End of an era

2008 sees the end of a 4 year relationship with the Perth Wildcats. Don't look beyond past this being more than just a business decision.

The Cats were great, Andrew Vlahov, Troy and the team really looked after us and made sure we delivered excellence for the entire four years.

It's funny because the NBL chose Sportal over Platform Interactive as their interactive provider. The Wildcats were the only team in the ENTIRE league not to sell their web site to the NBL / Sportal combination.

I wonder why? Probably because the Cats already had the best site in the league already. Sportal has now delivered nbl.com.au. YUK!!! Check out how they handle a sub site -

Sportal's site is hardly the quality site(s) that we we built for the Cats on our CMS . We excelled and it was a delight seeing the site grow each year.

It becomes pretty clear that if you make a poor technology choice your web site, capabilities, design and scalability will probably end up like Sportal's effort.

So why cancel the sponsorship? I suppose it comes down to how hard your money is working for you.It's funny, the community based sponsorships such as Swan Districts FC, Collegians FC and so forth really work hard to promote your brand and bring you business. I thought that was just because they were small. However after sponsoring Team Vodafone (Peter Jamieson has been an inspiration) and getting TV exposure, brand exposure and a national team that really partners with it's sponsors it became clear that the focus needed to be on those types of relationships.

The Wildcats will still hold a special place for me and the team at Platform and I wish them all the success this year in the NBL

Bluetooth, got a long way to go

At the Melbourne Grand Prix this year we ran a blue tooth campaign in conjunction with Team Vodafone, Comms Online and Gorgeous Films.

Comms Online supplied the blue tooth hardware, Gorgeous Films provided the talent (Stacy, head Melbourne Storm Cheerleader) and did the video taping and production and we supplied the Team Vodafone relationship, strategy and implementation.

The strategy was simple, we plastered the race track with "Switch on your bluetooth" posters as seen above. Once the fans went past the team pits they were sent the video with Stacey. Then all they had to do was go to the merchandise stand to enter the draw for a chance to win the prizes.

Well it didn't pan out like we hoped. First of all the bluetooth application can't detect what video type phones will receive (RM, WMV, MP4) thus many of the recipients failed to see the video.

Secondly, and it's fairly obvious, half the phones around don't have bluetooth on or don;t have it at all so we got caught there.

Finally bluetooth technology just isn't ready.

In hindsight, we should have used a simple jpeg. Did we make the campaign too complicated? Possibly! It could have been an SMS activated response instead of going to the merchandise store.

To wrap up: my new car's bluetooth radio receiver is buggy and just today I was just on the phone to a client that has a bluetooth car radio system that is also buggy.

I think the powers to be that created bluetooth devices have some work to do.