Below are the photos taken from the day of the exciting presentation. Each person has to dress up in something that represents his/her nationality, country culture or the client’s business. Since our client is selling wetsuit, we chose to go Beachy Style!

Team Radiator in "Beach Style" - Kathryn, Elliot, Susanti and Bob (from left to right)

Team Radiator with our Lecturer, Peter Ling (in the centre)

All Google Challenge Participants with Peter Ling

During the Presentation - Team Radiator

ECU International Representative with Team Radiator - Presenting the 1st Prize for the Best Blog

ECU Representative with Team Radiator - Presenting 2nd Prize for the Best Campaign

We would like to say many thanks to Peter Ling, our awesome lecturer. Without his support, patience and guidance, we wouldn’t be here today doing this challenge. We would also like to say many thanks to ECU International for selecting us as the Best Blog amongst other fantastic blogs – and for giving each of us a one-gigabyte USB and $100 Myer Shopping Voucher as the prize!

This has been a remarkable experience for us, from the beginning till the end. This is certainly something that I’ll never forget and I hope Google’s going to love our work too. We wish you guys who are doing this awesome challenge the very best for your report and thanks for the fantastic readers for reading and commenting on our posts!

Love
Team Radiator

1. People use the Internet for various reasons: find information, have fun, meet people, correspond with friends, discuss interests, find software, buys things, create a blog [like us ] and more.

2. It is also fast, convenient, revolve in interactive process and creative. This also help marketers to tailor a highly effective message to the target market(s).

3. For corporation, the Internet is highly beneficial for communications (corporate, brand), image building (corporate, brand), direct response (sales promotion, database/direct marketing, E-commerce), relationship (interaction, entertainment) and feedback (image, sakes, requests, visits).

4. In terms of advertising, the Internet has push technologies (by webcasting, podcasting, email alerts), paid search engine, sponsorships and links as well as ‘Rich’ media- commercials, video, webisodes, blogs)

Here’s one of my favorite webisodes featured on the lecture:

This webisode featuring Superman and Seinfeld for American Express was not released on TV and launched on the Internet only. They’ve got a series of Superman and Seinfeld in action online and those webisodes have generated a significant hits online- and it’s cost effective too.

5. It is also stated that “UK online advertising market will be larger than television in just four years time” (Andrews 2006). Imagine how dispersed it would be!

Whether or not folks agree with this point of view, its always good to be aware of options. What’s your opinion?

Will I get fired if I don’t write my reports in the TEEL format? Would it be frowned upon if I didn’t set my margins to 2.54? Or used another source of referencing other than the APA style? I’m hardly criticising the fine details of tertiary expectations, rather, I acknowledge that these requirements are set in place for students to recognise an appreciation for attention to detail and become ‘report writing technicians’ so to speak, however, what is it that is going to really set us up for that big bad world out there?

I once had a tutor that didn’t care for the punctuation, grammar and technical marketing terms. The seminar based class was supposed to run for three hours and he was happy to get it done in half the time, as long as we produced ‘the goods’. The students didn’t know what to think. We had been raised in first year to think centrally, and stick close to the sidelines but he wanted the guts, and he had a unique way of interacting the class to think critically and profoundly. In fact, it was this man that persuaded me to choose marketing as my career pathway. And I haven’t looked back since. Alike this man, opportunities such as the Google Challenge remind me of the things that are important in career development. We need the patience to be able to sustain our hard work, and being aware that in time our persistence will pay off – alike making changes to the AdWords campaign, we had to give it time to reap results. Team work. You think as a university student you understand team work. Let me tell you, you don’t fully understand team work until you’ve tried the Google Challenge. Integrated thinking. Two minds are always better than one and each one of us has contributed something to which all of us have learnt ten-fold. Confidence. To have the confidence to walk into that potential employer’s office and be beaming with self-worth because we were the ones that had the real-life campaign experience. No portfolios, no tests – just experience. We got ‘the goods’.

And most importantly, the reminder. Being reminded every day why we’re here, and why we chose to do this. Because, we’re motivated, passionate and hungry to learn – this is career development.

The article below is written by one of my lecturer, Robert Lauterborn. He came all the way from US to teach Advertising Management unit for this semester, and has worked all places that I could only dream of. Professor Lauterborn has been invited to teach in over a dozen countries, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, England, France, Germany, Greece, India, Italy, Japan, Macedonia, Monaco, New Zealand, Norway, and Sweden.  Over the past dozen years, he has consulted or conducted seminars and workshops for more than 50 organizations in 19 countries on five continents, including IBM, General Motors, ExxonMobil, HP, Monsanto, AT&T, Bank of America, Kellogg’s, and Philips.

I found his point of view of advertising fresh, highly customer-based and really worth of learning – that’s why i believe that it’s worth sharing. Have a read and feel free to comment!

Seven common mistakes business owners make in advertising… and how to avoid them

by Robert F. Lauterborn
James L. Knight Professor of Advertising,
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Most people make advertising harder than it needs to be.

Here’s a quote often ascribed to a famous U.S. merchant named John Wanamaker: “I know that half my advertising budget is wasted,” he’s alleged to have said. “Trouble is, I don’t know which half.”

He was probably wrong. Probably a lot more than half of what he spent on advertising had no positive impact at all on his business. And he’s not alone.

Every day, otherwise smart, successful owners of all sorts of businesses make similar uninformed decisions about advertising and waste mountains of money.

Here’s how to do better:

1) Don’t confuse advertising with good will contributions.

There’s an argument to be made for local businesses supporting community activities and causes. Maybe “ads” in the high school yearbook or the college game program are appropriate as a demonstration of a business’s involvement and community spirit – but they’re not really advertising. They’re donations, and should be budgeted as such.

2) Think of advertising as an investment, rather than an expense.

The difference is not just semantic. An expense is something spent, gone, over with, done. An investment is something from which you expect a return. Under current accounting rules, advertising may have to be budgeted as an expense, but it functions as an investment. Here’s just one example of how positioning advertising as an investment rather than an expense changes management thinking: Expenses can be cut or deferred, with little impact. Investments cut or deferred clearly have consequences. Businesspeople should ask themselves for every advertising investment, “Exactly what return do I expect for this money? And how will I measure it?”

3) Concentrate on customer behavior.

Too many advertisers settle for changes in awareness or favorability. The theory goes, “If a lot of people out there know about us, something good is bound to happen.” They’re not too specific about exactly what. The result? Reread the quote from John Wanamaker!

Some advertisers think they’re doing better if they measure improvements in favorability, the number or percent of people in their target markets who profess positive feelings about the advertiser’s business. That still doesn’t get to real return on investment.

Want proof? Despite the fact that virtually100% of their prospective customers are aware of them and say that they like them, a major U.S. greeting card company finds its market share at only 39% — and it’s falling. Hmmm. Their advertising wins awards, but perhaps they are measuring the wrong things. The critical factor here (and for every other business) is consumer or customer behavior. If people aren’t going out of their way to buy your products or to do business with you, the return on your advertising investment will decline; no matter how many awards your ads or commercials may win. No one makes any money until somebody buys something. Business owners must tie advertising investments to behavior change (or perhaps in the case of current customers, behavior reinforcement), asking themselves, “Exactly what do I want exactly whom to do? What is the role of this investment toward making that happen? And how will I measure success?”

4) Understand the customer or consumer thinking and buying process.

How do you know where to place advertising so it will be productive? One way is to talk to your best customers, not about advertising per se, but about how they make their business decisions. For example, if you sell insurance or make loans, what causes the type of person you’ve identified as a prime prospect to think about a particular financial service? An event, such as a death in the family or a hurricane or a stock market decline? A burglary? A birthday? Then what do they do? Where do they look first for information? The newspaper? Which newspaper? Where in the newspaper? A special section or a particular columnist? Or is their first stop the Internet? Which sites? How do they access the Internet? What do they type in? Where does that take the person? Or do they talk to someone, like friends or family? Which friends or family? Whom do they consider expert? How do you get to be that person’s top recommendation?

All good advertising begins with a fundamental understanding of the customer or prospect — who he or she is, what he or she wants and needs deep down inside, how he or she looks for information, what he or she does with it, and most of all, why he or she thinks and does all these things. These answers can’t be based on guesswork. The data and insight businesspeople need to guide their advertising decisions should be a product of valid market research — interviews, focus groups and surveys in the particular population and geography served.

Does that require an investment of time and even money on your part? Yes. But it’s an investment that will pay dividends by helping you know where your advertising needs to be to be most productive.

5) Don’t think of advertising in isolation.

Once an advertiser has decided exactly what behavior he or she wants to make happen among exactly which groups of people, the best way to plan is to visual the entire decision process and figure out how and where and when to communicate. Goodyear sells snow tires in the northern parts of the United States by advertising heavily on the radio when snow is predicted. Their research proves that most people don’t and won’t think about snow tires until it’s almost too late, so advertising before that time will not yield as good a return on investment as advertising when snow is imminent. Why radio?

Because that’s where Americans go for up-to-the-minute weather news, and they’re most likely in their cars. All Goodyear has to do is tell them where the nearest Goodyear service center is. Goodyear brand advertising built confidence in the company over the years; now local store advertising at the right time pulls the trigger. Can similar models be built for financial services providers? Or any other type of business? Of course.

6) Make sure your advertising has specific, measurable objectives.

Example: “To produce 150 leads from qualified new business prospects in the metropolitan area by August 31, 2003.” The primary reason to do this is because it focuses everyone’s attention on the objective, not the advertising. People working on the project no longer say, “What shall we say in the ad?” What they say is, “What is the best way to make this behavior happen?” That in turn forces people to think about the target prospect and what he or she wants (see 4, above) and opens up decisions on which medium (or which media, in what combinations) should be used, based on the target prospect’s media habits and preferences.

7) Measure in real time.

Too many advertisers wait until a program is over before measuring and evaluating the results. While that can help make the work better the next time, it’s too late to make sure that the current program is paying off. It’s far better to track results while the program is running. In the case of the objective in 6), above, if the advertiser discovers a few weeks into the program that not enough leads are coming in, or the wrong kinds of people are responding, there’s time to figure out why and fix it.

Advertising doesn’t have to be hard. The best advertising talks not so much about something but rather to someone. It’s not a product pitch, it’s a conversation – the kind of conversation friends have with each other, as much listening as talking.

But it’s still business, with objectives and strategies that make sense and tactics as accountable for performance as any other part of a business. And it’s fun. Ask any business owner who’s learned to do it right.

In my last post I wrote about how creating a kick ass GOMC blog was made easier by using a team of writers vs a single author. I still do believe this but there are a few good blogs out there that are all written and owned by a single individual. One of these blogs is Seth’s Blog which is written and run by Seth Godin. This guy is a marketing legend. He is the author of several best selling marketing books such as Purple Cow and Tribes and he continually writes insightful posts on his blog sometimes even on a daily basis.

Seth Godin knows the basic rules of blogging. He knows only to post content that is going to make people think and he manages to do this daily. I highly recommend checking out his blog and reading a few of his books. I guarantee you will learn something!

The other day I was visited by a radio sales guy. He had his pitch all laid out, and a presentation for me in a cute little book with a binder that had My business name on it.

He quoted me $5,000 per month. I literally laughed right in his face.

Nervous yet somewhat insulted, he said “don’t you think that’s a good value to create more brand recognition”?

“Not for $5,000″.

The price kept coming down. Now we are down to $3,500. I’m still amused. He steps outside to “call his boss”.

Finally after toying with this poor bastard, he tells me we can do it for $2,500 per month and they’ll throw in some free plugs too. I say no thanks.

The sales boy asks why.

My reply: “It is all about facebook and youtube now”. Radio is going to be obsolete soon”.

It looked like someone had given him ‘the shark’. He was taken aback. “but why rely only on the internet” asked radio boy.

Continues here -

Were we successful in terms of fulfilling the client’s needs?

Absolutely. Recapping over the client’s objectives from the Pre-Campaign Strategy we can recall that:

1. Being a small business, Radiator would like to spread its wings and break into new international markets.
2. In time, Radiator plans to be the number 1 wetsuit brand internationally. Lushey (Radiator director) has visions of dominating the market with the biggest slice of the market pie.
3. The website illustrates two main target segments – surfers and divers. Who? Where? When? Why? In order to move forward, Radiator needs to discover which segment is derived from what geography, when are they shopping online? And who are they?

This is a testing strategy. We tested. We succeeded by discovering invaluable information that will kick start Radiator’s branding efforts internationally and stimulate the initiative for a loyalty program for current Australian consumers.

Without a doubt in our minds, we crossed the line – and can look back at our journey and say we didn’t miss a stride, grounded every hurdle and exceeded beyond our personal bests.

Teamwork is the key to success

One of the things that I have learnt coming away from the Google Challenge is the importance of team work. I truly believe that success in anything comes from team work and we have proven that with our blog. When you think blog you first think of a personal diary which can be great but how long can a blog with one perspective and one style of writing, keep consistently posting thoughtful content?

Our blog has remained professional, thoughtful and up to date because:

• We all come from different backgrounds with different perspectives and ideas
• We set a schedule where each one of us were responsible to post something on a certain day which helped the blog maintain it’s momentum
• We all understood that content was our selling point and our blog concentrated on that
• We worked together and made sure each one of us weren’t doubling up on any ideas
• We were writing for the Team Radiator blog – not ourselves
• We were all honest in our thoughts – no gloss overs here

ECU International is currently running a competition for the ‘Best Blog’, and we will take on the challenge, however, at the end of the day we blogged because we wanted to not because we were told to. We truly believe our blog has gone above and beyond what Google and ECU have expected. We blogged because we knew our ideas, our teamwork and our communication skills were better than most and we had the ability to.

Below I have put together some of Team Radiator’s top posts that you may have missed. Blogging is about contributing and being conversational so we do encourage feedback!

Personal Thoughts

Its Fun Being International! The Journey from Indonesia to Perth – By Susanti The

What’s Been Keeping us Busy? – By kathryn Neale

The 80/20 Rule – By Bob Strah

Campaign Goals: Why Click Numbers and Google Aren’t Important to Us – By Elliot Mist

Living With Google Challenge – By Susanti The

Learning Resources

5 Must Read Pay Per Click Websites You Must Read to Help Your Adwords Campaign – By Elliot Mist

Why Online Marketing Isn’t Going Away – By Bob Strah

Sex Sells? – By Kathryn Neale

Tools To Help Your Adwords Campaign

Google Analytics: Adding Accountability to Your PPC Campaign – By Elliot Mist

Adwords Editor: 5 Reasons Why You Should be Using This Awesome Tool – By Elliot Mist

Integrated Marketing Communications

Support Media – By Kathryn Neale

IMC and The Google Challenge - By Kathryn Neale

Thoughts? Comments? Raspberries?  Let’s hear them!