AFL Footy Show double standards hurting AFL brand.

If the Footy Show wants to know why 13 year old's think it’s OK to vilify players, it’s because these kids are watching their program.

Last night, after sanctimoniously espousing the need for spectators to show more respect towards players, the Footy Show quickly reverted back to the rubbish that is influencing their younger viewers – especially with the new earlier time-slot.

During his segment, AFL legend Brent Harvey was persistently goaded about his height; including a comment from his own club president and the further insinuation he was the son of a dwarf.

Later in the program, Bill Brownless was referred to as “hey, fat man”.

What struck me during the recent incident involving Adam Goodes and a young spectator’s poor choice of words is they are exactly the words constantly used by the Footy Show to vilify Jason Dunstall – another AFL legend.

Like any organisation looking to grow and create more fans of its product, the AFL is grappling with a number of issues that relate to how well it can manage its brand in the community and its place in society – especially as a sporting entity in Australia.

The quickest way to kill a brand is when the true culture of an organisation is inconsistent with the positive messages of the product.  The market will find you out very quickly and tear your brand to shreds.  The AFL has had one of those weeks.  They seem to be happening more frequently.

The Footy Show is one of the AFL’s critical touch points with its market that are out of control.

The younger generation are watching the Footy Show to see their AFL idols and consequently the AFL should insist that the Footy Show shows some leadership on how to treat sporting heroes with respect and reverence.

I have lived in sporting clubs for 36 years having played sport every weekend of my life since I was 5.  Consequently, I understand the magnitude of the challenge ahead for the AFL to change behaviour and culture.

What the Footy Show is allowed to keep dishing out is failing the AFL and Australian sport in general.   

The program is a dinosaur.  It’s a big thumbs down from me.

Hotworthy Upworthy.

My April favourites from Upworthy.

 

Escape from North Korea.  Twice.

Compelling story.  I had never really comprehended (well, to be truthful, had never given myself the chance to properly consider) the plight of the North Koreans, until it was captured in this amazing presentation.

How many stories like this - that Australia needs to hear - are hidden away in places like Nauru?

 

UNICEF Advertisement.

Fantastic bit of creative.  Every time a child is born, the rest of the world is given one more chance to get it right.  We need to stop those that are getting it wrong - or just don't get it at all.  As adults we can sometimes get our thinking back-to-front.  We are consumed with predicting the future.  It is only through children that we can ever truly know what the future is going to look like.  That is to say, we need to start looking backwards, not forwards.  Who is behind us is what will matter in the future - not ourselves.

 

Dove Advertisement.

Incredible piece of marketing.  There are some talented people working at Dove - or their agency.  But I'm in two minds.  How can a message so powerful be associated with flogging a product?!  I'm in two minds because I subscribe to both messages.  There has been a lot of hoopla about this ad.  But that's what brilliant marketing is about.  What astounds me is there are companies out there that still don't believe the power of social engagement and content marketing.  Oh, and for what it's worth, if you haven't already done so, throw away your mental-mirror.  I did - well, I had to.

 

Chimps freed after 30 years of being kept inside and tested on.

Sometimes we see something that doesn't require much thought at all and it's just nice to know it happened.  P.S. When I started my own business and stopped working for other people, I felt like these chimps being set free, rolling on fresh lawn for the first time.  You should try it.

Would you like fries with your wine?

Following a bit of a rant in my previous blog about the Australian wine industry, I was wondering how to start Part 2 (a more structured look at the industry), when this little gem hit my inbox:

Someone in the Australian wine industry had called New Zealand Sav Blanc ‘the McDonalds of wine.’

If you are in the business of selling products to consumers, then comparing a competitor to McDonalds is a compliment, not a sledge.  There is none better than McDonalds at understanding the purchasing behaviour of consumers.

If you feel that your industry competitor is just as good, it might explain why they are kicking butt in the Australian market with the following figures:

• -          39% of all white wine now sold in Australia is New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc.
• -          Of the top 20 Sauvignon Blanc’s sold in Australia 17 are from New Zealand.

In the same article someone reasoned that New Zealand Sav Blanc is successful because 95% of Australia drinkers are not discerning.  Exactly.  So why try and market your own wines to us, as if we are?  That was the point of my previous wine blog.  The average consumer doesn’t understand what you are saying.

So perhaps the Australian wine industry could use McDonalds as a case study for learning what drives consumer behaviour.

Social Chatter

Speaking of behaviour; I keep hearing that the Australian wine industry is an effective user of social media.  Something that is very topical amongst Australian small business at the moment – social media versus ‘real work’.

The wine industry is certainly an active user of social media; but I wouldn’t say most of it is effective, as far as engaging consumers are concerned.  The industry just seems to talk (sledge) amongst itself.

I’d like to see smaller wineries extending their reach with Australian consumers, using social media – at the very least please have a decent web site.  If anyone has any great social media examples out there, let me know.

No local focus

Clearly, the Australian wine industry doesn’t want to talk to us anyway.  There has been so much emphasis on exporting, I feel Australian consumers have been neglected by the wine industry for a long time.

Not long ago, Australian consumers were some of the highest discretionary spenders in the world.  We were out for a good time and many wineries didn’t even notice.

I know that exporting has been held up for all its glory; but a bit more local love would be nice.

The rise of cleanskins

The rise and rise of cleanskin sales may be the evidence to support that Australian consumers are still confused about buying wine.  Cleanskins were introduced in the early 00’s to get rid of the wine glut.  The timing was perfect for consumers that were looking to spend more on wine, but didn’t know how to decide.  The scenario looks like this - if I don’t understand what the winery is telling me, the only way I will find out what I like is to buy-n-try.  Will I risk $20 each time – no thanks.  Will I risk $4 on a cleanskin – absolutely.

Cleanskins now represent value-for-money and a fun experience for many regular wine drinkers.  Consequently, a significant percentage of Australian wine sales each year are cleanskins.

Australian wine labels have become so confusing, they are being beaten by products with no label at all.  Go figure.  So much wine, sold so cheaply, because no one wanted to make the labelling simpler for consumers.

Design & Layout

My last observation about the wine industry is bottle shops and retail outlets.  The design-layout of these stores is a complete dis-service to the wine industry.  Consumers are left drifting aimlessly through rack after rack of wines.

It would be great to see the wine industry encouraging retailers to stock its wines based on occasion, use, function, food, experience etc – or something to that effect.  It would take a bit of research and trial-and-error; but some better planning at the retail end would make buying wine so much easier. 

 

My idea is to have touch screens in each section of bottle shops and I can tap through a series of questions about why I’m there to buy wine and it makes some recommendations for me.

Think I’ll leave the wine industry alone now.  I haven’t set out to poo-poo the wine industry; it’s just that when I hear of constant doom and gloom coming from an industry sector, I like to burrow into what could be done better, from a strategic and tactical perspective - especially for small and medium enterprises, as is my passion.

What can wineries or retailers do to encourage you to buy more local wine?

Australia needs a food safety scare.

Do you know where your food came from?

Australian consumers need a food safety scare as a wake-up call and to get them asking the right questions about where their food comes from.

That sounds crazy, I know; but I have experimented with this topic in dozens of conversations over the last 12 months.

Let’s put some method behind the madness of that proposition.

Firstly, one of the hardest things you can ever hope to do is change peoples’ attitudes.  As the best marketers will tell you, it’s very, very difficult.  Australia’s agricultural and food producing industry has tried on many occasions to change the attitudes of Australian consumers.  The campaigns have been very aspirational and it hasn’t worked.

Australian consumers say one thing, and do the other – despite what they tell us in numerous surveys.  And it’s not just when it comes to buying their groceries.  For example, Australians also say they would be happy to donate their organs to save someone’s life, but never do.  You see my point.

By now we know enough about Australian consumers to start changing tactic.

This brings me to pressure points.

One of the key ways to change peoples’ attitudes is to find their pressure points.  Where do we find the pressure points for Australian consumers?  Inside their homes - we need to get inside their front doors.

If Australian consumers start getting nervous about what’s going into their kids lunch boxes; what’s going into the fridge; what’s going onto the kitchen table at night – they’ll start to ask questions.  I’ll get to the power of questioning in a moment.

Thirdly, we use the power of shared experience to spread our message.  If something happens to make Australian consumers nervous about where their food comes from, it becomes a shared experience.  Picture this - it would be the number one topic at school drop-off points, in the school canteens, at family functions, at kids sport on Saturday mornings, Facebook, etc etc.

Back to the power of questioning.  If the Australian agricultural and food producing industry wants to make retailers squirm, you set up a situation whereby their consumers start hammering them with questions, questions, questions about what they’re doing and how they do it.  Nothing makes a corporation sweat faster than when they are getting beaten around the head by angry consumers, who are banging their fists on the table and demanding ‘if you don’t answer my questions, I’m shopping somewhere else.’

Consumers just aren't asking the questions we want them to.

How do we make this happen?  Remember the Grim Reaper advertisements on TV. 

Absolutely legendary campaign, watched in peoples’ living rooms around Australia every night in 1987.  My idea is that we do a similar ‘grim reaper’ campaign about imported food, to show consumers what might happen if there is an accident regarding imported food from a country that has poor production safety standards.
 
If you had a grim reaper bowling an imported apple at a bunch of school kids, I think it would get peoples’ attention.  Watch the ad and imagine it talking about imported food.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U219eUIZ7Qo

So, what I’ve been proposing all along is that we don’t have an actual food safety scare and people actually start getting sick – we create one, by putting the notion in peoples’ heads of what might happen if they don’t change their attitude.  That’s all the Aids campaign did – the people watching it did the rest e.g. remember all the talk about the ad?

How do we know this works?  Well, at the moment there are other countries in the process of restructuring their entire food chain, because there was a food safety scare and consumers have now demanded change.  But for them it was too late.  Think horse meat.  Think baby formula.  Think milk contamination.

Anyway, just a few thoughts to stir the pot, because I don’t think what we’ve been doing is very effective.

What do you think?  Go the Grim Reaper tactic?

 

Risky business is good business.

Risk is not negative.

It simply means we don’t know what the future holds.

Does this mean things will turn out good or bad?  Who knows?

If all risk is negative then the future is bleak.

A business must keep moving forward or it will die.

This requires strategy.

There is no right or wrong strategy.

What there are is a set of compromises for each strategy.

The key to choosing the right strategy is to focus on the compromises.

The right strategy has the compromises that a business is prepared to accept and is ready to deal with as they arise, in order to keep moving forward.

If a business does not allow compromise to get in the way, how can the strategy go wrong?

This is what many businesses confuse with risk.

They move forward with a strategy unaware, unaccepting or unprepared for the compromises that came with it.

But it’s getting harder.

The world is changing rapidly and business has no borders.

External forces beyond our control are changing the game for many businesses.

If the game changes, so do the compromises.

Many businesses aren’t aware the compromises for continuing to do the same thing have changed and this is what’s causing them problems.

Avoiding this situation requires innovation.

If we are aware of the compromises for doing certain things, then we are aware of when they change.  However, if we now have less control over choosing a new course of action that will change the set of compromises, then we must innovate to start a new game.

So a simple recipe for success might look something like this:

• Embrace the future.
• Keep innovating.

What's your recipe for success?

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