Hi there!

We are well and truly into autumn now and it’s still dark at 5.30am now so harder to get out of bed in the mornings! But life is ticking along here down under.

For today’s update I thought I would give you an insight into the marketing industry here in Brisbane at the moment.

Marketing – smart recruitment or not?
On a marketing front things are slowly picking up work and employment wise but it is still proving a difficult nut to crack for marketing peeps out of work especially for those with many years of experience. It’s very much an employer’s market which is great for employers but not for people trying to get jobs. I would imagine it is the same in London?

Many people that I know are actually taking lower level jobs simply to pay the bills and what this is producing is very happy employers but not necessarily employees! Why you may ask…well my theory is they figure that they can get someone completely over qualified for a position which means they are not only filling the position but are then hiring someone that they can tap into for their higher level expertise, all for the grand cost of a lower level salary.

Will this backfire?

What about the employee?

As soon as the market picks up I am sure that employees will be on the lookout for bigger and better things that match their experience more. This then means that the company that originally thought they were smart in their recruitment strategy will have to recruit again.

I spoke to Victoria Pickard, Marketing & Communications Agent at Aquent an international recruitment consultancy about the current market situation for marketers, in relation to employees with a lot of experience working in lower level roles. Victoria said:

“Not only will these employees be the first to move as soon as the market picks up, there can be a number of other negative impacts. For one, if someone is reporting to a staff member who does not match or exceed their experience, this can cause frustration and dissatisfaction amongst the team. The detrimental effects of reporting to a supervisor who has less experience can impact on everyone. It can also lead to the new employee going above their immediate supervisor’s head, which in turn disrupts the reporting structure, and can leave existing staff feeling under appreciated.”

She continues “It may be an employer’s market, however cutting costs in recruitment, can often lead to short term fixes, and long term issues. Investing in a new employee costs both time and money, and if they are only accepting the role as a short term fix whilst looking for a more suitable role, it can end up costing the employer far more than expected. Using a specialist agency at least provides some safety net to employers in securing a replacement, should this happen.”

For more information, Tim McNamara also an agent at Aquent recently wrote an article about employee retention which you may find interesting.

Bye for now! Zoe Gell

Well what a weekend it has been. I went to the coast up to Bunderburg and my husband and I got caught in all the Tsunami warnings for South East Queensland. So on the way home we drove inland and discovered some tiny towns that we never even knew existed such as Goomeri – the winner of the ‘neatest town’ award, Ban Ban Springs which I got excited about and then discovered there were no springs, and Nanago which was a very small country town and made me feel like I was really in the outback!

The latest news in Australia hot off the press at the moment is that Kmart has decided it wants to go against tradition and open on Anzac Day which is a memorial day that Aussies take very seriously over here – so there is a public outcry at the moment. It will be interesting to see how it affects their brand in the long term.

Australian market recovery
Things are looking up here in Australia economy wise with Reserve Bank Governor Glenn Stevens recently reporting that Australia’s economy is stronger after the GFC which is very positive – see the article for more details.  In addition Stephen Long of ABC News recently reported that Australia is showing encouraging signs of economic strength, with new figures showing a 5.5 per cent increase in new business investment in the final quarter of last year. See link. At the end of his article Long remarks that the Reserve Bank is worried that Australia is entering a new economic upturn with spare capacity.

I read that the UK economy has reported it is officially out of a recession which is good news. Australia as I said in my last post seems to be getting better too so things can only get better right? I recently read as well that Westfield, the shopping centre giants have plans to build more shopping centres here in Australia after their full year operating earnings increased by 6.2% – see the article – so that is very encouraging. More shops – hoorah!

The social media buzz
I am still in the process of writing my company’s social media policy and strategy. I thought it would be a piece of cake but actually it’s more like a bone to chew on. The social media market is continuing to grow over here and now Google is in on the game as well it can only get bigger and better – one hopes! I’m not too fussed with Google Buzz yet and with the Wall Street Journal reporting that it isn’t exactly ‘buzzing along’ it has been a bit of a disastrous new product launch in marketing terms.

I’m reading a book at the moment by Tamar Weinberg called The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web and I’ve also been researching more about auto responses on Twitter. Our company wants to be able to pick up when tweeters are saying certain words i.e. #dilemma and then be able to have a piece of software automatically send an email to anyone fitting that criteria telling them about our product – as of yet Tweetbeep seems to be the only application that has anywhere near that power. If you know better please contact me!

Anyway I had best be off but before I go if you haven’t read it, have a gander at this – the funniest article I read recently was about toy company Mattel announcing it is developing a product called Puppy Tweets enabling your dog to send twitters of a sort! See to read it for yourself. I think personally it is social media gone mad and a pretty good PR stunt. It certainly got my attention!

Bye for now! Zoe.

Hi, I hope you all had a happy Christmas and New Year! I heard it has been very cold which seems weird to me sat here in a summer dress – sorry!

Glad to inform you I now have air conditioning and no hole in my ceiling. So I am very grateful for that since it was reported by the Bureau of Meteorology today  that  Australia had the second warmest year on record in 2009.

Resolving and retraining

So how many of you have made new year resolutions?

I tried but when my list went over an A4 page I realised I had a few issues and should maybe quit while I was ahead!

I did make a few decisions for 2010 though, one being that I have decided to add to my skills portfolio and start a graphics design certificate in February at Shillington College for a year.

I have noticed more and more over here in Brisbane that employers want integrated marketers to have an even wider spectrum of skills including Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and Indesign. They are good packages to know anyway.

Shillington also has a college in London so you might be interested too – see www.shillington.com.au for more information.

I start a new job on Monday which promises to be interesting , working for a not for profit publishing and radio organisation. So with the course and the job it feels like this year is on track to be a good one.

Positive economy

From an economic point of view here in Queensland everyone that I spoke to at the end of 2009 was optimistic for 2010 and said that things would be better , so let’s hope they are right.

Things are looking promising, with the Brisbane Times reporting on New Years Eve that visitor numbers to Australia are set to rise in the new year.  Australia wide figures from the Tourism Transport Forum show an expected increase of 4.3% in international visitors in 2010 and a rise of 2.3% in domestic visitor nights.  So if people are starting to travel again that can only be positive can’t it? See the full article here .

Bye for now

Hi from Brisbane.

Well, we finally got our air conditioning put in, but can you believe two of the guys that installed it fell through the ceiling!!

It was very similar to an RACQ Insurance advertisement going around here but believe me very real!! So as a result we are now waiting for the plasterer to come and fix our hole so still don’t have air conditioning and it’s 36 celcius today!!!

So how is your Christmas shopping going? I’ve done mine now phew! So now I am ready for the silly season to begin.

Scanning the shops for presents!

I wanted to tell you this week about a new marketing craze that has hit the shops targeting children for Christmas. I don’t know if they are doing it in the UK but the offline wish list craze seems to have really taken off here in the form of scanning. See this article for more info

Children can now go racing round the toy departments of stores zapping away the barcodes of the toys that they want for Christmas!  Why didn’t they have this when I was a child I wonder – it would have saved lots of ‘thank you’s’ for jumpers and clothes I just really didn’t like!!!

But I think they may be onto something. Children are so switched on when it comes to media, consumerism, spending and computers that it’s the perfect way for a business to ensure that children get to choose what they want and in the form of their products rather than just pointing something out to mum or dad that they will probably forget down the line.

Is it a good thing?

I guess there are the sceptics that say – what about the surprises and the element of Christmas itself, but children don’t really think like that – for some it is still about Santa and for others it’s about what they can get. Like the article says it saves the hassle for aunts and uncles who think they have it right but don’t. I guess the only down side is for those parents that don’t have the disposable income to spend much on their children for Christmas, therefore the element of disappointment.

So I guess at some point some clever store is going to roll out a scanner for adult gift lists. I mean you can already do it online, and in the form of wedding gift registry’s so why not for birthdays and Christmas…..Gone is the element of surprise!

Santa bringing the shoppers in ….ker ching!

Talking of Santa though, maybe I have been out of the loop too long but I could not believe how much it costs to see Santa! I remember when I was little being dragged into some bright red igloo type thing by a scary looking elf to sit on some fat mans knee and being given a tiny toy all for £1.50. Nowadays the shopping centre marketing for Santa is huge just like in the UK. I think the cheapest was $17.50 to see Santa and have a picture taken with him, but of course there are the Santa ‘bonus packages’ which cost anything up to $50!

On a business front, I am sure it works, pulling customers in who might also wander around the shops and buy at the same time and after all; Santa was a part- creation of Coca Cola in terms of colours…..

Hi from Brisbane.

I am sat here wishing for cooler weather would you believe? It is 35 celcius here today and my husband still hasn’t sorted our air conditioner!! I’ve got every single window open, my fans going and I feel like I am sat in a sauna! But hey I guess you are sat in London thinking shut up and enjoy the warm weather…

This week over here marketing news wise, Virgin Blue’s loyalty program team are in trouble for ‘accidently’ sending out an upgrade offer to more than 1 million members. See  for more details. I think the moral of the story here is always double check your emails you are sending out along with your mailing list!

I’ve just finished a contract working for a big multi national company and am back to my volunteering work until something else comes up. The market seems to be looking a bit healthier and my recruitment consultant thinks that January will be a good month, so we shall see as it was reported a month or so ago that unemployment was set to hit 6.8% so it is still a tough market.

I am busy organising a Christmas drinks and nibbles here in Brisbane for fellow CIM members which will be nice. The CIM isn’t that big here in Australia but they are really starting to grow now so it is great to be a part of it all.

Mailed out!

So I have a bit of a gripe this week! And the culprits are direct mail and telemarketers! I used to live in Southfields and the direct mail was pretty intense there but here I have never known anything like it! You empty your mailbox and it is literally full of magazines and companies selling anything from food to dog hydrobaths to telling me what I should be buying my husband for Christmas.

On a smaller scale, I love direct mail and have done many campaigns myself – but every day we have bunches and bunches of mail which a lot of the time is duplicated or out of date stuck in our mailbox.  Now it just goes into the bin without my even looking at it, so my thought on this is would I want my brand to be one of those that  is associated with such a mail out and potentially is annoying its target market??

Don’t call me!

And as for telemarketers, Optus for me (a phone provider) is the most resilient and annoying telemarketer!!

I have had the same woman from Optus call me now on 6 occasions in the last 2 months. Each time I have told her that I am not interested and each time she has said she won’t call me again….and then 10 or so days later I get a call from her. I ask her why she is calling when she says she won’t bother me again, and she then proceeds to tell me that before she goes, she has a new offer for me!

Arghhh. I mean telemarketing must work, otherwise people wouldn’t do it but how far does the telemarketer have to go before they understand that people like me do not want their services – No means no right?, and if it wasn’t for the fact that I am tied in for two years with my iPhone I wouldn’t be using Optus anymore! Many people I know feel the same way so on a larger scale, so what does that say about the brand?

Right, I’m off to sit under the fan! Bye for now

In the Greater London Region, The Institute partners with several charities. One of them is the Prostate Cancer Charity . Their recent Tour of Britain Event was a huge success with over 1,200 riders taking part in Stoke and over 500 in London. But it doesn’t stop there. This year’s Movember event promises to be the best ever.  We’ll keep you posted.