Cafe Crem, Now and Again! 
  Originally uploaded by Miki, Queen of Planet Goodaboom

My week was full of listening to big personnel announcements, pitch preparations, apologising tv executives, campaign launches and more personal lessons learnt.

This week I found out that I LOATH conservative marketing thinking mixed with low brand-esteem.

But less of me…more on blogging intellects:

Julian Cole is spot on again (he’s one smart dude) with his article on jump starting the Aussie SMM revolution.

Zac Martin, Pigs Don’t Fly take on why using banner ads is not social media marketing

Valeria Maltoni, one of my favourite blogger’s asks the question: What is beyond the conversation?

Laurel Papworth hits an area that I haven’t even thought about, closing down social media sites without damaging your brand

I hope you like them:)

  Cappuccino Coffee House… 
  Originally uploaded by Charlesfuller

B&T Digital Bootcamp

I was wondering if anyone will be going to B&T Digital Bootcamp next week. It’s at the Australian Technology Park, Sydney on the 3rd September.

It promises to build my knowledge. I hope so, the agency paid over $500 for me to go.

The agenda is:

The Future of Digital Media Speaker
Mike Walsh, Managing Director, Tomorrow Pty Ltd
What is the future of digital media? Digital Bootcamp convener Mike Walsh will take you through the topic of his new book “Futuretainment” and look at how technology will transform the media and entertainment industry.

Digital Analytics Speaker
Megan Clarken, Managing Director, Pacific, Nielsen Online
The online world is constantly changing. How can advertising agencies and marketers find information, data and insight to take advantage of different analytic measurements available today?


Basic Terminology (Online & Interactive) Speaker
Scott-Bradley Pearce, Strategic Media & Sydication Advisor, CNET Networks
With the ever-changing world of technology and digital use, this session looks at the A-Z of online and interactive terminology.

Search & Digital Media Speaker
Andrew Beecher, Director of Sales & Marketing, Ansearch Limited
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is all about understanding how to optimise your website in such a way that it will appear higher in the search rankings. In addition, Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is paying for web traffic via paid click and is targeted, direct and measurable. What are the benefits of SEO & SEM and how do they both benefit online advertising?

Mobile Advertising Speaker
Martyn Raab, Head of Mobile Sales, MediaSmart
With the advent of the 3G mobile network and the new generation of mobile phones released, the mobile phone is poised to be the next big area of growth in both consumer use and advertising spend.

Social Networking Speaker
Michael Burke, Managing Director, Liquid Interactive
Social Networking in the past five years has rocketed from a niche activity into a phenomenon that most Australians connect to everyday.

Rich Media Speaker
Sam Smith, Sales Strategy Director, Yahoo7
The term “rich media” or interactive media has a loose definition. What are the current categories defined as rich media and where is rich media going?

Permission Speaker
Dominic Elfer, Managing Director, Max Interactive
Permission marketing has many different names like Opt-in Marketing, Email Marketing or eMarketing. It is simply an effective way to get through the marketing clutter to consumers who are interested in your product.

Are you going?

For more information go to B&T Digital Bootcamp

  Search Engine Optimization 
  Originally uploaded by samanthacampbell16

Search engine optimisation is like a mysterious black hole for my fellow marketers in Newcastle. No, I’ll rephrase that…the vast majority of marketers in Australia.

They see the Internet as some form of dark and hazardous place, infested with porn users and predators wanting to steal their company secrets, but they’re totally way off the mark.

The truth is most marketers leave digital to the web designer or even worse, the I.T. department, while focusing their time on more glamorous marketing tools such as television, radio and print.

In today’s marketplace, brands have to communicate via the Internet to successfully connect with Gen Y and Gen X, who live on the net. Even my generation (sad to say), the baby boomer’s use the Internet to madly research products before purchase.

Sorry back to SEO.

Marketers don’t get SEO!!!

Our friends at Google have made this world a much easier place to market products and it’s measurable. It’s called a search engine.

It should be a marketers paradise, but how many marketers have a SEO budget? I know a few.

SEO has to be added to the advertising mix.

You might think that I’m talking bull, but let me ask you….how does your brand rank on Google using key industry terms or in SEO speak, your ‘Keywords’?  And I don’t mean Google Adwords.

It’s not funny, I know large Newcastle companies that don’t even rank on Google when you search their company name!!!

Why don’t marketers get it?

  The Coffee Cup Club 
  Originally uploaded by Miki, Queen of Planet Goodaboom

This week, I certainly had my share of excitement, but the pinnacle
had to be the social media gathering in Sydney, on Tuesday night.

A gathering of Australia’s blogging glitterarti to meet Joseph Jaffe
and welcome Julian Cole and Marketing Mag’s online editor, Scott
Drummond to New South Wales.

Sorry Victoria, it looks like Sydney is the
social media capital of Australia or is it Newcastle?

However, less about me and more on some bloody good blogging reads:

• Media Hunter, Craig Wilson covers our social media soiree
• Servant of Chaos, Gavin Heaton this week has reminded me that my blogroll is not dead. Thanks, Gavin I’m onto it.
• Adspace Pioneers, Julian Cole’s crusading social media blog gives some constructive criticism on a new viral campaign
• A Blog About Digital Media, Ben Shepherd looks at a few Olympic video frustrations
• Mathew Packer’s great Newcastle ranting blog on everything and everyone

Now back to drinking my coffee:)

  brand idea 
  Originally uploaded by mridea848

At last, the Australian Marketing Institute has given its member’s a clue to their vision of the future of marketing.

Roger James, chairman of the Australian Marketing Institute in this month’s issue of ‘Marketing Update’ tells us about the need to bring marketing and finance closer together.

He explains, his vision of marketing is based on a somewhat tongue-in-cheek suggestion by Tim Ambler in ‘Marketing and the Bottom Line’, that proposed a simple solution to marketing’s problem: “give finance the responsibility for marketing measurement, since that way the bean counters would be forced to learn about marketing and marketing metrics.”

And listening to a presentation by Angus McKay the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Foster’s, the title of his presentation gives a clue to its particular interest: ‘The CFO’s Role in Brand Management’.

Yes my fellow marketer’s…the brains trust at the Australian Marketing Institute think the CFO is the best person for championing good brand management practices!!!

Our miss guided Chairman has to remember his responsibility is to the members and championing the marketing profession. It’s not to put our marketing careers under the control of the CFO.

I think Milan Kundera was right when he said “Business has only two functions – marketing and innovation.” He didn’t say “Business has only two functions – “Cash in and cash out.”

At this point, I want to mention that I’m not downplaying the importance and role CFO’s play in the corporate world. It’s just that I believe in marketing and its importance, I didn’t join the marketing profession to be a bean counter…Get my drift?

In my opinion, our so called peak marketing body has lost the plot and they want to sell the family jewels, to a bunch of accountants (with all due respect to accountants).

In layman terms, our Chairman has just removed his bicycle clips, dropped his elasticated slacks, removed his crusty Y-fronts and taken a cash receipt book from behind, just to appease a bunch of cardigan wearing over inflated egotistical accountants, who just don’t get it (with all due respect to all over inflated egotistical accountants).

Doesn’t he know that 100’s of companies and agencies all around Australia have just been put at risk, due to the Global Credit Crisis? Who put these companies at risk? The marketer…no, the CFO…YES!!!

And the Australian Marketing Institute wants to put them in charge.

I’ve read heaps of marketing books by leading marketing thought leaders like Philip Kotler, Jack Trout, Don Peppers, Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki, David Aaker and Al Ries, but I don’t remember them suggesting we should be integrating marketing with the finance department. 

How many companies are taking this radical idea? Our Chairman said “At this stage Foster’s is likely to be the exception rather than the rule.” With all due respect to our Chairman, if he had any experience in explaining marketing theory or pitching key marketing concepts to a CFO…he would understand why Foster’s is the only brand silly enough to hand over a key marketing function to the finance dude (with all due respect to Foster’s CFO).

In any case, CFO’s don’t have the time to manage the marketing team, CFO’s are to busy spending their time investing (losing) the company profits and cash reserves on the sub-prime mortgage market and/or manipulating their company’s financial performance and profitability metrics, before they go into retirement or gaol.

What next? A merger with the Charter Accountants.

But wait, that might be a good idea…rather than being a CPM, we could all become CPA’s…that’ll be good, we may gain some respect.

Marketing’s 4 P’s would become Price, Profitability, Performance and Productivity. The 4 C’s would become Cost, Capital, Counting and Crisis or Credit, Currency, Constraint and Consequences.

A leader must be able to gain respect for his vision and as a person. A leader is a dealer in hope. The Australian Marketing Institute is dealing in defeatism.

I’d like to leave you with a few words from our Chairman on his vision “there is a good argument that this approach should be increasingly adopted by Australian businesses. Let’s hope so; marketing will be the better for it.”

In the words of Gordon Whitehead mmktg, afami,cpm: “CRAP!” You haven’t presented an argument, all you’re trying to do is justify the AMI leadership’s fixation with marketing metrics program and marketing will not be better for it.

I said final word, but I can’t stop.

Yes, we all know marketers have to speak the language of business and achieve return-on-investment, but the role of the Australian Marketing Institute is to champion marketing and marketers, not give up on marketing because CFO’s just don’t get it or can’t be bothered to change.

To read the offending article in the AMI’s ‘Marketing Update’ go to www.ami.org.au. Be quick they might remove it.

When it comes to social media in Australia, the TV industry is leading the way. First, we had ABC’s Gruen Transfer engaging viewers, but Channel 9’s new TV drama called ‘Scorched’ is going to take the biscuit.

The nice people at Channel 9 are going to enhance our experience with ‘Cassie Has Dreams‘, ninemsn’s first ever online-only drama using multiple social media sites.

Other industries, please take note.

‘Scorched’ online world consists of:

• CPN (Cross Platform News), a fictional news network from 2012 which is featured in the telemovie
• www.argon-energy.com and www.h20.com are the homes of fictional companies Argon Energy and h20 Transport group
• www.angelaboardman.com is the home of fictional NSW Premier Angela Boardman, played by Georgie Parker
• www.rawt.org.au is the homepage of fictional resident action group RAWT (Residents Against Water Theft)
• Meanwhile, you can keep up-to-date with the star on Cassie on her blog, Twitter, Myspace, Flickr and Youtube channel. Oh and meet her mate, Jade on Facebook.

I think it may work.  Do you think its social media?

Please check out the ‘Scorched’ news:)

  Lotus Flower – White 
  Originally uploaded by Bahman Farzad

If you live near Newcastle this Wednesday get yourselves down to the Hunter Australian Marketing Institute’s educational event on ‘Strategic Perspectives.’

As usual, the Hunter team has rounded up an interesting bunch of speakers.

Presentation 1: John Roberts, Professor of Marketing, University of Sydney and London Business School, on ‘Brand Roles: Calibrating What your Brand does for the Company’

Presentation 2: Ken Virtue, Marketing Manager Retail Channels, Dulux Australia, on ‘Dulux — A Case Study of an Iconic Australian brand’

Presentation 3: Tony Surtees, CEO, Australia’s iPRIME.com.au, the digital division of Prime Media Group on Power to the People – What Digital Is and Isn’t doing to the Media and Us

Venue: Newcastle Graduate School of Business, corner of King and Auckland Streets, Newcastle

Timing: 2-5 PM

Registration: AMI Members: $35, Non-Members: $55 & AMI Student Members: $10

Don’t worry fans, I haven’t gone soft on my old enemy the nerds at the Australian Marketing Institute, but it is ironic that they’re holding an event titled ‘Strategic Perspectives.’

I do have to make a distinction between the AMI’s underachievers in Sydney and team Hunter.

In this month’s issue of Marketing Magazine, regular marketing columnist Julian Cole has announced his Top 50 Australian Marketing Pioneers Blogs and Sticky Advertising’s very own bloggers Media Hunter and The Marketer claimed the number 18 and 22 spots, respectively.

According to Julian Cole: ”With Sticky Advertising having the minds of Media Hunter (Craig Wilson) and The Marketer (Gordon Whitehead) it would not be surprised if it was top dog in social media by 2010.”

Julian Cole and the team at Marketing Magazine saw a need for a filtering of the insightful marketing blogs from the total time wasters. While many marketers realize the power of blogs, they often don’t read them, simply because they don’t know where to find them.

“Blog’s excel at breaking news stories related to their industry, generating new marketing strategies or showcasing advice on marketing challenges. Believe it or not, blogs are now influencing the rest of your learning sources too.”  says Julian.

The Top 50 Australian Marketing Pioneers Blogs is a ranking of the top media and marketing blogs in Australia, as developed by digital strategist and blogger, Julian Cole. Released quarterly in Marketing Magazine, the rankings are constructed using six different comparative scores out of 10. 

1. Google Page Ranking (ranking from Google)
2. Technorati authority ( the number of unique blogs pointing to their blog)
3. Pioneer ranking (subjective score by Julian Cole, depending on how pioneering the content of the blog is)
4. Technorati blogs reactions (the number of times the blog is mentioned by others)
5. Alexa traffic rankings (ranking in terms of website), and
6. Bloglines (the number of subscriptions)

Listen to Senator Tom Coburn tell Robert Scobles why he likes bloggers.

I want to challange our Australian local, state or federal politicians…would you allow a blogger to interview you? If so, I’ll be there with bells on.

Just leave a comment below or just email me.

  NRL Premiership Logo 
  Originally uploaded by morganf2096

In the aftermath of the National Rugby League’s throwing its teddy out of the cot, due to Sonny Bill Williams.

I’d like to have my five pennies worth.

Firstly, I want to give Channel 9’s Footy Show the ‘Dumbest Statement of the Year Award’ for this: “We don’t want to be like the English Premier League”

WHAT!!! You guys don’t want the National Rugby League (NRL) to be a billion dollar a year business? You don’t want NRL clubs to be recognised and evoke passion, all around the world? You don’t want NRL players to be the best paid sports people? You don’t want NRL clubs to have the best facilities? You don’t want NRL grounds full?

LISTEN…the people at the NRL may not know it, but the NRL is a brand, each club is a brand and each player is a brand. These brands are owned in the minds of the people, not the NRL.

These brands are built on a series of assets that are linked to the brand names and symbols, adding or subtracting to the value of that brand.

In the case of the NRL, its major assets are its clubs, its players, its facilities and its supporters.

Loss making clubs + under paid players + shit grounds + low attendance = National Rugby League

Or in marketing terms…a crap brand.

The best quote I’ve heard on the state of rugby league was from the former New South Wales Premier Nick Griener, he said: “The problem with Rugby League is it’s the only business I know, where they (NRL Clubs) plan to make a loss at the end of the year.”

Why don’t the National Rugby League get it? Sonny Bill Williams was your best asset.

The Players bring people through the turnstile. If you don’t believe me, take a look at what happened this year when David Beckham turned out for the LA Galaxy, in Sydney. A massive 80,000 people turned out to watch one man.

Lately the pocket pundits have had a field day in the press, telling us how they would fix the problem by merging clubs, reducing or increasing the number of teams, increasing the salary cap, changing the games rules, but my favourite had to be a player agent who wanted 3 twenty minute periods, like the AFL. What a load of crap.

In the business era of the twenty first century, a sporting organisation like the NRL and its clubs, must search and recruit the best sporting administrators money can buy, administrators that will focus on building strong club brands.

With all due respect to the current NRL administration, we need a Tiger Woods, David Beckham’s or a Sonny Bill Williams’ of the business world to run the NRL and its clubs.

Our game currently is full of ex-players, accountants, lawyers and small time business people without the skills orthe ability to run a piss-up in a brewery. They are dragging the game down…with all due respect.

Take the Newcastle Knights for an example:

Big crowds + big support base (1/2 million) + big star players = big financial loss (every year)

During the Sydney Olympics, the Australian organising committee searched far and wide, high and low to find right people to run the best Olympics ever. Why can’t the NRL?

David Beckham to run the NRL?