Walter | Cooler Insights

Why Avatar is so Awesome

December 22, 2009 • • 2 comments

By now, probably half of the world’s cinema going geeks would have watched Avatar, James Cameron’s latest mega blockbuster featuring blue-skinned 3 m tall aliens battling robot riding humans in a tropical moon. With a huge budget of close to US$500 million, Avatar is one of the most expensive Hollywood productions to date, and initial box office results look promising despite the relentless wintry snowstorms in the Western world. There are many excellent movie reviews available on the web, so I wouldn’t bore you with yet another critique of its hits and misses.

Let us look instead at some of the ingredients which Avatar has applied that led to its successful opening and made it such a huge global rave.

6 Ways to Strike Gold at Sovereign Hill

December 1, 2009 • • 1 comment

One of the great things about the award winning outdoor museum Sovereign Hill at Ballarat is the amount of activities that one can participate in. You can either dig for gold, pan for gold in the river, ogle bars of gold in sheltered comfort, experience how miners lived, or frolick amongst “denizens” of a former gold-mining town in the 19th century. While not all that glitters is real gold – for obvious security reasons – one can be fairly assured of having a glowing and goldilicious good time here!

Our first stop at the Gold Museum brings us face to face with the 4.4 kg, $250,000 Goldasaurus, a huge nugget of pure gold.

The City Built on Gold

November 27, 2009 • Blog • 1 comment

Located northwest of Melbourne city, Ballarat was famous for being a mining town, and the site generated the greatest amount of gold during the Victorian Gold Rush of the 1850s. The city occupies an area of 740 square kilometres and houses an estimated population of over 88,000, and has a mixture of Victorian-era architecture interspersed by modern day buildings. Considered one of the state’s premier tourism destination, Ballarat attracts some 1.8 million day trip visitors and about 13% of Victoria’s annual 1.1 million overseas visitors.

Taking a walk along the streets and roads of Ballarat, one can’t help feeling that it has retained much of that old world small town charm of a bygone era, while still modernising itself. The streetscape is vastly different from Melbourne as you may have guessed, and while vestiges of gold-generated opulence can be seen in its buildings, most are classically elegant rather than overtly ostentatious.

The Ballarat train station built in 1862 is the first place to check out. One can see that the name Victorian Railways befits the regal look of this building. The V-Line train from Melbourne stops here.

Shockingly Good Advertisements?

November 10, 2009 • • 4 comments

As I was walking along Swanston Street this afternoon, a couple of advertisements caught my attention. Both came from the Worksafe Victoria, a government agency tasked to improve workplace health and safety in the state of Victoria. They were both very eye-catching and immediately got the message through.

Here’s the first from a tram stop shelter:

Sovereign Hill Shines

November 9, 2009 • • 143 comments

Perched atop a hill in the gold mining city of Ballarat in Victoria, Sovereign Hill is an award winning outdoor museum cum heritage attraction which first opened in November 1970. Recreating the essence of a 19th century mining town, the open-air museum occupies a sprawling 25 hectare site that is linked to one of the richest alluvial gold rush in the world. Adding to its authenticity are staff members dressed in Victorian-era clothes who are friendly in an unpretentious manner.

Unlike commercially oriented theme parks plastered with sponsor brands, Sovereign Hill charms with realistic portrayal of life in the 19th century devoid of 20th and 21st century logos. Many of the shops also adopt traditional ways of making and retailing heritage goods and services, from blacksmiths to bars and bakeries. What’s especially surprising were the multiple layers of experience which one encounters as a visitor, which whisks one magically away to a different time and place.

Our day began with a bang as a costumed musket-eer shows us how traditional guns were fired.

Eureka! Its Australia’s Golden Moment.

November 8, 2009 • Blog • 3 comments

Eureka Circle with the emblematic Southern Cross located at the Eureka Stockade Gardens

What is the most significant moment in Australia’s history?

In the hearts of many, such a moment is represented by the Eureka Stockade, a bloody rebellion of miners against their colonial government oppressors in November 1854. Happening in the gold mines of Ballarat, the tale of the Eureka Stockade is one peppered with values of hardship, courage, determination, and the fight for freedom. What began as a drunken fight leading to the death of Scottish gold miner James Scobie ended up triggering a major skirmish between 276 British military police and soldiers against some 150 men who fenced themselves in with a man-made stockade.

Freudian Slipping (Warning: Long and Disturbing)

November 6, 2009 • Blog • 1 comment

Courtesy of OxfordSEOBlog

As a current student in humanities, I have generated an interest in its various fields like sociology, psychology, anthropology and geography. Being a marketer and communicator, my focus is to see how these wider fields in social sciences influence the outcomes of consumers and markets. By understanding the various dimensions of human behaviours in individual, group and community settings, I hope to devise strategies and tactics that can match those characteristics.

After viewing the blockbuster exhibition Liquid Desires featuring Salvador Dali at the NGV, I learnt that much of his art was influenced by ideas which stemmed from Sigmund Freud. Being curious to learn more about Freud’s theories and influences – without going too deep into the intricacies of psychology – I picked up a slim volume titled Introducing Freud by Richard Appignanesi and Oscar Zarate. Heavily illustrated in a highly whimsical fashion, the book described the life of Freud as well as his major contributions as the father of the psycho-analytical movement.

Making Money from Minority Markets

November 2, 2009 • Book Reviews • 1 comment

Courtesy of Christopher Pattberg

Considered one of the most multi-cultural country in the world, the United States of America has one of the world’s most culturally and ethnically diverse population. Presently, it has some 305 million people out of whom 68% are non-Hispanic whites, 15% are Hispanics, 12% are blacks and 5% Asian American.

While white Americans currently dominate the American marketplace, some of the country’s most profitable segments actually hail from the other segments. Projections by the Census Bureau show that by 2050 when the US population grows to about 439 million, non-Hispanic Caucasians will only make up 46% of the country’s population. By then, the population of Hispanics (the fastest growing group) will swell to 30%, with blacks growing to 15% and Asian Americans swelling to 9%.

When Old Can Be Gold

November 1, 2009 • Business and Management • 1 comment

Not all seniors are frail and embittered (courtesy of ACE)

One of the biggest mysteries about contemporary marketing is this.

Why are such an overwhelming proportion of companies in the world only obsessed with advertising or selling to the young?

Don’t they know that the youth market is going to be shrinking in the years to come, or that seniors will dominate the world’s population, especially in developed countries?

Author: coolerinsights