I had the pleasure of Cameron Brewer‘s company at a looong lunch at the Auckland Club a while back — a gaggle organised by David McEwen. (Thanks again, David.) He’s an ebullient, engaging guy — and pretty clean-cut, it seemed to me. Just like his well-designed billboards, one of which I spotted yesterday. I may [...]

It’s OK! I’m not going to give the top ten tips for attracting more eyeballs to your website … this is just an example of good marketing, in my opinion. What worked. Well, sort of. It started at the East Village Takeaways (in Howick, not NYC, as my recent visitors from the East Village, New [...]

This document fragment found itself to my office fax machine. At the top of the first page was a handwritten note … This is much too pointed… could even be inflammatory! TONE IT DOWN, please … don’t  waste ‘straight-talk’ on this rubbery character. – M.K. [fragment begins] == D R A F T _ O N L [...]

Lawyers for fuel giant Shell facing misleading advertising charges have told a court in Wellington that claims in their advertisement for petrol containing an additive ‘designed to take you further’ were “hyperbole and puffery” and they didn’t expect anyone to believe them. (Source: Radio NZ News) RNZ Court reporter summarising Shell’s statement of defence: “The [...]

What’s coming up for discussion with the new media/old media/social media/internet marketing debate is: how important is ‘original material’? It’s an issue not just for the Rupert Murdochs of the world: original, quality content for news media — actually any media — is expensive to produce on anything like an ongoing and quality basis. It [...]

Even more on ad-blockers I was reading over at The Unofficial Apple Weblog, about a new extension for the Safari web browser which ‘cleans’ a lot of the extraneous material from around You Tube videos. Naturally, I’m not the only one annoyed by the ‘creativity’ You Tube’s owner/operators Google engage to interrupt my viewing pleasure. [...]

A great little New Zealand short film with a message … This is the extended and enhanced version of FROSTY MAN AND THE BMX KID which was written and directed by Tim McLachlan – one of the five finalists in the international YOUR BIG BREAK film-making competition run by Tourism New Zealand in conjunction with [...]

Ok I promise not to go on about this re-touching bizzo too much, but Gee Whizz, it’s so awful that Photoshop is being used to make girls and women feel inferior to fashion models that don’t even exist. Another disgraceful display from Ann Taylor — a brand I have no respect for based on this [...]

Funny, I’ve got one of those MacBook Pro laptops like the one President Obama used to demo the new healthcare.gov website … but mine doesn’t have the Presidential seal plastered over the Apple logo. Jeez, those of us using Macs used to be ‘oddballs’, ‘outlaws’ and renegades (‘the elite’ I always used to say, which [...]

I take no satisfaction in being proven right (again) about ‘Tumbleweed’ Dean Letfus, the itinerant get-rich-quick spruiker who from time to time features in these pages. I observed earlier “He seems to flit hyperbolically from one cash flow generating event (for him!) to the next without much regard for consistency …” This afternoon a friend [...]