Harold's Autobiography On Sale Now

You can now purchase on line Harold's recently released autobiography "Living Large - the world of Harold Mitchell - from sawmiller's son to multi million dollar man"

http://catalogue.mup.com.au/978-0-522-85657-6.html

The Good Old Days Now

School reunions can be great. But they can also be a big wake up call to the fact that we’re getting older and that perhaps the good old days have gone forever.

After my last reunion, where we counted how many old school mates were no longer with us, I – like most of the others – went on a diet and did some more walking to try hold back time.

But the old-fashioned values of the good old days don’t always seem to be quite as important any more. Our old pal Charlie has produced some excellent research that shows that these tougher economic times have sent us back to relying on the things that have always been important. In tough times we look for comfortable safe havens.

So staying home is in fashion again along with DVD sales and fish and chips. And we didn’t cancel the Foxtel in the family budget cutting, although the news this week from the Government is that it looks like Foxtel got canceled from its Telstra ownership, but that’s a story for another day.

Attendance at church has also held up, even if we are going to the newer churches.

Louise always has a running commentary on life and she was telling me in her role as an arts aficionado that she was recently at a sell-out concert by James Morrison accompanied by one of our great symphony orchestras. James performed a new work written especially for him to a standing ovation. He then brought the house down at the after party with a scintillating trumpet solo of the timeless standard “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”. He learnt it on his mother’s knee while she played the church organ.

All the marketing people reading this column know how important it is to be innovative and up with the latest.

In fact, if you don’t throw out the old stuff and come up with something new, you’re seen as being a bit of dinosaur.

I think we might have misread people a bit about the things they hold dear to them. This week in England, 92 year old Dame Vera Lynn, took her number one hit, ‘We’ll meet again’ to the top on the charts again. The “forces sweetheart” first recorded the song in September 1939. At 92, she breaks the record set in 1993 by 54 year old Tina Turner when ‘What’s Love Got To Do With It’ made number one.

So Louise says to me, “what has advertising learnt from all this back-to-the-past stuff”?

I always like to defend my colleagues, so I trotted out examples of some clever campaigns that were really good and are still going - ‘Beanz Meanz Heinz’, ‘Is Don is Good’ and ‘I’m Loving It’ from McDonalds.

That defends advertising people I thought, until Charlie reminded me of a meeting he attended years ago with a young advertising agency executive. Wanting to show how clever and modern he was, he questioned the group by asking if they couldn’t come up with a better line than the one that they’d been using - ‘Oh what a feeling’?

Just as well they didn’t throw that out. Toyota’s been looking good with it for decades although I doubt that it will have the longevity of our Vera or a spiritual classic.

http://haroldcharlesmitchell.blogspot.com

Apple Isle - Again

TASMANIAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

Thursday September 20

I am here tonight to put to you a very simple proposition -

Australia is “the best place in the world for business, culture and living”.

And I am going one step further –

Tasmania is at the premium end of this proposition and about to take the lead with the remarkable opportunity of first mover advantage with the roll out of the National Broad Band Network.

Australia is the best place in the world to live and work because of our community and our geography – our people and our place.

Our people are our greatest asset in this incredible country - you can start at the bottom and finish at the top. And that is going to continue to make us as good, if not better, than country in the world. This is the Australian way, this is the people that we are - trusting and helping of each other and determined to succeed for ourselves, our families and our communities.

Wave after wave of migration has filled this country with people who have very powerful motivations to make their life, and more importantly their children’s lives, better than it was before. We are a combination of people from over 200 countries and still less than 250 years old by one measure and 60,000 by another. We are one nation – and that is a huge advantage in a world where so often, what passes for a nation, is a deeply divided, unjust and corrupt society.

And our sense of justice is at the heart of our cultural make up. The idea of a “fair go” has imbued and inspired generation after generation and given enormous strength to our most defining and unifying characteristic – our rare and priceless democracy.

No matter how self critical we might be, no matter how much we might be, from time to time, the “knockers” of our own self generated folk lore, no matter how many tall poppies we might have a go at, in the end we are an informal and fair-minded people by world standards with few serious divisions and a real belief the democracy and rule of law.

In addition to our people, our geography is also one of our great assets.

We are in the 6 hour Asian time zone which will be the engine room of economic and cultural development for the next 50 years.

This region will become a much bigger economy that the US within our children’s life time.

Add to this the fact that we have vast open regional areas that are environmentally clean by world standards.

So to put it simply – any place where you can drink the water, not get mugged going to work and don’t have to bribe people to get what is rightfully yours is light years ahead of most of the rest of the world.

But we do face real challenges.

In 2003 I gave the Andrew Ollie lecture in Sydney. In that lecture I said that we were about to leave our children five very great burdens if we don’t act decisively and imaginatively.

1. Poorer employment prospects

2. A poorer education system.

3. A housing and land crisis in the major cities

4. Major water and environmental problems

5. and a collapsing health system

We simply can’t go on having 70 % of our population crowding into a handful of eastern seaboard cities.

We can’t just rely on digging up raw natural resources and shipping them to other parts of the world. And, as well all know, the days of “riding on the sheep’s back” are over for ever.

But all challenges exist to be overcome.

True progress that can realise and sustain the hopes and dreams we have for the future must use our natural advantages to solve the challenges that present themselves

Let me bring this together now – first for Australia and secondly for Tasmania.

Transport and communications was what opened up Australia to enable our economy become what it is today. The road and rail network, and the early telegraph lines and telephone system of the old PMG made our economy possible. Remember – it was the railway that created the US

Broadband is the new road, rail and phone system in one tiny cable.

I come from the world of advertising and marketing. Let me tell you a few things about my world which is going to affect yours in a very big way.

From the beginning of my career, TV has been the major force in the advertising industry but that is now changing rapidly.

We spend 8 hours asleep, 8 hours working and 8 hours with the media.

For the past 40 years, our 8 hours with the media was dominated by TV which changed everything about our lives – our tastes, our news, our products, our sense of our selves and our economic, social and cultural opportunities.

Now, as we enter the digital age, this 8 hour contact time with the media is going to change again and range radically. It will produce change and opportunity that we can’t fully imagine today.

If we are not smart in this instantly global environment we will have no chance of building a better future for our kids and their kids – we will have no chance of meeting the challenges I listed in the Andrew Ollie lecture six years ago.

The digital world is no sci fi dream or romance. It is here now.

Right now, 14% of advertising is on-line – bigger than magazines and radio. Within just 8 years it will grow to 25% and that will come from TV and Newspapers. Already the classifieds have gone to the internet.

As I said to a publishing group earlier this week, if you don’t get the digital age then leave the building, leave the city, leave the planet.

We are fortunate that the Federal Government has seen the potential and the necessity for Australia to rapidly improve its capacity in the new digital world.

This brand new era for Australian is about to have its dawn right here in Tasmania – Tasmania has been delivered first mover advantage in the biggest economic, social and cultural revolution to hit Australia since the first bullock track from Melbourne to Sydney became a dirt road and the first Morse messages were tapped out from Adelaide to Darwin.

I am sure that the powers that be in all sectors in Tasmania are hard at work making plans to turn this advantage into real long term benefits for the people of this lucky State.

You are about to become the high tech hotspot of the South Pacific and your well honed sense of isolation is about to be blown away.

You are about to become a magnet for people and businesses wanting to deal with the world via the internet – and who doesn’t – only the neo dinosaurs and neo luddites whose inevitable extinction is much closer than they realise.

History has shown us that when the conditions that inspire opportunity exist, entrepreneurial people flock to particular cities and regions and transform them.

J S Bach’s musical genius transformed the tiny city of Lietzberg into the world capital of western music, Montpellier in France became world leader in medicine in the 19^th century and at the turn of this millennium Ireland became an international capital in the emerging hi tech world.

In the 13 century Angkor in Cambodia grew to be city of 100,000 people while London was a back water with 30,000 due to its intellectual leadership in the great religion of Buddhism.

In the 21^st century, this new digital world that we are inextricably part of, breaks down the barriers of time and space – “the old tyranny of distance” if you like, that we have been so fond of using as an excuse for not engaging with the rest of the world.

Regional areas all over the world have the potential to come into their own in the digital age. Look what has happened in the US on its north east seaboard around Seattle and San Francisco – Google, Microsoft and Apple. These are the global products and innovations of one small region on the planet that was once regarded as a backwater.

And you in Tasmania are already underway – you had the first digital only commercial TV network in the country and you have the very best example in Australia of creative young minds using the internet and ploughing both their revenue and their intellectual capital into this community - its Mona - David Walsh’s multi million dollar Museum of Old and New Art – Australia’s largest privately owned and funded museum. And this is just the beginning.

It’s important to remember that this revolution, which will begin here, is not just about “business” in that far too limited sense of the word. It will stimulate all sectors of Tasmania society directly and indirectly. It will revolutionise the capacity of schools to deliver truly relevant education. It will enable hospitals to provide world leading innovations for your health care and it will encourage creative people of all kinds to develop their products right here for global consumption.

As American economist Richard Florida says “in today's idea-driven economy, it's time costs that really matter. With the constant pressure to be more efficient and to innovate, it makes little sense to waste countless collective hours commuting. So the most efficient and productive regions are the ones in which people are thinking and working – not sitting in traffic."

He goes on to say

“Access to talented and creative people is to modern business what access to coal and iron ore was to steelmaking.”

This is your future – make the most of it – for your children’s sake – and their children’s sake.

And while we are thinking about our children and our grandchildren and their capacity to be creative and prosperous into the future, listen carefully to this quote and see if you can tell me who said it

As tools for learning, the arts and humanities have a positive impact on our children's cognitive development, their confidence, and their motivation. As we face the challenges of a new era, the arts and humanities will be vital to a future of innovation, opportunity and hope.

--George W. Bush, President of the United States

The most conservative American President in living memory was not a natural ally of the so called “soft” education options and the touchy feelies of the arts world.

What hard headed conservative George Bush knew and was that innovation from information and communications technology is the biggest single driver of business productivity.

It has been estimated that it drives around 80% of productivity gains in the service and manufacturing sectors.

George also knew that American civilization depends on the civilising forces of creativity and the arts and humanities just as much as the sciences and our abilities to effectively and productively organise ourselves.

The same is true for the entire world – including Tasmania – the old “apple isle”.

I can see some of you flinch.

But who would have thought that this old rejected slogan and image would be reborn as one of the most potent brand names in this brand new world.

So nurture this new specie of apples and it will become it will become one of the powerful brain foods on earth. It will make everything in Tasmania healthy – including your wallets.

Good luck to you first movers – make the most of it.

Gear Up and Peddle Faster

Some of the regular readers to this column think that there is no such thing as over-gearing. And you may be surprised to hear that our Charlie, the conservative realist, thinks this way too.

I can already see that you’re thinking we’re talking about business and the economy when we talk about over-gearing. But not Charlie. He’s recalling life as a seven year-old in the 50s he got his first second-hand single sprocket pushbike. It cost his parents 10 shillings – a lot of money in those days. The big movement to gearing came in his twelfth year when he took possession of a brand new three-speed Malvern Star with head and tail lights. At that point he became totally hooked on gearing. His capacity to take on the steep hills and the long slow climbs with a single sprocket was destroyed forever and now, at a much more mature age, he heads off each Sunday morning in his lime green Lycra with the latest twenty four gear, yes, twenty four gear Shogun. He knows he is over geared because he only uses seven of the twenty four but he wouldn’t have it any other way.

Louise on the other hand, has always gone out on a Sunday on her tandem bike with partner, Max. Remember the tandem? The one at the back was always pedalling harder than the leader. That’s the trouble, of course, with joint ventures or partnerships. One is always working harder than the other, and it’s rarely the one who is up front.

So its true – our childhood experiences with our bikes is important preparation for our business life. It’s easy to borrow and get over-geared and the more you do, the harder it is to pay back and the more impossible it becomes to get back to where you started. And as for the joint ventures, forget it.

Our media owners have had a fair go at the gearing too. It works if it means you can go faster, just like a bike. Kerry Stokes seems to have worked it out pretty well, but the private equity funds that own the major parts of our media are finding it harder. Some advertisers are faced with the same problems, although advertising here in Australia is holding up pretty well compared to the rest of the world. Being a bit stretched or over-geared as Charlie says, means it’s hard to be competitive.

But if you are in a position to expand, this is the time to do it. History has proven that advertising in a downtime can be effective. Advertisers that kept up their activity in the 1920s and 30s through the great downturn are still with us today. In the US there were two big breakfast cereal makers; Kellogg and C.W. Post. Kellogg kept advertising and Post didn’t. Who’s ever heard of C.W. Post?

In 1991, in the midst of the last recession, Barclay Card was the second-largest credit card brand. The market was dominated by Access Card. During the recession, Barclay Card doubled its ad spend to launch a long-running campaign featuring Rowan Atkinson as a bumbling secret agent. Within three years, it was the number one credit card brand. Within 10 years Access Card no longer existed.

Gearing is good as long as it makes you go faster.

Harold Mitchell http://haroldcharlesmitchell.blogspot.com

Harold's Autobiography Now On Sale

You can now purchase on line Harold's recently released autobiography "Living Large - the world of Harold Mitchell - from sawmiller's son to multi million dollar man"

http://catalogue.mup.com.au/978-0-522-85657-6.html

Fuelling The TV Wars

Anti-siphoning is in the news. It is causing many to have sleepless nights, except lawyers of course, who always sleep well when big business and government burn the midnight oil trying to work out how to make and break new laws.  

For those who fought to save the planet by leading the charge against lead-free fuel and who think anti-siphoning means that the hyperventilating legislators in the national capital want to control how you fill up your car, you can relax.

Remember the old days of running out of petrol? If you didn’t have a rubber hose in your boot you weren’t travelling. The old one-gallon can was as necessary as a spare tyre.

Out of petrol? No problem - out with the spare can, the rubber hose and just siphon away.

Sucking the petrol through a hose without swallowing was an art form - usually passed on in the manner of father-to-son. It was dangerous too, given the heavy smoking population at the time.

However the anti syphoning issue today is about television, power and money - a mix just as heady as leaded fuel and perhaps more explosive.

Minister Conroy is wandering around Canberra with a box of matches ready to set alight a new review into the vexed issue of the “use it or loose it” provisions for sports on the anti syphoning list. The Senator is our hero, of course, as he introduced the big bang of broadband to the home after nearly a dozen years of the Coalition doing nothing.

Charlie, who apart from helping us with his outstanding economic research advice which continues to be ahead of the Reserve Bank - is right up there with this anti-siphoning stuff. For the casual reader to this column, let me explain.

Anti-siphoning is the term that is used to allow over 1300 sports events to be offered first to the free TV networks.  PayTV picks up the crumbs and many events end up simply never being telecast. It covers everything from the Olympic and Commonwealth Games to the major footy codes and the Melbourne Cup.

The Foxtel people hate it. They would much rather we have to pay to watch most of our sport, especially the big ones like the football finals coming up. It would mean big bucks for them.

But I can’t see anyone in Canberra letting it happen. What pollie would want to be responsible for making “working families” pay for their most passionate leisure time pursuit which they have been able to watch all their lives for nothing?

But along comes a twist with the advent of the new TV sets that receive digital broadcasts.  The free-to-air channels want to have their digital offerings protected so that they can have more sport, more advertisers and more happy viewers watching without paying a cent.  

The argument has also been raised about online access.

I like to please everyone in this column, but it’s hard to see the Government doing anything other than protecting the free-to-air networks and looking good with our nation of sports mad voters - oops sorry - viewers, even though the anti-siphoning legislation is actually anti-competitive, and doesn't allow free and fair bidding for all parties for sports events.  This leaves our other hero, Kim Williams at Foxtel sucking up benzol, not air, and cursing anti-siphoning.

Autobiography Now On Sale

"Living Large - The World of Harold Mitchell - from sawmiller's son to multi-million dollar man"

is now on sale in bookshops throughout Australia
http://catalogue.mup.com.au/978-0-522-85657-6.html