FRANKthoughts

Has anyone experience walking into JB Hifi, bought something electronic (a USB stick), then spent the next 10mins breaking scissors and getting scratches as you try to pry open the impossible packaging?

Apparently this is pretty common.

An article on Adverlab found that - “Anecdotally, emergency room doctors say they’re slammed the week after Christmas with such injuries and see them regularly all year. Dr. Christian Arbelaez, a Boston-area ER physician, sees about a case a week, some as serious as tendon and nerve damage that require orthopedic surgeons to repair.”

Wired even goes further with “Tales from Packaging Hell.” It seems to be such a simple solution but it’s causing widespread grief and a crappy experience.

Then from an unlikely source, we see a small innovation in Microsoft’s Bluetooth mouse packaging. They’ve left a small hole with perforated lines to easy opening. Small improvement, vast return on my first product experience.

So kudos for Microsoft taking notice and doing something about it!

Bit of fun with Two iconic brands… Enjoy!

I love the cool hunter. Every visit I discover something amazing. This time it’s this little thing called miShare. From their website: “miShare is a smart little gadget for sharing files and playlists between iPods. No computer or cable is needed, and it’s super easy to use. Just attach the source and target iPods and press miShare’s big button to start the transfer.”

Check it out:

Check it out, watch it, comment it, rate it!

Not sure where this idea leaves the funding for public transport but it has merit. In Melbourne the train/tram/bus ticketing system works off the premise that having bought a ticket you then have to ‘validate’ it. So, for example, having paid $3.50 for a 2-hour ticket at 10am you validate it and printed along the top it will say ‘expires at midday.’ All good, however the majority of time i’ll only use approx. 20 mins of the two hours. So on exiting the railway station i always leave my ticket, with unused credit, on the shelf of the ticket machine where the coins have to be fed in, as above. I have since discovered that i’m not the only one thinking along these lines with people leaving their tickets in other convenient-benevolent places. Where there’s smoke.

By 2020 25% of Australia’s population will be over 65 and 90% of these will be living in their own home…..enter the “ipot.”

The ipot links a kettle to a mobile phone or website. Each time an ‘elderly person’ (sorry mum & dad) boils water for a cup of what-they-fancy a message is sent to a family member telling them their relative is up and well.

Promoted by Zojirushi it is only available in Japan, at the moment. The beauty of the ipot is that the elderly user does not have to learn how to use the system, the technology is built into the kettle.

There is a start-up fee of approx $50 and $30 per month for the service. Over, say, 10 years this amounts to approx $3,500…a small price to pay if your elderly loved ones live overseas

When the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) of Australia partnered with google to seed the idea of “tell us what makes your company tick and a great place to work” we figured FRANk has a case.

Since FRANk’s inception we have been asked “Who is FRANk?” hence our video clip was conceived. Anyone who has been here loves our view, our location, our balcony and hopefully the vibe. So in the guise of James Boag we expose who FRANk is by where FRANk is and where FRANk goes, we even borrowed a helicopter to capture that real-google map look.

FRANk is firmly Melbourne based for lifestyle-satisfaction and fulfillment. We overlook Grattan Gardens towards the Chapel St end of Greville Street in the heart of Prahran. Aside from the ‘work-thing’ a typical week in our neighbourhood is that of massages, fruits, breads, cheeses and nice things at Prahran market, swimming in Prahran’s heated 50m outdoor pool, coffee shops a plenty, multi-cultural eating options, iconic destinations such as Greville Records, the Greville St Bookstore, bars, clubs and of course Dan Murphy’s.

All credit goes out to director Christian David Cordeaux @ First Light Films, the Winston Giles Orchestra for their original soundtrack, Matt Knipe @ mediaplay for helping us find Winston and our good friends with the chopper.

Please enjoy “Who’s FRANk?”

*Updated to IAB version

BankWest’s happy banking initiatives is making me happy!

Banking has been traditionally been associated to be a grudge experience. Increase fees, money hungry leeches, poor service, long ques, lack of staff smiling staff, push to ATMs, etc. BankWest should be commended for the company’s cultural shift to a happier experience. And I can’t imagine it to be an easy shift dusting traditional banking bureaucracy. Not only benefiting the customers, I can see this translate to their internal staff and business partners.

Evidence to this initiative, I’ve just made a phone banking call re. my home loan, and I was greeted with “Hi, I’m Matt, ……”. Thou still an automated greeting and I still prefer to speak to a human immediately, it shows they are trying. While on hold, they have an audio loop explaining their initiatives. Finally speaking to a consultant, a friendly voice (introduced as Pete) clearly explaining all the finance jargon and never putting me on hold again while he adjusts my account. If only all banks were this friendly!

Happy experiences = happy people… a simple formula! Hat’s off to BankWest.

About a year ago I was speaking with the MD of a Melbourne advertising agency who told me online is still being looked at as BTL by most clients.

Today we see more and more TV commercials pointing to websites and clients starting to realise that the experience online can’t be matched by a 30 sec ad.

Unless it’s an ad about your website. Here’s the latest (and very clever) ad from VW UK:

So is TV going BTL? Or should we just stop using these old school marketing terms and start thinking about “experiences”?

“Yahoo and Google, the world’s two biggest search engines, have announced a two week experiment that will see them share advertising space.

During the pilot, Google will be able to place ads alongside 3% of search results on Yahoo’s website.”

I haven’t had time to delve into how this will work but the word seems to be it is Yahoo’s clever ploy to frustrate Microsoft’s takeover bid.  A consolidation between Google and Yahoo would take over 90% of the search market globally… making it less competitive.

Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer on Saturday gave Yahoo three weeks to agree to the company’s offer or risk having the offer lowered.