Australia Day Self Google

Google maps have just been released with high resolution maps of Australia taken on 26th January - Australia Day, reports the Sydney Morning Herald.

I've always loved reading maps. As a kid I would spend hours cruising through the street directory.

So it was only reasonable that I tried to see if I could see myself on the map, as I drank the afternoon away with friends under the giant oak tree at the Oaks hotel on Australia Day.

Well I could see the Oak tree but not my beer.



The view was better from under the oak tree than from above it...



..then as you go up, the view gets better again!

That Orange Square Thing

Last year when I had way too much time on my hands, I noticed everyone had that little orange Feedburner thing on their blogs.

It looked pretty cool.

So I headed over there to Feedburner, read all about it, and signed up and got one as well.

But I have to admit, I have absolutely no fucking idea what it actually does.

Warney

This has absolutely nothing to do with marketing or advertising, and everything to do with the fact that I am already missing this bloke....


Shane Warne - 8 of the Best




Kevin Bloody Wilson - The Shane Warne Song

Tonk a Kiwi....not

I notice that the end of the cricket season has fallen just in time for Ford, who have now taken their Tonk-a-Pom and Tonk-a-Kiwi promotions off line.

Because as we all know, the Kiwi's tonked our arses out of the park.

Just after the poms tonked-an-Aussie in the latest one day finals.

I wonder what the consumer's response would have been to the campaign if the results hadn't gone Australia's way in the test series?

Would that have left punters with a view of Ford as a brand which completely misjudges things? Backs the wrong horse? Boasts without delivering the goods?

Not great attributes to have associated with your brand I reckon.

Ford are very, very lucky for a 5-0 Ashes thumping. They've got Shane Warne to thank in a big way and probably need to buy him a new car.

Archie Thompson and the Lada

About 20 years ago they tried to launch the Lada in Australia.

Russia's answer to the Ford Laser was launched onto the market for about $12,000. They sold a few of them. But then they stopped selling them. It seemed the hot Australian summers were melting parts of the Lada that were designed more for Siberia than Townsville.

But the Lada was always a brand destined for failure. It will never work in this country.

Or will it?

Sometimes when you launch a new product, it just dies in the arse. Then you launch the same product 5 years later and it bombs as well. Every 5 years, you relaunch it. Each time, there's something different. Maybe a new management team, new paint, some new features. But fundamentally it's still the offering underneath. And people see it as a dog no matter what.

Then one day, the product is launched again. And it goes mental! Everyone wants to get on board and own it.

That's football in Australia today. After years of Lada launches (and accompanying dodgy Lada quality), football is now the iPod of sport in Australia. And I am absolutely loving it!

How bloody good was it to see 50,000 football fans in Melbourne watch the Victory thump Adelaide yesterday?


Archie Thompson won the impressive new Lada Kalina with his Man of the Match performance


I'm a Sydney FC fan but really, it would have been an injustice to the league if Sydney had somehow bumbled their way into the Grant Final and tried to score by hoofing it over the midfield and into the slowest forward line in the comp.

The finals series had some fantastic football throughout. Really great football.

Years ago I got Foxtel and used to watch all the English Premier League games until the wee hours. Or tape them and watch them on sunday morning. Nowdays I have no interest in Arsenal vs Reading, or Tottenham vs Charlton Athletic. I would rather watch Newcastle vs Adelaide. Two years ago they would have locked me up for saying that.

I'm just going to reminisce for a second about the time that this brand was relaunched. When John Aloisi knocked in the deciding penalty against Uruguay last year, he started the rebirth of football in this country.

Unfortunately I missed the Australian World Cup frenzy in this country. Fortunately I was in Germany at all the first round Aussie games! Here's some photo's of this glorious new powerbrand sweeping the country.....

And perhaps there is hope for the Lada yet.


Sydney - John Aloisi gives birth to Football



Kaiserslauten. Australia v Japan.




Munich. Aust vs Brazil.
"I will sell my mother for a ticket"



Der Guten Guys. Proving that consumers the world over will buy white goods at cheap prices from dickheads.



Stuttgart. Aust vs Croatia. There's a party in my pants and everyone's invited.

In the Margins

I was in a bar the other week waiting for someone and decided to do something else besides bury my head in my mobile phone trying to look busy when I'm really just sending meaningless text messages to friends for fear of being seen as a lonely loser in a bar.

So I pick up this street mag called Lifelounge, whose theme last month was 'Tight".

I remember growing up reading Mad Magazine and Cracked comics, where the margins of the magazine used to contain jokes. I forgot all about this until I started reading Lifelounge.

On every page there's a bit of a smartarse comment in the margins around the 'tight' theme.

It's an interesting little space I haven't seen too many advertisers in, and certainly not in the mainstream mags. Maybe there's printing limitations to doing it, but if not, maybe this represents some kind of opportunity?

If nothing else, at least I get to show the picture of the half shaved llama, or whatever that thing is.

Shiny Happy People

Can you make someone feel like this?



I'm not sure if I can. Absolutely not in a business sense, unless I offer them an electric shock with each purchase.

The only other time someone may have come close is on a more intimate level which is clearly not an appropriate discussion for the PG rated Jason Recliner.

Even if I could make someone this happy in business, I'm not sure I'd like it.

I've done some pretty good powerpoint presentations in my time, but if someone in the meeting reacted like this I'd be ducking for cover and whispering the words 'Stress Management' to the nearest manager.

But if you do possess this amazing skill, then forget about earning the millions you probably would elsewhere and, as the back of this avant card outlines, go and work for the St George bank behind the counter.