marketroids Archive

2

How to be a team player

By
Josh
– 14 January 2008Posted in: marketroids, wordy things

In preparation for internal training at work, the presenter sent us a list of questions to help her “focus the session on [our] skills levels and needs”.

  1. In one sentence, what would you like to get out of the session?
  2. What is your current understanding, knowledge and experience of [subject matter] and what would you like this to be?
  3. What three key topics/points would you like to know more about?

I wrote back:

  1. Sandwiches.
  2. Current knowledge: minimal. Desired: more than current level of knowledge.
  3. Unable to answer, given current knowledge (see 2).
2

Feminism, but not as we know it

By
Josh
– 22 July 2007Posted in: marketroids, media, politics, sensitive stuff about chicks

Previously in this blog I have noted that the high proportion of complaints to the Advertising Standards Bureau that come from humourless feminazis. And today we have another story from the Sun-Herald, doing a poor impression of its Melbourne palindrome, complaining that the board dismissed more than 200 complaints against the piss-funny Nando’s Fix advertisement, which features a stripper.

Among other free publicity, the story details the efforts of the Women’s Forum Australia to overhaul the Advertising Standards Board, claiming “its decisions do not reflect the wider community’s standards, particularly on the exploitation of women”.

Watching the ad, it’s about as far from prurient or exploitative as an ad containing strippers could possibly be. And it’s obvious to anyone but the most humourless harridan that it is a parody.

The ad subverts the stereotype of women so common in ads: the all-knowing supermother – watch as she laughs off the foibles of her helpless, inferior husband and breezily juggles career and family with the aid of the judicious purchase of margarines and cleaning products. The woman in this ad is clearly playing on that image, except her career happens to be lap dancing. Funny AND clever – who could object?

Besides, any lobby group that claims to represent community standards is lying in the most breathtakingly brazen fashion. A lobby group, by definition, does not represent the majority; it represents a minority who believe, for whatever reason, that they deserve special treatment. And a group of socially conservative feminists who oppose abortion, therapeutic cloning and the sexualisation of young women has got to be just a wee bit on the niche side, rather than representing the mainstream.

So when this lobby group claims an advertisement does not meet the standards of the community, its beef is with reality, not the Advertising Standards Board. The board quite obviously reflects community standards, but those standards are not what the group would like them to be.

“We want the ASB changed because it doesn’t reflect the views of right-wing prudes who appropriate the language of feminism to promote a conservative social and political agenda,” would at least be an honest claim.

2

Unoriginal thought

By
Josh
– 6 June 2007Posted in: marketroids, media, techno-wankery

London 2012 logo

I was going to make some witty remarks about how Nathan Barley must be working at Wolff Olins, the company that designed the London 2012 Olympics logo, but plenty of people beat me to it.

5

Finally, SATC helps me get laid

By
Josh
– 10 May 2007Posted in: marketroids, media, sensitive stuff about chicks, techno-wankery

Sydney Morning Herald and Sun Herald staff went on strike yesterday afternoon over planned redundancies of 35 staff. If one had hoped we would at least be spared another Miranda Devine outrage, it turns out one would have been disappointed. Though perhaps in support of her striking colleagues, it could at least be said that Miranda put no effort whatsoever into research or good writing.

Meanwhile, fellow strike-breaking scab Sam and the City has found yet another marketroid category of man whom women should want to date: the technosexual.

Hence there was a gap in the market for a man that not only good looked good, but could fix the DVD player, sync the iPod to their laptop and configure their internet connection so they could do the shopping, pay the bills and get the latest installment of Perez Hilton.

One of Sam’s readers mentioned the F-word – feminism – and asked why women should not be able to fix their own laptops and internet connections. To which Sam probably responded, “Don’t ask me, I’m just a girl! *giggle*”

Because Sam believes in thorough research almost as much as Miranda, she actually goes as far as the other end of the hallway for her archetypal dateable nerd: SMH tech reporter Asher Moses. Yes, the same SMH tech section that features all those stories about Google and Second Life and Wikipedia, not that they’re chasing page impressions to boost ad revenue, or anything.

Actually, I reckon Sam and Asher would make a great couple. They’re both yids and clearly have similar attitudes to research and the whole journalistic-standards-vs-populism debate. And not only is Asher fairly easy on the eyes, so Sam seems to think, he also falls into a terribly fashionable stereotype that would demonstrate Sam’s ability to stay at the bleeding edge of social trends.

Meanwhile, I will be hanging out in dry-cleaner bars (the sort of places women go to pick up a suit), flashing my BlackBerry and talking loudly about fixing DVD players and synchronising iPods.

Please form an orderly queue, ladies.

2

Newsflash: journalist has principles

By
Josh
– 4 May 2007Posted in: marketroids, media

PC World magazine Editor-in-Chief Harry McCracken resigned this week, claiming new CEO Colin Crawford tried to kill a story that was critical of Apple and Steve Jobs. Crawford reportedly also told editors they needed to be nicer to advertisers and write less critical reviews.

It’s hardly shocking that a publisher tried to heavy editors into playing nice with advertisers – that happens all the time.

Advertisers want favourable editorial, sure, but they also want to advertise in publications with loyal readers in valuable target markets. Readers only stay loyal if they believe the editors make independent and critical judgments free of commercial motives. Otherwise they could just read the corporate gumf. But publishers are remarkably thick-headed when it comes understanding this idea.

The real news is that a journalist quit over this principle rather than doing what he was told.

Not that it’ll make any difference. McCracken will no doubt be replaced by someone who has fewer principles, or different ones.

0

Newsflash: journalist found to be self important

By
Josh
– 29 March 2007Posted in: marketroids, media, techno-wankery

Having been a journalist in the past, I think I’m fairly qualified to comment on how far up their own arses many journalists’ heads are. And the answer to that is, very, very far.

Today’s shocking story begins when Wired journalist Fred Vogelstein was in the process of writing a fairly long-winded and detail-heavy story on Microsoft’s attitude to transparency in dealing with the media and the public. Due to an email stuff-up, one of Microsoft’s PR chaps accidentally forwarded Vogelstein the “secret dossier” that Microsoft kept on him. So flummoxed by this was Vogelstein, he posted about it in his blog and published the offending document in full. The ensuing bad publicity drove Waggener Edstrom President Frank Shaw to publish a defence in his blog.

Vogelstein makes out that the entire 5,500 words was all dirt on him. In truth, the majority of the 13-page document is a bunch of forwarded emails and discussion of key messages and expected questions, the sort of research any good PR company would do for a major client facing an important interview. Especially a company as obsessed with spin and media perceptions as Microsoft.

Perhaps half a page is devoted to Fred himself and contains such wow-scary revelations as:

Read the rest of this entry »

0

AIDS ads? FABULOUS!

By
Josh
– 31 January 2007Posted in: damned lies and statistics, marketroids, media, money, Sydney

You’d think with a subject as serious as the rise of the HIV infection rate, even the Herald could manage a slightly respectful and serious tone. And you’d be wrong.

Ruth Pollard’s article Surge in HIV figures a grim reality starts out gloomy and serious enough, but this only lasts until around the point where she tells us:

Australia has an internationally respected record in HIV, containing the epidemic mostly amongst gay men and limiting its spread in the broader community.

So it’s only gay people dying. That makes it OK. Respected, even.

Read the rest of this entry »

5

Ride the consumer wankfest all the way to hell

By
Josh
– 1 September 2006Posted in: marketroids, media, wordy things

Everyone who’s been to a conference or awards night of some description will be familiar with the bag of (usually heavily branded) thoctchkes the event’s sponsors give away. Celebrity guests at the upcoming MTV Video Music Awards will receive a set of slightly less tacky freebies, the details of which can be found in this press release. Here are 10 reasons why this press release signals the imminent collapse of Western society:

  1. The use of the word “gift” as a verb, as in “Actifirm will be gifting”.
  2. Mangled grammar, as in “Bespoke Labs T3 is offering their Narrow Wet-or-Dry-iron”.
  3. The oxymoronic phrase “fashion necessities”. Fashion is, by definition, not necessary.
  4. The Bacardi team of noted mixologists (who make cocktails, apparently).
  5. American celebrities are so dumb they don’t realise Burberry has been made utterly unfashionable by chavs in the UK.

    Read the rest of this entry »

2

Tosser Morning Herald

By
Josh
– 17 August 2006Posted in: marketroids, media

One of the cardinal sins commercial TV often commits is using news and current affairs coverage to promote other shows on the same channel.

Barnaby

This is getting more and more shameless every year. It’ll sometimes earn a smackdown from Media Watch if MW’s having a slow week. (What’s even more galling is when other media outlets report this as if it’s news – Big Brother is world champ in this regard.)

The SMH, lately, has been doing a fair bit of the same. For instance, the website on Saturday usually includes a “news” story that is a preview of the stories in Good Weekend that you’ll only get if you buy the dead-tree paper. And then there’s today’s story about how the Herald is running a new ad campaign. Wow, now that’s newsworthy. I’m sure all the other papers will be covering it too.

The campaign uses cartoon characters very nicely designed by Jon Burgerman to “change perceptions about the masthead’s readers”. You can find out more about these super-quirky characters and read their Myspace-ripoff profiles at www.interestingcreatures.com.au.

It doesn’t take you very long, though, to work out who are the new generation of readers the Herald is targeting: hip twenty- and thirtysomethings who view themselves as quirky and alternative by dint of having seen a Michael Moore movie once and having said something snooty about reality TV.

The wisdom of Barnaby

In other words, not all Herald readers drive Volvos – some of them are fucking wankers.

1

On hold

By
Josh
– 12 May 2006Posted in: marketroids

So whose bright idea was it that while I'm on hold getting increasingly frustrated because the company I'm calling is too cheap to hire enough call centre staff, to compound their contempt by playing their advertisements at me?!

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