Monthly Archives: January 2013

You Dirty Old Man…

31 Thursday Jan 2013

Posted by in Branding

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Thanks for the positive feedback on yesterday’s blog about teaching. It created some conversations about school experiences, so I thought I’d just share a couple with you to demonstrate how school life has changed.

I went to school when the cane was used as a form of punishment, but it was abandoned during my high school years. Although we did have one “very nice” male teacher who took great delight in making you bend over so he could give you a wedgie, then flick the edge of a metal ruler down your butt as hard as he could, leaving great welts on your rump.

Can you imagine what would happen today if a teacher did that to a child? The uproar would be unbelievable. There would be demands for heads to role. All manner of counsellors would be employed for the affected students, as well as any other students, teachers, admin staff, neighbours and parents traumatised by the act. And of course the offending teacher would receive serious counselling, legal advice and probably a transfer to a non-classroom environment (or some such political language).

The parents would probably sue the school and the Department of Education, not to mention the teacher. And the media and social media chattering classes would have a field day. And the teacher would deserve all the wrath.

But can you see the following happening in today’s classroom? When I was in 4th class we had a weekly spelling test. Spelling was my best subject, so I looked forward to it. At the end of the test, three kids who had been nominated the previous week, would stand in front of the class and recite a word and its meaning. The students then had to try to spell the words.

The trick was to use words with silent or unexpected letters, such as psychology, or pneumonia, etc.

On this particular Friday the teacher called out the names to the three quiz masters for the day, one of whom was me. But I had forgotten all about it. So I quickly grabbed my trusty Collins Pocket Dictionary – a compulsory school text in those days – and started flicking through to find my word.

At the top of each page in the dictionary was the first word to be defined on that page, printed in bold. So you could quickly scan through the pages looking for a word. I soon found a cracker, but did not have time to read the definition.

“Righto Auld, what’s your word today” called the teacher. I stood tall and in phonetic language started to announce “nime-fo-may-knee-ack”. “A sexual desire in woman…”

“Stop Auld! Stop!” shouted the teacher, as he doubled up in a combination of laughter and horror.

“Come over here young man” he said, as kids in the classroom started to inquire loudly as to my word and its meaning. (nymphomaniac, in case you missed it).
I had a crew-cut in those days, so my forehead was bare. The teacher asked me to lean towards him and he then wrote in blue pen on my forehead, the following upper case letters:

D.O.M. – he whispered in my ear “it stands for Dirty Old Man and you cannot tell anyone but your parents when you get home”.

So thinking this was not unusual, I walked around for the rest of the day with D.O.M. printed boldly on my forehead as a badge of achievement – and am sure I told my mates what it stood for.

My mother asked me why I had the letters on my head and I told her. She was mortified. She wasn’t a bit upset at what the teacher had done, rather she was embarrassed about what I had done. Go figure.

There were no recriminations, my father just laughed and shook his head. In fact my parents couldn’t wait to meet my teacher at the end of year school function, most likely to apologise for my insolence.

Imagine will you, what would happen today if a teacher dared to have a sense of humour and do such an act to a child? In the first instance I suspect I’d be one upset parent and would initially not see the funny side.

The teacher would lose his job, be ostracised by the community – and possibly put on some watch list kept by vigilante parents. Along with all the other things I mentioned for the earlier metal ruler transgression.

But sometimes things work out OK. Today my son in his second day at his new school, had his first basketball training after lunch. He was very keen to get involved, so changed into his sports gear at lunchtime and followed his sister to the courts. He is in year 4, she is in year 5. Close to the end of the training session the Principal of the Primary School came looking for my son.

Seems in his enthusiasm, my son had been training with the year 5 and year 6 kids – he’s a tall lad and nobody questioned him. He was supposed to be in the classroom for an hour after lunch before starting his basketball training and his teacher was frantically looking for him as he had ‘disappeared’.

Full marks to the Principal though. He let my son stay at the court and do his year 4 training as well, so he had an afternoon of basketball. He reckons it was the best part of his first two days at the school. If that’s all he gets up to, I’ll have nought to worry about. But I have the feeling he has inherited some characteristics, so who knows what lies ahead?

And a free set of steak knives for every parent…

30 Wednesday Jan 2013

Posted by in Branding, Marketing

≈ 1 Comment

back2school

It’s the start of the new school year and the parents and kids of this country are going through the annual reality-check of getting into their school routine.

But this year there’s something different in NSW. If you have watched television over summer, you may have noticed some advertainment during the commercial breaks, sponsored by the NSW Teachers Federation.

It is a series of dramatic stories about teachers that position the teachers in a favourable light in a very clever way. They are well produced and appear to be aimed at teachers to make them feel good about what they do and possibly at students who are considering becoming teachers.

There is even a website which explains why these spots were created: http://www.nswtf.org.au/news/2013/01/14/video-teachers-make-difference-campaign-launch.html

And there’s another website designed to spread the word and encourage teachers to contribute their stories. http://www.teachersmakeadifference.org.au/

Now I have to admit, one of my favourite things in life is teaching – it’s why I own a marketing training business. I love sharing knowledge and seeing those light-bulb moments when people in the audience get the message or lesson being delivered. I am also a guest tutor at universities and TAFE.

Some of my closest friends and relatives are teachers in public and private schools from pre-school through to high school and universities. They are dedicated and hard working. I’m also the father of two kids who have been in the public school system for the last 5 years. My wife and I are a product of the public school system.

The campaign is obviously a political one designed to get the public to view teachers and teaching in a different light. According to the brief there is a lot of negativity about teaching in public conversation. Apparently teachers aren’t political, but the system in which they operate is definitely political. Try telling that to the Gough Whitlam Fan Club leader that taught me economics – you were almost forced to stand in the corner if you disagreed with his political view.

When I was leaving high school, if you wanted to become a teacher you were required to have an interview with a panel of teachers as part of your career advice. I interviewed with a panel and they collectively told me I would be wasting my talent (whatever that was) in teaching. I was told I wouldn’t enjoy it and the system would frustrate and stifle me. In summary, teaching was a bad career choice and I could do much better – and this from people whom I admired. I was very confused. But I took their advice.

How ironic though, I’ve now written marketing textbooks and certificate courses, and teach for a living in the business world.

The difficulty with producing advertising that makes sweeping generalisations about a service, is that it’s much different to creating advertising about products. You see, products are created all the same – they have to be. The customer expects a specific brand of beans to taste the same and weigh the same, each time they buy them. It’s effectively illegal for products not to be consistently the same – if you get my drift. So an ad that makes general statements about a product has more chance of its claims matching the consumer experience.

Yet in the case of teachers, even though teachers in a specific year for example, may all teach the same curriculum, every single teacher is different in the way they teach and behave towards their students. And every single kid has a different personal teaching experience. The service varies from teacher to teacher and school to school. In fact, it varies so much that every child and parent in each specific year has a different experience, even though they are being taught the same curriculum. And that adds up to millions of different experiences with the NSW Teachers ‘brand’.

My family has had some wonderful experiences with our kid’s teachers. However, when you stand in the playground to collect your kids at the end of the day, the conversation amongst the parents is rarely about how wonderful the teachers are. It’s usually about the problems the kids/teachers are having and what is the school doing about it! That’s human nature – it’s easier to moan about something that isn’t working, than to praise something because it is working.

And the parents rightly believe they are paying the teachers via their taxes, so they want a say about things that affect their children.

Here’s some experiences in schools with which I’m familiar – how do they stack up against what’s being portrayed in the advertisements:

– The school stationery list came home numerous times with the heading “Stationary List”. Note the typographical error in stationery. We were always taught it’s ‘e’ for ‘envelope’.

– “Your brilliant” was a comment on a homework sheet, not “you’re brilliant”.

– “The Great Australian Bight” was corrected to “The Great Australian Bite” – I’m not kidding.

– 6 x 8 = 48 was marked incorrect and the answer was given as 54.

– The Greens party have stuck their political stickers on the boy’s urinal, but nobody has taken them down. So the lads get to read political messages every time they go to the loo – although some might say that’s the perfect place for such messages.

– If a child breaks a leg and is on crutches, their parents are required to be on mobile phone stand-by for the full school day, to take the child to the toilet and help them move around the school, if they need assistance. The school has to prepare a risk assessment report to determine if the child can even come to school. Teachers are not allowed to help the child manoeuvre in the toilet, in case they get sued. The teachers cannot help the child up or down stairs or anywhere they walk, in case the child falls and the teacher is sued for causing it. True.

– Teachers smoke on the school footpath in view of the kids.

– Teachers using kid’s skin colour as a reference when addressing students.

– And then there’s the issue of how children being bullied or suffering anxiety get treated by the system.

A friend of mine is a Primary School Principal. Every time she asks a veteran teacher waiting out his last few years for his lucrative pension, to do something outside his rostered hours – such as playground duty, or after-school pick-up monitoring – he demands an equal amount of time without children in return. Otherwise he threatens union action.

And recently I learned direct from a 2012 HSC student, that if you fail your HSC – that is, you get less than a 50% mark – you can wait 12 months and apply to university to become a teacher. Apparently that’s how you become a teacher if you miss out the first time. Should this be the qualification for teachers we want and need to grow our country?

So how would you react to the ads given these facts? What should you think when the advertising (which is contrived and fake) says one thing, but the real experience says another? That’s how brands are built – not by advertising alone. But by the experience the customer has when they use the service or buy the products. And if the customer has seen the ads and the message has sunk into their brain, how does the experience compare with what the ads are saying?

The bigger the gap between the advertising message and the real experience of the customers, the more damage is done to the brand.

And that’s the risk this teachers campaign runs – there are millions of parents out there who do not have the same experiences proposed in the ads. It could create a backlash amongst parents. It’s mostly not the teachers’ fault by the way.

I really hope the campaign is a huge success at attracting males to teaching – we seriously lack male teachers in all levels of our schools. In a collective 11 years of schooling my children have never had a male teacher between them. Each year they live in hope.

We’ll keep an eye on the campaign and later in the year will report on its performance, because good teachers really do make a difference – and our future depends upon them.

A customer service tale, or two…

28 Monday Jan 2013

Posted by in Branding, Customer Service

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We all have stories about customer service, mostly when it’s poor service. We tend not to get too excited when what we expect to happen, happens.

But in the last few weeks I’ve had some interesting experiences with local businesses that I thought I’d share.

The first is with Pittwater Mowers, my local store about 200 metres from my home as the crow flies.

Pittwater Mowers

For my sins I mow my lawn as often as necessary, which in Summer is almost weekly. In the first week of December 2012 I dropped my lawn mower into Pittwater Mowers because it wasn’t idling properly. They said they would service it and text me when it was ready. I had bought the mower about 18 months earlier.

A week later I had not heard so I dropped in to see how the mower was going. The bloke behind the counter flipped some forms, clicked a mouse and then told me they hadn’t looked at it, but would do so on Monday and text me. Come Tuesday, still no text. Come Saturday and still no communication. So I dropped in again to see how my mower was enjoying its visit. A different bloke flipped some forms, clicked a mouse and said it would be done first thing on Monday.

As the grass was approaching calf length I borrowed a mower from a lawn-mowing service working on my neighbour’s garden – getting the place ready for auction. It was such a stinker of a day he didn’t want a second mowing job, but generously offered me his mower so I could do it myself.

Christmas arrived, still no text. I went away for a couple of weeks and returned mid-January. The grass looked more like a crop awaiting harvest, so I dropped in to Pittwater Mowers again. The bloke flipped some papers, clicked a mouse and advised me they needed to order a part. I asked if it had been ordered and he hung his head in embarrassment, told me he would text me after he’d spoken to the supplier on Monday.

This time he was true to his word and he rang and left a message – the part would not be delivered until early February. So now I’m borrowing my neighbour’s mower to trim my grass crop until the next text message. My mower is nothing complicated, just a middle of the road lawnmower found in most backyard sheds or garages in suburban Oz. But I could have gone onto elance.com and paid someone in India to build one in less time this ‘service” has taken. And now we’ve had the highest rainfall since the last time we had the highest rainfall in Sydney, so I’ll be bailing hay in my backyard next weekend.

Counter the lawnmower service with the service we received from Bike Addiction, located about 100 metres down the road from Pittwater Mowers.

Bike Addiction

My son and I went there to look for a new bike for his birthday. He’s outgrown his current one and needs something bigger. The young bloke greeted us enthusiastically, assessed my son’s height, asked his age and other questions related to how he would use the bike – will he be crossing fjords, doing tricks off stairways, etc.

He recommended a specific bike, had my son test it and advised that the one in the shop was already sold, but new stock was due in next week and he would call when it arrived. Guess what? He called the following week. We dropped in on the weekend. He fitted the bike to my son’s requirements, watched him test ride it in the street, threw in a drink bottle and we left as happy campers with a new bike – very cool wheels I must say:)

The contrast in service couldn’t have been more stark.

Then my wife went to buy some wine at our local Vintage Cellars.

Vintage Cellars

We are members of the club and have 2 membership cards, so either of us can use them when we shop. The club mails “Cellar Shares” to you once you’ve spent way too much money on wine and the share is redeemable for $25 against a future purchase. My wife often buys the wine as the store is near where she shops for other food. The lady that serves her knows her and regularly recommends wine.

But when my wife presented the Cellar Share to redeem against her latest purchase, the lady who always serves her refused to accept it – because it was in my name. I joined as a member, but I don’t recall the membership form asking for the name of an additional member, even though they give you 3 membership cards.

So while the lady serving accepted our membership card to acquire points for our membership, she would not accept the Cellar Share for redemption against said purchases.

To say my wife was a tadded miffed is an understatement. She left the store, came home, gave me an earful of what she thought of Vintage Cellars and went online to the Dan Murphy home-delivery service and placed an order that arrived within 2 hours. That’s how fragile brand-loyalty is these days. People can switch at the click of a mouse, or a quick phone call.

I’ve always said your brand is only partially built by what you say about yourself and mostly built by how you service your customers – after all they are the ones paying your salary.

My son is enjoying his new bike, my wife and I have enjoyed a few wines – I’ll keep you posted about the world’s longest lawnmower service.

An airline with a sense of humour, how refreshing…

24 Thursday Jan 2013

Posted by in Branding, Customer Service

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One of the traps of the internet is that when people receive an email from a friend or colleague they often assume the content of the message is current, or at least recent and more importantly ‘true’. Yet very often the content has been doing the rounds for years and the recipient just hasn’t seen it. And quite often the content is pure fabrication, but it’s on the internet so therefore it must be real.

So I apologise to those who may have already seen the stories about Kululu Airline in South Africa. And I make no claims on the alleged staff statements, but hey it’s refreshing to see a brand not take itself too seriously and make an effort for their customers.

Kulula is an Airline with head office in Johannesburg. Kulula planes are unique in their graphic design and their airline attendants make an effort to make the in-flight “safety lecture” and announcements a bit more entertaining.

Here are some images of their planes. You can see more at http://www.kulula.com/flights/fleet/gallery

101 captain

101 copilot

101 front

this way up

Here are some (alleged) announcements that have been heard or reported:

On a Kulula flight, (there is no assigned seating, you just sit where you want) passengers were apparently having a hard time choosing, when a flight attendant announced, “People, people we’re not picking out furniture here, find a seat and get in it!”

On another flight with a very “senior” flight attendant crew, the pilot said, “Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve reached cruising altitude and will be turning down the cabin lights. This is for your comfort and to enhance the appearance of your flight attendants.”

On landing, the stewardess said, “Please be sure to take all of your belongings. If you’re going to leave anything, please make sure it’s something we’d like to have.”

“There may be 50 ways to leave your lover, but there are only 4 ways out of this airplane.”

“Thank you for flying Kulula. We hope you enjoyed giving us the business as much as we enjoyed taking you for a ride.”

As the plane landed and was coming to a stop at Durban Airport , a lone voice came over the loudspeaker: “Whoa, big fella. WHOA!”

After a particularly rough landing during thunderstorms in the Karoo, a flight attendant announced, “Please take care when opening the overhead compartments because, after a landing like that, sure as hell everything has shifted.”

From a Kulula employee: “Welcome aboard Kulula 271 to Port Elizabeth. To operate your seat belt, insert the metal tab into the buckle, and pull tight. It works just like every other seat belt; and, if you don’t know how to operate one, you probably shouldn’t be out in public unsupervised.”

“In the event of a sudden loss of cabin pressure, masks will descend from the ceiling. Stop screaming, grab the mask, and pull it over your face. If you have a small child travelling with you, secure your mask before assisting with theirs. If you are travelling with more than one small child, pick your favorite.”

“Weather at our destination is 50 degrees with some broken clouds, but we’ll try to have them fixed before we arrive. Thank you, and remember, nobody loves you, or your money, more than Kulula Airlines.”

“Your seats cushions can be used for flotation; and in the event of an emergency water landing, please paddle to shore and take them with our compliments.”

“As you exit the plane, make sure to gather all of your belongings. Anything left behind will be distributed evenly among the flight attendants. Please do not leave children or spouses..”

And from the pilot during his welcome message: “Kulula Airlines is pleased to announce that we have some of the best flight attendants in the industry. Unfortunately, none of them are on this flight!”

Heard on Kulula 255 just after a very hard landing in Cape Town : The flight attendant came on the intercom and said, “That was quite a bump and I know what y’all are thinking. I’m here to tell you it wasn’t the airline’s fault, it wasn’t the pilot’s fault, it wasn’t the flight attendant’s fault, it was the asphalt.”

Overheard on a Kulula flight into Cape Town , on a particularly windy and bumpy day: During the final approach, the Captain really had to fight it. After an extremely hard landing, the Flight Attendant said, “Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to The Mother City. Please remain in your seats with your seat belts fastened while the Captain taxis what’s left of our airplane to the gate!”

Another flight attendant’s comment on a less than perfect landing: “We ask you to please remain seated as Captain Kangaroo bounces us to the terminal.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to smoke, the smoking section on this airplane is on the wing.. If you can light ’em, you can smoke ’em.”

I must say it may be worth the trip to South Africa just to fly with Kululu – I’ll just have to make sure it’s during the rugby off-season:)

Hanging on the telephone…

24 Thursday Jan 2013

Posted by in Customer Service, Direct Marketing

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Is anyone there?

Is anyone there?

As computer technology has become ubiquitous in our lives, so has the capture and use of data related to our usage. The way we ‘use’ websites, where we talk on the phone, the competitions we enter, things we buy, questionnaires we complete, subscriptions we opt-in to, all provide data for use by marketers and others within corporate and government organisations. 

The term “privacy” as it relates to data use is now part of the vernacular of the general populace. People understand they have rights regarding data capture and usage, something they weren’t too savvy about only a decade ago.

And one of the main reasons they know about their rights is because of the appalling way they’ve been treated by marketers. The abuse of personal media such as the telephone, e-mail and mail has created so much angst that laws and lobby groups exist to counter marketing activity.

My parents are living proof. Thanks to marketers they had to change their lives – well at least the way they answered their telephone at home. Living in blissful retirement and despite being on the ‘do not call’ register they can receive between 5 and 12 calls a day from telemarketers trying to flog them something, donate to a cause, or request an opinion about politics, shampoo or credit cards.

Eventually they became so fed up with telemarketers they bought a new handset with caller-id. They programmed every phone number of friends, family and essential contacts into the phone and started a new routine for answering calls.

You see, they had been conditioned by telemarketers. They learned that most telemarketers hang up if the call is not answered after 6 rings. That’s because the answering service kicks at 6 rings, which means the telemarketer has to pay the call connection fee – which adds up substantially after a few thousand unanswered calls from Bangalore, or even from a rural Australian call centre, sorry “customer service centre”.

So now when the phone rings at my folk’s home, they check the caller id. If the call is from an “unknown” number they don’t answer it unless it goes to 7 calls, which in their experience means it’s less likely to be a telemarketer. They’ve had to change their phone answering habits thanks to telemarketers – either that or develop nervous ticks whenever the phone rings to interrupt their retirement.

I solve the telemarketing issue at home differently as I have young children. I let them answer all calls these days. Always fun to imagine the other side of a conversation between a youngster and a foreign-based salesperson. But my kids are growing quickly and this luxury won’t be available to me for much longer. Maybe I should train a budgie?

The same difficulties exist in B2B telemarketing. People now hide behind voicemail. Instead of answering the phone (at their desk or their mobile) people let the phone go to voicemail, then filter the messages before deciding if they’ll call back.

A colleague contracted a professional telemarketing company to ring a qualified list of 1,200 prospects. They made one appointment. The problem was the difficulty in getting people to answer the phone.

Executives have become so frustrated with unsolicited and irrelevant calls, they have changed their behaviour. They choose who they will speak to and when they will speak to them, using voicemail technology.

This has big implications for businesses trying to make appointments with prospects for their sales people.

People don’t get out of the bath to watch a television commercial, but they will to answer the phone – and if the call is unsolicited it can result in enormous damage to the related brand.

And now it’s the same in B2B sales – people are not interrupting their life to answer their phone – and it’s making it more difficult for businesses to generate leads via the telephone.

Mind you, try finding a telephone number to ring in a ‘contact us’ section of a website. Nowadays it’s all DIY search til your eyeballs pop if you want information or a problem solved. Or you can try sending an email to an automated ticketing service in the hope the company might get in touch with you. But don’t dare call, as someone may have to do some work or provide service – and that costs money.

Sorry gotta go, the phone’s ringing.

Who needs an agency when a plumber will do?

23 Wednesday Jan 2013

Posted by in Branding

≈ 4 Comments

Following yesterday’s blog about retail signs I spotted this plumber on the road in front of me – and it made me smile:

Our business is going down the drain

Our business is going down the drain

It reminded me that some of the best examples of tag lines for companies can be found on the back of trades-vehicles or on small shopfront windows. We had a local beautician named “Peel & Squeal”. The plumbing headline: “We’re number 1 in the number 2 business” comes to mind. And of course there are all the versions of Thai restaurant names: Bow Thai, Thai Tanic etc.

I’ll bet that none of these companies hired an advertising agency or strategic planner to come up with their slogans. They just applied a little thought to their business and in most cases used customer language to describe their service, or at least language that makes the customer smile.

As I was about to write this blog I received a link to an article written by a Creative Director in the UK. It reinforced again how little knowledge so many who work in the advertising industry have about marketing and communications. Why would you hire them to look after your advertising – the local plumber could probably do just as good a job?

Here’s part of the article – the headline was “The end of digital marketing is nigh” and it was about how all digital marketing will soon be called ‘marketing’. No, seriously, the article is about that topic:

“… and you don’t need to label marketing as digital, traditional, mobile, ambient or direct. You’re talking to the customer and it’s working. The channel is irrelevant.”

This statement demonstrates a clear lack or what marketing is, or isn’t. There are only two ways of marketing (see post on this date 12 months ago) Mass Marketing and Direct Marketing. All other descriptors describe a channel eg email marketing, digital marketing, etc.

Direct Marketing is not a channel – it is the dominant way of marketing today being driven by digital channels. When highly paid Creative Directors don’t understand marketing, we may all soon be relying on our plumbers for marketing advice.

Come to think of it, they are in the business of cleaning up sh*t so they could be perfect for the job.

Here’s the article if you’re interested:
http://wallblog.co.uk/2013/01/22/the-end-of-digital-marketing-is-nigh/

More signs of the times…

22 Tuesday Jan 2013

Posted by in Branding, Customer Service

≈ 1 Comment

Further to my post yesterday about the Manly Library Poster, I thought I’d share some other signage I photographed while on the annual Aussie Family Summer Holiday Road Trip a few weeks ago. It’s sort of like the Grizwalds but without the accent.

We headed north to the Sunshine Coast via an inland route. First overnight stop was Tamworth. A rural town in NSW famous for both types of music – Country & Western.

I was walking along the main street trying to find the right place to have coffee, when a women sitting on a bench on the footpath sneezed loudly – just as I glanced in her direction. I nearly jumped back through the plate glass shopfront in response. Because as she sneezed, her full set of dentures shot forward from her mouth and would have hit me in full flight if she had not quickly snatched them in her hand and automatically shoved them back. Though I was a bit surprised, she nonchalantly carried on as if nothing unusual had occurred:)

It was then that I found a fabulous cafe called “Gusto”. Very simple in layout and design. This sign is the only thing on the wall – which is a definition of the term Gusto, as it relates to consumption of food and drink. Most importantly they served great coffee with a smile.

Gusto defined

Gusto defined

On the rear wall behind the counter were very clever oversize clipboard menus. Easy to read and cheap to update.

Gusto menus

Gusto menus

The next day we stopped for a while in the old hippie colony at Bangalow. There are loads of wealthy tree-changers living in the region now, so its character has changed a tad from the early days of dope and free love in the 70’s. I thought this sign on a doctor’s surgery said it all.

You know exactly who the doctor is referring to – those sad sods who believe animals are humans and don’t understand why people living in the real world don’t agree with them.

This is not a vet surgery

This is not a vet surgery

And my final sign is in many ways what you would expect from a cafe in Noosa – where the higher the price, the smaller the portion. And if you have to ask the price, then you don’t belong:

You want attitude with that?

You want attitude with that?

I’ll bet this signwriter didn’t apologise like Jack Dee did?

Happy new year – but be careful, the bureaucrats are back

22 Tuesday Jan 2013

Posted by in Branding, Customer Service, Social Media

≈ 2 Comments

lance-armstrongHappy new year to all. And to those in Oz, I trust you are surviving the heatwaves and downing the medicinal cold one or two to keep the heat at bay. While those in the northern hemisphere are rugging up and avoiding the freezing cold, possibly with a hot toddy or medicinal spirit:)

So this year’s resolution is to join the throng and blog/tweet/write/photograph and create ‘content’ more often. Gotta luv marketers – some bandwagon jumpers are even calling it ‘content marketing’.

I thought I’d start off with a local event that has become global news, thanks to the fact the event was about the biggest news story in the world – not thanks to social media as some digi-spruikers would have you believe.

My local library in Manly has become famous because a casual library assistant, Jack Dee, posted a mock notice about Lance Armstrong books in the library window – see the photo. The notice said that Lance’s books would be reclassified and moved to the fiction section of the library – a funny joke that demonstrated a library could have a sense of humour about a topical event.

A local named Dane Murray took a photo of the sign and posted it on his Twitter account. It was retweeted and then picked up by mass media who broadcast it on television, radio, newspapers and online news sites. People also sent it to their email lists and blogs.

That’s the irony of social media – its lifeblood is traditional media. For if the traditional media didn’t publicise the tweet, it would reside in the closed ecosphere of twitter and other social sites and largely be missed by the population – as over 90% of social posts never get read by the list of followers/subscribers/friends et al.

So a good old bit of Aussie larrikinism gets global publicity and lots of moral support in the comments about it. But here’s the rub.
When Jack realised the image of this sign had gone public, he took the sign down and apologised to the council. One wonders what the apology was for – having a sense of humour, enticing locals to use the library? Certainly the sign was not offensive to anyone. I suspect even Lance may have chuckled in between mea culpa interviews. What sort of regime runs the library?

Today it is reported on the front page of that bastion of international journalism, The Manly Daily, that; “a Manly Council spokesman said yesterday Mr Dee’s job was not under threat, but procedures were under review.” The acting manager of the library, Wendy Ford went so far as to reassure the world that Manly Library was not reclassifying the books. According to the Daily, she said; “Libraries Australia classifies all material, and member libraries follow that interpretation.”

Are the lunatics running the asylum? What sort of bureaucrat could even contemplate firing or reprimanding a staff member for showing a sense of humour or some initiative? Why was the question of his job situation even under consideration? It shouldn’t even be a topic of discussion.

Jack Dee should be made Head Librarian! Maybe run for Mayor? Jack Dee has generated more publicity for the Manly Library with that one poster than the library has gained for itself in the decades it has been open.

He showed some initiative, made us smile about a topic that is not funny – Lance Armstrong’s drug taking and cheating in professional cycling.
As Dane Murray said “I think Jack is a very clever, witty, up-and-coming librarian in the Australian community”.

Libraries the world over are struggling to remain relevant in the internet-world. Manly Library should frame Jack’s sign in the foyer, open a Facebook fan page, get people to Like it and maybe run a Jack Dee slogan of the week competition to “engage” (there’s one of those new buzzwords for you) locals to use the library. They could even have a Jack Dee poster signing day where the public could buy a print of the original poster and Jack could sign it for them at the library – but you must be a library member to be able to participate.

I doubt it will happen though – there would be nothing in the Libraries Australia operating manual encouraging initiative. Though there is probably something about making sure you have public liability insurance for book-signings, in case someone trips over while waiting in line and sues the council for damages. That way the Library Manager could issue a statement, thus justifying their job.