Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Tag: business

  • You don’t wanna be on the front page.

    Nothing amuses a journo or ruins a PR’s day more than a CEO or founder declaring “we want to be on the front page of x publication.”

    The sensible response to that demand is ‘why?’ and it’s an important question for anyone looking for media coverage.

    Usually ‘x publication’ is the nation’s major business outlet, think the AFR in Australia, the FT in the UK, or the Wall Street Journal in the United States. Every country has its equivalent.

    Positive stories leading a site or paper aren’t something easily won, unless you’re buying space which is a different story.

    However, regardless of whether you’re buying space or you’ve earned a story at the top of the page, is it something you really want and, if so, why?

    A favourite story of mine involves an old colleague who was editing one of Australia’s top tech magazines (back in the days when front cover CDs drove sales).

    Her magazine awarded ‘PC of the Year’ to a small suburban computer shop, resulting in that store deluged with orders.

    Great news, right?

    Not so for the business as the owners found themselves overwhelmed with work and, shortly after, buried with customer complaints as they struggled to meet demand. Eventually they went out of business with a horde of disaffected clients and consumer affairs on their tails.

    Most business owners don’t think through why they are looking for publicity – if you suddenly get attention are you risking ending up like that suburban computer shop?

    The answer to the ‘why’ question often turns out to be complex – some businesses are looking to juice sales or build their brand; others, particularly in the startup space, want to get on investors’ radars; while high-growth businesses may be looking at attracting good quality staff.

    And there’s ego, which is often the biggest driver of the “I wanna be on the front page” demand.

    The latter’s easy to get dispel with a litany of all the times CEOs and founders careers have been scuppered by a high-profile scandal on the front pages – basically the “you don’t wanna be on the front page” reply.

    More complex are the other motives, and they require a nuanced, well-thought out strategy with the audience and the desired end result being key considerations.

    Often, that audience is more in a niche publication, or even the company’s own social and owned channels, rather than a city or national publication.

    While it’s a good ego-stroke to see yourself illustrating the day’s top story in the national business paper, for most organisations that’s not where the real benefit of media coverage lies in building a name, selling a product, or catching the eye of well-heeled investors.

    Sensibly thinking about where you want to be seen is the first step to getting coverage. Of course, you still need to have something decent to cover.

    But, no, you really don’t need to be on the front page.

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  • No promises from the NBN – the nation building project that guarantees nothing

    No promises from the NBN – the nation building project that guarantees nothing

    Since Australia’s National Broadband Network has started ramping up its connection, the project has been plagued with complaints of underperformance, culminating in Telstra admitting thousands of its customers were entitled to refunds.

    Today the national customer rights watchdog, the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission published a range of guidelines for advertisers, something I covered for Mumbrella.

    What’s striking though – apart from the ACCC’s adding a new layer of complexity with ‘minimum typical busy period speeds’ is the regulator’s requirement for ISPs to state maximum evening speeds on the network, with the cheapest plans offering no guarantees of speeds at all.

    There is no qualifying minimum speed for a plan labelled as ‘basic evening speed’ given there is no slower speed tier to which a consumer could move.

    By the ACCC’s figures, a third of subscribers on the NBN to date are on the lowest speed plan with no guarantee of any speed at all.

    The telephone system being replaced by the NBN at least guaranteed a dial tone and data speeds slightly better than an acoustic coupler, now a large proportion of Australians will not even get that.

    Australians are spending at least $50 billion dollars on a project that will see a third of the nation going backwards, future generations are going to wonder how we managed this.

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  • Appointing the wrong crew to your cargo cult

    Appointing the wrong crew to your cargo cult

    The government is hopeless says Mark Sowerby, the soon to retire Chief Entrepreneur of Queensland.

    Sowerby’s views are a long way from the heady days of a year ago when it was announced he would lead the state’s startup policies.

    The sorry tale is a classic tale of all parties not really understanding what they were getting into.

    In Mark’s case, he admits he had little of idea of how government operates;

    To be honest my experience with government has been limited and I’m going to limit it to zero after this job – but bloody hell does everyone get everything wrong.

    I came in with fresh eyes and lots of hope and I am just disgusted. It’s extraordinary to me how hard it is to get the simplest things done.

    Sowerby’s poor understanding of managing governments and stakeholders should have been a warning sign for Advance Queensland but they themselves really didn’t really know what they wanted, as the Entrepreneur In Chief job description says;

    He will act as the state’s startup ambassador working with local, national and international entrepreneurial communities to help develop and grow Queensland’s innovation ecosystem and attract investment.

    From that description it’s clear the Advance Queensland panel sees “the knowledge based jobs of the future” coming from Silicon Valley type tech startups.

    Thinking an official government entrepreneur with a funds management background will create a startup ecosystem is another example of cargo cult thinking from Australian governments so it’s not surprising the appointment failed.

    Despite his unsuccessful tenure, Sowerby should be an asset to the Queensland government in an advisory role given his proven skills, experience and networks. It’s a matter of putting the right people into the right roles – and understanding your own objectives.

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  • The myths of dead brands – busting disruption stories

    The myths of dead brands – busting disruption stories

    “These three brands have one thing in common – they’ve all been destroyed by digital disruption,” says one business commentator in a recent presentation.

    He cited three names; Kodak, Nokia and Blockbuster.

    It’s a nice, and often repeated meme, which is only really true of Blockbuster which failed to adapt to a changing market and could be a perfect example of a transition effect although some don’t buy the digital disruption reason for the company’s demise.

    Giving lie to the idea the company was a victim of Netflix’s rise, a former Blockbuster executive puts the chain’s bankruptcy down to management not understanding the company’s role in the market, and that it was in decline long before the streaming service’s arrival.

    A more fundamental problem with the statement is both Nokia and Kodak are still in business too, the latter having come out Chapter 11 financial in late 2013.

    Finland’s Nokia is somewhat more complex than Kodak or Blockbuster, having been founded as a paper pulp mill in 1865.

    The company became a global brand thanks to being a leader in mobile phones prior to the iPhone disrupting the market but the name faded as the Apple and a new breed of East Asian manufacturers came to dominate the market.

    Despite fading as a consumer brand, the company is still a major player in telecommunications – being a major supplier of cellular base stations – along with a range of other technologies.

    Both Kodak and Nokia are still very much alive, albeit no longer being recognised by the average consumer.

    There are major lessons from both companies for those studying the effects of technological disruption on brands and businesses. Even Blockbuster’s mistakes in the face of a changing and declining market has many lessons.

    Citing them as examples of ‘digital extinction’ though is untrue and almost certainly unhelpful in understanding what management can do to respond to new technology or societal shifts.

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  • Being an industrial revolutionary

    Being an industrial revolutionary

    “The future isn’t pre-determined, technology doesn’t come from some outside force. It’s created by us. Some people have more power than others in that system, such as the big tech entrepreneurs, but at the end it’s people and organisations that have the power.”

    Nicholas Davis, the World Economic Forum’s Head of Society and Innovation, was discussing at the recent Sydney CeBIT conference how we can take control of the digital economy and where workers fit into an increasingly automated world.

    Technology and online platforms aren’t neutral system, Davis observes. “It’s not just about how we use them, but the values that are designed into the systems, technology is not just a neutral thing. During a conversation like this if I put my iPhone between us, it’s proven that reduces our memory of that discussion and our sense of connection.”

    Politics and addiction

    “The purpose of the technology, the design of it, affects us in different ways.” Davis says, “if we design technologies for addiction, if we design business models that involve us being sucked into systems at the expense of other things in our lives, then that is a value choice that companies make and that we as users are trading off in our lives.”

    “In understanding that technology is not neutral then the question is how we, as revolutionaries have that political discussion? I don’t mean political like ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ but these are value decisions that we need to engage with.”

    “The difficulties about having discussions about technology is not getting sucked into a left-right divide and letting one group of people own innovation, but to say what do we want, How do we get there and how do we avoid the mistakes of previous industrial revolutions where the environment suffered, kids suffered and vulnerable populations suffered.”

    A change in thinking

    “One of the biggest problems is we don’t have regulatory or even democratic institutions where we can make collective decisions about technologies,” says Davis.

    “The average AI researcher, at the top of their game anywhere in the world, would only understand a small percentage of the AI space. So how do you expect a politician or a voter, to come to grips with it.”

    One of the key discussions missing in the public sphere is around automation and concepts like the Universal Basic Income, Davis believes. “We should have a serious chat about giving everyone the space to build up their skills.”

    In the development policy, Davis sees growing inequality and applying last century’s thinking to today’s challenges as among the biggest risks facing governments and communities.

    Rippling beyond business

    For business, the imperative is to recognise the effects of decisions on the wider community.

    “The big thing for business is understanding the technology decisions you make have a ripple effect beyond your company, you need to look forward to new ways of value adding.”

    Davis warns we are seeing a backlash against innovation and technology with concerns about privacy and security growing.

    “So much of the world is build on their use of data. Most companies and organisations don’t have good data hygiene or ontology to classify their information. People say data is their greatest assets – some say it’s the new oil – but it’s also their greatest liability. So understanding information security at the board level is critical.”

    The power of individuals

    For individuals, Davis believes the power lies with us in the choices we make as consumers.

    “Don’t underestimate your own power, but also don’t underestimate that more and more products around us are designed to influence our behaviour in ways we need to be aware of.”

    “In most cases, if the product is free then you and your data are the product, understand that and on what terms is important.”

    Conscious choices

    “Understand the externalities of these services as well. Appreciate the effects it has on your family, your mental health, on the ability to connect is important. Being able to make conscious choices about these things.”

    “Supporting open data standards and competition – not just accepting Android or Apple for instance – rather than allowing politicians and big business to fight over these things.”

    So in Davis’ view being an ‘industrial revolutionary’ in the digital era is a matter of being an informed, and empowered, consumer. Will that be enough?

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