AAMI Safe Driver Test is an Insurers Gold Medal in Marketing

 The past month I've been thinking about how this campaign that AAMI has launched in Australia. What a master-stroke in every way you look at it. The big money in marketing is definitely in insurance. They spend millions trying to keep you thinking about them all year round especially when you are about to renew your insurance (that's why they always ask you when your insurance is due so that they can strike when the majority are renewing).

Car insurance is a very difficult game in Australia. The culture seems to favour the risk takers and fast and furious. This isn't good for society and it is definitely not good for an insurance company. Enter AAMI with their safe driver competition which aims to turn driver behaviour and habits on its head and gamify something that will hopefully lead to cultural change on Australian roads. Using the technical advances in everyone's smartphone, every AAMI insurance holder can participate in the competition that will score your driving. Every month for the next year they will randomly select 25 drivers that have exceeded a score of 95 and then rank them from highest to lowest score. The highest will get the first prize for that month and down to the 25th driver. To score well, you need to control your mobile usage, speed, cornering, braking and your acceleration. If you catch the bus, you can select that you were not the driver. If the passenger was using your phone you can also declare that. You don't need to have the app open, just have gps enabled.

Marketers can already see the advantages of this promotion. Participants will always be thinking about AAMI every time they drive. AAMI will get some priceless driver behaviour statistics which they assure us won't be used against us in a claim but will certainly provide useful observations about how the program has changed driver behaviour. Also, customers are more likely to avoid accidents by driving safely while participating in this year long competition. There will be endless media releases about how South Australian drivers are better than those in the West or how much Sydney drivers have become better at putting their phone away whilst driving. Already in the National Basketball League, commentators have joked about who's got the better driving score and Sydney AAMI customers will be offered seat upgrades for being the better driver when attending Sydney Kings games. You will hear a lot about AAMI in the coming year and much of it will not be advertisements reminding how lucky you are with AAMI. It's not luck, it's skill. 

Cheap dodgy products are really good (for retailers)

Four days after Christmas, I started to think about what kind of product recalls we will be hearing about in the early part of next year. Toys, clothing and generally everything has never been cheaper in Australia since manufacturing got so cheap in China (and now, Africa). As a retailer, it makes perfect sense to sell cheap, potentially risky products. And many have because now you see products in major retailers that really makes you wonder how they afford to sell those products so cheap and still make a massive profit. What really are these things made of? 

Despite being a major shipping route from China, visitors from Singapore have started to catch on that it is cheaper to get baby goods and children clothing in Australia compared to where they are from. So what happenes when a retailer sells a dodgy product? All you get is a forced recall. When you are selling thousands of lines of items at huge mark ups, a few recalls has no material impact on profit. After all, how many people who bought a product subject to a recall actually respond to a recall? We have Samsung washing machines still floating around that potentially could explode and even that risk hasn't ensured all people respond to the recall. 

So as we are always reminded, caveat emptor, or buyer beware, could never be truer than our current retail landscape. 

Why you need to watch Kogan!

There was a time I despised the name, Kogan. It was just like many other players in the business, touting their own TVs or computers. However, over the last few years, Kogan has shown that it is more than about selling used TVs.

It was probably the time when Kogan bought the failed Dick Smith brand that really got me. They relaunched the iconic electronics store a few weeks after that as an online store selling a mix of Kogan products along with what they used to sell. 

Then they started reselling Vodafone mobile plans and prepaid sims at prices that beat their provider's offeirngs that had me thinking of buying in to their stocks. Now, Kogan is worth twice the market capitalisation of Myers and is nearing their Unicorn day, when they will be worth $1 billion dollars. 

However, there are good reasons for me to think that this is not a passing fad or a house of cards like the Big Un. Firstly, it is the attention to detail of their CEO Ruslan Kogan. The fact that he sees his company as a statistics company masquarading as an online business should have people worried about how big Kogan is going to get. 

Everything that they have entered into recently has been based on their own customer analytics. Their influence is growing as they acquire new customers every day, practically giving away sim cards in exchange for access to customers' inbox. From there, they can find out whether you clicked on the email about furniture, which furniture you were looking at and when you came back through a google ad back to that same furniture, before finally buying that product. With millions signed up to Kogan, even if there are some which are duplicate customers, this means that Kogan has behaviour analytics that you are now reading about all over the news - Facebook, Putin, Cambridge Analytica, 

 The fact is, Kogan can start providing health insurance, life insurance, car insurance, financial products even mortgages in future, using their analytics to determine how much commission each of these ventures are generating and which new ventures they should pursue. So when Kogan announces they are going into the Pet Insurance business and launching Life insurance products, you have very good reason to be excited because they would have gone to these businesses with the analytics to convince them that Kogan would be good for their business. 

Whether you are Vodafone or Hollard Insurance (pet insurance), why wouldn't you let someone else get you customers, do your online marketing and retain your customers, for a reasonable commission? Or rather, why wouldn't you want to be Kogan's only provider for your type of product? 

On the Kogan website, everything is being sold on there. Much of their product range are their own brands, which means that they have a higher margin. However, there are many other products there that probably help to build people's comfort with purchasing from Kogan. Many of these products I would imagine to be a drop ship arrangement with the supplier. The downside of the Kogan experience is that it is very easy to buy something and very difficult to return products due to fault or change of mind. The talk of Amazon taking the Australian market by storm still has not eventuated and all such hype has benefited existing players like Kogan. 

I've experimented with Kogan Mobile and it is very interesting what Kogan has done with Vodafone's product.

1. They signed up with Vodafone at a time Vodafone lost many customers and spent billions of dollars expanding their mobile tower capacity. 
2. The time taken to port in to Kogan seems to be unusually fast. 
3. They have been giving away 28 day sims, which most businesses know, will lead to many long term customers who can't be bothered switching out after the 28 
4. With a few days left of your prepaid sim, every time you call someone, they remind you that your sim card is going to run out in a few days and to login to koganmobile to recharge. 
5. They started selling buy one get one free 365 day plans which I know of a few people who have taken up this offer after getting free sims to try out. 
6. Their data speeds have been very fast. 

Their shares today touched $10 for the first time before dropping back like an excited toddler. Be sure that as Kogan grows up, we'll be talking more about Kogan as a household name. 

Purchasing through Apps is so 2017 - 7 Eleven, BPme, Baskin & Robbins

With our constant attention on our mobile devices, and the fact that we are getting lazier and lazier, one emerging trend is that we have been bombarded with apps. Recently, 7 Eleven brought in an app with an innovative idea - you can lock in a petrol price from today and fill up a few days later when you do need to get fuel, at today's price. However, you need to pay first via the app even before you get to the petrol station. The advantage is cheap petrol any time you want and you don't need to line up to pay for your fuel once you are done and drive away legally. Of course this could have a cannibalising effect on their in-store purchases. For that, the 7 Eleven app also offers in store specials like free coffee, free fruit, free iced coffee and special pricing for many of their products - all redeemable via the app in store.

Then this week Baskin & Robbins enticed their mailing list to install their app with a $10 incentive to sign up. This also takes your credit card details and enables you to order your ice cream via the app. Not sure what this serves except to enable B&R to advertise to you directly via their app. 

Also launching recently is the BP petrol station app BPMe. This was promoted via AMEX and also advertised on TV as a new way of paying for your fuel. There have been teething problems for those early adopters, some didn't get their credit card charged, some got declined after they left the petrol station, others couldn't even get past unlocking the fuel pump via the app. For mothers and fathers with a carload of kids which need to come into the store every time you fill up, apps like these when they work will be very popular! 

This summer, Maccas has also decided to up their app game. They've experimented with at least three types of apps and their newest one is called Ordering if you can't find it in your app drawer. They are offering a special offer every day of the summer. Today was a $3 double cheeseburger and tomorrow is a free hash brown with every purchase. Thanks to ozbargain, here are the upcoming in-app offers - 

• Thursday, 14th December 2017 - Free Hash Brown with any burger purchase
• Friday, 15th December 2017 - Free large sundae with any large fries purchase
• Saturday, 16th December 2017 - Buy a McFlurry, get a Free Apple Pie
• Sunday, 17th December 2017 - Buy a 6 pack of Nuggets, get $2 off Hotcakes
• Monday, 18th December 2017 - Free side salad with medium or large Qtr Pounder, Filet 'o' Fish or McChicken Meal

Hungry Jacks Shake and Win app has been around for a while and still proves to be very popular. If you didn't know this is how you can get free food once a day. Free orange juices or free coffee in the morning are quite regularly offered. Free fries and free large cokes come up quite a bit as well. 

With so many business apps, which app plays have impressed you? 

Mango Heist - Nandos Admits PR Campaign

With the help of a small country town that would benefit from millions of dollars worth of free advertising, Nando's undertook a raid on one of Australia's greatest landmarks - the Giant Mango from Bowen. Under the cover of darkness, the Mango was taken, leaving the media the next day speculating how such a large monument could be "stolen" overnight. The news traveled to places that wouldn't even know where to put Sydney on the map of Australia and the other day, Nando's owned up to the PR stunt to launch their Mango and Lime sauce for their peri-peri chicken.



Nandos specialises in guerilla advertising with campaigns aimed at the national consciousness whether Australia is talking about a corrupt politician or a drug smuggler. Everything can become advertising nirvana for Nandos.

Great strategy Nandos.

How To Advertise On Superbowl for Cheap

There is the Chinese saying that where there is a crisis, there is opportunity. And when the lights went out at the Superbowl, some were ready. Ryan Northover put up a great post about how companies took to Twitter to hijack the Superbowl when the power outage became a #Superbowl gamechanger on Twitter. Companies started bidding for sponsored tweets to associate with the search words "power outage". Here are some of the examples cited on Ryan's blog.

Smart Campaign Shows Dumb Ways to Die

Whenever some great advertising campaign comes along, I spend quite a bit of time thinking about it and wondering what made it so good. So there is this song in my head for the last 30 hours which came out of a little animation on youtube. It was shared by at least five people on my facebook so I had to have a look.



Turns out that this video is actually a community safety message put out by Metro Trains in Melbourne. Makes sense because the first time I saw the video, I didn't realise it was an ad and was  thinking about how good it would be if it were part of an advertising campaign.

Was even better surprise to read a guest post on Mumbrella from one of the creators of this ad who helped to explain how the ad came to be.

"The music itself was obviously vital. We were adamant that this couldn’t be an advertising piece of music – we wanted this to exist as a song in its own right. Fair to say the composer nailed it.

The rest of the time was spent making the video as funny and likeable as possible. Not just that, but to load it with so many moments, you finish watching it and want to watch it again.

Anyone who’s ever made a commercial knows that there always comes a point when you’ve seen/heard it so many times during production that it drives you insane. But with Dumb Ways to Die, that moment never came. We’d all seen and heard it a hundred times, yet whenever it aired in the agency, people still stopped to look."

Check out the rest of the article here.

Hungry Jack's Implements Shake and Win App for Freebies

This is probably the cleverest promotion I've seen from a fast food company in years!

Hungry Jack's has come out with an iPhone App which gives away free food items every day to potential customers within 1km of any Hungry Jack's store. Once you are in range, activate the app and shake your phone to find out what the closest store is offering you. Let's say you win a Whopper, the timer will start counting down from 20 minutes during which you are able to claim your giveaway.

This is a clever app because it is not just giving away free food items.

1. Hungry Jacks is making people more consciously aware of their stores nearby. The more you have HJs in your head, the more likely you are going to stop by. 
2. By offering a giveaway with a time limit attached to it, they are turning their foot traffic, or rather, road traffic, into more potential sales. The countdown introduces a fear-of-loss aspect to the giveaway, leading to more spur of the moment purchases than they would have achieved.
3. The app also promotes the fun side of Hungry Jacks, requiring customers to shake their phone to get their deal. Potentially, this can make people more likely to talk about the offer to friends that are nearby. If you have a school near HJs you can imagine kids shaking their iphones at 3:30pm seeing whether they should drop by HJs with their friends
4. Having the app only available on iPhone means that there will be another flurry of interest when it finally gets developed and released for Android users. 

So what do you think of Hungry Jack's app strategy?

EDIT: If you have a Samsung Galaxy II or III, Galaxy Nexus or other Android phone, the Hungry Jacks shake and win app is now available for download as well! Check it out here.

6/10/12 - It seems that this promotion is over. Quite a few stores that we tried recently all said "Sorry all prized have been claimed at this location for the current time".

Salsa's Two Free Tacos for Mexican Olympic Medals

There is a recent promotion by the Australian answer to Taco Bell, Salsa's Mex Grill which takes advantage of the Olympics in a clever little way. Salsa's Facebook page has the following banner.

Check out how many likes they have now

They are offering two free tacos to every person that shows up between 2pm - 3pm at their stores on every day that Mexico wins ANY Olympics medals.

This is a clever promotion for quite a few reasons.

Their Facebook page comes alive with this each day Mexico wins a medal

First of all, when you are running a food outlet, any time you are not earning money, you are losing money. Between lunch and dinner time, your staff are being paid to wipe down the counter, talk to each other and stare blankly into space. It is better to use that time to promote your products without cannibalizing your lunch and dinner sales. Giving away two tacos is a small amount to pay for introducing your tacos to potentially a first time customer. This is especially important when you are a new kid on the block.

Secondly Salsa's is increasing their mindshare amongst the general public (that know about the promotion) by making people think about Salsa's every time they look at a medal count.

Thirdly they are linking customers' word association with Mexico to Salsa's so that next time you think about Mexican food, their shops come to mind.

Fourthly if they do get a nice long queue in front of their stores at 2pm, it will make people around their stores wonder what's going on. Not only is word being spread on social media, people in the immediate proximity of the stores will also notice a fast food chain that they might not have noticed before.

So what do you think?

EDIT Comments Now Allowed on Facebook

Facebook has just rolled out a feature that is just another step in the right direction for the social media juggernaut. They now allow you to edit comments that you make to your and other people's posts. The edit history can also be seen. The only exception is that you can't edit your original post which makes sense because you could have a thread like this: Go Miami Heat Nah, Miami sucks, go Thunder! EDIT original post Go Thunder Nah, Miami sucks, go Thunder! So do you like the new change that facebook is rolling out? You can finally go back and make corrections to those typos in your comments rather than sheepishly deleting the comment and re-posting it.

CBA Can-pain revs up for Olympics

Commonwealth Bank who was the subject of various ambush marketing campaigns when they launched their CAN campaign, has started to roll out the CAN ads with quite a clever inclusion of their upcoming sponsorship Olympics. I can admit that during my workout after seeing these ads, CAN'T suddenly came to mind.

NAB Rolls Out Honesty Campaign

Once again answering the perennial question about how to convince an audience that a bank can be trusted is the National Australia Bank's latest ad campaign "Honesty shouldn't go Unrewarded" where a lost property stunt is staged to acknowledge honest bystanders who hand in lost property in a shopping centre.

When the person hands in the lost property, their photo is taken and then re-broadcast on various digital screens around the shopping centre acknowledging their honesty, with one even superimposing the do-gooder on a supposed news item. Check it out and tell me and leave a comment if you didn't smile at this promotion. NAB, great strategy!

Nokia Australia's Amazing Everyday Begins Tomorrow

We've been told that Nokia will be going all out in promoting their Nokia Lumia phones starting tomorrow across the country with a promotion strategy that you will be hearing about very, very soon. 1 March 2012 people will start googling and coming to this site hoping to get some answers. We hope that everyone will leave their comments about what they've noticed in their city.

Nokia print advertising has already started to appear in Melbourne's TimeOut publication featuring Windows tiles which are characteristic of the Windows Phones. How big is this promotion? Let's see tomorrow... but for now, check out what's been happening for Amazing Everyday promotions in Belgium, Denmark or India..




And Nokia in Singapore


If you were wondering where you heard this "Amazing Everyday" promotion before, perhaps it was Hyundai's "Everyday Amazing" ads earlier last year?

How does a Multinational Monitor Social Media?

How does a multinational company such as Nokia watch how you behave on social media with their brand? Here is a video of a "heads up display" view of Nokia's social presence which has been set up in Nokia's headquarters in Espoo, Finland. This six screen command centre gives Nokia employees the opportunity to see how people around the world are reacting to their new product launches and where they sit in terms of social media conversations. You have to admit, that is a pretty awesome set up and one that probably your social media specialist (if you have one) ought to have running in their office.

Bonds 12 Days of Christmas

Over the Christmas holiday season, TV viewers were polarised by the BONDS Aussie remake (or rather distortion) of the 12 Days of Christmas. Here it is for the sake of argument. Ad makers say that when the audience is polarised, then they have succeeded with their ad campaign. So I guess you call this success? Well it definitely stuck in my mind, but not sure whether it made me want to buy BONDS for someone's Christmas present.. thoughts?

#smokedbywindowsphone at the CES

At the CES 2012, every promotion
1. bring in a crowd
2. leave an impression
3. send people off with a message to share

This promotion was very simple. Give away $100 to anyone who is able to update their Facebook and Twitter with the same message message faster than the Windows Phone representative. However, if you lose, you need take a mug shot holding up a sign that says "My phone just got smoked by Windows Phone". Check out the video for the execution. Great strategy!

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?