FRANKthoughts

This week saw the combined efforts of LeoBurnett Melbourne, Blackwood Communications Group NZ & FRANkVizeum Melbourne help launch SEEK’s new brand advertising campagin ‘If it exists’.

The idea works on the promise that jobseekers can find whatever job they can think of on the website. The TVC’s have been shot in a mockumentary style to explore the work day life of employees with quirky roles such as a cannon safety inspector and a shopping trolley mechanic.

The campaign is running across both Australia & NZ, with our media investment heavily focused on TV, Radio & Outdoor.

Meet the stars of the new TVC’s below (produced by LeoBurnett Melbourne):

Greg Walters is a talented Shopping Trolley Mechanic and Damien Mashall is obsessed with cannon safety.

Have you considered a career change lately?

2.1 million viewers can’t be wrong about the massive appeal of Hey! Hey! It’s Saturday That’s how many people tuned in last night to see Daryl, Plucka and the gang back on our screens for the first of two reunion shows.

Not surprisingly, Melbourne (the home of Hey! Hey!) pulled in the majority of viewers with just over 790,000.

I never once thought Ten’s Celebrity MasterChef would be able to outshine the return of what was an Australian  institution for so many of us growing up, and I’m pleased to say I was right. However, regardless of my opinion Celebrity MasterChef did pull in a respectable 1.3million viewers, which is a great effort!

It is a huge windfall for Nine, which would have still been reeling from the less than impressive launch of The Apprentice Australia, on Monday night. It barely registered on the radar with just under 700,000 viewers.

Ten will be consoling itself in the knowledge that the MasterChef franchise is a slow burn. When it launched earlier this year it barely nudged a million, but it finished with more than 3 million viewers.

Mention also needs to go to Seven who kicked off this huge ratings week with their new sci-fi drama Flashforward pulling in 1.8 million viewers and of course wrapping up last week was Ten’s coverage of the 2009 AFL Grand Final which pulled in a massive 2.9 million viewers.

Nine, meanwhile, are considering whether to commission a new series of Hey! Hey! on a permanent basis. It would seem that the old format still has legs and the intergrated use of Social Media sites such as twitter during the live broadcast has helped catapult the show into the 21st century.

It remains to be seen if Daryl would stay on board as host, but would it work as well without him? I’m not convinced.

Up until now it’s been hard to determine what impact Kyle Sandilands controversial comments and the temporary cancellation of The Kyle & Jackie O Show was having on audiences. Yesterday Nielsen ratings from June 28 to September 5 were released and show an audience slump. Overall listening dropped nearly 20%. This is the biggest ratings decline of any music station in the current survey which covers the infamous lie detector stunt on the 29^th of July however does not take into account Kyle’s most recent comments made on September 8 about Magda Szubanski losing weight in a concentration camp. The bottom line here is that if their audience had increased then undoubtedly advertisers would be asked to pay more to be on the show. However approximately 18% of listening has disappeared so it should follow that advertisers can now pay less for spots in their show. Anyone else agree that we should be paying at least 18% less for a show that has lost 18% of its listening audience, keeping in mind that this doesn’t begin to take into account the most recent Magda Szubanski stunt?

To celebrate Melbourne Spring Fashion Week, Melbourne’s GPO is holding their ‘Fashion at Altitude’ runway parades next Wednesday 2nd September.
There will also be special offers and designer in store appearances on the Wednesday at Melbourne’s GPO shopping day from 10am – 8pm.
The Melbourne’s GPO media launch took place yesterday and got great coverage including home page of The Age online.
A great way to kick of the new website launch which is all about fresh, good, fashionable content!

Thought of the day post.

Is it easier to remember him as “Geoffrey Normandy” or “The Guy with the Beard“?

If your customer had to find a way to describe your brand / product / business, what would that be?  And are you addressing them in your consumer touch points?

Thankyou to everybody who attended our third FRANkademy session on Friday.  We really appreciated having an inquisitive audience, and the active discussion about an exciting area of communications strategy.

A recap on what we focused on in the session:

We started out by outlining the size of the opportunity social media brings; with its unique reach now higher than email.  We then introduced the bought, owned and earned media integrated approach to communications planning.  Bought – is media you can buy like TV airtime, radio, billboards, magazine space, online banners and so on. Owned includes assets of the business – logo, packaging, website, retail outlets.  Earned is the conversation you engage with your customers, the word of mouth you generate, customer feedback and comments etc.  Traditionally the first two have budgets, strategies and timelines.  But what about earned?  Shouldn’t everything be aligned?  We made the analogy that jumping at social media tools as solutions is like walking into the toolshed, grabbing a drill, a saw and a hammer, and trying to paint the back fence.  It doesn’t work!

We then moved on to two areas of interest in the social media space – Twitter and blogs.  We looked at how businesses are using Twitter to connect to their audience, harness the power of positive word of mouth, enhance customer service, build communities, and align their bought/owned/earned output. In our blog section we explained what value blogs and bloggers can offer brands through some contemporary case studies, and the best way brands can work with bloggers.  We presented guidelines employed by our own blog network Nuffnang , the biggest blog advertising network in Australia.

After the drinks break we went through a case study for Melbourne’s GPO. This showed FRANkVizeum’s focus on building a long term social media strategy, as opposed to a short term ‘campaign’, through the process of immersion.  This involves listening and learning, developing a strategy with budget and timeline, allocating resource to manage the brand community, and implementing the plan to agreed measurement metrics.  We ended by quoting Google analyst Avinash Kaushik – “Social media is like teen sex.  Everyone wants to do it. Nobody knows how. When it’s finally done there is surprise it is not better”.

Thanks again to our audience from TTF, Taboo, Full Circle, Austereo, MCN, Simply Energy, GoSwitch, Channel Ten, RMIT, and all other guests including Richard!

Now… has everybody done their homework?  Visited our Twitter account?  Looked at Twitter 101 For Business?  Played Brandwars?  If not, you can redeem yourselves by commenting on the blog post below, or contributing your own!  What was most interesting about the session?

Despite losing some of its gloss in recent years due to various drug scandals, no world cycling event captures the imagination of the public like the Tour de France.

Fans urge heroes like Lance Armstrong (who is tweeting between stages) up lung-busting hillclimbs, spill onto almost every inch of the road with banners and flags, watch fierce rivalries play out,  and throughout the stages write messages of support (and self promotion) on the pavement.

In a big step for media innovation, Nike have integrated a number of elements (Armstrong, the Livestrong charity, the event, and their  brand) through social media strategy to bring ‘The Road Is Your Canvas’ campaign to life.  Consumers can get their own 40 character message of hope, inspiration or encouragement sprayed on the Tour route by a ‘Chalkbot‘ via the Nike Website or tweeting Chalkbot on Twitter,  and view the results in the Photo Gallery.

It’s a fantastic idea, and really demonstrates how marketing communications are at their strongest when fully integrated – although it doesn’t hurt having assets like Lance and Nike to play with!

2008 was a record year for the Australian Box Office however the first 6 months of 2009 has already smashed records. Over half a billion dollars was spent at the Australian box office during the first six months of the year which is 15% up on the same time last year!

Some of the big guns in 09 which have helped drive the increase include Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Monsters vs. Aliens, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Angels & Demons & Ice Age: Dawn of The Dinosaurs. I would also assume that the heavily discounted ticket offers early in the year may have played a role.

Interestingly it would also seem the increase at the Box Office has impacted on FTA audiences. Research shows a dramatic increase in light free to air viewing amongst frequent cinema-goers with 50% of frequent moviegoers now light or non FTA viewers.

So can we continue to see cinema attendance grow? I’d suggest the back half of the year is already off to a strong start with the launch of Bruno last week which to date has taken over $7.5m. Whilst this is only marginally up on the Borat opening week of $6.08m, the launch of Harry Potter & the half-blood prince this week has seen the record set for the biggest opening Wednesday ever. Harry took a massive $4.4m Australia wide & broke the existing record set in 2007 by Harry Potter & the order of phoenix.

Source: Val Morgan July 2009

Keep your eyes out tonight for the start of The Ashes cricket on SBS.  VB will be debuting their 2 minute branding campaign ad before the first ball, with their irreverent take on the types of ‘blokes’ we should be celebrating as a nation – ‘The Regulars’.  Pup Clarke, Molly Meldrum and other famous Aussie ‘blokes’ feature in the ad.  Outside of the AFL/NRL Grand Finals, it’s probably as close as we’ll get to a ‘Superbowl half time ad‘ this year.

VB are doing a great job with their site, with online content mirroring the campaign, and plenty of fun gadgets to engage the average beer drinking Aussie.  It’s hard to follow up ‘A Hard Earned Thirst’ which has gained the brand so much mileage through the years – but this isn’t a bad follow up.

C’mon Aussie, C’mon!

For those who love a casual read of the weekend newspaper supplements, you would have seen that Sunday Life has recently seen a ‘change’ both in appearance and content.

On June 28th, Sunday Life relaunched itself which saw a  slightly larger matte stock ‘look’ and has moved away from the traditional broad lifestyle read to now target the busy 28+ women who want intelligent coverage of issues that impact their lives. The magazine is now designed to appeal to smart women looking for enjoyment and relaxation as well as good practical tips on everything from cooking & healthy eating to shopping, fashion, fitness and wellbeing.

Although it’s early days, so far the change has been well received amongst readers.