Nice bit of product placement there, Priceline. (They’re not just in the same aisle, they’re virtually opposite each other.) If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth half doing: This advert for VoteMyPet.com.au (promotion for Advocate, a product of Bayer) was nailed to a tree in the park. You reckon they had permission from Kingston Council ... [More]
Advertising on public transport is big business. In Melbourne around 360,000 people a day use the train system for starters… and buses and trams get spotted on the road by many more. Personally I don’t mind the ads if they’re not intrusive. They help subsidise the system. I wonder how it works when advertising on ... [More]
Is it extreme stupidity, or just carelessness not to spell-check your advert before putting it in the newspaper? What were they thinking? (from today’s Age)
Dammit, why does this keep happening? I figure out what I want to buy, and it vanishes. After getting the Ikea Billy bookshelves setup, after some procrastinating, I worked out I needed an extra shelf. When I went back last time they were out of stock (I had checked the web site; it had lied ... [More]
I’m good at some things, and bad at others. One of the things I’m worst at is buying shoes. I hate it, I’m not good at it, and while I don’t always stuff it up, it seems like I certainly do sometimes. I went to replace my Ecco shoes. They’ve been great; have lasted many ... [More]
Forgot to review the Star Trek movie. In summary: great stuff, really enjoyable. (And still chuckling over The Onion’s take on it.) How is it that Rivers in Victoria have 7 retail outlets, but 31 clearance centres? For those of you who want to browse PT timetables online while out and about, bookmark this in ... [More]
Yesterday after having a win at Officeworks (they agreed to beat Landmark’s $20 price on Canon ink cartridges by 5%, thus giving me a discount of almost $11 on each of the three I was buying), we took a look at the Sir William Fry reserve. There were couple of strange metal things near the ... [More]
Why is Westpac bank turning into my mother? Do they really expect to get more customers like this? Great quote: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” — Robert J. Hanlon Star Trek: all creeds and colours of humanity, in a spirit of co-operation and harmony, working together at hating the ... [More]
Had to laugh at the Indian protestor talking to Jon Faine on Monday who appeared to inadvertantly use the phrase “Too many chiefs, not enough Indians” (at about the 20:45 minute mark, using the ABC media player’s weird countdown system.) I haven’t actually seen this week’s controversial Chaser episode yet. But judging from last week’s ... [More]
I’m sorry, I know I’m being terribly dim here, but these adverts: Can someone explain what it means? I appreciate that a physical printed bus timetable is generally made out of paper, and is therefore flexible. But what with online timetables and journey planners, a lot of people never use a paper timetable anymore. Especially, ... [More]
As part of my conversion to a cheapskate, I was comparing low-fat milks. For a while I’d been buying Pura Light Start or Rev. The supermarket brands are a lot cheaper, and maybe my taste buds are AWOL, but I can’t really detect a huge difference in taste. But how do they stackup on nutrition? ... [More]
I was in the barber shop last week getting a hair cut. I’ve been going there for something like fifteen years, and things have changed little over that time. One thing that used to be different is they had ash-trays in the waiting area to accomodate smokers. Those disappeared some years ago. But now for ... [More]
If you’re wondering, yes, the Lasoo.com.au banner advert is due to a sponsorship deal. I was quite pleased to see they produced a graphic that fits in well with the blog — in a similar vein to my post last week on contextual advertising. Lasoo is a web site that compiles and indexes retail catalogues ... [More]
Online it’s all about contextual advertising — figuring out what the viewer is interested in, then showing them ads they’ll hopefully like. It frequently doesn’t work of course; Facebook knows everything about virtually everybody, but still manages to show me adverts for things I have no interest in. In the offline world, contextual advertising is ... [More]
Just when I thought my finances were more-or-less under control, March brought a couple of major unexpected things breaking down. Electric car windows are nice to have. But one stopped working a couple of weeks ago. This involved using sticky tape just to keep it from descending by itself and staying open to the weather. ... [More]
If you’re in customer service it’s good to have some kind of patter worked out to keep your customers entertained. Bad to use the same line twice in one session though. This is why spam fails, actually. One might take notice of a single reputable-ish-looking email, but when a dozen show up at once, it’s ... [More]