February 23, 2009
This Site Has Moved
Site has moved from https://niteshok.wordpress.com/ to http://andrewmcmillen.com/.
It used to redirect; now, it’s hosted on a different server.
Update your feed settings to point to the new one.
Thanks to Tubu Internet Solutions for the hosting and support.
See you, WordPress.com. You’ve been good to me.
But for now, this site will sit abandoned on the toxic waste side of town.
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February 21, 2009
Big Day Out Public Relations: Is Silence The Best Response?
A 17-year old girl died from a reported drug overdose at the Perth Big Day Out music festival earlier this month, after taking three ecstasy pills to avoid being caught by police at the gate. This was an unfortunate, but unsurprising occurrence.
The surprising element is how Big Day Out publicity have marginalised her behaviour by silencing their highly active online community.
A statement published on the BDO site on 2 February 2009 reads:
Perth drug overdose statement
Early yesterday afternoon a 17-year-old girl was taken to hospital after a suspected drug overdose at the Perth Big Day Out. Tragically she died overnight.
While details have yet to be confirmed, it has been reported that the teenager consumed a number of pills outside the event to avoid being detected by police sniffer dogs that were in operation, in this instance with fatal consequences.
Big Day Out does not condone the use of drugs at the event. The same laws of the outside world apply inside the event. Over 3 million people have attended the Big Day Out in its 17 year history and this is the first time an incident of this nature has occurred.
Sniffer dogs are commonly used outside large events like the Big Day Out and are part of the police’s harm minimisation responsibility.
The investigation is being followed up by the Police.
To respect the privacy of the family, no further comments will be made.
In contrary to that final statement, there’s also a dedication page on the BDO site, containing a message from the girl’s mother.
While the Big Day Out brand will remain untarnished by this event – it’s arguably stronger than ever – this sad occurrence is now inextricably linked to the event’s brand in the same manner as 16-year old Jessica Michalik‘s death during the 2001 tour.
Where Michalik’s death was the result of inadequate crowd control measures – a mistake rectified from the 2002 tour onwards – Thoms’ drug-related death requires a conversation between Big Day Out publicity and the hundreds of thousands who attend the tour across Australia and New Zealand each year.
Critically, the online community who follow the event have been silenced: the highly active Big Day Out forum was disabled immediately after the news of Thoms’ death broke, and it remains closed almost a month later.
http://forum.bigdayout.com/ as of 21 February 2009
Silence isn’t the best response here.
In this case, Big Day Out publicity invite criticism by refusing to allow a dialogue to occur.
The only publicised offshoot of Thoms’ death is a Western Australian police commissioner agreeing that “amnesty bins” should be installed outside music festivals, to allow punters to deposit their drugs without fear of prosecution. And to minimise the likelihood of festival attendees overdosing in a panic before entering the venue, as in Thoms’ case.
There’s nothing new about youth drug culture. But when an unfortunate event such as an overdose occurs, people start asking questions of the police, of the festival organisers, of each other.
In a time of crisis or confusion, people want to connect with each other. And while an isolated festival overdose isn’t the strongest catalyst for either impulse, it’s still an occasion better met with community encouragement than marginalisation; with noise instead of silence.
I understand that moderating public opinion becomes exponentially more difficult as a greater volume of people converge in one location. The need to consistently and accurately monitor the fine line between opinion and libel is likely at the forefront of the organisers’ swift decision to close the public forum.
Censorship aside, an alternative forum named Small Night In has sprung up following the closure. But many questions remain unanswered:
- Why silence an established, highly active online community following a drug-related death?
- Why not encourage a dialogue between festival attendees and festival organisers?
- Why not partner with an established organisation such as the Australian Drug Information Network (ADIN) and encourage participation – both online and in BDO-sponsored community forums held in capital cities – to gauge youth opinion on drug use, so as to minimise the chances of a repeat e?
- Most importantly: why not work harder to turn a negative event into a positive by reinforcing a sense of community?
Funnily, I was only provoked into thinking about the BDO organisers’ handling of the Thoms death after I received an email sent to the BDO user database advertising Lily Allen’s June Australian tour.
Promote a tour; marginalise the voices of Australian youths itching to converge and converse.
Poor form, Big Day Out.
February 14, 2009
Brand Memory, Addendum
Brand marketing lesson: it’s just as quick and easy to disappoint your fans as it is to satisfy them.
In this case, it’s as quick and easy as an errant article appearing at the top of a news feed.
My previous post discussing RHUM‘s great personal touch is now overshadowed by the first sentence I read upon loading their site today.
Screenshot of RHUM homepage, 14 Feb 2009 (click to enlarge)
See it?
Headline: “Girls I’ve Had Sex With“.
Great! If I were visiting with Penthouse Confessions in mind, or Tucker Max, or the zillion other smut repositories online.
Awful! If I were visiting the site for some well-written critique on Australian youth culture. You know, music, the arts, film.
That’s why I visited the site. For good, relevant content. Not for the infantile scrawl of some punk who wants to share his sexcapades under a pseudonym.
RHUM is an Australian web publication targeting creative youths. Their mission statement:
RHUM – Rabbit Hole Urban Media – is a non for profit arts-media organisation. RHUM works together with musicians, writers, visual artists and all sorts of other like-minded creatives as well as events, gigs and festivals Australia wide; connecting the peeps with all that is worth a read, ramble and a bit of showing off too.
RHUM, ball = dropped.
Sure, there’s a place for that kind of content within the guidelines stated above (“..a bit of showing off too”).
But – front page?
First item?
Is this the kind of image you want to portray?
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February 9, 2009
Content Analysis: admission.com.au
- Why do all of the footer links direct me to email the company?
- Why can’t I find any details about the company?
- When they were founded?
- Who is their managing director?
- How many comprise their team?
- Why don’t all of their examples link through to the developed website or live concept?
- If you can’t link to a real-world example of a concept, then why advertise it?
- Why can I only click on the tiniest section of the main menu?
- Why do I feel like leaving the site ten seconds after entering?
- Why do I feel no connection to a company who presents static images of their work without explanation?
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Brand Memory
I received an email newsletter from RHUM events & media, which directed me to their site.
They had some good content that I wanted to follow. But at the time, they didn’t have any RSS subscription feature enabled.
I emailed on December 9 suggesting its inclusion.
A timely personal response:
Yes absolutely, it’s on my mile long to do list don’t you worry. We will send out a subscriber notification and email when this function has been activated.
Kind Regards,
Nick Hutchins
Group Operations Manager
Rabbit Hole Urban Music events & media
And then, on February 4, an unexpected personal response:
Hi Andrew,
Just wanted to let you know that RHUM has now released RSS feed capabilities to http://www.rhum.org.au, facebook.com content applications and Myspace.com content applications.
Sorry about the wait for that and thanks for your patience as we sorted out some technical glitches preventing earlier release.
Kind Regards,
RHUM Admin
Rabbit Hole Urban Music events & media
In an era of diminishing attention spans, brand memory is crucial. If you remember me, I’ll remember you.
Easy, right? So why am I still surprised that a company cared enough to follow-up my cursory feedback, six months later?
The Next MySpace for Musicians
I’ve stopped logging on to MySpace. The only reason I’d continued to check it was to read bulletins posted by bands I enjoy.
But then the noise became deafening.
Too much effort for too little reward.
Processor-intensive Flash ads swarmed my homepage.
And instead of including bulletin pagination, to allow me to view 25 or 50 or 100 bulletins on a page, they kept with the original model of dividing bulletins into groups of 10. Each page yielded a new set of flashing ads. Awesome.
But that’s in the past. Bye, MySpace.
So if you’re a band I listen to or a band who thinks that I might like to listen to you, there’s a question you should be asking yourself. How are you going to connect with me, now?
How are you going to coerce me to join your tribe?
Or, more importantly: where is your tribe going to converge?
I don’t friend bands on Facebook, because Facebook is for human friendships.
I rarely visit band websites, as I’ve discussed.
If I don’t visit your Facebook profile or your website, it’s going to be tough to convince me to join your mailing list. And mailing lists aren’t the ideal method for artists to broadcast from, as it’s one-to-one. Not one-to-many like the sense of community you felt when browsing a band’s MySpace profile.
MySpace succeeded for several years because it provided the tools for musicians to share their craft and assemble a community in a central location.
But if the community is dispersing, where are they going to meet next?
Where is the next MySpace for musicians?
Finding a suitable answer for this question is as important for me, the music fan and critic, as it is for the artists who want me to hear their music.
I want a central hub to connect with hundreds of artists I admire and enjoy. I want to listen, to follow, to gain an insight into their recording process and international tours and personalities.
MySpace is no longer the answer. It’s old tech.
I don’t care about exclusive album streams. I don’t care about digital music store partnerships.
I just want to know when my favourite artists have recorded new music. When they’re touring. What other people think of their music.
Twitter is not the answer. Too shallow. When it comes to musicians, it’s a case of too little data spread too thin. I’ll happily read essays on subjects that I’m interested in.
If you’re a musician, I don’t particularly want to know what you’re doing all day, every day. Just the important stuff. Specific, anticipated, relevant. New music, tours, reviews, videos.
Again, these kinds of periodic updates could be delivered via mailing list. But I’m not going to go around visiting band websites and joining lists.
Like I said, this is as important a question for me, the music fan, as it is for the artists and labels.
Build something remarkable. Something worth sharing. Somewhere worth returning to. And I’ll be there.
November 18, 2008
Penny Modra of ThreeThousand on writing
Penny Modra is editor of ThreeThousand, a weekly email guide to Melbourne’s subculture whose sister publications include FourThousand and TwoThousand for Brisbane and Sydney, respectively. Emerging creative hub Junior interviewed Penny for their second entry in an series profiling established creative types and their advice for the legion of youth attempting to break into industries such as advertising, architecture, design, photography and journalism.
If you’re reading my blog, you’ll want to read the entire interview. Some quotes:
If you want to make money from writing, you’ve got to understand what copywriting is, and you’ve got to seriously love it (rather than view it as some kind of inglorious detour on your route to literary fame). You also have to actually read the publications you pitch to.
Do you really want an internship at The Age where they’ll pay you nothing and cycle you through business, sports, travel and whatever else for basically no pay? Or would you like to have a column one day that someone has given you because you’ve built up your own identity as a writer more broadly? Better to take on the real world from the start I think.
This is a refreshing outlook. Leave the fact-reporting to boring people. Be known for being interesting, and people will want to talk to you and read you.
…we’re always looking for people who can turn 150 words on a t-shirt into a really good piece of reading. Or a bar write-up into the highlight of someone’s day. And this is a rare and valuable skill.
If you have studied journalism you may well be bitter and pessimistic already – all the joy and honesty has been sapped from you… So try to remember your English language skills and forget everything else. People who are honest, and have genuine curiosity and a real interest in the world are good writers.
I took a grammar elective during the semester just passed, and it started to affect my appreciation of the language. Analysing sentence construction and subordinate phrases is amazingly boring. As a result, I am far more concerned with cultivating an entertaining tone than being grammatically correct.
When you’re pitching to other people, you can send them links to your work. Or you can just meet them by saying “Oh herro, I linked to you in my blog because I think you are rad.” (People do this all the time, apparently. Look, I know it sounds lame, but it’s NOT.) Make sure every piece of work you do is solid gold, no matter what it’s for.
She’s right, it’s not lame. It’s a massive fucking compliment to receive from a fellow writer when you’re young and making a name for yourself, when you don’t know whether what you’re writing is any good.
Get away from school and university networks and clubs and join real world clubs. Such as people who sit at bars and bitch about life. Or people who help out at radio stations. Or people who start magazines. Or run arts festivals. And when you are in conversations with people, listen to what they’re saying. Don’t be all shy, just actually listen to them and then you’ll relax and think of things to say back.
Further to this, I think it’s important to realise that most people won’t read what you write, and to become comfortable with that fact. Because you’ll realise that the people who do read are the ones that matter. They’re the ones you’re writing for; the ones you want to make smile, the ones you want to keep reading your material. Because reading is fucking fun and enlightening and relaxing. There’s miles and miles of thoughts transcribed and ideas published every day, and it’s a thrill to have an audience who’re willing to take the time to read and respond to your words.
Penny ends with this quip:
NEVER use food metaphors in music write-ups. God. Just don’t do it.
I’m guilty on at least four counts, which is just disgusting. Lesson learned.
Subscribe to Junior right now, because you’ve got no good reason not to. Their first interview with animation director Tim Kentley of XYZ Studios is excellent, too.
November 10, 2008
Effective Tribe Management: 200 Nipples
200 Nipples is an online t-shirt store with a twist:
That’s how many nipples we assume will be covered by any single run of our high-quality shirts. (We’ll have the third-nippled buyer in there occasionally, but we didn’t want to count on it when naming the company; this is serious business, after all.)
One hundred shirts per month, individually numbered. Shirt prices range from US$1 to US$100 inclusive. First in, best dressed.
I’ve had my eye on them for a few months, since they were mentioned on Seth‘s blog. Funnily enough, I can’t find the post where he initially linked to them.
I received notification this morning, Brisbane time, that a new shirt was due to go onsale later that afternoon. I set a reminder in my calendar and went about my business for the rest of the day.
At 4pm, I logged onto the site and found that their 100-item cart showed that no shirts had been bought. Weird. I proceeded to checkout and received order confirmation of my longsleeve shirt, which cost US$11 including postage. Sweet.
Except that their shopping cart and database broke, and 76 users thought they’d snapped up shirts for a dollar or two. Whoops.
This potentially painful ordeal was handled brilliantly by Wade, 200 Nipples’ founder. He replaced the storefront with a temporary ‘out of order’ page and kept hundreds of repeatedly-refreshing users in the loop by updating two blog posts.
A couple of dozen users chatted amongst ourselves in the comments sections until Wade initiated a ‘do over’at 4.30pm. Best of all, Wade defused the fiscal situation by creating and publishing a 33%-off coupon, which was valid for an hour.
Shirts 1-30 were snapped up in minutes, but I snagged #11 for US$11.
This year, Seth’s all about tribes. He posits – bolding mine:
Tribe management is a whole different way of looking at the world.
It starts with permission, the understanding that the real asset most organizations can build isn’t an amorphous brand but is in fact the privilege of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who want to get them.
It adds to that the fact that what people really want is the ability to connect to each other, not to companies. So the permission is used to build a tribe, to build people who want to hear from the company because it helps them connect, it helps them find each other, it gives them a story to tell and something to talk about.
At a guess, Wade’s tribe numbers in the low hundreds right now. His tribe was brought closer together today, by sharing a disruptive experience that was elegantly and openly managed.
We ended up taking a $150+ hit on the coupon code, but that’s OK. Above all else, we always want to deliver a good experience to you, the users of the site. The overwhelming majority of our customers were very cool about it. Thanks so much for your understanding.
Perfect. This is the kind of experience that gives Wade’s tribe a story to tell and something to talk about. You can bet I’m going to tell this story to everyone who asks about my long-sleeved shirt.. which mightn’t be worn for months, since it’s almost summertime in Australia.
Tribes is a great concept and a book that I look forward to reading. 200 Nipples is an example of gathering a tribe around a niche concept – attractive, limited, (potentially) cheap shirts – and today, a great example of masterful tribe management.
October 20, 2008
Website review: Time Off Magazine
Imagine that you run a free weekly music publication. A pretty popular one named Time Off, that’s read widely across Brisbane, a city home to 1.8 million. You recently got bought out by – sorry, merged with – Street Press Australia, who own several similar publications across the country. You decide to upgrade the magazine’s website, which has become outdated.
You’ve got two options: fast, easy and crappy, or slow, meticulous and attractive.
Which option do you think Time Off chose?
Time Off Magazine website screenshot, 20 October 2008. Click for full size.
I think it’s pretty obvious.
It’s an out-of-the-box, CMS-based site with minimal focus on design. Okay, fair enough; not every site needs to be eye-catching, so long as it gets the job done, right?
Unfortuntately, the redeveloped Time Off site fails to get the job done. Content is cumbersome and slapped onto the site directly from the latest printed issue with little rhyme or reason.
Mysterious capital letters abound throughout the site’s content. Album reviews are awarded SEO-unfriendly URLs, and they’re grouped per-issue on the same page. Nice one.
Two live reviews from last week’s issue – #1395, 15 October 2008 – are attached to the same article named ‘Feedback’, which is the name of the live review section in the print magazine. The fact that they opted to devote that issue’s entire Feedback section to 2000 words about the Time Off-sponsored Sounds Of Spring festival is another discussion. What’s more, that review was part one; part two will be printed in #1396. Can’t wait.
Clicking the top-level Time Off item on the site’s menu results in the following page, cleverly named ‘Rock’:
Rock
- Six Pack ( 24 Articles )
- Gig guide ( 3 Articles )
- Features ( 53 Articles )
- CD Reviews ( 8 Articles )
- Live Reviews ( 20 Articles )
- Short Fast Report ( 4 Articles )
- Breakdown ( 4 Articles )
- Rootsdown ( 4 Articles )
- The Racket ( 4 Articles )
- Behind The Lines ( 3 Articles )
Wow, useful! When were these articles published? Let’s click one to find out. Gig guide, sure. Oh, another page, that lists those three associated articles. Two named ‘gig guide’ and one named ‘venue guide’, all authored by ‘Webmaster’. I’m really glad that it shows me how many ‘hits’ each article has! Unsurprisingly, the gig guides are pasted in a plaintext format that’s needlessly difficult to process.
Okay, so their content sucks, and it’s evident that no one within Time Off gives half a crap enough to check for consistency, or anything resembling quality control. That’s fine, I didn’t really want to use the website much anyway.
But after clicking around a bit, I uncovered some truly awful content that I must paste for posterity, as they’ll surely change it once someone decides to actually.. I don’t know.. look at their fucking website.
This is under the readership section. Subtitle: Who are our readers?
Time Off readers are divided equally between male and female.
Time Off readers are predominantly aged between 17– 30 but the nature of the industry and the refusal of bands such as Rose Tattoo to call it a day suggest readers will more often than not continue to pick up SPA publications well into their 40’s.
Time Off readers are avid consumers of music, entertainment and technological devices and products. They own iPods, Blackberrys, video game consoles, Macs, Laptops, Wiis, records, record players, Mobile Phones, DVDs and MP3s. Their need to have the latest model/product available coupled with the urge to spend rather than save sees readers replacing said items as frequently as once every 6 months.
Time Off readers have access to the internet both at work and at home, on which most time is spent accessing websites of bands and performers, shopping online, watching video clips on You Tube and blogging about how the band they saw play last night changed their life…. or destroyed it.
Time Off readers go to shows, get their hair cut, buy new jeans, are addicted to coffee, see films, occasionally turn up to Uni and party hard. And wherever they are doing these things, SPA publications are within reach.
Time Off readers are a product of a consumer driven age where brand awareness has taken place of literacy and social etiquette. They were born in the ‘80s when greed was good and they know what they want and when they want it, which is sooner rather than later. This puts them and their peers ahead of their game.
Time Off readers have one best friend that never lies – the mirror. They preen, puff, spray, squeeze, flash and luck all in the name of fashion. They buy what they don’t need and are willing to try anything once if it’s considered hip, regardless of cost.
Time Off readers are educated and informed. They value substance over transparency and integrity over wit. The wool is not often pulled over their eyes.
Nevermind that it’s the most awkwardly-worded piece of copy you’ve read this month, possibly this year. Nevermind that nobody at Time Off cared enough to edit out all the instances of ‘SPA publications‘.
No – most of all, I’m genuinely disgusted that Time Off, or moveover, Street Press Australia felt it necessary to attempt to classify their readership using some broad, sweeping statements that are neither funny nor accurate. I’m not sure which outcome is more disturbing – the fact that someone was commissioned to do a half-arsed hack-and-paste job to create content just for the sake of it, or that the above paragraphs made their way onto the site apparently without quality control.
What a fucking shambles.
Hey, Time Off. This is 2008. People use the internet all the time; they check your website, and if it sucks, you’re going to get called out about it. Invest the time and money into planning a genuine strategy for the website to complement the printed magazine, or don’t do it at all.
The old site sucked too, but at least it didn’t describe me as someone who “preens, puffs, sprays, squeezes, flashes and lucks”.
The bullshit readership copy quoted above was at least partially correct, though: I’m educated and informed. I value substance over transparency and integrity over wit. The wool is not often pulled over my eyes.
So who the fuck are you trying to kid, Time Off?
Disclosure: I write for fellow Brisbane street press Rave Magazine – who have a functional, attractive and well-utilised website – and I work for a Brisbane-based web development company. The sentiments expressed above are my own, and should not be attributed to any entity other than myself.
August 4, 2008
Celebrity Photographs: I don’t get it
Why do publications still pay ridiculous amounts for “exclusive” photos of celebrity babies?
We all know that as soon as these photos are published, they’re scanned, uploaded and disseminated across the web.
Exclusive pictures of [celebrity name] newborn twins fetched $14 million, a person involved in the negotiations told The Associated Press. The celebrity weekly scored the photos in a joint deal with [magazine name], and the two will split the bill. Particulars of the division were not disclosed.
Bragging rights?
“We’re thrilled to be able to feature these pictures in [magazine name],” managing editor Larry Hackett said in a statement. [magazine name] plans to unveil the first photo on its Web site on Sunday evening.
The photographs aren’t even going to appear in the magazine first.
How can a collection of pixels be worth US$14 million? And what kind of fucked-up, media-driven society thinks this is normal? Acceptable?
It’s cool that they’re donating it all to their charity. Really cool. But can you imagine the boardroom conversations before this deal was sealed?
“We’ve got to secure the rights to these pictures! It is imperative that people of the world associate the images of these celebrity children with our brand name! Our magazine!”
Doesn’t this all seem ridiculous? Excessive? Moronic?
Andrew McMillen 