Chicken Eating Crocodiles at Dundee’s Wildlife Park

Chicken Eating Crocodiles at Dundee’s Wildlife Park

May 25, 2009 • • no comments

Located off the Murray River just an hour away from Adelaide, Dundee Wildlife Park is a charming little old-school zoo focusing primarily on native Australian birds, reptiles and animals.  A boutique-sized establishment catering largely to families and kids, it occupies a fairly small area and can be easily covered in an hour and a half (or less).  This privately-owned establishment includes a restaurant and hotel too, so one can literally eat and sleep with the animals (ala Doctor Dolittle).  As this was the first wildlife park that my family and I visited, Ethan was naturally all excited about it.

The theme for this visit? “Food Glorious Food!” and you will see why as we go on.

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Looking fairly nondescript, with a simple and disarming facade, Dundee Wildlife Park was quite a “no-frills” park although prices are not exactly cheap at $10 per adult and $7 per kid.

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Emotional Marketing the Hallmark Way

May 23, 2009 • Book Reviews • 5 comments

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Courtesy of AZ Quotes

“People don’t buy for logical reasons. They buy for emotional reasons.” – Zig Ziglar

This quote from the legendary sales guru Zig Ziglar aptly describes the world of marketing, where it is vital to reach the heart in order to generate a buying response.

While the rational part of us would sort through the price, features, and logical needs we have for a particular product or service, it is the emotional part – the feelings, benefits, wants and beliefs – which determine the purchase decision.

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Seth Godin Talks about Tribes

May 21, 2009 • Blog • no comments

One of my favourite marketing gurus Seth Godin shares his ideas on how tribes are changing the world, community by community, in a grassroots evangelistic sort of way. In the age of social media with its platforms and tools – blogs, Facebook, Youtube, Flickr, Twitter, Plurk etc – the barriers to entry in starting any movement is considerably lowered. The democratisation of publishing and content production means that anybody can leverage on these tools to create pockets of influence wherever they are.

While not every one of us can be as convincing or charismatic a speaker as Seth, his speech does give us much food for thought on what we can do as marketers, as communicators, as publicists and as leaders. Perhaps it is time for us to start our own movements today?

PS – I just heard from Jackie Huba (via Twitter) of Church of the Customer that Seth’s looking for stories for his next edition of Purple Cow. Sounds like a great way to get your local stories of extraordinary products and businesses in …. if you can meet Seth’s high standards! I will start to consider some options now…

Mainstream Media Still Rules Online

May 20, 2009 • Blog • no comments
Still the most influential website based on links
Just had a quick glance at the Technorati Attention Index from Technorati’s blog.  This is a list of the 50 top sites with the highest number of blogs linking to them in the past 30 days.  

Other than YouTube, which has continued to surge ahead largely due to the immense interest in its ever growing pool of user-generated videos, it is interesting to note that mainstream media related websites are still the most influential in the list.  While American websites have dominated the list, several British content providers like the Guardian, Telegraph and BBC News have received attention.  Many of the media firms are also concentrated on a few cities (or megacities) in the United States like New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Washington DC, and Houston.
This shows several things about social media influence:
1) The lure of sight, sound and motion (sisomo according to Kevin Roberts) is still influential, whether online or offline.

2) Mainstream media players still wield incredible influence on social media debates and discussions.

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The World’s Largest Lobster and Murray River

May 16, 2009 • • no comments

One of the more prominent destinations in the state of South Australia, Murray River stretches all the way from the border of New South Wales, across the entire state of Victoria, and ends with its mouth at South Australia close to Adelaide. A popular location for water-based activities like boating, canoeing, fishing and going on river cruises, the river’s waters are pretty placid most of the time. While it isn’t quite as wide or broad as the Mississippi or Missouri, it does evoke that sense of riverine adventure with Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer floating along on an old-style river boat.

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First, a fond farewell to Kingston SE and Larry the Humungous Lobster.  

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A shot along the river close to where the delta is (ie where it connects to the sea).

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12 Apostles, Great Ocean Road and Beyond

May 8, 2009 • • 2 comments

As part of my family’s recent driving holiday from Melbourne to Adelaide, we coasted along the Great Ocean Road from the 12 Apostles to the Limestone Coast areas (like Robe, Beachport and Kingston where our hotel was). It was quite a monumental drive in more ways than one, peppered with lots of beautiful sights, sounds (of seagulls calling and waves lapping against the shore), scents (especially of the sea), and tastes (sandwiches and burgers!). The drive was long but fortunately not too difficult as the route was pretty straightforward.

For those of you who have followed my blog for a while, you would recall that this is the second time we took the GOR. The first time in September 2007 was from Geelong to Bells Beach, Lorne all the way to Apollo Bay.  In a way, this second trip was a continuation of sorts from our previous journey.

Here’s a photographic record of our journey for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy!

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