Earlier this month, Readers Digest released the results of their Most Trusted Brands research for 2010. Year after year, it acts as a roll call for the saints of the marketing industry. But this year was a little surprising.

We have the usual goodie two shoes: Qantas, Visa, Dove, Omo, Colgate, Panadol, Whiskas and Westinghouse.

However there were a handful that spent more than their fair share of time in the naughty corner over the last twelve months. These include…

Most Trusted Aussie Icon: Vegemite

What did they do this year? Put a tutu and a silly wig on the icon and gave it a name only Steve Jobs would be proud of. iSnack 2.0 was one of the biggest marketing failures of the year and resulted in a total rebrand and relaunch.

Most Trusted Cars: Toyota

What did they do this year?

To continue reading head over to the BCM blog…

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Apparently there’s a new iPhone coming out. Whatever. No big deal… OK, I’ve got a little nerdcitement happening.

Today Virgin opened up their “register your interest page“. I was there straight away. Boom. Let me know when I can give Steve Jobs another two years of access to my credit card.

The whole process was exciting but amazingly, the best part was actually the final “thank you for expressing your interest page”. This is it:

As Steve would say, there are a number of magical features here…

To continue reading head over to the BCM blog…

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Unfortunately, we’re not ready to go to the polls online. The days of turning up to your local school or church on a designated Saturday are still with us.

This realisation was made when I tried to lodge my preference for daylight saving in Queensland. The prompt came this morning on Brisbane Times …

“Public comment on the proposal closes today, with Queenslanders telling their local MP or giving feedback via a government website.” Brisbane Times, 31 May 2010.

With no link to the government website, I turned to Google.

Here’s what I got for ‘queensland daylight saving’…

To continue reading head over to the BCM blog…

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Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Nirvana, Michael Jackson… Lady Gaga.

I don’t own a single Lady Gaga song but I put her in the above category. Why? Because Gaga has changed the course of pop culture as we know it. Here’s how…

The Music

Lady Gaga has sold 11.5m albums and 40m singles worldwide. To put that in perspective, Madonna has sold over 200m albums in her career. However, Gaga has only been on the scene since 2008.

Gaga is the first artist to have her first five singles claim the #1 most played spot in the Billboard charts  and is the only artist of the digital era to top the 5 million sales mark with her first two hit singles. Just this month, some claimed she was responsible for saving pop music in the UK;

“As a result of topselling albums from Lady Gaga – the new queen of pop… pop music claimed its biggest share of album sales since 2003. The genre’s 29% share was up from 25.3% in 2008.” The Guardian

In her three year career, Gaga has won 2 Grammy Awards, 9 Billboard Music Awards, 3 Brit Awards and 4 MTV Awards. She has performed with music industry legends such as Bruce Springsteen, Sting and Debra Harry. She has worked with Beyonce and Elton John. And, more questionably, she has written songs for Britney Spears, New Kids on the Block and Michael Bolton.

The Art

Gaga has the music creds. But what’s even more amazing is the way Lady Gaga delivers it…

To continue reading head over to the BCM blog…

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When I was growing up a good family friend of ours owned a car yard. I can recall times where he had to leave BBQ’s on a Sunday afternoon to shelter vehicles from an oncoming hail storm, he stayed back at night to allow people to test drive cars after hours and went to work in the early hours of the morning to make emergency repairs when the drunks had had their fun.

There was no Monday to Friday, nine to five for him. It was an around the clock job. Even at a young age this struck me as being unusual and undesirable.

Yet here I am 20 years later and I am doing exactly that. You probably are as well. Anyone who has a branded social media presence should be. Whether you’re a marketing manager, in an ad agency or handling PR, you’ll probably finding yourself working unusual hours. However, instead of running out in hail storms, we’re posting content, moderating responses and keeping a watchful eye on our social presence… at all times of the day and on every day of the week.

Why are we doing this? Because we’ve opened ourselves, as brands, to being online and social where there’s no off switch or ‘closed’ sign. In fact, if you are on social networks such as Facebook, you’re going to be needed more on the weekends than on a weekday…

To continue reading head over to the BCM blog…

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It’s been a big couple of weeks for geeks. We had the iPad earlier this month and the announcement of a new iPhone operating system this morning.

Putting geekology to the side, there was one really important development for those in the advertising industry. This was the introduction of iAds.

Apple have come out and said that one of the major differences in user behaviour between mobile and desktop is that people spend the majority of time on mobile devices in applications to find the information they are looking for rather than using search engines such as Google. Therefore, they need to put a greater focus on application ads rather than relying on search – hence the intro duction of iAds.

iAds within apps will allow users to play sounds, video, games, interact and even shop without leaving the app. There’s no click through to a browser. You can see in more detail how iAds function here.

What does this mean for us in advertising?

• App developers are now media shops. They keep 60% of the ad revenue while Apple and affiliates take the rest for selling and hosting

To continue reading head over to the BCM blog…

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It’s fair to say that image is very important if you are President of the United States of America. It’s a serious job with serious responsibilities. The USA needs a serious person in the role.

Well then, how can you explain that Barack Obama is one of the most respected and liked Presidents with antics such as these…

1) Hanging out on a basketball court playing HORSE

2) Getting down and dirty with a Latino dancer…

To continue reading head over to the BCM blog….

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Every fortnight BCM has a bake off where three staff members are rostered to bring in sweet treats for the rest of the office. My first venture into bake off land was yesterday where I was teamed up with naked chefs Jeff and Martin. And I let them down. Badly.

I wasn’t looking forward to task in the first place. Don’t get me wrong, I love cooking, just not the sweet stuff. Nevertheless, full of bravado and a little hungover, I attempted a lemon slice for the first time. The first one fell apart quicker than a second hand tv. While brooding about having to participate in such a stupid bake off, the second one burnt itself silly. Here’s the result…

To continue reading head over to the BCM blog….

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During pressure situations in the BCM office (such as looming material deadlines or a furious game of table tennis), it’s not unusual to hear the odd swear word being let loose. Despite this, the profanities have not yet sneaked their way into our advertising communications. But there are many campaigns out there which have a bit of fun with four letter filth. These include:

1) Air Asia’s press and outdoor execution which launched their services from the Gold Coast:

To continue reading head over to the BCM blog….

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At lunchtime on Tuesday, Brisbane went from a sunny 29°C day to a stormy, flash flooding mess. It was some crazy weather which caused some major disruption throughout the city. So, how did you find out about the damage caused by this little storm?

Was it through a mainstream news outlet?

Or was it through a social network such as Facebook?

For me, it was through Facebook (yes, I was on Facebook during work hours… but that’s what I get paid for). In fact, one of my friends posted a video of the flash flooding outside her office in Milton to Facebook. This was then taken from Facebook and uploaded to the Yahoo!7 breaking news.

To continue reading head over to the BCM blog….

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