Brand Australia Council a marketing flop: Kennett
JULIAN LEE Former Victorian premier Jeff Kennett has taken a shot at the latest attempt by Australia to sell itself abroad.
Advertising sees better times around the corner
PAUL MCINTYRE THE $12 billion media and advertising industries are cautiously flagging signs of life for the new financial year with most predicting the likelihood of tempered year-on-year growth from September.
Cannes do: Aussie ads make a pitch for global stage
Local agencies want a share of international briefs, writes Paul McIntyre.
Keep pests away from tourism campaign
HAROLD MITCHELL DON'T get Louise started on white ants. As far as she is concerned they are a bigger problem than climate change.
Julian Lee
BP's spin doctors can now breathe easy
JULIAN LEE IS IT any wonder that people are so cynical about marketing when a company such as BP decides that after nearly a decade of trying to be the nice guy, it can now relax and just be itself?
Blogs won't beat us: News chief
ARI SHARP COMMUNICATIONS CORRESPONDENT NEWS LIMITED'S chief executive, John Hartigan, has launched a broadside on bloggers and other online amateurs, arguing they are no substitute for professional journalists.
Hoyts plans digital expansion with Kirk
THE former chief executive of Fairfax Media, David Kirk, has re-emerged onto the Australian media scene as chairman of the cinema chain Hoyts.
Aussie adman lured back to get Mojo's working again
JULIAN LEE One of the best known names in Australian advertising, Publicis Mojo, has snared one of the world's best known admen to spearhead a push to get more work from global companies.
Labor cranks up the federal advertising budget
PAUL MCINTYRE THE Federal Government is preparing plans to pump up its advertising budget by more than 30 per cent next financial year - after hacking more than $100 million last year out of the huge sums splashed out by the Coalition before the 2007 election.
Commercial networks find it pays to be kind
PAUL MCINTYRE TELEVISION audiences decided some time late last year that aggressive, nasty and "heavy" shows were on the nose, and now the commercial networks are racing to fill their schedules with lightness, love and affection for the rest of the year.
Julian Lee
Advertainment - it's coming soon
JULIAN LEE When Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen opened in cinemas yesterday, it marked a remarkable journey for a brand that started life as a mere toy, albeit one that captured the imagination of a generation of boys.
Apple's silence will help push its new iPhone
STEPHEN HUTCHEON SOME time today outside the Apple Store on George Street someone will unfold a camping chair, unpack a vacuum flask and blanket and hunker down for a bracing night sleeping al fresco. The pay-off will come at 8am tomorrow. The doors to the store will swing open and that person and the others queueing outside will be among the first in Australia to get their hands on a new iPhone 3G S.
Best Job campaign bags two ad Oscars
JULIAN LEE Tourism Queensland's Best Job in the World campaign has picked up two international awards at the ad industry's equivalent of the Oscars in France.
Telstra dumps ad agency
JULIAN LEE Telstra has split from its ad agency George Patterson Y&R, bringing to an end a relationship that netted the agency at least $10 million in fees annually.
Ratings roll expected to continue for Ten
PAUL MCINTYRE NETWORK TEN might be experiencing high drama this week with its Canadian shareholder, CanWest Global Communications, but the broadcaster's critics are eating humble pie after a surprising U-turn in its ratings over the past month.
X marks spot and many ask Y, but gen Z new kid on brand block
PAUL MCINTYRE THERE is no prize for guessing that racy men's magazines such as Zoo and Playboy are the hottest titles teenage boys admit to reading at the moment.
Harold Mitchell
Do what you Cannes to tighten the belt
HAROLD MITCHELL Excess baggage is the blight of air travel. It costs you an arm and a leg, you have to join another queue, your partner shouts at you for buying too many books and, if you are as heavy as I used to be, you worry that you will be charged extra just for being yourself.
Julian Lee
Hard to sing Stand By Your Brand
JULIAN LEE Ask 10 marketers what they mean by value and you will get 10 different responses, each cloaked in the opaque jargon the marketing industry relies on. When words such as value are put through the linguistic mangler the industry is struggling to define one of the core weapons in its arsenal.
Australia delivers publicity windfall
JULIAN LEE MARKETING EDITOR TOURISM AUSTRALIA says its $50 million marketing campaign centred on the Baz Luhrmann movie Australia has generated unprecedented levels of publicity for the tourism industry.
Hard-earned thirst for change
JULIAN LEE MARKETING EDITOR FOSTER'S may launch a low-carbohydrate version of Victoria Bitter to revive the fortunes of the country's best-selling beer.
Atomic answers for the newspaper of the future
STEPHEN HUTCHEON AS THE editors and publishers of America's mainstream press reach for their pitchforks in anticipation of a showdown with Google, the smiling face of their nemesis is arguing that they're part of the solution, not the problem.
Harold Mitchell
You can be unique. Get a tattoo, then a bespoke pay-TV channel
HAROLD MITCHELL As I was growing up, the only people who had tattoos were crims and sailors. It was a very male thing, seriously frowned upon by parents. Well, all that has changed. Everyone has one.
Julian Lee
Our nation needs a Pure genius
JULIAN LEE If you could sum up Australia in a word or two what would it be? Not easy is it? Then see if your winning line can work in a business context. Even harder.
Papers call time on Morgan figures
PAUL MCINTYRE NEWSPAPER publishers sparked the beginning of a multimillion-dollar battle for control of newspaper readership data yesterday.
Paul McIntyre
Nation of optimists shrugs off bad news
PAUL MCINTYRE MORE than half the Australian population is largely ignoring the media doom and gloom merchants about a faltering economy, with some even actively fighting downbeat predictions by experts, according to a new report from the international consumer research group TNS.
Corporate titans to tackle Oz image abroad
JULIAN LEE A GROUP of prominent businessmen is pushing for the creation of a panel to advise business and government on how Australia Inc can market itself more aggressively overseas, amid growing recognition that the country risks losing its hard-fought position as a global brand on the world stage.
Yellow chief still mellow despite US bankruptcy
PAUL MCINTYRE YELLOW PAGES in Australia will not follow the US version into a death spiral despite grumblings by local advertisers about waning results and Yellow Pages in North America being placed in Chapter 11 bankruptcy last Friday.
Julian Lee
They know where you live, where you shop and what is inside your fridge
JULIAN LEE Who would have thought that feta cheese could teach Tesco a valuable lesson in shopkeeping?
Harold Mitchell
Confidence redux, or why space in menswear is at a premium
HAROLD MITCHELL 'Will you take my credit card or can you change a $900 note?"
Hey, you great big magical doll
PAUL MCINTYRE IT NEARLY went to Uruguay to be built and filmed. But a last-minute idea by the Academy Award-winning animatronics creator John Cox and the film director Mark Toia kept a big-budget TV commercial featuring the world's largest doll - nine metres tall - at home.
