The facts about Abbott and Endeavour Hills: There was never any threat.

Victoria Police finally confirmed on Friday that Numan Haider, fatally shot after stabbing two officers in an incident at Endeavour Hills police station last week, had not been threatening prime minister Tony Abbott.

Deputy Commissioner Graham Ashton said that police did not believe there was any current threat to the community, nor was there ever a threat to the Prime Minister, connected to Mr Haider, The Age reported.

But the horse has bolted. This important clarification will go largely unnoticed. Many people in the community will remain convinced that Haider was plotting against Australia's democratically-elected leader on behalf of fanatical overseas “Jihadist” interests.

How did the “threats against the PM” story start and how was it propagated? It all seems to have started very vaguely, via that time-honoured journalists’ trick of saying “we understand” when referring to a rumour:

Victoria Police Assistant Commissioner Luke Cornelius would not go into detail about why they wanted to speak to the man, but the ABC understands he had made threats against Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

A later News Limited story under the byline of Simon Benson actually clarified that the threats were only in the heat of the moment, at the time of incident:

Witnesses said he (Haider) made verbal threats against Prime Minister Tony Abbott then stabbed both officers.

Senior intelligence sources confirmed the attacker had made threats against the PM moments before a local police officer drew his gun and shot him dead.

But subtly, that fact is twisted later in the story – without any source being cited – to imply that Haider had made previous threats against the prime minister and that THIS was why security agencies had been watching him:

The man was under surveillance for having allegedly made threats against the PM.

Clearly this is just plain wrong, and very poor journalism. There is no evidence that Haider ever threatened the PM prior to the incident at Endeavour Hills.

And what about the oft-repeated line that Haider had been tracking Tony Abbott, with the obvious implication that the young man had been planning some kind of attack? This also appears to have taken hold, without any corroboration.

Early in the evolution of the story, some media outlets quoted the ABC as saying that "the 18-year-old Muslim extremist had been researching Prime Minister Tony Abbott's movements", taking particular interest in his plans to travel to Melbourne in coming months. I’ve looked and I can’t find any original source for this. However, on Friday, News Limited outlets were reporting that this “research” consisted of a Google search and had happened at some time in the past:

Haider’s passport was cancelled after authorities discovered he had done a Google search to try to find out when Prime Minister Tony Abbott would visit Melbourne and where he planned to go.

Then on Saturday, without citing any source, Gerard Henderson in an opinion piece in The Australian stated baldly that "Evidence has emerged that Haider was tracking the movements of senior politicians, including Tony Abbott". What evidence is that, Mr Henderson?

In fact, a story in The Australian the previous day, again quoting Deputy Commissioner Graham Ashton, reported that Australian Federal Police were still looking into whether Haider researched Prime Minister Tony Abbott's movements and that the AFP did not have any "specific" information about potential threats to Mr Abbott.

So… there you have the facts. No evidence of stalking of Tony Abbott, nor of threats - except (allegedly) at the moment of Haider’s attack on the two police officers - nor of conspiracy... except for the media getting together to make news out of rumours, half-truths and bullshit.

Strip clashes: Why can't the AFL get it right?

Yesterday's AFL Elimination Final between Port Adelaide and Richmond was hard to watch, and not only because of Richmond's painful performance. I found that the combination of bright sun and deep shade at the Adelaide Oval plus the confusingly similar strips of the teams made for very difficult TV viewing. And I simply couldn't understand why that was the case, when the issue of a strip clash had been raised and - I thought - settled during the week, with the unusual decision to allow Port to wear its traditional SANFL "prison bars" stripes. Yet again, the AFL got it wrong, and it continues to set itself up for failure by not having a simple, fail-safe strip policy.

Some teams and supporters seem to be stuck in the 1950s with the concept of black shorts for the home team and white shorts for the visitors. But that harks back to an era when every team had its own home ground. The concept of "home" and "away" games is meaningless in 2014 - the vast majority of AFL games are played at a ground where neither team is actually at "home" - yet the AFL seems to be gutless about dragging these laggards into the 21st century.

It's actually pretty simple. Teams don't need a "home strip" and an "away strip" as well as a "clash strip" - that's just unnecessarily complicated and confusing. I'm not a neuropsychologist, but I know that it's a basic precept of visual cognition that the eye and brain differentiate objects more rapidly and easily when they contrast. This applies to players as much as it does to spectators and TV viewers, although the limitations of image capture and reproduction make it even more crucial for TV audiences.

To maximise contrast in every game, every AFL team needs just two strips - one predominantly dark and one predominantly light. Forget the irrelevant "home" and "away" shorts - the colour of the shorts goes with whether the strip is predominantly dark or light. Let the home team choose first, or toss for it. And AFL teams should be forced to comply with the light/dark protocol. If they dig their heels in, they will be continuing to damage the game as a whole. While we're at it, guernsey designers should forget fancy swooshes and ribbons and stylised animals - just stick to traditional stripes, sashes, hoops and yokes. From a few rows back or on TV, you can't tell whether that's a majestic swooping brown hawk on the jumper or just a big skid mark.

Why Richmond and Port Adelaide couldn't have played yesterday in the colours they're wearing in the picture above is beyond me. Port had a huge home ground advantage anyway - what difference could it possibly have made what colour shorts they were wearing?

The Marlboro Man and the Australian Open

It might be hard for some younger people to imagine, but in the early 1980s the Australian Open tennis tournament (then held at Kooyong Stadium each December) was sponsored by Marlboro cigarettes. In fact, they were the "naming rights" sponsor, and the tournament was widely referred to in the media as the Marlboro Australian Open.

Activists and supporters from organisations opposed to tobacco marketing and sponsorship, including Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), the Movement Opposed to the Promotion of Unhealthy Products (MOP-UP) and Billboard-Utilising Graffitists Against Unhealthy Promotions (BUGA UP) organised effective protests on Glenferrie Road opposite the stadium, with a simulated "marble row" of headstones and a giant inflatable cigarette, easily visible from the South Eastern Freeway (now Monash/CityLink).

As part of a growing movement against tobacco sponsorship of sport at the time, I wrote and performed this song on community radio station 3CR's Health Show. It's my one and only "protest song"...

The Marlboro Man rode on out from the range
With his profits distending his belly,
And he cunningly thought, if he sponsored some sport
He could still get his ads on the telly.

So he went down to Kooyong and laid out some cash -
Just a pittance for someone so wealthy -
And he said, with a cough: "If this really pays off,
It might even make smoking look healthy."

He said: "Get me the best tennis players on Earth -
I want McEnroe, Borg, Gerulaitis!
It'll be so damn good, I'd play myself if I could...
But I can't - I've got heart disease, lung cancer, emphysema... and chronic bronchitis."

Eventually the Victorian government acted, not only to end tobacco sponsorship of sport, but to fund sporting clubs and healthy activities using revenue collected from tobacco taxes, via the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation (VicHealth), the first of its kind in the world.

Kmart and BWM bowdlerise a classic hit for TV

With the aim of extending the feel of its "Bom Bom" campaign of 2013, featuring the music track of that name by Sam and the Womp, Kmart Australia has recently launched a new TV ad. Here's how their agency BWM explains it:

BWM Melbourne's new spot for Kmart shows how irresistible value feels, by celebrating and sharing the 'Kmart feeling' that transforms low-price products into a wonderland for the imagination.The spot features track 'The Clapping Song' by Shirley Ellis.

It's a pleasant enough ad, if a bit derivative of the kind of thing Bonds has been doing for a number of years. But something about it has bothered me from the start. Although the agency claims on its YouTube channel that the ad features 'The Clapping Song' by Shirley Ellis, the lyrics have clearly been changed from that familiar classic hit of the 1960s without acknowledgment.

For some unknown reason, it's been bowdlerised. Here's how the Kmart version goes, with the original lyrics in brackets:

Three, six, nine
The goose drank lime (wine)
The monkey chewed tomato (tobacco)
On the streetcar line
The line broke
The monkey got woke (choked)
And they all went together (to heaven)
In a little row boat.

Unnecessary? Over the top? Political correctness gone mad? I can only guess that advertiser and agency are trying to avoid any possibility of complaints to the Advertising Standards Board about inappropriate references to alcohol and tobacco consumption and a fatal public transport accident.

Anyway, please enjoy the original (also covered by The Belle Stars in the 1980s) in all its offensive glory...

Toyota Klanger: Worst-ever rock song adaptation for advertising?

With the footy season reaching the pointy end, we're sure to see a lot more advertising from Toyota, official sponsors of the AFL Premiership. Sadly, that will mean many more exposures of the horrendous current 30-second TVC for Toyota's large family 4WD, the Kluger. This ad is based on what must be the worst-ever adaptation of a popular song as an advertising jingle. Think of the much-loved Creedence Clearwater Revival song "Down On The Corner", then read these lyrics:

Early morning netball
It's sideline coffee time
The boys begin stretching
Soccer's next, let's ride
Need another latte
To cheer on the team
Dad and the four kids exhausted
Mum will be up for a week.

Unbelievably clunky, unfunny and far from clever. Add a half-hearted and poorly-enunciated vocal performance and every visual cliché about "soccer moms" and WASP families you can think of, and you have an absolute shocker of an ad.

Is this really the best creative idea Toyota's agency Saatchi & Saatchi could come up with to differentiate the Kluger from its competitors? Apparently they reckon a lame anecdote about Mum drinking too much latte is something the target audience will relate to and find funny and appealing, in a way that helps build preference for Kluger.

It might work marginally better as an ad for decaf coffee. Or birth control.

Political parties: Forget "message". Try vision, values and leadership

With three days to go, I've pretty much given up hope. But reflecting on this excruciatingly awful 2013 Federal Election campaign, I still can't help wishing for the impossible... a glimpse of vision from a political leader somewhere.

Ask a party leader why we should vote for him/her and the answer is inevitably framed narrowly, with reference to the other parties. Even the Greens pretty much go with "Because we're not them...".

Surely a better question is "Why do you want to lead us?" Forget the other parties and tell us what you and your mob actually believe in. What are your fundamental values? What motivates you? What's your vision for the nation?

Both major parties are so often heading down the same cynical path on issues like asylum seekers and climate change that we can no longer rely on observed actions and stated policies as a guide to their values and beliefs. Yet I think we crave something more meaningful.

To extend this a little, and with reference to what I do for organisations (businesses and not-for-profits), it continues to puzzle me why political parties spend massive amounts on communications and "message" consultants, researchers and pollsters, but apparently fail to work internally on their core strategy first.

Put simply, message doesn't drive meaning. What I consistently tell marketers is that they must identify or decide what it is they really stand for FIRST, before they even think about the implications for communication. I don't see why the parties that aspire to govern us should do things any differently.

Coco Pops and contemporary culture

On Triple R FM's Breakfasters this morning, Stew Farrell was lightly ridiculing a newspaper story about advertising targeted to children when something curious happened. His co-presenters, Fee B-Squared and Lorin Clarke, seemed to become quite uncomfortable at Stew's repeated naming of the breakfast cereal brand Coco Pops (which was the subject of the story) and effectively truncated the discussion, even though it was absolutely clear that he was responding to a news item and this was in no way a case of "cash for comment".

The idea that mentioning brand names is somehow unpleasant or distasteful in non-commercial media is quite widespread. I've written here before about the ABC's unworkable and, at times, hypocritical "no brands" policy. But I haven't previously detected the same attitude among public broadcasters.

Let's be sensible about this: brands are a cultural reality. Like it or not, brands are one of the ways in which we make sense of contemporary Western life. It's almost impossible to discuss anything important or meaningful in our lives without mentioning a brand or, usually, numerous brands. Our memories are often linked to, and activated by, brands, brand names and advertising jingles. We don't do it consciously and we certainly don't do it in expectation of a commercial reward. Notwithstanding often valid critiques in works like "No Logo", brands are here to stay.

And just because it's a breakfast cereal or an unhealthy product doesn't mean a brand is unworthy of discussion on public radio. 3CR's Health Show was very actively involved in fighting - and ending - Marlboro's sponsorship of the Australian Open Tennis Championships in the early 1980s.

After all, Triple R is a brand, too. Its pivotal role in Melbourne culture over nearly 40 years is inextricably linked to numerous commercial brands: music venues, record labels, bands, festivals, cafes, TV shows. Silencing brands would be doing a disservice to the culture of the city Triple R serves so well.

Blurred vision and pointless positioning

More than a decade ago, while waiting for my visitor's pass at the gatehouse of the Australian HQ of a multinational pharmaceutical company, I noticed a new sign proclaiming their vision. It was so extraordinarily bad that it remains imprinted on my mind to this day. It read:

Achieving together to lead in healthcare.

It was a classic example of the sort of vision statement that can only be written by a committee. Ugly to read and say. So cautious as to be incomprehensible. Undifferentiating. Uninspired and uninspiring.

Achieving what? Achieving to lead? What does that even mean?

A vision statement is supposed to give employees, customers and stakeholders an unequivocal and inspiring view of what makes your organisation unique and how it aims to make the world a better place. Seeing such a hopelessly ill-directed and badly written statement made me think no-one was in charge and no-one really knew what the company was on about. Its performance in subsequent years tends to suggest perhaps that was indeed the case.

I was reminded of that pharma classic today when I saw a slogan carefully signwritten on the side of a smart-looking utility vehicle bearing the name of an air conditioning maintenance firm. It read:

Partners of first choice.

A positioning statement is supposed to define the ways in which you would like customers to perceive your offer as different and distinctive compared with those of your competitors. But this one is also meaningless and uninspired.

Being seen as a partner rather than a supplier is every service provider's aim. There's nothing new or distinctive about that - it's old news, as stale and hackneyed as saying you offer solutions. And being first choice is surely the goal of every provider of air conditioning services - they probably differ only in terms of which customer segment they decide to target.

My point is, if you are going to bother telling the world what you stand for, make it count.

If you lack the internal resources to work through it and develop something distinctive and meaningful, then seek outside assistance. And if your consultant comes up with twaddle like Achieving together to lead in healthcare, then sack him/her and get someone who knows how to develop insights, capture ideas and make words work.

Give polls a chance. Or STFU.

We all know there's a problem with political polls. Every time a new poll is published, we have 24 hours of headlines, questions shouted at politicians at every doorstop, denials, pundits attributing causes to every "dip" or "surge" and the polls themselves dismissed as meaningless or "dodgy". But the fault isn't usually with the poll. Here are just a few reasons why:

1. Political polls are conducted transparently and with robust, documented, methodology. Poll methodology is typically provided (if the media organisations or critics care to ask for it) along with the findings. Indeed, it's in the interests of market research companies to provide details of their methodology in order to support the credibility of their findings. It's just that the media and others aren't usually that interested. Of course there are technical flaws and merits in every approach - pollsters and psephologists may argue at length among themselves about methods and significance, but you'll rarely see those arguments played out in the mainstream media. Margins of error are also provided; but they too attract scant attention while tiny changes in voting percentage are discussed ad nauseam.
2. Stated intention today is not a reliable predictor of future behaviour. This is very well documented in the academic marketing literature - all sorts of factors have been shown to have the potential to cause the consumer not to follow through with his or her intention. A poll that asks "If a Federal election were held today..." sets up an artificial situation, making it even less likely to be a good predictor of the future. Even with the best design - and the best will - the findings of such a poll can only be used as a very rough guide to what might happen in the (impossible) event of an election being held today.
3. Local factors may significantly alter intentions. Voting involves a complex process - it's very different from answering a phone call or completing a survey online. For example, a significant proportion of those who provide opinion poll answers probably have no clear understanding of who their local candidates are, or will be, at a future Federal election. What if I told the pollsters that I intended to vote Liberal but when I eventually see the picture of the Liberal candidate on the How to Vote card, I don't like the look of him or her? Or I was intending to vote Labor but I recognise the Greens candidate as a former local Councillor who did some good things for the community? These may be small effects, but when countless column inches are devoted to differences of 1 or 2 per cent, they may well be very relevant.
4. Correlation does not equal causation. A movement in poll numbers - even a change that falls within the margin or error and thus can't even be thought of as a "real" change - invariably provokes a flood of analysis seeking to explain its cause. No change in voting intention should ever be attributed to any specific piece of political business - an announcement, a scandal, a photo op or a fuck-up - based on a piece of descriptive research like an opinion poll. Only a properly-controlled piece of causal research, where the impact of one particular factor can be investigated while others are controlled for, can provide strong evidence of causation; for example, was voting intention statistically significantly different among those who had seen a particular speech or interview, as compared with those who hadn't? Even then, there might well be confounders - people who saw the speech might be better informed about politics than those who didn't and this might be related to their long-term voting intentions.

My point is, when polls are discussed, dissected and ultimately despised, don't dismiss the research as "dodgy" unless you've examined and understood the methodology. To put it bluntly, don't blame the polls or the pollsters - blame the pollies and the press.

How conservatives and bigots delude themselves - and their followers - about history

I don't normally get political here, but the reaction of some conservatives in the US to the re-election of Barack Obama has been absolutely astonishing, sometimes even to the point of being hilarious. And there's something worth reflecting on about the extent to which a strong belief and identification with a brand like conservatism can completely change the way someone looks at the world. Even undisputed facts, history and science.

As commentator Rachel Maddow puts it, the conservative movement is "stuck in a vacuum sealed, door locked, spin cycle of telling each other what makes them feel good, and denying the factual, lived truth of the world".

Conservative political pundit Pat Buchanan claimed this week that Obama's re-election has "killed White America". And then, in support of that contention and acknowledging that "of course" he thinks whites are better than other people, he claimed that "Anything worth doing on this Earth was done first by white people." Buchanan then cited examples that prove exactly what Maddow says - conservatives are living in some kind of "truth bubble" of their own making.

"Who climbed Mount Everest?" Buchanan asked rhetorically. "White people."

Er, maybe half right at best. Tenzing Norgay (a Nepali Sherpa) was right there on the summit with Hillary, and numerous Sherpas were an integral part of the team that made the first successful ascent.

"Who invented paper?" asked Pat. "White people."

Wrong again, Pat. Papermaking was invented in China and spread through the Middle East to medieval Europe in the 13th century.

"Who discovered algebra? White people."

Sorry, Pat. Strike three and you're out. The roots of algebra can be traced to the ancient Babylonians and the word comes from Arabic. There's even a clue in that the word starts with "al".

How symbols lose their meaning...

If you've seen much of the London 2012 Olympics so far, especially online or print coverage, you'll almost certainly have seen a pic of a medal winner biting his or her piece of bling. It took me just a few minutes to find the images above; no doubt many thousands of pics like these have been taken already, just a few days into competition.

The origins of the tradition of biting the medal are well known: gold is a soft metal, and biting on a coin (or medal) could establish its authenticity or purity. No doubt the first athlete to do it was making a spontaneous and genuine gesture of amused disbelief ("Wow! Have I really won gold?!"). A few more athletes imitate the first, and it remains something the athletes own. But then the press pack get a hold of it, and the spontaneity and meaning are lost.

Aesthetically, it now almost always looks ugly and ridiculous; many of the medallists look uncomfortable or at best bemused. They are clearly being coaxed by photographers to do it.

But when even silver and bronze medallists are being bullied into making what is now a meaningless gesture, it has clearly lost its meaning and become just another stupid journalistic cliche.

The trouble with “content marketing”

I had no idea, but apparently I’ve worked in “content marketing” for more than 20 years. Of course, it wasn’t called that when I started my career in a marketing communications agency specialising in one of the most information-intensive promotional contexts imaginable: marketing prescription pharmaceuticals to GPs and specialists.

No-one mentioned “content marketing” when we pitched, developed and published custom newsletters, journals, symposium proceedings and product monographs on behalf of big pharmaceutical companies.

It wasn’t called “content marketing” when we developed and ran third party-accredited case study programs to support the launch of a new class of drugs, or when I sat in a hotel room at an international congress writing overnight newsletters highlighting the important clinical implications of a new multicentre trial, to be faxed to Australian doctors the next morning.

And it wasn’t called “content marketing” when I ghost wrote opinion pieces for business publications or prepared a CEO’s “From my desk” column for customer newsletters.

But these are all examples of targeted strategic communications designed and executed to meet very clear communication objectives, driven by marketing strategy.

Worryingly, much of what I read about content marketing seems to put the current vogue for “content” way ahead of the “marketing” bit. I’ve seen countless blog posts from content “experts” with “10 Great Ideas for Content” and "Tips for Content", as though sheer quantity matters more than purpose and relevance. It's worse still when one of these gurus describes content marketing as a "strategy" in its own right, and claims it's "cost-effective and easy"... without any evidence. And the content marketing buzz seems to value examples of how to generate content over actual case studies demonstrating true marketing effectiveness and ROI.

I’ve learned over the years to be very wary of any new fad that puts a word in front of “marketing”. Marketing is marketing. Buzzwords, new communications channels and marketing gurus come and go, but the fundamentals of marketing remain. “Content marketing” is not a new kind of marketing. At best, it’s about some new communication tools; at worst, it’s putting the cart before the horse.

And I really dislike the word “content”. It carries connotations of a communications space or void that simply needs to be filled, as though a novelist told her publisher “Here’s my 500-page novel, now I just have to develop the content”. By extension, the people who come up with “content” run the very real risk of being seen as merely “content providers”. There’s nothing inherent in the term “content marketing” that gives the content provider (or “Chief Content Officer” – ugh!) credit for having an understanding of marketing strategy or skills in writing and commercial creativity, or that imbues the content with a specific strategic purpose.

As I've suggested above, “content” in marketing is as old as the hills, and not just in areas like pharma marketing. Long before the web and Facebook, FMCG marketers seeking ways to increase the range of customer usage occasions put coupons for recipe books on their packages: every Chocolate Ripple Cake made in the suburbs meant two extra packs of Arnott’s Choc Ripple biscuits sold. Young stamp collectors were encouraged to join the Junior Philatelists’ Club and get the quarterly Stamp News. These are classic examples of what today would be called “content”, but driven by clear objectives that can be linked to real measures of success.

Remember that marketing is about value. If your content doesn’t help you create superior customer value and hence confer competitive advantage, then what’s the point? And if your content is really valued so highly by your customers, then why are you giving it away to your competitors and their customers too?

Moreover, creating and disseminating quality content has real costs or, at the very least, opportunity costs even if you sit at your desk and do it yourself.

Everyone involved in planning, designing, developing and delivering content must know why each piece of content is being created, captured or curated and where it fits strategically. To be more specific, which customers and what customer behaviours is the content intended to influence, and how? And, in a world chock full of content, why should the customer pay attention to yours?

Just because we have new social media to play with doesn’t mean marketers, PR practitioners, “content engineers” or whatever we’re being called this week can ignore the fundamentals of marketing and marketing communications.

Nothing warm or funny about Dawn French spruiking for Coles

In July 2009, along with thousands of other Melburnians of a certain age, I queued up on a cold St Kilda night to see celebrated British comedy duo French & Saunders at the Palais Theatre as part of their "farewell" tour. The show was a relatively safe "best of" collection of sketches, and the Palais wasn't the ideal venue (far too big for their style of comedy), but it felt like we were there to pay affectionate homage as much as to be entertained.

Never in a million years could I have guessed that Dawn French's next major appearance in Australia would be in a truly awful ad campaign for the Coles supermarket chain's re-vamped "Fly Buys" loyalty program.

I've always thought of Dawn French as one of Britain's more socially-attuned comedians, since her days as part of the Comic Strip working with the likes of Adrian Edmonson, Rik Mayall and Alexei Sayle in the 1980s. It strikes me as particularly odd, then, that she would sign on to front a "loyalty" (read "profit-maximizing") program for one of a cosy pair of duopolists whose immense market power and savage pricing policies are widely held to be matters of serious concern by everyone from the ACCC to the National Farmers' Federation and Prime Minister Gillard.

While I don't expect someone like French to keep abreast of issues in Australian consumer economics and and trade practices, I'd have thought that she (or someone advising her) should at least have sussed out the situation with a view to gauging public sentiment and likely audience response before signing on. It's pretty fair to say that Coles is not regarded with the same affection as French is by most consumers... or at least as French was.

And the allegedly humorous scripts for the TVCs themselves - including a FlyBuys teaser and an introduction to the My5 deal - must make them about the unfunniest things with which Dawn French has ever associated herself.

Look, it's not enough simply to put Dawn French on camera and tell her to be wacky and crazy. Her very significant body of work over more than three decades has been based on exceptional comedy writing, but there's none of that in evidence in this campaign. Her delivery just seems manic, as if the director believed that louder and wackier must necessarily be funnier. And her flirting with Curtis Stone completely lacks the qualities she brought to the screen as Geraldine, the Vicar of Dibley (sensitively written for her by Richard Curtis and his collaborators).

And I am really struggling to follow Coles' strategy in choosing to parachute Dawn French in to tell Australians why they should be more loyal to Coles. She's likeable, sure, but just how does a wealthy, successful English woman with a 40-room mansion in Cornwall relate to the average Australian suburban supermarket shopper?

Overall, the whole thing makes me very disappointed. I certainly think no more highly of Coles and its loyalty program as a result of of the ads... and, sadly, I think a lot less of Dawn French for having done them.

The QBrand QBlog rises again!

It's long overdue but, after a period of excessive attention to Twitter, I have decided to concentrate on some lengthier posts here, reviving a blog that had been my main outlet since around 2006.

So here goes. I've greased up the paddles and the defibrillator is charging. Now stand clear...!

Rexona brand extension madness: It's the pits

A couple of years ago, Unilever's Rexona brand of deodorant had one "For Men" product variant. It came packaged in black, the standard colour for men's toiletries.
Now, like tall Daleks, Rexona For Men line extensions have taken over the deodorant shelf in the supermarket, apparently massing for some kind of attack and chanting "ANTI-PER-SPI-RATE... ANTI-PER-SPI-RATE...".

Comedy Festival or not, bullshit's no joke

The Melbourne International Comedy Festival is a much admired cultural institution in my home town. Perhaps that's why I am troubled by what may look to others like a minor thing.

I saw an ad today for the 2010 Comedy Festival that features a "Comedy Fact":

"Those suffering ankylosing spondylitis gain 2 hours of painless sleep when expose (sic) to 10 minutes of comedy."

The "fact" is referenced to Pete Gitundu: 'Dealing with Stress' 2009.

To begin with, I know that ankylosing spondylitis is a real condition, an autoimmune arthritis mainly affecting the spine, and not something made up, even though it has a comical sound (especially to anyone familiar with the Goon Show's "Spon plague"). But that's a completely inadequate reference for any sort of therapeutic claim, so I Googled Pete.

It turns out that Peter Gitundu is "a Web Administrator and Has Been Researching and Reporting on Stress for Years" (all those capital letters are his, by the way, not mine). Sure enough, there in the first paragraph of one of Peter's 1400 online articles (!) is the source of the Comedy Festival quote:

"It has been found that two hours of painless sleep is added to patients of ankylosing spondylitis who are exposed to ten minutes of comedy. These are very interesting statistics..."

It's pretty clear that Peter isn't quoting his own research here, but there's no reference for these "statistics". So I looked a little further afield.

The trail leads back to a Canadian physician, Dr Norman Cousins, who published a personal account of the effects of laughter on his own ankylosing spondylitis in the late 1970s. Interesting and encouraging as it might be, it's a single-patient case report and does not appear to have been replicated in a clinical trial anywhere that I can find. There's no reference to a control group or placebo. And there are definitely no "statistics".

Dr Cousins may well have reported that he got an extra two hours' sleep after watching the Marx Brothers, but there's nothing to say anyone else will get the same effect from comedy (especially not if it's Two And a Half Men... just saying).

Look a bit further and you'll find thousands of references to Dr Cousins' work all over the web. Yes, it was a novel idea in the mid-1970s, and his personal account was compelling... but it didn't prove anything!

I don't want to be a killjoy, but a comprehensive review of the literature in 2001 concluded:

Few significant correlations have been found between trait measures of humor and immunity, pain tolerance, or self-reported illness symptoms. There is also little evidence of stress-moderating effects of humor on physical health variables and no evidence of increased longevity with greater humor.

It's disappointing that an anecdotal report from more than 30 years ago is still being cited - incorrectly - as "proof" of some therapeutic effect. But I find it even more disturbing that, having presumably chosen to use the first thing they Googled as a "fact" in promotion, no-one at the Comedy Festival bothered to check it anywhere beyond a ridiculously dodgy website authored by someone with no qualifications or authority on the subject.

Please understand, I'm not saying someone with ankylosing spondylitis doesn't deserve a laugh. But the Comedy Festival should be spreading mirth and merriment... not bullshit dressed as "fact".

Who ya gonna call? Consumer Affairs, the ACCC and the ACMA!

The Nine Network’s A Current Affair ran a story on Thursday night about a “haunted” nursing home in Queensland. The story centred on an “investigation” by a crowd called Queensland Paranormal Investigators, whose people wore prominent “QPI” shirts throughout.

Apart from being hysterically farcical - investigator “Shane” said at one point “it feels male”, making us wonder which part of the poltergeist he was touching – the whole segment appears to have been a blatant plug. Not only was the name of the firm mentioned several times during the story, but the host back in the studio then referred viewers to the ACA website for more information.

The web story turns out to be an uncritical piece of promotion for these fraudsters, with repetition by ACA of claims like these:

• QPI use “scientific and psychic methods”
• QPI use “more than $100,000 worth of ghost hunting equipment to determine the strange activity including... electronic voice phenomena recorders to pick up ghostly voices the human ear cannot hear”
• Members of the QPI team “have experience and qualifications which allow them to compile and analyse scientific, historical and psychic evidence”
• QPI “provide their clients with full documentation on completion of each investigation”.

And, of course, there’s a link to the QPI website, where they state clearly that “we are not a Not For Profit organisation”. So they are running a commercial operation “investigating” ghosts, hauntings and other paranormal activity? “Paging Dr Venkman. Dr Peter Venkman.”

But isn’t ACA the program that chases fraudsters down the street and demands answers from those who would hoodwink Aussie battlers and pensioners with their scams? The same program that fearlessly uses hidden cameras to expose rip-off artists and tradies who charge gullible consumers megabucks to fix non-existent problems?

Non-existent problems like ghosts, perhaps?

All right, so QPI will be dismissed by most people as hilarious losers (their website makes the comically underwhelming claim that they are “the only professional paranormal investigation team in Queensland with a thermal imaging camera”).

But how can ACA risk its credibility as a "scam-busting" program by presenting complete and utter bullshit like this? Did ACA receive payment or consideration for this story? If not, why did they let QPI's claims of "scientific" method go unchallenged?

As someone who has appeared on ACA from time to time to comment on marketing issues - drawing on published studies in consumer behaviour and peer-reviewed academic literature on marketing and brand management - I actually feel embarrassed to have been seen in the same company as these charlatans.

After tonight, don't expect any further ACA appearances - ghostly or otherwise - from me.

Google toilet paper: How easily could Google wipe away other hangers-on?

The amusing discovery that a company in Vietnam is apparently exploiting the fame of Google to sell toilet paper raises the question: Could anyone use the name "Google" in Australia and get away with it?

Google Inc. currently has registered Australian trade marks for the word "google" and the colour combination used in the familiar Google logo in a number of Classes, covering (not surprisingly) a range of products and services related to online search, other computer hardware and software, email and other telecommunications services, and advertising via the internet.

Perhaps more suprisingly, Google Inc. also has trade marks for the word "google" in relation to: books; manuals; notebooks; notepads; pens; greeting cards; stickers; decals; sticky notes; clothing; footwear; headgear; charitable fundraising; financial services; and payment and billing services.

While (broadly interpreted) the registration in respect of stationery might make it difficult for someone to use the Google brand for toilet paper, it would be very interesting to see what would happen if someone tried to use the word "google" in relation to (say) peanut butter, beer, a taxi company or any number of other products and services outside the limited scope of the current trade mark registrations.

Google Inc. would no doubt kick up a stink and claim that the intention of such users was to leverage the value of their world-famous trade mark. And they would probably be right. But Google Inc. can't claim that it (i.e. founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin) invented the word "google", nor that they have exclusive rights to the word it in all its forms and uses.

In fact, publisher Hearst Holdings has a current Australian trade mark (registered in 1960) for "Barney Google & Snuffy Smith" in Class 16, which includes books, newspapers, magazines and stationery. As it turns out, according to this well-referenced Wikipedia article, newspaper comic strip character Barney Google is actually the original source of the word "google" and Page and Brin's use of the word can be traced back to that source. So Google Inc. might not have it all its own way.

Astonishingly, though, an individual based in South Australia is currently trying to register the word "googler" for a range of services related to online publishing, entertainment and blogging. Once Google Inc. gets wind of that application, I venture to suggest it might be worth less than a pack of Google toilet paper.

ABC brand name policy runs aground on Etihad Stadium

I have written before on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's policy of refusing to use brand names in the titles of sporting stadiums and the like.

At one level, this is obviously laughable - intelligent, adult, ABC announcers are forced to use silly euphemisms like "the Scottish hamburger company" for McDonald's or generic terms like "the domestic 4-day cricket competition" when they weren't allowed to say "Pura Cup".

At another level, it's unworkable. Seriously - how can you discuss modern Western life without mentioning brand names at least sometimes? Apple, Google, Windows, iPhone. Several times I've been lined up to be interviewed on-air by the ABC on aspects of consumer behaviour - once on the subject of whether consumers have too many choices - and been asked by the producer: "Oh, and please don't mention any brand names."

But never was the sheer idiocy of the "no brand names" policy exposed more clearly than on ABC Local Radio this post-Christmas sporting weekend.

For every AFL season since it opened, the ABC has referred to "Docklands Stadium" or just "the Docklands", refusing to acknowledge successive "commercial" names: Colonial Stadium, Telstra Dome and - commencing in 2009 - Etihad Stadium. Yet, after Supermaxi yacht "Wild Thing" raffled its naming rights, ABC Radio coverage of the Sydney-Hobart Yacht Race yesterday was happy to call the boat by the name of its sponsor... Etihad Stadium.

As it happens, Etihad Stadium - the sponsor - probably got more than its fair share of early media coverage on ABC Radio on Boxing Day, as Etihad Stadium - the boat - was the first high-profile retirement from the Sydney-Hobart race.

So why is "Etihad Stadium" unacceptable to the ABC as the name of a stadium but perfectly OK as the name of a boat?

I agree that the ABC should remain free of advertising. But saying a brand name on air isn't advertising if they didn't pay you to say it!

It's time the ABC gave up this bloody-minded charade. The brand name "policy" is unworkable, hypocritical and makes absolutely no sense at all.

Ineffective "retractions": How to make false claims and get away with it

During the past week, bemused TV viewers in Australia may have noticed a brief TV commercial relating to a retraction by EASE-a-Cold.

I say "bemused" because it's an ad you could easily "see" several times without taking in much of it and certainly without understanding the context.

In my view, that's perfectly understandable. I think it's an ad that has been deliberately designed NOT to be effective.

First, the TVC features a single screen of tiny writing in red on white - one of the most difficult colour combinations to read on TV. Even on a 46-inch, high-definition screen, I could not read the text, especially not in the time for which it remained on screen. Second, it has a voice-over delivered in the least engaging way possible - monotonous, emotionless and perfunctory, the same way the disclaimers are read at the end of political advertising.

The whole impression is of an ad designed to meet the minimum requirements to comply with some kind of external order... and nothing more.

The facts are that Pharmacare Laboratories has been found by the relevant tribunal to have made an unlawful, misleading and unverified claim about the therapeutic benefits of EASE-a-Cold. The company was ordered not only to withdraw the false and misleading claims, but also to publish a retraction.

But the EASE-a-Cold case is actually a great illustration of how easy it is to make false and misleading claims about therapeutic effects in Australia and, effectively, get away with it. It is especially disturbing, as the product had been the subject of a previous adverse finding when earlier claims about its ingredients - zinc, echinacea and vitamin C - were also ordered withdrawn.

Problem is, although Tribunals and Courts sometimes specify that misleading claims should be "retracted", in my experience they rarely specify the form of that retraction. Even if they do make some stipulation about the content, quantity and scheduling of "corrective" ads in print or on websites (as it has done in this case), tribunals don't usually get into specifying the executional style of TV ads.

In TV advertising or advertorials, claims about health or weight loss benefits of non-prescription products are never presented in an unemotional and disengaged style. Rather, they use tactics designed to maximise attention, appeal and persuasion: attractive presenters, compelling images and carefully-chosen language.

That's what makes these mandated retractions so farcical. They set out to attract minimal attention, to go unnoticed, to leave no lasting impression in the mind of those exposed to them. So they stand little or no chance of "undoing" the effects of the original false representations.

It's time for tribunals like the Therapeutic Products Advertising Complaints Resolution Panel - and even the Federal Court - to get serious about retractions and do much, much more to specify the style and context in which the corrective messages should be delivered.