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Media Week: Apple Watch apps, Anzac irony

Apr 24, 2015, updated Nov 20, 2015

This week, early adopters strap on the Apple Watch, online eats a bigger slice of advertising budgets, a final word on Anzac marketing and much more.

Wasting no time on Apple Watch

The latest big tech product – if Apple has its way – is its watch, which will be strapped on to Australian wrists from today.

BankSA, as part of the Westpac banking group, is wasting no time, offering what it claims as the world’s first mobile banking app for the Apple Watch.

Given the relatively small screen of the watch, it’s difficult to assess how useful it will be – or whether this is primarily another clever marketing move by BankSA and its overlords.

BankSA is promising “quick and easy” access to account balances and a fast way to find your nearest ATM or branch.

The bank has already launched an Android smartwatch app.

Meanwhile, embattled Australia Post is also using the Apple Watch launch to push its parcel delivery business.

The Australia Post app will enable shoppers to track the progress of a parcel, or open parcel lockers by scanning their Apple Watch.

The question is: why would using a bank or post app on a watch be more convenient than doing something similar on a phone?

Make or break time: the Apple Watch, launched in September. Photo: AAP

The Apple Watch lands in Australia today. AAP photo

Screens beating paper

The Apple Watch is yet another screen to deliver marketing messages – which is more bad news for traditional media platforms.

The newspaper and magazine lobbies keep pushing the alleged cut-through of print advertising – but the latest stats indicate that advertisers aren’t heeding this message.

The Neilsen Top Advertisers report shows that online is growing at a massively greater rate than any other advertising medium.

In 2014, advertisers poured $4.6 billion into digital, compared with $4 billion the previous year. It now commands more than a third of total advertising business. Read more about the data here.

Is it because Americans don’t get irony?

Advertiser columnist Ali Clarke wrote a good piece this week about the tackiness of media organisations seeking to cash in on the 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli landing.

With the Anzac centenary coming up on Saturday, Clarke noted how she was “floored” by a radio station running a Gallipoli competition in a crassly commercial way.

The event “deserves a lot more respect than simply being tarted out for ratings points and to satisfy a client’s promotional needs”.

It’s impossible to argue with that sentence – which was published mere millimetres above a house ad for The Advertiser’s Anzac coin collection (“collect all 14 official coins for $3 each”).

Of course, you have to buy The Advertiser or Sunday Mail to be able to collect the trinkets.

The promo was also on the front page that day, and prominently displayed above the online version of Clarke’s piece.

The fact that no-one at the Tiser saw this as ironic is odd (could it be because Rupert Murdoch, The Advertiser’s owner, is an American citizen?).

Meanwhile, News Corp’s big newspaper rival, Fairfax, is selling an array of Gallipoli-branded merchandise, including teddy bears and dolls.

I know times are desperate for newspapers, but it’s all a bit much.

How dare a media organisation use the Anzac Centenary for commercial gain!

How dare a media organisation use the Anzac Centenary for commercial gain!

Every player wins a prize

The latest radio ratings were terrible for Triple M, Southern Cross Austereo’s blokey Adelaide station.

But that didn’t stop SCA putting out a media release promoting their performance.

Overall, Triple M dropped numbers, being overtaken by ABC youth network Triple J.

In the breakfast shift, Roo and Ditts lost 1.9 percentage points – the biggest drop of any breakfast program.

Nevertheless, as SCA pointed out, Triple M remains the number one FM station for males, the number one FM breakfast program for males – etc etc. Razor and beer companies, take note.

Meanwhile, Matthew Abraham and David Bevan continue their extraordinary era of ratings dominance. They flatlined at 18 per cent – but remain way ahead of their nearest rival, FIVEaa, which improved one point to 13.7.

Forget buckets of cash, Matt and Dave have climbed the ratings mountain with give-aways of quality merchandise, such as oversized wooden cutlery, French-polished by a listener.

Forget buckets of cash, Matt and Dave have climbed the ratings mountain with give-aways of quality merchandise, such as oversized wooden cutlery, French-polished by a listener.

Rub shoulders with the press

The SA Press Club has a great season of lunches coming up, starting with the Chief Justice Chris Kourakis on 14 May.

He will be followed by Cabaret Festival director and Australian show biz legend Barry Humphries on 2 June, state Treasurer Tom Koutsantonis on 22 June (the week after the state Budget), and Grant Stevens, the incoming Police Commissioner, on 21 July.

All lunches are held at the Hotel Grand Chancellor on Hindley Street, and they are open to everyone.

For details and bookings, go here.

Olympic TV

The trend for sports to to publish their own content – something the AFL does frighteningly well in Australia – continues to grow.

Now the powerful Olympic movement is seeking to control its own media message and sell its own content direct to viewers.

AFP reports that the International Olympic Committee is planning to have a new 24-hour Olympic television channel up and running by April or May 2016, in time for the Rio Games.

Tellingly, the channel will be aimed – in the first instance – at tablet and mobile phone devices.

The station will be based in Madrid, with a commercial base in Lausanne where the IOC has its headquarters.

It will show news, theme programming and events such as qualifying contests for the Olympics and world championships of international federations. It will not show live coverage from Games itself – the rights for this coverage are a massive cash cow for the IOC.

Naughty corner

The media swallowed, unquestionably for too long, the story of Belle Gibson, who made a name for herself – and countless dollars – by claiming she had cured her terminal brain cancer through diet and natural therapies.

Gibson admitted to the Australian Women’s Weekly this week that she had never suffered from cancer.

Body and Soul, the syndicated “healthy living” supplement published in News Corp’s Sunday papers, runs a baffling churn of health claims each week (many of which are contradictory). And, of course, they have promoted Gibson previously, including in this piece about “everything you need to know about clean living”. They certainly weren’t alone.

Everyone in the media business needs to start getting more sceptical about the proliferation of health claims – wherever they come from.

Top of the class

We’ll broaden our view this week to take in government communications – which rarely gets a favourable mention anywhere.

However, the state environment department deserves some kudos this week for its innovative idea to get kids involved in consultation about the future of our national parks.

As InDaily reported this week, the department is asking school children to use the online building game, Minecraft, to design their ideal national park from scratch, or to design changes to an existing park. The winning designs will help guide national park upgrades worth around $10 million.

The story was picked up by The Lead, before taking off around the world, including in the Washington Post and The Guardian.

Media Week is published every Friday.

 

 

 

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