27 Oct, 2011
We love the word bogan. We use it to describe those uncouth people that live next door. No longer are we restricted by geography to call the uneducated, unrefined people, westies (if you live in Sydney, for instance)—our vulgar neighbours can now come from the east, the north or the south.
The word bogan has given us—the usually egalitarian Australians—a word to help us gain social superiority over other Australians without being accused of snobbery. It has also given marketers the cashed-up-bogan market segment to which they can sell beer, hair loss cures, new utes, holidays to Bali and silly sporting memorabilia.
Bogans have been described as “hyper-Australian” a concept that suggests they are the exaggerated versions of us all. There are two sub-species of bogan: the plain bogan, and the cashed-up-bogan.
Word origins
The origin of bogan is not known but its mainstream use really began with Kylie Mole in the late 1980s TV series the Comedy Club. It was used before that in parts of Australia.
Some suggest that bogan is related to the Irish/Dubliner phrase ‘bogger’ equivalent to the westie for someone from the bog areas west of Dublin.
Bogan has displaced many regional Australian words for the vulgar underclass. These words usually refer to places where members of the lowest socio-economic, cultural group are thought to breed.
In the ACT the preferred word was ‘booner’ or ‘boonie’ being a shortening of someone from the ‘boondocks’, the far-distant, uncivilized regions of the outer suburbs. Queensland had the bevan and the bev-chick; Western Australia has bogs; Tasmania has the chigger (someone from the suburb of Chigwell); the Riverina has the gullie; Victoria has the Scozzer and Melbourne the mocca.
Plain bogans
Plain male bogans wear singlets, flannelette shirts, thongs or Ugg boots and ill-fitting track-suit pants or shorts.
They have skinhead haircuts, mullets or “frullets” (front-mullets). The mullet, the hairstyle that is short at the front and long at the back, has its own regional names and varieties, “boon curls”, or “bogan rolls” (short all over except for a curling fringe at the back). Bogans are very vain about their hair and certain celebrity bogans supplement their income appearing in commercials to help prevent hair loss (or more correctly mullet loss).
Favourite things are beer (VB, veebs, or XXXX because they are easy to spell), bourbon (Jack Daniels or Jim Beam because they have people names), rugby league or Aussie rules football (the simpler the rules the better) and particular types of motor vehicle, or “wheels”, the Holden Commodore, Holden Kingswood or the Ford Falcon. Utes are de rigour.
Plain female bogans shop at Target and Best and Less. They have tramp stamps, use cheap cosmetics and fragrances, wear short, tight skirts that show too much of their physique, particularly their muffin tops. They have children (sprogs) with unique, unconventional names with eccentric spellings, such as, Anakin, Deezel, Harlee, Brock, or Sharaz.
Cashed-up-bogans
The cashed up bogan or CUB, first appeared as a marketing term for a consumer segment. It is characterized as blue-collar nouveaux riche with well paid jobs and high disposable incomes that they spend on flash items to fulfil their aspirations of higher social status. Many work hard making their money in Western Australia mines and they want to spend their income on new utes, boats and motorbikes, luxury clothing, booze, food, holidays to Bali, investment properties, sports memorabilia and flat screen televisions.
Some CUBs are giving up their utes and muscle cars for prestige cars. BMW, Audi and Lexus are advertising in the tabloid press to appeal to this market. However many CUBs don’t want to attract the attention of the tax office by driving too flash a car.
CUBs are less popular than plain bogans because they go against the idea that some people deserve to be poor and instead are buying things that the rest of us can’t afford.
Living in Boganville
Australian Prime Ministers always try to connect with the battlers and workers. Julia Gillard succeeded better than them all when she was voted Biggest Bogan of the Year last year (pushing Russell Crowe into second). A lot of people find her exaggerated, or hyper-Australian accent irritating and some think it is deliberately put on to appeal to the bogan masses.
It is understood in Canberra that Bogan-ville is Kevin Rudd’s name for The Lodge since Julia Gillard, and her boyfriend, Tim Mathieson, moved in, after his replacement as Prime Minister.
Rudd’s insult is typical of our use of bogan. The more bogan-ness we see in someone else the better we feel about ourselves. When I drive my children to school in the 4WD unshaven and wearing my tracksuit pants and ugg boots, listening to the Best of Cold Chisel, I think of myself as a relaxed and casual suburbanite a long way from being a bogan. But really, most of us live only a little to the east of Boganville.
24 Oct, 2011
Summer marketing is thinking about your customers in a new way for the summer. Here are some great summer marketing facts and figures that will help. There are several things that impact on summer marketing: the weather, Christmas shopping season, back-to-school shopping, people taking holidays, and changes to consumer spending.
Think about the weather
The weather is warming up. People are wearing different clothes and wanting different things for the summer. They have different needs. They behave in different ways.
Research from British email marketing company Pure360 showed that businesses should consider the weather when implementing their email campaigns.
Hot, sunny weather increased the effectiveness of campaigns promoting summer-related products or services. Recipients of emails promoting festival tickets were twice as likely to open them on a sunny day as opposed to a rainy day.
They also found that consumers are far more likely to be thinking about major purchases such as cars or houses on a day with poor weather. Campaigns promoting restaurants are twice as effective on days with bad weather.
Their statistics showed:
• Email open rates for summer-related products on hot days was 15% (3% on rainy days)
• Click through rates for summer-related products was 27% in good weather (12% in bad weather)
• Holiday industry emails open rates were five times higher on hot days
• In hot weather, campaigns promoting satnav systems had a 48% click through rate (23% on bad weather days)
• Campaigns promoting business-related events and products had a click through rate of 27% (12% when raining)
Think about Christmas
Some US statistics from last year (source is in brackets)
• 19% of U.S. consumers planned to shop on the day after Christmas, December 26, 2010 (International Council of Shopping Centers, ICSC)
• 43% percent of people planned to make a purchase on December 26th (American Express Spending & Saving Tracker)
• 47% of U.S. consumers said they would be doing more shopping in the week between Christmas and New Year’s (ICSC and Goldman Sachs Group)
• 77.3% of shoppers planned on buying at least one gift card during the holiday season (NRF)
• 23 million people were shopping on Christmas Eve (ICSC)
• 31%-34% of shopping dollars generally change hands in the 10 days prior to Christmas (ShopperTrak)
• $36.4 billion was spent online by Thursday, the day before Christmas Eve, which was 15.4% more than 2009 (MasterCard Advisors SpendingPulse)
Think about back-to-school shopping
A US study undertaken last year showed the key back-to-school buying behaviours.
Back to school shopping includes: general school supplies, clothing (including shoes and uniforms), books, USB flash drives, laptop computer accessories (software, speakers), calculator (basic, scientific, graphing), mobile phone/smartphone, sporting goods, and netbooks.
While shopping for children’s school supplies parents are also thinking about themselves. It is important to note that back-to-school spending can also drive non-school-related purchases.
• 51% of consumers will leave their shopping until the last minute to take advantage of price drops, while 49% will start shopping early to spread the cost out.
• 56% of consumers planned to spend more than US$250 on back-to-school items. 31% of consumers planned to spend more than US$500.
• Most consumers planned to spend at least $250 on back-to-school shopping for their elementary, middle/junior high, or high school student or college/junior college student.
• 14% of consumers say their economic outlook will influence their back-to-school shopping compared to last year.
• 17% of consumers will compare prices from their mobile phones when back-to-school shopping in-store.
• Shopping at discount stores (60%) and printing online coupons (33%) are the top back-to-school money savers.
• 21% of consumers feel influenced to make non-school-related purchases for themselves while shopping for back-to-school items.
Think about changing consumer trends
In a recent report the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed how we are changing our preferences for household appliances. We are spending less time washing up and more time on the computer. We are spending less time listening to our stereos and presumably more time listening to our iPods or MP3 players or watching DVDs on our home theatre. Statistics showing proportion of consumer goods in households:
• dishwashers have increased by 9 per cent since 2005 (42% in 2005 to 51% in 2011)
• top loader washing machines decreased from 83% in 2005 to 68% in 2011
• front loader washing machines increased from 13% in 2005 to 31% in 2011
• DVD players increased from 72% in 2005 to 83% in 2011
• stereo systems dropped from 78% in 2005 to 41% in 2011
• laptop (at least one) increased from 38% in 2008 to 61% in 2011
• desktop computer (at least one) increased from 55% in 2008 to 60% in 2011
5 Oct, 2011
In 1754 Horace Walpole, the son of Prime Minister Robert Walpole, composed a letter that introduced seredipity into the English language:
… It was once when I read a silly fairy tale, called The Three Princes of Serendip: as their highnesses travelled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of … now do you understand serendipity?
The Three Princes of Serendip was published in Venice in 1557 as a translation of the Italian Peregrinaggio di tre giovani figliuoli del re di Serendippo which was itself a translation of part of a Persian poem, the Hasht Bihisht (The Eight Paradises) of 1302, which is the first mention of the three princes.
The story of the three princes involves a piece of deduction about a missing, lame, blind, toothless, camel carrying a pregnant woman, honey and butter. By identifying the particular camel the princes are rewarded by a king and set off on adventures in which they make accidental discoveries due to their undoubted cleverness.
The three princes were from Serendip, the old name for Ceylon or Sri Lanka. Serendipity, meaning the faculty of making happy and unexpected discoveries by accident, comes directly from this tale. Serendipity has been incorporated into other languages: French sérendipicité or sérendipité, and Italian serendipità.
Some argue that the definition should also include the preconditions of intelligence and wisdom for serendipity to truly occur—as in the story of the three princes—or the discovery is merely luck. John Barth wrote in The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor (1991):
You don’t reach Serendip by plotting a course for it.
You have to set out in good faith for elsewhere and lose your bearings serendipitously.
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