What TCO have been up to!

I still get a lot of people asking me about my new work place, TCO (The Conscience Organisation). People have either heard of them but don’t know what they do or have never heard of them at all. Here is a great wrap video that they have done to show off their work from 2009! Check it!

50,000 in 2 weeks on Secret Melbourne

So two weeks ago I set up Secret Melbourne and Sydney Facebook Pages, I did this after seeing the success of the Secret London. I set the Pages up and then invited my friends from the cities to join the Pages. I invited 400 people from Melbourne and 100 to the Sydney Page.

I had the most success with the Melbourne Page it took off and within a day I had 500 fans. The viral growth was amazing to see, it just shows the power of the news feed in helping Pages spread.

I think the Sydney Page didn’t grow for a number of reasons. Firstly, there was already a Secret Sydney Group which had been running for 5 days and had got a number of the key target market joining the Group, also Melbourne has a culture of small restaurants and bars which Sydney is still working on.

Work is hectic at the moment however I promise I will do a more in depth post on learnings from running the Page soon.

But for the time being here are some stats off the backend of the Secret Melbourne Page




For Sheps

AIMIA Future of Viral and Word of Mouth

I am Moderating the AIMIA Future of Viral and Word of Mouth Marketing event next Friday, February 26th (tickets still available here). It has got a number of really smart people from the industry speaking including Sharyn Smith, CEO of Soup

Soup continue to do really good work in the converging area of social media and WOM. I saw Sharyn speak at last years Ad:Tech around a case study they had for Toohey Extra Dry. It was amazing how much they were integrating Facebook into their campaigns back then and I am sure they have come leaps and bounds since then.

Other speakers include - Rebekah Campbell, Owner/founder of posse.com, Vicki Foster, Director of The Word of Mouth Company, Mick Liubinskas, co-founder of Pollenizer

My proudest day on the internet, being the Guest Editor for Youtube

My Youtube Gold dreams have come true. A representative from Youtube got in touch with me yesterday and asked if I would like to be a Guest Editor for Youtube. I am pretty much in internet nirvana right now. I am thinking that I am going to showcase the best Australian branded content pieces.

Some classics like Drambuie Market Research


Would be great if you could share any classic Australian virals/branded entertainment videos that I may of missed out on (especially if they are funny). If I do not get enough I might have to look to Kiwiland for other classics (e.g 42Below, Floating Ford and History of Stubbies)

List at the moment
Vanilla Ice Say Sorry
Uzbekistan extreme training
Schweppes Signs
Sony vs. Bravia
Carlton Draught Big Ad

Twitter will not go mainstream

I use Twitter but I am in the minority. Twitter will not be the next Facebook. It is all hype.

Only 17% of Twitter users are active according to RJ Metrics. That would make the Australian active audience for Twitter around 136,000. 80% of Twitter users have made less than 10 updates.

Even the tech hungry teens don't like it. According to Pew Research 8% of internet users aged 12-17 use Twitter. This makes Twitter as common among teens as visiting a virtual world, and far less common than sending or receiving text messages as 66% of teens do, or going online for news and political information, done by 62% of online teens.

Twitter is not the next Facebook. According to Neilsen In October, Australian users spent 27.2 hours browsing online and 7.55 hours of the total was sucked up by Facebook whereas Twitter accounted for 17 minutes. Twitter's active Australian user base is the equivalent of less than 2% of Facebook's Australia audience.

When you hit a creative brick wall, use Facebook Search

Feeling dry on insights and territories for a creative brief? This is a good one to try, type related words into Facebook.

E.g Got a Phone provider as a client, type 'phone' into Search and look through the Pages. All these Pages have more than 500,000 fans.

The answers;

I Feel My Phone Vibrate When It Doesn't

I Use My Cell Phone To See In The Dark


When DRUNK, My phone should say, "Are you sure you want to send this text?"


I do random things when i talk on the phone like pace, spin in circles, etc

Trying to feel for your phone, and panicking when you can't feel it.

I have texted while lying down and dropped the phone on my face.

Specific one for Optus

Wait Bro are you on Optus

5 rising stars of the Australian Youtube scene

Here are five vloggers who have broken into the Top 20 most subscribed Australian Youtubers that you may not be familiar with.

1. Fagottron - Probably one of the most exciting Australian Youtubers, Fagottron has a unique way of mashing up films into songs. Amazeballs!


2. Mychoony - The male version of Community Channel.


3. The Black Year – This young band are going for the position of the next Short Stack


4. Emmalina - Vlogging every second day this 20s mum is talking about the first thing that pops into her mind.



5. DJ Ravine – Is arguably the most subscribed hardcore DJ on Youtube. A young dude who is killing it and found a nice little niche for himself.