During February 2010, more than 9,200 participants joined ‘FebuSave’, a month-long national savings campaign created by ANZ to encourage Australian women to develop a regular savings habit. It was part of an innovative social media campaign that delivered some impressive results.

SOCIAL MEDIA CASE STUDY
Client: ANZ Customer Segmentation
Campaign: FebuSave
Time Period: Mid December 2009 – Mid March 2010

ANZ launched a new nationwide campaign to encourage women to develop a regular savings habit following research that found 53% of women do not save money on a regular basis.

Research commissioned by ANZ into the savings habits of women found:
• One in five women surveyed said they typically spend all their pay packet or regularly dip into their savings for basic living expenses.
• More than half (58%) have less than $5,000 in savings and 33% less than $1,000.
• 51% of women would last less than three months on their current savings if they lost their job and still had to pay their usual bills.

In an effort to raise awareness of these issues in the community and encourage Australian women to set financial goals and take action towards achieving them, ANZ created ‘FebuSave’ – a month-long savings initiative that ran from 1st to 28th February 2010.

At the end of the month, FebuSave participants reported back on how they performed against their savings goal, with three ‘FebuSave’ participants being rewarded with $5,000 in an ANZ savings account of their choice.

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Popularity: 2%

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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Popularity: 10%

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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Popularity: 1%

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.

Popularity: 1%