Galleries

Mixing it up on Twitter

B2B social media content marketing offers so many perspectives if just a little thought is invested. Our strategy for Twitter at Hoyne was to show a breadth of knowledge and interests. We researched industry news, actively instigated thought leadership conversations, demonstrated our ability to connect to communities, celebrated case-studies and acknowledged individual achievements. All this within the space of a week. All businesses can drive this with the right team, resources and tools. Be sure to remain mindful of messaging across your channel mix to keep things focused.

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Designing a winning Employee Experience

Writing and editing this White Paper for Sydney onboarding company, Enboarder, was a real eye-opener to the complexities of recruitment and people management. No one should underestimate the role that leaders play in the health of their businesses or the extraordinary outcomes that can result if the wellbeing and professional pathways of people, are considered. This report aims to prompt HR professionals to rethink the impact their roles play and the relationship between empowered employees and operational productivity. Let’s start to put some overdue focus on the players who are key in creating and affecting real cultural change, and ultimately business success.

To read how onboarding is an integrated HR practice with the involvement of hiring managers executives and staff members, click to read the full paper here.

Making the magic happen: the complexities of property branding

Nick Sammut, Managing Director, Toast Creative uncovers the complex process of selling the dream.

The property development market is thriving, and as it incrementally changes the face of every Australian city, it’s inevitable that we consider its implications. The current pace of the sector has triggered our personal enquiries about how we want to live and why, while also radically transforming communities culturally, socially and commercially. Understanding these shifts in perceptions and knowing how to tap into the needs and expectations of a specific market are key to our role as a creative agency working in property branding.

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Public relations professionals should listen to Fairfax

I came across this in my inbox today. A subscriber value-add from Fairfax. Quite nice. Raw and passionate. Believable. Senior journos explaining the meaning behind their craft, what drives them and its importance to contributing to social good. Journalism must be independent. It’s Fairfax’s mantra – ‘Independent. Always.’

Few professions can offer the same amount of integrity and purpose.  But if you’re a communications person, as I am, and work in public relations dealing with the media, listen to their words closely.

Unless you are approaching your media relations with the same energy and intent to impart knowledge and information that is useful, relevant or interesting – I’d have to agree, you’re treading dangerous waters if you want to catch a serious journalist’s attention.

“For every one journalist there’s probably about a dozen PR people who are trying to hide the truth, says Adele Ferguson.

Don’t be one of them, I say.

Logorama – 2,500 logos in 2009 award winning French animation

Logorama is a 16-minute animated film written and directed by H5/Francois Alaux Hervé de Crécy and Ludovic Houplain, and produced by Autour de Minuit. It won the Prix Kodak at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival and the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film at the 82nd Academy Awards. It uses no less than 2,500 logos to show the extent to which brands are embedded in our existence. Logorama is of course a visual hyperbole of our daily branded lives yet frighteningly realistic. On viewing this film you realise our relationship with any of these brands rests almost exclusively on consumer action and direct experience.

Craft your brand to drive business success

Consumers are brand curators in this integrated, experiential, social screen age. What are the questions brand owners need to be asking, and to whom?

The sheer number and complexity of meanings assigned to the word ‘brand’ is a modern marketing dilemma. Add to this consumer expectation of the role we expect brands to play in our lives, and how we want them to behave, and you’ll hear dissension in the ranks.

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Shazam misses World Cup craze

Shazam and the World Cup? What’s going on? Where are you? You came out at the Super Bowl with your most successful campaign yet with a live performance from Bruno Mars, and you’ve been appearing on US TV screens for almost two years. The world’s biggest sporting event launches and you’re almost invisible? (more…)

Leadership and authenticity in a social world

The debate in business circles as to whether senior management should actively use Twitter as a business tool resurfaces consistently and has been the subject of many marketing studies along with its digital cousins. Application of the insights that these studies offer to brands, brand management teams (and to all businesses that understand the power of branding), will most usually be managed in consultation with a communications professional. (more…)

You’re not you when you’re hungry.

The 2014 launch of the latest instalment of Snickers’ long running ‘You’re Not You When You’re Hungry’ campaign, received much attention on social media, but possibly not for the right reasons. Interestingly, and perhaps unsurprisingly in 2019 that campaign is nowhere to be seen online, even on industry titles. A difficult but necessary lesson learned.

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Helpful communications questions

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Most communications problems tend to be complex.The following probing questions may help you to generate even greater ideas for your next communications task. Perhaps you’ve devised a system already, but you can never ask too many questions, right? Click on the following link to view – Communications questions

The beauty of social

DIALOGUE = CONVERSATION = INTEREST = MORE CONVERSATION = IDEAS = POSSIBILITIES = LEADS = BUSINESS = RECOMMENDATIONS = EXTENDED NETWORK = CONVERSATION ….

connection

Social and digital are the most critiqued channels in the mix. If we strip them right back, the intent is clear. We simply have a fail-proof conversation starter that also happens to be the most far-reaching regardless of the product or service you offer. Social facilitates integration and provides perspectives you never thought you’d consider; it educates and informs. How you engage is your choice, as an individual – as a consumer. The beauty of social is its unique ability to seemingly tie everything together. Just don’t over-think it. There are many examples. Here is a recent beauty.

http://dfergpr.com/2014/03/09/trending-vending-machine-from-oreo-eatthetweet/

Screen Shot 2014-10-18 at 10.49.36 pm

Call to action for the business sector to change their ways

My recent discovery of TuShare and Retrash has helped to validate my belief in the concept of collaborative consumption as economically, socially, politically, environmentally and ethically imperative.

If we extract this moral code – where products are consumed through sharing, or an artist’s work is created using pre-existing materials – and ask the business sector to consider how this perspective could be transposed and applied to a commercial paradigm, it may be possible for brands to move closer to a culture of customer centricity, relevance and functionality. Think product ingredients, useability, value-adding. Surely this is the kindest way to profitability. I’d written this prior to coming across a blog article by TuShare’s CEO James Bradfield Moody in which he says:

Brands that successfully sell their purpose, rather than their services, have much more potential to success in driving loyalty and building community over the long term. And a clear and compelling purpose has the potential to give a brand the opportunity to more effectively connect with its core audience and market.

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Here’s the link to James Bradfield Moody’s article – http://www.marketingmag.com.au/blogs/collaborative-consumption-and-the-sharing-economy-shaping-the-market-in-2014-and-beyond-47488/#.UxsGG-eSzOc

Design’s natural order

Chantal Omodiagbe investigates the value of design’s non-intentional outcomes, challenging conventional practice and embracing creativity’s natural order.

By definition commercial design is a considered process where ideas are constructed then visualised by combining both creative and intellectual thinking. Design is necessarily intentional.  It is most usually steered by project briefs, driven by business goals, and ultimately tested against client objectives. But could design be ‘non-intentional’ and what kind of design might result from such a practice?

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DEZOMO in 2014 promises new and bigger thinking

A broader depth of thinking is on its way. Under-pinning future posts will be my belief in the importance of cultural awareness in management, what constitutes real leadership in the creative sector and the ability to read people’s potential in our world of creative connectivity. Golden hand shakes are long gone – too often they fail to inspire. Relationships are the new sales while confident conversations and collaborative thinkers are the door openers. Can’t wait to share more and grow my readership. Feed me your thoughts. I am hungry for dialogue. Monologues are definitely not my thing.