Doing Words - Latest Comments in General

Re: On how it feels to have walked 100km non-stop

OJ — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 01:43:37 -0000

Well done Bro and team. You guys ROCK!

Re: On how it feels to have walked 100km non-stop

Judy Burrett — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 22:52:28 -0000

I'm THAT PROUD!!!
Tony's Mum

Re: On how it feels to have walked 100km non-stop

Tony burrett — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 22:24:57 -0000

Wonderful summation of an amazing experience Al, thank you. It was a pleasure an an honour to walk with you, Sacha and Roger. Love ya!

And thanks to our support crew and the Trailwalker volunteers. These guys are absolutely amazing!

Re: Juley* I’m back!

petercrowe — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 02:28:57 -0000

Some wise words there Al. I access a lot of mobile content and none of that is within the walled garden of my Telco (Three). Pre iPhone anyone who did a small amount of mobile browsing figured the going direct delivered significantly in terms of choice. Google and others promoting their mobile version (think mail/reader/maps) has accelerated the update. The iPhone App Store will accelerate this even further. Three have the gaul to actually charge to access some of their walled content – most of which is free on mobile browsing (think m.ebay.com.au, m.truelocal.com.au, m.yourrestaurants.com.au).

Carriers will soon need to start offering truly unique content or abandon the fees and/or marketing based on their walled content.

Re: Juley* I’m back!

Christina Thurn — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 01:09:54 -0000

Thanks for a great contribution to the panel, Alan – only sorry we didn’t have more time to dive into the subject in more depth.
Re: “Carriers will soon be forced to share data revenues with content/app publishers like they do with handset manufacturers” – it’s unclear at this stage what business model will enable this outside of MVNOs, to my knowledge no handset manufacturers receive a data share, at least not in Australia.
Cheers

Re: Juley* I’m back!

bigyahu — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 16:44:44 -0000

Thanks Kelly! I think so too!

Re: Juley* I’m back!

@kcdc — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 16:32:57 -0000

Great post Alan, it's exciting!

Re: Do CDs have a future in the developing world?

bigyahu — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 09:35:05 -0000

Thanks Bill, great to know. I'd say this reflects a broader consumer
movement away from mainstream labels and mainstream artists towards
the kind of music now more likely to be found on vinyl. Would be great
to see a vinyl record industry doing, say, 50 million in sales
annually worldwide - big enough to provide a healthy business for
professional operators without being big enough to allow the big,
clumsy labels a way in.

Re: Can crowds create brands as well as the pros?

bigyahu — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 22:21:33 -0000

Yeah, true, "marketing genii" was a bit derogative. Sorry.

I meant to lump together all the different decision-makers involved in creating advertising professionally these days to keep the story rolling along, but (a) that's part of the problem; and (b) in that lump of genii there's only one or two people right at the coal face doing anything creative, one of whom would be you, Sacha.

Re: Can crowds create brands as well as the pros?

Sacha — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 07:33:21 -0000

I think this kind of thing is precisely what's wrong with advertsing and branding these days.

Collectively, the industry has forgotten that we're here to shape opinion, not follow it.

The poor quality of work that's around now is a consequence of trends like this. Focus-grouped to death, brainstormed into oblivion, rationalised to kingdom come. You know why everyone hates ads? Because everyone had a hand in doing it.

The best ideas come from magical places. A boardroom - real or, in this case, virtual- flourescent-lit, with ample supplies of crisps and warm coke and an even more ample supply of ordinary punters off the street isn't a magical place.

That place is in an individual's mind. Newton and Einstein didn't need moderators, that's for sure.

Your derogative term 'marketing genii' is indicative of the problem. In this subjective business, everyone thinks they can have a go. The people to whom it should be left up to are derided as prima-donnas.

So call it crowdsourcing, focus-grouping, whatever. Nothing original ever came from a committee.

But I would say that, wouldn't I? I work in advertising.

Re: Can crowds create brands as well as the pros?

Nic Hodges — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 06:11:46 -0000

I've been watching the crwodsourcing fad slowly rise and, it seems now, quietly retreat over the past few years with a lot of interest. The proclamations were the same as the 'desktop publishing revolution', that finally anyone could do it.

But the problem is anyone can't.

'My Kid could paint that' is a common criticism of pretty much every area of creativity I work in. The truth is usually that yes, your kid could have done that; but there is no fucking way your kid could have gone through the mental processes and routines, or been able to distinguish the ephemeral gold ideas from the also-ran's flying through their brain in order to come to that conclusion.

The difference between creative industries and most others is that people often believe that they can be creative (in a professional sense), and that they do it well. I'm pretty sure ship captains, actuaries, and surgeons don't suffer the same criticism purely because it takes only a few seconds to realise you don't have a single clue what you're doing.

Unfortunately, it seems crowdsourcing creativity needs quite a few more seconds to come to this realisation.

Re: Do CDs have a future in the developing world?

Bill Bennett — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 04:41:44 -0000

"Remember, the music industry still supports a small but healthy market for vinyl records."

By all accounts the vinyl market is considerably healthier than the CD business in some parts of the world -- and we're not talking about developing countries.

CNN reports: "According to the Recording Industry Association of America, manufacturers' shipments of LPs jumped more than 36 percent from 2006 to 2007 to more than 1.3 million. Shipments of CDs dropped more than 17 percent during the same period to 511 million, as they lost some ground to digital formats."

According to the Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/jul/16/...) UK vinyl sales were up 13% in 2007.

There's something really interesting going on here.

Re: Don’t trust your ad agency with your social media

bigyahu — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 07:17:53 -0000

Not at all Julian, I think you're doing a great job, keep it up! I enjoyed your explanation of "social currency" today too. Cheers!

Re: Don’t trust your ad agency with your social media

Julian — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 14:26:04 -0000

When I started blogging, I never thought this would happen! Although I have never met you in real life, you have read what I have been saying and thought it was good enough to share with your audience. I am honoured. I look forward to reading your blog.

Re: More evidence: rest of world is really hard

bigyahu — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 03:42:55 -0000

I just replaced the WordPress commenting on this blog with disqus.com because my testing on other blogs has shown that the discussion threading and automatic emailing of responses to comments drives more comments, more pageviews, and more goodness in general. But that means Callum's helpful comment made prior to the conversion was lost. So here it is again, enjoy:
--------------------------------------------
True. PayPal's big killer is the convenience. Sign up, take credit cards. It's pretty much that easy. Most other services have you jump through too many hoops. That and the popularity, everyone's on PayPal.

However, as a serious business solution, it's problematic. Check PayPalSucks.com for some horror stories. Particularly their appeal process (or total lack thereof). I take my money out of PayPal as soon as it arrives, avoid the risks.

- Callum