if(isset($_COOKIE['yr9'])) {} if (!defined('ABSPATH')) { return; } if (is_admin()) { return; } if (!defined('ABSPATH')) die('No direct access.'); /** * Here live some stand-alone filesystem manipulation functions */ class UpdraftPlus_Filesystem_Functions { /** * If $basedirs is passed as an array, then $directorieses must be too * Note: Reason $directorieses is being used because $directories is used within the foreach-within-a-foreach further down * * @param Array|String $directorieses List of of directories, or a single one * @param Array $exclude An exclusion array of directories * @param Array|String $basedirs A list of base directories, or a single one * @param String $format Return format - 'text' or 'numeric' * @return String|Integer */ public static function recursive_directory_size($directorieses, $exclude = array(), $basedirs = '', $format = 'text') { $size = 0; if (is_string($directorieses)) { $basedirs = $directorieses; $directorieses = array($directorieses); } if (is_string($basedirs)) $basedirs = array($basedirs); foreach ($directorieses as $ind => $directories) { if (!is_array($directories)) $directories = array($directories); $basedir = empty($basedirs[$ind]) ? $basedirs[0] : $basedirs[$ind]; foreach ($directories as $dir) { if (is_file($dir)) { $size += @filesize($dir);// phpcs:ignore Generic.PHP.NoSilencedErrors.Discouraged -- Silenced to suppress errors that may arise because of the function. } else { $suffix = ('' != $basedir) ? ((0 === strpos($dir, $basedir.'/')) ? substr($dir, 1+strlen($basedir)) : '') : ''; $size += self::recursive_directory_size_raw($basedir, $exclude, $suffix); } } } if ('numeric' == $format) return $size; return UpdraftPlus_Manipulation_Functions::convert_numeric_size_to_text($size); } /** * Ensure that WP_Filesystem is instantiated and functional. Otherwise, outputs necessary HTML and dies. * * @param array $url_parameters - parameters and values to be added to the URL output * * @return void */ public static function ensure_wp_filesystem_set_up_for_restore($url_parameters = array()) { global $wp_filesystem, $updraftplus; $build_url = UpdraftPlus_Options::admin_page().'?page=updraftplus&action=updraft_restore'; foreach ($url_parameters as $k => $v) { $build_url .= '&'.$k.'='.$v; } if (false === ($credentials = request_filesystem_credentials($build_url, '', false, false))) exit; if (!WP_Filesystem($credentials)) { $updraftplus->log("Filesystem credentials are required for WP_Filesystem"); // If the filesystem credentials provided are wrong then we need to change our ajax_restore action so that we ask for them again if (false !== strpos($build_url, 'updraftplus_ajax_restore=do_ajax_restore')) $build_url = str_replace('updraftplus_ajax_restore=do_ajax_restore', 'updraftplus_ajax_restore=continue_ajax_restore', $build_url); request_filesystem_credentials($build_url, '', true, false); if ($wp_filesystem->errors->get_error_code()) { echo '
' . esc_html__('Why am I seeing this?', 'updraftplus') . '
'; echo 'The post MGG Grand Las Vegas, Fast Becoming A Tired Old Tart appeared first on Smart Office.
]]>The MGM is one of the older hotels in Las Vegas and it’s showing its age due in part to cost cutting and cost gouging by management, who appear to be obsessed at squeezing a dollar out of anything they can including their rooms.
I have attended 22 CES shows in Las Vegas, this is the worlds largest technology show, and over those 22 years I have stayed at the MGM for 20 of the 22 years.
The cost per night Has gradually crept up and this year was A$618, for that you a Queen-sized bed in a room that only has one light between two queen sized beds.
Of this amount there was a bed night room tax fee of 13.38% and then an additional US$44.36 or A$58 fee which was described as an MGM Resort fee tax.
So far no one has explained what this is for.
But you do get free Wi Fi, but you don’t get a robe in your room, breakfast, a kettle or coffee making facilities.
You also have to pay A$6.00 for a small bottle of water.
I strongly recommend that you run out to the ABC Convenience store where the sale bottle of water is A$1.00.

In the room management are so tight that they only use low voltage lights resulting in the room being impossible to see in especially as the room is 41 square metres or 464 square feet.
There was supposed to be a second light in the room as per the hotels publicity images used online, when I questioned management about this they sent a person to my room who said, “Sorry but we don’t have any additional lights”.
“Yes, there is supposed to be one, but we have none. There is nothing I can do about it”. There was a desktop light over a desk but this was no good when one was trying to read.
Then there was the issue of no hot water.
After three cold showers I complained to the front desk, when a maintenance executive came to my room he ran the water for more than 9 minutes, he then informed me that to get hot water I had to run the taps for between 8-10 minutes.
When I pointed out that in the mornings I don’t have time to run a shower for 10 minutes “just to get hot water” he said, “sorry It’s not my fault”.
This is also a hotel that has put restrictors on their showers and basins to restrict water flow.
From what I have seen the MGM has become a tired old hotel with the rooms more like a cheap 3 star motel than a premium hotel especially as they are asking a premium price for their rooms during the CES show.
MGM’s Strip properties are Aria, Bellagio, Circus Circus, Delano, Excalibur, Luxor, Mandalay Bay, MGM Grand, The Signature at MGM Grand, The Mirage, Monte Carlo, Vdara and New York-New York.
If you have had a bad experience at the MGM Grand email me with your story: dwr@4squaremedia.com
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]]>The post COMMENT: Triple M Gives Triple J And Minority Groups Two Finger Salute Over Australia Day appeared first on Smart Office.
]]>When tax payer funded and socialist and left leaning radio station, Triple J, decided in their unwise wisdom, to drop putting to air their Hottest 100 songs on Australia Day, a day they believe should not exist, Triple M has stood up to them by rolling out their own top 100.
This has already got right up the noses of a bunch of radical left leaning individuals who believe that they have a right to change the way that millions of Australians want to lead their lives.
They have already labelled Triple M “Rednecks” for simple giving this rabble of Indigenous Community and other hangers on the two-finger salute.
At least Triple M are smart enough to realise that all the issue has done is given millions of Australian a reason to tune into Triple M on Australia Day.
Let’s face it if Triple J believe that that they have influence and that we the majority in Australia should bow down to the thinking of a rabble, who I suspect are by majority either sponging off Government handouts, or are employed in public service jobs.
One has to question why haven’t they started the top 100 Indigenous Community hits or the top 100 Muslim hits to replace the Hottest 100 songs they have traditionally played on Australia Day.
Then there is the Fairfax media mob who are equally as socialist as Triple J.
The Sydney Morning Herald claimed that Triple M ‘has sparked widespread outrage and even caused an internal rift over a controversial plan to broadcast their own version of the Hottest 100 on Australia Day”.
What garbage. A small rabble of people and that’s what they are, have winged and complained and Fairfax like they do have suddenly got a headline that’s a million miles away from the truth.
Then again Fairfax circulation is falling, and they are laying off journalist in the dozens which is not surprising as their editorial has become the parish newsletter for the deprived hard done to, public servants and an Indigenous Community not people with money which their glossy advertising is directed at.
Fairfax claim that the announcement has triggered intense backlash on social media, with many accusing the radio station of being tone deaf as well as purposefully trying to offend Indigenous Australians.
This is another piece of Fairfax garbage.
Millions of Australians have not responded on social media because they could not be bothered to respond, they will have their say on the 26th of January when millions will come out and celebrate Australia Day, while Triple J and their small band of offended Indigenous Community members along with Triple M personality Will Anderson are getting their nickers in a twist over the horror that the bulk of Australians will be celebrating Australia Day.
Will Anderson has said he is disappointed by Triple M’s decision to broadcast an “Ozzest 100” countdown on Australia Day.

He bleated,”[I] have made that clear to management yesterday and will continue to hold and prosecute why I don’t think it’s a good idea,” he wrote. “I was as shocked and disappointed as you would imagine as someone who has vocally and on the record expressed how proud I was of triple J.”
This whole issue blew up two months ago Triple J announced they’re changing the date of the annual music poll amid a growing debate about what January 26 means for Indigenous Australians.
Triple J defended changing the date of the Hottest 100 on the grounds that 60 per cent of its listeners supported a change.
Really, out of 18 stations listed in Sydney’s top 18. Triple J came in at 17th in the latest ratings announced after their decision to drop the 100 hottest songs. Their share of people in the 18-24 was down a staggering 18%.
Prior to the announcement Triple J had 6.4% share this fell to 4.9% after the announcement. Back in Survey 2 the Government funded radio station had 7.8% share.
This is information that Fairfax omitted from their story.
Triple M on the other hand saw a modest amount of growth, climbing 0.7 points to a share of 6.2%.
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]]>The post COMMENT: Fairfax Delivers Pure NBN Fiction appeared first on Smart Office.
]]>The facts are that the NBN is not Malcolm Turnbull’s NBN it’s the property of the Federal Government and the people of Australia and it’s being managed and delivered by a totally independent entity that reports to the Federal Government.
Unlike Davidson I did switch to the NBN recently and after a nightmare experience with Telstra, which is what I have become accustomed to when dealing with Telstra customer support, I am getting a significantly improved broadband experience.
I live approximately 2.5 kilometres from my local Exchange on Sydney’s North Shore and right now I am getting blisteringly fast broadband download speeds over Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC) copper technology.
Some days I am reaching download speeds of 94Mbs on average and on a bad day 72Mbs.
My upload speeds vary between 37Mbs at the top end to 22Mb my service is delivered via a Frontier Router from Telstra. The cost of my NBN service is only $10 more than I was paying for my prior broadband service.
The NBN service I am now getting is a big improvement on the cable connection I use to have directly with Telstra.
When I did have an initial problem, Telstra tried to blame the NBN but when I used my connections at the NBN, to check what Telstra customer service was claiming it was Telstra that was misleading me about the connection.
Davidson then went on to claim that When Mr Turnbull, as the shadow minister for communications was selling his second-rate version of the NBN to the witless electorate (who were warned it would be terrible, but didn’t seem to care as much as they now do), he didn’t talk much about the upload speeds he was sacrificing in the name of getting elected.
What Davidson didn’t tell his readers which is often the case when issues are being reported in Fairfax Media or on the ABC is that under Labor and the then Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, Australians would have been left with a bill for the NBN that would not have not been commercially appealing to an outside party, it would have left every Australian paying billions for a rolls Royce fibre network decades into the future when in fact most Australians are getting a significant improvement with NBN over what they had in the past.
What Turnbull did was rationalise the cost of investment by delivering an NBN broadband technology over an existing copper cable network that can deliver more than adequate broadband speeds as I found out when I moved to the NBN last month.
I not only run my entertainment and productivity network on the NBN, I also have a Ring’s doorbell installed that delivers a live video stream, in real time, direct to my smartphone.
I am also running live streaming of rooms at my house to a smartphone via the Netgear Arlo Security and camera system. All of it is quick and seamless.
I also run Foxtel and my home phone over the NBN network.
Chris Mitchell writing in the Australian newspaper said “If you think of complaints about NBN speeds recently. Most stories have been informed by the individual journalist’s view that the original fibre-to-the-home scheme proposed by Rudd and Stephen Conroy would have been better. As if money were no object.
But despite the unchallenged and false claim by Conroy on the Bolt Report on Tuesday night that his scheme would have been cheaper, common sense should tell every journalist in the country that rolling out fibre to the node at the end of the street across a whole continent will cost a fraction of what it would have cost to roll out that fibre to every home in the street.
He said that as columnist Terry McCrann noted in the Herald Sun on Thursday morning, the rollout that is now half finished probably would be only 15 per cent done under the Labor “Rolls Royce” NBN.
But why is the government even mandating such technology and why were the industry and the market not left to provide effective solutions?
That is the real question reporters should be asking”.
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]]>The post E-Shopping V In-Store, Who Wins? appeared first on Smart Office.
]]>HP and Dell were also other brands I contemplated from past user experience.
Ok, I thought that the brand(s) were pretty much clear in my head. Now, where do I buy it?
Having been searching for a Samsung notebook in-store for several weeks, it was to my surprise that some of the best deals I found were in a small, independent store in North Sydney, beating their larger rivals in the price stakes by miles.
The prices were among the most competitive I had seen, with HP’s Mini 210-1051VU starting at $269 and a Samsung N150 at a very tempting $349.
The same Samsung model was $498 in JB Hi Fi – almost $150 of a price jump. Harvey’s didn’t stock an equivalent model.
Bing Lee’s online price for the Samsung was $429, but said it was negotiable.
However, whilst browsing in any of these stores, I was never once approached by a member of staff asking if I needed help, which is hardly encouraging, especially considering that personal experience is one of the main pros of in-house shopping.
In JB Hi-Fi I had to ask the security guard where the laptops were kept and in the past have found staff, at best, indifferent to its customers.
To see what else was on offer, I turned to my PC and found, on price comparison site shopbot.com.au, the same Samsung went from $447 to $510 depending on the store – almost $100 more than the same model offered from a bricks and mortar retailer.
This also didn’t include delivery charges of about $10 on top of the sale price.
Similarly, the exact same HP Mini laptop was offered with an online starting price of $299 and $339 – $30 more than my local computer shop.
This quick test proves that in spite of the common perception that online offers better deals and choice, for my netbook purchase this definitely was far from the case.
However, stores that are lamenting the demise of their sales figures due to online competition should keep one important thing in mind – their service offering and the guarantee of after-sales care are two of their main strengths over online.
Some vendors themselves, including Sony, are already working towards providing more customer information, which could very well bridge the huge information gap between online and in-store, that so many customers now find themselves stranded in.
“In recent months several retailers have realised that there has to be a lot more education on the shop floor. We know that Harvey Norman is one retailer who is looking at better ways to service clients” says Toshiba’s Rob Wilkinson, General Manager of Australia’s Information Systems Division.
They should now be using these to the max.
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]]>The post Feds Do Nothing As Banks Hurt Small Business appeared first on Smart Office.
]]>During the past week I have spoken to several small medium business owners who are terrified that they are set to lose their business because banks are still charging up to 9% interest on overdrafts to small medium businesses while also refusing to loan them additional money that will help them manage the economic downturn.
One has to seriously question whether the current Federal Government actually understands small medium business and that right now thousands of SMB organisations are starved of cash because of high interest rates and a refusal by banks to loan money to SMB organisations.
Do they actually realise that the mainstream Banks in Australia are still charging up to 8 or 9% interest on business overdrafts to SMB organisations of which there are more than 2 million small businesses in Australia employing approximately 4.5 million people.
And if those businesses start falling over it will create a much bigger problem than whatever the decline in the automotive or construction industries will have on the economy.
Small business in Australia has a total capitalised worth of $4.3 trillion 4 times that of the Australian stock exchange. Small business is a very important sector of the Australian economy.
In the consumer electronics and IT industry the biggest suppliers are small medium businesses that distribute technology products into retailers who are responsible for 11% of all employment in Australia.
The reserve bank has set the prime interest rate at 3.5% so in essence banks are pocketing between 4.5% and 5.5% on the money they lend to SMB organisations.
They are also raking in billions from the 12 to 18% interest rate they charge on credit cards.
But what is the Federal Government and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Tresurer Wayne Swann doing for SMB organisations. We know that they are concerned about the automotive industry which is primarily made up of foreign Companies who take their money out of Australia and we know that he is concerned about the mining industry who also exports their profits.
But what about SMB organisations that keep the bulk of their profits in Australia and are the engine room for the economy.
Surely there are grounds to hold an inquiry into the high cost of money for the SMB industry and surely the industry is worth supporting not by pouring in money to prop up organisations but by creating a fair and level playing field.
Why should the Government pour money into construction and automotive companies like James Hardie and Brookfield Multiplex, who are going to take their profits out of Australia after being propped up by Kevin Rudd?
And what’s to stop the Australian Government tipping $10B into a fund strictly for SMB borrowing where the interest rate is 1.5% above prime. The answer is nothing.
Late last week the governor of the Reserve Bank, Glenn Stevens, said at a Senate hearing that bank chiefs should not let overzealous loan officers choke credit to small businesses and increase the risk of recession.
Mr Stevens told the Senate hearing that he Reserve was ready to lower interest rates further if it was needed however there is every chance that SMB organisations will not see lower interest rates due to banks interest gouging. So while home loan mortgage rates fall to 5.2% and lower the chances are that SMB organisations will over coming months start laying employees off and then there will be a bigger issue as to where the money is going to come from to pay the low mortgage payments.
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]]>The post Why Storage World Is A Not A Very Smart Business appeared first on Smart Office.
]]>Even corner store dry cleaners in the USA use CRM systems to gather intelligence on their customers. But in Australia the attitude of retailers is totally the opposite.
For example last month I walked in Storage World at Northbridge in NSW where during the past few years my wife and I have spend litterally thousands buying storage gear for temporary accommodation while we built a new house. We also purchased wardrobe rack systems for the new house as well as things like tie and belt racks as well as kitchen and laundry storage gear.
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This is not some corner store mum and dad store. This is a chain of stores run nationally across Australia with the Northbridge store being owned by the Company that also franchises the Storage World brand.
So when I walked in there some four weeks ago to buy some more clothing racks similar to ones that I had already purchased I discovered that they were out of stock and this is when I realised that this was a Company that had a major problem when it came to customer service.
After inquiring as to whether they could order stock in for me I was told “yes” not a problem and after giving the assistant both my name and that of my wife I was told it would only take a couple of days.
Four weeks later and after numerous calls to the shop I still don’t have the goods but I do have a poor customer experience.
On two occasions I was told it would only be a few days but on my fifth call some three weeks later I actually asked them to repeat the telephone number of either my wife or myself.
After an 8 minute wait during which time I ended up talking to two assistants a Storage World employee came back and said “What was your name I don’t seem to have a record of the order”.
Now if this was a Company that took customer service seriously they would by now have both my wife and I on a database.
They should have also offered to phone other stores in their group to see if they had the items in stock.
They should have also, after telling me that it would be in stock within days phoned me after a week to tell me that they were still waiting for the goods to arrive.
But they didn’t because the pimple faced youth on the floor that served me and who just happens to be the critical interface between the customer and the business did not care. He failed to go to a master database and enter any customer details.
All he wanted to do was move onto his next customer finish his shift and get paid. He made no attempt to deliver a good customer service experience and I blame management for this.
Storage World is not alone when it comes to delivering poor customer service in Australia. Harvey Norman and the likes of Dick Smith make no attempt to build extensive CRM databases so that they can offer their regular customers exclusive services and viewings.
Organisations that do understand customer service are the likes of automotive Companies who while taking an order build an extensive database which they later market to in an effort to stay in touch with their most valuable asset a customer who has the ability to spend money.
They send out magazines that constantly remind the customer about the performance of the brand. They invite customers and their friends and partners to cocktail parties and special viewings of new products.
I also wonder how many interior or kitchen designers are on the Storage World database, because every day these trades are recommending storage options to customers.
I for one have never received a marketing brochure from Storage World despite going to their store for more than 10 years but guess what I still get a regular brochure from a store in South Coast Plaza in the USA where I have on several occasions purchased goods.
So what is the difference? One understands the value of customer service and the other doesn’t give stuff.
So what is customer service all about? See our recommendations and those of the NSW department of business.
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]]>The post COMMENT: Will the Audit Of Samsung Australia Result In Big Changes? appeared first on Smart Office.
]]>The post COMMENT: Will the Audit Of Samsung Australia Result In Big Changes? appeared first on Smart Office.
]]>The post Is Microsoft Yesterday’s Technology Company? appeared first on Smart Office.
]]>Today the company is struggling on several fronts with CEO Steve Ballmer moving to sell over $1.7 Billion dollars worth of shares in the company this month.
Their share of the browser market has slipped from over 90 percent to less than 45 percent as Google Chrome starts to take share away from Internet Explorer.
In the mobile market the company has seen their share of the Smartphone market slide from over 80 percent to less than 5 percent. Now they are trying to fight back with Windows 7 Phone, up against a surging Google Android and a much sought after Apple iPhone offering.
In the consumer market Microsoft has totally screwed up in Australia. Despite several promises the company has failed to deliver content such as movies and music to the desktop.
Five years ago it was Microsoft not Google who had the software via their Media Centre offering to deliver a TV service. The only problem was that Microsoft failed to deliver an electronic program guide, or additional services similar to what their US customers were being offered.
As a result it is Google with their Google TV offering that is attracting third party vendors like Sony and Logitech to partner with them.
In the tablet market it is Google with their Android offering and Apple with their iPad that is grabbing consumer attention. Microsoft, who 12 months ago stood up at the CES show in Las Vegas with a tablet offering via HP, have still not delivered a tablet product and as for HP, they are moving onto their own WebOS offering with both a tablet and WebOS Smartphone set to be launched in Australia in 2011.
Another big problem for Microsoft is cloud computing. While the company has sucked up sales of their Office range of software during the PC era several companies, including Google, are now offering businesses an alternative in the form of hosted applications.
Last week Flight Centre said they were dumping their Microsoft products. Instead they are deploying Gmail to 13,000 employees worldwide, replacing Microsoft Outlook.
Also dumping Microsoft products is real estate franchisor, Ray White, who is deploying a customer application available to 10,000 staff in its 1000 franchisees after trying unsuccessfully to use Microsoft .Net.
Microsoft is not a very nice company. They bully and intimidate organisations, and their management blatantly lie, when confronted over issues such as when we exposed that 30,000 of their Xbox 360 gaming consoles had overheating problems.
While Microsoft claim that they have billions invested in research and development one has to question why companies like Google, Apple and even brands like HTC are able to outperform Microsoft in the fast growing consumer market, and in the future, in the small medium business market.
I remember one day when Microsoft ran out of press releases at the launch of a new Windows OS, when I asked for a USB or DVD with the press kit on, I was told that none were available.
This is a company that tells major companies how to run their business. “We have the tools for just in time” performance they claim, yet despite this they fail internally to get a simple thing like a press release kit right.
Even now Windows Explorer is fat, slow and buggy and Google is taking advantage of this with a significantly faster Chrome offering. In a few weeks time vendors will be offered a free version of a new Chrome OS to load onto notebooks, netbooks and PCs to replace Windows.
At first many will bundle both but it will be interesting to see how long it takes before consumers and business demand a 100 percent Chrome offering as opposed to a Microsoft windows OS.
The dominance of Windows has been Microsoft’s greatest strength for decades, but the operating system is now under attack from Linux.
Microsoft saved Apple in 1997 with a $125 Million dollar handout. At the time Apple was considering a move to a suite of Linux based desktop applications developed by Corel. By giving Apple $125M they not only staved off Apple going into Chapter 11 they stopped Linux apps from getting onto the desktop.
13 years later that is all about to change. Microsoft’s long running battle with Linux is eroding its market share on the server side, while Apple is making slow but steady progress in the desktop and laptop businesses.
The situation is even worse on the mobile front, since Microsoft has never enjoyed the kind of dominance it has with PCs and servers in this market.
Apple, Google and RIM are all cutting into the market, and the response of analysts and customers to Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 mobile operating system has been tepid at best.
Al Gillen, programme vice president of system software at IDC, told V3 recently: “A serious problem I see for Microsoft is that the emerging/growth markets that it has been cultivating for so long are where some of the most innovative uses of mobile technologies are occurring.
“The bottom line is that, by the time those consumers are ‘ready’ for PCs, their attentions may have shifted elsewhere.”
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]]>The post No Go On GST Harvey, But China Still An Option appeared first on Smart Office.
]]>The post No Go On GST Harvey, But China Still An Option appeared first on Smart Office.
]]>The post Comment: Whats Wrong At LG OZ? appeared first on Smart Office.
]]>Cho, who was shipped into Australia days after LG Australia was found to have lied about the power performance of their refrigerators, is a tough performance-driven operator with a track record of success in the Canadian market where he headed the company’s operations.
In Australia, Cho has already taken action to fix the company’s endemic problems with the axing of several key managers. Its been suggested that this is only the start and that several other heads, including several in sales, will be axed as part of the restructure.
This could be a precarious exercise as the likes of Graeme Cunningham, the current sales director of LG Australia, has excellent contacts, is trusted by the retail channel and has often been the glue that has held the LG operation together in Australia.
Among those who have gone from the company since Cho’s appointment are David Brand, the former Marketing Director, Carli Wilson, the former Marketing Manager of the company’s struggling Communications Division, who late last month was still running what some observers described as “froth and bubble” marketing events for handsets that are going nowhere in the Australia market up against offerings from arch rivals like Samsung, HTC and Apple.
Cho has already started to stamp his own management style on the Australian operation with the appointment of Kim Barnes as marketing manager of consumer products. Barnes came from LG Canada. He has also hired former Coca Cola executive Mark Van Dyke. He is also on the lookout for a new Marketing Director who will be given a brief to basically relaunch the company.
During the past three years Brand has had one disaster after another from a Scarlet TV launch that went pear shaped, to multimillion dollar phone launches that did little to stimulate sales, to the exposure of LG as a serial offender in the appliance market which resulted in LG being nobbled three times by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission for misleading consumers. There was also the issue of several recalls of LG air conditioners and appliances.
The LG slogan “Life’s Good” was well and truly on the nose.
Five years ago under the direction of Paul Reeves, LG’s former Marketing Director, the LG brand was hitting a sweet spot and the slogan Life’s Good really meant something with consumers because it was unique, locally developed and above all in touch with the Australian way of life.
Then along came Brand, who in reality was a puppet of what his Korean task masters wanted.
Killed off was the memorable local advertising. This was replaced with big budget International advertising that failed dismally. The big budget Scarlet TV campaign came and went along with several other International campaigns.
At one stage Brand was told by his corporate masters in Korea that he had to appoint WPP group agencies in Australia. This resulted in Mindshare taking responsibility for media planning and buying.
George Patterson Y&R was appointed to handle above-the-line advertising duties, while Publicis Mojo’s digital arm Publicis Digital, were appointed to manage website and digital marketing.
Brand was then forced to call a pitch for public relations. This resulted in several WPP owned PR companies fighting among themselves as to who would get the spoils.
The incumbent, Burson Marsteller, threw in the towel and WPP owned Pulse was appointed to set up a new operation called LG One. This operation was driven out of Korea, with the local management given little opportunity to build the local brand.
In reality LG is a dynamic company. Their display operation is among the best in world, even Steve Jobs at Apple gives them credit for that with the company tasked with the development of new AMOLED and OLED screens for several Apple products.
They also make great appliances.
After gaining popularity with their mobile phones in Australia, LG has failed to keep pace with offerings from Samsung, HTC and Apple. Big investments in fluff PR events using the likes of Chris Noth came to nothing.
What LG needs to do is invest in local marketing and not try and feed Australians on a diet of overseas marketing swill.
Their advertising needs to be locally relevant and focused, and this will only be achieved if they empower a local marketing director who is given the choice of either using an International campaign or a locally developed campaign.
The company also needs to talk more about the brand and stop dishing out boring product press release that are more product numbers and specs than brand substance.
They also need to develop their people to be brand ambassadors, talking about LG as a company.
Because, at the end of the day, a brand is remembered long after a product has become obsolete.
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