The Sunshine Blogger Award’s 11 questions

Holly Jahangiri kindly nominated me for the Sunshine Blogger Award. I doubt I’d win, as I don’t follow the rules. I’m not even entirely sure what I’d win. But the questions seem a fun thing to do, especially now that I’ve decided to minimize my time on Facebook in favour of the blogosphere again (roll […]

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Google and Facebook should not head “top brands” lists when consumers do not trust them

I’ve always been surprised when I see Google or Facebook appear on any “top brands” lists. It’s branding 101 that a strong brand must have loyalty, awareness, positive associations, perceived quality, as well as proprietary assets, based on the model from David Aaker, and implicit in this, I always thought, was trust. You can neither […]

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How can we help those fooled into believing what their local brands are?

How interesting to see a silly Tweet of mine make the Murdoch Press and lead an opinion column—I’m told it even hit the news.com.au home page.    It’s a very old joke that I’ve told since 2002, when I walked along Bay Road in Kilbirnie and saw a locksmith sign in Futura. Back then, Dick […]

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It’s all going fines at Volkswagen

General Motors’ fine in 1995 for 470,000 cars using defeat devices against EPA testing: US$11 million. Volkswagen’s fine in 2016 for 580,000 cars using defeat devices against EPA testing: potentially US$40,000 million (or $40 billion, as the Americans say). The local companies get off far easier in the US. In fact, GM can even get […]

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Facebook forced me to download their anti-malware, and my own antivirus gets knocked out

When Facebook says it cares about security, I laugh. Every day I see bots, spammers and click-farm workers plague the site, and despite reporting them, Facebook lets them stay. It will make a statement saying it would no longer kick off drag queens and kings, then proceed to kick off drag queens and kings. So […]

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Trump a creation of the media, not of ad spends

This is by no means a blog post in favour of the Republican poll front-runner, although this graphic from Vox (not the old Vox that I used to be on) was very interesting: Jeb Bush's operation appears to have set $32.5 million on fire pic.twitter.com/dziA85tUAz — Vox (@voxdotcom) December 11, 2015    When I ran […]

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Alarm für Cobra 11 changes direction again, with Daniel Roesner as Paul Renner

Poor Vinzenz Kiefer. The co-star of Alarm für Cobra 11: die Autobahnpolizei, which commemorates its 20th anniversary next year, will be written out of the show, and not by his choice.    Since the departure of Tom Beck as Ben Jäger a few years ago, the producers of the long-running German action series decided to […]

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