FRANKthoughts

Finally got a chance to go through my favorite blogs and thought it will be nice to start sharing some links I’m deliciousing. I’ll try to do it every Friday and keep it short and sweet. So, here we go: Design, art & usability all play a part in designer Bas Groenendaal work. This designer has hit TED with his new kid focused camera. make sure to watch his Mars + Nietzsche vending machine! The school of life - A new cultural enterprise offering intelligent instruction on how to lead a fulfilled life and how Mozilla  figuring out our semantic lives with Ubiquity.
Have a great weekend!

Its time to remove the scarf and hang up the beanie as spring is only days away and we all know what this means…warmer weather, Spring fashion, racing and much more!
Among these many loves is Melbourne Spring Fashion Week (1-7 sept) which we will see showcase the latest looks for spring/summer with more than 100 events to choose from including runway shows, panel discussions, workshops, luncheons, film, exhibitions, racing and parties.

To celebrate Melbourne Spring Fashion Week, Melbourne’s GPO will be racing into spring with a fabulous promote of shopping offers and fashion shows.  To help showcase these exciting events, we thought it would be a good idea to have a dedicated event page. There are some cool things to check out like special offers, competitions and the option to book tickets to some events in advance.

On WEDNESDAY 3 September join the Melbourne’s GPO “Racing Into Spring Fashion” Shopping & Shows, including:
- GPO Trading til 9pm  - Exclusive Retailer Offers & Specials
- Complimentary bubbly - 3 champagne bars - DJ Sean Wise
- 12:30PM & 1:30PM @ Alto Event Space located on Level 3.

SHOW 1: WEDNESDAY 3 SEPTEMBER, 12:30PM
AG Clothing, Akira, Ben Sherman, Fat, Hussy & Madame Marie, im, Leona Edmiston, Lisa Ho, Nicolangela
SHOW 2: WEDNESDAY 3 SEPTEMBER, 13:30PM
AG Clothing, Christopher Chronis, Digbys, Georgiadis, Gorman, Karen Millen England, Lella Smith, Max & Co Rodd & Gunn, Veronika Maine.

Entrance is free and seating is limited, so to secure your place please go to the events page and use the “Book Tickets” button on the right menu.

It’s all well and good to sit at your big desk in the corner office and advise your clients on how to sell their brands, products and ideas BUT, have you ever tried it yourself? Have you ever tried to do it with a $2,000 budget?

The FRANk Crew has decided to conduct a little experiment.  We’ve imported 2500 Vietnamese Table Top BBQs and are trying to sell them using a grassroots strategy that relies on WOM and good old fashioned hawking, backed by a website because, lets face it, everyone has a website these days.  We’ve also taken the initiative to commit 5% of sales to The Vietnamese Victims of Agent Orange Trust, a charity that will use our money to purchase cows for communities that have been affected by Agent Orange.  Remember my post on the Girl Effect?  It’s a bit like that.

If reading this is making that little hamster in your brain hop on its wheel and start spinning then we’d love to hear from you.  If you were in our position what would you do?  Have you got any advice that fits our budget and will sell BBQs?   Let us know and if it sells we’ll send you your very own Table Top BBQ to say thanks!

A brand is my gut feeling about a product, a service or an entity. Branding is all about creating an emotional connection with people. This is important in every touch point with your users, especially when you’re talking. How do you think a customer feel about your brand after an unpleasant chat with your “customer care” person? (One of my good friends just had an unbelievably bad experience with Telstra and yes, he told all his friends about it).

Let’s take a quick side step to the world of robotics where robots are starting to connect with people on an emotional level - please check out “Heart Robot” to be blown away by some of these emotionally evolved robots. After watching this I was wondering what it’s going to be like having a robot as your customer service person.  On the positive side they can work 24 hours a day, never need coffee and never get cranky with a customer.  On the negative side they wont know when to bend the rules for a special client, exceed expectations or deal with a complaint.

Just a sec…when was the last time a customer care person slightly bent the rules for your sick mother, exceeded your expectations or calmed you down in a nice way? Unfortunately most customer service representatives are still trained to act like robots. How does this affect your brand emotional intelligence?

Thanks to MAKEmag for the Heart Robot post.

Okay, Lipton has come up with one of the most engaging ideas I’ve come across in a while.  You may have seen one of their yellow print ads that challenges the reader with a visual mind puzzle or riddle - you know the ones, “How many noodles are there 2 or 3?”  or “Remove nine letters to reaveal a single word”.  No?  Basically, they’ve created a campaign that leads consumers to one of the most sticky websites of all time!  I have probably spent at least 2 hours on it this week and the effectiveness was demonstrated this morning when Tamir noticed that I said the words Lipton Tea 20x in one conversation.  Talk about awareness.  I even turned my nose up at the Tetley bag in my cup, feeling that it is now somehow inferior to the brain-cell-boosting Lipton.

If you want to know what I’m talking about go to Brain Train.  You won’t regret it!

WARNING:  This site is extremely addictive.  Be prepared to get NO work done for at least the next hour.

It’s a war out there. Brands are throwing themselves at our feet vying for attention and money investing $Billions each month. The thing is though brands are only as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ as we perceive them, despite their best efforts to shape our views.

Brandwars is designed to elicit our innate opinions towards brands in the form of a tag cloud–a format in which the size of the word corresponds to its frequency among responses. Frequently submitted words are shown in giant type, while rarely-submitted ones look tiny on the screen. Brands rotate on a random basis to minimise competitor-abuse.

We have taken the concept of brands beyond the norm and have included personalities (politicians, media personalities, sportspeople etc.) media (tv networks, newspapers, radio stations etc.) sports clubs (AFL, NRL, A-league etc.)

Brandlove allows us to track overall brand sentiments along the scale from ‘love’, ‘good’, ‘neutral’ or ‘bad’ to ‘hate.’

In a climate where the impact of every dollar tries to be accountable the tried and tested brand awareness (aided and unaided) & brand preference continue to be viable benchmarks. Brandwars adds another dimension after all just because we’re aware of a brand it doesn’t mean we necessarily ‘like’ it.

If you become aware of this then how does this change your perception of Coca Cola? Has your attitude towards the Olympics become just a little more cynical?

The current list of quintessentially Australian brands can be found here. If you would like any brands added just let us know.

Brandwars was inspired by a similar initiative in the US called brandtags created by Noah Brier for which we are thankful.

We spend a lot of time discussing how brands can create ‘buzz’ online; SO, as the newest member of the FRANk Crew I thought I’d use my ‘blog-power’ to create a little buzz of my own.

If you haven’t heard of The Bamboos you’re missing out on a Melbourne band whose album, Rawville,was described as the best funk album of the modern era. I recently had the pleasure of spending a day with The Bamboos and feature vocalist Megan Washington at the filming of their debut video-clip “King of the Rodeo” (cover of the Kings of Leon original).

The day was rainy, the light was moody, the sounds were soulful and a few stars were born. Check it out and and tell your friends!

“King of the Rodeo” was directed by James Teh and produced by Beat Production. The video coincides with the release of The Bamboos third album, Side-Stepper, out September 1.

In the lead up to the Beijing Olympics Opening Night tonight, Hitwise showed us an interesting Weekly Market share of visits by country.  Australia and New Zealand has picked up considerable interest in the last two week leading to the Olympics.

http://en.beijing2008.cn/

No doubt each of the UK and US market will have their own local Olympics news sites from major media networks such as NBC, ESPN, etc.  The style, local heroes focus, and tonality will still drive a majority of local visitors to local sites.  In reflection of Yahoo7’s brand flat or little growth in audience numbers, they will be relying on the Olympics and current brand campaign to deliver the audience numbers.

Google Trends (http://www.google.com/trends?q=olympics&ctab=0&geo=all&date=mtd&sort=0) also shows Australia and New Zealand is also interestingly driving the top 1 and 2 spot in searching the keyword “Olympics” in the last 30 days.

It’s time for Australia to get excited!

You all probably get Adrants but I couldn’t resist posting this beast here. This has to be one of the coolest vehicles ever created.

From Adrants: “To call attention to Nike’s sponsorship of the AST Dew Tour, Hub Strategy, which put together a concepting team consisting of an architect, an industrial designer, a planner, a graphic designer and a copywriter. The result? A tricked out extreme vehicle complete with skate ramp, wake board tower, sirk rack, skateboard rails, BMX racks, a camper and, of course, iPod goodness.”

This ticks so many marketing buzz word boxes: it’s guerrilla, brand utility, sponsorship, branded entertainment and a mashup. Whatever we decide to call it - it delivers a unique and unforgettable experience. Even if you’re just looking at it.

Hot on the heels since the launch of Cuil, there is a new search engine in the market called Viewzi.

When different users search for certain keywords, they may be after the same information for different reasons.  They could be images, news, history, videos, etc.

Viewzi aggregates different search engine (google, yahoo, youtube, etc) and visually displays it based on what you’re after.  Eg. a timeline of news events, celebrity images, site screenshots, down to your simple text results.

Will this be a Google beater?  I doubt so… it’s more complex and Google is still the best in giving me what I want - FAST.  But I don’t really care who is better… it’s just another great tool to help improve my searching experience online.  I can already see how this will benefit me when I need greater depth in my search where Google does not offer.