I received one of these today - despite the NO JUNK sign on my letterbox. I didn’t think much of it until a quick look at their website seriously gave me the sh*ts. This is what they had to say:

“Unaddressed mail continues to be one of the fastest growing media channels in Australia and The Yellow Envelope is Australia’s most successful unaddressed …

“…the term astroturfing describes formal public relations (PR) campaigns that seek to create the impression of being a spontaneous, grassroots behavior. Hence the reference to the “AstroTurf” (artificial grass) is a metaphor to indicate “fake grassroots” support.

The goal of such a campaign is to disguise the agenda of a client as an independent public reaction…”

Read the full entry on wikipedia.

As the …

It’s dinner time - perfect for yet another unsolicited call. This time it is from GoTalk. It is interesting how this pitch was sequenced, and I paraphrase hence:

“Hello am I speaking to Z Liew? How are you? We want to tell you that Telstra, Optus [and several other big name telcos] are giving you a discount on your phone bill next month. There’s no catch, and no contract …

While out and about on another hot and humid Sydney day, I spotted three shoppers taking turns carrying their heavy shopping to the train station.

The heavy shopping was a large plastic canister of drinking water. It must have weighed 15kg or so – a lot of weight to be carrying around on a hot day. This was not buying water to drink there and then because we were …

I believe that conversations/dialogue is a big thing for the world at the moment. It is time we all come out of our self-imposed exile behind the walls of culture/politics/religion/politeness to start talking to each other in our real voices. There is all too much postulating and couching going on at the moment.

“Here is an interesting thought: place an ad in the personals and see if anyone will date your company.” wrote Stefan Engeseth in ONE.

Business is personal. Think of your business as a person. Find a hour or so in your week and write a personals ad for your business. Who do you think this ad will attract? Who don’t you want to attract? Why is your business attracting …

Remember the last time you showed someone from out of town around your city? You start seeing things through their eyes. You notice the little things – the state of the pavements, the state of the general population, the quality of the public transport system, the smells in the air…

We humans are good at taking things for granted – ignoring the things around us that don’t change much …

I just saw a car ad on TV. It showed two identical 4WDs side by side. One was labelled “2007″, the other “2006″.

The premise of the ad was: the 2006 model is great value because you can’t tell it apart from the 2007 model and it is so much cheaper.

This of course prompted the question: if no one can tell the difference between the 2006 and 2007 models, …

My sister bought me the book (thanks Tein) and I visited the site: Stuff on my Cat.

Cute kitties aside, the story behind the phenomenon is interesting. Mario Garza started the site in July 2005 because he liked putting stuff on his cat and decided to share his photos online. It took off! Millions of visitors, with many of them submitting photos of their cats, and write-ups …

When a company has successfully built up a strong brand, it is understandable that they would want to leverage that brand with new products through line extension. Logical, but not necessarily a good idea. Especially when (a) the brand has little recognition in a foreign market, (b) the brand as a word or phrase means something totally different from the product.

I stumbled across a …