Bush Branding & Marketing

Raving about OurFaves

bbm — Tue, 06 May 2008 22:05:00 +0000

This morning started with the discovery of yet another website paradigm. Andria one of my mates from Australian Boot Company in Toronto, emailed me to share that our company had been faved:

We’ve been ‘faved’. It’s a website, ourfaves.com owned by Torstar, and it’s a platform for letting people share their favorite businesses, destinations, products etc. We have two reviews on it. The community development co-orindator was in to tell me about it. Seems interesting. When you google “winter boots Toronto”, it comes up 5th or so as Our Faves – Australian Boot Company.

Our faves seems well positioned to take on the world. You will notice if you go to the site that they use toronto.ourfaves.com. A sure sign that this domain name is poised to take on more then Toronto. mmm let me check what other places they have faved and how they are managing that domain to deal with it. mmmmm queenstreet.ourfaves.com

No luck..Firefox can't find the server at queenstreet.ourfaves.com So I tried a few more being the curious type I am. Such a great idea they must be onto more. Lots more 404 errors and then I cracked one, I am becoming a hacker... montreal.ourfaves.com

Under Construction

The site you are trying to view does not currently have a default page. It may be in the process of being upgraded and configured.

Please try this site again later. If you still experience the problem, try contacting the Web site administrator.

How exciting. What is even more exciting is that ourfaves.com.au is not registered. I just checked. Gotta go grab that one and bring ourfaves down under or better yet cyber snatch it and sell it on ebay for millions. On second thought I might just save the money for registering the domain and use the money to buy a few of my favourite things when I visit Toronto is a couple of weeks.

Thanks for the fave Andria...a great way to start my day.

Joomla Byron Bay May 11th

bbm — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 03:25:00 +0000

Bush Branding & Marketing is organising and hosting a Joomla Day on Sunday May 11th starting at noon. For those of you not familiar with Joomla here are a few links and info bytes:

What is Joomla? An open source content management system and web application framework. Translation--A powerful tool for web developers and their clients that enables relatively easy updates to websites.

Who will be presenting at Byron Bay Joomla Day? Stars of the Joomla project Andrew Eddie and Brad Baker will be our lead presenters. Following them will be Bush Marketing's long time associate Jason "Scout" Ferris and a number of Joomla case studies including some exciting news from Hans Lovejoy from Byron Bay's local community newspaper--the Echo.

How much does it cost? $20 Book soon as spaces are limited to 50 people.

Pictured Bush Marketing's Briony Moore and Greg with some of Google's Open Source Progams Office bling donated for Byron Bay Joomla Day. photo by Kavi.

Thanks to Leslie Hawthorn
Program Manager - Open Source
Google Inc.

Search Engine Optimisation made Simple

bbm — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 05:34:00 +0000

Bush Branding & Marketing got its big start in search engine optimisation in 2001 when the Australian Boot Company asked us to boost their search engine rankings. This was the start of a steep and steady learning curve that has been one of the most challenging and rewarding parts of our business.

Things have come a long way in SEO since the heady days of meta tag fixation. Bush Branding & Marketing has offered SEO and SEM as part of our services in various forms. Our biggest successes have come from clients who have retained us to manage all aspects of their brand. Our biggest failures, especially from a financial perspective, have come from people looking for the SEO silver bullet. In other words, you did not make our pages rank # 1 in Google within 24 hours so we won't pay you.

Introducing the Standard search engine optimisation service:

Keywords: 160 character description and 25 key words
Webmaster for Yahoo, MSN and of course good ole Google
Google Analytics with scheduled report delivery
Site map

We are offering this starter search engine optimisation service at a cheap and cheerful price of $500. Please contact us if you are interested in this or to discuss our other search engine services.

NO-www

bbm — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 04:35:00 +0000

Less is quite often more. In the case of using www. in front of web addresses we could not agree more. For more on this subject visit this no-www.org dedicated to the subject. Next time you are including your website address on something have a look at it with and without the www. Why clutter up your url with superfluous letters?

Typesetting for the screen

bbm — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 00:14:00 +0000

Back in the day setting type was an art. A very time consuming, laborious and expensive aspect of advertising and publishing. More type is being set then ever today; however, far less time, if any, is spent thinking about how to best present letters and words in a pleasing and effective manner.

Most of today's type is consumed on the screen. By this I mean we read less on paper and more on our computer and other electronic screens. Thank goodness there are serious limitations on the internet. Not all fonts are web friendly, here is a good wikipedia reference on this subject.

In simple terms there are less than a dozen fonts that you can count on displaying properly. Here is an example based on the fonts that are available in blogger.

Typesetting for the screen-Arial
Typesetting for the screen-Courier
Typesetting for the screen-Georgia
Typesetting for the screen-Lucida Grande
Typesetting for the screen-Times
Typesetting for the screen-Trebuchet
Typesetting for the screen-Verdana

The art of typesetting has in someways experienced a renaissance with the world wide web. If you search the subject of typesetting you will be overwhelmed by the amount of information and content dedicated to this subject. A good example is typofile, a website dedicated to type and backed by a company specialising in user interface.

Brewery Wanted for Fired Guy

bbm — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 23:32:00 +0000

The Steam Whistle story begins in the spring of 1998 when three friends were on a canoe trip in the Ontario heartland. Greg Taylor, Cam Heaps and Greg Cromwell had all been colleagues at Upper Canada, a craft brewing pioneer in the late 1980's and 90's - before it was bought out by Sleemans, a national brewer and closed down. As they sat around the campfire, the self-named "Three Fired Guys" dreamed of running their own brewery one day.

They wanted to make a Pilsner that would compete with the best in the world. They wrote a plan and quickly attracted investors with their vision and passion.

Which brings us to the subject of this blog "Brewery Wanted for Fired Guy". Bush Branding & Marketing's Greg Cromwell has been fermenting for a decade to get stuck into the micro brewing business again. If anyone knows of a Good Brew Brand that could use a hand, contact Greg. He's all fired up and ready to grow.

contribute

bbm — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 03:52:00 +0000

Adobe Contribute has become one of Bush Branding & Marketing's best friends.

This is a test to see how it works with another good Bush Branding Buddy--Blogger.

And work it does: Sweet and seamlessly. Providing clients with the power to publish on their websites is a passion and a pleasure. With Contribute and Blogger we have empowered a number of our clients this year with great success. It has also been my tool of choice to make minor changes to clients sites. I even used Contribute today to put up a holding page for a new client who needed something up in a hurry--punctureproof.com.au

If you want to know more about these tools and other content management systems contact us. We would love to empower you.

Worth it.

bbm — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 01:25:00 +0000

Is advertising worth it? A question often asked and very difficult to answer. In our experience advertising is a key ingredient to growing brands. However, making your ads work their hardest and measuring their impact takes some fancy footwork. Take this "worth it" ad created by Ranscombe & Co for Blundstone Canada. This little ad has hit a cord with consumers.

Why has it worked so well generating sales? You cannot beat a straight forward retail ad with good old fashioned attention to the lost art of type setting. Add a powerful two word headline that draws you in. Insert some strategic copywriting that cleverly deals with price/value and presto- you have an ad that is truly worth it.

More to come on how we will be leveraging this successful bit of print advertising on the internet.

3 day, 3 girl, 3 dog camping

bbm — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 03:25:00 +0000

Last week I took 3 days off and went camping with 3 of my daughters. We were the envy of the Coorabell School camping excursion when we pulled up with our 3 Dog Camping trailer. On our first night as luck would have it rained like cats and dogs. We were high and dry inside our 3 Dog unlike many of the water logged campers; in fact, we took in a couple of refugees from the rain.

Another big hit on the camping trip was my Presso coffee maker.

On the first morning I became a teacher's pet, which was a first for me, when I offered to make the teachers a well earned hot cup of camp coffee. There were so many events during our stay at Woody Head near Iluka but here are a few highlights: learning to track animals with the park ranger, sand castle competition on the beach in Yamba and of course the two possums that blessed the rafters of the barracks that half our group slept in on our last night. I had the privilege to settle the children down with a bad bit of bush poetry which included....Possums it's time to go to bed in the shed at Woody Head.

Plant a Tree at Crystal Castle with Rainforest Rescue

bbm — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 05:53:00 +0000

Come on out on Sunday March 9th from 10 am - 2 pm to a tree planting at the Crystal Castle.

ART CLASSES FOR: All ages and capabilities

bbm — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 20:31:00 +0000

It's such a pleasure to work with talented, interesting and friendly people. Visit emmaweb.com to experience one of Bush Marketing's favourite web projects. If Emma Harrison's work tickles your fancy here are some workshops Emma is putting on:

ART CLASSES FOR: All ages and capabilities.
WHERE: 1/14 Clyde Street, Maclean.
WHEN: 9.30 AM TO 12.30 PM Tuesday's and Thursday's. Tea, coffee and nibbles break.* WHAT : Demonstrating and developing your art skills in the areas of: Drawing, textures, light and form. Composition, measuring and scale. Exploring all painting media; water colour, acrylic, oils, etc.. Colour principals, priming, styles of drawing and painting. Art history, portfolio selection and framing of your artwork.
WHO: Emma Harrison has been producing art for over 25 years
COST: Group sessions of 3 hours, 2 - 3 students $36.00 each per session. 4 + students $30.00 each per session.* 15% Discount applied for 1 month booking in advance, also one to one teaching available contact for further info.
EQUIPMENT: A variety of materials are provided at a small cost. If you wish to explore a particular medium please contact for availability and local suppliers.
CONTACT: E mail: emma@emmaweb.com or Tel: 6646 1659 or mob: 0418 481 088. Make friends and Make your Mark in an informal environment and take home a Masterpiece!

* Dates and times and costs may be altered with advance notice.
Click below to download Emma's pdf.
emma-artclasses.pdf

Bangalow Limousines Radio Production

bbm — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 22:05:00 +0000

Sisters Melia and Nerida of Scarlett Affection laying down a radio ad at Bay FM for Bangalow Limousines. Three radio ads were developed by Bush Branding & Marketing and will be hitting the radio waves soon. A big thanks to Grant O'Neil for his reworking of Folsom Prison, to Simon Barker for his his sweet production skills and last but not least our client Grant Kelly for watching over me.

Production of a television commercial using this sound track is also in the works.

Web Wrangler for Hire

bbm — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 02:18:00 +0000

Web Wrangler is a term a client used to describe one of the roles Bush Branding & Marketing played in developing her website. The term wrangler has a few meanings but mostly it is used to describe the role of caring for livestock and the catching and saddling of horses.

A web wrangler then, can be described as someone who cares for critical web assets like web site domain name registrations and web hosting. In my experience, catching horses is very much like trying to get hold of a domain name registration or sorting out ftp (file transfer protocol) access to a website: it's bloody hard work. Here are some of my web wrangling tips.

Domain name registration. Your domain name is much like a brand you put on a horse. It's a unique and important way of identification and proves ownership. Be sure that your domain name is registered in your name and that the contact details are in your control, especially the email address. Don't rely on any third party to take care of this for you because you will be at their mercy for critical things like renewals and managing dns (domain name system).
Website Hosting. Your website needs to live on a computer somewhere, much like a horse needs a ranch to run around in. Be sure that you know as much as possible about the ranch before you put your horse on it. Ftp access to your website is required for development and updates. You need to have 3 critical bits of information: domain name, username and a password to get in.

Without a doubt web wrangling is one of the toughest jobs I have ever had and the worst paying job by far. Most clients understandably get very confused about domain names and hosting; and often for good reason. The people they entrusted to handle these things that are beyond their grasp are motivated to make it even more difficult in order to maintain their strangle hold on your website and business.... the bastards.

Pictured with me are Lady and Deniro on a recent ride in the Goonengerry Forest with my apple mac wrangling mate Sagaro.

Sorry Snowballs to Canada

bbm — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 00:19:00 +0000

Australian Boot Company in Canada has joined the movement in Australia to say Sorry. Pictured is one of their snowy store fronts on Queen Street West in Toronto. Australian Boot manager Andria Gillis made up this sign and took this photo after she received an email from Greg Cromwell in Australia about Sorry Day. A copy of Kevin Rudd's speech has been posted beside the sign to let people know what it's about. "We have had a great response to our sorry sign, although one of our customers called us after seeing it from a passing streetcar and asked if we were going out of business," said Andria.

Homeland Security Sorry T-shirt

bbm — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 21:12:00 +0000

This is what my favourite t-shirt looks like. I bought it on Walpole Island (Bkejwanong) near our family farm in Chatham, Ontario.

For me wearing this shirt is a way of acknowledging that we are like terrorists to our indigenous people. I am going to wear it today to acknowledge the terrorist acts against Australia's aboriginal people and to show that I am sorry.

If anyone would like to buy this T-Shirt showing Geronimo, Sitting Bull, Numaga, Oseola, some of the many original directors of homeland security for Native Americans visit cafe press.

Let's put an internet forum on our website

bbm — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 21:30:00 +0000

Adding an internet forum to your website is a great way to generate dynamic content. A forum or notice board as they are also called allows people to interact and develop a community. There are lots of open source forum solutions available.

The best online forum Bush Marketing built is on bayweb. My partner in bayweb, Jason Ferris, deployed it as part of a relaunch of bayweb.com.au in 2003. Our goal was to give our Byron Bay website a purpose. We wanted to have a community portal that competed and complemented byronbay.com. If you visit bayweb today you will see the little forum we started has a total of 1727 articles and 10349 registered users.

If you want a forum to be an asset be prepared to work your little ass off to make it happen. Forums need to be moderated, seeded with articles and most importantly maintained with the latest software versions. Hackers and spammers just love to join and muck up forums so do beware.

Internet Questionnaire

bbm — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 05:19:00 +0000

When we first starting building websites for clients we put together a list of questions to help us help them. Surprisingly our questionnaire has undergone very few changes over the years. As much as technology changes the basics of building a website stay the same.

BBM-internet-workbook.pdf

Practice Random Acts of Appreciation

bbm — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 06:23:00 +0000

My mind is always racing, thinking about ways to help brands and businesses grow. The title of this blog, Practice Random Acts of Appreciation, is a guaranteed winning growth strategy.

Putting my blog where my bush wallet is, here are some of Bush Marketing's strategies for 2008.

People: Reward your people with pay and benefits.
Community: Give generously. Through Rainforest Rescue we are going to give 1% to the Bush.
Thank You: Two words that are never said enough. Send letters, emails and gifts.

Instead of adding to this list I am going to get busy with some appreciation.

Joomla Day in Byron Bay Sunday May 11th

bbm — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 02:17:00 +0000

A Joomla Day is now confirmed for Byron Bay in 2008. Appropriately we have picked a Sunday and will kick things off at 1 pm and wrap up by 5 pm. Brad Baker and Andrew Eddie will both be present as well as presenting. Joining Andrew and Brad will be a list of other enthusiastic and internationally experienced communicators including Yossi Ghinsberg (ghinsberg.com) and Sagaro from Lightforce Computers, Byron's Apple Mac Legend.

The event will take place at Bush Branding & Marketing's studio in the Byron Bay Arts and Industry Estate with a maximum of 50 participants. Please register your interest quickly as we anticipate a sold out event. There will be $20 fee at the door with profits from the event being donated back into the open source community. If you are interested in attending you can purchase tickets online at joomlabyronbay.com

The Bush Marketing web development team have been using Joomla since its release and have successfully developed a broad range of websites using this incredible open source content management system.

For more information on Joomla visit these sites:
Joomla
Joomla Day

Mini Nee Required Urgently: designer, web developer and project coordinator

bbm — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 23:26:00 +0000

Bush Branding & Marketing's Creative Director Nighean O'Brien (Nee) is seeking a Junior Designer. Our ideal candidate will be a Mini Nee: a graphic designer with skills and interests in web development; intermediate to advanced experience in Photoshop, Illustrator, Quark or In Design and Dream Weaver are essential. You must be able to work under tight time lines with loose briefs.

This is a great opportunity to get hands-on experience with a growing international boutique advertising agency. Please contact us for more information or send your resumé with a covering letter to grow@bushmarketing.com

The Price is Right

bbm — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 03:19:00 +0000

Bob Barker, a hero of my youth, from the popular game show The Price Right, had it right when it comes to selling online. If you want to sell products or services on the internet you need to be sure you have your pricing right. Your shopping cart cash register will run silent if you are not offering the best price online.

When clients come to us looking to cash in on the world of buyers on the WWW I often suggest that they test out their offering on ebay first. This sobering strategy has helped Bush Marketing's clients realise the realities of price sensitivity on the internet and thus saved them $1,000s on investing in a shopping cart and the long list of ancillary expenditures like payment gateways.

Here is a good news Online getting the Price Right story. Tin Shack, one of our longstanding clients, have been selling products over the internet since the mid 90's. One of their latest fashion footwear brands El Naturalista was in need of an outlet for selling styles from previous year's ranges. In fashion footwear it's all about the latest styles. To test the waters we deployed a cost effective shopping cart solution called Shopify. Up the shop went in record time and with minimal expense. We just waited for the sales to come in. And waited. And Waited. Nothing. No Sales. Lots of visitors to the shop but nobody was buying. Why? We did not have the Price Right. Two days ago we changed the prices. Since then they have had orders daily.

Thanks Bob Barker. You are right.

Australian Government Website Publisher should be packed off to Canada with a pair of Budgie Smugglers*

bbm — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 23:11:00 +0000

Below is a rant I wrote this morning and sent off to some select press.

The day after Australia Day started out with more then a sore head from too much celebrating
for Canadian Greg Cromwell who has been living in Australia for over seven years.

When he checked his email he got a message from a friend in Canada asking "What's going on
Down there?". The email referred him to an article written by Canadian Press that was published nationally yesterday. "When I read the article and checked the Australian Government website I could not believe it. Whoever is responsible for publishing this information should be packed off to Canada with a pair of budgie smugglers* on an all expenses paid holiday in the Canadian Great White North", said Cromwell.

Having travelled to many countries over the years, including South Korea, which is listed as safer then Canada, it is hard to imagine how this website makes its predictions and recommendations to Australians. "When the Australia Day long weekend is over I plan on calling the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and lodge a complaint," commented Mr. Cromwell.

What really takes the cake for Mr. Cromwell is that he and his partners export Australian Boots to Canada (R.M. Williams and Blundstone) and they are celebrating Australia Day in their stores in Toronto and Vancouver. After reading the warnings about Canada he hopes that terrorists don't attack the stores and that an earthquake doesn't spill the free beer they have on offer to celebrate Australia Day. For more information visit australianboot.com

Please refer to the article and links below for more information

Australia issues Canadian travel warning

Jan 25, 2008 10:06 AM
THE CANADIAN PRESS

Australians taking the advice of their government's "Smart Traveler" web site will likely be steering clear of Canada.

That website, which is run by Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, has Canada listed as a country where travelers should "exercise caution," which is the second-safest category.

Apparently our problems stem from the threat of terrorism, heavy snow, ice and forest fires that can erupt "at any time."

British Columbia, in particular, was singled out as being in an active earthquake zone and "subject to avalanches" along with Alberta.

Countries listed on the Smart Traveller website that are considered safer than Canada include Chile, South Korea and Latvia.

Canada's Foreign Affairs website which offers advice to travelers has no official warnings against Australia, and says most Canadian visitors to that country don't have any problems.

http://www.thestar.com/News/article/297431

Immediately I checked to confirm that the information in the article was correct and it was, every last bit of it. Refer to the link below.

http://www.smartraveller.gov.au/zw-cgi/view/Advice/Canada

*Budgie Smugglers-Australian slang for Speedo style mens bathing suit.

Bangalow Limousines...a rolling start.

bbm — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 04:32:00 +0000

We have started the New Year off in style working with our good friend Greg Nash and his mate Grant Kelly to get their start up business--Bangalow Limousines rolling. In drag race fashion our team has designed a logo, developed a launch website and we have collateral materials on the way.

One of the strengths of our team is our ability to work quickly and make things happen. We have found this happens when we have clients who know what they want and trust us to get the job done. A cooperative client/agency relationship pays big dividends and often quickly. A small example of this was passed onto me by Grant yesterday when I was helping him learn how to drive his new phone (getting his email hooked up and showing him how to surf). Grant told me he got a call from a prospective customer from the website only two days after it went up.

This was like winning the Lexmark Indy 300 on the Gold Coast for us: it only took two days for the search engines to index the site and someone to contact us.

CSS for Christmas

bbm — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 20:55:00 +0000

Bush Branding & Marketing got an early Christmas present from our Web Developer Cameron Skene: bushmarketing.com now meets W3C CSS and XHTML 1.0 standards. These international standards are becoming "the standard" in web design. What makes it even more special is that Cameron has done this work from New York City, where he will be based for the next year.

Thanks Santa Skene. For more information on this gift visit
the home of W3.

Online Customer Service key to Ecommerce Success

bbm — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 21:16:00 +0000

Selling things successfully online is the same game as traditional retail sales. At the end of the day it's about customer service and making people feel good about the product or service they are purchasing. My entrepreneurial experience with e-commerce dates back to the start of this century when we added a custom cart to australianboot.com

Since then I have been involved in setting up dozens of e-commerce sites. Sadly over 90% of them have never sold a thing. Why? Technology glitches certainly played a minor role; however, the one thing that crashed the carts every time was a lack of customer service.

This morning I was greeted with this email from my partner in Presso Canada. If you have the time to read it you can feel the smile of a happy customer. All the credit goes to Tilwood, our fulfillment company, who we found online and have never met.

Dear Mr. Doucette,

Just a short e-mail to tell you of the most excellent assistance I have received from one of your employees, Ms. Mary-Anne Noseworthy.

I tried to order something on-line from Presso Canada on Friday but, not being much of a computer expert or the least bit familiar with PayPal, I was unsuccessful.

I phoned the number listed on the Presso site and spoke with Ms. Noseworthy. I explained to her that I would like to place an order and also asked if she could answer come questions for me about the product. She looked up all information available to her but was not able to answer all my questions so she offered to e-mail the company (in Australia) and ask them to contact me directly . . . which they did.

This morning I received an e-mail from Ms. Noseworthy telling me she had also received a response from Presso and that she would be happy to help me with placing my order. I phoned her, she set me up on PayPal and completed all the work for me . . . all with a ‘smile in her voice’.

I couldn’t ask for better service than that!

My Christmas wish for Tilwood is that all your employees be as friendly and helpful as Ms. Noseworthy!

Thank you!

Usher G. Newstone

As a closing note Santa Claus will be sending Mary Anne and her mates a Presso for their office. We are also going to add a payment gateway to our shopify check out: a customer has spoken.