Oops Patrol - Strip Tease BTYB Bigpond

I saw Bigpond have a sponsorship on Heavy.com - which is sort of an integrated thing.

Problem is - it seems to go across ALL video content on the site. Even strip teases as the screengrab shows.

I wonder if Heavy told Bigpond this was a possibility ...

Sensis finally caves to Google

I read today that Sensis has finally decided to play nice with Google as opposed to trying to compete against them and losing badly.

http://www.bandt.com.au/news/A4/0C05B6A4.asp

It's not a bad move - back in February I touched on Sensis's problems - http://mimelbourne.blogspot.com/2008/02/how-vulnerable-is-sensis-right-now.html

When I wrote this I copped a bit of heat from some Telstra/Sensis people, which was never really clarified. It was implied what I was saying made no sense, however in hindsight I think it actually did make perfect sense ...

I raised 5 key areas they needed to sort out in 08 - my comments as of today are in bold

1. Do they maintain a search engine that cannot compete against Google let alone a MSHOO joint play ... or do they walk away from SEM or look to offer Yahoo or MSN a search distro deal across their network and rev. share?

They have walked and handed it to Google in what is no doubt a revshare similar to the above scenario.

2. How can they adapt Yellow to become more appealing to users? How do they adapt the way advertisers pay to be in Yellow given Google has changed the way many SMEs want to pay for leads

The Google alliance will probably help but doesn't solve the issue that Yellow isn't relevant in 2008

3. Can Whereis hold itself against Google Maps. What can it do better than its competitors - it's not enough to simply match them.

I think this product will be put to sleep in 09 given what has happened today. Yellow will now use Google Maps.

4. What does Sensis actually mean to consumers? Do you retire the brand or simply push it to the background?

Pushed to the background would be my bet now they have backed away from search and conceded to Goog. The media assets are under the Telstra Media stable so it appears they are moving towards the more trusted parent brand.

5. Do they walk away from search and maps and focus on mobile - an they have a pretty sophisticated offering to give the market now the walled garden approach has been abandoned.

They have walked from search and they will walk from maps. They are still making good headway with mobile and have a pretty solid first mover advantage still. However, they need wider distribution that they presently have, so this is the key challenge in this space.

"Bruce Akhurst, chief executive of Sensis, said: "This agreement combines Sensis' strong capabilities in advertising sales and local business content and Google's strong capabilities in online search and mapping technology."

If this isn't conceding defeat I'm not sure what is ...

There's no shame to losing to Google in these 2 specific areas. What Sensis/Telstra has done is a smart obvious move that makes more sense given the climate right now.

Telstra Media is borne: Milne kicks it off with creepy comment

Telstra launched their media division today. Sol pumped it up by saying it's an important part of the companies future and that content lay at the centre of what Telstra wants to achieve moving forward.

Then somebody let Justin Milne have a comment - a man with a reputation for sometimes saying the wrong things. I think today was one of them.

From the article on the heraldsun.com.au - http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24367438-664,00.html

Mr Milne said building a media-comms company involved combining the power of the media to attract customers to a telecommunication service.

"So the simple proposition is, 'Gee, I'm thinking about getting a new mobile, Telstra's got the footy, I'd better buy theirs'.

"Then we go 'great, you've bought our mobile service - we're making money from that - and now in addition to that we'd like to make money from serving you ads from selling new ringtones'."

Has anyone told the guy that consumers probably don't want to know how Telstra is trying to screw more money out of them through content and ringtones and ad targeting ...

Daft quote from Obermier re Next G ads

Remember those Next G ads with Bob Geldof, John McEnroe and Dustin Hoffman?

No ... ok.

Well anyway ... outgoing Telstra Marketing bigwig Bill Obermier has thrown in a reference to them when discussing how awesome the Next G network is with The Australian's media section.

I was a little befuddled at the rationale of using these international names, but according to Obermier Australians often don't value their own creations until they have achieved recognition overseas.

So as a result they used 3 celebrities to show the Australian public that the Next G network was robust and worth our time.

From the article:

"In an effort to gain that overseas validation, Telstra created the Next G campaign featuring the likes of Dustin Hoffman, John McEnroe and Bob Geldof -- all complaining that the mobile coverage they were getting was not as good as Telstra's. Obermeier says the ads actually tracked well with consumers, despite claims by critics that they were indulgent.

Even worse, the ads were attacked as false and misleading by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), and had to be altered.

"My biggest disappointment is that whenever we tried to really tell people about the experience, we have been shot down by the ACCC," he says.

"But the reason we did that was that there tends to be a need to have international validation -- it was way before Next G was really understood -- and that is why we had them saying this would not happen in Australia."

Are Australian's are that dumb they will accept international validation from big name celebrities who have never used the service and are being paid to read off an ad script ... it's an interesting mindset. Personally I've never looked to McEnroe or Hoffman for validation on my purchases in the consumer tech arena.

Maybe The Oz is twisting his words ... or maybe this is what he thinks works in this market.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24013493-7582,00.html