http://freebeer.com.au Business development, marketing advice, virtual worlds, social software, second life Sun, 17 Aug 2008 15:18:10 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I've seen two TV ads for the Carpenter Labor Government in Western Australia, both with low production values and I think strategically ineffective. The hero is the Premier, dressed in a smart suit and tie. In the first ad, he never looks at the camera. By now this guy is ... http://freebeer.com.au/2008/08/17/how-not-to-do-political-advertising/ I was surprised to see an ad for Woolworths during the Network Seven Olympic coverage. You would have thought Coles' position as major sponsor [see comments] would have given them some category exclusivity. Research has consistently shown that sponsorship is almost always a poor way of spending advertising dollars. More ... http://freebeer.com.au/2008/08/10/olympic-ambush-marketing/ Overuse of old internet memes such as 'i can haz' or 'pwnage' suggests a lack of original expression. Too much repetition is tedious. Learn to spell the word 'the'. Most of you are not teens or twenty-somethings. Stop faking it. I'm really not interested in the fact that you're going to ... http://freebeer.com.au/2008/08/08/message-to-the-twitterati/ The new search engine, Cuil, has underwhelmed people so far with its performance. I guess it's early days but their apparent business strategies, 'bigger than Google' and 'better privacy policy' got me thinking about what a better search engine than Google would look like. What are the areas that might ... http://freebeer.com.au/2008/08/06/better-than-cuil-better-than-google/ I have a relation who's a famous retired sportsman; a household name. He returned to his home town and wanted to join the local golf club, which had a waiting list. The membership officer explained to my famous relative that no, he couldn't get an accelerated membership. He would be ... http://freebeer.com.au/2008/07/28/on-passion-and-influence/ I worry that ABC chief Kim Dalton is spending too much time in the public eye. In trying to talk up free-to-air TV's future in the Sydney Morning Herald he says 'additional free-to-air digital channels and devices such as Seven Network's TiVo will reduce the appeal of pay TV'. Then ... http://freebeer.com.au/2008/07/28/dalton-on-digital/ Google have this philosophy of putting products into beta early in the development phase and ironing out the problems as they go. It's not going to work with Lively in the virtual world/game space. People are not going to come back. Ask the owners of Second Life. They lose 9/10 ... http://freebeer.com.au/2008/07/14/lively-is-a-complete-disaster/ Pictured: Me in Lively, streaming Lisa Nova's Twitter Whore video into my room, Twittery. Lively is described as Google's answer to Second Life. It's not. Second Life is a virtual world; Lively is chat software with 3D avatars. It's browser-based, as opposed to Second Life, which operates with separate software, ... http://freebeer.com.au/2008/07/10/lively-and-vivaty/ IBM and Second Life have announced the ability to teleport from Second Life into Open Sim grids (an open source version of Second Life). They describe this as a first; well, my business partner Loki Clifton and others have been doing that stuff for six months. The big guys may ... http://freebeer.com.au/2008/07/10/nice-breakthrough-im-writing-you-off/ The ABC are advertising their Local Radio stations on the teev. Fair enough. The ad features snatches of audio from a range of different programs and a fairly static visual background. It's dreadfully unappealing. When you watch television, and this will come as a shock to most of you, your brain ... http://freebeer.com.au/2008/07/08/advertising-radio-on-tv/