Yesterday was my first day as Social Media Manager at Jetstar. Yes, that means I have a new job :)

For those of you who might not know, the Jetstar Group (usually just referred to as Jetstar) consists of four low-cost airlines:

• Jetstar Airways, based in Australia,
• Jetstar Asia Airways, based in Singapore,
• Jetstar Pacific Airlines, based in Vietnam, and
• Jetstar Japan, based in Japan.

Jetstar was launched in 2004 and, with its 79 aircraft and over 7,000 employees, currently flies to 56 destinations in 17 countries across the Asia-Pacific region.

My job is a Group role (i.e. it’s a corporate function that works across all four airlines) and is based at the Jetstar corporate headquarters in Melbourne, Australia.

Why did I change jobs?

For a number of reasons:

• I love the airlines/aviation industry and working for an airline is something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time.
• Jetstar is a great brand that is run by good people who provide a valuable service. It’s a brand I respect and is a brand whose values I share (i.e. providing good value for money, making smart use of technology, and making travel to popular destinations accessible to lots of people).
• I’m making a career path adjustment that sees me changing my focus from building and managing websites to helping companies and customers communicate better with each other using social media. And while this is a slight narrowing of focus (e.g. in my current role I won’t be looking after the Jetstar website) it is also an increase in overall responsibility (i.e. I get to work on more strategic corporate communications objectives).
• My new role is more challenging because the scale and scope of customer engagement is greater (e.g. it’s across the entire Asia-Pacific region as opposed to just within the state of Victoria) and the aviation industry is more exciting, more innovative, and moves much faster than the water industry.
• I have a greater opportunity for personal growth because I now get to employ my social media skills to their fullest. I had been wanting to increase my social media focus at Melbourne Water but, with all the other work I was doing there, this wasn’t something I was able to do.

I also get to work with one of my former managers who I really like and work really well with. And finally, as someone whose family is spread across multiple countries, the travel benefits of working for an airline are important to me personally.

What does the new job involve?

Broadly speaking, my overall objective is to improve the communication, engagement, and understanding between Jetstar and its customers. Specifically, I get to do this via social media. Though, practically speaking, this engagement will be integrated across multiple communication channels.

How exactly I go about doing all this is something I will share on this blog (and probably also on Twitter) over the coming weeks, months, and years so stay tuned.

The Economist Intelligence Unit has ranked the Melbourne Business School full-time MBA at #1 in Asia and Australasia and #32 globally in its 2011 full-time MBA rankings.

MBS is already ranked #1 in Australia by AFR BOSS and #46 globally by Times Higher Education.

Drilling down to the detailed profile for MBS, you get some interesting results.

Missed Networking Opportunities

For example, the school ranks well for networking:

• Potential to network: #5
• Breadth of alumni network (i.e. ratio of registered alumni to current students): #2

But ranks poorly in the use and perception of its alumni network:

• Alumni effectiveness (i.e. student assessment of alumni network): #89

I’m not sure why this might be the case. I can make a few guesses, though. For example, international students might find that, while there are tonnes of MBS alumni that they can network with in Asia and Australasia, there aren’t enough of them around the rest of the world. There might also be some missed opportunities in the students’ use of the alumni network. Or of recent alumni themselves not networking much with each other.

Career Services is Improving

MBS also ranks really well for its careers service:

• Jobs found through the careers service (i.e. percentage of graduates finding jobs through careers service): #2

But students and alumni don’t seem to give it enough credit:

• Student assessment of careers service (i.e. did the careers service meet expectations and needs?): #98

This suggests that, while the MBS Career Centre is doing a good job, it suffers from some perception problems. This might be because perception change among alumni who no longer need or use the careers service lags the reality of the careers service having improved in recent years. I do know that the MBS Career Centre in 2008-09 had a challenging time placing graduates from my full-time MBA batch because we were the first group to come out of the new September intake. This meant the Career Centre had to find jobs for twice as many students (many of whom were international) right at the beginning of the GFC. And, since the EUI’s ranking has memory – i.e. it’s a weighted average of results from 2011 (50%), 2010 (30%), and 2009 (20%) – this alumni perception would still have an impact on perception scores.

Overall

Overall, though, this is a good result and I’m glad that MBS continues to improve its quality, reputation, and ranking.

Last week I attended the WebForward Conference in Sydney (which itself is part of the larger CeBIT Australia Exhibition). It was a really good event during which I got to hear from and meet a lot of interesting people.

The conference had two streams: social media and mobile. I hopped in and out of both streams and here are my notes from the talks that I attended.

Latest trends and techniques in the on-line marketing space and a look into the future

• Speaker: Tony Keusgen, Head of Technology – Australia/New Zealand, Google
• Why is there still a difference between ‘traditional’ and ‘digital’ marketing in a corporation’s budget? Why is digital still considered to be “new” media?
• There’s a huge correlation between offline marketing and online searches
  • For example, if you were to place your ad on a number of city buses you could tell, by analyzing Google search on the relevant phrase (assuming its unique enough), when those buses first hit the streets
• Predictions for the future:
  • 80% of screen time will be digital
  • Mobile devices will enable two-thirds of purchases and pay for half of them
  • Consumers will have more power and 80% of future engagement will be opt-in and 2-way
  • Real-time will play a big role; already 30% of Australians consumers access the web via their mobile phones while in a physical store
• Use evidence-based marketing; don’t assume you know what the market wants
• Don’t be scared to experiment with new things and try new ways of doing things (it’s okay to fail, stop what you were doing, and move on to other ideas)
• 12% of all Google search queries in December 2010 came from mobile devices
• Location marketing is key: A third of all searches conducted on mobile devices are location based
• In the US, a quarter of all searches conducted on mobile devices were voice based
• Think about doing how-to videos on YouTube
  • 2.4 million search queries per month on YouTube for how-to content
  • 32% of videos watched on YouTube are of how-to content

Integrating a mobile strategy into your marketing plan to cover multiple channels

• Speaker: Antonio Addario, Manager – Direct Channels Strategy, Efficiency & Innovation, ING Direct
• The online magazine Mobile Marketer is a great resource
• Some of the steps you need to take to figure out your mobile strategy are:
• Do lots of research (e.g. find out which apps people are willing to pay for in various app stores)
• Know your customer really well (both the people and the technology they use)
• Define your success
• Identify the key capabilities of all your online and mobile offerings; then select the ones you want to offer on your mobile platform
• Evaluate your development options (i.e. reuse/buy/build)
• Do plenty of promotion for your new offering
• Get your mobile offering to upsell for you (e.g. tell people to your other services from within the app)
• Measure success (KPIs, adoption, etc.)
• Listen to your customers and make the improvements they want

Utilising mobile marketing to promote your product or service

• Speaker: Julian Peterson, Marketing & Online Director, Time Out Sydney
• Time Out is 40 years old in London but 3 years old in Sydney and 6 months old in Melbourne
• A branded app can work well if your brands are similar and have the same core target audience (Time Out’s app is cobranded with Smirnoff)
• Time Out Australia used the app platform already built by London (which, as it happens, was work done by an Australian firm) so that made life easier for them
• The app does curated content and is really popular with their targeted audience

Recognising the benefits of mobile marketing to drive innovation and growth

• Speaker: Nandor Locher, Manager e-commerce, Virgin Australia
• A lot of the time, when you’re doing mobile marketing, you’re not really being ‘innovative’ in the true sense of the word
• It’s critical to focus your efforts on the unique advantages offered by mobile technology
• Mobile offerings are becoming part of a company’s larger product offering and are not just another marketing channel (e.g. like being able to check-in to your flight from the web, being able to do travel stuff on your mobile is now part of the broader travel services product offered by airlines)
• Mobile is becoming a ‘hygiene factor’ in the travel industry; i.e. if it’s not there, people will go to your competitor
• The ROI from the mobile offering is low so, for Virgin, their offering is largely a medium- to long-term brand and product augmentation investment
• It’s important to have a brand presence in the various app stores
• Integrating mobile with social media is important; particularly since social media is used so heavily in the travel industry
• Thanks to mobile devices, downtime has become the new uptime (e.g. Virgin increased sales by 150% by moving their happy hour sales to a downtime period for the target market)
• Depending on your offering, the usage and usefulness of mobile websites is sometimes greater than that of native phone apps (which many people download and then never use)

Understanding how to drive your brand via mobile

• Speaker: Stephanie Carrick, Senior Producer, Triple J Unearthed
• Triple J Unearthed is one of the largest online communities in Australia (250k registered users)
• They had to had a mobile presence (18-35 is their target market, after all)
• Their app focuses on users listening to music (i.e. they focus on their core value proposition)
• All their music content is available for downloading (for free)
• The app is a huge success, with over 420k downloads in 18 months
• Because of the app, they’ve seen a 50% sustained rise in traffic to their website (i.e. they’ve tapped a whole new audience that was inaccessible via radio)
• It’s crucial to have app maintenance budget because you will need to update it regularly from now on

Using Augmented Reality Technology to promote your business

• Speaker: Glenn Cooper, Executive Chairman, Coopers’ Brewery
• Brand and brand history plays a huge role in the decisions companies make (particularly in family owned businesses like Cooper’s)
• Doing a mobile app – that too, an augmented reality app – was a huge change for the business
• This worked well for them because they used it to promote their low carb beer which itself was a huge change for the business (as they are known for their dark beers)
• The app helped their marketing promotion be completely under their control (i.e. not under the control of the physical store retailers)

Joining the social media conversation about your company

• Speaker: Kristen Boschma, Head of Online Communications and Social Media, Telstra
• There are different types of social media programs (i.e. they have different objectives); for example:
• Listening
• Customer Care
• Thought Leadership
• Marketing & Sales
• The most important part of a listening program is to actually listen (and not jump in every time you’re mentioned or talked about)
• A key phrase to remember in social media engagements is “What’s the gift?” (looked at from another angle, that’s the answer to a customer who wants to know “What’s in it for me?”)
• Social media is an ecosystem: you must treat it with respect (i.e. don’t pollute it)
• In order to get stuff done, you need to have a burning platform
• Social media has worked really well for Telstra: 31% of all their online conversations now happen on Twitter
• All employees at Telstra have to take and pass their online social media course (yes, all 40k existing employees had to do this)
• Sentiment tracking is good, but make sure you provision for human coding in your budget because algorithms don’t understand sarcasm (of which there’s a lot online)

Developing social marketing strategies to transform your organisation

• Speaker: Paul Borrud, Head of Australia & New Zealand, Facebook
• 3 billion photos are uploaded to Facebook per month (globally)
• Australians spend an average of 7.5hrs on Facebook per month
• Facebook in Australia
• 10 million active users (i.e. use the site once in 30 days)
• 68% return daily, 86% return weekly
• 53% of users are female
• The age spread is about even (approximately 17-25% for each of the five major age brackets)
• Facebook lets people connect across borders really easily
• Facebook is about reorganizing the web around people
• In the 80s, the web was all about browsing
• In the 90s, it was all about search
• Now, it’s all about people
• Even gaming is reorganizing around people
• 43% of all news sharing now occurs in social media
• Businesses are reorganizing around people as well; this includes new product development, customer service, and marketing
• There are three types of marketing:
• Paid (e.g. newspaper ads)
• Owned (e.g. websites)
• Earned (e.g. word of mouth)
• Earned is the hardest to get, but is also the most powerful
• Facebook lets you do Earned marketing at scale
• ‘Fans’ are the new popular metric to quote (like ‘Hits’ was popular in the 80s and 90s)
• ‘Social’ is not the salt in the fries, it needs to be baked into the product

Panel Discussion: Maximising the opportunities given by social media strategies

• Speaker: Joe Millward, Innovation Manager – Social Media, Gloria Jeans International; Kristen Boschma, Head of Online Communications and Social Media, Telstra; Paul Borrud, Head of Australia & New Zealand, Facebook
• Ask yourself: What is it that the social media platform can do for you that other platforms can’t?
• Telstra has three rules for new social media ventures:
• You need a six month content plan
• You need someone to run the conversation (interacting at least twice daily)
• You have to have a back-end system to deal with questions, complaints, etc.
• Remember there are two kinds of social media interactions:
• Individual (e.g. my bill is wrong)
• Institutional (e.g. your billing system is wrong)
• These need to be handled differently (e.g. you need to be prepared to have individual interactions after hours as well as during work hours)

Introducing location-based mobile applications into your marketing strategy

• Speaker: Gary Daly, National IT Manager, Surf Life Saving Australia
• Surf Life Saving needed to get the beach safely message across to high risk beachgoers (specifically, males aged 16-35)
• Their app has two messages:
• Primary: be safe
• Secondary: get involved/donate (they are a non-profit that is run by volunteers and relies on donations to function)
• The app uses the phone’s GPS location to deliver targeted messages
• They use web services in the back-end to collect all the information that gets presented (e.g. they get weather data from the Bureau of Meteorology and beach data from their internal Surfcom system)
• Build into your app the ability to collect feedback – this will be vital to future app development
• A good mobile site is more cost effective than creating an app because the latter needs to be constantly updated

Panel Discussion: Keeping up with latest techniques and trends to gain competitive advantage

• Speaker: Gary Daly, National IT Manager, Surf Life Saving Australia; Tony Keusgen, Head of Technology, Google AU/NZ; Andy Ridley, Co-Founder and Executive Director, Earth Hour
• Google’s big bet is mobile (hence Android and Wallet and all their other mobile related services)
• Three key elements for location based services:
• Local
• Social
• Mobile
• Evidence based marketing is very important
• It’s important to go where you users are (e.g. websites, devices, platforms, etc.)
• This includes following their usage-time patterns; e.g. mobile web usage drops at 9am, spikes during lunch, then drops again till 5pm

Concluding Thoughts

The conference was well organized, well executed, and quite valuable in terms of what I got form it (both information and contacts). I look forward to attending it again next year.

NOTE: All speaker photos were taken from the WebForward website.

I’ve been really busy at work these last few months which is why I haven’t blogged here much. Unfortunately, it’ll probably stay that way till early next year.

What’s prompted me to write today, however, is Penny McLeod who wrote in The Australian an article called ‘A Degree You Can Bank On: MBA’ – that says:

Australian companies are knocking down the doors of leading business schools to secure the best master of business administration graduates.

The article goes on to explain how demand for MBAs has increased in Australia this year. Further, this demand isn’t coming just from the financial sector but from other sectors as well (including, for example, utilities and not-for-profit organizations).

That’s great news because, in my opinion, the MBA is undervalued in Australia and I’m glad to see that perception change.

I joined Melbourne Water as their Websites Manager just under a year ago and, since then, I’ve done a lot of fun and exciting web-related work there.

We recently hit a few important milestones so I thought I’d take this opportunity to do a quick roundup of what I’ve been up to.

Web & New Media Strategy

All the exciting work I’m doing has its foundations in the Web & New Media Strategy that was kicked off in early 2009 and involved a few months of research, analysis, and decision-making. The actual “strategy” ended up being a three-phase plan for building and enhancing the organization’s online presence over the next 2-3 years.

The first phase (basically, quick wins) took less than six months to do and involved plugging the holes in our existing online presence. This included numerous web tweaks, getting a better understanding of what worked or didn’t work on our site (via Google Analytics), and, generally, making better use of the website (e.g. more cross promotion on high traffic areas). We also bought a Google Mini search engine to remove one of site’s biggest pain points which was a crappy search engine.

The second phase (6-12 months) is finishing up now. This addressed a whole bunch of other web tweaks (like content rewrites and information architecture adjustments) and launched projects in five major areas:

• A complete site overhaul (redoing the site’s content, design, and information architecture and getting a new web content management system)
• More multimedia (specifically illustrations, photos, and videos)
• More and better online maps (the more useful and usable the better)
• More information provision via mobile phones (through SMS, mobile applications, and mobile web sites)
• Getting into social media (for information provision and stakeholder engagement)

The third phase (1-3 years) involves more complex projects that can’t be started till we have everything else in place (like a new organizational GIS and a web content management system). Phase three work includes the automation of customer-facing business activities, which means things like building online forms and applications, providing custom information via SMS, and so on.

What’s Exciting Now?

Right now, though, we’re nearing the end of the second phase and we’ve made great progress in all five of the areas mentioned above:

• We’ve kicked off a project to get a new web content management system and have started the website redesign and reorganization process.
• We’ve started to place photos on Flickr (including ‘Photos from the Field’ which are from Melbourne Water employees) and videos on YouTube (almost all of which were produced in-house).
• We’ve got some really basic maps on our site but have kicked off a project that will move all our old and clunky maps to a better platform over the next year or so. Meanwhile, we’ve developed an interactive map that explains in simple terms how Melbourne’s complicated water supply network works.
• We’ve launched an iPhone app (link to iTunes store) and will be launching a new mobile version of our website in the next few weeks.
• We’re quite active on Twitter and will get further into social media when appropriate.

All in all, we’re tracking quite well and the work we’re doing is lots of fun and really quite exciting.

Culture of Innovation & Effective Communication

What I love most of all, though, is how much on-board everyone at Melbourne Water is with these enhancements. This support and appreciation of innovation and effective communication starts right at the top, too. For example, it was our Board who originally suggested that we develop a simplified water supply network map for the website. They wanted a simple way of explaining a complex system and realized that the web would be a great place to do just that.

In my opinion, the foundation for this is laid in Melbourne Water’s Strategic Framework document which explicitly lists the support of “innovation, achievement, and good ideas” and the need to “understand, manage, and meet or exceed customer expectations” as success indicators for the organization. At Melbourne Water these aren’t just phrases on a company brochure but actual, practical goals that all of us aspire to every day. In fact, to give you an example of how this is implemented practically: Every project that’s proposed at Melbourne Water has to explain and justify which of these strategic goals it’s addressing before it’s allowed to start.

So the work that I’m doing there both matches the direction the world is moving in (i.e. information provision and customer engagement is moving online) and is brilliantly supported by the organization itself. That’s yet another reason why I love working there.

Michael Specht just completed a blog post series on ‘Social Media as Part of Background Checking’ during the recruitment process:

• Part 1 (Access to a unique view)
• Part 2 (Research into cultural fit)
• Part 3 (Legal issues)
• Part 4 (Bringing it all together)

I personally think that social media checks – or, at the very least, Google searches – are an essential part of recruitment. And I think that goes both ways:

• recruiters and companies learn all they can about candidates
• candidates learn all they can about recruiters and the companies they’re applying to

This is important because:

• both parties get to find out more about each other
• both parties get to assess cultural fit
• candidates get to show off their online portfolio and social media participation

While the last point is certainly vital for people working in Internet-related industries, it is also becoming increasingly relevant for people working in other industries (as more of their lives move online).

I took a number of marketing courses in my MBA at Melbourne Business School (MBS) and it was during my Consumer Behaviour course with Brian Gibbs that we got the best, single-page overview of the marketing process.

Framework for Marketing Management

Gibbs called this the ‘Framework for Marketing Management’ and it’s an excellent summary of how marketing is done:

[Note: The diagram above is one that I made based on my notes from the course.]

It works like this:

• The marketing concept says you begin by looking at your customers, company, and competition – these are the three Cs. Let’s say your company makes pens:
  • Ask yourself what it is that your customers need. How can you satisfy that need? In real life a lot of research would go into answering questions like these. Then consider what your customers do to satisfy those needs. What factors contribute to their decision making process? Again, more research would be done.
  • Also look at your company. Can you make the pens your customers want? Do those types of pens fit with your company’s corporate objectives? For example, if you’re Montblanc, you won’t be making cheap plastic pens anytime soon even if some your customers say that’s what they want in a writing instrument.
  • Don’t forget to analyze your competition as well. How will your competitors respond to your product (say, when you introduce a new version)? Also ask yourself who else satisfies the needs of your customers. For example, should you be looking at companies that make markers and pencils as competition?
• Once you’ve done that, you segment your customers according to primary bases, such as their identified needs. For example, Group A wants cheap plastic ballpoint pens, Group B wants fancy liquid ink pens, and so on. You also segment by secondary bases, which are often things like demographics. You keep slicing and dicing using a combination of bases till you get useful segments; i.e. those you can target properly. For example, you could further segment Group B by age bracket and annual income.
• Next, you decide which specific segments you’re going to target (and why). For example, Montblanc may be targeting only, say, richer and older people from Group B. They know they can communicate well with these people, they can defend this segment from the competition, and ultimately that’s the area of the market they want their company to operate in.
• That sets you up with the positioning of your product. Getting your positioning right is incredibly important because it’s the key to your entire plan. So, for example, Montblanc may position themselves in the luxury space as a company that sells excellent writing instruments that have the highest level of craftsmanship. In effect, their pens are high-end gifts, much like hand-crafted jewellery. They would then position themselves appropriately in the luxury gift jewellery markets, but not in the broader writing instruments market.
• Once you’ve got your positioning done, you figure out how you’re going to to create, capture, communicate, and deliver value to your customer. This value is created by the existence of your product, captured by its price, communicated through your promotion, and delivered by where you place (or how you distribute) your product – these are the four Ps.
• Finally, as the market grows and develops, you will need to tweak these four Ps to maintain your positioning. Then, at regular intervals, you will need to re-do your three Cs because the market will change and you will need to change with it. Repeat ad infinitum…well, at least as long as your company continues to exist.

It All Comes Down to Positioning

As you may have gathered, a good way of remembering the entire marketing process is to think of the just the three Cs and four Ps. However, if you want to distil it further, you can bring it all down to positioning.

Positioning is a summary of the first part (analysis & strategy: the three Cs) and a guide for the second part (planning & implementation: the four Ps).

From the consumer behaviour point of view, it is also the psychological epicentre of the marketing process. That’s because positioning – with the help of the four Ps – is what translates the ‘actual product’ into the ‘perceived product’ within the consumer’s mind (they are often not the same).

So while a Montblanc pen is in essence just a writing instrument, in the mind of the consumer, it is much more than just that. And it is the pen’s positioning that will determine what qualities above its ability to put ink on paper set it apart from its competitors.

Thanks for Sharing, But What Was the Point?

This one-page overview of the marketing process is useful in many ways:

• It provides a great sanity check for what you’re doing in your job. For example, the Web & New Media Strategy that Melbourne Water developed over the last year followed pretty much this process. That strategy now forms the basis of my day-to-day work. So, if we hadn’t done the three Cs right, for example, I would have had a hard time getting the four Ps done properly.
• It’s a great way to analyze the marketing, branding, and product positioning that’s going on around you all the time.
• It brings good overall project management and business strategy rigour to whatever it is that you’re doing.

Oh, and if you’re a job seeker, it’s particularly useful because it provides a good framework for when you get asked questions about the company’s products or services.

Ever wanted your resume to stand out – and I mean really stand out – from the others? How about making it an infographic?

[Source: ‘Resume / Infographics’ by Michael Anderson]

For more, read ‘16 Infographic Resumes, A Visual Trend’ by Randy Krum on the Cool Infographics blog.

I am very tempted to convert my own resume into this format. I wonder how long it’ll take and what software I can use to do it.

Tech enthusiasts will know what the term ‘unboxing’ means but, for the rest of you it’s:

The Internet trend of showing photos or video from the unpacking of a retail box of some desirable product, such as the latest laptop or portable music player. [Source: Urban Dictionary]

The post ‘An Unboxing You Won’t See on Gizmodo or Engadget‘ by Glyph Lefkowitz is the first time I’ve seen it done for a job offer…but I can totally see why you’d want to. It is, after all, a job offer from Apple.

Read Lefkowitz’s post to see what I mean :)

If you live in Melbourne then you probably know that the City of Melbourne went through a major rebranding project earlier this year:

[Source: Brand New]

Since I didn’t blog about it then, here’s a quick catch-up:

• Melbourne’s $240,000 makeover [The Age]
• Pieces of Melbourne [Brand New]
• City of Melbourne, Expanded [Brand New]
• City of Melbourne Identity [Landor]

Melburninans will also be aware that, in June, both Connex and Yarra Trams lost their contracts to run Melbourne’s trains and trams (respectively). The new operators – Metro Trains for our trains and Keolis Downer EDI (KDR) for our trams – will take over in December.

Metro Trains launched their new branding scheme for Melbourne’s trains earlier this year as well:

[Source: Brand New]

You can read more about that here:

• Melbourne’s train system name changes from Connex to Metro [Herald Sun]
• New Train Connexion for Melbourne [Brand New]

KDR, meanwhile, plan to keep the Yarra Trams brand but will refresh it over the next few years.

• Yarra Trams brand re-fresh [KDR]

Exciting times for brands in Melbourne, huh?