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Upfront Thinking: Trust Digital

Working within a digital agency, nothing is more frustrating than partnering with clients that don’t trust the digital space and therefore don’t trust you. Some don’t devote time to digital and others don’t consider it when budgeting. Most of my colleagues working in this side of the industry are passionate about ...

The Olympic Brand – iconic heritage vs vacant brand promises, human rights atrocities and gutless politicians

How many of us branding folk would die to work on the Olympic brand? “Ah, not me. I’m busy that day, helping mum move house, starting my key-ring collection, that sort of thing.” There are enough people dying because of the Olympic Games as it is. After some limited experience with the Sydney Games, I am permanently ...

Do we need marketers?

Where will it end, this constant blurring of the lines between us and them, the smelly public. This blog is further evidence of our fundamental interdependence. We marketers write, they write. Who is they and who is us anymore? We are blending together into a mass of postulating self-connected human genome mass. ...

Who's your fantasy blogger?

In recent years it's been pretty difficult to miss the meteoric rise of blogging, and it might not come as any surprise to many of you that the word blog was actually voted word of the year by Merriam-Webster in 2004. Dr Con Stavros looks for blogging inspiration from a couple of unusual sources. Q. If you could read ...

Good and Bad Blogs

Many of us in the media world are simultaneously drooling over the digital dialogue and doing bugger-all in our own backyards. Martyn Thomas looks at the abundance of bad blogs and recommends a few of the best. There is a danger as digital networking erupts that many of the companies who set themselves up as communication ...

Guerilla Guide: Managing your marketing career

Geoffrey McDonald Bowll explores the freedom that can exist when marketers own their own business I’m on a boogie board. Crashing into my 11-year-old as he spins around on the wave next me. He banks left then slams into me again. This time my sunglasses fall off and I have to slip into the surf to find them. With ...

Kiely: Analysis of customer service response

This story began with a letter from Michael to Geoff Dixon, CEO of Qantas, expressing his disappointment about the lack of personal space allotted to cattle class travellers on international flights. After receiving a rather dismissive response from the company’s customer care centre, Michael continued his pursuit of a personal response from Mr Dixon…

Prose and Cons: Presidential race, blogging, brand battles

Con Stavros explores the marketing battle for the American presidential race, blogging regulation and brand longevity Donkey vote Prose & Cons loves a big marketing battle. It doesn’t matter if it’s Coke versus Pepsi or Channel Nine versus Channel Seven, when the big boys get the marketing machines rolling it ...

Prose and Cons: Monocle, Gillete and General Motors

Con Stavros looks at Monocle magazine, Gillette’s MACH3 and General Motors GMC truck. One-eyed view Tyler Brûlé has graced this column before as the global style-setter of Wallpaper* founding fame. Brûlé travels the world nowadays overseeing a respected trend spotting and branding empire. His latest, much publicised, ...

Guerilla Guide: Briefing ad agencies

The inimitable Geoffrey Bowll delivers the inside line on briefing ad agencies. I’m sitting in a city café and it ain’t as simple as ‘white with one’ anymore. Skinny cap, soy mocha, skinny soy latte in a mug with the handle facing south. So many variations. People have too much time, too little to do. Here I am ordering ...

Kiely: Species fear providing a marketing opportunity

Michael Kiely explores the post 9/11 emotional response of Species fear and how marketers can satisfy a new need. Franklin D Roosevelt said, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” He was right. I detect a potent form of angst in our society that none dare speak of out of fear of its corrosive potential for the ...

Prose and Cons: advertising to children, sports marketing and fashion branding

In Prose & Cons, Con Stavros examines advertising to children, sport marketing and fashion branding. Childish blame The Simpsons were at their best in the early days of the cartoon franchise when their satirical barbs and humorous social commentary had an edge, sadly lacking in recent years. In a season two episode, ...

Guerrilla Guide: Selecting an agency

The inimitable Geoffrey Bowll delivers the inside line on how to go about selecting a creative agency I’m sitting spinning on my ‘director’s’ chair, drumming my fingers, scheming up something evil I can suggest to a client, to rip more precious lucre from their customers’ plastic accounts. And I’m wondering what lunch ...

Guerrilla Guide: Professional stereotypes

What else could I do? I’m at a Networx function, sipping a beer and chatting with Frank Chamberlin, who also writes for this esteemed publication. We’re talking about the pitfalls of penning a piece without a decent brief, when I notice to my right a woman who is staring at me. Being a well-brought up boy, I put ...

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