A woman’s legs in a pair of fishnet stockings is being used to show how out of touch the management/marketing teams over at Henderson and Horning really are.

Well, the Henderson Horning team (a real estate company, apparently) no doubt think they’ve got their market just right, but if Wade and Gavin are anything to go by, they’re out of line with their stakeholders…

A stakeholder is anyone who can have an impact on your brand’s value.

…And I reckon Wade and Gavin are putting a bit of a dent in Henderson Horning’s brand value at the moment, at least as far as that company’s presence in Google is concerned.

You see, when Wade and then Gavin documented the sexist nature of Hendersen & Horning’s marketing, and the management’s indifference to Wade’s original concerns, Google started giving their greivences a high priority in searches for the company’s name. You can click here to see how Henderson and Horning are fairing on Google. So what would potential customers or employees see if they searched for this company?

Sorry, what was I thinking? I should show you the advertisement in question:

Yeah, that’s right, a pair of legs in fishnet stockings, just at eye level in a Sydney street. Lord only knows why the guy’s got his shirt open and what any of this has to do with ‘massive parking’, but it’s not a particularly thoughtful piece of marketing.

So why don’t I show you my proposed ’street level’ solution that I suggested to Wade… Can you see it?…

…That’s right… I’ve turned the office number into a “Sexist Advertising Complaints Line”… I thought that was a cute idea that the public would respond to. I guess time will tell if anyone gets out there and blu-tacks a piece of paper to the window… I’m in China right now, so sorry guys, it won’t be me.

Well, there’s a free lesson on protecting your brand and realising the power of stakeholders in the social media environment.

When people say the Olympics has “sold out”, what they may actually mean is that the Olympics are more about “selling out” to corporate sponsors than ensuring people actually see the games live…

There are a number of reasons that Olympic stadium seats are empty in these ’sold out’ Olympics. Here is the reason I find the most compelling:

Sponsors, media rights holders and government officials aren’t using their tickets; or, they are using their tickets for only a portion of the allocated time (tickets secure the holder a seat for an entire ’session’, which usually lasts several hours).

The Olympics cost sponsors, media rights holders, government officials and committees (IOC, national Olympic committees and sporting authorities) a lot of time and money, and part of their reward includes allocations of tickets.

So the question is, how do tickets that won’t be used get allocated efficiently now and at the next games? Part of the answer may come from Wimbledon, helpfully, the home of the 2012 Olympic games:

“Wimbledon operates a ticket resale system, with tickets surrendered during the day resold and the proceeds donated to charity.

When spectators decide to leave before the end of a day’s play, they are encouraged to place their ticket in special boxes located around the ground.

These tickets are then re-printed and sold at the resale kiosk, which opens mid to late afternoon.”

This is a positive Public Relations opportunity

Well that’s straight forward: Olympic sponsors / ticket holders could quickly register the tickets they won’t be using each day online… The organisation that releases the most amount of tickets through the system (and therefore raises the most money for charity) could receive some kind of recognition, as a way of rewarding organisations that would otherwise be leaving seats empty.

At these games, though, a more basic system can come into play - if sponsors have tickets they won’t be using, give them away! Just about anyone on the street would gladly receive the gift. It’s much more sporting than just letting a ticket go unused because you couldn’t find someone schmooze-worthy to take!

If you represent an Olympic sponsor (General Electric, Johnson and Johnson, Kodak, Lenovo, Manulife, McDonalds, Omega, Panasonic, Samsung, Visa, Sinopec, CNPC, China Mobile, Volkswagen, Adidas, Air China, PICC, State Grid…) and/or you’ve got an innovative method of ensuring ticket allocations are used, post it!

Zàijiàn! Tim

Beijing’s “Nanluogu Xiang” Hutong (alley) is a bustling mix of stores, bars and eateries… A favourite of ex-pat’s and locals alike.

At night, the alley is illuminated by the lights from within the restaurants, street lamps and bright red Chinese lanterns.

But tonight, all of this has been washed out in a sea of tacky corporate badvertising.

Stand up and be counted, Visa. Everyone’s been talking about China’s effort to take on the air pollution, but what about Visa’s campaign to create visual pollution?

Here, in this picture, we see a man drilling a hole in a beautiful Beijing restaurant’s wall. Why is he doing this?

Oh, I see - this is why - he’s doing it for Visa! A credit card company…

And looky-here: there’s plenty where that one came from…

The alley I’m describing is narrow - it has room enough for one car to pass by and all the bikes and pedestrians have to scurry out if the way. To fill the alley with lightboxes for a credit card isn’t just tackey, it’s insulting to Chinese culture and offensive to visitors who expect to be able to enjoy Beijing’s charm without multinational’s trashing said charm for a perceived marketing benefit.

Personally, I think they’ve miscalculated. I can’t imagine getting ANY goodwill out of running roughshod over a small Chinese neighbourhood just because in ten days a bunch of rich foreigners will be showing up.

I’d love to know what Visa paid, who they paid the money to; whether the shopkeepers are getting remunerated for the loss of charm; and whether someone from Visa is going to be smart enough to literally pull the plug on this ghastly mistake.

If you’re a marketing rep from Visa and you’d like to respond, get in touch.

This evening I received a flurry of text messages regarding my cameo on Media Watch… Now, I didn’t see the show, but it was all about a Today Tonight story that ran a couple of weeks ago…

I was warned by smart people to think twice before giving tabloid TV the time of day…

If anyone saw Media Watch, I’d love to hear your take on it (I’ll have to see it online tomorrow…). Apparently an interview I recently did for the program was used to ’spice up’ a story Today Tonight had run twice already.

I was on the Opinion page of the Sydney Morning Herald this morning when I saw a banner advertisement for a “free” real estate service. A few clicks in, it was revealed that there were indeed charges incurred for using this “free” service. So what happens when a consumer compains about false advertising? I decided to find out.

I haven’t made a complaint to the ACCC, but a Google Search quickly led me to:

http://www.accc.gov.au/content/index.phtml/itemId/54217#h2_28

And pretty soon I was tapping away my complaint. As it involves an online campaign, and online campaigns can update rapidly, I was careful to archive photos and text relating to the complaint on my website, in case the campaign was re-engineered to avoid scrutiny in light of this post.

Here is the wording of my complaint, complete with hyperlinks. The complaint took about 15 minutes to pen, all up. I’ll keep you posted as to manner and speed of the ACCC’s response. It’s worth noting that they require quite a lot of personal information about you to make a complaint. I provided all required information, so I guess I’ll be hearing from the ACCC soon?

This complaint refers specifically to an online banner campaign run by the Australian business, Fairfax Digital, for their ‘Domain Mobile Home Alert’ product.

A snapshot of the advertisement is available here:
http://www.timlonghurst.com/criticism/domainmobilehomealert/domainmobilehomealert.jpg

It was retrieved at approximately 11.30am on Wednesday 27th February 2007 from the web address: http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/

The claim of the advertisement is:

“Find your next home on your phone for free”

However, several clicks later, it is revealed on an FAQ popup page under the heading “How Much Does It Cost?”:

“You will be charged 55c including GST for each SMS alert that you receive. Domain does not charge you an additional amount to view your alert results via the Domain Mobile site. Your standard mobile network charges for “data retrieval” may apply to access your alert results via the Domain Mobile site.”

SOURCE: http://www.domain.com.au/templates/MobileHomeAlertFAQ.htm#faq

For the purposes of this complaint, this page has been archived at: http://www.timlonghurst.com/criticism/domainmobilehomealert/MobileHomeAlertFAQ.htm#faq

IN SUM: A product advertised as free is charged in multiples of 55c. This product is not free and the advertising deliberately seeks to mislead and deceive consumers regarding the price of the product.

Kind regards,

Tim Longhurst

A few of my friends have been talking about Does What Happens in the Facebook Stay in the Facebook?

The key messages of this video are:

• Facebook has a very wide-reaching privacy policy that essentially means that whilst you retain copyright over your data, they can use it as if they owned it.
• Facebook is a fantastic social research tool in that millions of people are posting personal data on a daily basis - they’re uploading it for their friends, but Facebook gets it too, and Facebook will share this data with third party organisations.
• Facebook has a number of investors that have links to US government intelligence agencies, who are more than likely using data to track individuals and their communication, along with broad trends.

It’s a great case study of how a flash video can be used to convey ideas simply and effectively.

Today Apple announced it’s first ever mobile phone - the iPhone. It’s still six months away and hardly anyone has touched it, so I’m not sold on it yet.

Forgive me for being cautious, but I’ve heard plenty of stories of ipods dying and people losing all their files - that’s a shame if it’s your music, but devastating if a malfunction destroys your photos, music, contacts and email, which is basically what the iPhone will store, according to Apple. For the users’ sake I hope that the iphone proves to be more stable and reliable that the ipod.

There’s a yet-to-be-released study from Scotland that looks set to add to my conviction that Corporate Social Responsibility is a dangerous farce.

Scotland’s Sunday Herald newspaper has run an article under the headline, “Study slams ‘trivial’ social responsibility reports“.

The report is authored by Jan Bebbington and Rob Gray and as soon as I find the full report, you’ll read about it here. In the meantime, here are some teaser lines from the Herald article:

Less than 4% of the world’s 50,000 major companies produce reports on
“corporate social responsibility”, she points out. And the quality of
the reports that are produced is “almost universally trivial”…

The study warns: “The danger is that the very concept on which the
future of the planet depends – sustainability – will be emasculated,
appropriated and destroyed by assertion in the interests of
corporations.

“We believe we must treat the current crop of
‘sustainability reports’ with the profoundest mistrust as one of the
most dangerous trends working against any possibility of a sustainable
future.”

Politicians are influenced by their political donors and that is why Australia’s citizens deserve to know what organisations and individuals are funding political candidates.

I read the below editorial in today’s Crikey newsletter and decided I wanted more information. A search of Google News finds almost nothing. Is this a ‘fringe issue’ that doesn’t rate a mention? You decide:

The Senate has just passed the biggest attack on Australia’s system of campaign finance since the Hawke Government first mandated disclosure of donations to political parties more than 20 years ago. Despite vigorous opposition from Labor and all the minor parties, individual donations of up to $10,000 can now lawfully remain secret. This gives Australia arguably the weakest system of political disclosure in the developed world.

In the US, all donations above $US200 must be disclosed, and during election campaigns any contribution above $1,000 must be revealed within 48 hours. Contrast that with Australia, where the Russian Mafia could have donated $9,999 to the eight different Liberal Party branches on July 1 last year and at least we would have been told about it (although not for 19 months until February 1 2007). Under the new laws, such donations from international mobsters would permanently remain secret.

In the UK, political leaders even have to reveal how much they spend getting their hair done, whereas an Australian political party could pay $5 million to Mick Gatto and no-one would be any the wiser.

What we now have is a recipe for corruption. In a world where political and business accountability and transparency is on the rise, the Howard Government has taken a retrograde step and abused its Senate majority like never before. It’s a sad day for democracy.

To get a sense of why some politicians want to keep their funding a secret, check out democracy4sale.

It seems like only yesterday Coca-Cola had the wind taken out of their sails for using false and misleading techniques in their “Zero Movement” campaign. A whole bunch of people weighed in and Coke changed their game-plan significantly within a matter of days.

So how quickly will Quickflix change its latest campaign? I checked it out and it appears, at least to me, that there are a litany of false and misleading statements on this site, purportedly written by two guys called ‘Mike’ and ‘Mal’ (remember ‘Carl’ from Coke?).

What the site claims:
If you believe the site, two guys called Mike and Mal set it up in early February 2006 and in Early May, “Quickflix, a DVD rental company, and Intel have sponsored our hosting! How cool is that!!1!” the page is “copyright 2006 Mike and Mal”.

So Intel, the world’s largest chipmaker (at least for now) has joined with a DVD rental company to endorse one of the crappiest looking pages on the internet. What’s going on?

The reality:
Quickflix registered mikeandmal.com.au in late April 2006 (source: whois record):

Domain Name: mikeandmal.com.au
Last Modified: 24-Apr-2006 06:12:02 UTC
Registrar ID: R00012-AR
Registrar Name: TPP Internet
Status: OK

Registrant: Quickflix Ltd
Registrant ID: ABN 62102459352

Registrant ROID: C3691100-AR
Registrant Contact Name: Paul Wroth

So the site doesn’t appear to be owned by ‘Mike and Mal’, but Quickflix. It wasn’t set up in February, but April and it’s almost certainly not copyright 2006 Mike and Mal, but instead copyright 2006 Quickflix and/or Intel.

So why would two companies (Intel and Quickflix) mislead their audience with fake dates and fake copyright?
I don’t know. But what I do know is that Intel and Quickflix had originally planned a much slicker website than this, but decided to go for the “I’m making this website on my ‘486″ look.

They are obviously making an attempt at ‘viral marketing’, but as this article indicates, that’s a risky game to play - especially if you start making stuff up and assuming no one will notice.

Asking to talk to “Mike” or “Mal”
I called Quickflix and asked to speak to Mike or Mal, they weren’t around, and I doubt they’ll call me back. In any case, Quickflix’s corporate office have my contact details, so
if they or Intel would like to comment on this article, I’ll post additional comments here.

Quickflix fesses up

In a brief note that read more like a piece of sales copy than an email, on Friday Quickflix acknowledged that the above post is accurate.

So despite the site claiming to be made in February, nah, it was launched in May. Despite the site claiming to be “Copyright 2006 Mike and Mal”, nah, it’s copyright Quickflix. The boys are just actors. Pretty much everything on that site is B.S.

So what does that say about Quickflicks’ ethics or integrity? Are customer complaints that Quickflix DVDs are often scratched and greasy accurate? Are positive online reviews for Quickflix services simply more fake posts from a company that makes up the rules as they go along? Where does the crap end?