Monthly Archives: July 2008

Musical cheers

In our office we have commercial radio running when we all forget our iPods. The last three songs have been:

1.“I kissed a girl” – an annoying song now annoyingly connected to ZM’s mash up.
2.”In the air tonight” – a reborn song now intrinsically linked to Cadbury’s random Gorilla TVC.
3.“Baby come on” – a song now inextricably linked to Telecom’s latest TVC (the woman at the end gets too much airtime).

The emotional connection between music and advertising has been a winning formula for years. I just don’t remember having so many connections at one time.

What do they know?

iGoogle’s latest update has moved the tab navigation to the sidebar. I can see this fitting in nicely with their reader, but what do they know that we don’t? Have we seen the end of the tab as a site navigation tool..?

Richard, meet Risk…

This week’s freeze on Hanover Finance funds has indicated two things to me, New Zealanders don’t understand financial risk, and we put way too much faith in celebrity brands.

Members of my family along with thousands of other investors have found themselves caught out by the massive volatility of New Zealand’s financial services sector. Whether they get their money back down the line is entirely unknown and the feeling of helplessness is difficult for many to deal with.

With our 20/20 hindsight we’re now reflecting on how this could be happening. Despite the Retirement Commission’s tireless work in raising New Zealander’s financial literacy, it appears evident that many people don’t understand the financial risks they’re taking when they get guaranteed 9.95% annual returns.

What “Mum and Dad” investors also missed was the risk behind the face of the company. Richard Long was a newsreader on TV One for decades. After his early retirement he was bought back to the screen as the front man for Hanover Finance. For the last few years he’s leveraged his trusted, worldly, fatherly image to position the Hanover brand with New Zealanders.

It’s probably a moot point, but can you imagine what this situation with Hanover’s done to Richard Long’s personal brand? You’d have to be mad to have your brand associated with him now.

I wonder if Richard understood the risk he was taking there.

“M” ads meet mainstream

The NZ Herald’s freshly launched mobile version will make things easier for people with iPhones to read their daily news fill. It’s great to see the mainstream media being quick to embrace this new interface.

Blog image - NZHerald Mobile v1

You’ll notice the display ad and text ads framing the article. Interesting.

Trade me also launched their mobile version last month in anticipation of the iPhone 3G launch. We spoke with Trade me about featuring some tactical text link ads here but they declined as they don’t feel their audience is ready for this yet. Fair enough. I guess they make their real money through other means.

The NZHerald on the other hand do need the ad revenue to justify this new extension and obviously think their audience is ready for ads on their mobile version. Unfortunately the ad server technology isn’t. This is what happened when I clicked on the text link:

Blog image - NZHerald Mobile v2
Still, we’re getting there, and someone needs to start it.

Clambering for comment

Increasingly New Zealanders are seeing their opinions in the headlines. I’m interested in how online comments and poll results from Stuff and the NZ Herald are now making print news headlines as editors try to share the mood of the nation.

This week’s launch of the iPhone 3G in NZ has been a terrific illustration of how comment boards attached to online articles are being used to define the editorial perspective of subsequent news media.

The public have been quick to spot and comment on a weakness in Vodafone’s greatly anticipated launch, with most people fuming about the iPhone’s expensive unit cost and pricing plans. And the NZHerald and Stuff wasted absolutely no time reporting this frustration as news.

This sort of open review by ‘innovators and early adopters’ about technology products has been happening in the blogosphere for years, but now the chasm has been crossed, and the ‘early majority’ are getting the lowdown delivered to their desktop through their daily news media.

The ease and speed with which people can air their views now has a massive influence on sales and brands. Companies need to acknowledge and respect this. At the end of the day, marketing is about the customer’s needs and wants.

Now it’s up to Telecom to read the nation’s mood and come up with a supercheap pricing plan for their iPhone users that blows Vodafone out of the water.