Category: Marketing

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Why does MYOB always seem so desperate?

MYOB is an annoying company — literally. They annoy me. I’ve written to them about this — but of course like most companies they never bothered replying.

They’ve already sent letters and faxes and emails about renewing before 30 June. Today they phoned. “I’m at a client’s,” I said, “So I can’t talk now. But yes, we’ve received the faxes and we will be renewing before the end of the month.”

Now at that point I’d expect a polite goodbye. Something like “OK, good. Have a nice day, bye.” But no. Mr MYOB sort of stumbled and asked me if I wanted to pay with my credit card.

“No,” I said with a sense of deja vu. “I’m at a client’s, so I can’t talk now.” And of course I’ll give my credit card number to a complete stranger who called me unexpectedly.

Sheesh. I know, software is a competitive industry, there’s a target to meet etc etc. But please be able to understand simple human communication protocols.

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Sydney Opera House hacked, disingenuous

This morning’s Sydney Morning Herald has a story about how the Sydney Opera House website was hacked. It’s a nice explanation for the masses about how these things work.

But I think the SOH’s Claire Swaffield is disingenuous when she says that no customer data was disclosed.

Sure, the SOH customer database wasn’t affected. But if trojans were installed on visitors’ computers, then their data could well have been compromised — and the SOH doesn’t know how long that was happening.

Ms Swaffield’s comment is good for the SOH’s PR spin, maybe, but it isn’t the reality. A far more useful and, dare I say it, responsible statement would have been to say that while the SOH data wasn’t compromised, users should check their computers for infection — particularly if they’re not 100% sure their maintenance is up to date.

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Alex Balfour wins points for London 2012

Photograph of Alex Balfour London 2012’s head of new media, Alex Balfour (pictured right) has just won points for his organisation! OK, they didn’t publish my comments on the London 2012 blog — for the story so far see parts 1, 2 and 3. But it’s around midnight Saturday night London time, and Alex is emailing me personally.

Thanks for your comment. We’ll have to agree to disagree. For info, we didn’t publish your comment because it used inappropriate language — rather than inappropriate sentiments.

I thanked him for taking the time to reply, and told him he wins points. He replied:

I’ve been fortunate to see where the brand is going which is why I am incredibly confident in it. You may be pleasantly surprised…

I’ll admit I’ll probably take a lot of convincing, but hey… we’ll see!

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London 2012 fails to understand

I’ve just come back from Webjam 3, so this may explain my direct language. But I’ve just posted the following at London 2012, which won’t be published either:

You spineless turds! If you’re going to have a blog and ask for comments and pretend to be “with it with the hip young folk on the Internet”, at least have the intestinal fortitude to face the reality of those comments. Particularly when we go to the bother of giving you our names and email addresses and are prepared to stand behind our words. Or even just send a boilerplate email to acknowledge us.

London 2012 didn’t publish either of my comments, and probably won’t publish this one either. Here’s what they said instead:

We have received many comments that reflect the tenor of negative comments found elsewhere on the web. Rather than act as an echo chamber we have published a selection here that say something a little different.

“A little different” as in “Off in some fantasy land where people actually think your branding is good.”

Guys, at this point you really only have two options:

  • Change the brand. “Oh, we didn’t predict that reaction. Sorry, we’ll have another go.” You’re now the Olympics which listened to the public, and you come out of it looking good.
  • Stay with the brand. “Oh, well, we can’t change it now because [insert credible reason].” You’ll still look lame, but at least we’ll understand.

I reckon “credible reasons” could include “We don’t have the budget to re-do it” or “There isn’t time”. Hey, we understand. Time marches on, this is what we’ve got to work with, it’s not ideal, but hey, shit happens… We’ve all been there, and we sympathise. It’s a cop-out and your branding is still shite but, yeah, we know, snafu.

But if you expect us to give you any respect at all, at least be honest. Have someone put their name to this and fix it. One way or the other.

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Is London 2012 skewing their blog commentary?

Yesterday I posted a comment about the dodgy logo at the London 2012 blog, but it wasn’t published. So this morning I’ve posted the following comment which may or may not appear.

I don’t understand why the balance of commentary on this blog is so out of kilter with the balance of commentary elsewhere. It’s clear that most media outlets are reflecting an overwhelmingly negative response to the new branding — yet that’s not reflected here.

I posted a comment on this issue on Monday’s posting but it wasn’t published — yet I don’t see how it broke the commenting guidelines.

Are comments being selectively published as a PR “spin”?

I wonder if they’ll even respond… there’s so much at stake with the Olympics, and so many reputations to protect.