FRANKthoughts

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.

Isn’t it funny the reason people criticize because deep down, they really care. If they didn’t care, why would they bother?

The same applies to your Brand.

There will always be customers who complain that the service is too slow, staff are not friendly, it’s over priced, etc. They criticize because they believe your brand can be better.  They want you to succeed. They want you to be a better brand so they can engage with you.  Perhaps fostering a positive relationship.

So don’t dismiss critics and complainers. If you can listen to them and address their concerns, you may be able to switch them to powerful advocates for your brand. A great story for them to tell their friends.

 A thought of the day:

Influencers broadcast and advocate a brand or product to their friends and peers. It happens at home, it happens at work, and it happens online. They have an active role in influencing your customers in purchasing your product.

Influencers are typically hungry for information… more so than your average joe. They seek the latest news, to be first in the know, and consume information continuously. They also enjoy sharing this information… proudly in social gatherings, emails, blogs, among peers…. they are great story tellers of your brand or product.

So, there must be a need to feed the influencer’s hunger. Why not give them a story to tell through content (eg. blog or video) and experiences (eg. online and in-store). Help them share their stories with utilities and tools (eg. social media and mobile).

After attending PubCamp Melbourne I was thinking about business models and how they will change. Yes, we always had advertising and subscription based models (These were covered at Pubcamp in length) but what else is out there? Well there is the “Pay what you like model” and the “invest in something model” or the “Micro payment model“.

Now here is a bit of a mystery. Carrotmob - something that started as a non-profit now has a business model. Watch the video to see what Carrotmob is about and see if you can guess how this can be monetised:

“Dave Balter, a friend and CEO of BzzAgent, one of the leading Word of Mouth Marketing Platform in the USA, is about to publish his new book “”The Word of Mouth Manual”. But contrary to traditional publishing, Dave has launched an interesting WOM marketing experience. 20 top marketing websites have been selected to offer their readers to download for free the pdf version of the book.”

by Buzz News 

…or you can purchase the book for $45 at Amazon.

Download here >>

Years after people around the world discovered the Mentos+Diet Coke experiment, this little trick is still working for both brands.

Youtube alone has more than 11,000 videos about “mentos coke”. One video on Revver had more than 10 million views and the phenomenon was reported on television shows like MythBusters and the Late Show with David Letterman. The experiment also gets headlines regularly as Guinness records are challenged around the world.

On the 23rd of April, 2008, students in the Belgian city of Leuven (shown in photo above) set a new world record, simultaneously launching 1,360 Mentos geysers. (Unfortunately for them on May 14, 2008, students at Louisville Male High School broke this record by setting off 1,800 reactions at the same time).

This has to be the biggest ROI in history:

Cost of campaign = $0. Value of promotion = more than $10 million.

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.

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

Earth sought revenge, in Melbourne, yesterday by serving up 12 ‘Earth-Hours’ ….in our house, at least.

I say revenge, not because of the relatively lack lustre performance by man and women-kind last Saturday for the official Earth Hour but because of the commercialism by some sponsors.

There were a number of sponsors for Earth Hour in Melbourne inc. Leo Burnett, WWF, The Age & Austereo. All good, but in a two horse newspaper-town, such as Melbourne, the newspaper that doesn’t get involved (the Herald Sun in this case) can usually be relied upon to ‘slant‘ their editorial.

Irrespective of Earth Hour’s degree of success the need to raise awareness of profligate energy wastage can only be good and surely deserves the collective support of all media as to what was good and what can be improved upon.

It’s arguable that The Age (and the Sydney Morning Herald) saw an opportunity to take the high ground from their competitor(s) but additionally Fairfax printed a 40-page Earth Hour special supplement which generated approx. $300,000 of advertising revenue. I’m not aware if this is being ploughed back into the Earth Hour cause or is happily resting on Fairfax’s bottom line.

I hope revenue and profit has not clouded their corporate social responsibility…

Just when we thought Wii was the salvation to sedentary gaming along comes GPS-enabled phone gaming LocoMatrix . Currently in beta, the basics are…you text “loco” to a number (UK only) then download either ‘Fruit Farmer’ or ‘Treasure Hunt.’

In Fruit Farmer you have to be the first to collect fruit without being captured by the killer wasps!

You can play with a group of friends, either in teams or individually. All you need is a field or park and some good weather. You track your real life position using the map on your phone’s screen. Collect fruit as quickly as you can, and avoid the killer wasps!

There are more games in the pipeline and users are invited to design their own games. Each game has a chit chat forum too. Massive fun.

A not disimilar 3G-based game called, funnily enough i like frank, was pioneered in Adelaide in 2004 as part of the fringe festival. Ahead of its space.