I am NOT Maverick Marketing Sydney

A NEW survey reveals Virgin Atlantic has the most attractive flight attendants with 53 percent of those surveyed picking Virgin’s “red hotties.

According to the survey of 1000 people by the Business Travel and Meetings Show (BTMS), Virgin Atlantic scooped the pool for the most attractive cabin crew.

Qantas didn’t rate a mention. Read more at News.

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It has already presided over one of the biggest PR disasters of the year and now Vodafone faces being sued by potentially thousands of its customers over poor network performance.

Sydney law firm PiperAlderman is seeking out disgruntled Vodafone customers to form a class action lawsuit over dropped calls, reception issues and poor data performance that have left customers fuming.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has already said it is investigating the matter.

Vodafone initially blamed software bugs and argued that there were no serious problems with its network.
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Banking, technology, retailers, and food/beverage all made a strong showing on research agency Millward Brown’s inaugural BrandZ Top 50 Most Valuable Chinese Brands.

China Mobile Ltd., the largest mobile carrier in the world’s most populous country, ranked No. 1 among the top 50 Chinese brands.

The Chinese mobile carrier had a brand value worth 56 billion US dollars this year. The market researcher said China Mobile has been on its list of the top 100 most valuable global brands for the last five years.

The telecom brand was closely followed by the nation’s four largest banks. Industrial and Commercial Bank of China ranked second; Bank of China, third; China Construction Bank, fourth and Agricultural Bank of China, sixth.
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Hot on the heels of advertising that upset certain quarters over their “adultifying of kids”, the latest advertisement to cause a furore is this one above, depicting a woman in the company of three men.

On one side are the “experts” that say this kind of advertising can fuel cases of gang rape. On the other, the people that say it takes more than an ad for someone to commit a crime.

(See the argument here and make up your own mind.)

Of course, Calvin Klein is no stranger to sexy ads or controversy. This ad below, from last year, got the tongues wagging in Soho, New York City, and attracted plenty of mainstream media publicity, simply for being racy while a TVC produced in the US earlier this year never made its way past the broadcast censors.

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If you think Meals on Wheels, and you’re thinking “fuddy duddy” think again.

At least that’s what the service had in mind for you when it engaged Husbosch (creators of the new woolies and updated Qantas logos) to redesign its national identity.

At the launch of the revamped brand in Sydney today, it was explained that the new look would help encourage new donors and clients (probably quite important since I imagine the cost of the new logo would be, well, significant).

Meals on Wheels delivers more than 50,000 meals each day to frail, older people as well as younger people with disabilities. Over the course of a year, 15 million meals are delivered by 80,000 volunteers to about 50,000 recipients Australia-wide. Meals on Wheels originated in Britain during World War II and was started in Australia in South Melbourne in 1952.

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Video campaigns that combine pre-roll and banner ads deliver the highest recall rates, according to research from Sky, the IAB and media research agency Decipher.

The UK study, conducted over 12 months, examined the branding effectiveness of five online video ad formats against short-form content.

Of the 6,000 respondents interviewed, nearly half (47%) recalled ads which used a combination of pre-roll and banners, although 44% said they remembered the ad when pre-roll alone was used.

The research tracked 24 campaigns from 11 brands in FMCG, finance, motoring, technology and travel sectors across Sky Sports and News, Sky 1, Sky Showbiz and non-branded sites Golf 365 and Planet Rugby.

Five video ad formats were examined. Of the 2,400 people who recalled a video ad, 6% claimed they then clicked through to make an immediate purchase, while over half (54%) said they either delayed purchase or wanted to investigate the brand further in their own time.

Dwell time is highest on branded video players, according to the research, which in turn deliver better direct response, with an average 1.23% click-though rate across all campaigns. Pre-rolls combined with companion banners generated a 0.89% click-through rate, followed by post-roll at 0.83% and pre-roll on its own at 0.77%. Overlays were the least effective, averaging a 0.16% click-through rate.

Quality content remains a key driver of ad performance, according to the study, with 10% of respondents more likely to remember the ad if they enjoyed it.

Viewers are least tolerant of ads around user-generated content, with 83% of those who recalled ads saying they found them inappropriate around content posted by others.

Almost half of those who recalled ads (47%) said they were appropriate around entertainment clips, and 46% around TV programmes.

Over two-fifth of respondents (44%) said they recalled ads at work, compared to 39% who recalled them at home. However, click-through rates were higher at home, with respondents saying they’re more willing to alter their online journey when at home relaxing.

Users’ journey to content was also found to affect brand recall, with over half (53%) recalling an ad when directed there from a specific link, while just under half (48%) remembered ads when looking specifically for certain content. Nearly a third of users (39%) recalled an ad when they were just browsing content.

Read more at UK Marketing Week.

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Washington, Oct 12: An American professor, Harold Lewis, has branded global warming as “the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud” he has ever seen.

(His temperature might have risen a little higher had he got a glimpse of this “communication strategy” for alarmists (PDF). I’m sure you know the drill… don’t scare the bejeezus out of children, etc.)

The Professor, 87, described his “revulsion” at last year’s leaked “Climategate” emails which appeared to show scientists at East Anglia’s world-leading Climate Research Unit rigging evidence in favour of man-made climate change.

(You can still get the emails and data files here. (It’s a big file, I’m warning you). Alternatively, you can get up to speed with this hilarious parody that Michael Mann (through his lawyers) unsuccessfully tried to get off the Internet.)

Lewis branded man-made climate change a “scam” driven by “trillions of dollars” which has “corrupted” scientists, making the remarks after formally resigning from the American Physical Society (APS).

He claims that the APS, the society for America’s top physicists, has refused to engage in proper scientific debate about climate change and ignored climate skeptics.

He compared the APS now to the organization he joined almost 70 years ago which he said was “much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood”.

“How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth and the money flood has become the raison d’etre of much physics research,” the Daily Express quoted Lewis, as saying.

“It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist,” he added.

Back in Australia, now that the on-off-on again carbon price scam, oops I meant to say BIG NEW TAX ON EVERYTHING, is back on the table, and Australians brace themselves for skyrocketing electricity bills, we all might need a bit of this foot-tapping, cheer-me-up kinda Minnesota singalong:

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Found this great little gem in CNN, How to Brand A Disease – And Sell A Cure, which discusses what pharmaceutical companies do to get their drugs on the government subsidy lists.

They brand a disease. (How come I never thought about that before?)

The thinking goes along these lines:

1. Think less about selling and more about creating conditions for sale.
2. Persuade journalists to write about “new trends” (that’s the disease, folks)
3. Once the disease is well-known and, well, socially acceptable, drugs are made available.

To brand a disease is to shape its public perception in order to make it more palatable to potential patients. Panic disorder, reflux disease, erectile dysfunction, restless legs syndrome, bipolar disorder, overactive bladder, ADHD, premenstrual dysphoric disorder, even clinical depression: All these conditions were once regarded as rare until a marketing campaign transformed the brand.

Once a branded disease has achieved a degree of cultural legitimacy, there is no need to convince anyone that a drug to treat it is necessary. It will come to him as his own idea.

According to CNN, the disease branding strategy works well for 2 types of diseases:

1. Those that are shameful conditions that can be destigmatized and
2. Those conditions that can be plausibly portrayed as under-diagnosed.

Marketing knows no bounds.

Check the rest of the story out at CNN.

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Hey, wanna give packaging a whole new meaning? Want some ideas to ensure your retail brand stands out from the bored crowd?

If this applies to you, the answer is: it’s in the bag.

What’s a bag? Why it’s a flexible container with a single opening.

(It’s also an opportunity waiting to happen.)

If you’re looking for an excuse to spice up your brand, you’d be mad not to check out what these brands do.

This (and other truly fantastic content about advertising and interesting stuff) is at www.boredpanda.com.

Read on, then check it out.

1. Condomi Erotic Shopping Bag

Advertising Agency: Draft FCB Kobza, Vienna, Austria
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Squeezed between rampant discounts and the increasing pressure brought to bear from rising costs and price sensitive buyers, CEOs around the world are focused on pricing strategy more than ever before.

With the exception of mandatory items such as utilities and food, prices have largely stayed stagnant because consumers demand it and competition forces it.

Australia has fared better than many markets, but ask most retailers and they’ll tell you that retail, even in the lucky country, is hard.

This isn’t to say, of course, that executives are oblivious to the problem.

Universally, they stand united, scratching their heads, trying to figure out how prices can be increased without damaging there market share or driving away too many customers.

Some companies are getting creative, loss leading on some products to pick up a stronger margin from another. There are others running around-the-clock promotions and discounts, so much so that recent research shows that the average Aussie shopper is sick to death of relentless sales.

Then there are the cheats; those that con the consumer into thinking there is a discount where none applies. The Good Guys got caught out by Channel 7, labeling goods on sale where those goods were in fact not being discounted at all and then there was the uproar about the supermarkets giving the impression of discounts where none applied.

Before you tamper with pricing, you need to understand the effect that pricing has on your gross profit margin. You can calculate your gross profit margin using this simple tool.

Sometimes you can make greater profit by selling goods at a higher price, albeit in less volume, than you would make if you discounted your goods.

One of the most important decisions you’ll make regarding pricing strategy is whether you sell to many people for lower profit or fewer people for higher profit.

Then it’s a matter of choosing the best strategy you can adopt to execute your goals.

In this economic climate, that’s about:

• Focusing pricing strategy around repeat business  (offering a discount off a retail price hurts more than offering a discount when a customer buys a second time) and
• Making the decision whether you want your prices to be easy or hard to compare with your competitors (and promote or disguise them accordingly).

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