Colesy's Blog

The Art of Patience

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony Coles) — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 05:32:00 +0000

It's been a terribly demotivating month for me as an employee of Solar Shop Australia, (Receivers and Managers Appointed Sep 7th, 2011).

My Spider-senses saw the train-wreck coming back in January, but I did not anticipate the off-the-cliff destruction of a $140Mpa turnover business in a few short weeks since August.

It has been a difficult 5 weeks in-limbo waiting for a decision on my tenure, and indeed the future of the previously iconic solar business and the 150 people/ staff it still has on its books!

Some good bids are in and the bank will decide on how close a shave they will take, and then gift someone the business as a going concern on Monday.

As the National Marketing Manager, I have confidently traded off the established Goodwill built up by the previous business owner.

Over the last 12 months we nurtured the brand through the maelstrom of new entrants on the back of this....

Trusted Advisers
Renewable Energy Experts
Outshining Big Energy

Little did I appreciate how quickly those assets can disappear in the face of poor customer service, high staff turnover, poor quality control, and financial instability.

As a marketer we learn to adjust to changing market conditions and try to position the business for the best sustainable strategic competitive advantage in the future.

But when you have no story (ie - who owns you?, why are you in business?, what customer need do you meet?), and no money, then its difficult to keep motivated, and motivate others to vibe-up and attract the right customer that you want.

A 75% drop in website traffic doesn't help and I wouldn't say the call centre staff are too worried about the bank-up of incoming calls!

That said, we still have 1,000 customers waiting to be installed and a good offering for those customers still wanting to switch to home solar pv.

And electricity prices are still going up.

The challenge Monday when the new owner is announced will be how to re-ignite the spark andestablish a culture that can make the business what it was, and rebuild it on a commitment to customer service excellence and pv/ energy efficiency expertise to put up a strong offering in a more competitive and nimble renewable energy market.

But we all like a challenge.

Wish me luck!

Still avoiding this social media thing...?

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony Coles) — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 01:15:00 +0000

Great infographic on social media's growth and continued traction. Oh for those charts from the 90's though on potential audience sizes in the 100's of thousands...! This interwebs thing will never take off.

Source: The Growth of Social Media: An Infographic

thanks @rexster

I'm back

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony Coles) — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 00:07:00 +0000

It's taken a while, but I've got my name back. Those auto-renewal tools are useful after all!

Delighted to to see David Armano solve one of my challenges this week with a great graphic highlighting the differing cultures within business, and how they affect their embrace of social media (and environment that allows them to flourish).

Oh how I ache for open...

A sad reflection on human progress

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony Coles) — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 13:14:00 +0000

The more things change...

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony Coles) — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 13:49:00 +0000

It's been a while since I had the head space to put some random thoughts into some structure for this blog. A lot of energy has gone into absorbing the intricacies of the new job, and working out my place in the mix there.

I must say though, it does appear that the groundswell of inter-connectedness facilitated by this little thing called the internet is starting to have some impact on societal behavioural change.

It was 17 short years ago (1993) that I snuck into my accountants office and asked him to set up a company called Online Sales & Marketing Pty Ltd. I hated Stats at Uni, and IT was scribbling some pencil on a punch card to get a drawing come out on some green paper.

I didn't know what HTML was and TCPIP was a DOD secret.

What I did know though, was that communications was going to change, and that the ad agency I was working for then in Adelaide as Director of Media was not going to teach me what I wanted to know.

So off I choofed to Sydney to play some friends and work with a direct marketing crew called Hero Communications, who just happened to be working with some clients by the name of Apple, Sumantec and Acer Computers. Now Apple back then was not the Apple we know today, but even then, the brand had built up an envious following amongst the designer crew.

Online Sales & Marketing sat in the background and didn't see much action until I returned to Adelaide in 1996 and helped Leo Burnett connect their Adelaide and Sydney offices with the Chicago head office to take advantage of this thing called an email. Around the same time some guys tweaked some funny programming code that talked to computer operating systems to make a words appear a bit prettier on the screen through a thing they called a browser. They nicked the name off Cisco (balls) and so was born Netscape, and with it the Tech VC world (Kleiner Perkins) and Silicon Valley (Mountain View California).

There was an Adelaide company called Camtech who were running some "Internet" training (and who built a nice little e-commerce platform), a geek by the name of Simon Hackett was showing pictures of his toaster over a modem, Marty Gauvin was building a server farm at Ngapartji, and a little rort lining the pockets of some Rundle East landlords called the Co-operative Media Centre was putting SA at the forefront of the tech boom in Australia.

We had EDS coming to town and worldy IT gurus working with the late Phil Eastick at the Department of Information Technology and Administration Services on an IT services strategy (out of which the Government directory sa.gov.au was born), and a grungy crew called Virtual Artists were putting webcams on the street.

Online Sales & Marketing became Empire Ridge SA in late 1996 thanks to a JV with 40+ staffed Melbourne-based production/ creative services company Empire Ridge. Shortly followed by entrepreneurial lesson No.1 with their subsequent involuntary administration six months later putting off any planned buy-out, and dealing with the daunting prospect of trading out of establishment costs in a small SA market.

But battle on we did, and the three became 6, and six twelve, until 4 years later, the $1M t/o Empire Ridge was ranked No 7 in an Australian table of Top digital agencies by trade publication B&T in 2001.

Now lots of people came and went with Empire Ridge and I'll be the first to admit, I wasn't the best manager of all things businessy, (ie - people, money, processes and paperwork), but by heck we gave it a crack. Video banner ads, flash games, database-driven sites, building our own CMS, Email marketing tools, survey tools, intranet, and ad-serving tools. CD's, tvc's interactive games, screenshows, shopping carts, online banking, travel services, medical libraries, real estate, membership organisations, tourism, Government, automotive and Wine.

We had a ball. And with the extra space not needed since the ER Melbourne fallout, we had plenty of space for table tennis, archery and some Aussie Rules circle work around the office.

A little thing called instant messaging came and went (into Skype), Director" become Macromedia became Adobe. Internet Explorer 1, 2, 3 and god help us 4. Netscape became AOL and out of the ashes came Firefox.

The Google boys had just left Uni to make a noise, and Mr Zuckerburg had probably just left pre-school!!

All this around the time of the boom-bust bubble, and certainly from memory around the time a nice young bean counter Peter Williams (@rexster) was sporting short hair and a suit.

Telstra had no Big Pond.

Yahoo was no Ya-Who?

Amazon was known as a rain forest, not a book store.

Looksmart was smart and they, with Alta Vista and Yahoo, were where you went online to look for things on the inter-web thingy.

And the idea of a blank screen with a search box in the middle of it finding you information held in computers around the world was the pipe-dream of a couple of Stanford boys and Web 2.0 was still very 1.0.

Meanwhile the toil of my first ten pioneering 'digital' years took its toll on my earthly vessel and I fell into a large physical and mental crater whilst being chased by a big Black Dog that required a bit of a sabbatical.

After toying with changing the whacky messed up world all by myself, (with the help of a few Himalayan Mystics and North American Indian Chiefs), I fell back into the comforting arms of digital media as Head of Strategy and Digital at Starcom Media.

Boy was it hard to love again.

Another flurry of innovation and newness (in a beige-looking Government media buying way), I jumped back out into start-up land and cracked open digi agency v2.0.

The plan was simple. Learn from my mistakes from before, partner with some others, build up a value proposition for someone to want to buy the business. I had the buyer lined up. Moved into some new digs. Did some cool work.

And then the arse fell out of the markets around the world. Investors shrunk into their shell.

I wasn't enjoying what I was doing with my days, (ie - too much bean counting and not enough creating new things.).

Count down to business sale, exit strategy set, and on with a new path involving some opportunities in China and a thing called the mobile phone!

Exit stage left, no business in China unless you marry a national, and I couldn't see my kids wanting to live under a cloudy sky for my own indulgences (Tongren Lu Shanghai)

Client-side I go. Tourism and travel. more innovation and change. Not so much digi-evangalists as digi-evaders. Monopoly = Inertia, so off I head once more into the unknown.

Now then the wife, who wasn't my wife (then). Well, who was my wife, but we weren't a couple. Well, we were a couple, on and off through all this post Empire Ridge thing, but we didn't live together. Well we we weren't a couple, we werequite clearly separated and were actually just parents of shared children.

Well the two of us got back together in the end and lived happily ever after. Well nearly, but thats a whole other story...

The real essence of this blog is that the more things change, the more things stay the same.

I want an iPad and I don't know why.

I love the iphone, not for what Steve Jobs (and his army of Apple fanatics) had to do to make it a reality, but for its influence on the human meme. Its influence on inter-connectedness and coming together that has not been possible in an ever expanding, dis-connected human race.

The irony of the geek-built digital era, and the passing information age is that it is empowering individuals to express their feelings and be real again after an era of corporate facades and manufactured brands.

Yes there's still the unconscious alter of the mighty dollar driving us all, but slowly, very slowly, a new phase of humanity is emerging where the collective consciousness of 'mankind' will eventually outweigh the inertia of Government bureaucracy, and the externalised greed of corporations, to eventually link individuals into a homogeneous race of compassionate beings, connected with the pulse of nature, and responsive to the feedback of its limited systems.

A way off yet I know.

But hey, I love a challenge.....

Generational Change

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony Coles) — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 04:55:00 +0000

Aside from the joy of being able to feel apart of this wave of interest passing over Australia's twitterverse over the past 24 hours thanks to the events surrounding #spillard2010, I can't help but take a step back and see how the world is both positively and negatively affected by the adoption of new technology.

Firstly congratulations to Australia's 1st female Prime Minister Julia Gillard, and commiserations to Kevin Rudd, the 1st Labor leader to be ousted by his own party in his first term. Now that's some piece of history.

The pace of this change of leadership was observed with awe by traditional political journalists, indeed even the sitting members of Parliament who were amased at the pace of the moves.

On the positive front, the flourishing of creativity (refer above) and the removal of geographic boundaries were great thing to be a part of.

On the negative side, how did this happen? The change of leader of the country, elected by the people, without a vote by the people.

Who does democracy serve?

I honestly believe KRudd was a victim of his own "control" meme. A "Labor" man who despised Labor's factions. Surrounding himself with fresh, young, un-seasoned political advisors, (http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/national/more-pay-for-kevin-rudds-staff/story-e6freuzr-1111118617997).

There's a change sweeping across the developed world alright.

Swept along by the inter-connected web -the human meme takes form.

Reflection

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony Coles) — Thu, 13 May 2010 03:52:00 +0000

Am taking up a new role with the Solar Shop on Monday and have had a bit of time to do all the things we never have the time for in the hurly burly of the work week.

Its been an eye opener.

From the mundane of sorting out the tax with the accountants, to the serious business of moving house.

A new sports season for the kids - Rach Netball, Sam and Gabe Soccer.

Sam won his school and District High Jump, and got to experience the big wide world of competitive sports at the State School championships.

I even snuck in a walk around the Hills Botanical Gardens, and Morialta Conservation Park.

And dropping the folks off to the airport for their little cruise from HKG to SIN via Melbourne and Perth.

But the highlight I must say would be the wedding of my good friend and 'brother' Stephen Galpin to his partner Astrid. Performed in full Indian ceremony (albeit shortened from the traditional 3-days to 3-hours!) at the Shantarasa yoga centre by his Gurudev, Mahamandaleshwar Swami Nityananda.

And the Guru's sentiments for the day will be carried forward in everyone's hearts..."May all beings live in Peace and Contentment". Om Shanti Shanti Shanti.

Now, off to work I go...

Media spin, does it matter.

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony Coles) — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 00:02:00 +0000

State election time in South Australia and the only truly accurate prediction about the likely outcome is...that no one really cares!

Such is the movement of both main political parties to the middle ground, and the rise of the independents and the Greens that no-one really knows who's going to win, and everyone knows Mike Rann and his crew are on the nose after 8 years.

One positive to come out of all this is a definite maturing of one of the 'old media' News Ltd, with their online coverage.

I'd like to see the stats about visitation and time spent with the site, (and the ROI payback from the Advertiser's point of view as to whether they can recover the cost of covering it with advertising!), but from an online media consumer point of view, its done the job for me.

Integrated Twitter accounts from Premier Mike Rann (8290 followers), Opposition leader Isobel Redmond (433 followers), and resurrected tv journo Kelly Nestor (252 followers) show that they're 'connected', but the numbers of Twitter followers, site user sessions and comments certainly doesn't add up to the 600,000-odd 'readers' of the paper that they can still sell over-priced ads into in their print world.

The attempted video coverage has been a good learning curve for the paper. Somewhat clumsy and still too long for our poor broadband speeds, (where's that issue gone activists?). It does prove the popularity of this medium for communicating emotionally (remember tv?) but does also highlight the need for quality production values, narrative and editing. All which cost money and need a volume audience to recover costs from.

So back we go to the paper to make a few bucks and maybe, if you've got content like the Wall Street Journal and a few MySpace (remember them) music clips you might, just might get someone to pay for online content!!

From the growth in local online media (http://twitter.com/TeamAdelaide/, http://twitter.com/AdelaideBuzz, http://twitter.com/WHOadelaide, http://twitter.com/Kryztoffmag, http://twitter.com/AdelaideNews, http://twitter.com/adelaidetweet and the ubiquitous http://twitter.com/glamadelaide by http://twitter.com/kellynoble), we've plenty of ways to get our info today. Right now. And its only relevant for a second.

As I termed it in a seminar 5 years ago, its the ME Media generation and the old media still will make the money from the old ad revenue model. But the relevance and the importance, (ie - the connection) is ours.

Its up to your BRAND to strengthen the value offering and make me your best advocate so I (or a thousand others like me) can influence our networks. (150 is the max each of us can truly influence according to Seth Godin and Dunbar's law! sorry Mike)

The website features Health, Water, Economy, Law & Order and Trust in its tabloid-ish lead banner.

How about transparency, integrity, relevance, delivery, empowerment, value and PUBLIC service and then we might pay attention, whatever the stobie pole poster has on it.

My money is on no real answer on who has won until next weekend when the record number of postal votes come through the system.

A hung parliament might mean only a little more gets done in the next 4 years as has been achieved in the last 8.

Did someone say 'talk to the hand' Minister ?...

;-)

What's that Buzz?

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony Coles) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 08:19:00 +0000

Great session with Buzz Numbers this morning reviewing their Buzz Monitors tool box for monitoring (and monetizing) the white noise of online conversations.

Within a simple, intuitive dashboard (a given these days), the tools allow clients or their agencies the ability to track what's being said about them across the inter-web, in chat forums, social media sites and tweets.

The coolest thing I saw was a 'heat map' interface, called "Location Explorer", that shows graphically geo-locations of the hotspots for conversations about keywords and brands.

With a sweet little algorithm based on page/ user visits and cpm metrics, the tool also gives you a 'monetary' value to all the conversations. ie - if you had to pay for a banner ad on this page you'd be up for X".

It also lets you identify key influencer's and rank important sites.

But as with all research, this is still a tool to pull in all the data out there (think Google bots crawling the internet to find people talking about your brand), into a structure that presents that data as information, (based on your filter/ lens), which the snappy Buzz Numbers coders and designers have then turned into useful insights (ie - pretty pictures).

The key thing though is that this all still needs a human noggin to analyse the insights and consider them within the context of a businesses plan, and THEN work them into a marketing strategy that can best utilise the insights to some how achieve organisational goals.

Only then maybe should you work out what to promote on your FAN page or Twitter account?

Nice toys I must say, very impressed, and I'll certainly be talking to a few clients soon about running it over their brands out their in web-land.

Now just which clients out their want to actually LISTEN to their customers (or potential customers) is another matter!!

;-)

Colesy

Living beyond our means

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony Coles) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 01:26:00 +0000

Seems the GFC did little to dent the US of A's denial of living beyond its means...

Fast Company

Digital + Direct Marketing + Social Media

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony Coles) — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 03:03:00 +0000

Nice presso from Phil Smith (Idea Garden) @phillipsmith for ADMA peeps in #Adelaide

Social Media meets Direct Marketing

View more presentations from Phillip Smith.