What’s happening in Innovative Marketing Strategy class?

We are nearing the completion of the unit on Innovative Marketing Strategies. The unit coordinator, Professor Donnel Briley (Chair of the Marketing Discipline), has imparted his truly global interpretation of marketing strategies. Having lived and studied in North America, Europe and Australia, Donnel’s vast cultural experiences are exemplified through the cases studies he presents.

My favorite part of class is when we contrast regionally or culturally dependent marketing strategies versus strategies that have a more universal appeal. There seems to be no ‘one size fits all’ when it comes to marketing strategies as human needs and social boundaries define humor and success from one region to the next.

In this economic climate, marketers can be faced with developing marketing strategies that can be easily adapted to be suitable for varied cultures. Has there been a marketing strategy that has really struck you as universally appealing?

McDonald's Sponsorship Case Study

Another Olympic Games has come and gone. And while Australian swimming may not have done as well as usual and are looking to review their performance, one organization that performed well in this period was McDonald's in Australia.

Obviously, we're not privy to the detailed financial results of McDonald's or their ROI on their significant investment as a major sponsor of the Olympics in London. But what is impressive is the way that McDonald's in Australia leveraged their Olympic association.

Love them or hate them and no doubt some people will argue that McDonald's should not be associated with sporting events - but that is not the point here. The point is that the way that McDonald's has executed its Olympic sponsorship provides a great case study for how other firms need to implement sponsorship strategies.

Sponsorships have become a common part of a communications platform, particularly for larger firms. It is estimated that around 1% of marketing budgets are allocated to sponsorships, as they have unique advantages over other forms of promotion, particularly in the area of building a positive brand association.

Gone are the days where the sponsorship arrangement would simply be the payment of the funds and then adopt a 'hope for the best' approach. These days, most sponsoring firms would recognize that they have to work hard at leveraging and highlighting their sponsorship connection.

That's why McDonald's approach in Australia provides an excellent case study. They introduced a range of short-term menu items, with each tied to a previous Olympics, such as the Sydney Stack and the Beijing Chicken, along with a Coca-Cola Olympic glass give-away sales promotion.
This overall campaign clearly connected McDonald's and the Olympics, gave them additional products to sell, added variety for their regular customers, and gave the opportunity for different promotional messages and a value-adding sales promotion.

Overall, McDonald's has demonstrated a far more effective way of leveraging a sponsorship, rather than simply running ads saying that they are 'proud sponsors’. What are your thought on the issues surrounding the Olympic sponsorships? Should a company such as McDonald’s be a sponsor of the Olympics?

Geoff Fripp
Lecturer – Masters of Marketing at the University of Sydney Business School

When’s the best time to return to University?

Is there really a best time to return to university? After a few years into your career you might begin feeling less sense of achievement. Perhaps the challenges you originally thrived on are gone. The determined amongst us are contemplating our next move. That could involve a change of careers, or perhaps even climbing a rung or two higher on the career ladder.

Many people who feel this way have reached a crossroad. Their options include either continuing what they are doing or to return to study to advance their career. How old is too old to return to university as a post grad student? It seems that the average age for a post-grad student in Australia is 35 years old. Rather than benchmarking yourself against that number, perhaps it’s better to think about what you want to achieve by having a postgraduate qualification.

What are the benefits of doing a post graduate degree such as a Masters of Marketing early in your career life as opposed to after 10 years of work experience?

Is the macro-environment really a PEST?

When marketing students learn to consider the macro-environment in the development of their marketing plans and strategies, they are provided with the acronym PEST as a simple way of recalling political, economic, social and technology factors.

But this view stems from the traditional business outlook that environmental change was essentially a nuisance and that stability was preferable.

But one only needs to look at the recent financial results of Apple to see how outdated that view is in today's world. Currently, Apple generates 75% of its revenue from products it did not have five years ago. Their highly successful iPhone and iPad products were hardly on the Apple drawing board in 2004, yet today are responsible for an amazing transformation of this company.

Back in 2005, Apple looked to protect their flagship product, the iPod, from potential sales damage from the enhanced capability of smart phones. And due to their limited technical expertise in this market at that time, Apple's first foray into the smart phone market was via a joint venture with Motorola. It was only after this disappointing effort that they decided to go it alone and in mid-2007 the first iPhone was launched.

Within five years, Apple was essentially transformed into a different organization. They are now among the most profitable companies, and are also ranked as one of the valuable brands, in the world. Here is a firm that is now brimming with confidence, resources and profitability and eagerly awaiting further environmental change.

 So is the macro-environment really a PEST? A simple rearrangement of these letters transforms it into STEP. A step forward, a step upward - certainly true for Apple and perhaps a much better way to think about change and the opportunities it can provide organizations. What are your thoughts?

Geoff Fripp
Lecturer – Masters of Marketing at the University of Sydney Business School

Marketing is getting infinitely complex.

Marketing is getting infinitely complex.
But here is some context to help you deal with that complexity.

Today’s marketer not only has more channel choices than at any other time in history, but the number of channels is increasing every day. Plus they are often operating with effectively less budget, to deliver higher, more accountable performance, while a waterfall of data thunders down upon them.

No wonder we often feel overwhelmed. No wonder many marketers are suffering decision paralysis as they wade through the mountains of options and data trying to decide the best strategy.

In response our reptilian mid-brain has us longing for a simpler time, as a way of protecting us from an ever-lurking fear of failure.

The problem is not complexity
 
Let's bring some context to this complexity.

In 1999, the IBM Knowledge Management Team developed a Cynefin Framework (a welsh word), which provides new approaches to communication and decision-making in complex social environments. Sounds like a good description of the marketing function - right?

The Cynefin framework has four main domains: 

• Simple in which the relationship between cause and effect is obvious to all.
• Complicated in which the relationship between cause and effect requires analysis or investigation.
• Complex in which the relationship between cause and effect can only be perceived in retrospect.
• And Chaotic in which there is no relationship between cause and effect at all.

In the context of marketing, the market systems we deal with are at best complicated, but usually complex. Yet often we find ourselves mistakenly developing strategies based on the incorrect assumption of a simple system where cause and effect are obvious.

Understanding that marketing sits in the complex domain creates opportunities for better dealing with the challenges of complexity.

Change your approach to testing and learning
 
The first insight is that in this domain it is impossible to develop best practice, or even good practice. Instead, relationships between cause and effect manifest as emerging practice. This requires us to probe, sense and respond to the market. It means that marketing activities are actually probing the system, observing the changes that occur and responding to these changes, both negative and positive. This is seen in practice as marketing moves from a succession of individual campaigns to a process of constant engagement.

Collaborate to create new solutions and mutual value –

The second insight is that complex systems require us to develop truly collaborative approaches to market. Not simply co-ordination and cooperation, but collaboration leading to creating mutual benefit and value with the many stakeholders within the system. In media we are seeing this collaboration between many of the traditional and the newer media providers and their customers leading to new intellectual property, functionality and utility.

Simply learn to deal with complexity
 
At the core of our survival mechanism we crave simplicity, the fact is that marketing has never been simple. There were perhaps fewer options in the past, but within the context of the Cynefin framework marketing primarily exists in the complex domain, never the simple.

Marketers need to embrace this complexity and evolve processes and strategies for dealing with complex systems. This means that many of the modes of operating that are based on the simple domain assumption of an obvious relationship between cause and effect will need to change too.

Darren Woolley
Managing Director and Founder
TrinityP3 Strategic Marketing Management

The Different types of Creativity in Marketing

For one of our final group projects for the Master of Marketing, we were given the chance to not only design a marketing campaign but also the actual product we wish to bring to market with our campaign. I mentioned about this in the post about A visit to Smart. This project was very exciting for me because I can finally find the connection between marketing and design. Yay!!!

In preparing for the project, we had countless group meetings, research briefs and brain-storming sessions, as well as useful guest speakers to open our eyes to the possibilities of creating a great campaign for a product we came up with. Three weeks after we handed in our brief we had an intensive concept generation session with 5 creative directors. Three of them were from Smart and they were all very helpful from different perspectives.

They shared experiences about everything, but they all stressed on the method of presentation. How well we can express our ideas and sell our product. But our focus at the time was to come up with the product first.

Our product was a bike sharing system and slightly controversial due to the helmet laws and geographical limitations in Sydney (that being very hilly). After sorting that out (well the helmet issue kind of sorted itself out and we decided to use the Audi concept bike designed by Arish Karimi to combat the hills of Sydney.) we had to decide the art directions of the campaign, the budget and sponsorship allocations, and finally what advertising mediums to use. Our final poster (print is a mandatory medium for this project) is in line with current fashion trends as you can see below, and we placed a heavy emphasis on social media because our single minded proposition is ‘Share your ride”.

Our final campaign poster

Finally we had to put together the presentation. This was the most frustrating part as all the fun for me was in designing the product and the marketing campaign, but it HAD to be done and done well, otherwise all our hard work and creativity will not be seen. This perhaps took us the longest to do because we came up with this product and campaign, so we have countless things to say about it. How to put it into a 20 minute presentation with equal emphasis on the main areas and to cover every aspect was the most difficult part.

Our postcard/coaster/sticker concept

In doing this project for the Master of Marketing program, we not only understood the importance of creativity in the field of marketing, but also how to express this creativity in a form that the audience can comprehend. The collaboration of various forms of creativity is also very important for us as creativity in presentation methods is something I lack, and luckily someone else in the group is able to fill me in.

Successful campaigns are usually the memorable ones such as those I have mentioned in my previous blog posts. And I think our project is far from being comparable with those, but it was an extremely memorable experience for us and a great piece of work to put in our portfolio.

We’re letting people try the service for $1 to generate buzz and increase awareness

So if anyone is interested in knowing more about this project please do not hesitate to contact me. Also I will be in China for the next three weeks for Christmas and New Year. So I’ll keep my eye out for any interesting marketing tricks while I’m there. Till next time, happy holidays, be well and stay lovely!

Partnering with not for profit organisations – Should we give free head hours for good publicity?

For most businesses, the biggest objective is to make money. Marketing as the Master of Marketing program puts it, does it’s bit by letting people know about the product, how well it does its job and most importantly, tell them they need it, and why.

For not-for-profit organisations, the more exposure they have, the higher chances they will get donations. Surely their marketing budget is much smaller than international corporations, but somehow we see the “Salvos” everywhere. That’s because not all the work is being paid for.

The Salvation Army has always been one of the most influential charities in Australia and the large amount of marketing and promotional materials they put out plays a major part of it. For our integrated marketing communications subject in the Master of Marketing, we had the honor of speaking to the marketing agency working with the Salvation Army.

They put in a lot more head hours then they got paid for and create extremely effective campaigns. But there are issues associated with that. First of all the Salvo’s is a Christian charity so the team assigned to work with them within the Agency has to be comfortable with that. Secondly, a charity will never say no to sponsorships. A local print shop might offer to do 200 of their posters and the Salvos will ask the agency to print 200 copies less. And because a lot of the ad spaces are donated, it is hard to determine who will see the ad, and therefore had to produce campaigns that are targeting specific markets.

There were also cases where the agency has launched the new campaign, and because some advertising spaces were donated at the last minute with no time to print out the new material, the Salvos decided to put up the old one just so the opportunity isn’t wasted. This type of inconsistency in the message they send out could be counterproductive, but like all things brand equity related, is difficult to determine.



So is going through all these difficulties as well as putting in free head hours worth the good publicity? The agency think so. At the end of the day, they are proud of their work and it is a campaign that will be perhaps more memorable because of the association with the Salvation Army. We as Master of Marketing students are taught an important lesson, we must be ready to make compromises for the good of the organisation. Just think about the damage it could do to the Salvos brand if they rejected donation of free ad spot just because the new campaign posters are not ready. One of the rules of the Salvation Army is to accept all types of donations, no matter how small.

This marks the end of the post. Have you ever worked for any not-for-profit organisation? Feel free to leave me your feedback.

A Visit to Smart

Hello everyone!

The Master of Marketing program at the University of Sydney Business School aims to have a balance of academic and industry knowledge to cover all aspects of marketing, in-house or agency based. At the beginning of semester two, we were given the chance to attend a re-enactment of a creative pitch Smart did for Appletiser.

Smart is a full service creative agency with offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Queensland and Auckland and key clients include Coca-Cola, DrinkWise, Specsavers, Horticulture Australia, Betstar and the NSW, Victorian, Queensland and Federal Governments. Smart acquired The Foundry in 2010 and aims to become Australia’s biggest independent agency. This seems to be a growing trend and preferred business model in the marketing industry as seen in many case studies we came across in the Master of Marketing course.

An article about Smart on Mumbrella, Smart CEO Ben Lilley comments on this business model stating: "This marks Smart’s fourth acquisition in as many years (including Kindred in Sydney and Turner Sands and Logan Meo Walters in Queensland). We have now refined a mergers and acquisitions model that is proving very successful for our own business, our clients and the businesses we have acquired. This model is proving hugely effective in allowing the talent in each agency we acquire to realise the equity value in their companies, while allowing them to work on in an independent creative offering.”

The event was held at their cosy Sydney office near central station around 6pm. They provided light snacks and refreshments upon arrival, and the whole creative team was nice enough to stay back to attend the presentation.

We were greeted by the creative director Daniel Gregory - who is a part of the panel on Gruen Transfer (please read my piece on Gruen if you haven’t done so), and client services director Nicole Gardner.
in the concept being presented.

Daniel Gregory on the Gruen Transfer

Youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wej9JVbQk1U

We were then introduced to the team and presented with the campaign as they would to the client, using graphics, animations and other visual tools to help us understand the concept. The presentation was casual and interactive, and we were also given a brief history of the agency and what they do to set the scene.

Question time was allowed at the end of the presentation and all the team members jumped in to answer questions related to their area of expertise. The presentation really highlights the importance of teamwork; everyone must thoroughly understand and believe.

The visit was not purely for entertainment purposes. We’re required to watch the presentation carefully, taking notes and asking questions to prepare for two assignments later. The first is an individual assignment which asks us to write a review for the pitch including a score card rating system by AANA. This assignment is analytical bases and focus on attention to detail.

The second assignment is a group assignment aimed to develop a marketing strategy to launch a brand new product in a specific category (which I will write about later). This assignment is more creative and strategic based, covering areas of product design, campaign design and marketing research to come up with the most suitable campaign for the product which appeals to the target market.

In the Master of Marketing program and evident in those two assignments, we are required to think ahead and review the presentation provided by Smart from both the client perspective and the agency perspective. This pitching presentation also sets the bar for the quality of work required at a professional level, which is useful whichever side you decide to work for in the future. These assignments are just one of the ways The Master of Marketing at The University of Sydney combines theory with industry knowledge and experience.

This marks the end of this blog post, hope you enjoyed reading it.

Qantas Corporate Spinning Failure Damages Brand Image Badly

Hello everyone. In my attempt to be “current” I have dragged Qantas into the water. Qantas is officially back in the air yesterday at 4pm, after Fair Work Australia ended the unprecedented two-day grounding of its aircraft sparked by a divisive industrial dispute.
Qantas’s recent attempts in reshaping the airline have become a PR disaster. This defective use of PR by Qantas is a perfect example of corporate spinning failure which greatly damaged the brand. Alan Joyce's problem is that no matter how hard he tries to beat the national icon drum, his customers know it's not true where it matters: service and efficient movement from Point A to Point B.

ATEC managing director Felicia Mariani says the industry has started assessing the damage the weekend's grounding of the Qantas fleet has caused and whether it has done more harm than the long-running dispute between the airline's management and workers.





Qantas spent $2 million buying wraparounds and full-page ads in the nation's newspapers to soften the fall. These are full page ads claiming to be building a ‘stronger Qantas’ while remaining in a state of denial over the management failures that have so badly damaged the carrier. Qantas management’s answer to dismal fleet planning is to cut 1000 jobs. But it hasn’t announced anything that will recruit new Australian customers, win back the lost legions, nor even keep those who have remained loyal. In addition, Qantas continues to damage its reputation by playing the blame game, accusing the Transport Workers Union of holding the airline to ransom and disrupting passengers and completely grounding it’s fleet.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has blamed Qantas for leaving thousands of passengers stranded in Australia and around the world, insisting the airline didn't need to take the "extreme" action of grounding its fleet.

Building a stronger Qantas print campaign

Qantas wrap around in the Australian

A group that co-ordinates a national response to major shocks to the tourism industry was assessing the impact of the turmoil at Qantas, she said. Tourism and Transport Forum (TTF) boss John Lee sees the weekend grounding as a "forgettable event" which won't do long-term harm to the industry. Mr Lee said the swiftness of the Government's response to the grounding had given the tourism industry certainty and helped prevent lasting damage.

"It's not as long-lasting as the earthquakes in Turkey or the recent flooding in Bangkok, so in the eyes of potential international visitors this probably isn't going to last in their memories," he said. "This recent phenomenon we all have in our modern lives, with so much information through technology, will mean this will be a pretty forgettable event come Christmas."

Many travellers reflect they chose to fly Qantas because they consider Qantas to be safe and reliable, which they no longer do. As for Australians, Qantas’s betrayal to move off-shore will destroy their value of being an Australian owned brand, one of their biggest selling points.

Do you think Qantas have gone too far this time? Or do you think the union has been too harsh?

Also check out blog post by Sydney Uni Business School Marketing Professor Charles Areni @ the Big opportunity blog.

Marketing Sameness

Hi all! Sorry about the prolonged delay on the Google piece. I pinky promise to get it to you asap, with cherries on top. So we’ll talk about something else today? For one of our assignments in Marketing we talked about marketing sameness. Deep stuff I know, but just bare with me.

An interesting quote by William Bernbach - "In advertising, not to be different is virtually suicidal”. So in saying this, why is it a growing trend that so many marketing campaigns are the same? I found 4 reasons.
One is, as Greg Ippolito puts it, the psychology of sameness. People are born to imitate others. That’s how we naturally learn. Advertising geniuses are rare, pairing that with the fact that the ability to imitate requires little talent, and we end up with the vast majority of creatives being driven by the psychology of sameness who resort to the ever-popular, undying cliché.

A good example is the change in retail branding in the US. In an attempt to be more relevant to younger customers, America's department stores and retailers have lost their brand identities as we can see below.

"The consumer is not a moron, she is your wife" - David Ogilvy. Part of the problem of marketing sameness is a lack of empathy, and in order to craft meaningful communications, they need to empathise with their audience, and very few people are wired for empathy in the marketing world.

The second issue is the rapid growth of social media and its influence on consumer behaviour. In the new world of the empowered consumer, they are exposed to more than 3,500 marketing messages per day. In order to stand out, marketers have evolved from traditional to transformational. But most companies are doing it wrong. For the automotive industry, their view of adaption to social media is to upload their TV commercials on Youtube.

The budget also plays an important role for marketing in a company. The lack of revenue can sometimes encourage brands to make campaigns with a high degree of innovation, divergent thinking and risk taking, i.e. viral campaigns and guerrilla marketing. But sometimes, it goes in the opposite direction. A perfect example is given again, by the automotive industry.
GM had just recovered from bankruptcy and promised product-centric ads that sold differentiating features. They down-played the GM brand and instead featured the individual brands Buick, Cadillac and Chevrolet. Sounds’ promising doesn’t it? Unfortunately due to budget restrictions, the ads failed to create any distance from each other, but rather reinforce that they are part of a family of brands.


Cookie-cutter ads GM have produced to save on cost.
The last issue is the company’s lack of marketing knowledge which allows every department to work together and achieve a common goal. In most cases, different departments in a company set their own goals, which sometimes contradict with each other. The classic one is the everlasting fight for budget across departments. This produces a vicious cycle and slowly grinds off people’s enthusiasm to come up with anything new.

This marks the end of the post. It’s a bit long I know, but I think the outcome is quite informative. And being marketing people, I hope it will be of help to you in some way. Again, sorry about the delay on the Google piece. I will deliver it asap, with cherries on top, as pinky promised.

Stay lovely and don’t forget to smile! Ta!

Life in a Day

I have always loved documentaries; I love them for their honesty, integrity and edited reality. And when I found out about this movie, I had to go see it. Thanks to the power of geo-marketing, I received session information for the nearest cinema as soon as I finished watching the preview on Youtube. Ahhh… the world of technology at my fingertips…building everyday living solutions… Let’s leave my appreciation for all things gadgetry for my next entry shall we, which is about our Masters of Marketing class visit to Google. Yay!

Back to the film. I had to do some research before I went to see it because I had mixed comments from my Masters of Marketing class and from friends. This is what made me decided to go... "An entirely new form of storytelling... provocative, gorgeous, and at times deeply moving." - Wired Magazine

Last year, YouTube asked its users to upload a film capturing something about their lives on one particular day, as an attempt to create a unique snapshot of a day on Earth, over 24 hours, from all corners of the world that serves as a time capsule to show future generations what it was like to be alive on the 24th of July, 2010.

Watch the idea behind the movie:

The film is 94 minutes 57 seconds long and assembled with scenes selected from more than 80,000 clips adding up to 4,500 hours of footage from 192 countries around the world, by Oscar winning director Kevin MacDonald. The completed film debuted at the Sundance Film Festival on January 27, 2011 and the premiere was streamed live on YouTube.



Watching the official trailer:

So I went to watch the movie, and it was surreal but overwhelming at times. The imagery was breathtaking, and everything was put together beautifully. But after a while I started to think, this is the first of many experiments with new media in cinema and it's potentially a very interesting one. But I don't think this is as ground breaking as it could have been. The concept is simple, and self expression is what people are born to do. But how can it be better? And what on earth has this got to do with marketing? As this is a marketing blog after all.

Well. There are many examples of co-creation in the Marketing world too. Honourable mentions include the scandalous iSnack 2.0,Which caused much anger and fury and costed Kraft millions of dollars to remove from shelves.

And the extremely successful “The best job in the world” campaign by Tourism Queensland that went viral extremely quickly and earned the brand over AUD$400 million of estimated marketing dollars when it was picked up by mass media including global news coverage from CNN stories to BBC documentaries, Time magazine articles and everything in between.

The best job in the world campaign was successful because they kept the footages original. They simply built a system of supporting marketing mediums around it and let the people vote for the most suitable applicant, allowing the people to have their say every step of the way and creating an emotional connection with the audience.

Picture source: http://www.ourawardentry.com.au/bestjob/index.html

iSnack 2.0 cough*failed*cough because although they went out of the box by collaborating with the target market on coming up with the name, they didn’t follow the idea through and the name selection process happened in the boardroom at Kraft. As boardroom tradition goes, they never pick the name somebody likes; they picked the name nobody hates. So not only did Kraft mess with “our” brand, the people who went through the trouble of coming up with a top-notch name, submitting it then crossed their fingers also feel used. I would imagine a similar case with Life in a Day. Perhaps the film should have been edited by the person who submitted the footage, because they’re the only one who knows exactly what the video wanted to express. By excluding them from the editing process, some value and meaning might be lost in translation, which is such a shame as people put so much effort into it, and it’s disappointing to see it not achieve its full potential.

Do you like the film? Feel free to leave me your comment.

This marks the end of the entry. Please stay tuned for the next blog on Google. In the mean time, be well and stay lovely!

Gasp Email Scandal – Customer Relationship Management Fail or Brilliant PR Stunt?

Hello everyone! Just want to use this blog entry as an opportunity to discuss a recent incident we talked about in our Integrated Marketing Communications class for the Master of Marketing involving an Australian clothing label and a dissatisfied bride-to-be. We’ll start with some background; Gasp clothing, an Australian boutique chain, is gloating about the international attention garnered by its obnoxious response to a customer complaint, which turned into a viral email sensation.

Keara O'Neil was on a shopping trip with two friends at the GASP Chapel St store on September 24 when she had a dispute with a sales assistant named "Chris". O'Neil, a retail assistant herself, claims Chris was initially helpful but soon turned nasty, making a dig at her size 12 frame and yelling out as she left the store, "Have fun shopping at Supre... I knew you were a joke the minute you walked in".

Keara O’Neil, put the issue in the hands of social media, and made Gasp’s rude responses everyone’s problem.

Distressed by the treatment, O'Neil then sent a letter to the customer service centre at GASP, which was answered by GASP area manager Matthew Chidgey who further insulted her and called Chris a retail “Superstar”. The email exchange then went viral, and made the infamous boutique known to the world. Mr Chidgey later confirmed that the email was legitimate but was “written by one of the staff in head office.” During the interview on The 7pm Project, Mr Chidgey also said that the girls “walked around the store making fun of the dresses.” and when asked about the public’s response following the incident, Mr Chidgey said that “the comments we received were mostly positive with some negative”, which made him the laughing stock on National Television.

 

GASP Store Manager Matt Chidgey on 7PM Project

GASP also released a statement in its defence. "We respect that not all consumers strive for a glamorous appearance; some prefer to simply blend in. We respect and welcome all customers whom wish to visit our store, even though the intention to buy may not exist. But we ask that their opinions be expressed through blogs, social media or around a warm latte, but certainly not inside our stores."

Refusing to back down, Gasp has further vowed to ban O'Neil and all her friends from stepping into the stores, while thanking her for initiating free promotion. "GASP's official statement to the young lady who started this tremendous publicity stunt for our company is that, we would like to thank you from the bottom of our hearts for putting our business on the national and international stage," Chidgey wrote in an email to the Herald Sun.

"Notwithstanding your ill intentions, our business has experienced unprecedented sales volume, and we would like to thank you for all your assistance in helping to achieving this. To all the rude and obnoxious clowns, we respectfully ask that you get out and stay out, we don't want you or your business. We ask that (you) share your misconceived and unfounded remarks amongst yourselves. Have a nice day and good luck," added Chidgey, ending the email.

The announcement on GASP’s website further proved truth in the increase in sales due to this social media stir-up.

It is understood GASP later closed its Facebook page following a deluge of negative comments concerning the incident. “Gaspfail” was registered immediately after the Facebook closure which blew up across Twitter. GASP have yet to respond as they don’t currently have a Twitter account. It's important to remember that while the shelf life of social disasters is mercifully short, search isn't so forgiving. Long after Gasp Fail has faded from the social networks, Google will continue to display content related to the incident that will drag Gasp’s brand through the mud each and every time someone searches for it.

Gasp is not the first company to be brought to its knees by the devastatingly democratic demands of social media, and how they respond now will be critical to their survival. The United Airlines example is one that has become legendary. When David Carroll's complaint about his broken guitar was ignored by United, he wrote a song called United Breaks Guitars. The song has now been viewed by 10 million people online and 100 million people across the globe know his story. It has been estimated that the complaint wiped $180m off United's share value.

I’m sure the advancement in this case must have dropped a few jaws, but let’s analyse this for some insights. A few obvious ones were mentioned in class during the discussion. First one is that, not everyone at work should be allowed to write. Every company should have a complaint manager who deals with customer complaints and a dedicated writer to respond on behalf of the company. Secondly, always apologise, as your business is to an extend run by your customers, and optimise the effects of social media as much as you can to get the message out. And thirdly, train your customer representatives. How the internal company culture works is one thing, but reflecting that attitude with your customer is simply unacceptable. Now, could a business get it so incredibly wrong? Is this really a customer relationship management fail or a carefully fabricated PR stunt? Just something for you to think about until the answer unravels itself, mostly likely on social media.

Telstra Brand Launch

Welcome to the second entry to the Marketing Matters blog! I survived through the first one! Yay! Hope you liked it!

As we all would have noticed by now Telstra looks different… (Actually I wasn't until I was told in my Master of Marketing class) and because Telstra is such an iconic brand, I’m planning to turn this topic into a case study about how major brands reposition themselves to create new brand values. This blog entry will be on-going as I will be watching Telstra’s performance and people’s reaction closely for the next few months as part of my study covering a few subjects including Integrated Marketing Communications and Regulatory Environment & Ethics.

Since the beginning of 2009, rumour has it that Telstra’s NextG Wireless is growing, with Telstra already set up to transition to 4G and LTE Wireless technology, which is capable of delivering movies to tablets and other devices in a matter of seconds (Richards, 2011). In September 2011 Telstra has unveiled a new colourful identity that aims to capture the diversity of its products, services and customers, in the biggest change to the Telstra brand since its transition from Telecom Australia in 1993 (CB, 2011). Full page ads were featured on the Sun-Herald on the 18th of September in celebration of the launch.

Full page ads on the Sun-Herald

DDB Group's specialist brand agency, Interbrand, worked with Telstra on the brand identity and along with DDB Sydney launched a new Telstra advertising campaign featuring the new look brand through TV and press. Marty O’Halloran, Chief Executive Officer, DDB Group said: “Telstra is one of Australia’s biggest, most recognisable brands. Our challenge was to maintain that familiarity, while also encouraging customers to re-evaluate what Telstra is about. Aspects of people’s lives are not any one colour, so injecting the existing branding with a full colour wardrobe means that we can take the Telstra brand to customers in a recognisable, relevant and engaging way.” (Aimgroup, 2011)

Telstra's new TVC

The new brand identity is designed to reflect the changes that have been happening at Telstra over the past two years, as the company moves to focus on customer service, sales and marketing while continuing its great legacy of engineering excellence (CB, 2011). The Telstra logo will continue in its current shape, and will feature a new colour palette incorporating orange, green, turquoise, blue, purple and magenta. The new look will be used for all customer groups including consumer, business, enterprise and government (Sandev, 2011).

Most of the negative comments from Mumbrella, the B&T website and CB website are from people who are not convinced that Telstra is able to provide real improvements to their services and this all “advertising fluff”. But overall, Telstra received positive feedback but the effects of the campaign are yet to be seen. This is a comment from GreatStrategy on the B&T website: "I think Telstra has done a great job rebranding. As a customer that has loathed Telstra for most of my life, I am observing my own change in attitude to Telstra not just from this rebranding but by their recent attempts to be more competitive. Its a good change and looking forward to seeing how it all pans out.” And another one from Al on CB:“Colourfully forgettable”. I personally am staying neutral as I’m waiting to see what actual changes Telstra will make before making a decision on the effectiveness of this brand change. For more information on their new branding, visit Telstra's website.

This is an interesting case study because it covers a variety of issues including brand equity, corporate restructuring, internal marketing as well as value creation which are all important topics covered in the Master of Marketing course. There are many other topics and I will include them as I go.

This marks the end of this post. I will be writing about this topic from difference perspectives through the next few months and compare it to other major iconic brands that are perhaps not doing so well cough*Qantas*cough. I’ll leave you with something to think about. What is your point of view on the new Telstra campaign?

Attending the filming of Gruen Transfer

As part of our “get to know industry” type events for our Integrated Communications Subject in the Masters of Marketing course, Steve James our lecturer organised an educational evening of advertising goodness. Other than the usual insightful and creative content this great show offers, we were given the chance to have our 3 seconds of fame in the audiences on national television.

First time attending the filming of a show and filled with excitement, all 13 of us in the class turned up on time and we managed to act like adults in the ABC lobby. Upon entering, half of us were moved to the last row so we don’t look like an obvious cluster on TV, and our path to stardom have ended for the time been.


 

Back to the more realistic things in life. The topic of the day was billboards. Billboards are one of the oldest forms of advertising mediums but are ever-changing thanks to great creativity and technology advances. Honourable mentions include the New Zealand road safety billboard by Colenso BBDO advertising agency for the Papakura & Franklin District Council that “bleeds” in the rain to remind drivers to slow down during bad weather conditions. The billboard was released in June 2009 and was highly effective.

New Zealand road safety billboard

Now more on the technology side of things. Digital billboards are becoming increasingly mainstream and is highly effective in attracting attention by interacting with the audience. Not mentioned on the show but definitely one of my favourite is the McDonalds PicknPlay by DDB Stockholm, Sweden. Paired with geo-marketing and using a large digital billboard in the heart of Stockholm, DDB created an interactive challenge where the audience can pick and play for their favourite McDonald's goodie. Simply steer the paddle by using the touch-screen on their phone as they follow the game in real time on the large digital screen. If the player last 30 seconds they win their goodie of choice. A digital coupon is sent to their phone, with directions to collect their prize at the nearest McDonald's.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7u0ij9D5S4Y

Overall it was a very fun and memorable experience. Wil Anderson was absolutely charming and the panel really captured the essence of the topics from different perspectives. Some of us got our 3 seconds of fame because they sat in the front row but for the rest of us who got moved to the back, we got to relax and enjoy the show. You can catch the latest episodes of Gruen on ABC1 9pm Wednesday nights and 8:30pm on ABC2 Thursday nights. Or view online at ABC.net.

This marks end of my first blog entry.

I found the Marketing course that I am doing filled with interesting guest speakers and opportunity to go on educational trips to meet industry including Google HQ and award winning creative agencies, which I will blog about as I go. I will finish the course in 2012 so if you think you have what it takes to help me continue building this resource library of marketing goodness, or if you have any questions, please feel free to leave me a comment.

Cheerio!

Marketing Matters

Hello everyone! This is the first blog entry for Marketing Matters, the Master of Marketing blog and I’m Erin, your writer. Nice to meet you all!!!

The reason for doing this blog is to create a small collection of current marketing materials around us throughout the Master of Marketing course in 2011-2012. Some entries are about interesting marketing case studies, others about the work we do in class and for assignments and the rest are just bits and pieces from design, technology and marketing. In creating this blog, I wish to help current and new students understand the Masters of Marketing course better, through the eyes of a full-time student.