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.

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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.

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This statement just arrived via email  from Luke Grant dated 5 February 2010. I have spoken with Mr Grant to confirm that he was indeed the sender and wanted it published:

“Following what I consider my unfair dismissal from Radio 2HD after more than 4 successful years hosting the Luke Grant Show, an attempt for conciliation with Fair Work Australia to resolve my claim was yesterday unsuccessful.

Whilst I cannot reveal the details of the conciliation I can confirm that my nature is always to find compromise if possible.

I will now pursue my rights through a public hearing in the next couple of months where I will present witnesses who will help uncover the truth and clearly demonstrate the difficulties I found working in the environment of 2HD.

I strongly deny any suggestion by the management of 2HD that I have acted other than with professionalism and integrity in a high pressure role and plainly say I was effectively starved of support in my judgement.

I would again like to extend my gratitude to colleagues, listeners and advertisers of 2HD for their loyal support, encouragement and good wishes. Being dismissed a week before Christmas has made my circumstances very difficult and I will continue a strong and public campaign to be reinstated or compensated.”

No further comment will be made at this stage.

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Is this a sign that Google feels the need to compete with the Bing advertising budget? Is it a bit of cheeky post-modern irony? I don’t know. But it sure was interesting to see that Google just ran an ad in the Superbowl coverage. Here it is…

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As the Australian television ratings season kicks off, many network executives will be nervously watching the results.

OzTam has altered their measurement to include those with personal video recorders and it appears to be shaking up the results in a big way. The Seven network in particular is not impressed after their Australian Open Tennis coverage scored much lower ratings and some of their new season shows have received lukewarm figures.

Seven’s Desperate Housewives’ audience was down 25 per cent to 1.027 million in overnight viewing compared with live figures for the same week last year, while Gangs of Oz was down 20 per cent and Criminal Minds was down 16 per cent.

On a network basis, including the digital multichannels for each broadcaster, Seven’s audience numbers from 6am to midnight are down 7.4 per cent, while Ten is down 11.9 per cent, and SBS is down 8.1 per cent.

In contrast, the ABC is up 12.7 per cent and Nine is up 2 per cent.

Seems we’re in for an interesting year.

(Information sourced from The Australian)

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Trade Promotion Optimisation helps products fly off shelves

Trade promotion optimisation involves analyzing and understanding what worked, what didn’t and why, in the retail trade and FMCG industry. In Australia its a fascinating field that we’ve been investigating lately.

It seems that most FMCG’s have highly sophisticated delivery chains but desperately need effective trade promotion optimisation to track the effectiveness of campaigns on stock movement.

Trade promotion optimisation software provides FMCG’s with the ability to quickly and accurately TRACK their sales and promotional funds, use sophisticated multi-causal models to confidently PREDICT consumer response to promotions, and streamline the entire promotions lifecycle to OPTIMIZE the price, volume and profit across their entire customer landscape.

We believe that integrating an online optimisation strategy can complete the sales and analytics cycle from FMCG supply chain, retailer and consumer.

Its an interesting area that we’ll be monitoring over the coming months.

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