What marketing lessons can we learn from the recent election?

No matter which way you voted, it was back to work on Monday after the unforeseen election results. As everyone settled back into the daily grind, we took some time to reflect on the weekend’s events. Of course, being a marketing agency, we couldn’t help focusing on the marketing lessons arising from this year’s election. […]

Times up on gender inequality – Navigating gender in advertising

Any conversation on the topic of gender is a minefield these days. It requires an up to date point of view, a sense of compassion and a belief in equality for all. Either that or you risk the full wrath of the female population, their male allies, and anyone who’s rejected the gender binary code. […]

Workplace Identity – how your workplace is perceived

Identity is a word of monumental proportions, with definitions a plenty, including i). displaying certain characteristics; ii). in reference to self; or iii). reference to social category. For the purpose of defining workplace identity, let’s look at the first option; displaying certain characteristics. That leads me to my first question: how do you present these […]

Smoke and mirrors

Smoke and mirrors is actually a classic technique in magical illusions that makes an entity appear to hover in empty space, sometimes passed off as conjured spirits. There’s a simple “sciencey” explanation for this. Sounds cool – huh? Since this technique was documented in 1770, we have gone on to incorporate the phrase into real […]

Can you survive on word-of-mouth alone?

The short answer is no. What!? A blog that answers the initial question in the first line and doesn’t make you read all the way through to the call to action at the end? Crazy right!? Make sure you tell all of your friends how crazy we are. WHY IS THE SHORT ANSWER NO THOUGH? […]

The true cost of false advertising

“You’ll feel better on Swisse.” This is the slogan that Swisse, a Melbourne health and wellness company, was forced to defend against false advertising claims. In March 2012, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) forced Swisse to cease using the slogan as it could not be proven that people did actually feel better when using the […]

Why SOME newsletters fail

Let’s get straight to the point and define what the success of a newsletter looks like and how this success can be measured. Before we do so, it’s important to note that today 99.9% of newsletters are emailed and no longer sent in the post. And horse drawn carriages are no longer the primary form […]

Handling brand attacks in the media

The least popular orange person of our times, President Donald Trump, attacked major luxury brand Nordstrom for dumping his daughter Ivanka’s clothing line earlier this year. Though Nordstrom had a completely justifiable reason to do so, the potential damage to their brand could’ve been HUGE! My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by @Nordstrom. […]

Media monitoring and why your business needs it

It’s just about impossible to follow every mention of your business in the media these days. Why? Because the ‘media’ as we know it, is a growing number of public channels available for all to see 24/7 worldwide. It sounds daunting because it is! Setting up Google News Alerts isn’t going to cut it anymore. […]

Four reasons to choose an independent marketing agency over a big corporate

The people upstairs approved your marketing budget, your team is clear on campaign objectives and your pitch brief is ready to roll. Now it’s time to create a shortlist of agencies to pitch for the work and get things moving. You’ve only ever engaged corporate marketing agencies in the past, and their work has mostly […]