Miltary propoganda is almost always executed well (pardon the pun).

The Bolsheviks had some great artists working for them.

Uncle Sam is an icon of Course:

Even Volkswagen, one of the most-admired advertisers in history got its start in NAZI propaganda:

And us Aussies were pretty handy at the poster too, although why would you want to go and fight in a trench with all these hotties waiting at home:

Fitting then, that the Israeli military have done a pretty good job putting together their YouTube channel. You need to be over 18 and logged in to view the content, but once you’re in, they present a pretty good case for what they’re up to. Allowing the world to see ‘Hamas members’ loading ‘rockets’ onto the back of a ute from the sights of an Israeli helicopter gunship is a compelling bit of propoganda. Of course, they won’t show you the attacks that miss their target (stand by for the Hamas channel, coming soon) and you have to treat each video in context as a biased historical document, but it’s a sign of the times that the Israeli military are using social media to give credence to their cause. They need to be careful though, they’re not allowing comments on their videos, and like any corporation who tries to control the dialogue, their message is likely to backfire on them. It won’t be long before Palestinians start using social media to show their side of the story. Propganda can backfire badly even when you think you’re in control - throw your message open to the world and who knows what will happen.

I saw this sandwich board on the street in Adelaide a few weeks ago. I don’t need to write an essay on it, just reflect on the thought processes involved, and the marketing message behind it.

I’m writing a book about small business marketing. It would be called ‘The Small Business Marketing Bible’, except this guy already took that title. There are already quite a few books on the subject, hell, there’s even a dummies version, but no-one seems to have written a great book from an Australian perspective with an up-to-date and truly insightful section on online marketing as far as I can tell. Sure, there’s plenty of chatter on the Interwebs and lots of blogs about the subject, but I can’t find anything in print that acts as a complete, effective guide full of case studies, professional ‘theory’, practical advice, interviews and, gasp, research on ALL aspects of small business marketing.

Having run a number of my own successful small businesses over the last decade, and with an entire family all doing the same (my brother runs a cafe, my parents have built and sold about 5 vastly different successful small businesses in their time and virtually all of my other friends and relatives either own, or work in small businesses) I’ve got a wealth of practical experience to draw on, not to mention the knowledge I’ve gained from studying marketing at uni and working with and consulting for the marketing departments of some of the largest companies and organisations in Australia.

I’m still very much at the research stage but I think my table of contents is almost complete. I haven’t included the topics in each chapter, but a basic overview would be:

1. Overview
2. Initial Research
3. Location
4. Defining Your Brand
5. Writing a Marketing Plan
6. Your Marketing Budget
7. Your Website
8. Advertising and Promotion Opportunities
9. Word of Mouth Marketing
10. Public Relations
11. Networking
12. Knowing and Growing Your Customer Base
13. Marketing is Everyone’s Department
14. Distribution Channels
15. Creating Partnerships
16. Franchising
17. Marketing vs. Sales
18. Measuring
19. Case Studies and Marketing Tips
20. Tips for Specific Businesses
21. Finding Inspiration
22. Further Reading
23. Example Documents, Forms and Letters

If you have any ideas or initial feedback I’d love to hear it!

Three thoughts:

1. One of the gifts I bought myself for Christmas was the latest hardcover edition of Kotler’s standard textbook, Principles of Marketing. Nowhere in the index or table of contents does it mention Christmas. This is a good thing.
2. I was given the board game Mastermind as a present. It’s cool. They have an official iPhone app, which is nice to see. By having Mastermind at my fingertips, I will have more exposure to the brand and the iPhone app will most likely make me want play the board game more. If only the Scrabble people would cotton-on to the idea.
3. Merry Christmas!

Thanks to Craig Wilson at Media Hunter and those who nominated and judged for awarding my piece on ‘How to Get The World’s Attention Without Being Remarkable‘ as the second-best media and marketing blog post of 2008. It was a big year for marketing blogs and I’m proud to be among some great company. Make sure you read the other posts too, they’re darn fine.

Everyone thought Bush was a little slow until they saw him duck a couple of shoes. As quick as he was, the reflexes of former Texas Rangers owner were no match for the speed at which news of the event spread around the world. Consider this timeline:

December 14

• Shoes Thrown
• sockandawe.com registered

December 15

• 8,300 online news articles published about the incident
• sockandawe.com goes live. It’s a game where you can throw a shoe at Bush. Used as a promo for popjam.com - a new comedy website

December 16

• Over 2 million YouTube views registered of incident
• 6.5 milllion shoes have hit Bush at sockandawe.com

December 17

• Bush shoe thrower - Mundtadhar al-Zaidi, has 5,000 Facebook fans

Amazing stuff…

(Footnote: While the social media response to the shoe incident is astonishing, you also have to put it in context. Read what happened in 1938 when Orson Welles broadcast a radio play called The War of the Worlds, or look at the ratings figures for any B-Grade Sunday night movie and you’ll quickly realise that although we twitterers and bloggers can spread news pretty quickly, we’re a long way from toppling broadcast media).

I’ve never won much. I got a trophy for playing in the St George’s Basin Under 7’s soccer team, but everyone else on the team got one too, so it wasn’t particularly special. I remember receiving plenty of certificates throughout high school for being good at being good, but the only subject I actually topped was Grade 11 Practical Computing Methods; not much of a bragging right. I always used to sit back and laugh at the regularity and hilarity with which advertising people threw dos to award themselves. But now, under a shadow of irony I now find myself working at/with/for/beside/other “Queensland’s Most Awarded Agency” as declared by the Brisbane Advertising and Design Club. I’ve also been personally nominated for a ‘Moggie‘ Award for blogging and not so long ago was recognised by Jule’s algorithm as being one of the top 50 marketing bloggers in Australia.

The accolades are great and don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to site back and get a little pat on the head for putting some effort into something, but at the end of the day, I’m far more interested in writing an entertaining blog, not to mention helping clients turn their business around with amazing bits of strategy than I am with peer awards. dp dialogue, the social media marketing agency I run, is still a relatively new venture but already we’re starting to put some ideas into practice that are making clients sit up and take notice. The list of companies who have brought us on board is growing by the week and after summer we’ll have some pretty cool case studies with, gasp, financial returns.

So I’d like to flank the academy for now and get back to work - but thanks for reading

1. Marketing budgets will be slashed by 35%.
2. Marketing expectations will be raised by 35%
3. Facebook will not be sold, Twitter will not be monetised and MySpace will grow at precisely the same rate as the American Economy.
4. A major Australian corporation will get its first social media marketing officer/director.
5. Someone you know will be made redundant and start a new web-based consultancy with a mis-spelled domain name before moving to Northern NSW, assuring you they always had an interest in permaculture.
6. The following will officially be declared dead and later discovered to be, in actual fact, alive:
   1. Advertising
   2. The American Dream
   3. Fidel Castro
7. The following will finally be exposed as having been dead since June 2005:
   1. Banner Ads
   2. Kim Jong Il
8. You will wake one morning to find that Google has bought your competitor and now makes a version of your best-selling product.
   1. And it’s better than yours.
   2. And it’s free.
9. Radio. LOL!
10. You’re not in the car or housing industries are you?

I was telling some people in the office about my plans to spend a day these holidays counting the ads I see and the general consensus was that I was a) crazy and b) in need of a more fulfilling way to spend my summer. It’s probably true, but I’m going to do it anyway. I’ve decided that logos don’t count though. Otherwise I’ll just end up counting products. The new definition of an ad is promotional message that has been paid for in some way (not neccessarily cash) - some sort of an exchange has to have taken place.

Now, does anyone know where I can get a little click-button counter thingy?