A company that doesn’t exist yet, that’s going to sell virtual objects
(eg things that don’t exist), founded by a 6th grader, has just raised
$6.5m.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/09/19/playspan-takes-65m-series-a-founder-in-grade-6/

For those of us who used to spend days at the concert production
factory sweating over fulfilling the latest egomaniac’s 67 page
backstage rider requirements this is probably the funniest document
written in the entertainment world:

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/1004061iggypop1.html

Last night we took ourselves off to the launch of a new book ’50 Great e-Businesses and the Minds Behind Them’ – because Fiona and I are in it – they’ve written us up, with our story of Arts Hub and its sale in 2006 as one of the 50 businesses.

We were interviewed by Emily Ross, the co-author with her partner in life and crime Angus Holland, a few months ago. It was a pleasant and professional experience, Emily was a delight to deal with, and made sure she followed up with fact checking emails afterwards.

The launch was held at the Avenue Book Store, our absolute favourite bookshop – we’re regulars, I think we probably own shares in the shop now given the quantity of books we’re purchased over the years.

You can read more about the book, and order it, from the publisher’s web site. It’s not available yet on Amazon as far as I can see.

Since the dawn of time Mankind has been dominated by the need for speed. And every little boy at some stage dreams of the double-overhead cam-turbo-charged-fluffy-dice-and-go-fast-striped racer.

Back in my sailing days we used to live by the equation ‘G2B2’ – or translated ‘gotta get a bigger boat’. Come to think of it, we also used to describe our hobby as the equivalent of standing under a cold shower tearing up one hundred dollar notes.

It’s instructive to note my current involvement with information technology produces similar sensations. But I, like many technology users, remain committed to the notion of bigger, better, faster.

In my younger days the G2B2 theorem would likely not have produced much better results – I simply wasn’t a terrifically talented sailor when it came to cut-throat teenage weekend racing. But sitting in front of my computer, I enjoy a level playing field. The only talent I need is the ability to click my way across the Internet, and seek out and enjoy all the entertainment it offers.

At the beginning of the nineties my trusty 2400 baud modem helped me navigate, via a simple text interface, through library catalogues, online discussions and email.

Then the revolution came, the barricades were thrown across the town square and the laneway I so happily meandered down became the world wide web superhighway.

The web was a revelation, but eternally frustrating, turning off the image display option in my early version of Netscape was the only way to view sites at anything approaching a comfortable speed. It wasn’t long before a 28k modem took pride of place, quickly supplanted by a 33k, and by the mid 1990s, a 56k version.

Unfortunately web developers are a little like car thieves; as soon as the car manufacturers find a new way to protect a car, the thieves up the ante. So it is with the web. Every month the technology the web delivers becomes more sophisticated, more complex, and more entertaining.

The bottleneck between all of this content, and our computer screens, remains our internet connection and how fast the information can travel across the connection.

Enter stage left the latest buzzword ‘broadband’.

Broadband basically means the internet at really fast speeds. In fact it’s been around for quite a while, mostly if you worked in a university or some other institution which enjoys a big, fast connection to the Net. But for us mere mortals the cost of an Internet connection worth thousands of dollars a year rendered broadband a pipedream.

Enter stage right cable internet.  Telstra and Optus spent the equivalent of the GDP of a developing country on laying two, duplicate pay television cables through the more heavily populated areas of Australia in the mid 1990s. (Don’t get me started on ridiculous political  telecommunication policy decisions).

The cable doesn’t just carry endless re-runs of the Simpsons, but the internet as well. So if you are one of the lucky households, cable internet would have been a revelation. Speeds of up to 1 mega bytes a second, not bad compared with the old 56k modem. Plus you don’t need another telephone line, and it’s always on, no more dialing up and waiting for the too-often busy signal. Cable does have its drawbacks – the speed is affected by how many people in your area are using the Net at the same time. It’s a little like the old ‘party line’ telephone connections. Too many people talking simultaneously renders conversation unintelligible.

Enter stage centre ADSL. ADSL is basically the answer to everyone’s prayers. Try this for size: it uses your existing phone line, BUT you can be on the telephone at the same time. You don’t ‘share’ the connection, so top speed is, theoretically, always available. Speeds of up to 1.5 megabytes a second are possible, meaning you can watch crystal clear streaming videos. Indeed, with a variant called SHDSL, which is little like ADSL on steroids, speeds of 6 meg are possible (although the cost is high). Like cable ADSL always on, no dialing up.

The problem is, despite all the positives, ADSL has copped some bad press since its launch a year or so ago – mostly disgruntled Telstra customers who for some irrational reason found it unacceptable to be unable to log into their internet connection on a regular basis.

To Telstra’s credit a great deal of the early troubles have been ironed out, and the PR problems smoothed with refunds of monthly access fees.

Far more interesting is the explosion of companies now offering ADSL internet connections. Big retailers like Harvey Norman, and possibly Dick Smith Electronics, have weighed in, both to offer packages on-sold from  prominent telecommunications companies.

For business users there is also the RequestDSL (www.requestdsl.com.au) network, who offer a range of high speed products through their network of resellers.

Here at The Dramatic Group we use a 1 meg RequestDSL SHDSL connection. It’s  performed flawlessly since its installation, and as well as providing high speed internet access to our eight staff, handles the more than 20,000 emails a week sent out for the dramaticonline.com, and now screenhub.com.au, web sites. All at a speed some eight times faster and a price 10% cheaper than our old 128k ISDN connection.

For a complete list of ADSL providers see http://whirlpool.net.au/. Originally established as a gripe site for Telstra broadband customers, Whirlpool has grown to be an invaluable source of ADSL information, including comprehensive descriptions about the technology, services and ADSL companies.

There are a couple of caveats – mainly that ADSL is dependent on your distance from your telephone exchange, and it is only just becoming available outside the capital cities, meaning relief for regional and remote users may not be so close, although it is actually possible to have satellite based internet access for the truly desperate.

The world has shifted on its axis in the past six months. For more than half of the life of the web we’ve been constrained by our trusty 56k modems.

The new breed of broadband access will inevitably change the way we use and interact with the web. For arts organisations it opens up a marketplace capable of viewing multimedia content – performance, music, and information – in ways and at speeds hitherto impossible.  At present the marketplace is small. The early teething problems mean that of the more than half of Australian households which have internet access, at best less than 200,000 have broadband connections.

The early content providers, such as internet radio stations, struggled to find a business model which could work in a tiny marketplace. Now new players are entering the marketplace, If you had been wondering what radio personality Doug Mulray has been up to lately check out thebasement.com.au, his video radio station based at Sydney’s popular music venue of the same name which broadcasts live concerts, along with a 24 hour music video station.

Beyond Online’s arts web site redkarpet.tv was launched earlier this year, and although initially only available to Telstra broadband customers, paid subscriptions are planned for later in 2002. Redkarpet.tv has access to the AFI library of films, plus other terrific content, and is leading the way showing what is possible.

With television broadcasters unlikely to reverse their inability to spell ‘arts’, and the ABC still constrained by budget and politics, broadband internet multimedia offers an unparalleled ability to deliver the arts to an audience remote from a venue.

And with the telecommunication heavyweights like Telstra spending millions on advertising ADSL, and a multitude of smaller players creating a competitive supply arena, growth in the available audience will be exponential, as Australians again jump on the new technology bandwagon and demonstrate their need for speed.

‘Click to Start’ is a regular column covering arts and technology issues, appearing fortnightly on dramaticonline.com and screenhub.com.au.

Postscript

Figures released on 21 June 2002 from a report by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission say ADSL connections have soared 206% between July 2001 and March 2002 to a total of 85,800, while cable connections increased 71% to 157,000.

In Australia there is a terrible tendency to equate service with servitude. Perhaps it’s too much ‘Upstairs Downstairs’, or a natural extension of the jingoistic creation of the larrikin Australian lacking respect for authority and his colonial superiors.

Whatever the cause, there is no question that Australians have a lot to learn about providing truly effective customer service.

The web site www.notgoodenough.org, established early in 2002 to track bad service, recorded 12,000 gripes in the first 30 days. Top of the list are the usual culprits: phone companies and the banks.

The only slight comfort I take is in knowing that even the largest businesses have succumbed to the syndrome. And those which include customer service concepts in their key branding messages are often the worst. Coles supermarkets have spent years trying to convince shoppers they are ‘Serving you better’. News flash, they’re not. (What is it about the deli counters which particularly embrace this dichotomy? It’s a war zone in the early evening, and coincidentally, is the only time of day when they don’t utilise the electronic ‘take a number’ system).

These days incidences of good service are notable, and we seem resigned to the normality of poor service. It’s a depressing scenario, but there is an upside – get your customer service right, and, however unfortunate it might seem, you’ll stand out.

There’s lots of talk in the marketing world, including the arts, about buzzwords such as ‘relationship marketing’ and the like. Whatever the jargon, it’s new words for an old concept – be nice to your customers and they’ll be nice to you.

Some of things which annoy the crap out of me:

The customer walks up to the box office, selects their seats, the ticket seller calculates the total price, the customer reaches into their bag to pay and pulls out their …. mobile phone. The customer keys in some numbers, and presses ‘send’. The ticket seller hands over the tickets and the customer leaves.

Fiction? Well no. mCommerce has arrived, and it’s set to be the next ‘big thing’. Sydney train commuters have already had a taste, with soft drink machines at railway stations as part of a mobile phone payment trial. The vending machines display a telephone number, you dial that number on your mobile phone, your telephone bill is debited for the cost of the drink, and the can is released by the machine.

Mobile phones are ubiquitous in Australia. The marketplace is virtually saturated, with mobile phone companies now concentrating on extracting more value from their existing customers rather than seeking out new ones – explaining their recent moves to reduce the subsidy on mobile phone handsets, opting instead, as Telstra has done, for loyalty based payment plans, where you may still receive a discount on the handset at the time of purchase, but are penalised heavily if you swap carriers during the life of the payment plan.

Theatre, concert and cinema tickets are a logical choice for mCommerce. Mobile phones are often a lifestyle tool, not just a device to chain us to the office. We plan our social outings, stay in touch with friends, and frighten the heck out of other drivers on the road as we execute hair raising manoeuvres, steering wheel in one hand, mobile plastered to our ear.

The ‘killer application’ to date on mobiles is SMS – ‘short message service’, the ability to send small text messages from one mobile to another. We’re mad for SMS, Australia’s 12.5 million mobile phone users sent 2 billion SMS messages last year – that’s 150 per person.

The canny marketeers have already cottoned onto this new way of reaching the media shy, cynical customer. Hamburger companies promote competitions where you SMS a code number from the back of a salt and vinegar flavour chip packet to win a prize; radio stations run SMS requests (song requests sent in by SMS). The latest is proximity marketing, where a retail store uses a system which detects you walking past the front door, identifies you in the database as being interested in a certain type of their product, and sends you an SMS discount offer, all before you’ve had time to bend down and tie your shoelaces.

So far I’ve only seen one cultural organisation use SMS to effect. Melbourne Comedy Festival ran an SMS system this year, to communicate special offers –  discounted tickets ‘on the day’ and so on. As a marketing tool to manage last minute promotions SMS is perfect. Email is a fast way to reach a customer – but it presumes the customers are near their computers. We’re always near our mobile phone, so when a message arrives offering 50% off tickets for a show later that evening, it says two things – there might be a few more seats unsold than the theatre company would prefer …  and they are doing everything they can to shift those seats.

The notion of spam SMS has also arrived – unsolicited text messages promoting a product. It doesn’t seem to have taken much of a hold so far – but only because SMS hasn’t really captured the imagination of the (generally) technologically illiterate marketeers, and the technology hasn’t necessarily been affordable and easily used.

That incompetence is rapidly changing, to the point where some larger companies have moved beyond promotion and use it for more mundane tasks – a big hotel in Melbourne has trialed SMS to broadcast work roster information to its hundreds of staff. At any time they can issue a request to off duty staff if the hotel is caught unexpectedly by a higher level of business, and needs extra staff on duty.

The naysayers have threatened brain cancer, impotence, bone disease and a multitude of disabling health nightmares, but to no avail. Australians are mad about mobile phones, we’ve all got one, and we’re not scared to use them.

mCommerce is about moving beyond communication, and converging the convenience of an easily portable electronic device, with the already well accepted idea of phone banking. We’ve embraced the ease of online and phone banking – what my bank amusingly terms ‘convenience banking’, named so because it’s much more convenient for them if I stay away and do battle with a multitude of electronic gizmos, rather than actually walking in the door of their branches and requiring service from a real person.

The problem is, much as I love to bank bash (and after a particularly horrendous week negotiating with our bank I confess I’m ready, willing and able for a good stoush), there is actually something in all this ‘convenience’ stuff.

A few years ago to pay our staff we used to have to go to the bank, stand in a queue, and cash a cheque for quite considerable sums of money. Then walk, with trepidation, back to the office, divvy up the spoils amongst a bunch of envelopes, then distribute these amongst the staff. Who then in turn had to travel home with a bundle of cash burning a hole in their pockets – not a recommended activity particularly if you are privileged enough to enjoy the travails of travel on the public transport systems of many of our capital cities.

Today, we process the payroll through our accounting software, dial up the bank’s web site, log into our online business banking account, access a pre-saved list of our staffs’ bank account details, and push a couple of buttons to transfer the money from our account to theirs. No mess, no muddle, no security concerns, and instant gratification, although I still puzzle about where the money goes between leaving our account in the afternoon, and turning up in the staff member’s bank account later the next day – where does it go for those 24 hours – Bermuda for a quick holiday? I know we’re not earning interest on it, nor the staff, could it be the bank is, on some far off currency market? I really must restrain these unkind thoughts.

We use the same system for our suppliers, we pay online, often accessing the B-Pay system used by many utility and service providers. A push of the button, the power bill is paid, a click of the mouse and Telstra has their pound of flesh for another month.

If you’re still using a million cheques a month, and standing in queues all over town each day to pay the bills, your organisation needs to seriously consider the alternatives.

Online and phone banking have changed the way we deal with our suppliers and service providers. The final frontier is the way we deal with our customers.

The predominant payment method for most theatre and entertainment tickets is still the humble credit card, that little flat piece of plastic which has been around for years. Try as we might, we still haven’t found a more efficient way of paying for things we want, without handing over actual cash. EFTPOS and debit cards filled the gap temporarily, but the theory remains the same – a plastic card with various details encoded (and barely encoded at that) on a magnetic strip, which we then swipe at the box office. The bank then takes its cut, the card company takes its cut, and whatever is left over finally wends its way into the theatre’s bank account, sometimes a few days later. And as the Reserve Bank has shown recently, it’s becoming increasingly clear why the banks would like the status quo to remain – they’re all busy paying each other vast sums of money, through something called ‘interchange fees’, as part of the credit card payment system.

We’ve dallied with smart cards, but other than American Express with their funky new clear plastic credit card, no one has made a serious attempt to get smart credit cards into the marketplace. Not that the Amex card’s fancy features are much use because no retailers have the systems to interact with the cards. It’s just another way of endeavouring to prolong a comfy, and lucrative, oligopoly.

If mCommerce can make a mark, quickly and in a way that our customers can easily understand, and find reliable and secure, it will not be long before we all have a large sign at our box offices displaying the payment phone number, and our customers reach for their mobiles instead of their wallets when it comes time to pay.

I’m constantly asked about using the Internet as a marketing tool: there’s no question people think the Nets’ multimedia capability is the greatest thing since pre-packed boiled rice when it comes to communicating with customers, but remarkably few seem to find a way to turn it to their advantage consistently.

There’s a constant stream of marketing materials walking through my Internet gateway, and I often use them in training seminars and workshops – usually as a way of opening eyes to their potential, rather than simply providing examples for replication. The bottom line is that marketing on the Net is like any other marketing, it plays by the same fundamental rules. Ignore anyone who uses the words ‘new paradigm’ in the same sentence as ‘online marketing’. Most of Australia’s major advertising agencies experimented with establishing separate ‘funky’ online marketing businesses, and not surprisingly, after spending large amounts of investors’ money, most have fallen by the wayside.

Marketing is marketing is marketing. The Net is nothing new. You need clear, simple communication, which ‘cuts through the noise’, so people take notice. You need to put in front of people messages they can understand, and which will entice them to take action.

In response to some recent requests, here are some of my favourite online stories, which in one way or another fall under the ‘marketing’ banner. They range from the stratospherically expensive to the completely free. This is not supposed to be a definitive list by any criteria, they are simply examples I have continued to enjoy long after the initial discovery.

Stratospherically Expensive

BMW Films ($US9 million)

You have to give the car marker BMW credit: when they decide to do something, they include all the bells and whistles, and deploy a budget equivalent to the GDP of a small country – and that’s just to design the cup-holders in one of their very expensive motor vehicles. BMW is great at selling tin boxes on wheels, and there’s no better example than when they decided to go into film production as a brand awareness exercise.

In 2001, BMW launched The Hire, a series of short films showcasing some of the world’s top film makers. Each of the films features a professional driver (appropriately named ‘The Driver’) who specialises in high-risk trips – from transporting a rock star (played by Madonna in a film directed by Guy Ritchie) to delivering a load of stolen diamonds. Coincidentally, each film rapidly degenerates into a car chase, with ‘The Driver’ piloting… wait for it… a BMW. Actors appearing include the aforementioned Madonna along with Mickey Rourke and Forrest Whitaker. The directors include Ritchie, Ang (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) Lee, John (Ronin) Frankenheimer, Wong (Happy Together) Kar-Wai and David (Fight Club) Fincher.

BMW put up a reputed $US9 million to produce the five films.

http://www.bmwfilms.com.

John West Salmon (£1 million)

It’s hard to imagine anyone who hasn’t seen this cult video, distributed via email around the world from one friend to another since its launch in December 2000. It’s a commercial for John West’s tinned salmon, produced at a cost of £1 million.

Using the magic of special effects (with help from Jim ‘Muppet’ Henson’s company), the ad shows a John West fisherman engaging a large, and very angry, grizzly bear in fisticuffs, culminating in the fisherman kneeing the bear in the groin and running off with the fish the bear had previously caught. The message is easy – John West will do anything to get their hands on the best quality fish, even if they have to box a bear.

You can watch the ad, using Real Video (yes, you’ll need the Real Player) from our server by clicking HERE

TheBasement ($A1.6 million)

When Telstra was looking for a way to sell its customers on the merits of broadband Internet (irrespective of its unreliability), they decided to back Doug Mulray, wild-child Sydney radio host and holder of the dubious honour of hosting the only Australian television show cancelled while it was actually on air (hands up those who remember Australia’s Naughtiest Home Videos?).

TheBasement launched in November 2000 with a $1.6 million helping hand from Telstra. It’s just like any other radio station – it features music, interviews and DJs, including Mulray himself. But the station takes advantage of its broadband Internet presence to create a highly interactive relationship with its audience, and to extend its offering beyond that of a normal radio station. Telstra has sweetened the pie by making TheBasement an ‘unmetered stream’ – it’s not included in the monthly data-limit for Telstra broadband subscribers.

You can watch the DJs at work in the studio, see the music videos for the songs being played, and enjoy concerts broadcast from the adjacent Basement music venue in Sydney. As one computer magazine puts it: “It’s like old-school MTV meets somebody’s cubicle web cam.”

TheBasement claims to earn revenue from activities such as advertising, leasing its additional studio space and selling CDs and DVDs of artists who perform in the nightclub. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when Telstra’s largesse expires, but there’s no doubt TheBasement is probably the most effective, practical way to illustrate the benefits of broadband (and preferably Telstra’s offering) to a key target audience.

http://www.thebasement.com.au

An honourable mention should also go to the suite of sites produced by Beyond Online, including the arts and cultural site redkarpet.tv. I’d write more about it, except that, unlike TheBasement, which is available to anyone, redkarpet.tv and its compatriots are only accessible by people connecting via Telstra’s broadband service – which, here at The Dramatic Group we don’t (if you’re wondering, we use an SHDSL connection from requestDSL).

Completely Free

Thunder Stars Talent Showcase (Nil)

A little while ago I invested the princely sum of $109 and bought a web cam from Harvey Norman. It’s a small video camera which perches on top of my computer monitor, pointing at my face, and designed for video conferencing. The excuse was so I could talk with friends and family overseas without running up enormous telephone bills. Combined with my computer’s speakers, and a microphone, I can chat with anyone on the Net with the same set up.

The quality ain’t Academy Award-winning, but it is surprisingly good for the financial outlay. Just to satisfy my ego, here’s what a snapshot looks like:

It’s one of those toys which you buy, then try and find a use for. In the process, I ran across PalTalk, a web site established to allow people to talk to each other with audio, and in many cases, video. Essentially, PalTalk runs a huge number of online discussion forums, which you can participate in using text, audio and video. As with public discussions anywhere on the Net, the breadth of topics is breathtaking.

Be warned, PalTalk hosts a considerable number of forums devoted to the Internet’s favourite subject – sex, which explains the exhortations to ‘keep your clothes on’ when you enter some forums. But there’s a surprising number of discussion areas for all sorts of mundane themes – including one devoted to Australian country music.

And the concept has been extended further, by establishing forums which occur at scheduled times – essentially programs broadcast to a published schedule. My favourite is ‘Thunder Stars Talent Showcase’, broadcast each week on a Tuesday evening (US time). As the promotion says: ‘If you’re a singer, musician, or songwriter… THIS IS THE PLACE FOR YOU!’

The showcase is essentially open-mic night, where anyone with ‘talent’ can get up and perform, in the hope talent agents and scouts are also watching. It’s free, fun and rivetingly bad on many occasions, but strangely fascinating (no, nothing like Celebrity Big Brother).

http:// www.stardustent.com/thunderstars.htm

http://www.paltalk.com

What’s Wrong With This Picture? (Nil)

This is an instructive exercise in how to get six million page views a month to your web site, when you don’t even really have a web site. (Six million page views a month for any Australian web site would place it in the top ranking sites).

A while ago an Illinois-based computer programmer named Jaybill McCarthy created a silly photographic puzzle and sent it to some friends. He woke up one morning to find his web site handling 5,000 page views an hour (which wound up causing some friction between him and his web host).

He took advantage of the popularity the puzzle had created by establishing a web site with various forums and other features. As Jay explains on his site: “In my delusions of grandeur, I like to think I’ve invented a new model for web sites: traffic == community == content. The community is the content.”

In April 2002, the site had racked up more than 3.6 million unique visitors.

Click this link for the puzzle: http://www.jaybill.com/article.php?articleID=49, and to see how one extraordinarily simple idea can turn your web site into a phenomenon.