Posts tagged ‘collaboration’


This week it’s the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit models; what’s next for our destination marketing?

09.02.2014

In Lucire’s publication history, more Americans than New Zealanders have read from the title. Online, that was always the case, as we started off in 1997 with a 70 per cent US readership, which has dropped to around 42 per cent with other countries catching up with web browsing over the last 16 years.
   Who knew, then, that Kiwis would come en masse over the last day and a bit to have a gander at our behind-the-scenes story on Air New Zealand’s next safety video?
   And all it took were five swimwear models from the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. None of whom are actually New Zealanders (four American, one Australian), though former Miss South Pacific Joyana Meyer, who is based locally, does make an appearance.
   I can see the irony: Kiwis browsing a Kiwi site reading about a Kiwi airline. Yes, it is strange, considering we are quite happy reading Australian newspapers and German magazines. We are proud, however, of our national carrier.
   I can also see the second irony, in that the video itself has foreigners in the main roles.
   However, 70 million SI readers now alerted to the Cook Islands, New Zealand and Air New Zealand without reliance on ‘Who Shot J. R. R.?’ marks a new change, and that might not be a bad thing for the maturing of tourist marketing.
   I know, we are falling back on babes and beaches, but I’ve never been convinced about the 100 Per Cent Pure campaign. While Sir Peter Jackson put us on the map thanks to his own love of our nation, I wonder if there may be fatigue in the association. What is the life cycle of such campaigns, typically?
   I could be completely wrong on both but it was a dozen years since I was in Scandinavia talking to excited Swedes about our country in the wake of the first Lord of the Rings film.
   Post-Conchords maybe it is time to show another side of us. You know I will keep championing Kiwi creativity and intellectual capital because I still believe these set us apart. Sports Illustrated doesn’t express that, but the fact that our national carrier is happy to co-brand with an iconic US title at least puts us on an internationally recognizable level. And it shows some decent, globally minded lateral thinking on behalf of the brand managers at Air New Zealand. I’m also encouraged that Air New Zealand’s new CEO, Christopher Luxon, is a brand guy with MNC experience because he’ll understand the need for differentiation on a global stage. It’s a stepping stone that we can take advantage of.
   The question to engage our brains next are: how else can we get our best brands out there? Are there more collaborations that are possible? Or are there ways we can find leverage to go it alone?


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Cities are, or at least should be, driving globalization

06.06.2013

My friend and colleague William Shepherd directed me to a piece at Quartz by Michele Acuto and Parag Khanna, on how cities are driving globalization more than nations—a theme I touched upon on this blog in March 2010. As he said, I had called it three years ago, though admittedly Acuto and Khanna have fleshed things out far better.
   It’s not just the fact that cities elicit less pluralistic feelings among the population—Wellingtonians felt pretty strongly when PM John Key made his comment that our city was ‘dying’—but there are practical reasons for cities to lead the way.
   First, we can’t afford to wait for central government to take the lead on a lot of policies. When it comes to economic development, cities should be able to mobilize a lot more quickly. The idea is that cities are leaner, flatter and more responsive to change. The reality is that some are mired in bureaucracy, and if voters agree that that has to change, then I would love to see that reflected in this year’s local body elections. Based on what I’ve seen, you won’t find the agent for change within politics, however—they have had more than enough opportunity to voice this very view. This has to come from outside politics, from people who understand what cities are truly capable of, especially when they engage and realize their potential.
   Acuto and Khanna cite several examples where cities have had to go above and beyond what their national governments have provided, in the areas of security, climate change and academia. Even stock exchanges are merging between cities:

Stock exchange mergers testify to this changing geography of influence: the popularized link between New York and Frankfurt via the 2011 talks on the NYSE Euronext and Deutsche Boerse merger only hinted at a wider trend that, in the past two years alone, has seen negotiations between London’s and Toronto’s stock exchanges, and similar discussions between Sydney and Singapore, Chicago and Sao Paulo, Dubai and Mumbai or the Shenzhen–Hong Kong–Shanghai triangle, all of which indicate how global finance networks are being redrawn through emerging global cities.

   In my discussions with MBIE, the New Zealand Government has been aware of this trend, but other than the discussions about regional reform, very little of it has surfaced in Wellington. Yet the government has a focus on Auckland, and Christchurch will be state of the art once its rebuilding is completed. We have a perfect opportunity to use our inherent agility, if only we had our eyes on the prize, and moved forward rather than played politics, stuck with “think local, act local” thinking.
   Secondly, cities should find the task of marketing themselves less confusing. A nation-branding exercise, for example, hits a snag early on. When I quizzed Wally Olins about this many years ago, he identified a very obvious problem: which government department pays for it? Is this the province of tourism, internal affairs, foreign affairs, trade, or something else? A city should be able to establish sufficient channels of communications between its organizations and trust in one—in Wellington’s case, tourism—to handle it. If these channels are broken, again, it’s going to take some new blood and real change to fix them and inspire a spirit of cooperation. There’s a pressing enough need to do so, with a vision that can be readily shared. We need to think differently in the 2010s.
   Thirdly, cities can foster offshore relationships more effectively. New Zealand, as a country, has not done as well as it should in promoting itself in various Asian cities, for instance. In one major city, I have had feedback that New Zealand stands out for the wrong reasons, in not having its chief diplomat join other countries in celebrating a particular national holiday. We seem to be on auto-pilot, not being as active as we should. Yet, as Acuto and Khanna point out, almost all global economic activity is being driven by 400 cities. Wellington, especially, should be able to take the initiative and head to the world’s major cities, promoting ourselves and ensuring that the innovators and enterprises here can hook up with others. We can establish trade and cultural links more quickly if we go to the source. Many cities and provinces even have their own economic offices, so they expect such approaches: they want to work at the city level.
   And if we head offshore to promote our own, then we should expect that foreign direct investment can flow more effectively inward, too, having established that relationship.
   This all makes sense if you consider how democratization has changed the world we live in. On so many things already, we cut out the middle man: in printing, we no longer need to go to typesetters or plate-makers; online publishing has meant our words can go to the public on blogs; social media have allowed us greater access to companies and politicians. Air travel is more affordable than it was 30 years ago. Cities have the resources to engage with citizens and learn about their needs. Offshore relationships can be maintained between trips using Skype and other digital resources. The nation-state will remain relevant for some time, but cities can deliver more relevant, more specialized and more customized programmes in a more timely fashion. Now, do we have the courage to declare that we no longer want “politics as usual” this year?


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Posted in branding, business, culture, globalization, internet, leadership, marketing, New Zealand, politics, technology, Wellington | 1 Comment »


Cringely gives Facebook till 2014 to peak—and he may be right

22.07.2011

Bob Cringely wrote (found via Stowe Boyd):

Facebook is a huge success. You can’t argue with 750 million users and growing. And I don’t see Google+ making a big dent in that. What I see instead is more properly the fading of the entire social media category, the victim of an ever-shortening event horizon.
   Each era of computing seems to run for about a decade of total dominance by a given platform. Mainframes (1960–1970), minicomputers (1970–1980), character-based PCs (1980–1990), graphical PCs (1990–2000), notebooks (2000–2010), smart phones and tablets (2010–2020?). We could look at this in different ways like how these devices are connected but I don’t think it would make a huge difference.
   Now look at the dominant players in each succession—IBM (1960–1985), DEC (1965–1980), Microsoft (1987–2003), Google (2000–2010), Facebook (2007–?). That’s 25 years, 15 years, 15 years, 10 years, and how long will Facebook reign supreme? Not 15 years and I don’t think even 10. I give Facebook seven years or until 2014 to peak.

   I’ve said it for a while based on the opaque corporate culture at the company and its apparent disregard for privacy (the opposite to what it was like in 2006). Arrogant cultures like that don’t last long. I’ve similarly said nothing is forever, with Altavista as my example.
   It’s likely that the social phenomenon passes, not because it is invalid, but because most occidentals will have found their tribe of 150 and interact with it. Or, an economic change or a collaboration tool brings people into connection with others that sees their daily routines change.
   Facebook is a social tool, one which surfaced as a recession loomed, and grew as people desperately tried to define their networks or retreated from hardships. Once either task is done, then it loses its appeal. It loses further appeal—hence the embrace of Google Plus by the Google Kool-Aid drinkers—when networks get to a certain size and undesirable elements kick in, either people you don’t like (or have come to dislike through contact) or the need for too much maintenance. (See email’s loss of utility through spam, Wikipedia’s loss of accuracy through power-hungry editors and incompetent additions, or Google Blog Search’s loss of decent results through splogs and its own Adsense programme.)
   Facebook’s culture will likely give it seven years as it will deem itself invincible and fail to adopt to shifting consumer needs.


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The real experts are fixing Firefox 4

25.01.2011

Good news: there have been more developments with Mozilla as they work on the rather serious bug (the one where you can’t read a damn thing) in Firefox 4 Beta.
   John Daggett at Mozilla created logging to help identify the problem, and I ran the latest nightly build to get the logs back to him. We’ve identified the troublesome area. Another expert, Jonathan Kew, today identified what caused the break and has created a patch.
   I’m glad this finally got to the attention of the people that matter. Once it did, the fixes are proceeding apace. I have to admit it took a while, and the initial filings of the bug seemed to have been ignored, but once it got into the system after Boris asked me to cc him, the Firefox initiĂ©s are trying to make the next incarnation of the browser top-notch.
   I believe it took reporting it to both Mozilla Support and Bugzilla before it got noticed—that’s the strategy I’ll take in future if there’s a bug of this nature.
   I also kept the buggy Beta installed, so I could help with troubleshooting.
   For once, I’m looking forward to the next Firefox Beta with optimism. It might even be worth holding on to till the final release.


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