It’s been a while since I teed off. But every now and then you read an article so blatantly wrong you feel compelled to respond. That moment came for me last week when I read an opinion piece on Mumbrella declaring that “Australia’s traditional agencies can’t manage to put out anything remotely passable as digital work”. Which is quite possibly the most ill-informed opinion I’ve heard this year. But rather than relying on sweeping generalisations to support my claim, I’ll respond in the manner appropriate of a strategist – with insights and data.

Before I get into that though, I should make it clear that I have no personal agenda linked to my response. In fact, I’ve spent the last 4 years working within a pure-play digital agency. And I’ll admit that when I first came into the role, I had an opinion similar to Daniel's. Traditional agencies did do digital poorly at the time. But that was 4 years ago. And as anyone working in digital knows, the speed of change in our industry is immense. A lot has transpired since, and the traditional agencies have rapidly bridged the capability gap.

To prove so, you only need to look as far as this year’s AIMIA award finalists. The AIMIAs are widely regarded as the pinnacle within our industry, recognising the best digital work our country has to offer. If Daniel’s assertion was correct, there’d barely be a traditional agency on the radar. Except that there is. Plenty of them. From Leo Burnett to Ideaworks to Whybin/TBWA/Tequila the traditional agencies are representing.

In fact, almost half of all AIMIA finalists came from beyond the pure-play digital environment.  I analysed the complete list of AIMIA finalists and identified projects whereby an agency was engaged. Here’s what I found:

• 53 finalists (52%) emanated from a pure-play digital agency
• 37 finalists (36%) emerged from traditional agencies
• 12 finalists (12%) came from a hybrid style agency

Which seems to be fairly conclusive proof that Australia’s traditional agencies are perfectly capable of producing high quality digital work. And to be honest, I’m not sure how anyone involved in the industry could still think otherwise…

You may not have known it, but a momentous day occured last week. It was Tell the Truth day of course. And to celebrate it, I had a little light hearted fun by exploring the secrets the world's top tech companies might be forced to reveal if they were to participate.

Check out 'The secrets of the world's top tech companies revealed' over at Search Engine People

I don't usually have a lot of affection for spammers who try to pollute my blog via the comments – primarily because their techniques are so blatantly transparent/lame. From generic 'thanks for sharing'  comments that could be applied to any post, through to excessive flattery, I've seen it all before (and deleted it accordingly). That was, until recently when I came across a technique that had me in stitches. In essence it's a mixture between humour and begging, which I'm calling humour spam…

For your entertainment, I've copied the comment and pasted it below. Although I'm sorry to say to my spammer friend that I've removed the link because I really don't want to be associated with that sort of product. Sorry pal! Without further adieu, here's the comment:

It’s so hard to get backlinks these days, honestly i need a backlink by comments on your blog / forums or guestbook to make my website appear in search engine. I am getting desperate Now! I know you’ll laugh while reading this comment !!! Here is my website – penis enlargement (link removed) I know my comments do not relate to the topic, but PLEASE HELP ME!! APPROVING MY COMMENT!

Regards: PoormanBH2011

You just gotta appreciate his candour! And he was right… I did laugh at his comment. But alas, I don't really want to endorse his penis enlargement product. And I daresay Google won't appreciate me linking to that type of neighbourhood either. But good try buddy. You certainly got my attention.

What I love are the small touches. Notice the signoff – Poorman. Nice. Another tug on the sympathy vote. And the email address associated with the comment… mattcut90@gmail.com. A cheeky reference to Matt Cutts – Google's anti-spam warrior. That was perhaps the funniest part for me.

So what do you reckon? Funniest spam comment ever, or am I an easy audience?

*Update: I was contacted By Paul Robinson from ABC about a day after this post was published. Paul apologised for the experience and advised that there had been some teething problems with a new delivery supplier. He also offered a full refund. So thanks go to Paul for the quick response and for ensuring resolution on the matter. Now I can go back to liking the ABC again.

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'Tis the season to be jolly. Or so you would think. But I'm not so merry at the moment. In fact I'm pissed (in case you couldn't tell from the headline). Christmas shopping has whittled away my will to live over the past couple of years. So I thought I'd be really clever this year and do all my shopping online. Genius! Or so I thought. Until I made the mistake of shopping at the ABC Shop, who have shown that as online retailers, they make very good broadcasters!

It doesn't exactly give me great pleasure to direct this tirade against the ABC. They produce and broadcast the handful of shows that actually attract me to the television. But they have crushed my Christmas spirit. And I truly believe they deserve this rant! So here it goes…

My saga started all the way back in November when my Christmas shopping began (how organised is that?!?). With a brother-in-law that works within the advertising industry, some Gruen Transfer DVDs seemed like a pretty good gift idea to me. In fact, I was pretty stoked with my choice. Except that when they were delivered, I opened the box to find two discs of a home improvement program.

No big deal though… It was delivered at the start of December. Sure… it was a little inconvenient, but an honest mistake nonetheless. I contacted the ABC and they asked me to return the incorrect DVDs with the receipt. Once I had done so, they'd send the correct discs my way. Another inconvenience, and in all honesty I was a little annoyed at having to go out of my way to atone for their screw up. But hey… they're a non-profit. So I forgave them.

A couple of weeks later the correct DVDs arrived. Which should have been the end of my saga. Except that I decided to order from the ABC Shop again. Bad idea! My mum had asked for a DVD that the ABC sold, so I returned to the scene of the crime. Once bitten, twice shy would have been sound advice at this point. But I can be stupid sometimes…

So I ordered the DVD on December the 7th. And waited… and waited. And then waited a little more. They'd been pretty slow processing the original Gruen delivery, so I wasn't expecting particularly hasty service. In fact, I kinda forgot about it while I did the rest of my Christmas shopping. Until today when we contacted them to see what on earth was going on.

After waiting on hold for 15 minutes to speak to someone about the issue, we were advised that the product had been dispatched. End of story. That's where the ABC Shop saw their responsibility ending. You see, we had chosen the cheapest delivery option, which meant that that the ABC didn't bother to track it beyond the warehouse. And of course, we were told this in a tone that implied it was our own fault for choosing the tight-ass delivery option.

Which is the point at which this blog post became necessary in my mind!

So let's get this straight ABC… you seem to think it's ok to take my $50 for the DVD despite the fact that I could have ripped it via a torrent like everyone else. And it's also ok for you to take a further $5 to deliver the damn thing. That's $55 you've taken from me so far… And now you want me to pay a premium just to ensure you do your job and actually deliver the product to me… Now I'm a few days out of Christmas, without a present for my mum, and out of pocket for your ineptitude.

Merry Christmas to you too!

Back in the day, I was a bit of a social media purist (aka wanker). Indeed, in an early strategy doc, I once wrote that a campaign mentality was completely inappropriate for social media. I was wrong. Social media can be an immensely effective channel in activating and spreading marketing campaigns. For instance, Smiggle did an excellent job activating their Colour Crew campaign via Facebook. But… I’m still highly pessimistic about campaigns that are contained solely within social media channels. Because far too often, they become redundant assets once the campaign has ended. Or in the case of Toyota, they become spam infested cesspools…

Last year, Toyota launched perhaps the highest profile social media marketing experiment this country has seen. In an open pitch, they pitted 5 agencies against each other to see which could generate the strongest result. In my opinion it was poorly conceived. Five agencies with five agendas creating five distinct messages for the same audience at the same time. Mixed messages anyone…?

However, that’s not my beef right now. Instead, I’m more concerned with the state of those campaign assets. Almost one year on, they’ve become wastelands. In particular, the Ultimate City pages created by now defunct agency The Population are horribly spam infested, as can be seen below:

Interestingly, Toyota still links to these pages on their standard Facebook page. What’s the average customer meant to think when they click through to these spam infested pages? They certainly won’t understand the background of the project. They’ll simply see Toyota endorsing and supporting a bunch of spammers. Not cool…

While not meeting the same spammy fate as Toyota’s page, there are plenty of other examples of high profile social media campaigns that have been abandoned after the initial buzz of activity:

Ispylevis

Ispylevis was one of the more celebrated social media campaigns of 2009, and it certainly was a cute little idea. Indeed, it was nominated for a bunch of industry awards such as the B&T Awards &  Mumbrella Awards. Yet if you visit the ipsylevis Twitter account today, you’ll notice they haven’t Tweeted in 6 months. They may be planning a follow up campaign, but I do wonder how many of the 2,000 followers will be receptive after 6 months of silence.

The answer may be plenty, with a pair of free jeans at stake. But it sure would have been easier if an ongoing engagement strategy was in place.

Pepsi Refresh

Pepsi followed in the footsteps of Levis, launching a similar scavenger hunt for its Pepsi Refresh campaign. But like Levis, the Pepsi Twitter account has remained dormant since. Unlike Levis though, Pepsi’s account was generically branded, rather than being tied to a specific campaign. So a transition into non-campaign based interaction would have been perfectly acceptable. But obviously it didn’t happen…

So… are these shit campaigns?

No. That’s not my point. Each campaign was run well by a competent agency.  The problem is that they were just that… campaigns. I suspect it went down like this – each brand came to the agency with the budget and brief for a short-term social media campaign. Because social media is the cool thing to do right now. Each agency ran the campaign, but stopped supporting it once the client stopped paying them to do so (as they are entitled to do). So what is the client left with? Dormant social media assets, and a lack of internal understanding of how to maintain them…

It’s hard to see what the brands actually get out of this. Certainly the three brands mentioned aren’t short of awareness. So it seems to be all about generating some short-term PR buzz (and perhaps sales). Funny thing is though, the agencies probably get greater PR benefits from the campaign than the brand itself. The marketing industry will remember who executed each campaign for 12-24 months I suspect. Actual consumers will be lucky to remember it after a couple of months…

Short-term mentality = short-term result. Simple as that.

Some organisations shouldn’t bother advertising. Plain and simple. Banks are a primary candidate (warning – incoming rant!). Over the last few weeks, the Commonwealth Bank has unveiled a series of self-indulgent TV spots, the first of which can be seen below:

I’m not going to comment on the creative execution. There’s been enough snark relating to the Commonwealth’s new advertising direction on Mumbrella and Campaign Brief, and it’s truly not my area of expertise. What does shit me however is the underlying message the Commonwealth Bank is trying to deliver through these commercials – “we care”.

Bullshit!

For the first and only time, I’m in complete agreement with Senator Fielding. The banks are thieves! Let’s look at the facts. The Commonwealth Bank records a record profit of $5.6 billion, including an increase of 42% in cash profit. By anyone’s account, they are astonishing results. Yet while posting record profits, they want us to believe that it’s necessary to raise interest rates above and beyond the RBA’s movements…

And you expect us to believe that you actually care about your customers?

Please!

Actions speak louder than words. And when you act like a fucking jerk, no amount of advertising can possibly change that perception. So quit it with your patronising advertising! You don’t need brand awareness, and you’re never going to change perceptions that you are in fact devil spawn.

Unless of course you actually start acting in a humane manner… pffft!

Online trolls are an unfortunate reality of the web. The combination of simple publishing tools (forums, blogs etc) and total anonymity creates the perfect breeding ground for keyboard warriors to flourish. Almost every online community experiences some form of trolling behaviour. And the Australian media/marketing community is no different. Indeed, we have our very own type of troll, which I have entitled the Snarcissist.

The snarcissist is an ugly little character. Chock full of snark and an inflated sense of self-importance, he lurks within marketing communities such as Mumbrella and Campaign Brief, waiting for any opportunity to impart his superior marketing intellect. You can spot a snarcissist from a mile away. Just look for the following character traits:

• The snarcissist is a visionary, blessed with the unique talent of being able to forecast the human response of every possible message/campaign/scenario (in hindsight of course…)
• The snarcissist cares not for solutions. What’s important is identifying faults!
• The snarcissist is a master of all trades, being able to provide expert commentary on any campaign regardless of industry, budget, client brief or audience (as if they matter anyway…!!)
• The snarcissist is immensely humble, preferring to remain anonymous most of the time, instead of taking credit for his insightful commentary
• The snarcissist is a master of time management, managing to juggle a (supposed) full-time professional career with a part-time trolling habit

So where exactly will you find the snarcissist? I’m glad you asked. Just head over to the local trade press to find him pulling apart the latest campaigns. Here’s just a few recent examples:

1. A swarm of snarcissists took aim at the recent Tourism Australia campaign
2. Bakers Delight was baked itself on Campaign Brief for producing a TVC ‘as bland as their bread’
3. A Channel 9 TV ad was  crucified, albeit in a blatant case of plagiarism. Was the criticism justified? Perhaps. But the self indulgent snark… Perhaps not!

So what are we to do with the dreaded snarcissist? Well one thing’s for sure… he certainly ain’t going away any time soon. Indeed, the curse of the snarcissist goes back as far as 2006, when rumblings of his unsociable behaviour first began to emerge. Four years on and he’s just as prevalent as ever, if not more so with the rise and rise of Mumbrella. So I’m afraid we’re just going to have to learn to live with the little bugger. Ho hum!

With that in mind, here are a few practical tips for living in a world with our snarcissistic friends:

• Don’t feed the troll! Wherever possible, avoid entering into debate with the bastard, regardless of the stupidity of his opinion. He feeds off conflict and craves the reaction. Employ the Simpsons mantra – “Just don’t look“.
• If you absolutely can’t ignore the snarcissist (ie. they’re attacking your campaign), challenge them to submit their own campaign/message for consideration. Independent thought ain’t their forte, so a challenge like this is likely to send him running!
• And if all else fails… build a bridge! Trolls love em, and it’ll help you get over it!

It’s been a long time since my last post. As many of you would know, that’s because I’ve been busy tying the knot with my beautiful wife (as per my last post). So what better way to reacquaint myself  than with a rant against the very industry that has utterly consumed my life for the past 6 months. Let’s get straight to the punch – the wedding industry is evil. Pure evil! Profiteering off love and raw emotion is almost as despicable as profiteering off war/death. In my journey, I dealt with two types of operators – short-term profiteers (the overwhelming majority) and event partners. And there’s a clear marketing lesson in this story about how an overemphasis on short-term gains can cost a business in the longer-term. Let’s take a look at how the two types of  parties operated…

Short term profiteers

As the name suggests, short term profiteers are all about the cash baby! Or more to the point, extracting the absolute maximum number of dollars out of the transaction. A broad range of tactics and tricks are employed by the profiteers in an attempt to increase the total volume of dollars from you:

• Emotional bribery: This tactic was used on my wife numerous times and really pissed me off. After expressing pricing concerns, she’d often be told that money should never be a barrier for a wedding. Easy to say when you’re not paying for it… One prospective dress supplier even told her to ignore the budget she was working towards and just get what she wanted. “Don’t worry about what your husband says; it’s your day after all”. Funny… I thought marriage was supposed to represent a union. Needless to say she was quickly removed from the supplier list.
• Bait and switch: One of the oldest and most devious tricks in the book. Various suppliers roped us in with promises of free services (such as alterations or delivery), only to conveniently forget about those verbal agreements when it came time to settle the bill. Often for the sake of little more than a hundred dollars. Tell me… is it really worth pissing your customer off in the most royals of manners for the sake of a hundred bucks?
• Failure to provide any additional service: Our boutique hotelier was well aware that we were staying at their venue as part of our wedding celebration. Yet despite the fact that we were spending well in excess of $250 per night, they refused us permission to take photos in their picturesque lobby area, as we had not utilised their wedding facilities. Nor would they honour a specific request to scatter rose petals on the bed. Way to ruin the romance!

In summary, short-term profiteers are pricks.

Event partners

To blatantly discard all wedding suppliers as dishonest would be a disservice to the rare diamonds in the rough we found (such as our wedding caterer or wedding band), who understood that premium pricing should in fact be accompanied by premium service. These were the providers who at least gave the impression that they actually cared about our wedding, rather than simply fattening their wallet.  They followed a few simple principles of good business:

• Being responsive to our enquiries and communicating effectively
• Honouring minor requests without attempting to jack up the price
• Being open about their pricing structure
• Customising and personalising their service where necessary
• Understanding that good service is good marketing!

So who wins in the end?

Sure… the short-term profiteer might have got an extra $100 out of me via their bait and switch tactics. But they are the real losers in the end. I was amongst the first in my friendship circle to tie the knot. I have five close friends getting married in the next 9 months. Guess what they’re doing now…? Planning their wedding. And who do you think they’re turning to for advice and referrals. Me.

Naturally, I’m more than happy to give them a list of suppliers who I insist they avoid. At all costs! Conversely, I have have been a passionate advocate for those few businesses who treated us well. For our caterer, that has already translated into a new customer to the tune of $20,000. And guess how we found out about our caterer… via a referral.

So congratulations Mr short-term profiteer. You weasled a few extra dollars out of me. But you’ve cost yourself thousands of dollars in new business. And whilst I haven’t named and shamed you, others will in the future via social media. You’re living on borrowed time buddy.

Power to the people!

You may have noticed it’s been a little quiet around here lately… or you may not have. Anywhoo… there has been a reason for the lack of activity, and a good one at that. You see, it’s just over three weeks until I tie the knot with my bride-to-be. And as anyone who has ever organised a wedding before would know, it’s a hell of a ball-breaker! Hence, I’ve had more important things to do than muse over than the nuances of the digital marketing world (for now). And that’s likely to be the case for the next 3-4 weeks. So, in the anticipation of an extended absence, why not help me celebrate this momentous occasion by raising a virtual glass to the happy couple…

It’s official. Chatroulette is the hottest thang on the web right now! The buzz machine has rapidly filtered through to the mainstream media, who seem to have found a (temporary?) alternative to the Twitter hype. comScore data tells us Chatroulette’s user base increased 900% to almost a million US users in February. Whoa! And as we all know, where people go, marketers follow. We’ve already seen brands such as FCUK & Sunny Queen Eggs enter the fray. To which I say… ho hum! Just because a service achieves instant popularity, doesn’t mean that marketers should jump in blindly. In fact, I can think of a bunch of reasons why marketers should stay the hell away from Chatroulette…

1. Chatroulette is seedy

Really seedy! If there’s one warning that continues to emerge from people trialling Chatroulette, it’s to prepare yourself for what you’re going to see… cocks. And a lot of them. Informal research revealed a 14% skew towards perverts and masturbators. Anecdotally, some claim it is much higher. Regardless, it’s an environment few brands would want to be associated with. In fact, the only industry that should be gravitating towards Chatroulette right now is XXX. Stick a pornstar in front of the webcam and watch the perverts flock to their webcams…!

2. Chatroulette is random

By nature, Chatroulette is random. Completely random. Which is of course the novelty of the whole thing – connect with a complete stranger and see what happens. Which is exactly what makes it a disaster for marketers. The point of any marketing campaign is to connect and communicate with a defined audience. Yet the random factor makes it impossible to achieve that simple goal. Businesses can’t select who they communicate with. And more importantly, customers can’t connect with brands if they want to (I’m highly doubtful they would want to in this environment anyway). So what are we left with? A brand searching randomly/aimlessly for people to speak to. Sounds kinda like advertising to me…

3. Chatroulette is private

Unlike Twitter, Chatroulette is a private environment. Chat sessions are a one-to-one experience, as opposed to the one-to-many format that Twitter and Facebook embrace. This is a significant difference. Brands can’t (and shouldn’t) penetrate private communication channels. You don’t see brands trying to invade private conversations on traditional instant messaging services such as MSN or Yahoo Messenger. Nor do we attempt to infiltrate private telephone conversations (although we do try to create new ones via telemarketing). So why should Chatroulette be any different?

4. Chatroulette fails to offer any tangible benefit

As far as I’m concerned, there is next to no benefit for brands participating on Chatroulette. We already know it’s untargeted. Furthermore, it’s lacks a registration process. The implication for brands is the absence of a branded profile, such as you might see in Twitter or Facebook. So we have no profile (and therefore no crawlable links), no history & no ability to generate real web traffic. Just random interactions with strangers. Heck… even if you do create a positive experience, there’s still no word-of-mouth benefit because the interaction is private. The sharing element that makes other social environments so appealing to marketers is absent as well. All we’re left with is that fuzzy fallback position that display advertisers love - branding… ewww!

Getting past the ‘shiny new toy’ syndrome

Chatroulette is hot. But so what… Just because something achieves fad status, doesn’t necessarily make it an effective marketing tool/channel. Being the first to implement a campaign on a new service is not a marketing goal. Nor is making your agency look “cool”… at least not for your clients (who are the one paying the bills after all). The rush of brands towards Chatroulette was entirely predictable, yet ill-advised in my opinion. Yes… marketing on the web will always entail an element of innovation and experimentation. But that doesn’t mean innovation for the sake of it. If you can’t see a tangible goal at the end of it, what exactly are you trying to achieve…?