The ad states that the ‘side effects may include nausea, dizziness, and sweating.’ That could be bearable, until one reads the fine print which states: ‘Antidepressants increased the risk compared to placebo of suicidal thinking and behaviour (suicidality) in children, teens, and young adults. Depression and certain other psychiatric disorders are themselves associated with increases in the risk of suicide. Patients of all ages who are started on antidepressant therapy should be monitored appropriately and observed closely for clinical worsening, suicidality, or unusual changes in behavior.’

Indeed, it is important to disclose all the side effects for clinical reasons. Yet, one wonders if such warnings are not placed there for legal reasons, beyond the legal obligations. I could imagine all sorts of companies choosing to state the worst, or even fabricating the worst, on purpose, knowing that hardly anyone reads the fine print, and those who do, might be desperate enough to try anything. Also, the public has become immune to bad news of this kind. It’s like the health warnings on packets of cigarettes. The public has grown accustomed to wild warnings. It seems that nothing will shock. So, with that in mind, and to prevent legal action by a litigious society, I wonder if manufacturers will now make up, or exaggerate, side effects, just so that they can proclaim, ‘We told you so!’

By the way, if you are interested in hair loss treatments, and if you have anything to do with Sam Cohen or IHRB, be sure to read this dedicated site (www.IHRB-Story.com) so that you do not waste your money. Sam and IHRB are so clever, you will kick yourself if you are stupid enough to part with your money.

I had already published articles about the unfathomable prices of parking at Secure Parking and at Wilson Parking. Wilson lures people with an attractive offer that is not as good as it seems. Secure shouts with massive signs that are as confusing (and therefore as misleading) as mobile phone rate-cards. This article is useful to managers who would like to learn more about pricing strategies and the destruction of consumer confidence. Although this article uses two parking stations as an example, it is designed to assist senior managers to delve into pricing models that could well be destroying the brand though invisible unscrupulous practices.

In this previous article about Secure Parking, I had commented about the rates that jump all over the place. Three weeks after posting that article, we now have yet another price change. If someone at either company knows what they are doing, they might do well to study this analysis, and perhaps they can tell us how the client is supposed to make head or tail out of these rates.

Consumers are used to seeing prices increase. They would not be baffled if someone had raised the price of something from $10 to $12 to $14. Consumers could assume that the company is either greedy, or that the price of raw materials had gone up, or some such excuse. However, in the case of Secure Parking and Wilson Parking stations, the logic is way beyond even the most seasoned of mathematicians and actuaries. This report focusses on two stations that are both on Sussex Street in Sydney. These are stand-alone operations, only six buildings apart. They both occupy the entire building in which they operate, so we do not have to suffer any disparaties in terms of comparison (becasue some stations are under corporate tower blocks and shopping centres).

Let us analyse their pricing strategies. First, note that within a short period of time, Secure Parking had three price changes that do not make sense to me. They went from a ‘From $5′ inducement to a ‘From $6′ inducement and changed the exit time to an hour earlier during weekdays. During Friday and Saturaday nights, entry was changed by one hour in what seems to be in the customer’s favour, but later you will see that this was a clever hook; more like honey to catch flies.

Look at the photo below. One wonders what the deep thinking was behind the logic of the tactics that moves the 1st bracket up by one dollar. Then the 2nd bracket remains unchanged. The 3rd goes up by one dollar, then the 4th by two dollars, and the 5th by three dollars. According to this new price list, if you park for four hours, you pay the equivalent of $11.25 per hour. But if you park for 24 hours, you pay $1.88 per hour. How can it be that Secure Parking is satisfied with $1.88 per hour, but charges $11.25 per hour if you park for four hours? Is this because they know that most casuals stay for approximately four hours, and this means that they are charged the maximum rate quick-smart to catch everyone in the net? It’s like saying, ‘Give me everything now, and show me that you love me.’ Also in the photo below, the rates on the left went from $24 to $32 which is a jump of $8. The second set of rates (right side photo) went from $25 to $34 which is a jump of $9. That seems sneaky to me. Not only did the price increase, the gap between the two was also increased. I am waiting for the day that they introduce the 99-cent suffix to end up with $6.99 and $45.99. Also below we see an earlier exit requirement for early-bird parkers. Seems sneaky to intrudce the 24-hour army-style of telling the time. If everything on that page is 6:00 am and 10:00 am, why must 2:30 become 14:30? They can’t say it’s for clarity, because they differentiate with the ‘am’ and ‘pm’ suffixes in all other cases. Early-birds were first required to park their car and walk to 9b (that could be good exercise). Later, they were asked to ‘drive’ to 9b first in order to validate their tickets. Perhaps people were cheating or something.

The strangest of all terms is the one that says, ‘Rate apply from entry time to time per 24 hours period’. Please read this over and over and see if you can make sense of it. That is either one of those mega-clever statements designed to trap anyone who opens their mouth, or it is an abbreviated version of complex indecipherable legalese, or it is in response to a few people who have found a loophole in the system. Either way, no-one understands it. And I suspect that if it led to a legal showdown, no judge would accept that the average person could have been deemed to have been given fair warning, because the language was nonsensical. So, why is it there? Is that to cope with people who park for 26 hours, and they would be expected to pay $45 plus another two hours based on the rate at the time, depending… blah blah blah? Why not just sell it all at one rate per hour and let people park until their heart’s content. Besides, it seems that companies always write their legals to cope with a few underhanded unreasonable customers, and as a result, they confuse all the regular decent cleints. I have seen young drivers physically ligft the boom-gate and drive off without paying. Is it worth anyone’s time to trace the anomaly in the day’s takings, or to pursue the matter in court? I wish they would, but I doubt they would. So if all this is meant to cope with someone who parks for 26 hours or even 126 hours, what’s stopping them from driving their mate’s vehicle in, and using that ticket to pay for 30 minutes. And then the mate can declare a missing ticket, which comes to $45. Do they have a policy for that? There are way too many cheats out there, but in the end, do not bamboozle everyone, in order to cope with a handfull of idiots who will break any rule, and who will not be pursued for their petty crimes.

Before we delve even further into the strategies, let us now conduct the same query by looking at the differences between the second price rise and the third (below). At face value, it seems that the price went down. Alas not. Why did Secure Parking reduce the rate for the first 30 minutes of parking from $6 to $5? Was this benevolence? Customer service? A favour to the City of Sydney? Or was it just a way to compete with Wilson parking down the road? We will compare the two companies shortly. Meanwhile, what has changed between the second rate rise and the third, which took place within a matter of weeks? In the world of parking, there seems to be something significant about the second and third hour. Is that the ‘sweet spot’ as far as statistics are concerned? In the first rate-card in the photo (above left), we saw that the rate moved up the ladder from $24 to $32. The second rate-card (above right) went from $25 to $34.

The third rate-card shown below-right, the price went from $28 to $38. That’s a category jump of $10. So far we have seen deltas of $8, $9, and $10. Note again that these are not price increases, but category jumps on top of the price increases. That is a subtle yet clever distrinction. The average punter would see the entry price and the maximum price. At face value, we see the entry price as $5 and the maximum at $45. On the whole, one could presume that the rate card went in the customer’s favour. The photo below-left shows it going from $6 to $45 and then it changed (bottom right) from $5 to $45. That seems dandy. But the real change ocurred in the middle. $25 became $28 and $34 became $38. So the incrase (within this seemingly decreasing benevolent rate-card) went up by three dollars and then it zigzaged up the category scale by a jump of $10. Any business can charge what it likes. But this not a matter of raising the price, but of manipulating the core rates while disguising the truth with smoke and mirrors. That is the bit to which I am objecting. It does not point to sound management practices. The core of any company needs to be wholesome, and these tactics do not point to sound wholesome practices.

From the rates above, we can see that it all centres around the second and third hour. Anyone who parks for two hours is paying $14 per hour. And if they park for three hours, they are paying $12.67 per hour. Why is it so expensive at that combination, when Secure Parking is happy to say that anyone can park for 24 hours for only $1.88 per hour. That’s not a sliding scale. That is a sheer drop. Anything up to four hours comes to $11.25 per hour and then there is a cliff. It drop to $1.88 per hour. The is nothing sliding if one plots the graph where it all starts at the equivalent of $10 per hour and goes to $11.25 and then a massive drop to $1.88. That does not polt a bell curve. It does not plot a sliding scale. It does not point to economies of scale. And here is why: the company speaks to us in its rate card. It says, please enter at the equivalent of $10 per hour. If you stay for 31 minutes, you now owe us $12. This is not the direction of a sliding scale! Then it says, if you have the hide to stay one minute over one hour, just one minute over, you owe us $28 which is $12.67 per hour. If you stay one minute over two hours, you owe us $38 which is $11.25 per hour. But this is all misleading, because if someone does stay for one minute over two hours, then it is no longer correct to say that it is $11.25 per hour. This in fact is 121 minutes at $38 which comes to $18.84 per hour.

So now we ask, how can a company entice people with a $5 offer, when anyone who stays a minute over two hours is really paying $18.84 per hour which comes to $38.00?

Why promote a service at $5 entry, when I suspect that the overwhelming majority of a parkers would not leave the carpark in under thirty minutes. Anyone going in on a Friday or Saturday evening is most definitely going in for a function, a night on the town, or a dinner and movie (remember that this establishment is officially called the Cinema Centre Car Park). So why display a massive sign that promotes $5? This is not the kind of business practice in which any ethical company ought to engage.

SHORT-TERM PARKING MAKES ALL THE PROFITS

One more thing before we move on. Supermarkets have a special lane for people with 12 items or fewer. This was introduced to serve shoppers who did not think it fair to wait ten minutes to pay for a packet of gum. The supermarkets were encouraging small-value transactions. Now let us look at this new set of signs by Secure Parking (Wilson Parking has a similar section) that say ‘Short time parking: Under 3 hours’. This off is completely different from that made by supermarkets. The short-time parking bays are not a service to short-time clients. Rather, it is a service to Wilson Parking’s shareholders. These bays are on the lower entry levels. They are prime spots designed to make it easy for short-term visitors to access the car park. Why? Because anything under three hours is where all the profits are made. If these parking stations could have their wish, they would not want anyone to stay any longer than three hours. If the car-parks could be filled to capacity, by a high-turnover of people who leave in under three hours, they would be printing money hand over fist.

In a comedy sketch, Bob Newhart takes us into a driving school for bus drivers. The instructor teaches the class how to torment the customers by driving off while customers are chasing after the bus. He says that the driver must not drive too fast, lest the customer give us. He wants the customer to think that there is some hope of catching the bus. And when the customer becomes exhausted, the driver should accelerate. The instructor is teaching the art of tolerance. If you give people hope, they will not give up. A similar radio sketch was enacted by Tony Hancock, with Kenneth Williams as the instructor. In John Cleese’s TV documentary called, ‘How to irritate people’, Cleese says that when irritating someone, you want to remain irritating and annoying, just up until the victim is about to explode, but stop short of giving the victim that satisfaction. Irritate just enough and then stop. Do not allow you victim to hit the roof. Leave them angry but not enraged, so that they do not let off any steam. These are lessons in tolerances. It seems to me that the parking rates follow this wisdom. Charge people heaps of money up front, but make it sting at the high end, so that parkers say to themselves, ‘Gosh this is expensive. I am going to try to get out of here before it reaches $45 ($53 in Wilson’s case)’. In most businesses, customers are encouraged to consume more. The more they consume, the better it is for the business and the client. In this case, the spaces are limited, and so ‘turn-over’ is the name of the game. Both stations do not want people to linger. The top rates of $45 and $53 are not designed for the 24-hour stayer. They are designed to sting, in the hope that people leave. If a customer stays for 24 hours, Secure Parking makes $45. Whereas if a customer were to use the spot for 2 hours and 1 second, the company makes $455.

FLAT RATE OFFERS

I will not cover the early-bird rates in this article. But let us now look at the flat-rate offers. Below we see the change of rates within a few weeks of each other. What’s significant? On Mondays to Thursdays, we can now park for thirteen hours for $10. This works out at 77 cents per hour, yet a moment ago we could see that the company wanted $18.84 per hour. This is perhaps playing on the notion that business people are likely to park duing the day, and they tend to overlook such business expenses. Whereas in the evening, Secure Parking is speaking to the non-business crowd (people who might not claim such after-hours expenses against their company or Tax Department).

The other major observation is that the flat rates never apply to Fridays, and never to Saturday evenings. Yet, during Friday and Saturday nights, the enticing ‘From $5′ sign is displayed.

Wilson Parking

Down the road, the competitor, Wilson Parking, is offering Friday nights at a flat rate of $9, but I suspect that this will change after new customers form the habit or parking there, only to be bitten in due course if the company changes the night rate for Fridays. I say this because Wilson Parking has constructed new signage where Fridays have been separated. This seems to be a pre-emptive step in preparation of a major price differential when the iron get hot. But for now, Wilson’s $9 Friday night is a massive blow in competitive terms against Secure Parking a few hundred meters up the road. Of course, it is made difficult for consumers to favour one parking station over another. Both stations keep chopping and changing their rates (many more than I have shown here). In the end, we have to ask, what is it all about? Both stations are in Sussex Street. According or land valuations, how much different could one be from the other? As far as operating expenses, they bother operate in similar ways, offering concrete, lighting, and cleaning, with the odd security camera installed. So why and how can Wilson Parking offer Friday nights at $9 flat-rate while Secure Parking cannot? If someone parks for 10 hours on a Friday night, they would pay 90 cents per hour at Wilson and $4.50 per hour at Secure.

There are times when the parks are completely full. However, this is rare. People will pay $45 and $53 if they have no choice. So now we have to ponder if a business ought to adopt a pricing strategy based on a long-term, sustainable pricing model, or an opportunistic money-grabbing, greedy policies of charging whatever they can get away with, regardless of the damage or the confusion that it might cause. Does an existing board of directors not owe it to future of the business to ensure that genuine long-term strategies are in place to foster genuine long-term clients who can grow to trust the business, the brand, and the company. Does a management team not owe it to their own prfessionalism, ethics, and conscience to advice its CEO and the board about modern, ethical, sound management priactices that consider sustainability and growth, as opposed to instant myopic profits that not only destroy computer confidence, but puts the business in jeopardy?

WILSON PARKING

Wilson Parking has an article all its own. Read it here. By comparison, let us look at Wilson’s recent price increases. Below we see the old and the new rates. The photo on the right had an unfortunate flash light which obscured the the text. In fact, both old and new rates start at $7 for the first half hour. Then they both go up to $15, then $30, then $48. The only fee that changed was the 4+ hours to $53. What purpose could this serve? Is this trying to discourage people from staying any longer than four hours? Or could it have been due to a printing error in the first one, when it was not intended that $48 be printed. Was it also an oversight to have printed the illogical category of 4-5 hours, which begs the question: what happens after 5 hours?

If they were correcting errors, I wonder if they had missed this one: at the bottom of both signs is the legal nonsense that reads, ‘Car park charges apply per entry per pay’. Did they mean ‘per day’? Either way, it does not make sense to the average consumer.

WHAT CAN WE LEARN?

No-one would begrudge either company from wanting to maximise its investments. No-one should tell a company what it should charge for its services. I am merely noting the underhanded, the tricky, the misleading ways in which the company tries to communicate one thing, while trying to do another. It should have the audacity and the decency to face the facts and just call it out, and say, ‘We are in the business of making money, and we are trying to engineer an x-percent profit this year, and we have limited car spaces, so to achieve our goals, we will charge x-dollars per hour.’

Just call it out, up front, without the hideous ‘From $5′ which is an absurd rate from which no customers can benefit in the overall scheme of things.

In other words: Stop lying. Transacting ethically. There you go. Four words. That what this 3164-word article is trying to say.

Interestingly, we see that both Wilson and Secure raise revenue from advertising. How much further could they take that idea? What if every spot was sponsored by a different company? Of what if each floor were dedicated to an advertiser. Rather than parking on 9b, we would park on the Coca Cola level. Or what if parking were free if you drove a Holden, sponsored by Holden. Would more people by more Holdens. When I owned a Lexus, the salesman boasted to me that Lexus customers can park at the Opera House at no charge. That sounds good. Silly me, I did not ask to see the fine print. There were many conditions. There were limited spaces, and first in best dressed. And one could only park there if they have a ticket for a show at the Opera House. So he mislead me. Silly me. Stupid Him. I was bitten like this by Apple recently. They said, for $160 or so per year, you can have unlimited training. Not so. The training happens in George Street, and only one hour can be booked per time. So I would have to drive two hours into town, park, pay tolls etc, for a one hour session. Apple would not allow two or three sessions in one day. So that’s four hours on the road, $39 parking, $15 in tolls, just for one session. Silly me. Stupid Him (and stupid Apple policy).

If 50% of the workforce is stressed out, it would not be an unfair question to ask each person what they mean by stress. It’s one of those words like ‘depression’ or ‘boredom’. People use it to mean different things.

In ‘How to Lose Friends and Infuriate Your Boss’, the first chapter touches on the topic of stress, wherein I say:

KILLER DISEASES

Collectively, we entered the twenty-first century carrying a doctor’s certificate. It said, ‘Suffering from stress. Light duties prescribed.’ What does it mean to be ‘stressed out’? What causes us to feel pressured, overworked, and underpaid? Every ten years or so, we learn about a new wave of occupational hazards. Most recently, public liability has become so expensive that community events have had to be cancelled and small businesses have had to be closed. Exorbitant insurance premiums have been fuelled by our litigious society, whose members no longer take responsibility for their own actions — even when walking across a field. Back in the 1990s, employers discovered how costly it could be to handle grievances and ‘emotional damage’ in relation to sexual harassment and unfair dismissal. In the 1980s, employers refused to believe that ‘repetitive strain injury’ was a serious ailment; not until the courts awarded astronomical payouts to victims of soft-tissue injury. All of a sudden, ‘ergonomics’ entered the vernacular. In the 1970s, employers and insurers were learning about back-pain and whiplash. For private investigators, business boomed as they spied on unethical workers for whom ‘compensation’ was another word for ‘get-rich-quick’. Lawyers convinced victims to try their luck, promising ‘no win, no fees’. Despite employers’ best efforts to appease unions, to placate environmentalists, and to satisfy insurance companies, it seems that our places of work are more dangerous than ever. Stress is the new killer that affects workers’ mental and physical health. It destroys both productivity and profitability.

Is it conceivable that, despite earnest attempts to improve occupational health and safety, we have entered an era in which the greatest threat to our workforce is an ill-defined intangible disease that emanates from work itself? Could it be that workers are more inclined to suffer from stress because they are uncertain about their future and because they are not passionate about their work?

Although we can point to many factors that fuel stress, we must find out what triggers it. In my search to understand the essence of stress, I have come to disagree with popular medical definitions. I define occupational stress as a condition resulting from our inability to reconcile our capability with our authority. This means that stress is ignited when we can see a solution to a major problem, and we know that we are capable of fixing that problem, but we have no authority to do so. We are shackled by bureaucracy.

Stress leads to frustration, which in turn leads to a debilitating disease called ‘depression’. I define depression as a condition resulting from our inability to reconcile our inadequacy with our responsibility. This means that depression consumes us when we realise that we are unable to do anything about our own problems. As a result, we believe that our problems will never go away.

STRESS TEST

I have devised a stress test called the ‘elasticity of command’. It enables me to determine an individual’s propensity to suffer from occupational stress. I draw on the analogy of giving employees a piece of elastic to measure the distance between them and the nearest colleague who can obstruct a project unnecessarily. Employees are then asked to compare that by measuring the distance between them and their commander (the boss) — whose responsibility it would be to facilitate a smooth transition for the project.

If the boss is reachable and responsive, the stress level is said to be minimal. If the boss is unreachable and unresponsive, the stress level is said to be extreme. Stress becomes ‘frustration’ when those who can obstruct us are more powerful than our boss. In industries where everything is processed in real-time, we must be given the tools to make decisions in real-time. Using ‘elasticity of command’, we can see that the person who is ultimately responsible for work-related stress is none other than the boss (whether it be our own boss, or someone further up the ladder). Bosses, too, can suffer from stress if their superiors are unreachable and unresponsive.

It would be convenient to blame ‘globalisation’ or ‘politics’ or a myriad of external factors for today’s stressful work environments. Ultimately, it all boils down to the boss. If you are the boss, or aspire to become the boss, it is important to equip yourself with the skills that will be demanded of you in the future. Otherwise, you could perpetuate this problem into the next decade.

Over the years, Chrysler has been missing the mark (or should I say ‘Marque’ to force a pun, as many do, thereby committing sin Number One). The Chrysler advertisement below, which resembles one of their billboard campaigns, seems to ignore two important rules. Incidentally, while the world was suffering one of its greatest financial meltdowns, the US government poured millions into Chrysler, while at the same time, the company was spending US$134 million on advertising, saying that it needs to keep its image alive. I endorse advertising, but I fear that they might have wasted a lot of money.



The first error is the use of jargon. In general terms, most people might understand inches and centimetres, or pounds and kilograms. So if we were to say that for $10 you can receive a bar of gold that is 2 cm (or inches) square, you would be able to comprehend this. One can visualise what is on offer. What if you were told that this bar were 100 kg in weight? If you have basic knowledge, you would be amazed, because something so small, to weigh so much, would be out of this world. However, is $10 a fair price for a small lump of gold? At this point, given that you know a bit about gold, you would ask if it is plated, or how many carats it is. If you knew a great deal about gold, you would be either suspicious or amazed at this price. The offer would trigger many thoughts. However, for the average person who is not a professional jeweller, this offer would only be amazing if they were assisted to comprehend the $10 offer, by comparing it with the market value. So the ad would need to say, ‘A $500 bar of gold, for $10 if you purchase today’. Now we have a clue by comparison.

Even as far back as 1957, Chrysler was using technical jargon. In this ad, it mentions horsepower, which back then, and still to this day, most people would not really understand what that means. We know that it sounds impressive, but it does not form a proper picture in our mind, and we cannot compare that with what we drive, because people do not know the horsepower of their own vehicle.

The Chrysler ads often mention the 317 kilowatts. Most people know what a kilo is. And they have heard the term ‘Watt’ used in relation to light-bulbs. Yet, when the phrase/measure is combined, it does not form a picture in one’s head. Of course, a real automotive pro would understand. But this ad is not directed at the pro. It is mass-marketed. The car is being sold to the average family driver or executive. The average person would not be able to imagine what this really means. This is failing in terms of communication. The best form of communication takes a message from one person, and implants it in the head of another (while evoking emotion at the same time).

So here we do not know what 317 kw really means. The second aspect where this ad fails is in what I call the ‘comparison’. The consumer would only say ‘wow’ if they knew what their current vehicle was rated at. For example, if the average Holden Commodore is only 17 kw, and this Chrysler is 317 kw, we know from general maths that this has 300 more. So first, tell the consumers what they are driving, so that they have a comparison. But this is useless unless you give consumers a reason to care. The ‘so what’ test comes next. So what that my car is 17 and this one is 317? Unless we can convert that into something we can visualise, then there is no connection in the communication. Of course, if it transpired that the Holden is 316.5 kw, and this one is 317 kw, that would spark a whole new set of questions.

The advertiser might do well to put that in terms of, ‘If your Holden and this Chrysler raced from Sydney to Perth or from New York to LA (the geography has to make sense to the reader), then by the time you leave your front door, the Chrysler would already have reached Alice Springs (Texas). And now this has an ‘amazing’ factor about it. Yet, the consumer will have to wonder ‘so what?’ Sounds fast and powerful, but my local speeding laws prohibit me from travelling any faster than the local speed limits, which are so low anyway.

And those who know a bit about cars will start to wonder what kind of fuel this car would consume if it is this amazing. There are dozens of other factors that would come into play. All the while, a billboard ad must contain no more than a few words, so it’s a tough assignment.

The internet version of the ad, as shown below, also mentions torque. The average driver whom they are trying to attract will not be able to really comprehend this. Sure, if asked casually at a party, they would pretend to know about it, because they do not want to appear ignorant, but place people in a room and ask them to explain what all these technicalities really mean, and they will fail. Which means that the advertiser has failed. Sure, we can boast in advertising, and we could hope that it would rub-off on the consumer, but in the end, people will feel lost.

The second-last strip worries me. It says that the Chrysler can go from zero to 100 kilometres per hour ‘in low 5 seconds’. This is either sloppy writing or slimy writing. The uninitiated is being conned. The average reader might assume that it is 5 seconds. Much like the silly ads that say, ‘in five short weeks, you can lose weight’. Five weeks are five weeks. There are no such things as five short weeks. And banks say ‘In five low repayments of $10′. Ten dollars are ten dollars. There can be no such things as low ten dollars. Hence, most people will presume that the Chrysler can reach 100 km/h in 5 seconds. Yet I suspect that they mean in the ‘low fives’ like people say, ‘I am in my low thirties’, which is like 35 years old. And so now the company commits yet another sin by misleading.

I trust that this article has given you a brief introduction to the complexity of advertising.



Jonar Nader is a management consultant who areas of expertise include adverting, marketing, and branding. His observations about customer service and consumer behaviour can be found in his book, ‘How to Lose Friends and Infuriate People’.

Paul Hogan affected the Americans with his Crocodile Dundee and his shrimp on the barbie. And the late Steve Irwin coloured the Australian landscape to the point where foreigners now expect to see a crocodile in every back yard. Not to mention what the TV show Skippy did to the idea that Kangaroos come a’hopp’n left right and centre.
I mention all this because at Sydney’s International Airport, arriving passengers are treated to ads on the back of the trolleys. This one is from Vodafone which shows an illustration of a snake, with the message, ‘Australia’s scary. Calling home isn’t.’ The tag line reads, ‘Make the most of now’. Is Australia so dangerous that if we do not make the most of now, there might be no tomorrow? Do we need to scare new arrivals to such a degree? We might not think much of it, but when you travel the world and you see how people just pigeon-hole countries and brands, you will realise the importance of brand control. This leads me to suggest that any company or any product that wants to associate itself with Australia, ought to seek approval from a Brand Manager. This person might be associated with the Tourism Commission or the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

The ways in which we send out messages about Australia could impact Australia’s standing in terms of its perceived development, intelligence, and social advancement. If you do not believe this, just travel and speak with people. I happened to be in the foyer of a hotel in St Louis, USA. A young, tall, healthy, blond-haired nineteen year-old boy heard my non-American accent and he wanted to know where I was from. When I mentioned Australia, he wanted to know more about it because he imagined it to be a red, dry, desert whose inhabitants kept kangaroos as pets. As I described our way of life, he asked me, ‘Do they have cars in Australia’. And when I answered this question, he was not convinced, so he quizzed me some more, ‘Like what type of cars?’ I mentioned a few brands, of which one was BMW. He turned to his father and said in amazement, as if to report a revelation, ‘Hey Dad, they’ve got cars in Australia!’ Replay that in your mind, using a strong Yankee accent.

Bad news travels far and wide. I was in Melbourne when the Indian protests were taking place. I went to take a look, and I interviewed some of the protesters. ‘The Times of India’ newspaper wrote, ‘Indians in Australia are living in crippling fear. Worried parents in India are recalling their children from Australian universities. Victims have vowed not to go back. Aspiring students and travellers have decided against visiting Australia…’


Here is an audio of the protest. I could not understand a single word, but somehow the crowd knew when to cheer.

Mounted police officers were on the scene. The students had stopped all traffic around Flinders Street Station and the surrounding blocks. I spoke with police officers who said that they had no fore-warning about the protests. As a result, they were not prepared, and did not have the man-power to stop the illegal disturbance. All they could do was plead with the student leaders to stop the show which at times became rowdy and turbulent. It went well into the night and into the next day. Two police officers separately told me that they did not want to aggravate the crowd because ‘there are more of them than there are of us’.

One protester told me that he had his teeth kicked-in while at a train station. Despite video footage, the police did not act. The protest was more about the lack of police assistance, than about violence or racism. Anyway, it all got out of hand, and Australia’s reputation is damaged. One banner read, ‘Justice for the victims, not “sorry”.’ The students were fed up with politicians apologising. They wanted justice. So you see, much like people can’t stand it when corporations do not respond to customer complaints, citizens and members of the community feel aggrieved when those whose job it is to assist the victims, seem to show no compassion. It’s interesting to hear the stories, and then to hear police spokespeople say, ‘We do not want the students to take the law into their own hands’. Good idea. In that case, show us the law in action before communities turn against each other. Tit for tat. Retribution. Revenge. Violence. Bad reputation. We all lose.

Is this a matter of racism? Not at all. Australians are just lazy. You can hear of similar stories at hospitals and train stations and at the biggest department stores and the most prestigious brands. Lazy dimwits who don’t do their job. They have no pride and no concern. They want to get home, pop a pill, get drunk, and go out. That’s all they live for. That, and the footy, mate. It has nothing to do with Indians. What about the case of Aaron Warnecke and Greg Harland, attacked with metal poles while walking home, minding their own business. They were bashed for no reason. Charming. One was hospitalised. All caught on camera. Further threats made. The victims asked for an AVO (apprehended violence order) and the police refused, until three months of community protests. Disgusting. Get off your back side and do your job, whether you work at a hamburger shop or a knocking shop. Lazy bastards. And this image of Australia will not change until community and corporate leaders stop checking the daily stock price. I have said a million times that we need to stop the game of musical chairs. We need leaders/executives to stay in their job long enough to be responsible and accountable, and we need them to never own shares in the company in which they work. Go ahead laugh, or read ‘How to Lose Friends and Infuriate Your Boss.‘ 590 pages to make you laugh some more.

I conduct a lot of business with suppliers overseas. It has absolutely nothing to do with price. If I asked an Australian company to provide me with a quotation or an expression of interest or some ideas about a project, I could wait six weeks before I received a luke-warm response, and that’s only after I have had to escalate the question and re-send my query several times. Compare six weeks with thirty minutes from Asian suppliers who are polite, accurate, enthusiastic, and willing to listen and to perform. It has nothing to do with price. And isn’t it funny how Aussies complain about them over there taking their business and taking their customers. No business in this country loses a client to a competitor overseas. No-one steals them away. The local fat-cats kick their customers away. This week I sent notes off to MelbourneIT and to another internet service provider called Ilisys, asking if they would like my business. I had asked them the same question last week. I am always keen to keep my business local. It rarely works. I bet you that if I do not ask them a third and tenth time, no-one will respond. Lazy buggers. They give us all a bad name. As that police officer said, there are more of them than there are of us.

Once upon a time, I required a marketing communications manager. I advertised the position and received eighty expressions of interest. I had specifically asked applicants not to send their resume to me. Instead, I sent a package to each respondent. The packaged outlined everything I could share with them. I tried to sell them on the job, before they had to sell me on their skills. In the package were instructions on how to apply. Essentially, I said that I do not want a traditional resume. I preferred something creative. I wanted candidates to think creatively. Of the eighty who expressed interest, only eight or fewer responded as per my instructions. That sorted the serious folk from the time-wasters.

I often warn head-hunters and candidates not to mention anything in the resume that is not real. For example, if someone says that they enjoy golf or theatre etc, I would expect that they would be completely immersed in golf or theatre. I would not take kindly to someone just writing about general hobbies that are nothing more than a passing fancy.

When the candidate comes for an interview, I would have someone watch how well they can park. How often must they move the car backwards and forwards to position the vehicle correctly? If they cannot park a car, and they have been driving for years, it would say a lot about their state of mind and their tolerance for imperfection. What are they doing about personal development?

It is not unusual for me to ask other members of staff, or trusted friends, to meet with my candidates, at odd times, in strange places. I have invited candidates to bowling alleys and amusement arcades, along with some of their prospective work-mates. How people interact outside the formal meeting room, can be revealing. How they eat, how they play, how they conduct themselves when they are off guard and off duty, will reveal more to me than whether or not someone has a degree from Harvard.

Suppose that you spied on your candidate (via legal means only) and you found the following, how would that colour your opinion about a person? To me, I take a person’s conduct seriously. If someone cannot park properly, it says to me that they do not care to improve. If they litter when no-one is looking, I wonder what else they would do around the office when no-one is watching. Here are some photos that can make you think twice about candidates. I am not even touching on their social networking sites, which can be more than enlightening.

Here is a candidate who parks the car very close to the kerb. Not a big deal. But not wise. He then hits the car in front. Perhaps he was in a tight spot. Not so. The third photo shows the distance at the rear. A sign of sloppy thinking. By all means, people can do what they like, but when they are custodians of your brand, you have to wonder how sloppy they might be with your assets.

If a candidate has no respect for the law of the land, and speaks on a mobile phone while driving, how costly would it be for the company if the executive loses his licence and can no longer drive. Or if the exective has an accident as a result of mobile phone distractions, and ends up on the front page of a newspaper?

I often warn staff about drinking within a work environment. Here is a young woman on the ground. How could she expect a promotion after this incident? In her new post, she would be expected to travel the world and entertain clients. What kind of a liability and an embarrassment would she be?

What kind of risk could a person be if they have a gambling problem? Today I heard on the news that a man tried to sue Crown Casino because he gambled away $1000 million (one billion) dollars. He expected the casino to have stopped him. I guess an employer might also be expected to stop a candidate, but everyone says that we should mind our own business. Then they want to sue when they reach the end of the line. I wonder if the gambler would have sued if he had won $3 billion. Would he have complained about that outcome? Unethical, undisciplined drip sticks.

This candidate was young, fit, and healthy. He belonged to an up-market gym. All sounds sporting. Except for his manner in the change rooms. He gets on the mobile phone and has no regard for people around him. He is a loud foul-mouth, cursing and laughing. He spits in the shower. He does not pick up his towels. Keeps the locker doors open. He opens a bag of shopping and rips off the tags from his new clothes, and litters the floor with them, when the exclusive club is otherwise clean, and the rubbish bin is within arms length. What a spoilt brat. No thanks. Can't work with that kind of attitude.

Here is an excerpt from one of the chapters in my book, ‘How to Lose Friends and Infuriate Your Boss’ wherein I speak about integrity:

‘You speak volumes by what you do not say. You expose your integrity by what you refuse to accept. You highlight your conviction by what you refuse to believe. Astute people will determine your fibre by observing what you deem insignificant. They will construe your essence by what you overlook. They will interpret your actions by what you neglect. They will assess your grandeur by how low you stoop. They will examine your honour by what you hide. Shrewd people will scrutinise your nature by giving you whatever you ask for. They will examine your morality by tantalising your pleasures. They will probe your ethics by sponsoring your indulgences. They will unveil your principles by extending your authority. They will know your limits by replenishing your power so that you will be able to reach your destination. Leaders do not mind clumsy people, but they worry about polished yobs. They do not mind the uneducated, but they loathe the ignorant. They can see value in a rough diamond, but not in fool’s gold. The tiniest detail exposes impostors. Vulgarity seizes glamour. Rudeness usurps style. Indiscretion smothers elegance. Insensitivity extinguishes romance. Selfishness destroys love.’

It does not worry me in the least that someone wants to score cheap laughs with product names. I am just speaking up for the poor people whose lives are complicated by serious ‘isms’ such as chauvinism, racism, and sexism.

Funnily enough, it has been suggested that the Yorkie chocolate bar contains so much sugar and fat, that no girl would want so many calories. Maybe blokes don’t mind being fat and unhealthy. There you go, making assumptions.

Fair enough; there might be tradition and history to the Yorkie bar. But pray tell, what’s this ice-cream all about? The photo below was taken at a Melbourne ice-cream store. The tub with the pink heart is labelled, ‘Just for girls’. No idea why. The store interested me because upon entry, the music was most unbecoming of any retail establishment. I asked the attendant (I had to yell it out) to tell me who chooses the music. She said, ‘When the boss is away, we can play whatever we like.’ I wonder if the boss also lets her change the ingredients? We live in a world of multimedia, yet staff members seem to think that store-music is for their own amusement… something to while away the boring hours.



P.S. I finally succumbed and opened the wrapper and tasted the chocolate. My first thought was that it is overly sweet, almost sickly sweet. More like eating pure caramel. My second thought was that the term ‘Not for girls’ could have come as a put-down when someone said to the inventor, ‘Hey this is too sweet’, and the retort was, ‘Don’t be such a girl’. Sometimes, friends and colleagues browbeat people into submission, by insulting their opinion.

The reason for my indiscretion and bad taste is that the green ‘cock’ ad was found on the back cover of a magazine called, ‘Her Business’. Don’t you think that it is a disgrace for such a magazine to perpetuate this rudeness towards the species of the opposite gender? Can you imagine if a magazine by the name of ‘His Business’ printed an ad that put down female bosses?

What’s good for the goose…

At first glance, I thought that the coffee outlet was riding on the reputation of Jamaican men’s willies, and calling their extra-large cups ‘Jamaican’. But I later realised that it must be a pun – a play on words, considering the name of the store and the origin of the coffee that it sells. So I corrected myself and thought nothing of it, until I came across a sign that said, ‘Size does matter’. Now what are we supposed to think. And to draw our attention to men, willies, and sex, we see a topless man in the photo.

I wonder how this style of promotion would have worked if a bar, selling beer from a country known for its buxom women, used topless women holding two jugs of beer, with the same type of suggestive text, saying that size does matter.

Is Jamaica Blue ‘objectifying’ the penis? This is a term that was used in relation to the Nando’s double breast burger that showed a women with large breasts. The TV was banned because we were told that the ad ‘objectified’ the bosom.

Maybe it can be argued that the ‘Jamaican’ serving of coffee does not objectify the male member because Jamaican men are not that large. There have been studies of penis sizes around the world, and the outcomes show very little difference. I discovered this while researching the RTA Pinkie ad (see that story here).

Perhaps it’s all a myth. Sure, the odd porno star might have something to sing about, but the average Jamaican is just an average guy. This means that the worst that Jamaica Blue is up for, is innuendo and false advertising.

Isn’t it interesting that self-deprecation is humours. If they had made other observations about other races, they would be in deep trouble. For example, what would you make of the size-range featured below?