The Geely King Kong Hatchback, one of the new entries on the Autocade website.
Not that I blogged it at the time, but Geelyâs multi-brand strategy in 2009 felt doomed. Earlier this year, the company retreated, and brought everything from Englon, Gleagle and Emgrand back under its parent brand again.
It wasnât unlike Mazdaâs attempt to do the same in the early 1990s, when it began selling cars under marques such as Efini, Autozam and Eunos, as well as its own brand. The bursting of Japanâs bubble economy didnât help things, but the problems went deeper than that. Those who were used to buying a Mazda Capella from a certain outlet were surprised to find that it had become one of these new channels, and there was no Capella or equivalent to be seen. In fact, for those years, there was no Capellaâa nameplate Japanese buyers had become accustomed to for decadesâas Mazda decided to offer cars such as the Cronos, which went over the 1,700 mm width that landed it in a higher tax bracket.
We never noticed much of these issues outside Japan, as these cars were simply sold as Mazda 626, and there were fewer signs of the companyâs ambitious plans that landed it in such trouble then-shareholder Ford installed a Scot in charge. It was the first time a Caucasian wound up running a car maker there. Mazda felt embarrassed it wasn’t one of their own.
Geely might not have had the Chinese economy collapse on it, and it may have been buoyed through the 2000s as it went from being a manufacturer of recycled Daihatsus to a major Chinese automotive force, but there was the obvious problem of increasing its marketing costs dramatically. Could it also develop lines for four marques all of a sudden? Remember, too, it would swallow Volvo around this time, giving it a fifth marque.
The answer was no: Geely wound up shifting various models to different marques, badge-engineering others, and generally confusing the state of affairs for Chinese consumers. Thereâs a solid argument to be made for Geely at the time though: the automotive market was clearly segmenting, and there was a need to have budget and luxury brands. But it didnât seem organic, but dramatically forced. I take my hat off to Geely for carrying it out, nevertheless, even if some of the models were lacking: the Emgrand EC7, for instance, had rear torsion beam suspension, and it was supposedly a premium product for the well-to-do upper-middle-class Chinese buyer.
It all came crashing down earlier this year, when Geely realized that it lost economies of scale in marketing, and the most important player in all of thisâthe consumerâreally couldnât follow what was what. To top it off, these new brands had no goodwill, just as Mazdaâs didnât 20 years before. Unless youâre willing to push these brands like crazy, itâs a hard battle to win, especially in the most competitive market on earth. China, too, has had a downturn in car sales this year, and the heady days of thinking one can adopt multi-brand strategies without the numbers to support them are over.
Why has it come up? Today, Autocade has successfully recorded the entire current line of Geelys, and there are quite a few historical models in there, too. It was incredibly confusing, too, tracking the new identities of a lot of the modelsâdid the Englon SC5 get renamed? Which lines were dropped because there was a badge-engineered equivalent? And, as is particularly common among Chinese models we put on Autocade, how on earth shall we translate some of these model names? (The practice is to use the Chinese companyâs own translations, where available, and not succumb to using the export names to index them.)
While some pages had the new Geely names appended to the old Englon, Emgrand and Gleagle model pages, there were new entries for the Geely New Emgrand, the old King Kong line along with the Englon SC5-based King Kong hatchback, the two generations of GeelyVision, and the historical Geely Haoqing (an old car based around a 1980s Daihatsu Charade: to think, at the turn of the century, this described pretty much every car in the Geely range) as well as the new flagship SUV that now bears the name.
The reason for being a bit obsessive over the Geelys, as well as some other models (we added nearly all the current Cadillacs and a few more Changâans), is that with the demise of Auto Katalog, I believe more will go online. If we can present a credible new-car siteâalthough we have a long way to go before we get every current model line upâwe may go some way to filling the void with Autocade.
With Autocade exceeding the 5,000,000 page view milestone (it’s on 5·12 million), I thought it might be fun to look at a few of the models on the site: the most popular, the least loved, and the first on the site.
Looking at the stats, here are the most popular models. These shouldn’t be surprising: for a long time, our page on the E100 Toyota Corolla was the most-read. That’s since been overtaken by the Ford Fiesta Mk VII, the Toyota’s rival, the Nissan Sunny (B14), and the older Nissan Bluebird (910), probably thanks to a link from Wikipedia.
5. Toyota Corolla/Toyota Huaguan/Toyota Limo (E120). 2000 to date (prod. n/a). 3-, 4- and 5-door sedan, 5-door wagon, 5-door minivan. F/F, 1364 cmÂł diesel (I4 OHC), 1398, 1598, 1796 cmÂł (I4 DOHC), 1995 cmÂł diesel (I4 DOHC). Corolla grows to its biggest size up to that point but limited by Japanese taxation requirements (setting the maximum width to 1,700 mm before it goes into a higher tax bracket). Shortened Toyota Vista (V50) platform, 2,600 mm wheelbase. Torsion beam axle at rear, replacing independent rear suspension. Sedans sold as Corolla Altis in some Asian markets. Wagons named Corolla Fielder, with hatchbacks taking Corolla Runx and Allex names (the latter replacing Sprinter). Corolla Spacio denoted a minivan model, sold as Corolla Spacio in Europe. Toyota Matrix, a different small van or tall hatchback, sold in US, renamed Corolla Matrix in 2005. Platform shared with Pontiac Vibe (or Toyota Voltz). Competent small car, hatchbacks in fact quite stylish, though interior design dull. Mid-life facelift 2004 in Japan. Japanese production ended 2006; some other countries 2008; continuing in China into the 2010s as Corolla EX, running alongside E150 successor.
But what of the least popular? Itâs unfair to go to the bottom of the statisticsâ page, because youâre going to get a newer page that might become popular later. The following four are models which Iâve seen at the bottom of that page even after they had been on the site for a while, suggesting not too many are searching for them.
1. Riich X1. 2009 to date (prod. n/a). 5-door sedan. F/F, 1297, 1497 cmÂł (I4 DOHC). B-segment city car with SUV looks, exported as Chery Beat to some countries. Meant to have been absorbed into the Chery range when the Riich marque was killed off in 2013, and continued to appear on Cheryâs export site, though it vanished from domestic listings. Based on the Riich M1.
3. Buick Park Avenue (WM). 2007â12 (prod. n/a). 4-door sedan. F/R, 2792, 2986, 3564 cmÂł (V6 DOHC). Chinese-assembled version of Holden Statesman (WM), but with differences such as visually large grille, different bumpers, and no indicators and vents in wings aft of the front wheels. Smaller Australian-built 2·8-litre unit related to one from Cadillac CTS available on Chinese edition, along with 3·6 from Holden Commodore (VE), later both replaced by 3·0. Otherwise mechanically similar to Statesman. Killed off in 2012 due to slow sales.
Finally, the oldest photos on the site tell us which articles I wrote first. A few of the oldest photos have been replaced for quality reasons, but itâs safe to say the following five cars were among the original ten or dozen entered on to Autocade.
2. Trabant P601. 1964â91 (prod. 3,000,000 approx.). 2-door saloon, 3-door estate, 2-door utility convertible. F/F, 595 cmÂł (I2 OHV), 1093 cmÂł (I4 OHC). East German subcompact car descended from DKW, made with cotton-based plastic (Duroplast) bodyshell. Sold in UK till 1965. Made with 595 cmÂł engine (26 PS) until 1989 when larger and cleaner Volkswagen Polo 1·1-litre engine adapted under licence. Estate variant called Universal. Utilitarian âoff-roadâ convertible model called Tramp. Kitsch value toward the end of its life as a relic of the DDR, but unloved for most years.
3. Ford Falcon (E240/FG). 2008â14 (prod. n/a). 4-door sedan, 2-door utility truck. F/R, 1999 cmÂł (I4 DOHC), 3984 cmÂł petrol, 3984 cmÂł LPG (I6 DOHC), 4951, 5408 cmÂł (V8 DOHC). Extensively revised series launched in February 2008 with three grilles, for regular Falcon, G6 (which replaces the Futura and Fairmont nameplates) and XR. V8 engine restricted to sporty XR8 model only. No station wagon (EA169 platform carried over on facelifted model briefly). Very little change in fuel economy figures compared with predecessor. V8 produces 290 kW. FG designation supposedly meant to evoke memories of now-defunct Fairmont Ghia nameplate. Marketed as larger than Mondeo Mk IV, but in fact smaller in key dimensions except overall length. At time of launch, petrol models gained a five-star ANCAP safety rating, one up on its main competitor, the Holden Commodore (VE). EcoBoost turbo four from 2012, when FG also had a minor facelift. Smaller 5·0 Miami V8 for XR8 from 2013.
4. Ford Falcon. 1970Âœ (prod. 26,000 approx.). 2- and 4-door sedan, 5-door wagon. 250 inÂł (I6 OHV), 302, 351, 429 inÂł (V8 OHV). For half a model year (built JanuaryâAugust 1970), Ford transferred its Falcon nameplate from the compact model to the intermediate TorinoâFairlane bodyshell (117 in wheelbase for sedans; curiously, the wagon was on 114 in), making the Torinoâs engine options available. Still marketed as an economy car, the last American Falcon is characterized by its swooping design. After 1970, Falcons were made only in Australia and Argentina (with an assembly plant for Australian models in New Zealand).
5. Hyundai i30 (FD). 2007â11 (prod. n/a). 5-door hatchback, 5-door estate. F/F, 1396, 1591, 1975 cmÂł petrol, 1582 cmÂł diesel (I4 DOHC), 1991 cmÂł diesel (I4 OHC). First Hyundai designed specifically for Europe, rivalling Volkswagen Golf. Designed in RĂŒsselsheim, Germany with excellent dynamics, among the best for the Korean brand. Quality survey in Germany in 2010 put the car at the top. Estate added at end of 2007 and sold in some markets as Hyundai Elantra Touring. Sister car to Kia Ceeâd (2006â12), released earlier, but lacks that modelâs three-door hatchback style.
My forced Facebook sabbatical came to an end in the late morning. So what did I think of it all? One of my Tweets last night was: âI hope [it is temporary], though I have found people out for 7â12 days now. Now itâs Monday I hope they have got over their hangovers!â At the time I thought: this Facebook is probably not a 24-hour operation. These guys are probably off for the weekend, and they work part-time. We might see them on Monday morning, US time, or whenever they come back from Thanksgiving, Memorial Day, Bill Cosby Day, or whatever it is they celebrate over there. Oh, itâs California, so they are probably stoned.
Sixty-nine hours werenât quite enough to break my habits, though they were beginning to change. No more was I looking up Facebook in bed before I go to the office, or having a quick gander at night. But on the desktop, I left one tab open, which would always draw me there to have a glance at what friends were up to.
The timing was a bit exceptional: we had the top 23 pages for the Miss Universe New Zealand 2014 finalists to launch. Had it not been for that, I wonder if I would have bothered with Facebook at all. I had queries to field, direct messages to respond to.
The direct messaging is obviously separate from the rest of Facebook, as it was the one thing that hadnât failed. But everything else was worsening: initially losing liking, commenting and posting, then losing the fan pages I administered. Friends could not see my wall, while a few who could see it tried to like things and were given errors. Aside from a few exceptions, no one seemed to think this was out of the ordinary and worth chatting to me about. Not that I mind this: they could all get in touch with me via other media. But this signals that it is OK to get an error when liking something, and shrug it off as temporary, because we believed Facebook when it told us to try again in a few minutes. Never mind that in Facebookland, âa fewâ means 4,000. We have low expectations of these dot coms.
So when people joke about how these things always tend to happen to me, I wonder. Iâve always maintained they happen to us all. Maybe the difference is I donât believe these buggers when they tell me that things will be back in a few minutes, because invariably they donât. So I put an entry in to Get Satisfaction, or on this blog, so others donât feel they are alone.
And if I had found the limits of the siteâbecause I believe on Vox I did in 2009, when exactly the same thing happened, and the techs had no way outâthen Facebook should know about this.
Facebook was, through all of this, useless. It had closed down its Known Issues on Facebook page, which seemed foolhardy, because this certainly was a known issue with the increasing number of Tweets about it. There were no acknowledgements, and most of the time, feeding anything into its report forms resulted in errors. Sometimes I got a blank screen. Its own help pages told you to do things that were impossible. If it were any other firm, people would be crying bloody murder or wanting their money back. (And I am technically a customer, through my mayoral campaign last year.)
A few other accounts came back, for the people I interacted with on Twitter and Get Satisfaction in the same predicament.
So what now? I might Facebook less. The 69 hours were a good reminder. One of the things I had watched during the sabbatical was the following video via Johnnie Moore, where Douglas Rushkoff speaks about how these big innovators arenât really adding value, only capital. He gives the example of Twitter:
The company that was going to be the maker of things now has to be the site where he aggregates the other makers of things ⊠so that you can show multi-billion-dollar returns instead of the hundred millions that you were doing ⊠You know, for Twitter, I just saw yesterday, they’re failing! Only $43 million last quarter! Isn’t that awful? Oh my God! Only $43 million, which is, I mean, how many employees do they have? I think that would be enough but their market cap is so outlandishly huge, so much money has gotten stuck in there, that they’re gonna be stuck looking for a new way to somehow milk more money out of an otherwise great tool and they’re gonna kill it. They have toâthey have to, âcause they need that home run.
Can we expect there to be greater innovation in such an environment, for any of these platforms? If we arenât feeling the same buzz we once did with these sites, thereâs a good reason, and the above is part of the problem. They arenât creating value any more, only market cap and stock, or, as Rushkoff says, âstatic capital.â
This is what [Thomas] Piketty was really writing about ⊠Capital has the ability to actually create profit, so all these companies, all this development, are really just different versions gaming the system rather than rewiring the system, rebooting it, which is the opportunity here.
I spent part of the last few days looking at the PDF proofs for Lucire Arabia, where at least I know I am part of making something that is creating value and, through its content, helping people. While my original motive for being on Facebook et al was promotional, for my businesses, I have to question if that was the best use of my time, and for creating value. Facebook organized my friends, as Google organized the webânow that those are done, there is the next step.
I left Voxâor rather, Vox left me when the site died and I was no longer able to postâand put more time elsewhere, namely into my first mayoral election campaign. I knew I was creating an opportunity to help people, and the upshot of that is the free wifi system we have in Wellington today (ironically probably very heavily used to update Facebook). It meant more than a means to Facebook and Instagram: the bigger picture was to signal to the tech sector that Wellington is open for business, and that we arenât being left behind in an industry that can create frictionless exports and intellectual capital.
We arenât quite there again in 2014, as Facebook is back, but it may be worth contemplating just where Iâm creating value for business and society when itâs not election year. This year, I don’t have a book plannedâbut it may have to be something where a good bunch of people are going to get some benefit.
I must have had a busy end of 2013, as I never posted my trade-mark summary of the year as viewed via my Tumblr. Here âtis, better late than never.
January 2013 Lucire has a facelift onlineâby December 2013, this “new look” would be history. Kylie Minogue is on the home page as the first story with the new look. Seems very retro now.
Cliff Curtis plays a non-Māori with a standard American accent in Missing. Maybe no one really knows about New Zealand in Hollywood, unless you are Jemaine, Bret, or a Hobbit.
Kim Dotcom launches Megabox but itâs still not fair or sustainable for content creators, says Russell Brown. You just don’t hear much about this these days.
Jaguar is happy that the Tata procedures’ manual is four sides of A4 instead of Ford’s three-inch thick one. Free from US bureaucracy, it now produces good cars. This might apply to other things concerning the US of A.
February 2013
Dick Prosser doesn’t get stood down by New Zealand First after racist comments, and Shearer and Key are OK with that, too. Prosser’s relieved he doesn’t work for TVNZ.
On Instagram, the OHMS hashtag reveals very little that is On Her Majesty’s Service.
Google claims that it cannot crawl for a file that never existedâthe first of some serious bugs from the search engine giant.
March 2013
Theorizing a remake of Back to the Future, with Justin Bieber and Will Ferrell. Yes, I thought that sucked, too. Malala Yousafzai’s story is retold in cartoon form.
Tumblr reaches 100 million users; Instagram is plagued by Instaspam.
April 2013
One reviewer equates Bruce Willis’s John McClane in the new Die Hard movie with Mr Magoo: ‘Remember those old Mister Magoo cartoons where the doddery old bald guy would blunder around various locations, leaving chaos in his wake while constantly insisting “Iâm on vacation”?’
Margaret Thatcher’s funeral was foretold in The Final Cut in the early 1990s. I watched it then. The remake was totally different. For a start, a lot of Thatcher Cabinet politicians now look like their Spitting Image caricatures.
Googlebot keeps making false accusations about malware, as I document Google’s latest folly. Why do people depend on this website? And, more to the point, isn’t libel covered by US law?
Adam Rayner and Eliza Dushku try to reboot The Saint in a remake, with Roger Moore and Ian Ogilvy in cameos. The series is yet to be picked up.
June 2013
The Royal Wedding of HRH Princess Madeleine and Chris O’Neill. It becomes one of Lucireâs most-read articles in June.
Edward Snowden becomes the whistleblower of the year. Later, when I am stuck at the Russian Embassy behind its gates in Wellington, I note that I was ‘snowed in’. Snowden has inspired new language.
July 2013
Dzohokhar Tsarnaev gets on the cover of Rolling Stone. People complain that Rolling Stone glamorized him without reading the story which doesn’t glamorize him. Some media cover this without mentioning this point.
PM John Key dismisses GCSB protesters as misinformed or politically aligned.
The death of Mel Smith. Will Matt Lucas still dress up as Andy Pipkin?
August 2013
Facebook and Instagram stop people from saying thank-you, either failing such comments or calling them abusive.
Stuart Munro writes, at the al-Jazeera English website: ‘The major driver of the GCSB bill has been the improper use of the agency by John Key. This bill was thrown together on the ïŹy to cover the PMâs embarrassment arising from his misuse of GCSB resources to spy on Kim Dotcom. With an honest PM, the legislation might not be problematicâbut Key makes personal and intemperate use of the GCSB. He is therefore incapable of providing impartial oversight to the GCSB, and that leaves this bill fatally ïŹawed. It will have to be scrapped, and the current GCSB will have to be disestablished in favour of a more scrupulous organisation.’
October 2013 Doctor Whoâs 50th anniversary special is coming. I eventually watch it on Iplayer after testing it out watching Strictly. This reminds me of how much Britain has changed in the last 30 years. Today, Bruce Forsyth is on BBC1 on a Saturday night, Terry Wogan is on the radio, and Tories are in Number 10. Nothing like it was before.
Google breaks another promise. In 2005, it stated, ‘There will be no banner ads on the Google homepage or web search results pages. There will not be crazy, ïŹashy, graphical doodads ïŹying and popping up all over the Google site. Ever.’
November 2013
The 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, which must also mean the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who.
The origins of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air are revealed in this fictional entry by yours truly: ‘To entertain the populace during the Troubles, The Fresh Prince of Bel Fast was a Northern Irish sitcom about a young Catholic man from Derry who is forced to live with a Protestant family to the east of Belfast. It later spawned an American remake starring Will Smith. It was known for its theme, which concluded, “I looked at my kingdom, I was there at last / To sit on my throne as the Prince of Bel Fast.”‘
December 2013
Pinterest puts spammers into your feed. The Hobbit cartoon in the 1970s was a much quicker way to get Tolkien’s novel dramatized: in and out in 90 minutes.
There ain’t nothing like a Dame: Penelope Keith gets a DBEâand I mark this with a Morecambe & Wise clip. Seems appropriate.
1. The cars
The Triumph Dolomite Sprint Lewis Collinsâ character, William Andrew Philip Bodie (he was a âregal-looking babyâ) had in The Professionals had more power than Doyleâs TR7. And his Capris were far cooler. So cool that eventually, even Doyle had to follow suit and get one to replace his Escort RS2000. (In real life: the RS2000 was stolen.)
2. The clothes
In his roles, Bodie was well dressed in The Professionals, sharp suits in the first season contrasting Doyleâs casual look. As Cmdr Peter Skellen in Ian Sharpâs Who Dares Wins, Collins showed that he could wear well tailored clothes as well as an SAS uniform exceptionally well. In one of the last appearances I saw him in, the German series Blaues Blut (which was created by The Professionalsâ Brian Clemens), Lew showed he could pull off a bowler hat.
3. The hair
Not having a bubble cut is a good thing.
4. The machismo
After playing an SAS commander in Who Dares Wins, Lewis Collins signed up and passed the entrance tests, but was rejected for being too famous. He auditioned for James Bond but was deemed âtoo aggressiveâ. In a pub brawl, youâd want Lew, and not Ross Kemp, on your side.
5. The twinkle
Lewis Collins had a twinkle in his eye in everything he did, whether it was a bit-part in The New Avengers (where he teamed up with Martin Shaw) or spoofing his character on The Freddie Starr Show. Thatâs what weâll miss the most.
The below was written on the 4th inst., the morning of the release of Absolutely Positively Wellington’s “plus sign” logo, and ran on Scoop, where I am told it is one of the most liked for the Wellington section. As it is to do with branding, I have republished it in full here. (The parody image was done separately.)
As I learned of the story first through a story by Katie Chapman in The Dominion Post, out of courtesy, I sent the below to her initially, some hours before Scoop, where it was picked up as an opâed. As the only mayoral candidate with a master’s degree in the area, and as an author, and as an editorial board member on the Journal of Brand Management, I might be one of the better qualified people to discuss the topic. I might also have been the first to write about destination branding as a discipline in this country. A city rebrand was also among the topics I discussed regularly during the debating season during the 2013 campaign, and I first raised it at The Dominion PostâMassey University debate in September. (It turns out I also blogged about it in 2010.)
Let’s just say it was a topic that concerned meâas well as many other Wellingtonians, including councillors who began digging and found out the plus sign cost us NZ$25,000. So on Monday morning, I put pen to paper (figuratively). Other than Scoopâs publication, I was interviewed on Newstalk ZB about my thoughts.
Incidentally, Edinburgh has a particularly good destination brand for a capital city.
Iâm fairly certain that when Wellingtonians identified that our city needed a new brand, the one shown today in The Dominion Post isnât what they had in mind.
It doesnât matter whether you are branding for a company or a city, the biggest rule is: get your internal audience on side first.
In the case of a city, that internal audience is the people of Wellington.
And there seems to be less excuse for not engaging citizens in the age of social media.
Of course, if everyone were engaged, then the status quo tends to be preserved. People tend not to like change, even when they say they want change. However, the logic is that at least the cityâs opinion leaders must be involved in a rebranding process.
Maybe they were. Although if they were, it doesnât come through.
First up, as I said in my election campaign, this is a 22-year-old brand.
Today, it remains so.
It may have had touch-ups over the years, mostly typographicallyâmoving from typefaces like Perpetua and Baskerville under Mayors Wilde and Blumsky to an italicized FF Fago under Mayor Prendergast. But it reflects the aspirations of Wellington in 1991. What we saw today was the same brand, but a new logo. It comes across as a cosmetic alteration, applying lipstick to the bulldog.
Arguably, grouping the wording together into a single place is preferable to having it divided into three, with black and white bands. It would not be wrong to call the logo more âmodernâ in the formal sense of the word: it is reflective of modernism.
Ăsthetics will always be subjective, but there is a school of thought that a logo that can be easily replicated is a positive development. A plus sign is easily replicated, but then, thereâs the second rule of branding: differentiate.
The purpose of branding is to symbolize, differentiate and communicate.
The logo is original: while there are many with pluses (Google Plus, or our Plus One channels on Freeview), I canât think of any that are executed in this exact way with this colour scheme. But you get an underwhelming feeling since weâre the creative capital. A few more pluses would convey dynamism (although that has been done before, too)âas long as we stick with getting Wellingtonians on side first.
The brand itselfâAbsolutely Positively Wellingtonâdoesnât take into consideration those sectors that did not exist in Wellington in a major way, notably ICT. Maintaining it tells me that itâs more of the same. That message is backed up by the abolition of the portfolio within council.
It doesnât take into consideration the thoughts of any of our young people, who will be burdened with this as the cityâs brand in years to come. Those in their 20s might feel a familiarity with the term âAbsolutely Positively Wellingtonâ, but also a disconnect. They werenât consulted on where they see Wellington or what they aspire us to be.
The logo, therefore, reinforces the old brand. Comments on social media this morning highlight that: at the time of writing, I have yet to see a positive one. They range from not knowing what the logo means to thoughts that it would be better applied to a church [one example shown at right].
That brings us to the third rule: tell the internal audience what it stands for before rolling it out to an external audience.
Yet this is all shrouded in mystery today.
Another point of interest is the logoâs removal from parking tickets. Itâs going to be reeled back from being a city brand to one that is applied in more formal marketing efforts. We go from the enviable position of having a city brand to a mere destination brand.
There is a subtle difference. A city brand is meant to unite the city, giving everyone who lives here a sense of pride. A destination brand is one aimed at marketing, the province of business and tourism agencies.
However, Iâd still like to see us all âownâ it because modern marketing sees citizens participate as much as organizations.
While I accept that thereâs a Resene deal that sees citizens being able to adopt the yellow ourselvesâwhich on paper is a fine ideaâwill the lack of earlier engagement encourage us to take it up?
So in the branding 101 handbook, there have been mistakes.
On the plus side, pun intended, Iâd be happier to see the yellow box in movie credits and on letterheads than its black-and-white predecessor. That was certainly unworkable in destination marketing and lacked appeal for years. One might say it has never had appeal.
Regardless of how negatively the Stuff reader poll puts the new logo, itâs not as bad as the Wellywood sign proposal.
I hope for our cityâs sake this works out and that stage two of the roll-outâwhere itâs sold to the rest of usâis far more convincing.
WordPress, with its automatic deactivation of Jetpack after each update, messed up, so I have no metrics for the last two months of this blog. Nor did it send me emails notifying me of your comments. It would have been useful to know how the last couple of posts went, to gauge your reaction to them on the day, rather than seeing comments now after the election. Essentially, all I have of the last two months’ stats is the above: apparently 12 people popped by yesterday. I’m pretty sure the numbers were healthier during the campaign!
In fact, Jetpack does not update automatically any more, which shows what a faulty product it is. I’d prefer to see WordPress get back to offering statistics separately, since it’s clear that the plug-in does not do what its makers claim.
So I apologize to the two commenters who gave me feedback on the Kapiti Airport idea and the flyover. It’s true that if blogging were a more important platform for the campaign, I’d have noticed the foul-up with Jetpack, so I take some responsibilityâand maybe it is naĂŻve to think that software works out of the box. It very rarely does. Take it from a guy who spent three days post-campaign reinstalling software.
To David, I am talking about a long-term plan, for something to happen mid-century. However, your idea of going even further north has merit. If we regionalize, a major international airport located there could service Taranaki, Manawatu, Hawke’s Bay and the Wairarapa as well as Wellington.
To Leon, sorry I didn’t get your vote, but this might explain my opposition to the flyover.
There are a few issues here at play. First, it’s not a single flyover, but two. The first might cost in the $100 million region, and the second, I guess, will be about the same.
As you and I know, whether it’s funded by rates or taxes doesn’t make that much difference to everyday Wellingtonians: we’re still paying for it.
The time saving gained is minimal because, eventually, the flyovers will be choked with traffic. The bottlenecks will remain exactly where they are: the Mt Vic Tunnel and Tory Street.
Now, if there was a plan that cost under $10 million for the immediate area and delivered the same traffic flow improvement, then it’s worth looking at. The good news is that there is: Richard Reid’s proposal, the one that seems to get no traction in the media, yet it’s elegant, and it works.
Richard’s had a lot of expertise looking at these solutions and if Wellington indeed favours innovationâthough the council’s decision to abolish the ICT portfolio is a retrograde step that signals the oppositeâthen we need to be hearing from him.
When you think about the entire project as central government has envisaged itâtwo Mt Vic Tunnels (though I am beginning to see the merit of this part at least), two flyovers, and even more changes at the Terrace Tunnel endâwe’re looking at $500 million.
I’m just not convinced it will get us bang for the buck, especially if we ratepayers haven’t been told what the options are. All we tend to get, especially in the mainstream media, is “one flyover or no flyover”. If those were the sole choicesâand they’re notâthen I can see why you’d feel I might be letting the side down, especially since (I’m guessing) we both get stuck in traffic jams around the Basin Reserve on a regular basis.
I’m deeply thankful for those who voted for meâ18 per cent once the preferences were distributed is an improvement, as were 10,000 votes (or least a whisker shy of the number). We ran a grass roots’ campaign that was dismissed by some media, but we showed that Wellingtonians can think for ourselves and that we have a voice. We should create conditions in which our best private enterprise can do its thing, and not, as some of my opponents were so keen to do, go cap-in-hand to central government, thereby going against global trends by centralizing more power with national politicians. This city still needs a rebrand to overcome a tired one. On the campaign team, we have a desire to continue the points in my manifesto: it shouldn’t matter who is mayor. We should still try to identify the high-growth firms, promote innovation in our capital, and act on as many of the points as possible. Wellington is looking at a game-changing decade and we should grasp the opportunity.
I have been posting these on the videos’ page as they became public, but maybe I should have added them to this blog, too, for those of you following on RSS. The multilingual one seems to have had a lot of hits. They have been directed by Isaac Cleland, with Khadeeja Dean on sound. Lawrance Simpson was DOP on the first one below.
This one was important to me, as I sent in a submission on the local alcohol policy, leaning more in favour of the hospitality industry’s submissions while acknowledging the need to reduce harm.
Highlights from that submission: ‘The hours feel very limiting as the harm has not come from the opening hours of on-licensed venues, but from pre-loading. Most venues are responsible and safe based on my own custom. A blanket 7 a.m.âÂ5 a.m. with council officers using their discretion on venues failing to meet the highest standards, then restricting them back to 3 a.m. would be a better approach, while acknowledging the changes at the national level.’
âI remain unsure whether harm will be decreased. I have listened to the police and hospital submissions, and I have great sympathy for them. However, if we know pre-loading and drinking education to be the greatest issues, restricting on-licence hours will not help. If it forces people to drink more at home rather than frequent the city, then that doesn’t actually decrease harm: it makes harm harder to police because it is shifted to the suburbs. It adds to the cost of health services because of travel time and the inability for those harmed to get immediate help.’
âThere are some good aspects in its response to the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act 2012âand it was right for Council to respond. The arguments on density and proximity are a good response to some residents’ concerns.’
Finally: ‘My belief is that the root cause of a lot of our drinking culture comes from socioeconomic conditions and, especially with the young, a sense of disengagement and a pessimism about their futures. While it is not the purpose of the strategy, it is something that we must address as a city.’
Judging Miromoda for the fourth (I believe) time, this time at Pipitea Marae. It must have been the first time the te Reo portion of my address was longer than the English. I need to disclose that I am not fluent but I try to make a decent stab at it at every opportunity, for the obvious reason that it is the native language of this country.
They range from not knowing what the logo means to thoughts that it would be better applied to a church [one example shown at right].