Free beer

Welcome to Idealog Weekly, the free email newsletter for New Zealand commercial creatives, entrepreneurs and anyone rich with ideas.

Free beer

Welcome to a special bigger, beer-filled issue of Idealog Weekly—the last for 2006. We’ll be back in your inbox in January, but in the meantime one lucky Weekly reader will get to enjoy summer the traditional way: with beer. Not just any brew, either—Heineken has kindly donated a Limited Edition Mini Keg of its fine product to the cause and is also throwing in a couple of tickets to New Zealand’s premier tennis event, the Heineken Open, on the evening of January 9.

Just send us an email listing your most embarrassing Christmas party moment—you can claim it happened to someone else if you have a reputation to protect—and you might be sipping from your own Heineken Limited Edition Mini Keg and hobnobbing in January at the Heineken Open. Mark your email ‘Heineken giveaway’’ and send it to us within a week. You must be 18 to enter.

From everyone at Idealog HQ, enjoy the silly season, keep safe and if you have a great business idea on the beach this summer—go for it.

The man who gave Red Bull wings

Guerilla marketer Josef Roberts made megabucks selling a Thai tonic to Kiwis and Aussies. Now he’s planning to sell Kiwi hamburgers to Americans hungry for something different. In the current issue of Idealog, we find how Roberts turned the then-unknown Red Bull into a pop phenomenon in Australia and New Zealand without even an advertising budget, despite entrenched competition and constant attention from officialdom. And we learn how he intends to take Burger Fuel to the spiritual home of the hamburger and build the Kiwi company into a global superbrand. Read his amazing story on our website.

Don’t have time? Here are the Roberts rules—six lessons from a man who knows how to mould a market:

1. People make mistakes. Kiwis are too quick to seize on failure, but it’s part of life. “You’re going to lose now and then and you’re going to make mistakes, and you’re going to learn from those,” says Roberts. Those mistakes generally enable you to take things to the next level.

2. Understand the product, and understand your customer. Roberts knew Red Bull represented something more than the sum of its parts, and avoided any hint of ‘ordinary’ marketing. He also let bar managers know they could call any time and his team would turn up with a bootload of Red Bull.

3. Don’t be a cowboy. Aussie lawyer Chris Preston says Roberts was determined to get Red Bull into Australia, but it had to be above-board. “People are not so willing to explore the other ways of doing things that Joe was willing to explore,” he says. But he didn’t want to be seen as a cowboy … he was determined that this product was going to come onto the market to stay and needed to be on the market legitimately.

4. Don’t rush overseas. Australia might have five times the population, but it also has five times the competition, and Kiwis aren‘t used to dealing with Australian bureaucracy. Roberts worked out a worst-case scenario, and then doubled the cost and doubled the time. ”We were about right,“ he says. It took three times as long and was three times as expensive.

5. Sniff the pavement. Google won’t tell you whether an idea will work. Get on a plane and do the groundwork. Market research isn’t the answer, either: create your own market.

6. Aim high. New Zealand is full of small businesses—it doesn’t need another one.

The full story is online.

The Samways Way

In September, Telecom’s online store, Ferrit, admitted some of the customer reviews on its site had been written by staff. Oops. The bogus reviews were first spotted by Spare Room, the online publishing venture of Ana Samways and Steven Shaw.

Spare Room is an intriging mix of pop culture and serious journalism, where you can read about Ferrit’s fakes, watch Annette Presley’s “glorious performance” on Mark Sainsbury‘s About Now show, see Metro mag put in its place, and marvel at the SPCA’s creepy ‘kitty-fiddling’ ads. But don’t call it a blog: it‘s an online magazine, says Samways, and she’s determined that the site will have a broader appeal that most blogs. The website is the first venture of Spare Room Publishing, a cross-media mini-empire in the making. Read more on our website.

Next time Ferrit should take a leaf out of Amazon’s book, which has no need to make up reviews. Just put some products on the site that people can’t resist commenting on. Take, for example, the essential vehicle for the paranoid commuter, the Badonkadonk Land Cruiser/Tank, which has an armoured shell and an excellent stereo system. See also the Hofftastic collection of Germany’s favourite beach-bronzed pop god, David Hasselhoff (although Amazon commenters get a tad confused about the spelling). This, one correspondent reveals, is the album that Radiohead play on their tour bus. The track ‘Hot Shot City’ is particularly good.

Beating the Googleplex

Last month Google shut down its Google Answers service. The blogosphere marvelled that not everything the company touches turns to gold. Don’t fret, though—the Googleplex is churning out cool new products as fast as ever. On Tuesday it released new layers in its Google Earth product, which adds content from community sites like Wikipedia to the maps on Google Earth. Fantastic. And just the next day it released Google Patent Search, which allows easy searches of the massive USPTO database.

But just like Google Answers was beaten by a better app built by a much smaller competitor, Google may find some stiff competition in patent searches … from a Hamilton company. On Tuesday Patent Analysis unveiled its new website that already allows searching US patents, European patents and, of course, New Zealand patents. Check it out. It’s free, easy to use and fast. Watch out Google.

Cookie time

I’m not sure how many gadgets Microsoft expects to sell with this ad for its Zune music player, but it’s undeniably amazing. What’s it about? Love and a chocolate-chip cookie with magic powers.

Repeat offender

Rod Drury just doesn’t know when to stop. He co-founded net developer Glazier Systems in the mid-90s before selling it to Advantage Group. He’s the chief technology officer of US-based Context Connect and sits on the advisory board of Trade Me. Earlier this year he sold his email management company, AfterMail, to US-based Quest Software for US$45 million, and in November he won the Entrepreneur of the Year title at the 2006 Hi-Tech Awards. Time to relax? No way—Drury is investing in a string of local IT startups and blogging up a storm too. Just what is it that he wants to prove? Find out in the Idealog Grill.

In tune with 2006

Peter McLennan, Auckland muso and dubdotdash blogger, has canvassed 16 local music nuts for their favourite Kiwi music of 2006 and come up with a list of faves that ranges from the familiar to the fringe. It’s an intriguing list, with contributions from the likes of Chad Taylor, Greg Churchill, Russell Brown, Simon Grigg and McLennan himself, and is followed with predictions for the local scene in 2007. By all accounts it should be a ripper.

If you’re buying local music online, make a visit to amplifier.co.nz before loading up iTunes. The Kiwi store sells MP3 files without digital rights management so they’ll play on any digital music player, including the iPod, and you can copy them between computers and gadgets without hindrance. It claims to have over 1,000 local artists in its catalogue. Many observers—myself included—expected Amplifier to be a rapid casualty of the arrival of the iTunes Store here, but it turns out we shouldn’t have worried: the plucky local upstart has some new business.

Billboard bashing

So downtown Auckland will become a billboard-free zone if the council gets its way. The hoardings, says the council, clutter the city, distract from the natural landscape and aren’t appropriate in an international city. Without billboards, presumably, Aucklanders will be able to further appreciate the dreary apartments, clogged roads and dismal public art that currently grace the CBD.

In London, where they’re less concerned about whether they live in an international city, Britain’s largest billboard—complete with a skirt that flaps fetchingly in the wind—has just been unveiled. It’s 60 feet of leggy advertisement for tights manufacturer Pretty Polly.

But what will Aucklanders put on the blank walls where billboards used to sit? May we suggest learning from the Spanish, who know a thing or two about creating pleasant cities. If we can’t have huge ads, let’s have some huge art. Case in point: the monstrous murals of Wooster Collective artist Sam3.

Party like it’s 2007

Organised your New Year’s Eve recreational activities yet? Here’s a few suggestions from the Agenda, Idealog’s events calendar. The Rhythm & Vines festival runs for 18 hours in an amazing natural ampitheatre in Gisborne, featuring local and international acts including Shapeshifter and Rhombus. Further north, Fat Freddy’s Drop, Nesian Mystik, Concord Dawn and others will see in 2007 at Buffalo Beach Road in the Whitianga. Shihad and the Datsuns will provide a blistering introduction to the new year in Wanaka. More sedately, the annual Black Barn Open Air Cinema starts its three-day run in Hawkes Bay.

However you celebrate the New Year—in a mosh pit, at a beach, at work, or hiding from the masses with a tipple and a couple of close friends—we hope it’s enjoyable and you have some great memories of the year that was.

Quote of the week

“It’s not a vanity project, or a way to make a book deal or get an editorship at a paper magazine. Our plans are to make some money out of it. We’re thinking long-term.”

—Ana Samways is serious about new-media publishing

More at Idealog online

Read more on our website: web exclusives, opinion, Idealog IP, the Idealog blogs and the Idealog podcast. See you at idealog.co.nz.

   Matt Cooney
   Editor

Idealog Weekly is sent to friends, subscribers and registered website users of Idealog magazine.