How's your Burger Fuel shares going?

I can't believe i haven't posted about the Burger fuel float yet. That was probably the most borderline unethical campaign i've seen in a while. It was a campaign targeted at people who knew nothing about the share market, and most probably didn't have $1000 to chuck around.

Green and Mean

I just had a debate with my housemate about what energy company to go with. Supposidly our current provider is "greener" than the rest. However the thing with power is that it all gets dumped into the national grid so you don't know where the power you are using comes from. Why not just select on price? Why select a power company just because they don't happen to be the one required to operate Huntly?

In the BrandChannel article Best Global Brands: How valuable is green? , they quote Andrew Shapiro of GreenOrder, a strategy and marketing firm focused on helping companies maximize the value of sustainability, as saying “Lots of companies are trying to get on the green band wagon because they perceive it to be a hot issue, and they are putting forward messaging campaigns that amount to little more than ‘we care about the environment too,’ ” he says. “I don’t think those empty statements are going to carry weight with consumers; [consumers] are becoming more educated and savvy about corporate environmental [practices]. They know when a company is making a broad claim that doesn’t have much weight behind it.”

I tend to disagree. I would imagine the majority of people out there don't actually investigate the "Green Claims" made by companies. I recently undertook a research project for a major New Zealand power company on how companies were reacting to the Greenhouse Gas emissions issue. It's amazing to see how many companies have green statements or policies on their website. With a bit of critical analysis, it's also interesting to examine the substance of many of these claims. For many companies it's policies such as installing a new air-conditioning system which will save them tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars a year - and then calling it an environmental move.

With the growing awareness of environmental issues, companies will continue to green-stamp anything they can to make a quick buck. Whay defines a carbon-neutral power company? What's in our eco-friendly washing powder? For that matter what's so bad about our old dishwashing liquid? Will people take the time to actually try to get answers to these questions, or will we blindly buy anything that makes an environmental claim.

Will companies just be able to say they are green and charge a premium? Will we pay that premium without considering why we are doing so? If we can save the planet this way - great. I'm just concerned peoples good intentions are going to be taken advantage of by smart marketers.

Kaws

Some ads we like

Facts and Figures

Courtesy of the Mike Craney's Mediacom Marketing Digest, here's some ridiculous numbers. the source of which is Andy Lark, guest at a recent Marketing Association "Brainy Breakfast"

· 40 exabytes (that’s 4.0 x 1019) of unique new information will be generated worldwide this year. That’s estimated to be more than in the previous 5,000 years.
· There are 106 million users of MySpace.
· If MySpace were a country it would be the 11th biggest in the world (between Japan and Mexico).
· There are over 2.7 billion searches performed on Google each month.
· 120,000 new blogs are created every day.
· Can’t keep up with your online reading? Read faster – there are 58,000 new blog postings every hour.
· 90% of all commentary on a blog happens in the first 24 hours following the original posting. After that, it’s old news
· And finally – a factoid that fascinated the audience: 1 out of every 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met online.

Seeqpod

check out Seeqpod it searches the web for mp3 and streams them to your computer. You get to create your on the go playlists.

What are you talking for?

The thing that has surprised me lately is the realisation that many people simply don't unerstand what they are "advertising" for.

Are you telling people that you exist? Are you trying to get a new type of person to notice you? Is it about getting them to like you more? Or to use you more often? There could be a myriad of reasons why you are trying to talk to your customers (or potential customers.) Before you even think about spending dollars on PR, advertising, DM, design, research or redecorating, understand WHY and what the actual task at hand is.

Maybe this piece of advice is a bit simplistic. But there are a lot of brands that really need to take it to heart. Millions of dollars are year are thrown away on pointless or misdirected campaigns that have failed to properly address these questions up front.

Emerica goes wild in the streets

The greatest thing you can do for your brand is to have your audience interact and have involvement with it. Check out this video from skateboard footwear brand Emerica ... it conjurs up imagery of the Pied Piper.

Welcome to the shop

The Whiper Shop are stoked to offer a belated welcome to Mrs Sarah Tiplady as an Account Director.

Wow, you're great!!!

Welcome back

Spam sucks.

For the last 4 months I've been trying to post back at our old blog.

To cut a long story short i've been trying to change the password on my blogger account. Due to the mass proliferation of spam my ISP decded to increase the integrity of their spam filter. The fortification however stopped Google being able to send me the change of password confirmation. Google customer service are hard to reach. My ISP couldn't solve the problem either. 4 months later it's come to this. A new blog.

... hopefully it'll be better than ever.