Simon Says

Time to Join the Family Business

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Oboler) — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 01:31:00 +0000

The next couple of months are going to be extremely busy for me, and what better way to keep everyone updated on my thoughts, and get some feedback than through this blog!

The biggest thing going on now is my fathers business, Oblo Jewellery, is moving from the wholesale side into online sales direct to the customer.

So far over the last few months we have managed to get the store online and in about 3 weeks get our Facebook page up over 200 likes and growing steadily.

With my brother Andre Oboler having all the necessary computer skills to build the website, that leaves me to look after the Facebook Community. Up til this point none of us have had time to actually sit down and develop a real strategy of how we are going to build this effectively new company and start selling Jewellery online. Unfortunately that is most likely not going to change in the coming few weeks which is resulting in everyone doing their own thing without really talking to the other people.

A couple of early lessons on the Facebook side of things:

Adding a Welcome page for those that haven't 'like'd us before has been an extremely important addition to the Facebook page. The downside is we have had plenty of views of the welcome page, but not many people clicking through and 'like'ing us and wanting to join the community.

What are some good tips and tricks to get people to click past the Welcome page?

Interning at Google

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Oboler) — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 05:58:00 +0000

So I have been luckily chosen to be the first ever non-software engineering intern in Australia for Google.

Not exactly sure why I was selected out of probably the hundreds that applied, but apparently Google believes in me as much as I believe in the products, willing to give me a few months trial and then probably never to be used again.

Thats not completely true, I mostly use Google products when there are choices out there, but enough about that, and onto the internship.

End of week 3 and I have been working on quite a few different projects. The culture of throwing you in the deep end at Google was evident from day one, when straight after my orientation I met my manager expecting to go have lunch and meet the team, only to be told that we had a meeting with an agency in 15 minutes. Having no idea what the meeting was about, or any preperation whatsoever I was in this meeting helping make decisions about products I didn't know anything about!

Over the next 3 months just assume that everything good that happens with Google has all been contributed by me, and anything negative had absolutely nothing to do with me!

Until next time, Google away!

Pearson Reader

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Oboler) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 04:58:00 +0000

I recently took part in a market research focus group for Pearson Education, a publisher of text books. They have decided to take education back to the basics and try to ensure that all students have access to textbooks, as we all know that no-one actually buys them anymore.

www.pearsonreader.com is their new 'library' where you can log in and view all the books in your personal library.

Essentially it is the textbook online. Its a hell of a lot easier to read, and means I don't have to spend 140 on a text book I will open probably twice.

The thinking behind the idea is fantastic, the only issue they will face is convincing the University to pay for all the students ... which isn't gonna happen, not at Monash at least.

The social side of clubs

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Oboler) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 08:54:00 +0000

Everyone seems to mess up the name, but it is the MMSS, Monash Marketing Student Society.

I will start by saying that I will no longer 'officially' be part of the club next year as being the real gen Y that I am, I followed the money and will be working for the student union next year.

At the end of my first year of uni I was studing for exams with a group of people of which i was only friends with probably one or 2. One of them was going to be the social director for the MMSS the following year and asked if we wanted to be on the sub-committee next year.

My initial reaction was one of "pft who the hell wants to be part of a crappy uni club" then about a second later i volunteered to do so.

Thus the process of getting involved was complete. The next stage was actually doing things for the committee, I learnt extremely quickly that it was basically a big family up there. Everyone wanted to help everyone with not just MMSS related happenings, but also with assignments and study and etc, everyone was extremely happy to help out.

That is the first part about why Uni clubs are so great. The simple social aspect of them makes it essential for everyone to try and get involved. The number of friends I made through MMSS has been amazing, and not just those directly involved, but meeting the friends of those in the committee, and the group just grows and grows.

Something I like about Uni

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Oboler) — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 12:17:00 +0000

Alright, so a lot/most of my recent posts have been about how much I hate the way university's work and etc.

One thing I must say I do like is something which I have taken control of myself, and that is uni clubs.

For the past 2 years I have been apart of the MMSS, the Monash Marketing Student Society, and it has been probably the best thing I could be doing to seperate myself from other students who will all have higher grades than me.

The next few posts, will be a bit of information about what the MMSS is, what I have done in the past 2 years and why it is the best club at Monash University.

I'm a crammer ... what ya gonna do about it?

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Oboler) — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 08:02:00 +0000

Studying for exams is probably the biggest waste of time for me right now. I have a project I want to start working on, I have about 10 grand I need to save by January (not gonna happen) and there is plenty of TV I need to catch up on.

Why then, over the past few days have I been cramming like crazy for exams? Because I need to pass them to get my degree.

BUT in the long run what will this cramming do? absolutely nothing. Everything 'important' in the subject has already stuck from tutorials and lectures, and all the little things that I need to cram in my brain will be forgotten about 2 hours after I walk out of that exam, talk to everyone about how stupid the questions were, and start cramming for my exam on Friday.

My parents are always telling me (well mostly my Mum because she seems to care about my uni grades) that back when she was in Uni she was studying for exams like a month in advance learning everything. Today cramming is a skill, and going back to my tests in year 7, the night before was always spent thinking about how screwed I am for the test, and then always pulling through with pretty decent scores.

Anywho I should probably get back to cramming for this Sports Marketing exam tomorrow morning. Wish me luck.

That time of year again

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Oboler) — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 05:58:00 +0000

With exams coming up, expect to see a couple more posts from me as I procrastinate like only Uni students know how!

Exams are another thing which annoy me in relation to Uni. Now I know that it is important in the academic world and exams are an easy way to mark where people are at and blah blah blah, but realistically they are quite crap.

This semester I have only received 1 credit, and that was for a group presentation, which we got told afterwards, if we had of mentioned the name of one of the particular references we used, it would have got us an extra mark, putting us up to a distinction, but that is all beside the point.

I am not a terribly good student, in fact this semester has probably been my worst study/work wise with most of my time and effort going into the Brandstorm competition (which we came equal third in Australia, and I will talk about in another post). BUT I have still managed to receive Distinctions and High Disctinctions for every one of my assessments bar one.

But when it comes down to the exam, I expect to fail at least one of my subjects, because I can't write exams to save myself. Mainly due to the fact that I can't write essays too well, but given the time to do write an essay and actually think about everything I will be perfectly fine.

How does giving students 2 hours, to write as much crap as they can differentiate students all that well?

Thank god that employers don't just look at Uni marks!

Where I left off ...

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Oboler) — Thu, 07 May 2009 10:42:00 +0000

Alright, so my first post in a while and after re-reading it a couple of times I realised that in my true style I started off writing/thinking about one thing, then went off on a bit of a tangent and then finished on a different point to both the original and the tangent.

If you ask Zac Martin, who I am working on the L'Oreal Brandstorm competition with, he will tell you that I always jump in at random points and bring something up that we were talking about an hour prior, or even something completely irrlevent to what we are talking about, and might have absolutely nothing to do with anything. Kind of like what I am doing now.

This is probably not a good thing to do with blogging as I suppose each post should have a point, generally speaking, and if I keep up with the way I talk/act, it will mean each post will make absolutely no sense to anyone .. except maybe me, although even that isn't a given.

Already I was going to have a post explaining the main point of my previous one, but instead went off and wrote about how I write ...

A Students Perspective

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Oboler) — Sun, 03 May 2009 07:08:00 +0000

As all 3 of you who read this blog are aware, I attend Monash University. I did so because a) I wanted to do a marketing degree, and b) it is one of the top universities in the country.

I would say that 83% of students, if asked what their main motivation is for attending university, would say "to be able to get a better job" or something of the equivalent.

Herein lies the issue with tertiary education in Australia. Students attend Uni because they want to get a better job, yet almost everyone who I have spoken to who has completed their degree and are now working in that field, say that 90% of what they learnt at uni is irrelevant and they haven't used it once. Of course this is quite a big generalisation and extremely broad, as they might be using Maslow's hierarchy (the only thing I can remember from first year Management, but I will get onto that in another post), but will not specifically say as such, they might just be using the theory subconsciously.

Anywho, back on point, students believe that going to univeristy will put them in good stead to get a better job, and whilst that is true, it provides absolutely no training for students to be able to have the job, it simply gives them a piece of paper that says they have managed to get greater then 50% in at least 24 subjects.

Universities on the other hand KNOW that their main priority is not the education, but the research. Therein lies the major issue.

There is a massive difference between what students believe University is about, and what the Uni's think they are about.

School of Peter Wagstaff

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Oboler) — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 06:38:00 +0000

Looking back, I am extremely happy that I only got an enter score of 89 point something .. I forget. If I had gotten just 4 points higher, I would be doing a commerce degree at Clayton campus and would have missed out on one of the top 5 teachers I have had in my 15 years of school/uni, and definitily the number 1 at Uni

When I started University 2 years ago, I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do or how I was going to get there, all I knew was that I wanted to be at uni. Within the first 4 weeks of taking the first year marketing subject at Monash Caulfield with Peter as the lecturer (and Cori as my tutor, hey Cori) I knew what I wanted to do.

Since then with Peter's guidence along the way, I have worked up to being the MINDS director for the Marketing Club next year which I probably would not have known existed had Peter not given me a few pushes throughout the year.

The university will never give Peter the credit he deserves because uni's are all about the research and not about the students for some reason. It is for that reason that we are showing Peter that even if the uni doesn't think so highly of you, the people who truly matter, the students definitly do.

Along with just some of his other students from the School of P.W. Zac Martin, Julian Cole, Josh Strawczynski and Rick Clarke, I would like to say thank you to Peter Wagstaff for guiding us along the right path and being there for us when we just needed someone to talk to about how bad some of our other lecturers are!

Thank you Peter.

Inbox (1)

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Oboler) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 02:06:00 +0000

You know what I hate? People who don't respond to emails.

It is the 'new' way of contacting people rather then calling them and you cause no disruptions to them, and allow them to respond in their own time. However if I send an email about something important and it is clearly expecting a responde relatively soon, I don't want to wait 2 weeks to get a reply.

This is what is happening at the moment.

With a team, I am busy putting together a Marketing Career Guide for students, we have emailed overall about 40 companies asking them if they are interested. Within the week we got reponses from those companies that we have had previous contact and experience with, as they know that MMSS is a good contact to have to reach Uni students.

The rest of the companies? Well most of them still havn't replied, so I am busy calling them up, disturbing them, and making them give me an answer, of which being the businesses that they are, they didn't do, they simply asked that I re-email them and they will get onto it today.

Now being the nieve guy that I am, I am assuming these people will actually get back to me today. The chances of that actually happening? Slim to nil.

Why do these people even have email?

Seriously if they aren't going to use it properly, don't bother using it at all.

And if they aren't replying because they are not interested, then they need to get over their fear rejecting someone.

Seeing Green

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Oboler) — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 05:16:00 +0000

Shell Petrol you are gooses!

I will start by saying that I ALWAYS fill up at Shell, not because I have discounts for Coles, but it is more just a habit and I have had bad customer dealings with Safeway ones.

My latest occasion filling up at Shell however, did not got as planned.

For those of you that aren't aware Shell stations, as probably all petrol stations, have different colour pumps for different types of petrol. Eg. the normal unleaded is yellow, the V-Power stuff is red, and at the one station I usually fill up at, green is unleaded 95.

This afternoon I went to a petrol station close to me that I haven't been to in a while, and there were a few things wrong. First off their board saying the prices of petrol doesn't even have the regular unleaded price, which I didn't realise until I was already filling up, instead in small print next to the price it says it is for this new E10 petrol they have, which is 10% ethanol. Now I know very little about cars, however from what people have told me, that's not exactly the best thing to use.

The second issue I had which was the major one, was that they managed to trick me into using this crap petrol. As I mentioned earlier I always use the unleaded 95, which is usually the green pump. At this station however that was not the case. Not only did they not have any unleaded 95 that I could see, and in fact their green pumps were now this E10.

Obviously I am the idiot for not actually looking at what I was putting in my car, however the fact remains that green used to be 95 and now suddenly it swapped to E10.

At the very least all they had to do was choose a new colour for this E10 and all problems would be solved, instead they switch the colour of 95 and confuse people. I am sure I am not the only one who has started filling up thinking I was using unleaded 95 only to find that I was in fact using E10.

Aussie Aussie Aussie

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Oboler) — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 12:28:00 +0000

Hello to everyone again, it has been quite a while since we spoke and I do apologise for that, I don't have any extravagant excuse but rather I just haven’t. On top of that, this time I'm not going to promise to keep at my blog as much as others do, or even as much as others would like me to.

Now greetings aside I have thought this for quite a long time and tonight was the first time I have heard someone else of the same opinion as me about this topic.

I was driving home from basketball listening to Sunday Night Safran on Triple J. They had a special guest on whose name escapes me now, however he was discussing the fact that every time there is a situation overseas all the media focuses on the Australians. Now this is all good and well I am not against reporting news and reporting that x amount of Australians are missing, however it gets to a point where the missing/killed Australians become more important then everything else that occurred.

It could be that there was a bomb in one of Amsterdam’s biggest office buildings and 1000 people died. If there was just 1 Australian in that bunch, that’s .1% for those playing at home, they would get the majority of the focus for the news generally speaking.

Of course everything else will be covered, however it will most often me the case that the newsreader will say there were 1000 people killed in the blast and ONE Australian was killed, he was a prominent business man with KPMG and etc etc etc.

I am sure every country does it, however that doesn't mean everyone should be doing it.

This brings me to my next point which was brought up in Boston Legal (my new second favourite show, only behind How I Met Your Mother) in that news/media outlets are companies. They are there to make money, and in order to do that they need to have a larger share of the market. Maybe people only truly deeply care about the Australians that were affected, not me though.

If a major incident occurs and people die that needs to get a fair share of the broadcast in my opinion and the major focus of the article or news broadcast cannot be that out of a possible 1000 deaths, there was 1 Australian.

That’s the end of my rant, I would love to hear if other people take notice of this or don't think it’s happening and if people think that it’s ok to do this simply because, well everyone does it.

Getting there

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Oboler) — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 23:38:00 +0000

It seems everybody is talking about these new Microsoft "ads". Whlst I agree with the majority that the first one was a complete and utter waste of space, this new one I am starting to see where they are going with it.

Still no good, but at least they are starting to build a little story and semi explaining what is going on.

Gaining an advantage

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Oboler) — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 13:07:00 +0000

Whilst driving home from basketball on Sunday night I experienced what so many people talk about when speaking about why they hate cops.

I am lucky enough to have never had any encounter with the police, and in 3 and a half years of driving, am still yet to even be breath tested.

Anyway, so I was stopped driving down the street, the lights have just turned red so naturally the car in front of me stops, behind me is a police car which decides it is going to use its power to simply put its lights on at that moment and go straight through the red light. When people tell stories about that happening I usually imagine the cop car leaving their lights on for a while so not to look that dodgy. This one turns the lights off as soon as they get to the other side of the traffic lights. My first thought was just a "yoooou dick", but then I realised he was just using the powers/skills granted to him that enables him to gain that advantage. As long as they don't break the law in doing so, I don't see a problem with trying to gain that advantage.

I believe blogging is also that fair (or unfair) advantage that more people should take advantage of. Now myself probably not so much, however Zac Martin and Julian Cole are/have used their blog to gain an advantage over the rest of the field in getting into the industry after university. Obviously Julian has had the greater impact so far with his new role in sydney with The Population, and he has already completed his degree, however as soon as Zac completes his degree, he will already be known within the industry, and will be that far ahead of just the average student it isn't funny.

In two years time I wonder if companies will be looking for that straight HD student, or if they would rather look for someone that understands where the future of marketing lies.

Ernst & Young

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Oboler) — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 23:31:00 +0000

I was trawling facebook this morning and noticed that one of my friends had posted on the wall of "Ernst & Young Careers - Australia." First thought was, thats a bit odd, but I went to have a look as it caught my interest.

What Ernst & Young have done is quite impressive in my eye, and is utilizing Facebook to its full potential.

The page simply gives information about E&Y, specifically tailored to students. All the basic information is there, such as what types of entry positions there are, the Grad programs, information for international students as well.

The bit that really stood out to me though, was on the wall E&Y are actually replying to questions that anyone can post. The graduate recruitment team are the people replying as well, so they are really trying to get people involved and use Facebook as a recruitment tool.

Good work E&Y, hopefully other companies follow in Australia and utilise the full potential of Facebook.

I Believe

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Oboler) — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 01:15:00 +0000

Mars has just renamed their bars, Believe, in Australia in support of having a Tasmanian AFL team. At first glance, the only difference to the packaging is the name change to Believe. When taking a closer look however, there is small writing on the side which gives a brief comment, "If you believe in a Tasmanian Footy Team sms a phone number."

The Tasmanian Government entered a sponsorship deal with Mars in order to help promote having a Tasmanian footy team. Now mars has done this before in England to show support for England in the soccer World Cup in 2006.

I believe this WOULD have success, however the support for a Tasmanian AFL team, would be minimal outside of Tasmania. Most AFL supporters aren't supportive of the two teams that have already been announced to join the AFL.

If this were hypothetically about "believing" that an already existent footy team should not fold, ie the Melbourne Football Club, I think it would have greater success, as more people would be supportive of not losing a club, then introducing a new team into the competition.

The other negative of the campaign, is the question of what do the consumers get? The Mars Bar was renamed, and if we believe in a product we have to sms a number. No sign of anything to win, so the only positive is potentially having a Tasmanian Footy team, great for Tassie but the rest of Aus? Not so sure.

An Explanation

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Oboler) — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:45:00 +0000

I just thought I would take this time to give a little bit of an explanation of where I am at the moment, which might give a slight indication as to why I havn't blogged in about 2 months.

First off, I have decided that social media, or new media as it were, is not my thing. Whilst I am part of Gen Y and spend most of my time online, I dont feel like it is my calling.

That being said, it is no excuse for not posting in two months. That blame lies solely with the fact that I don't think like a blogger. When I see something that might be something worth posting about, it doesn't really enter my mind. That being said, it has started to come back to me a little bit, so I am hoping that my brain will start working like that again and hopefully I will be a little bit less spaced out then 1 post every 2 months.

Secondly, I can't think of what I was going to write secondly.

As I said, I am hoping that I will get back into the jist of things and start having more semi-regular postings although most likely won't be related to social media, or marketing in general, I'll see how I go.

Also, for those of you reading this, it means that after not making a post in 2 months, you have kept me in your reader, so thanks for not ditching me, I will try make it up to you.

Simon Oboler: Proud sponsor of Simon Oboler

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Oboler) — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 10:40:00 +0000

Watching television the other night I saw two advertisements that just made me think "what the hell are these guys doing?"

The first I cannot remember what company it was for, however at the end of the ad, along with the logo and all of that is the phrase "proud sponsor of value". I am not sure what channel this was on either, however I am pretty sure it was on channel 10, if not then Channel 7 the olympic broadcaster. As if that wasn't bad enough, the very next ad finished up almost identically with the phrase "Proud sponsors of Lifes Good". No points for guessing which company that was for.

Obviously the Olympics are on at the moment, and specifically on Channel 7 basically every single Ad that comes on TV is a company that is either worldwide parter, or broadcast partner, or proud sponser for the olympics, those are fair enough. When these two ads came on and were "sponsoring" value and life's good, it was clear that they had gone a little bit too far in trying to find something to sponsor.

Which Bank?

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Oboler) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 11:49:00 +0000

I currently have two accoutns with two seperate banks. Commonwealth Bank and Westpac. I recently went about comparing these two banks in a number of different areas.

Online: If you went to both of their websites, you would most likely see that the Commonwealth site, is a lot better then the Westpac site. The CommBank website looks a lot cleaner and is a lot more user friendly and easy to navigate. With their online banking sections, again the Commonwealth site looks a lot cleaner, but the Westpac site is a little bit easier to navigate and find what you need to do.

Commonwealth wins for the online section, with a far surperior design, and a little bit more thought going into their online feel.

In branch: These two banks are distinctly different in their layout and operations. The branches I am comparing are the Hawthorn branches of both banks, and the East Doncaster branch for Commonwealth Bank. Westpac's branch was a lot more open with lots of space, probably a little too big for my liking. When I went in I was also the only customer there which most likely didn't help the matter. The staff however were very friendly, with me being taken from the regular cashiers to the customer service section, which is a few tables near the entrance. Had there been some signage, or anything which said that was the customer service desk, perhaps I would not have wasted my time going up to the regular counters. The lady I spoke to was very helpful however, and actually changed my accounts around to give me the best deals possible, whilst also being warm and friendly.

Commonwealth on the other hand, first off their layout is a little bit different. As soon as you walk in there is the customer service desk with 2 people standing behind it ready to talk to whoever needs it. The bank has a warmer feel to it, with it still being spacious, but a little bit smaller so you don't feel like a single person in a big empty room as I did with Westpac. They do however differ again in dealing with the customer service person. Whilst it was a lot easier to begin talking to this person, they were almost useless in what I was asking them about (this is the Hawthorn branch, not my local one), and the lasy basically gave me a little book which was meant to answer any questions I had and basically sent me on my way without really trying to answer any of my questions herself. I found that pretty poor customer service. In my local branch in Doncaster however, it was a different vibe, and whilst I am not a regular in the bank, I was treated as if I was, and they were more then happy to sit me down and talk about what I wanted to know.

In Branch Westpac is the winner, but only just. Their layout needs to change dramatically at least in their Hawthorn Branch, so that it is not so spacious and empty inside, or at least they could put in some chairs, or paint the walls a different colour to plain white to give some warm feeling. BUT their service was top notch and couldn't have really been much better, and what else do you really need with a bank, other then being efficient and effective.

Phone: This one again, was two almost completely different scenarios. First off, Westpac do not have a general number to call, it has to fit into one specific area, so if you want to talk about a number of things (luckily I didnt) whilst I am sure most of them would be able to handle a number of different areas, it is silly not to have one general number to call. Now to actually speaking to someone on the phone, the wait was a lot shorter for Westpac, and it could be for any number of reasons, I called at different points in the day, it could have been a really busy time for the CommBank, or Westpac might just have more staff on the phones, but that isn't going to come into it, a wait is to be expecting when calling a bank. When speaking to the people from the two banks they were both quite helpful, and in the end reached a point where I no longer needed to speak to them on the phone.

Therefore there is no way for me to compare as they were both efficient, therefore the phone section is a draw.

Both banks scored 1 section each, which doesn't really allow me to distinguish all that well which leaves me with only one solution.

ANZ here I come!

Less Spam Anyone?

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Oboler) — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 10:07:00 +0000

I might just be an extremely lucky person, but I must say that over the past couple of months the amount of spam emails in my inbox has decreased dramatically.

The first reason I can think of is that I do not just randomly sign up for websites anymore. I must admit I used to do that quite a bit and the junk mail was horrendous. Obviosly by me not putting my email out there as much, I recieve less spam.

The second option I can think of is social media spam. Before I left Myspace and converted to Facebook, my Myspace inbox and comments section was full of virus type spam with messages automatically being sent from peoples accounts without their knowledge with a link attached, and those of us without much brain activity at least once clicked on the link which then stole our details and did the same thing, and the snowballing effect took place.

My email inbox is now almost recieving almost no junk mail which is a reasonably amazing feat considering just 2 years ago in 2006 40% of all emails were considered spam.

Channel Ten ... Seriously?

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Oboler) — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 01:56:00 +0000

Channel 10 are having another go at sketch comedy with a show titled Mark Loves Sharon.

I am sure you have seen the promo's online with the words "Mark Loves Sharon" flashing on a big screen TV like at the footy or a baseball game.

Much like the following picture.

It is a great promo and actually make me go searching on google in regards to what it is about. Then I found out it was for a new comedy for channel 10 and though "oh here we go again."

Channel 10's promotions for their comedy shows is quite good. A recent channel 10 "comedy" was The Wedge. Now whilst I can't recall what the promotion tools were, (aka find the promo's on the web), I do remember thinking at the time that this show was going to be hilarious, and i convinced all my friends to make sure they were sitting down in front of the TV to watch this show. What a flop. The show was horrible.

This new show, Mark Loves Sharon, which is due to come to our televisions in Late June is about one of the characters from The Wedge, Mark Wary, a troubled sports star. In the Sydney Confidential section of newspaper, The Daily Telegraph it is explained that the plot of this mockumentary is "a six-part series on the temptations and indulgences of sporting fame."

It sounds like a recipe for success, however with Channel 10 letting me down with their comedy in the past, I will wait for the critics to come out with reviews before I watch another one of their sketch shows.

The Girl Effect

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Oboler) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 02:17:00 +0000

What more needs to be said?

Head to their website to find out more about this great cause.

Thunderbirds Are Go

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Oboler) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 01:04:00 +0000

I just set up Thunderbird, with a couple of minor hickups early on in trying to get the right servers for the different email applications it is now set up properly and ready to use. Time will tell if I get used to it or simply go back to the seperate websites. So far the signs look good though, for me staying on with Thunderbird.

Future in the Making

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Oboler) — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 15:19:00 +0000

I recently attended a synagogue service and the Rabbi made a sermon which really made me think, and think about marketing specifically.

There were two points in his speech which stood out to me.

The first was a story about a shul in South Africa where there were plenty of children running around every service and making noise. The elder members of the synagogue were getting upset so went to the Rabbi and asked him to do something about the children as it was distracting their prayer time. To this the Rabbi responded that he would rather the children making noise during the important parts of the service, than the silence of no one attending, as the children are the future of the synagogue.

The reason that made me sit back and think was because it made me realise I am no longer one of those children running amuck during the service like I used to be. I am now an adult and need to be in control of my own actions. I am the current future of the population as a Generation Y child and I need to take action when action needs to be taken. For these little children to be able to run amuck I need to make sure there is a place for them to do so. The amount of members of my synagogue have been dwindling for quite a number of years now, not dissimilar to the global warming crisis getting worse and worse in the last couple of years. Yet it has only been made a public issue that needs to be dealt with reasonably recently. If we, as Generation Y, do not do something there will be nowhere for the future children to run amuck and make us angry when we are 70 year old men.

The second point in the speech was when the Rabbi was explaining the difference between children and adults, and spoke of an adult and child making the same statement, "I don’t understand what you are saying." When an adult says this phrase, he is saying he does not believe the premise of which you are explaining yourself, where as when a child says this, they are simply wanting to know more and for you to explain yourself more clearly.

Children are a sponge of information, when they ask you to explain something again and again and again until they understand what you are talking about, everything they hear will help them develop into the person they will be in 15 years time. I am starting to reach that stage in my life where someone is starting to squeeze the sponge and I need to actually utilize all the information that has been gathered up until this point. I will not however, stop taking in more knowledge. Every time someone or something takes a squeeze, that bit of knowledge does not leave the sponge forever. Rather, it drips out of the sponge to be used in a context that is necessary and is then absorbed again once that time has passed. All this information will help in the long run, whether it be in the workplace solving a problem or in a social setting with friends; every little bit helps.

I hope I do not reach a point where my sponge starts to leak or I am stuck searching for that one piece of information stuck right in the middle of that sponge. As that piece of information that I cannot reach might just be the difference between being annoyed by little kids when I am 70 years old and realising they are the future, as I once was to a previous generation.