TOYS FOR BIG GIRLS AND BOYS

We had a chuckle over Motellas post on travelling etiquette for vibrator owners...

It is very wise advice indeed.

It reminded us of a family story that is now legend. We have blogged on it before but its worth another whirl..

Ma and Pa have the near perfect life. They live in Alexandra and when the want takes them, they head for the highway in Bugsy's Burrow, their beloved motorhome.

They meet all sorts of people and some of them have become life long friends. A couple of weeks back they met up with some Aussies in a Hire Motorhome at the canals nearOmarama, who were heading to dads place of birth, Stewart Island. As people do, they soon worked out they shared a common ancestor Rob Roy McGregor. Bonds were cemented.
As they prepared to fish together, the Aussie brought out his pride and joy. It was a travelling set of fishing rods reels and stuff that fitted in a plastic container the size of a cake tin. Dad was envious. Everyone was deeply impressed. Dad helped the Aussie set up his lines and they caught fish, lots of fish.

Soon the Aussies departed and headed their motorhome south, bound for Stewart Island. That night as dad packed up Bugsy's Burrow he spied the plastic container full of his distant relatives fishing gear.

They called up the " nephew" Vaughn Fisher star of the TV3 series Million dollar catch who lives in Bluff.

They didn't have much to go on - Dad told Vaughn to leave a message with the Stewart Island Ferry for "An Aussie called Dave who was a descendant of Rob Roy McGregor who had lost his fishing gear." 24 hours later mum and dad got a call.

Dave the Aussie, was stunned and ecstatic to get his very expensive fishing gear back.

Anyway, mum told Dave everyone was curious, as in amongst the mini rods and reels was a small bright purple thing about 4 inches long that hummed. The consensus was that it was some sort of fish attractant.

Er, no the Aussie said, it was his wife's vibrator. Seems that on their worldly travels he and his missus had copped a bit of flack from Customs over the vibrator. So he hid it in the fishing gear.

Mum reckons that the look on the old mans face when he heard what it was, has her wondering if he didn't try it out on the trout. He aint talking.

BUSTED BLONDE'S THREE MINUTES OF FAME

Silly bobble head..... but we still love and miss her...

DISSECTION

One of the lessons of the past week and the great Veuve Clicquot scandal was that it showed what an incredible force for communication and change that the social media has become.But you have to know h0w to use it as it is a pretty unruly and hungry beast with a very short attention span.

This is best exemplified by just who ended up carrying the story.

Take for instance this tweet

latest: JancisRobinson @bustedblonde Congratulations! Social media have the power to leech multiple kilos of Veuve C from tight fists. bit.ly Retweeted by you less than a minute ago

Thats gold in social media. Jancis Robinson has 40,000 followers on twitter. They are all people who have a serious interest in wine and food around the world. And she likes New Zealand and New Zealand wine.

So who were responsible for the story gaining a foothold in the social media. At the core were the bloggers. Whaleoil ( who started and led the whole campaign , his ability to get stories into the mainstream media is now well established), Kiwiblog, and Cactus and a host of other bloggers who quickly followed suit, were central to the story getting legs. They all have considerable weight in social media, while for the purposes of this campaign BustedBlonde just has the weight!

Many of them twitter and facebook as well. So its about using multiple channels and quickly.

You have to be bloody nimble and it helps if you have a core team as we did.

So did we have a plan? Nope not really. Just some ideas and some tactics. Its very organic and you need to have faith in your intuition.

Then came facebook. That cant be underestimated and its like an infection and of course there is Twitter. If you want to get your message out quick and it gets onto someone site who has 40,000 followers like Jancis then you have critical mass very quickly.

Take for instance this.

August 26 at 1:03pm

I see NBR finally responded!
I briefed a US mate of mine, Colin Clarke, who is commentator on social media strategies and he wrote this, I should let him know NBR has made a move. Well bloody done you. http://marketingsense.wordpress.com/2010/08/25/when-a-social-media-campaign-goes-bad/

When A Social Media Campaign Goes Bad « Marketing Sense

marketingsense.wordpress.com

An interesting case study has recently emerged in New Zealand that underscores the power of social media… and how it must be wielded CAREFULLY.

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So this happened two days ago and and already the analysis of the clicquot competition and the social media response and its impact are flying around the world at lightening speed.

And then there were the emails. And by all accounts there were a few direct to NBR ( we have seen some). And of course TV3.

It defies all the old rules of PR. Its not about planning its more about plotting. n.

So whats the damage to NBR? - bugger all we reckon. As soon as they made amends and publicly people were heaping on the praise for the putting right.

And Veuve? Well the damage might last a bit longer. They were involved in a competition that was supposed to be all class.

I havent seen the winning entry but I bet its all lovely and worthy and romantic . It will tick all the brand boxes for Clicquot.

However the competition was so badly designed and executed that it ended up being all about ass. It provoked crassness. Then when the judges got crassness and not just from our entry but dozens of others as well, things went pear shaped.

For us Champagne is all about fun. And for the last couple of weeks we have had lots of it.

And we have learnt quite a bit as well.

BUSTEDBLONDE

Hello all,

I have had a few emails asking why Roarprawn has not been entered in the Air New Zealand Awards for bloggers ( real bloggers). Well as Busted is a little bit of bother which hopefully will be resolved soon, she decided that it would not be appropriate to enter.

However, it appears that Roarprawn could still be a wildcard in the awards which are here

As Busted can't do or say much for the moment, here are our links to some of her best work in the last year.

I like Bustedblondes impressions of Ngai Tahu politics such as this post here. I am Rangitane so I am always interested in what our neighbours in the south are up to.

And I definitely want to hear more about this issue. Scampi may be a tad historical but by Jove it has all the makings of a great yarn.

And who could forget this post about the downside of being a mistress. ( Busted seems to know an awful lot about being a consort) That post spawned an international threat of legal action because some woman claim to own the word Mistressology. The entire VRWC corner of the blogosphere came to her aid and slam dunked the Pommie blogger.

She has such an interesting family. He mother and father seem  to live every day like there will be no tomorrow. This post shows a real soft side to Bustedblonde.

And she has been a very strong supporter of Maori TV. That was apparently one of her most read columns.

She is fervently pro whaling, leaving no room for doubt. She scored a world exclusive piece of footage on the Ady Gil crashing into the Japanese whaling vessel. It was watched on You Tube over 45,000 times in less than 2 hours - before it was taken down - but not before the activists re edited it and put it up on you tube where it was viewed by millions. Busted then put it up again with reworked commentary and today it has been viewed 18,000 times.

So I am sad the Busted never got to enter the Real Bloggers awards and I hope that this list of posts will show that she would have been an admirable contestant.

Toodle Pip

SOUTH PARK DOES WHALES

Thanks to Motella for alerting us to this wee gem..

Its a piss take of the whaling issue. It really gets funny at about 7 mins.

WHAT WE WANT FOR XMAS

For our blogging mates



For Cactus - a stunning looking rich as bloke who doesn't have a wife at home.
Nah - what we want for Cactus is a newspaper to realise the talent and hook her in as a columnist .




For Whale - someone to deliver a bad ass tank to his front door.
Nah - what we want is for him to have a fantastic day with his family

For the boys at No Minister - lots of sex and booze
Nah - recognition that they are the best team bloggers around.

For Motella - A full house over Xmas
Nah - a contract to write for the AA magazine.

For KiwiBlog - A super rich cute political loving geek chick that roots like a rabbit.
Nah - actually super rich cute political loving geek chicks who root like rabbits in every town in NZ.

For Red Alert. - A poll that shows they are closing the gap on National
Nah - a poll that shows Shane Jones is more popular than Phil Goff.

For Alf Grumble - a fine paddock or two of hay.
Nah - A posting to be our man in the Ukraine. We think he would do wonders for our trade relations in Eastern Europe..

And what do we want for Xmas? Well we have got all we wanted.

Family around us, good food wine and the expected company of good friends to our little piece of kiwi paradise.

Our partner – the Aussie Rock has been toiling away building a house that will be our retirement abode and a place for our friends to parkl up and shoot the breeze.

The Rock bought me an ice making fridge,/freezer - something that I have always wanted above all other material possessions for no good reason. It shines like a diamond in the yet to be completed kitchen. We love him all the more.

Our son is seeing the fruits of hard graft and has a career he loves flying helicopters.

Our job is interesting and has some importance so we are feeling a measure of satisfaction.

Ma and Pa are looking pretty good for 70 plus coveys.

Lambcut has given up the cancer sticks and her eyes and skin have shed years in a matter of weeks. It almost made us cry to see her smoke free.

In the New Year we vow to support the agencies who work tirelessly to stop our children from ever taking a puff.

So for 2010 we just want the same again thanks

We wont blog too much over Xmas - we have things to eat and drink , people to talk to, places to explore, gardens and flocks to tend to and families and friends to love.

Merry Xmas and all that....

WHAT A BRIGHT IDEA

We saw the same story as Motella has here the other day and came to the same conclusion. Up Earth Hour we say. Bugger the hemp undy wearing wankers - we are gonna turn on our lights too. However we will be using Powershop to get the best deal.

COPTHORNE CRAP

Courtesy of the Govt, we stayed at the Copthorne Central last night. It was crap - You need to take out a mortgage to use the broadband. The bath hadn't been cleaned properly, It was hot and it was generally shabby the soap shelf was hanging off the wall. Now if it was $99 a night I wouldn't complain but it was $140 a night and $30 for a cooked breakfast which was frankly appalling. The bacon was wet, the eggs hard and the hash browns as limp as an 80 year old. To add to the misery we forgot our shampoo and conditioner and had to use that vile paint stripper they give you in in a bottle called conditioning shampoo. So now we are sitting in the ChCh Koru lounge with Phyllis Diller hair.

Oh and I pay for my Koruclub membership from my own pocket.

It's time that the government stopped using this chain and looked for better value accommodation.
Or negotiated a better price. We are a fan of motorlodges and motels. We think that the government should become a fan of them as well.

MOTEL ASSOCIATION TAINTED BY LABOUR NANNY STATE

Motella is a relatively new blog but his latest post makes for interesting reading. It appears that after nine years of a nanny state the public has become conditioned to looking to regulation to solve problems.
It appears that the Motel Association of NZ wants to geat heavy with the ma's and pa's around the country offering B and B's and short term accomodation.
Motella is right - if this idea is instituted, then it will mean more fusspotting by local authorities. Shame on them. And good boy Motella for rooting out this silliness.

MOTELLA - WELCOME TO THE VRWC

Heres a newish blog we like. Its fun and likes taking the piss. - Just as good blogs should.