Coming soon, Age of Conversation 3

The latest edition of the exciting collaborative Age of Conversation marketing book series is about to go on sale with the release of “Age of Conversation 3: Its time to get busy” now at the publishers.

Drew McLellan and Gavin Heaton have had the monumental task of compiling and editing the contributions of around 170 authors from around the world and now the book is close to release.

Very soon you will be able to purchase it directly from Amazon or a number of other online book stores. The new cover was designed by Chris Wilson. And the new website was created by the hard working team at Sticky.

There are some extremely talented marketers contributing this book so I can’t wait to read it myself. Stay tuned for more announcements soon, but in the meantime you can meet the authors:

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source: Sydney Morning Herald 12 March, 2010

There’s been a decided shift in television viewing numbers already in 2010 and it seems to be a nationwide trend. Here in Newcastle we have been intrigued by the difference in audience numbers this year compared to the same time last year.

So far there seems to be an average of 20,000 less viewers per top 10 program than for the corresponding week in 2009. For example the #1 program in Newcastle for week 10, 2010 was The Mentalist with 84,000 viewers. The #5 program was NBN  Saturday News with 67,000 viewers and the #10 program was Talkin’ Bout Your Generation on SC TEN with 55,000 viewers.

IN 2009 for the week ending 3 March (corresponding week) here are the numbers: #1 Underbelly on NBN with 124,000 viewers, #5 RSPCA Animal Rescue on Prime with 86,000 viewers and #10 CSI on NBN with 75,000 viewers. Of course, Underbelly is a standout ratings winner but the #1 program last week had less viewers than the #5 program last year.

As you can see there are about 20,000 less viewers for the main Free-to-Air channels. And this is happening every week.

Now the national media are picking up on the trend. The rest of this post is taken from today’s Sydney Morning Herald.

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Is now the time for new kind of communications business that connects marketing specialists with corporate marketers?

Its been obvious for a while now that the generalist media era is coming to an end. No longer do a handful of large media outlets determine our news and entertainment the way they did during the last century. Increasingly we are turning to a multitude of specialist media providers to satisfy our many needs. Media consumption is splintering so rapidly that it’s difficult to keep track of the vast array of options available to us.

Marketing "connectors" assemble teams of specialists

One hangover from the generalist media era is the full-service agency. Whilst “everything under one roof” may have been feasible when there were only a handful of media options, in 2010, with a ridiculous number of feasible marketing options available….Free to Air TV, Subscription TV, Radio, Digital radio, Press, online press, outdoor, SEO, SEM, social media, inbound marketing, micro sites etc…. its seems ludicrous to believe that one shop can do it all.

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some of the Colliers International riders in Tour de Kids

I had the distinct honour of participating in the Tour de Kids charity ride from Melbourne to Sydney last week as part of the Colliers International team. Part of my job was to cover the event online for Colliers and demonstrate how effective modern mobile and web-based tools can be.

We decided to keep things simple by setting up a Posterous site to post all the daily updates and photos then compliment it with a dedicated Twitter account.

It couldn’t have been easier. Another Colliers rider and I were able to post directly to the website from our phones. The PicPosterous iPhone app meant that I could post images and short descriptions immediately from anywhere on the ride, allowing those following the event to gain almost real-time access.

We also pointed visitors and Twitter followers to the donations page of Tour de Kids urging them to support the riders. We felt it was important as a charity event to encourage donations whilst people were engaged rather than delay action.

It worked extremely well with riders raising more money for Starlight Foundation than ever before in the ten year history of the Tour de Kids and generating a considerable amount of media coverage.

Tour de Kids Peloton - photo by Steve Ferguson

All-in-all it was a great example of how easy it can be to engage and share online.

On a personal note, the Tour de Kids was an amazing experience. The people who rode and ran the event were extremely generous, paying their own way and raising almost $500,000 for seriously sick kids whilst enjoying the highs and lows (literally) of pedalling 1200km in 7 days. Meeting some of the families who Starlight help and hearing their stories was truly moving and was a reminder of how lucky most of us are to be in good health.

Congratulations to everyone involved.

Following several rumours that ex-2HD breakfast announcer Luke Grant was about to sign with another network and was leaving Newcastle, I contacted him for official word.

Luke confirmed that he has signed a contract with Macquarie Radio Network and starts work on Monday1 March 2010 in Melbourne. He will be working directly with Steve Price on assembling a commercial talk radio station, as reported elsewhere, in direct competition with long time market leader 3AW.

Luke cannot elaborate on any other details at this stage.

Telstra’s directories unit is up against a formidable foe online, and it doesn’t look good, writes Dominic White from the Australian Financial Review.

Who bothers to dig out the Yellow Pages if they want to find a plumber or order a pizza when they can Google it in seconds on their laptop or iPhone?
It’s a question Telstra shareholders may be asking after the company revealed this monthly the first-half print revenues at the Yellow Pages tumbled by some 8.7 per cent.

Even after adjusting for growth in China, online, currency movements and the loss of Trading Post, revenues at Sensis, the Telstra unit that looks after Yellow Pages, fell 0.1 per cent – the first revenue fall in Sensis’s history.

Until now Sensis have proved remarkably immune to the headwinds that have battered other Yellow Pages businesses across the planet, including rise of Google. Unlike its rivals, which are largely owned by private equity, it doesn’t have debt problems.

But now experts wonder whether the move into negative growth marks a worrying turning point for Sensis, a business that generates almost 10 per cent of Telstra’s total sales.

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Marketers must start thinking about apps

The mobile phone apps market is booming and is expected to go into overdrive when Apple’s new iPad device launches next month. For most corporate marketers apps are probably nothing more than a curiosity or a convenience if they have app-friendly devices.

But maybe businesses should start thinking about apps a little more strategically as part of their internet marketing strategy.

Research firm Gartner expects that cellphones will be the most common device used for browsing the web by 2013. They predict the number of browser-equipped phones to exceed 1.83 billion, compared to 1.78 billion old fashioned computers in use within 3 years.

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Marketing lessons from AC/DC

Last night I was the lucky recipient of a last-minute ticket to see AC/DC play in Sydney. As expected, the concert was great, but I couldn’t help noticing what that this aging band are also amazing marketers.

Here’s what AC/DC do that many businesses should try to emulate:

Know your niche. AC/DC are an out-and-out rock band, always have been. Its been said they’ve made the same album 13 times. No ballads, no tricky experiments, just good old-fashioned hard rock. They’ve stayed the same over 4 decades, ignoring trends and doing what they do best. They know their place in the market and don’t deviate.

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I can’t help but wonder if News Limited totally miss the point regarding the new digital world or are just spectacularly successful trolls.

Rupert Murdoch, who spent a fortune investing in the like of MySpace only to see it drop away, continually threatens to remove his news content from search engine indexing and seems set on constructing paywalls to access his content.

In Australia, the News Limited marketing boss Joe Talcott toes the company line by unleashing regular diatribes about online measurement. His latest came last week when he attacked research showing that time spent online has outstripped that spent consuming traditional media.

The internet is not a medium, it’s a place where people do stuff. There’s media on the internet, no question. No one sits down to `watch the internet’.

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Sticky is looking for a Digital Account Manager with great project management skills to join the team. The role is a crucial link between our growing client base and digital team. Its an important position so we’ll be taking our time to find the most suitable person for the job. All the details are here.