FRANKthoughts

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!

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.

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

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

It’s the second week of i-mate’s Ultimate Escape and we’re starting to see some action.

Applications are coming in every hour or so and our first participant is already locked in! (You can check him out here). We also posted our second “call for applicants” video.

How about putting your application in?

We’ve just launched a campaign for i-mate. It’s called The Ultimate Escape:

The Ultimate Escape is a five day experiment where five strangers, situated in a Byron Bay villa will be collaborating with their i-mates to promote the concept of working out of the office. During their time in the villa they will keep doing their work, create content and learn what it takes to work remotely. They will also try to create a national profile for working smarter and convince organisations and employees that you can work out of the office and remain highly productive. We are currently looking for applicants to go to the villa for 5 days in the week starting 31 March. We’ll look after all flights, accommodation & catering costs. All you need to do is continue with your normal working week, and enjoy the experience. So, if you think you’re the right person for the job, send us your stuff: apply@theultimateescape.com

Cool!

On Friday, October 19, 2007, Philter Group was awarded Outstanding Achievement for excellence in the design, development and implementation of the Frank Media Website. The honor, granted by the Interactive Media Awards, recognizes that the project met and surpassed the standards of excellence that comprise the
web’s most professional work. The judging consisted of various criteria, including design, usability, innovation in technical features, standards compliance and content. In order to win this award level, the site had to meet strict guidelines in each area - an achievement only a fraction of sites in the IMA competition earn each year.

Nice work guys - We salute you!

Simon and Andrew from The Portable Film Festival are friends from way back (FRANk was supporting the first PFF) and in the last few months they’ve been trail-blazing into digital media with new initiatives supported by ACMI and AIMIA.
They’re doing so many cool things it’s worth getting their portable informer straight into your inbox (excuse me for the blunt promotion but it’s really good stuff).
This November, as part of The Portable Symposium Series 2007, they bring us the creators of LonelyGirl15. It will be interesting to see if they can duplicate the mass hysteria with their new venture “KateModern” , a series they developed for UK’s leading social network Bebo.

“The Portable Symposium Series 2007″ will present members of creative team behind the world’s most infamous and celebrated online serials lonelyGirl15 and KateModern. Created by Miles Beckett who serves as Co-Creator and Executive Producer, lonelygirl15 and KateModern , lonelyGirl15 received international attention in 2006 when fans discovered that the popular online serial was in fact a well-executed online drama. Bree, the 16-year old girl who presented the cult video blog, was revealed to be a trained and scripted actor cast by the talented team of creative producers. Now in its second season, the show has over 70 million combined views.
KateModern’s Creator and Executive Producer Beckett will be joined by Head Writer Luke Hyams in their presentation. The interactive online serial is the story of a hip, British University student and her group of friends as they endeavor into the types of mysteries, adventures and interactive elements that have made lonelygirl15 an international success with almost 17 million views since its launch this summer. The show is a collaboration with Bebo, which offers an attractive alternative to traditional TV. Learn about the ground-breaking online entertainment trend, as “The Portable Symposium Series” brings these innovative international practitioners to the Australian creative community.

See you there.

FRANk’s core mantra is that advertising is only interesting when it’s relevant, in turn generating advocacy and positive word of mouth.
Well we’re claiming a world first here by advertising on ice cream vans for kidspot targeting predominantly mums with pre- teen children.
With this intent we discovered the Chief Scooper community scoops, courtesy of google, and after a visit to an industrial warehouse in Melbourne’s suburbs we agreed on a couple of panel sizes placed just to the right of the window where all and sundry queue up.
The stickers arrived today and we’ll be up and running on a number of “high-profile” vans by Nov1.
We’ll post some photos of stickers in situ soonest.

One of the privileges of working in communications is being part of the change. The iconic Australian brand of Moonlight cinema is launching moonlight tv with the Becker relationship paying dividends in sourcing the broadband rights to great content.
On demand web TV is at an embryonic stage (think joost & babelgum) and it’s great to be able to help launch this Australian initiative in December.