Perceptric Forum

OfficeWorks - the Rip Off

Chris Gilbey — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 12:51:00 +1000

My Fuji Xerox printer has been on the fritz over the last couple of weeks. I needed to print a letter so I went to the Office Works in the local town to print it. I saved the letter onto a memory stick to make it easy.

OfficeWorks wanted to charge me $5.50 to download the letter from the memory stick to one of their PC's! And then charge me for the printing on top of that! What a total rip off!

Instead I went to an internet cafe a couple of blocks away and got the two page letter printed for fifty cents...

Back to the printer - this is another rip off. I have had the Xerox laser printer for a couple of years. It cost originally about $600 which was a pretty competitive price at the time. So now it appears that the ink cartridges need to be replaced. And boy are they expensive! About $170 per cartridge. And there are four cartridges...

The moral of the story seems to be that it is substantially cheaper to buy a new printer when the first cartridge gives up the ghost. This is why we have landfill overflowing with e-pollution in this country....

Presidential ROI

Chris Gilbey — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 13:48:00 +1000

I just came across a really interesting observation.

Someone has compared the amount of name frequency in Google searches and the amount of money spent in candidate marketing in the US Presidential campaign.

The answers are quite astonishing. The whole article and a graph are here.

What it indicates is first that Ron Paul and Hilary Clinton are pretty much tied at #1 in search. Not surprising is that Ron Paul has spent almost nothing and Clinton has spent a huge amount already.

Obama has a much lower level of brand interest, it appears.

And on the Republican side, Mitt Romney has outspent them all.

Check out the article.

Facebook

Chris Gilbey — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 08:45:00 +1000

OK so I finally broke down and joined Facebook. And for the last few days have been creating my page, and 'poking' people and generally trying to get my head around it.

Basically it appears to be no different from MySpace - it is blogging basics but with the ability to have a neural network of known friends that appear on your homepage.

Amazing that it can be that simple.... and that powerful

The Big Screens

Richard McKinnon — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 09:02:00 +1000

Phil was at Costco in Culver City yesterday. Shopping for a big screen TV. "We got a 52" already but I think I'll take that out, and put it into the bedroom and install a 60" on the wall." Plasma probably. That's several K. But Costco have a $499 deal for a 32"LCD on the website.

Big screens prices are plummeting and the demand is explosive. Phil isn't alone. American consumers want the big screens. Price drops get them drooling. There's big growth building here. And some previously no names; Olevia and Sceptre; could be big winners.

But after you get the screen what next? HDTV. Internet hookups. All coming as the hardware mandates more content.

Vquence Debuts

Richard McKinnon — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 09:23:00 +1100

It's no surprise we like video. It's the future. So good news. Today we announce a heavyweight contender launching into the video arena. We know it remakes content on the web. Why? Chris Gilbey founded it with a very fine technology thinker, Silvia Pfeiffer.

The company went public today in Sydney and Santa Monica. Read the release. Remember the name.

Vquence remakes Internet Video
Video Startup Launches.

Sydney, Australia/Santa Monica,Ca

Australian start up video search, socialization and advertising company, Vquence, commences business today at the heart of the Internet hotspot, video, promising to remake the web experience.

“The Internet is now driven by video. The video quotient of any business or consumer communication: the VQ:is becoming the key factor of success” said co-founder and CEO, Chris Gilbey,

“Vquence helps solve revenue problems for content owners. We make finding videos easy for consumers. We hasten content distribution.”

Vquence provides a one stop shop for content owners to monetize video to consumers under one seamless umbrella. Vquence has a patent pending for an instantaneous approach to clickable video.

“Vquence’s technology and business model turn today’s video assets and costs into online reach and revenue. Consumers, publishers and content owners are united by Vquence” Gilbey noted.

The basis of Vquence is a technology leading video search engine. Users easily discover relevant video content. An authoring toolset then permits easy creation of a playlist of thin sliced videos (or ‘vquence’). The vquence is presented through a specialised video player. This playlist will play in any Web page. Users can cut and paste the code for their vquence into a blog or web page. Dynamic insertion by Vquence places ads into the vquence, based on relevance.

“Vquence boosts social networks.” Gilbey said, adding “Consumers find and aggregate video, then share it widely. They get paid. Content creators and publishers are rewarded from embedded ads in the vquences their communities share.

Initial seed funding to establish Vquence came from Information City Australia Limited, a Melbourne innovation incubator.

“This changes the market dynamic. Consumers become legitimate distributors of the video asset rather than pirates. In contrast, old school DRM brakes distribution” Gilbey said, continuing:

“Vquence gives consumers the ability to opt in or out of ads. Advertisers are getting smarter and making their messages more personal. Passive consumers no longer exist. It’s a community driven outlook now – with the emergence of almost a hive mind. The wisdom of crowds is a powerful market force.”

Vquence was formed in July 2006 by Gilbey and Dr Silvia Pfeiffer, a former CSIRO research scientist. Gilbey is a long time entrepreneur in the content and technology arenas, a former CEO of Lake Technology who consulted to Dolby Laboratories for two years on a global basis.

Dr Pfeiffer is a leading authority on Digital Media Analysis. During a seven year stint at CSIRO she led the team that developed Annodex, an open source platform for video distribution, and her continuing research over the last decade has deepened industry’s understanding of how to apply algorithms to analyse and mediate video content.

“Vquence takes the World Wide Web immeasurably closer towards a Web of Videos, where people build communities around video content published anywhere on the Web. But, uniquely, Vquence guarantees the original content owner will not lose an audience or their content.” Dr Pfeiffer noted.

“Video is the centre of the internet’s next big leap forward. Vquence will be one of the key accelerators.” Pfeiffer said.

The Vquence R&D team is internationally spread and headquartered in Sydney. The company expects to announce a slate of initial customers that includes media and content companies in both the US and Australia.

“Vquence lets consumers click through video and go beyond. Previously, all you could do was click to a video. Vquence is transformational. Vquence gives media publishers the powerful tools of comprehensive, easy search of all their video assets, and then super-distribution.” Dr Pfeiffer concluded.

About Vquence. Vquence is a video search, socialization, and advertising company that has a comprehensive model of monetizing video for content owners to consumers. Demonstrations of the technology are being conducted under NDA. The Vquence website has more information on the company. www.vquence.com. The company has offices in Sydney Australia and Santa Monica Ca.

Fries with your Video ?

chrisbroad — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 20:25:00 +1100

McDonald's taps into "you" craze.

The move by the world's biggest restaurant chain to feature customers on its packaging is the latest proof of the importance marketers are placing on so-called user-generated content like the homemade videos and blogs that rule the Internet on sites such as social network MySpace and Google Inc.'s video-file sharing site YouTube.

"People are really interested in reality," McDonald's Chief Marketing Officer Mary Dillon said in an interview, pointing to the rise in popularity of reality television shows. "It's about real people connecting with our brand."

"They've really tried to be on the cutting edge of change and the cutting edge is viewed as user-generated content," said Mark DiMassimo, chief executive of New York-based ...

Viacom and You Tube.

Richard McKinnon — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 08:03:00 +1100
Viacom hit YouTube with a billion dollar law suit this week. Summer Redstone's other property, CBS did a deal with YouTube this week. Deduction? Viacom is aiming to squeeze Google for cash to carry Viacom show video. But if they don't? Then Viacom will suffer, denied access to the biggest video marketplace in the world. Video and TV are making the same mistakes as music did. Threatening rather than dealing. Complaining rather than acting.

And the biggest laugh? Viacom CEO apparently doesn't like their "professional" content side by side with amateur hour. Dope. That's what makes their stuff look so good.

Plus, side by side professional, amateur, drama, actuality, reality, news, history, music, is the way people consume on the net and in real life now. He has worked that out yet? There must be a vanity issue. Or. He must be middle aged.

BBC Does YouTube Deal

Chris Gilbey — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 08:39:00 +1100
The BBC has cut a deal to license some programming to YouTube. And John Batelle talks about the Google numbers here. And here at Tech Crunch there is some more detailed analysis of the content deals that GooTube are doing or not...

5 SUCCESS FACTORS TO BUILDING BRANDS IN ASIA

chrisbroad — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 18:45:00 +1100

Is been said that companies need be 'consistently inconsistent' to win in Asia.

Based on Grey Global Group's latest Eye on Asia research, Chris Beaumont, the company's chief strategy officer/Asia Pacific, identified five key factors that are essential for creating and building brands that connect with the region's consumers. Together they work in tandem to increase marketing ROI for business.

1. Value(s) Creation: Brands are moving quickly from a focus on functional excellence and style to a focus on more culturally relevant meanings. New brand ideas will emerge increasingly from the cultures of Asia, in fact, possibly more so than from any corner of the world, to shape the dynamic Global Culture within which we all participate. We are all in the business of creating cultural brands.

At another level, every branded product and service provides a perceived value. Too often, the word value means cheap. It should mean satisfaction. Marketing value should not be synonymous with price promotions. But marketing will have to be more skillful to produce better results from slimmer margins and budgets.

2. InfoLust: By enabling unparalleled access to information, technology is already changing consumer expectations, bringing more transparency and accountability to society. In the era of choice, there is lust to know the best price, the quickest card, the healthiest option ?immediately. "How do I make the right decision?" The power that marketing departments typically had in terms of being able to manage customer expectations will disappear. Marketers need to feed the thirst for knowledge and to use information wisely.

Information, knowledge and communication are the very heart and sinew of the newly emerging post-industrial societies of Asia. The focus of all such societies is always on those areas and activities which produce new wealth. Here, the idea is king. In this sense, we can hypothesise that, with web 2.0 communities, we will see innovation overload as the natural extension of information overload.

3. Being Brand: Successful brands must be based on a point of view their owners care about deeply and be backed by the delivery of a powerful product experience. The marketing imperative is to understand and improve the consumer to product connection. Brands which focus on this connection, like Apple, see the consumer experience at the centre of their innovation process and are leaders as a result.

4. Operational Efficiency and Innovation: As a first step for meaningful innovation, brand building needs to be recognised as a key success factor in both business strategy and operational excellence. To win this recognition, marketers need to accept the increasing use of metrics and ROI focus for marketing initiatives; to quote John Quelch at Harvard, " Today's boards want CMO's who can speak the language of productivity and ROI and are willing to be held accountable. Today's boards don't need CMO's who have creative flair but no financial discipline. They need ambidextrous marketers who offer both."

Consumer research and dialogue has only one critical objective: to improve marketing decisions. In Asia's new commercial environment, marketing will, through technology, move more toward being a science. However, as in music, modern technology gives the composer a greater degree of control and allows creativity to flourish. Successful marketers will need to utilise consumer research to uncover the art in science.

5. Segmentation: While we consider massclusivity, so we need to think of the 'long tail'; there are riches in those niches. We also need to think in a different manner about how people communicate and absorb messages; communications architecture will become more important for all brands as we better understand the interplay between the type of content that is appropriate for the specific context or medium that's being used.

The nature of the communications model has moved on. It's not about the 'new media' but rather how to employ new marketing principles recognising that the old marketing communications paradigm of interruption will no longer suffice. Marketers must think differently about the ''F''-word: Fragmentation.

Rio Tinto and BHP Bid For Alcoa

Chris Gilbey — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 06:32:00 +1100
Two Australian companies, Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, are in the process of making bids around the US $40Billion mark for Alcoa according to this story.

In the flat world of a global economy what changes? Well it would put a lot of focus on the Australian Stock Exchange globally, and would see Australia's economy being even more centred around resources....