FRANKthoughts

I’m in Singapore for a few days as one of the judges of the inaugural Nuffnang blog awards. Great result for the Aussies, we have about 1% of the bloggers that make up the 100,000 community and picked up 25% of the awards!

 Congratulations must go to everyone who was nominated and who made the event such a success.  More about the winners later.
On my strolls around Singapore i came across a new twist on reflexology which involves hundreds of fish nibbling your feet to remove the dead skin. Check this out 

It’s a shame that Hutchison Telecom  in Australia rolled the Orange mobile phone brand into what is now known as 3 in 2006, as we’re being robbed of some great cinema advertising coming out of the UK.

Orange has signed up US stars Danny Glover, Juliette Lewis, Sigourney Weaver and Emilio Estevez to appear in its cinema ad campaign this year, which has been running since 2003.  The creative agency (Fallon) have a new take on the famous franchise, which sees the long-running formula of celebrities having their movie pitches ripped apart by Dresden and his boorish Orange Film Board colleagues replaced by the Orange Film Studios, which makes new versions of Hollywood classics.  A spin-off digital campaign to promote the spoof movie in the latest commercial has also been created.

 Orange is a great case study for having a long term brand strategy.  Their long-term ownership of the cinema medium (in the telecommunications sector) with a humourous take on ‘turning off your mobile’ reaches a young audience spending a lot of time out of home, and using their phone as a social hub.  The strong content of the ads also increases engagement, in an environment where ad avoidance is fairly easy.

Initiatives such as Orange Wednesday continue to add value to the consumer with 2 for 1 films and even pizzas (through a deal with UK chain Pizza Express).  In the mobile phone market, where handsets, technology and deals change as quickly as you can say ‘Harry Potter’, owning a medium and to an extent, a day of the week stands the Orange brand in good stead.

Great stuff!

http://www.vimeo.com/3170682

Good afternoon to all FRANk-ophiles. As the title suggests, this is the first of what I hope will be many FRANk posts in the exciting world of communications! 

Following the success of last night’s ‘Australia Unites’ Channel Nine telethon in aid of the Victorian Bushfire Relief Fund (Red Cross website, 13 10 60 or 13 33 53), it is interesting to see how other people are using social media in promoting charitable work. 

On Thursday 12th February, more than 175 cities around the world hosted ‘Twestivals’ (Twitter Festivals), bringing together Twitter communities in the aim to raise $1m and awareness for charity:water.  The Twestivals gave supporters various methods of supporting the charity, with an anticipated 20,000 Twitter users and their friends following and participating. 

Supporters could:

Attend a local event (Melbourne event details here)

Donate via TipJoy or charity:water

Add their name to the ‘Water Cloud’ – a tag cloud made up of Twitter user names, with the size of their name reflecting the size of their donation 

Purchase a Twestival T-shirt – with top donors’ Twitter user names appearing on the shirt 

Tune in to Twestival.FM, a global online music project.  Tracks have been donated from numerous artists, with consumers urged to stream or download tracks, and donate.

For those that couldn’t attend an event, a number of events were streamed online, and also hosted through SecondLife and Moderne Island. 

It will be interesting to see how successful the model is at the campaign conclusion.  Whatever the result, it certainly provides an exciting and interactive alternative to the traditional ‘call centre and website’ approach of most charities, which can be quite labour intensive.

Not much to say other than this is a new mobile maps application. Have a look at the introductory video below.

For a list of supported phones, check here. The iPhone and iPod Touch are in the “coming soon” category, which is a suprise and a short term negative. You can visit google.com/latitude on your desktop and install the Latitude iGoogle gadget, which lets you share your location from your desktop computer.

As far as supported countries go, currently there are 27 of them.

We are moving on the 25th and 26th of September to our great new office just around the corner.

Our new address will be:
28 St Edmonds Rd
Prahran VIC 3181

View Larger Map

All our contact details will remain the same.

We’ve lost our balcony but picked up four!

Social media is sometime described as the magic solution. Simply get a facebook profile/blog template/twitter account, start talking and voila – your target audience is now talking with you and about you, commenting, sharing and providing you with endless amounts of free word of mouth.

Hmm… it’s actually a bit more complicated then that. “The social media fallacy” is a new video presentation from David Spark (spark media). It shows the right way to approach building your online strategy – from the beginning, with research and planning. Take a look – it’s worth it.

Thanks to Shana Albert from social desire for the cool diagram.

Check it out, watch it, comment it, rate it!

My friend James just came back from the Carnival in Salvador where every section is sponsored by different brands. The branded singlets in the shot are actually your ticket to the event/section. It made me think about all these branded t-shirts we see around. None of them looks appealing like these singlets. The design is quite amazing and the quality is great. It also helps that the singlet actually stands for something. It reminds you of a place, music, friends you’ve been with and the experience you shared. Slapping your logo on a t-shirt is not enough anymore. Instead try to wrap it with an experience people will love to talk about.

Several people have asked for my opinion on Microsoft’s intention to purchase Yahoo (Microhoo) for around $41 billion, as well as WPP’s merging of their of 24/7 Real Media search division with its other search agencies – Outrider, Catalyst and Quisma – to form the world’s largest search agency.

Well, to be ‘Frank’, I say bring it on. Like in most industries, consolidations make sense and it also proves that the Australian marketplace is taking search engine marketing (SEM) seriously. In Australia, Online advertising has cracked the $1 billion mark and is growing rapidly. Mergers and acquisitions are bound to occur when there is demand, or more importantly, perceived demand in the marketplace.

Due to the vast amount of media coverage concerning the potential merger of Microhoo, more and more people are starting to investigate SEM and realising that SEM is both a cost effective and accountable form of online advertising. Even my father, a web novice, has begun asking the right questions. And thats great news if you are in the business of providing SEM solutions.

Will the deal proceed? I have my doubts. For starters, Jerry Yang (founder of Yahoo) is not a great ally of Microsoft and I sense a deal is potentially forming between Yahoo and News Corp…

This is my FRANk-bag made from part of a recycled billboard vinyl skin, (Qantas i believe) all good. But here’s the tip. Next time you recommend to a client that they recycle their ’skins,’ post-campaign, ensure they build in their logo with a stipled effect. This will only be visible close up, not detracting from the ad, pre-branding their recycled merchandise…computer bags, wallets, cube seats, bean bags, shoulder bags, dog collars, folders etc.