Monthly Archives: March 2010
The Victorian state government has launched a new road safety campaign on the Internet, telling people, "don’t be a dickhead, wear your seatbelt", and "don’t be a dickhead, don’t use your phone". Police minister and MP for Bendigo says it’s "… designed to confront, and this one confronts people that don’t have respect for other people on and off the road.” The campaign is receiving almost overwhelmingly negative response from the general public, from teachers to to politicians because of the language and message it sends. Some are slamming it for racial offensiveness and say it will encourage bullying, young people are calling it "lame" (Sunrise 30-3-10) and while marketing gurus will say all publicity is good publicity, it’s looking like a fail for the Victorian government. A poll from The Age suggests 77% of viewers don’t think it will help reduce the road toll. View the videos here.
Regardless of how effective, offensive, disrespectful or whatever that the adverts themselves might be, my issue with this is the intention of the marketers that this campaign will "go viral". The very fact that they’ve gone all over national TV trying to push the ads, by campaigning to the "young people" and saying that’s what the ads are intended to do, they’ve clearly demonstrated their lack of knowledge about how social networking and viral marketing really happens. I’m a teacher of young people – trust me, if you tell them that something is AIMED at them, DESIGNED for them, and they are the TARGET AUDIENCE, you’re pretty much guaranteeing that they’ll switch off and ignore whatever it is you’re trying to push at them!
If the advertisers had kept their mouths shut, had not tried to defend themselves and their use of language by justifying it as hitting the target audience’s buttons, they would have had a FAR better chance of the young ‘uns posting and reposting links to the offensive and disrespectful ads. Why? Because it might piss off their parents and teachers!
This one is, I think, a marketing fail.
We had a lovely family day today. Miss Four’s ballet school hosted an Easter Picnic in the park, so we went along. Was a beautiful day, after two overcast ones, and it was most pleasant indeed. We’ll be going back to the park with bread for the ducks 🙂 Kids found a couple of shares of eggs each, which was good (no tears! Win!).
Following the picnic, we headed over to Chutney Marys for Indian for lunch – was very nice, even if the kids didn’t eat much of anything. It was a treat for hubby, and he kept expressing his surprise that I was eating it (my tastes are usually not adventuresome). We over-ordered and I would have liked to stay longer to finish some of it off! But we had a deadline, as we headed across the road to the cinema and watched How to Train Your Dragon (not in 3D – it doesn’t worry me, but Miss Four doesn’t do so well with the glasses). Thoroughly enjoyed that, even though once again I missed a few minutes with child toilet breaks (at least she’s going to the toilet, this is also WIN!). Will happily add that one to the DVD collection when it comes out.
Came home and after feeding Bub (who had been fabulous all day, chirpy and sleepy and not whingy at all – I think he even watched most of the movie!), he and I both crashed for a couple of hours, which was also nice. And now hubby and the kids are "camping" in the back yard (foolish Daddy makes foolish promises!), so I’m enjoying a quiet evening.
In all, it’s been a great weekend – spent yesterday afternoon with and at A’s place, chatting and working on stuff for next weekend, with drop-ins from and . Time flies when you’re having fun! And again, Bub was brilliant – he’s a lovely social thing apparently!
This week is all about getting ready for the weekend – Master Seven jets off on his adventure on Saturday, and Sunday is Swancon day for me. Need to get my contracts for Worlds Next Door out in the next couple of days, and hook into reading for Australis Imaginarium. Some proofing for TPP on the cards too. Can’t believe it’s the end of Term 1 for the kids this week – where is this year going??
Bub seems to have grown up about a million percent in the past week – we’re getting lots of smiles now (particularly just after a feed when he’s feeling very content!), and he’s cooing and making lovely noises at us. He enjoys his big brother and sister chatting with him too. He had his eight week needles on Monday, and was pretty clingy for a couple of days, but he’s settling again now.
Hubby is home this week, which is so good! Not having to dash out for school drop offs and pickups is great. He goes back again next week for about ten days, but then we’re back on the 8/6 roster, which we’re REALLY looking forward to! Master Seven heads off on his Queensland adventure next Saturday. Miss Four is jealous, but looking forward to her Granna visiting the week after that.
She’s still being difficult about going to school/daycare, but once I’m gone, she’s fine. This clingyness in the mornings is extremely frustrating, as she used to be fine with all this – partly blame arrival of bub, but partly lack of routine – she used to go five days a week to daycare, now only two days of "school" (and one day of care, because I was going nuts, but we’re cutting that out after the holidays). She’s doing it at ballet too, which is really odd, because she loves it. *sigh* I guess she’ll get over it. Eventually.
I’m proud as punch mum with M7, because his reading is leaping ahead amazingly – he’s reading the Captain Underpants books (devouring would perhaps be a better term!) at a rate of one per day. I’m trying desperately to find him something else that will equally engross him – he’s pooh poohed the Zac Power Test Drive books, but I think he’ll go through the pile of Simpsons comics I bought home from the library. Looking for proper book recommendations for him though!
This week I missed out on a book blogger role I applied for – apparently I got to the shortlist stage, but they went with someone else for the same type of blog I put in for, a Canberra person. A bit disappointed actually, but them’s the breaks! I’ve been working on some TPP stuff in my non-baby cuddling times, and of course on my own books and associated tasks to do with that. I also wrote a profile for my school website, based on my role with the ASLA committee. Oh, AND received in the mail this week copies of Magpies (with my first two reviews for them in it) and Fiction Focus, which has not only a bunch of my reviews, but also a four page feature article I wrote! I’ll reprint that here at some point 🙂
In other news, illustrator Kathleen Jennings has posted some sketches of her pictures for my forthcoming anthology Worlds Next Door! The anthology is going great guns – I’m only waiting on one story to come back from edits, all the rest are laid out and have had my very awesome proofer go over them, and they are about to go out, with contracts, to the authors. Woot!