It’s been an interesting couple of months here in Australia.

Talk about a PR nightmare – Qantas had a lot of bad worldwide press with their staff striking and then the issue escalated when CEO Alan Joyce grounded the Qantas Fleet until the matter was resolved affecting tens of thousands of passengers world wide. Australia Prime Minister Julia Gillard was forced to step in and then matters came to a quick resolution. I don’t know how it was publicised in the UK but it was a round the clock commentary here and Julia Gillard was criticised for not stepping in soon enough.

One could argue that Alan Joyce’s decision was a brilliant one PR wise as no PR is bad PR right? Although he had just given himself a nice 71% pay rise which further rubbed salt into the wound. Not great timing.

We’re seeing the aftermath of the strikes now with Qantas sweetening customers up with frequent flyer offers and complimentary gifts, and today Alan Joyce has been plugging Qantas’ new investment – the Boeing 787 which one could say is interesting timing.

We’ve also had the Carbon Tax passed here in Australia recently which if you don’t know what it is basically means that companies that generate pollution will pay per tonne of carbon they release into the atmosphere.  The cost will increase up until 2015 when there will be a move towards a trading scheme that will let the market set the cost.

Many people have been for and against the tax so it will be interesting to see how it goes.

More recent news, Queensland is celebrating having just been awarded the right to host the 2018 Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast. This will be excellent PR for the Gold Coast as it often gets a lot of bad press, although the Acting Queensland Premier Andrew Fraser has been a bit of a killjoy over the announcement today suggesting that the financial gain for the Gold Coast was completely unquantifiable.

Finally, Canberra has been at a standstill recently as US President Barack Obama was there Canberra on a whistle-stop tour.  So it’s all go here down under at the moment.

More soon.

Speaking of books, I just finished a great book that as a marketer you might be interested in, by Paul Arden called It’s not how good you are but how good you want to be. Sounds like a self help book but it’s a small book full of interesting work soundbites from a marketing and advertising point of view.

Anyway bye for now.

Zoe

Hello from down under

I hope you all had a festive Christmas and New Year, I just got back from skiing in Japan which was amazing.

I’d like to say that things have been good here in Australia since I last wrote but as I write Queensland is being ravaged by severe floods. According to the latest news reports ten people have been killed and at least 80 are still missing. These floods are the worst since devastating floods that swept through Queensland in 1974.

The rain and floods started a week or so ago devastating Northern Queensland city – Rockhampton and more recently they moved onto Toowoomba and its surrounding regions, which ironically has suffered for many years with droughts.

Yesterday Queensland Premier Anna Bligh made many emotional speeches talking about the devastation and the toughness and spirit of Queenslanders, and Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard confirmed she would give whatever resources necessary to Anna Bligh in order to help our state.

Brisbane is next on the list. Thankfully the area in Brisbane that I live does not seem to be on the flood list, we have just had heavy rain. But for those that are, their areas have been evacuated and for those that have nowhere to go, centres have been set up in order to keep them safe.  The Brisbane CBD has closed as it is heavily flooded and the banks of the river is due to peak today which could have devastating consequences.

24/7

It’s amazing in terms of the way that we now use the internet and social media that now literally we can get a blow by blow account of what is going on in real time. People are tweeting under hash tags #bnefloods and photos are constantly being uploaded of new flood areas and warnings.

Facebook groups have been set up and the Council websites are the central point for information about the floods and people trying to find out about missing people.

The next two days are critical for Brisbane and by Friday the  worst of the flooding will be over.

I hope that next time I write I will have better news for you. For the Aussies out there or anyone that wants to help you can do so by going to http://www.qld.gov.au/floods/donate.html

Bye for now

Zoe

I can’t believe it is nearly Christmas. The silly season crept up on me and santa is everywhere, even for pets (Santa Paws!)

We’ve been watching the scenes from the UK here with great interest. The snow scenes are incredible and it looks like it’s pretty cold over there. Over here we have had the worst spring/summer in a long time apparently. It has rained and rained which is good for Australia as they have struggled with droughts in the past, but when it rains here in Brisbane it really rains if you know what I mean and the thunder storms are seriously scary – we had five days in a row with storms and rain and huge floods.

So other than that it’s been pretty busy. I finished a role in the city and managed to get a new job that starts in January and I also qualified as a graphic designer . I did a year long course part time as marketing jobs here seem to require you to know Adobe Creative Suite as well as your core marketing skills, so I figured an extra skill would help, and it did. The job market seems to be picking up which is good news for unemployed marketers and it has been a hard year so hopefully next year will be much more productive.

I’m still helping CIM Australia out which is interesting as the number of members is increasing now that CIM courses are happening so I think 2011 will be an interesting time for CIM here in Australia.

Anyway I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and New Year, and best wishes for 2011.

Bye for now.

Zoe

G’day from Australia

It’s starting to warm up here in Australia with the weather finally starting to improve. We’re in the mid twenties at the moment so I can finally get rid of my coat!

Have actually been a bit homesick lately, missing London and the buzz of it. I figured Australia would be an easy place to settle in but it hasn’t been as easy as I thought. Most of the expats I have spoken to say it took them 3-5 years so I guess I have a way to go yet…

Lots going on here at the moment. Since I last wrote the election fever has ended and Julia Gillard remains our Prime Minister. She seems to have got off to a reasonable start, but only time will tell.

This week saw the event of the year here in Australia – the Melbourne Cup – similar to Ascot and they even get a days holiday in Melbourne for it. See the Melbourne Cup site  for more information about it. The number of people I saw here in Brisbane in hats was incredible and apparently Melbourne Cup day is less productive than the Christmas period.

Also the month of November sees another marketing event for a real worthy cause – Movember. The event which involves men growing a moustache throughout November to raise money for Prostate cancer and depression was first born in 2004 and started in Australia and New Zealand. It is now run in a few other countries including the UK – but the event is a nation-wide event in Australia. See the UK Movember site for more information and here are the guys I work with and their page  - their photos that they did are amusing!

I’m still working with the Australian CIM Chair to help collate and send out a regular newsletter. The CIM offerings in Australia are not as comprehensive as in the UK so I think there are plans to improve sooner rather than later. We’re getting ready to send out our second updated newsletter now, so all good and all relatively new.

Bye for now.

Zoe

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 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

Zoe Gell

The social media scene in Brisbane is rife with Facebook, MySpace and Twitter groups to join and get involved with and jobs are also advertised this way. In fact I read when I first arrived into Brisbane that it is the Facebook capital of Australia, and more recently a survey by Scientific American Mind revealed that Australians rank 17^th in a worldwide study of top social networking users. 

Digital Marketing in Australia

Australia is really embracing the digital age especially where marketing is concerned, with many companies now expecting to see digital resumes with examples of work in the marketing arena as well as candidates with their own websites and wacky ideas about how to get themselves noticed. I haven’t had to send my CV out on a baked bean can yet but it did cross my mind when I was searching for work … how can I be more creative than all the other people looking. How can I get my CV noticed?

Changing economy, changing demand

I was chatting to Tim McNamara who works for Aquent – an international creative, marketing and digital recruitment company and he believes it’s now more important than ever to stand out from the crowd when applying for positions, particularly when competition is so fierce.He can validate my remarks about the employment market and said that the employment market in Brisbane – and indeed Australia wide – has changed remarkably over the last 12 months. He also said that ‘between 2002 and 2007, Australia experienced chronic skills shortages in a number of industries, but particularly within marketing and creative. The current economic downturn, however, has seen demand for marketing and creative professionals drop significantly, and fast. For the first time in recent memory, these professionals find themselves in ample supply but relatively modest demand.’

I have heard the same from my marketing chums in the UK.

Depressing! But he did have something optimistic to say- .. ‘that the lull will not last forever; indeed, we are seeing some encouraging signs emerge as we head into 2010 and our recent Aquent Market Eye Survey indicates permanent hiring intentions are on the way up now, but in the current environment it is imperative to shine through a polished application.’Refining your strategy

He gave some advice to anyone currently looking for a job whether it is in the UK or in Australia ; ‘Emailing a generic cover letter and resume and expecting the job offers to flood in is not going to prove effective in this market; those who succeed are the ones who go that extra mile, do research on and show an interest in the company they are applying to.’

Things are starting to pick up here though with an interest rate rise predicted shortly and I am noticing  that more and more marketing jobs are starting to pop up which was not the case earlier in the year.  So all is not lost and there is a mood of optimism out here at the moment.

If you are interested in how to stand out above the rest when applying for a new job, I found a recent article that Tim wrote really useful so here is the link if you would like to read it for yourself..

 Bye for now

 Z

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