Posts Tagged ‘marketing’
Bank sugar coats price-fixing penalty as ‘rebate’
‘Spin’ (bending reality), is not a phenomenon just confined to politics. At the risk of being accused of ‘looking a gift horse in the mouth’, here’s a fine example: Yesterday I saw this letter which looks like a kind gesture from the BNZ — telling ‘small business owners’ who are credit card merchants about the […]
Killer whale submarine
From Mashable, number 1 on their list of things you could buy if you won the lottery … Made me chuckle. 1. Personal Killer Whale Submarine Price: $100,000 What does it do?: If you won the lottery, why not jump into a 17-foot watercraft that resembles a killer whale? The submarine can travel underwater at […]
Bryan Gould’s must-read on the changing face of John Key
Wow. I’m still catching up on things that popped up while I was away and largely offline this week. Read this analysis from the nothing-if-not-polarising Bryan Gould in the NZ Herald: Tougher approach hints this term is Key’s last … What is now clear is that the goal of the first term was simply to […]
Fishing for suckers
Just back from my school camp/tropical island holiday (ha!) and look what was on the fax machine: A new scam looking for victims… Fishy? Yup. Yellow Pages Group is warning its small business customers not to be sucked in by a scam that asks for their details so that they can be listed online. The […]
Applying Banksy to election advertising
This, [allegedly] from brilliant UK street artist Banksy, made me think. The sentiment (“any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, rearrange and reuse.” … “They have rearranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked […]
Fattening the lawyers
Fran O’Sullivan, writing in the NZ Herald today about the controversial Crafar farms sales process has this exactly right, in my opinion: The door is open to Shanghai Pengxin to change aspects of its original application. The OIO said yesterday this often happens during the application process as “applicants refine their applications and agree to […]
Three faces of Eve … er, John Banks
One-point-one percent blogger Cactus Kate has written a well-worth reading column for the National Business Review website with the engaging title Who is John Banks? (I’m not kidding.) I agree with this part (below) and have said something similar for years: Three sides to Banks I believe there are at least three sides to John […]
US troops building bridges with Nazi symbolism …
I spotted this on the Mother Jones news website today, and words fail me. Why is this making news now? Several Marines who were concerned about the photos contacted Mikey Weinstein (no relation), president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a nonprofit that watchdogs religious intolerance in the armed services. Their behavior, Weinstein told me, […]
Ellen DeGeneres and ‘traditional values’. Nice.
Watch this. It’s brilliant. From Ellen DeGeneres, facing a boycott threat against JC Penney from people offended she’s gay … “I usually don’t talk about stuff like this on my show, but I really want to thank everyone who is supporting me. … Here are the values I stand for: I stand for honesty, equality, […]
Louise Mensch right wing vixen part 2
I mentioned UK Tory MP Louise Mensch in July applauding her handling of a blackmail attempt. Here’s a profile from The Guardian‘s Decca Aitkenhead Louise Mensch: ‘We’re not all ogres’ which is very interesting for similar reasons, and more… We were still swooning at her brio when rioting broke out across Britain and she made […]
Attacking Mitt Romney
Look at this attack ad aimed at US Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney (below the fold) with NO mention of who its producers and publishers actually support. It’s just a smear of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (vomit) ilk. We don’t have a lot of this type of political advertising in NZ … do we? […]
Just like ol’ times — NZ Herald tells us what we’re interested in
This from the NZ Herald earlier this week: Wednesday’s article “How to get RICH — 10 steps to becoming a millionaire” (written by a freelance writer whose net worth isn’t stated) is sooo reminiscent of the boom days and the breathlessness of the pursuit of money. And we can see how that worked out. Question: […]
Losing the shine? Maybe. We’ll see.
Post mortems don’t always render a conclusive or even useful diagnosis, especially when tackling multi-faceted puzzles like an election campaign, but I nodded as I read TV3 political editor Duncan Garner’s round up of the political year … in which he shares some of the same conclusions I expressed in my pre-election post Teflon John […]
Europe: the ‘you have to act quickly’ sales pitch?
People who work in sales are familiar with the use of the ‘urgency’ or ‘impending event’ ploy to try to achieve a purchase decision. The sound of ‘I want to think about it’ is like finger nails on a blackboard to a salesman. Potential buyers use that statement or similar to put some distance between […]
