Private Health Insurance competition heats up

I am not sure whether this is really the case but from an individual's point of view, it seems that the private health insurance wars have started to heat up a little. Here are a few anecdotal points

• Not too long ago, Medibank was offering a free movie ticket at my workplace to anyone who wants to get a quote from them about their private health insurance
• This was closely followed by MBF / BUPA who set up a little van out the front of the car park and arranged for consultations with staff, offering Coles/iTunes vouchers of $20. 
• Medibank sent a nice pamphlet recently to advertise their new mi Health medibank advice line
• They then followed up with a survey sent to presumably all their members asking whether they read through the pamphlet and whether this made them more or less likely to stay with Medibank or see them as providing value added services. 

This is quite interesting as I had recently wondered whether private health insurance companies could do more for their members. I look at examples overseas where health insurance providers would even organise parties etc or exclusive screenings for their members. Things like that.

Maybe that is a future strategy someone is willing to look at? I know it would sway one particular 30 year old private health insurance holder.

How to Effectively Use Foursquare Checking In

I and millions of others on this big blue planet have wondered, what's the point of Foursquare? I think its only very recently that checking in has been adapted to the marketing world. Nokia came up with an awesome little idea combining a vending machine with social media tool Foursquare.

The Nokia Gift Machine from 1000heads on Vimeo.

Will this get you to check in?

Who's Australia's most recognised Group Buy player? Scoopon Cudo Jumponit or Spreets

An interesting comparison between the searches mad by internet users in Australia show the growth in popularity of group buying in the past year and which players have taken off in "name recognition. 

From the graph below, we can see that in WA and South Australia, there is one clear leader - Scoopon which gets more than double the searches than their competitors. It is interesting to note that Scoopon started in the Eastern States but since it spread over to WA and SA, it seems that the website has overtaken its Eastern State counterparts. This could be because of the stronger word of mouth effects in smaller cities. What isn't shown is that the most popular search term has been "perth scoopon". 

This is certainly a trend and comparison worth watching in the coming months. I've noticed Cudo increasing in advertising on tv so one would expect an increase in cudo searches in the future.. 

Click to Enlarge

We're watching Virgin Australia relaunch

It's always a very interesting experience to watch a company rebrand themselves and see how that rebranding impacts on the consumer's conscience. Today Virgin Blue rebrands itself as Virgin Australia, with the website redirecting to virginaustralia.com.au and the new homepage looking much more upper class as if everyone just got a seat upgrade. Purely intentional as Virgin Australia aims at the business travellers who have always looked at Qantas as their preferred carrier.

The advertisement to be screened tonight across Australia has been released on Facebook with 218 likes and it certainly brings out the vibrancy that Virgin is clearly gunning for with the relaunch. Entitled "now you're flying" gives people the impression that Virgin Australia is the right choice, as well as implying that Virgin Blue in a sense has grown up. Take a look...



I would be really interested to see how the Virgin lounges and the flights themselves "feel" after this relaunch and see how the whole rebranding is carried out on the business end of the company. What are your thoughts?

Why Myer China MyFind site won't survive

You may have all heard about the Myer online store which they are trialling to compete with the likes of CatchoftheDay. The website is myfind.com and you may have probably visited it once but probably completely forgot what the website address was. My prediction is that this website will bomb out and Myer will conclude that online shopping does not work for them however, there are reasons why this would be a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

From a cursory glance at the website we can see some reasons why it will not succeed

1. There is a lack of mindshare amongst online communities about the website. 
2. Online shopping is mostly about price and nothing is standing out demanding that you buy it on the myfind.com website. 
3. There isn't from what we can tell any social media engagement by Myer
4. The news about myfind.com has completely dried out and the spike in web traffic probably has flattened out by now
5. Many of you will probably stumble over this website because myfind.com is not only obscure to Myer customers (intentionally) but also to the general online community and google searches (unintentionally). 

So don't be surprised if Myer's venture into online sales falls apart soon but remember it could have been helped.

Best Superbowl ad 2011

The best part of the Super Bowl each year for many avid creatives around the world is to see what top advertising dollar buys you. One of my favourite ads in this year's Superbowl mix was the VW advertisement



You can see 20 of the Soperbowl ads at the Mumbrella blog here. Check out especially the Doritos ad.

Great Synergy - Nokia and Burton Snowboards

Are you ready for it? This winter somewhere in Europe, you are about to see what a Nokia phone and a snowboard can do together. I was reading a blog by one of the product managers I met in London in August and felt that this would be of interest to people who get excited about marketing. I've extracted a part of his blog entry with the link to the rest below. 

"I didn’t come at this trying to find a way to work with Burton and only them. Truth be known, I have been snowboarding for some years now and my mix of brands includes Foursquare (arguably Burton), Bonfire, Lib Tech, Dakine and also the ubiquitous Burton (a pair of Mission bindings in case you’re wondering).

What attracted me to Burton was a combination of factors. Compared to Nokia they’re a small company, but there are a lot more similarities than differences.

Like Nokia, Burton was a business that was started with a pioneering spirit and a willingness to bet the farm on a new, uncharted product territory.

Also like Nokia, Burton benefits by having a belief in innovation and driving its category forward.  (As an aside, it may sound odd for me to claim innovation as a core belief of Nokia – but this is one of the many challenges of being a marketer in the company at the moment. We invested around 40 billion euros in R&D over the last two decades and registered no less than 11,000 patent ‘families’; we just haven’t been great at telling that story).

Both brands have a truly global reach and had built up a global community of fans, critics and others somewhere in-between. In other words, people we can engage with.

As part of the presentation there were some initial thoughts of how the two brands could work together.  These ranged from a mobile Web TV app to showcase their tons of content through to an idea that we called “Board’s eye view” (NEVER underestimate the power of a pun in a presentation….); a project that would allow you to see a rider’s journey through the half-pipe using the technology found in one of our devices; gyroscope, GPS, cameras, wi-fi and so on.

The Board’s Eye View project was initially a joining of some dots.

Dot 1: The successful Push N900 project had produced a skate hack, which brought together the physical skate world and its virtual gaming world cousin; literally identifying a skateboarder’s trick (from a list of pre-programmed tricks) and assigning a score for a successful Ollie (or whatever).

Dot 2: More and more the work I’m doing is about continual consumer engagement, which involves communities doing something that they are passionate about with our devices and then getting their deserved kudos for doing it.

Dot 3: We were looking for like-minded brands to partner in our marketing in 2010 and 2011.

Dot 4:  We had a powerful device coming to market (the N8) that’s packed with technology and we needed to demonstrate that.

Dot 5: On a purely selfish level, Helsinki had been -20c for the last two months and I needed to get out of the cold and darkness. And hell, if Vermont was good enough for Ben & Jerry’s then it was going to work for me."

Read the rest here.