Author: John McCallum
When Not In Rome
So it’s official, the Norse God of Fire is more powerful than the Pope. The molten underworld has succeeded in preventing me and 49 other heathens attending the TAAN Spring meeting in Rome this week. This is hugely disappointing for all concerned however flights in Europe are chaotic at the best of times but this week has been something special. So my bi-annual recharge is in abeyance, and I don’t think listening to Pavarotti, eating pizza or hiring a Fiat for the weekend is really going to help either. Continue reading
A Good Social Media Campaign; This Is Nothing Like It.
The Australian tourist board recently unveiled a new slogan and campaign designed to entice visitors to sample its many, many delights. It’s a nice enough campaign, I like its double meaning and as always it is exquisitely shot. What caught my eye about it was that they are actively inviting the general public to take part in the campaign. They hope that people will upload photographs and write something explaining why they believe ‘there’s nothing like it’. Eventually the plan is to have thousands of endorsements, recommendations and images backing up the campaign which can be searched by visitors to their websites. Again this is quite a good idea and suggests a confident and forward thinking organisation; until you read the small print that is. Continue reading
The More Things Change……
Somehow the end of the decade has sneaked up on me. I’m not sure how I didn’t notice we were moving from the noughties into the twenty-tens but we are and very shortly. The end of a decade is usually a good time to pen some self absorbed navel gazing, at the end of the last decade the world became obsessed with ranking events from the previous 10 and 100 years, the millennium became big news, catastrophe was being predicted by every closet Nostradamus. Most of us thought the turn of the century was significant, although when pushed most of us didn’t know why. So maybe we’ve still got decade-change-fatigue because I’ve barely noticed any comment of this one slipping past.Another reason might be that many are really pleased to see the back of this year. The new year brings new hope, a fresh start, the symbolic changes and resolutions that will ensure next year is better than this one. This must be entirely psychological as the economy isn’t going to change dramatically in the next few months, at least not for the better that is. As marketing people we deal in the psychological though, we play on emotions, desires and needs; we make things look pretty and sound exciting, we spend our working days creating new year resolutions all year round if you like. Our agency has had a contradictory 2009 with billings down yet new business as buoyant as it has ever been. On the whole though the decade has been kind to us yet we find ourselves mired in recession once again. However clients still need to communicate with their customers so the need for people like us is greater than ever. We’ve a few media challenges ahead, local press particularly is in a bad way, but TV and radio are also facing an uncertain future here in 2010. The internet continues to evolve and the challenge for us is to continue to evolve with it, in many ways we are running trying to keep up rather than leading the way, it’s beholden on all of us to remedy that.A lot has changed since the turn of the last decade; we didn’t even have a website then. Yet a lot hasn’t changed and we would do well to remember that. Creativity will continue to be the spark that makes us, and our clients, memorable and successful and that’ll still be the case 10 years from now, of that I have no doubts at all. Our new year resolution should simply be that we continue to nurture that.
TAAN now on Facebook
TAAN now have a dedicated Facebook page. The page is intended to complement the website and give us another presence in social media. We’ll endeavour to keep it up to date with all TAAN related news. Facebook works best when it is collaborative, a bit like TAAN actually, so feel free to ‘friend’ the page and use it to post questions, answers, pics or general news. It is also a good way to keep in touch with people we only see every six months. Hopefully prospective members, speakers or even clients will find us there too. Please also encourage your agency staff that use Facebook to visit the page, often TAAN is something only senior members of staff are actively involved with, if this page can open up the considerable benefits of TAAN to all staff then it will have been worthwhile. Continue reading