Flog The FULLER blog

Bosses watch the blowers

Think of whistleblower movies. You know Matt Damon's role in bringing down a price fixing corporate scam in The Informant;  Merryl Streep who brings the world's attention to bad nuclear citizenship in Silkwood; or even the classic Woodward and Bernstein expose of Watergate in All The President's Men. Because this is Hollywood and the bad guys always lose, whistleblowers have become modern day knights in shining armour. And so they should.

But what if you are a good boss? What if you've worked for dozens of years building up a reputation for honesty to clients and fairness to staff? What if, as happened to a business I know recently, a group of youngsters decided to have some fun at your expense and feature some less than ideal work practices on a Facebook site. Nothing particularly bad – planking, time wasting, misusing company equipment on company time. Some Gen Y exuberant foolishness, that's all, but the threat to this company's history of excellence was substantial. They were sacked summarily.

What happens if that "fun" goes one step further – like a group of Adelaide high school girls who were found on YouTube offering oral sex for sale? Or miscreants who might even add something dangerous or unpalatable to a food product? What if that happened in your business? On your time? And on the world wide web?

Whistleblowers don't need to go to the media anymore – they are the media and they can reach millions of your customers in minutes. Whistleblowers don't need to have an axe to grind – they can (with unbelievable naiveté) just be having what they believe to be little harmless "private" fun.

As employers we turn ourselves inside out to orientate our workers about Occupational Health and Safety, quality work standards, equal opportunity and discrimination issues.
But do you take your staff through your social media policy – what they can and can't say on Facebook, Twitter and You Tube about your company? Or worse, do you have a social media policy?

To the employers who read this, please take these words as professional advice not fear mongering and don't rush out and disconnect every PC in your building. Handled within set guidelines social media will become one of the most profound marketing tools your business possesses in the next decade bringing unimaginable connection and engagement with a rapidly growing audience of future customers. But the message is that without rules and a clear pathway of responsibility, your hard won reputation is at an increasingly silent, subtle and scary level of risk.

- Peter Fuller

Guest Flog: Google, ice-hockey and the genius of post-it notes. Five reasons why you should make creativity your business.

By Heather Rowland, FULLER Account Director

If you've ever thought creativity was irrelevant to your industry, think again.

Whether you work at a legal firm, in manufacturing or at an internet start up, you're only as successful as your last great idea.

As ice hockey legend Wayne Gretzky put it, "a good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be”.

What Wayne knew is that true success comes not when you're keeping up with the pack, but when you're ahead of play. Here are five reasons why the ideas and innovations that stem from being creative are essential to the success of your business.

Guest Flog: Who’s the Boss?

by Hayley Conolly, FULLER Digital Communications Consultant

Everybody’s talking/blogging/tweeting about the impending launch of Facebook Timeline for brands which rolls out officially on March 30th.  The new changes will allow for creative brands to shine, tell their company story and engage with fans at a deeper level.

Right you say. Yeah, sure, it’s great hearing about all the warm fuzzy things big brands like Coke  and all the other cool kids can do, but what does this mean for a brand who relies on Facebook for measurable outcomes, such as database building, or even cold hard cash?

At first, some of these changes might seem earth-shattering for brands who use Fcommerce stores and promotional “competition style” apps as a way of tracking ROI.  With the default landing tab and fan-gated options gone, brand pages may find it increasingly difficult to drive traffic and make fans obey them in the way they want to.

Rock the boat

Heard the other day that the world currently has a glut of wheat, so farmers in Australia are all planting canola this year. Guess what? In 2013 there will be a glut of canola. So I expect they will all plant wheat again. And so it has gone in agriculture for hundreds of years – boom and bust, feast and famine.

Business is exactly the same. Take the current excitement about social and digital media. Rushing to one side of the boat are all of the early adopters, embracing Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and LinkedIn like their life depended on it, believing evangelically that these new horizons will solve their marketing problems forever.

Back on the other side, clinging to the guard rails,  looking back longingly towards the safety of land, are the troglodytes I spoke about last month who haven’t yet committed to a website, let alone a SmartPhone.

What? No website?

It seems inconceivable to me that as we settle into the second decade of the 21st century some companies still don’t have a website – or if they do, they haven’t opened it and updated it for years.

Yet, over the summer holiday break when I had time to Google around looking for products and services, I was appalled at the virtual dead end streets and closed shopfronts I wandered past with my credit card. Given the cobwebs I saw and the lazy reliance on directories such as truelocal.com.au (great idea but no personality), I’m not surprised that the rapid growth in online purchasing went mainly to overseas retailers last year – at least they have 21st century websites.

Race to the bottom

It beggars belief that the ACCC continues to disregard the monopolistic tactics of Australia’s big two supermarkets when every supplier one speaks to tells a story about being “rogered”. If you think it’s an isolated phenomenon see the Sydney Morning Herald report here.

I was talking to an Australian winemaker this week who was wringing his hands about the latest treatment by Woollies. Having absorbed for several years a one case free in every 12 promotional deal, he was told last month (that’s right told)  that the new terms of trade were $15,000 upfront for every wine label he supplied (about $60,000 in cash in his case for the privilege to supply) and a double up of promo stock to one case free in every six cases sold. Take it or leave it! This highly respected company that I would rank in the Top 50 producers in the country, who has worked tirelessly for more than 20 years to build his brand and stretch his patient capital,  told the big supermarket to get nicked. But of course he now has more pallets of good wine to quit via cellar door or his online mail order system (which by the way delivers a 45% better margin).

Social media – it’s a worry

An IBM study has found that marketing managers are worried – not just about post-GFC sales – but social media.

“Only 26 percent of chief marketing officers track blogs and just 40 percent track any online communications, while 82 percent still rely on traditional market research to shape marketing strategies”, according to the study. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/11/socialmedia-ibm-idUSL5E7LA3JO20111011

Vale Steve Jobs – 1955-2011

I never met him but like millions round the world I felt I knew Steve Jobs.

In July 1993, on the day before I left my first career as a newspaper editor and embarked on my own business in communications I walked through the door of the only Apple store in Adelaide and was greeted by the most exciting range of technology I had ever seen. I wasn’t a luddite – I had been using PC based newspaper production terminals since the mid 1980s – but until then I had only heard about Mac.

Telstra Goes Psycho 



Look it’s easy to be critical of big brands. They sit there like constipated mammoths waiting for someone to poke a stick at them. And if they reach out with a back-hander they are damned.

But after another horror rollercoaster share market ride, it is only inevitable that there will be many emaciated shareholders asking why Telstra spent $3 million of their potential dividend on a re-brand last week.
We are all cognizant that a brand is not just a logo. But let’s start with that anyway. Mercifully DDB (the lucky agency which got the big gig) didn’t suggest a change to the wavy T which has become as familiar to Gen Ys as the old 1990s Telecom was to Baby Boomers. As we all know in the branding world, throwing babies out with bathwater can lead to deathly silences, polite coughing and sideways glances (remember the national days of mourning after the loved and trusted Commonwealth Bank decided to shove a black wedge into the side of a yellow square).