fitzroyalty

I give up. The Australian Grand Prix Corporation are morons. They have finally publicised their replacement for GP Traction, called Sidetracked, but unless you’re dedicated you’d never know about it or be able to find out about it. Information is buried, the offer (what you get for your money) is unclear and I think it is the wrong product marketed to the wrong audience.

The stupidity of their invisible marketing is enormous:

• Sidetracked is an existing brand name and web domain of a go-carting and leisure complex business (when googling a business or product it’s essential to have a unique and easy to find name) - marketing failure
• Sidetracked is not mentioned on the GrandPrix.com.au hompage - marketing failure
• Sidetracked is not mentioned on the grand prix website tickets page - marketing failure
• It is finally mentioned at bottom of the Ticketek grand prix tickets page - marketing failure
• The offer is not explained clearly - marketing failure

The original product, Traction, which was a great experience, must have been too expensive or too poorly attended to be financially viable. Unlimited food and drink must have been expensive to provide. Perhaps if the marketing had not been a complete failure this situation would have been different.

There will be no food or drink provided for a fee of $199 (Saturday and Sunday) compared to $250 per day (Saturday and Sunday) for Traction. It’s about the music, not the overall experience of attending the race. However, you get lots more doof doof. They are trying to attract more party bimbos to the F1 rather than serious fans. They are ignoring people with money to spend on quality accommodation and services and are aiming at the low end of the market - 20somethings who only care about a party and not about the sport itself. These are not loyal consumers or customers. They don’t care about the product.

As Ayrton Senna once said, F1 is “a business with some sport in it.” You can read my thoughts on stupid F1 marketing and the failures of the Grand Prix Corporation to understand their audience here and more on the whole situation here. I will be attending with a general admission ticket. They have completely failed to upsell me to a better and more expensive product or to effectively manage the business of F1 in Australia.

I’ve refused requests to advertise on my blog to date, and have not incorporated google ads or adsense because I want to respect my audience. Anything that I publish must provide a relevant valuable service. To this end I have been looking at services that aggregate restaurant details. A hyperlocal site like mine would benefit from providing a dynamic listing of local places to eat along with their contact details.

So far I’ve looked at three services and all have failed the hyperlocal test. The menulog people want me to run generic banner ads because they have not yet implemented an API that would allow me to pull in a dynamic rich content feed of their data showing pics and text of restaurants only in Fitzroy. No thanks. Do you understand what ‘local’ means?

The webmenus site is dumb and says nothing about the purpose of the site or why anyone should use it. While their search is good, they have no content, and so they offer nothing useful to the visitor. They fail the useability test. Also, their blog does not list the date posts have been published, which for me is very useful information.

Finally, foodgod’s search is stupid or their data is deficient because they only list 7 places for ‘Fitzroy’ and some of those are in St Kilda (because of Fitzroy St). And their UI is ugly. Weakest link etc…

None of these sites has the needs and wants of their supposed users central to their construction or business models. I suspect all are doomed to fail.

In the premises formerly occupied by the sadly departed Charmaine’s Icecream (the chilli chocolate was amazing!) is a new business, Juanita’s. At least, that is what the window promises. I’ll try them out very soon. In the meantime, welcome to Fitzroy!

By the time I got to photograph this piece it had been attacked, but in a way this only adds to its value.

I read recently about a new online service called cybertwin AKA cybertwit. They imply that they create AI driven avatars that you can chat with online, and that these can be used to represent the ideas and personalities of people or businesses. What utter twaddle. I tried two of the cybertwits listed on their site and both failed the Turing test within 2 responses. Here are the transcripts.

First Tracy:

You: what do you like to do?

Tracy: I like to write screenplays and dream about them being published.

You: who would direct your film?

Tracy: Which movie? Is there a good one you have seen lately?

You: the one you are writing

Tracy: Is writing something you enjoy doing?

You: you failed the turing test

Tracy: The Turing game is used to see if we can tell the difference between a male and a female online.

Second George (as in W Bush):

You: are you rich?

George: I will have to refer you to Condoleezza. She is my social secretary

You: what is your favorite movie?

George: I’d say it would have to be the Green Berets — we really showed those Vietnamese a thing or two.

George: Do you think I am doing enough about the environment?

You: yes, I own an oil business

George: We need an energy bill that encourages consumption

You: what about pollution?

George: I don’t know if I fully understand you. What about that exactly?

How do these entrepreneurs get millions of dollars for such crap? You’d have to be a moron to trust that such stupid tools could represent you, unless you’re also very stupid (which you’d have to be to think that this could be a good idea). So, stupid avatars for stupid people. What a great business. I would also expect animated avatars, not flat images. If it can’t think at least it should look good.

So little Murdoch and little Packer are set to play in the same sandpit again. I remember what happened last time: one.tel. I was a customer and for months the service was nonexistent. Unfortunately for them the idiots had helpfully put the emails of the company board on their website, so I sent them an email:

To: jodeerich@onetel.com; bradleykeeling@onetel.com; ceos@onetel.com.au

Subject: Your Customer Service

Tuesday, 26 September 2000

Dear Sir/Madam,

I write to express my absolute disgust at the complete incompetence of your customer service staff, the lack of quality customer service provided by your company, and the general indifference with which you treat your customers.

I have been attempting for more than 1 month to change details of my telephone services with your company and to date I have still not received the service that has been repeatedly promised to me.

[details of issue and how staff had failed to do it]

I am a busy professional who does not have time during office hours to waste dealing with the cretins you employ in your call centres. I expect prompt intelligent service in exchange for my money.

You should be paying me for the several hours I have wasted dealing with your staff.

As soon as I get control of my phone numbers I am going to change to a phone company that employs less losers.

Your company is obviously full of incompetent sycophantic morons and I hope that recent reports of your massive annual loss lead to swift collapse and bankruptcy. It would be nothing less than you deserve.

I would sign this letter ‘yours sincerely’ but that would be insincere.

Fuck you!

I enjoy being a vindictive guerilla consumer. I got a response from managing director Jodee Rich:

Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2000 14:36:15 +1000

From: Jodee Rich

Organization: One.Tel

Subject: Re:

Very disappointed to read about your experience, thanks for letting me know. I have asked [name] to look into this matter and keep me informed.

I checked their website soon after and the email addresses had been removed. Corporate scum don’t like being held accountable for their actions by their customers. I was right of course - they crashed and burned. I like being right, and I like corporate scum being publicly humiliated even more…