What content marketers can learn from print media’s mistakes  The Australian Press Council (APC) is a dinosaur – and a toothless one at that. Charged with regulating (or, more accurately, self-regulating) the content produced by the nation’s print media, it has long been criticised (most recently in the Finkelstein Report) for being under-resourced and slow. And now one of the country’s largest media companies, Seven West Media, comprising the Seven Network, Pacific Magazines and West Australian Newspapers, has withdrawn from [...]

When it comes to content, comedy is often in the eye of the beholder With Easter lying tantalisingly at the end of this week and thoughts drifting towards the extra relaxation opportunities inherent in a four-day weekend, we’d like to get you in the mood with a bit of comedy content. The following images come from the UK Daily Telegraph’s travel section and have been sent in by readers over a number of years highlighting clever, funny or just downright [...]

Should governments have the right to monitor our online/mobile lives? How would you feel if the government had the right to ‘spy’ on your email exchanges or website visits? Angry? Violated? Or would you simply shrug and think, ‘Well, Google does it…’ In the interests of crime-prevention, democratically elected governments around the world are suggesting increasingly Orwellian means of monitoring their citizens. In Australia last week, NSW Police Minister Michael Gallacher argued that genetic samples should be collected from all [...]

Kim Dotcom is apparently turning to music to pay his legal bills. Does anyone else see the irony in that? Last month, The Message posed the question: Will NZ extradite Kim Dotcom? We are currently no nearer to a definitive answer on that point, but the heat on the controversial Megaupload founder does seem to have been turned down a degree or two with an Auckland judge relaxing Dotcom’s home detention conditions. Which means the corpulent crim (allegedly, of course) [...]

I read the news today, oh boy: pop culture’s greatest content is getting an image makeover… When it comes to albums, they don’t get much more iconic than the Beatles’ 1967 epic Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Still widely regarded as one of the best in history, this proto-concept album pushed the limits of recording technology – and in terms of packaging, married music (of course), words and images to create a content offering that hadn’t been seen before. [...]

The NSW government is considering giving students access to social media sites while at school In an apparent about-face, the NSW Education Department is considering allowing students to access social media sites like Facebook and Twitter while at school. This policy reconsideration has come about because the department’s current Internet filtering contract (which prohibits social media access) is due to expire. Moreover, the Director of Public Schools, Diane Marshall, recently told an education forum that she believed social networking would [...]

The reportedly growing use of mobile phone jammers could have serious implications for content creators and marketers Mobile phone jammers have been in the news of late, and now the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has revealed the full extent of their popularity in Australia. Between 1 July, 2010, and 31 December, 2011, the ACMA confiscated 279 jamming devices. In addition, the Australian Federal Police sized 13 jammers between May 2011 and February 2012, stating: ‘Of the… 13 seized [...]

Coca-Cola’s brilliant new content marketing strategy keeps it ahead of the game The Message has long been a fan of how Coca-Cola markets itself across a variety of platforms. From film clips to Facebook, the soft-drinks giant clearly understands the importance of creating engaging content as not just a marketing tool, but a whole marketing strategy. In fact, Coke takes content so seriously that it has recently released a new approach. Called ‘Content 2020’ it is essentially a manifesto highlighting [...]

Satire is booming thanks to online content Humph! Don’t you just hate it when your thunder gets stolen? Just yesterday we were musing about the changing nature of social media usage and wondering (in an oh-so-ironic, oh-so-cleverly-comic manner) whether people have become so addicted to social media that now everything has to be viewed through its prism. We asked: ‘Are we shortly going to be at the point when eating dinner will be filmed and posted/live streamed? And speaking of [...]

Here are the answers to our online content quiz Last week, we asked if you could sort the photo content fact from fiction. We posted 15 Internet images and invited you to tell us whether you thought they were real or simply made clever use of Photoshop. Obviously, you are all eagerly awaiting the big reveal, so here are the answers… 1. Black and white twins               This image was… real. 2. ‘Welcome to [...]