Jonothan Stribling

Rather than the usual resolution setting on new years eve with a drink in one hand, a cigarette in the other, I have done something a little different this year.

I approached my goals for the new year as I would a project or corporate gig. There needed to be clear objectives and clear measures. I asked myself what did I want to achieve for the year? What was important to me? I arrived at four objectives that covered having a loving and rewarding family life, being healthy and vibrant, having a successful career, and having fun.

When I take a look at 2011 it was a pretty good year apart from the natural disasters, riots, financial turpitude, and end of times malaise. Personally I achieved a bunch of goals with the stand out goal being stopping smoking. I have struggled with this for 20 years and this time have broken the back of it. This time I didn’t make any excuses for just having one cigarette, I accepted that I would never be able to smoke again and if that meant that I couldn’t drink as much or associate with some people then that’s what it meant. I have more energy now even with the 8 kilos I have put on.

In the career sector 2011 had some ups and downs. The economy was a tough one for the business I work for and the international economy teetering on massive amounts of debt made the second half of the year challenging. I was given more responsibilities at work taking on responsibilities for operations and product, and have started to build a strong team. In 2012 I will continue to build a strong team and encourage them to be successful and grow revenue, margin, and most importantly make our customers happy.

My approach changed during 2011. It become more measured as considered rather than explosive and forceful, although there were some hiccups when I stopped smoking and my co-workers told me I should put on a nicotine patch to calm the angry dragon. In 2012 I will be calmer and meditate daily. There will be no sweating the small stuff.

Through sheer accident I became involved with a small business importing European car parts. Due to the circumstances the business had been through bad management as was struggling to find its way. We’ve put on a general manager, sold off dead stock, rebranded, launched a new website, and are launching a new consumer website. In 2012 this business will do over $1 million in sales and generate good profit margins.

I had a mixed year social media wise and with sporadic blogging and engagement with social media. I didn’t make enough time to create good content. In 2012 I will write a blog post every day and contribute to zeitgeist rather than passively consume information.

After a tumultuous 2010 for my family where my wife and I realised we had two children under two years of age, 2011 was a definite improvement. I felt that I grew as a father, learning how to be a better parent through being patient and kind rather than a dictator. I 2012 I will be a loving father and spend at least 30 minutes a day with each child. I will also not argue with my wife about trivial matters.

Lastly, 2012 is the year of the dragon in Chinese astrology which promises to be a powerful and unexpected year.

Bring it on!

I was talking with a colleague about the BONDS Facebook page today admiring their 600K+ likes when she challenged me to find another Australian brand with a higher number of likes. I’m happy to say that I did.

A few things stood out.

Australian fashion brands dominated the rankings. Global surfing brands Quiksilver and Billabong led the charge with over 1 million likes, followed by BONDS.

The NRL leads the AFL by around 30 thousand likes. Interestingly, the NRL fan site, my-nrl.com, has slightly more likes than the official NRL site.

Holden has over 200K followers, no doubt on the back of a big “social” campaign to launch the new Captiva. This indicates a well executed social media strategy.

The telcos, Telstra and Optus are pretty evenly matched. What’s interesting is that as “technology” brands they don’t have a higher number of likes.

The banks are poorly represented. The only banks I could find were the NAB and the new Bank of Melbourne. The new Bank of Melbourne billboard campaign has prominent social media icons and this has obviously been relatively successful as it has generated more followers than NAB.

Retailers like Myer, David Jones, and Harvey Norman are at the lower end of the rankings. Harvey Norman however did appear to be pursuing a pretty successful Facebook places strategy. It was unclear whether this had been initiated by them or simply organic.

The Australian brand social media rankings

1. Quiksilver 1,213,398
2. Billabong 1,040,527
3. BONDS 629,363
4. NRL 373,949
5. AFL 343,217
6. Holden 228,059
7. Optus 52,079
8. Myer 43,359
9. Big W 36,491
10. VB 33,643
11. Telstra 25,584
12. Seven Eleven 24,730
13. David Jones 22,993
14. iiNet 18,888
15. Harvey Norman 8,837
16. Bank of Melbourne 8,290
17. NAB 8,245
18. Coles 5,360
19. James Boag’s & Sons 3,814

This ranking was created 18 August and the brands ranked were my best estimation of major Australian brands. If you think any are missing, drop me a line.

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I had a great day out with the family on the weekend. We took a ride on the wonderfully steam-punk and daggy Puffing Billy train through the Yarra Ranges. It was the first train ride for the kids and they responded well to the chug-a-chug up the hills, the rattling, the smoke, and the intimacy of being able to touch the trees and observe the hills people hanging out their washing or burning off leaves (a favourite hills pass time).

As expected the train was packed with tourists all dangling their legs out the windows, determined to get the maximum value from their $40 return trip. The cost seemed expensive to me.

Am I a cheapskate?

Probably, but it is a unique experience travelling through the hills at 15 MPH being able to lean out and touch the forest and feel the coal smoke sting your nostrils.  It is definitely 2 hours of fun.

We exited the train at Emerald Lake with 2 hours to spend checking out the lake, entertaining children, talking to ducks and all the wonderful things you do as a parent.

We followed the crowd down the hill past the tracks and towards the lake, me pushing the double pram, and my wife carrying the bags. Parenthood means you travel with extra baggage!

When my wife saw the cafe in the distance, she groaned, “It’s going to be horrible in there.”

“Don’t worry”, I replied, “It can’t be  that bad. Look at all these people.”

I couldn’t have been more wrong. The cafe was a shocker. The fare was pre-packed focaccias, pies, sausage rolls, and burnt coffee. It had the feel of a hospital cafeteria not a cafe that is part of a tourism venture that gets obver 250,000 visitors a year. Now I wasn’t expecting an amazing culinary experience, but I was expecting something that could show off the great food and culture of the Yarra Valley and Yarra Ranges.  The whole Lake Emerald was reminiscent of a museum dedicated to showing the history of the double-flush button on Australian toilets since 1974. On second thoughts that would have been more interesting.

Australian tourism often lacks the vision and courage to create a truly special experience for international visitors. Too often the rudimentary experience is delivered with all the panache of a McDonalds next to a petrol station. It is as if we’re ashamed to celebrate what’s great about this country and create an integrated experience that appeals to all senses.

The cafe could have created the kind of fare that visitors to the mountains ate pre-1954 with a modern twist. It would match the retro-steam experience of the train and provide an experience to appeal to the appeal to the “Experience Seeker” segment identified by the Tourism Australia.

I note from the 2010 annual report that Puffing Billy patronage has  stagnated in the past few years. No doubt the Great Recession has had an impact, but the primary cause I believe is the half-arsed Lake Emerald Cafe and short sighted thinking.

It is such a shame because the Puffing Billy volunteers  are obviously committed to delivering a fantastic experience for the punters and did a wonderful job.

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I found out today that Myer have started to offer free shipping in Australia. This is a welcome step and a sign of the maturing of online retail in Australia.

The large department store and big box stores have largely ignored ecommerce for the past 15 years and have started to act after being faced with changing consumer behaviour and declining profits .

There is a long way to go. The David Jones online store has made big improvements but is a great example of getting a lot wrong.

Some retailers like Bunnings offer only store location tools and catalogue downloads. The catalogues are a prime example of Australian business taking the easy way out and not thinking about what’s good for the customer.

Who wants to navigate a printed catalogue online? It is a horrible user experience and only encourages customers to look elsewhere for better service and value.

I applaud Myer for being bullish about online retail in Australia and going for $50 million in annual sales. It is a great target and shareholders, customers, and the business will all benefit.

A small business I provided some advice had launched a website in a space with low competition and high margins, and the results were pretty good for a small investment.  They had knocked up a site, launched some paid search ads, put in some rudimentary processes for managing enquiries, and like the results. The problem was that the site had stopped growing.

What was missing was the kind of consistent maintenance and content creation to engage buyers, rank well in Google, and learn from your mistakes.

I find many people not familiar with the intricacies of online marketing and ecommerce are surprised that making a website successful can be hard work. Even more express dismay when they discover that integrating an online channel into an existing business requires a rethinking of all processes.

This is common in any business small or large. I think some people are sold on the internet fantasy of “build it and they will come” or think that the internet is technical stuff which is best left to the guy who runs the servers.

The fact is that online takes work. Like any business it needs to be planned and the plan needs to be worked.

Customers need to be identified and spoken to, marketing plans drawn up, search experts engaged, if you’re shipping goods fulfillment needs to be sorted out. Most importantly you need to know how you’re going to be successful. What are the metrics you will use to work out if strategy is working and what tactics you need to change?

I don’t mean to make it sound impossible but without a commitment to do the work, make mistakes, and learn, it is almost difficult to make an online channel successful. The secret sauce is not technical, it is an passion for learning. I remember listening to @sammartino, the founder of rentoid.com, talking about how he  launched the website with no web design skills at all. What he had was a hunger to build something and make it successful. As an ex-web developer who can get caught up in technical wizardry, it was a very useful lesson in what really matters.

With passion, energy and a keen eye for solving customer problems, any online business can be successful. I recently helped a neighbour and friend fix her wordpress site she developed almost single-handed to launch her hanging glass vase business. I love this kind of enthusiasm to use the web as a tool to build a business. I’m sure that she will be successful because she understood she needed to put the work in to make it work.

I think there is a place for an ecommerce mentor who helps with strategy, measurement, optimization, and coaching. The future of small to medium business is in embracing online technologies to reduce costs and grow their businesses. They just need to be shown that the skills that made their existing business successful is all they need to make their online business successful.

How can you help someone be successful online?

I was reading about Christine Nixon criticising the 2009 Victorian Bushfire Royal Commission and it struck me that we all have different ideas about leadership.

Nixon had claimed that the Royal Commission was the “worst kind of kangaroo court”. The media, in particular the News Ltd papers had taken a dim view of Nixon having a meal in a pub on Black Saturday, likening her to Emperor Nero, eating while Victoria burned.

Nixon had previously said about leadership on the ABC:

“But I think there’s a line about leadership for me that I think’s really important and it’s not about privilege, it’s not about rank. It’s not about popularity but it is about responsibility.”

I think that claiming leadership is about responsibility and then criticising the Royal Commission which said that “elements of the leadership provided on 7 February were wanting” is a little transparent. Delegating or abdicating authority in a crisis is not responsible and it is poor leadership.

Nixon made a point of talking about leadership during her time as Police Commissioner and appears to be trying to resurrect her career and create some controversy to sell some copies of her book. She strikes me as being the worst kind of hypocrite. It would be better if she wrote about what she learnt about leadership throughout the Royal Commission and how she realised that true leadership was about stepping up and helping other people feel like leaders. Or whatever she realised but isn’t saying.

So what is leadership really?

For me, it is an over-used corporate weasel word. Leadership group. Team Leader. Senior Leader. Leading edge. Leading the way. Bullshit most of it. Leadership is about showing grit in tough times and inspiring others to show the same grit and be leaders themselves. The leaders who have inspired me have motivated me to act against my better judgement and avoid reflecting on any perceived short comings,  they have shown me that I have within myself the capacity to lead and inspire others.

Is that what Christine Nixon was doing when she left her deputies in charge at the emergency Response Centre on 7 Feb 2009? Perhaps that is exactly what she intended. The shame is that it didn’t work. According to the Royal Commission report, there was no one really in charge. The situation called for someone to show a way forward in a difficult situation and in that Christine Nixon failed. Having a quick Chicken Schnitzel dinner sent the wrong message and was not the right thing to do.

One of my favourite quotes about leadership is from George W. Bush:

“I have a different vision of leadership. A leadership is someone who brings people together.”

Or perhaps a better quote from Michel Foucault is:

“The strategic adversary is fascism… the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us.”

For me, leadership is about acting and enabling others to act without threats or violence.

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When I was just starting out in the web game in the 1990′s, I met a bloke just back from working in London and about to open a restaurant. He wanted to change the way Melbournians ate fine food. There would be no mediocrity. Every ingredient would be individually sourced and the finest available. The staff would approach hospitality as professionals, not as students with a part time job. The sommelier would be a verified expert at pairing the finest wines with the finest food. The venue, whilst humble would be in a great location, have parking and be easily accessible to his customers.

So what happened? Well today that man is one of Australia’s most successful restaurateurs, is regularly featured in the social pages, occasionally appears on a certain TV cooking show, and has a number of very successful restaurants.

So what does this have to do with online success?

It’s all about vision. My mate defined his vision and worked tirelessly to see it realised. He knew that in the high end market he had to do something different and be 100% committed to quality. He bought the best French butter available, he arranged Melbourne’s first degustation menu, and promoted himself whenever and wherever he could. It didn’t happen overnight but people discovered that he was doing something different and offered a suburb culinary experience.

Pretty soon word of mouth spread and the little restaurant took off.

The point I am trying to make is that the recipe for online success is not about tools, products, or a new PPC or social media strategy, it is about vision and drive.

Sure you need to get the products right, understand your market, build a great brand, and have efficient processes, but without a vision and the drive to realise it you will struggle to successfully build a great online business.

With the web, it’s easy to become enamoured by technology and bright shiny tools. Everyone has some great advice about a web host, PPC,  SEO, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, taking payments, colours, design, layout, the size of your font, your background colour, your logo, delivery and fulfillment, email marketing, CSS, YouTube, link building, Google Panda, Facebook pages, PayPal, PHP, .NET, jquery, and so on.  That’s all bullshit. My advice is to forget the tools and focus on the vision. Once your vision is written in huge letters on your wall start looking at which technology can help you realise it.

My mate wanted to change how Melbournians ate fine food by introducing a new European style of dining, what’s your vision?

I just saw a new Australia Post ad promoting their parcel delivery services to small to medium businesses in Australia. The ad encourages businesses to “zing their thing” and apart from being a little trite (zing = speed), I liked the ad.

It tells the story of a small business that makes Zing and becomes wildly successful. And guess what, they need a flexible delivery service to meet the needs of their rapidly growing business. The ad is backed by a website http://www.zingyourthing.com.au/ which builds on the idea that Zing is every product, every idea, every dream, which is of course delivered speedily by Australia Post.

The ad invites people to search for zing. So being an obedient consumer I did exactly that. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that there were no results for Australia Post or their campaign sites on page 1 of Google.  There was a paid search ad. This is another case of agencies getting only half the campaign right. If you’re going to invite people to search for a low competition term like zing then spend a couple of weeks ensuring you rank for it. With an estimated 2% to 10% of Google searchers clicking on paid search ads, Australia Post are going to be missing out on a reasonable amount of traffic. Admittedly, Australia Posts click-through-rate for the ad will be higher than most terms, but it is still a poorly executed campaign. Some users will wonder if they are in the right place and move on.

It is a shame because the rest of the campaign is really great. The campaign site is one long page and has a beautiful scrolling background. The call to action is front and centre, and the privacy policy is easily found. Before the digital geniuses in agencies have a great idea like, “Why don’t we just ask them to search for quirky product term”, they should make sure they cover off organic and paid search.

When Google+ was launched a few weeks ago I saw it as another Google Buzz writ large. Google Buzz was of course a lamentable failure after hype of dizzying proportions. Now I think Google+ may be different. In a little over 3 weeks the service has amassed 20  million users and seen the social media stars and blogger experts jump on board and make all sorts of wonderful claims. My favourites are:

• Personal blogs are no longer needed because Google+ allows maximum engagement;
• This will kill twitter and people are already bored by twitter;
• The 140 character limit is limiting twitter;
• This will kill Facebook;
• Google are playing favourites with brand pages and demonstrating how unethical they really are;
• Google+ will change how brands interact with social media;
• Google+ will not change how brands interact with social media;
• Twitter is still a better mobile tool;
• Google+ is a better curation tool;
• Google+ sucks;
• Google+ is like Friend Feed;
• Google+ vs Facebook is like Facebook vs MySpace circa 2005.

Some of the views above are not entirely crazy (apart from redirecting your personal blog to your Google+ profile), but people really need to calm the fuck down.

Sure Google+ is great and shiny and new. It is like the latest spring fashions from Paris, the new BMW M5, a latest Nike’s, or a new diet drink made from a substance found deep in the rainforest which magically makes you thinner, better looking and smarter.

In other words Google+ is simply fashion.

Geeks, techno-bloggers, and social media experts are flocking to Google+ so they can be part of the cool-set.

And Google are of course building a massive new data-set to crunch some data and sell advertising. I have no complaints about that, it is after all just business. My problem is with people magically forgetting that Google are not a charity creating some really innovative cool stuff to make everyone happy. They are building honeypot to make lots and lots of money because they have been watching Facebook pull in more than $1 Billion a year in advertising and have a massive share of Internet users invisible to Google.

The great thing about the world is that there will always be room for something new and innovative. And if Apple or Google are in business there will always be uncritical acceptance of whatever they do from guileless fools.

Oh, you can find me here if you want to follow me on Google+

I have a few memories of Amy Winehouse.

One is in Norway, which is an awful coincidence given the terrible shootings there this weekend. It was at a recovery BBQ for a Wedding, the weather was warm, the party attendees nicely drunk or hungover when “I don’t wanna go to rehab” came on the ipod mix. My brother-in-law, who has long struggled with his own demons, jumped up and said they’re playing my song  and started to dance; wildly, crazy, and free. The more senior members of the party looked at the ground or studied their wine glasses. The younger, more inebriated of us just laughed.

My other memories are purely tabloid. Amy drunk. Amy sad. Amy drug-fucked. Amy OK. Amy not OK

That Winehouse died alone (I’m guessing) after 10 years being a poster-girl for wasted youth, and a spectacle eagerly consumed by tabloids is a tragedy.  A look at Winehouse’s twitter page is instructive. One of the similar users is tabloid disgrace Perez Hilton.

Winehouse was the same age as my sister, who also died alone, a victim of addiction and destructive  hedonism. My sister’s battles were largely personal, unshared with her family and friends. Winehouse’s battles were a public spiral into the gutter which sold a lot of magazines. The end result is the same. Another life wasted because of drugs, alcohol, and desire.

Our society doesn’t tolerate wastedness very well except at mandated public events – Christmas, New Years, Melbourne Cup, and if you’re under 30, every Friday night. Being wasted on a Monday morning is to gaze into the Nietzschean void and loudly declare, “Fuck you all. Fuck corporations. Fuck your God!” To do it on a Friday is to be a joiner, a team player, or great bloke. The fissure between the two modes of behaviour is almost non-existent. A Friday drinking can turn into a wasted Monday for someone with poor support structures, depression, or a baggage too painful to bear alone.

The death of Amy Winehouse forces us to remember those who’ve also died too early, alone, and a victim of a Nietzschean rage at the world and themselves.

We should be able to do better for them.

Photo credit: Crikey