Archive for the 'Advertising' Category

Advertising radio on TV

Tuesday, July 8th, 2008

The ABC are advertising their Local Radio stations on the teev. Fair enough. The ad features snatches of audio from a range of different programs and a fairly static visual background. It’s dreadfully unappealing.
When you watch television, and this will come as a shock to most of you, your brain is expecting visual stimulation. Colour […]

What does BANNED mean?

Friday, July 4th, 2008

“Each morning, the Maori people of New Zealand, which is part of Australia, rise at dawn, cook some eggs, put on their grass skirts and go out to the fields to make 42 below vodka.” It’s the start of a pretty cute 42 Below vodka advertisement that was banned on the web, radio and newspaper […]

Bad Hair Day on Radio National

Sunday, April 27th, 2008

The ABC has always been Amateur Hour on grooming. Its station promotions are the other weakness; sickly imitations of the commercial networks’ urgent demands for attention. I’m not suggesting they get better at copying commercial style promotions. Quite the reverse. The problem is an unwillingness to experiment with alternative advertising formats - testimonials, mash-ups, pointers, […]

Phone Words

Tuesday, March 25th, 2008

I saw a great use of the Telstra Phone Words product this week. Phone Words is the add-on service that lets you use a 13 or 1300 number in conjunction with a word. Makes it easy to remember a phone number. It’s particularly useful in radio advertising because the listener has a good chance of […]

Google Advertising Professionals

Monday, February 4th, 2008

Henry Ford is credited with the insight “I know half of my advertising works really well. I just don’t know which half”. The success of Google, the leader in online advertising, is largely due to the impressive accountability that they give advertisers.
Having done the online training course provided by Google, I sat for (and passed) […]

Problem with interactive media

Tuesday, December 18th, 2007

Is that people insist on interacting with it. If you look at the Facebook applications generated by big business you see that Facebook spam is a major hurdle for corporates. Once again the battle between the old respectables and ambush media.
Businesses continue to treat interactive media the same way that they treat magazine advertising. In […]

Media Tonic

Thursday, July 5th, 2007

Media Tonic is a new client, a media representation business based in Perth. My brother Mark works there. I’ve done them an e-newsletter and a blog aimed at entertaining their clients and agency contacts. ENTERTAINING? Yes, I’m working hard to keep it 40% focussed on the relevant business message. The agencies already know what […]

Viral 3D advertising

Monday, April 9th, 2007

Email is the fire that fans the internet. Hidden amongst untold millions of boring, static web pages are tiny pockets of original content. Yes, there are RSS feeds and sites which aggregate content but how do you find most of the good stuff? It’s probably through people you trust sending you emails which link […]

Remote intimacy and musical underwear

Monday, March 5th, 2007

Clients are starting to ask their ad agencies and digital ad agencies about Second Life. Last week I did a series of presentations to Australian agencies about the virtual world, trying to explain it to people who in some cases have not yet experienced it. In those cases it was like trying to explain television […]

Am I Person of the Year or Not?

Saturday, December 30th, 2006

The problem with smarty-pants headlines is that sometimes, just sometimes, they go awry. Generally calls for fancy footwork.
Chrysler bought sponsorship of Time Magazine’s Person of the Year edition and a copywriter wrote a contextual ad: ‘You may not be the Person of the Year but at least you can drive like one’. Wait a minute! […]