Inherent value

There is a story of Pablo Picasso sitting at a table in a Paris café when a woman at a table next to him approached him and asked if he would do a quick sketch on a paper napkin for her. Picasso obliged and quickly sketched an image onto a napkin and handed it to her – but not before asking for a large amount of money. Stunned the woman exclaimed “How can you ask for so much? It took you only a minute to draw this!” to which Picasso replied “No, it took me 40 years.”

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Digital dilemmas

Digital TV in regional WA has certainly been a popular topic over the last 12-18 months. In the absence of anything official, consumers are clutching to whatever information they can find on the WWW, which is rife with comments, blog posts, articles and forum discussions. Regional WA residents, I believe, are genuinely offended at being left last on the digital roll-out list. In my constant digging on the issue, I’ve found some more information about the rollout, and a new channel, TenWest, that I thought was worth communicating, since communication about Digital TV stations has been so hard to find.

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More than meets the eye

Email marketing has changed remarkably in the past decade. Most of you will have noticed the obvious switch from text-based content to the visually loaded HTML based email we receive today. Marketing emails today can have as much visual impact as a double page spread in a glossy magazine, but in my opinion the biggest and most important developments for us marketers have all been happening behind the scenes.

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Collateral damage

One of the most dangerous practices in marketing is product diversification. Encouraged by CEO’s, accountants and shareholders, such strategies are implemented in the name of value adding, maximisation, potentialisation, use of by-product etc. It is revered as a panacea for easy growth and profitability.

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Leaving it to chance

I am a strong believer in good, solid branding which is why I was a little shocked when I opened the newspaper recently to discover a local group calling for submissions for a new logo in the form of a competition.

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The human aspect

By now, I’m sure many of you have seen or at least heard about the full page advert from 20+ of Australia’s biggest retailers. They’re attempting to focus the spotlight on the tax aspect of the movement to the online environment but is this really the issue? Is the consumer 100% focused on price? And if so, have many of the retailers listed on the advert been responsible for this price war mentality?

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