Anticipation was huge for this three day seminar series so it was no surprise the queue snaked around the block and competition for the best seats was strong.

For anyone who has seen Brian Cox's portrayal of Robert McKee in the film Adaptation, you could have been mistaken for expecting anger, bile and histrionics. In reality, McKee is hugely entertaining, as well as informative and inspiring. Who knew that watching a guy walk up and down the stage - only rarely resorting to scribblings on an overhead projector - could maintain attention, amuse and engage as McKee does. No word is wasted, no idea unexplored. For any serious writer and/or lover of film, it was incredibly easy to be completely engrossed for three long, cramped twelve hour days. (Sitting in a cinema seat for that long is not recommended, by the way. I think McKee needs to catch up with the times and start a Gold Class version with reclining armchairs and waiter service.)

McKee is certainly opinionated, offer those opinions strongly and without room for argument. He is witheringly honest about the current state of writing; whether novels, plays or films. He is even more devastating when describing the hallmarks of amateur writing. Never patronising or vague, McKee strokes no egos and provides no false hope to those 'writers' looking for the easy formula or justification for their amateurish beliefs. Instead, he shoots down those dreams with well-aimed candour. Some people will never succeed as a writer - better to be told now rather than waste years bugging Hollywood readers with abysmal scripts.

McKee characterises the major difference between professional and amateurs quite simply. Amateurs love everything they've written and find writing a joy. Professionals hate everything they've written and find the process painful and uncomfortable. But that is how it should be - excellence is hard. If writing were so easy to be a joy, there would be nothing remarkable in it. We'd all be turning in Oscar-worthy scripts by the truckload. No - a true writer has to force themselves to the desk to keep going, rewjecting 90% of the pages they produce and still carrying a niggling unsatisfied hatred for the small 10% that forms the final manuscript.

If his intention was to scare off the feint-hearted, he may well have succeeded. After three days of intense analysis and detailed deconstruction, there could be no one left in the auditorium who still harboured beliefs that writing was a fun hobby. Each and every scene, every beat of dialogue, every nuance and plot twist and subtext was shown to be a specific and calculated choice out of hundreds of possible permutations examined and discarded by the writer. There were many in the audience grimmacing as they saw their lovingly-typed scripts mentally disappear in a smoke of realisation.

"Oh my god - my script is crap!" was a common reaction after each two hour session revealed ever more ways a budding writer's story may be, in reality, a mess. I'm certainly not alone here. My scripts were continually turning over in my mind with each new nugget of analysis from McKee. Scenes I once hung onto as my favourite moments suddenly were revealed as painfully inadequate and almost embarrassing.

Fantastically, the weekend was rounded off with a six hour screening of Casablanca - allowing us to stop after each scene and deconstruct the story in minute detail. Although not advisable on a first viewing, most of the audience were already huge fans of the film like myself, and therefore were ready to appreciate how this story is constructed from carefully woven threads of plot and character.

Certainly, the key to developing as a writer is to try, fail, learn and try again. For that reason, we all left on Sunday evening exhausted and cramped, yet better skilled and inspired to work even harder and longer to produce excellence in story.

This week sees Robert McKee deliver his brilliant Story seminar series in Melbourne before bringing the three day screenwriting-fest to Sydney for what is apparently his last visit to Australia. If you are a screenwriter - amateur or otherwise - you will most likely have come across McKee in your readings. Yet the chance to participate in the fuill three day seminar is a chance not to be missed.

The Australian recently interviewed McKee in the build up to his visit and Time Out talked with the Hollywood script 'fixer' on his opinion of recent films like Slumdog Millionaire and Australia.

If you don't know why so many writers swear by McKee and his book Story, watch the following short interview he did with George Stroumboulopoulos.

The Melbourne sessions are now completely sold out. I'm going to be at the Sydney sessions from June 26th to 28th, at the Chauvel Cinema in Paddington, and there are a few tickets left. If you come along, look out for me and say hi in the break and share your thoughts, as I'll be blogging my observations and revelations afterwards.

See you there!

It's here! And now with added arrows! The June edition of the Top Fifty Aussie Blogs on Writing is live and ready for you to enjoy, argue with, marvel at and link to.

There are a few new blogs on the list. Some are very new with only a couple of posts - great to see some fresh bloggers taking a hand so give them encouragement. Some are only new to the list and had I discovered them would have been included before. If there are any blogs on writing or by published writers that you are aware of that aren't included, please drop me a line.

Welcome to:

• The Unutterable Phrase
• Christine Bongers
• About Writing
• Gingatao
• Benjamin Solah, Writer and Revolutionary
• Even in a Little Thing
• Typing Space
• Doing All Write
• Karen Tyrell
• inJenuous.com
• Global Copywriting

Observations and changes

I've also added in some handy up/down arrows signifying how much a blog's position has changed since the last chart. Now you can see who's on the way up and who's in need of a boost to turn them around. There has been some huge movement for some blogs - the biggest jump being William Kostakis leaping 55 places to come in at 51 (sadly, just outside the Top Fifty).

Others, such as Australian Romantic Suspense and Stories are Light have leapt up the chart into the Top Fifty, which is fantastic. And, let's not forget, there's movement at the top of the chart too with a new number one! The Top Ten is home to some pretty strong blogs jostling for position, so it's exciting to see a few shifts in the order.

Some of the big leaps up the chart are down to the blog owner registering their blog with Technorati, enabling an accurate Technorati score. Technorati is free and is one of the biggest central blog directories on the web. By registering, you allow it to track how many other blogs are linking to your articles - a strong indicator of how successful your blog is becoming. If your blog is yet to be registered with Technorati and you are still languishing towards the bottom of the list, I can suggest this may be the best chance you have to see a similar leap in future lists. 

What goes up, must come down

Of course, if a lot of blogs move up, an equal number have to move down. Some may only have slipped a place or two, but some slid quite dramatically. This may be due to a slow down in posting activity. Certainly, there are a handful of blogs on the list that were eliminated for not posting within three months and a handful more very close to that benchmark. A three month window is more than long enough to establish that a blog is 'dead' or not active enough to warrant inclusion. If your blog has languished unloved for a few weeks, maybe now is the time to pay it some attention and add some wonderful gems on writing.

Add the badge

You may want to promote the list or show off your achievement. If so, you can add this badge to your website with the following code.

The link within the badge stays constant as each new update will happen on the same page. If you have a badge linking to an older version of the list, you may want to update it so that it always stays current.

Congratulations and start reading

Of course, the focus of this list is to encourage networking and a greater interaction between Aussie writer/bloggers. I have personally found blogging to be a valuable tool in my writing career and hope more amateur and professional writers will increasingly discover the benefits of marketing themselves in this way.,/p>

If you have any questions about how the list is put together, what all the numbers mean or how you can get your blog added in the next update (due in September), check out the FAQ.

Congratulations to the bloggers who make the Top Fifty, but let's not forget all those rapidly rising up the runner-up list. Maybe we'll see some more radical changes in the next update!

Is marketing unavoidably sexist? I've been motivated to think a great deal about the question of sexism in marketing and advertising this last week following the amount of press Netregistry gained for using two female nurses at this year's CeBIT expo. Were Netregistry perpetuating a sexist image unnecessarily or are stereotypical gender roles unavoidable within marketing when trying to reach a target audience?

There are two issues involved that require separate analysis. Firstly, the concept of 'sex sells', which I will dissect in a future post. Secondly, whether marketing and advertising are to blame for allegedly perpetuating gender stereotyping, which is the subject of this post.

Reaching the target audience

Contrary to what some critics have suggested to me in the past few days, marketing does not have a responsibility for improving societal attitudes or breaking down gender stereotypes. Marketing is responsible to - and paid for - the brand that is attempting to persuade a specific target market with a particular message. Certainly there are ethical guidelines and rules that apply in how this is achieved, but there are also certain realities that dictate how marketing campaigns represent certain groups.

The most obvious example is in the use of housewife advertising. For most household products, gender roles are still quite clearly split along old fashioned lines. The housewife is at home, deals with the kids, cooks, does laundry and cleans; while the husband works, drives cars, watches sport, buys tools and drinks beer. Certainly, some campaigns blur those lines a little, but for every woman in a suit we see, there's another career woman portrayed picking up the kids on the way home and juggling work with the cooking.

Is marketing therefore undeniably sexist? Are all these agencies populated by misogynistic dinosaurs deliberately perpetuating a sexist view of the world in an attempt to keep women in the kitchen?

Well, no actually.

Blaming the Mirror

Marketing agencies are exceptionally careful in how they target and represent people within campaigns. They are certainly not out to deliberately misrepresent gender roles - in fact, to do so would seriously undermine the effectiveness of a campaign. The goal is to reach and achieve cut through with a specific audience - the key demographic most receptive to the message. When advertising snacks for school lunchboxes, marketers know that - even today - the majority of food purchasing decisions are made by the woman in the house. That's not sexist - just statistical fact. Whether that fact is unfortunate, disappointing or lamentable, I leave up to you. But that doesn't change the truth that more women than men look after the household groceries and determine what their children will eat.

Therefore, an advertisement attempts to reach identification with this group. Placing a man in the role of lunchbox preparer would fail to resonate with the majority of people at whom the message is aimed. It would appear artificial to the very people the brand wanted to reach.

The same observation can be applied across all advertising. The vast majority of power tool purchases are by men, so even though it is a gender stereotype to only portray male carpenters, tradesmen and DIY enthusiasts, it is because that stereotype is still the vast majority. Placing a woman in the carpenter role would only allow a tiny proportion of the audience to identify and relate with the character's actions - thereby sending the marketing message to the wrong people.

This is why Lowes Menswear is advertised by footy players, why perfumes are advertised by female celebrities, why Brand Power adverts are fronted by a female presenter.

Although marketing is designed as an influential medium, it is also forced into the role of society's mirror. The influential power is concentrated in the specific marketing message. Everything that backs up the message - the scenario, characters, actions, etc - are designed to create maximum identification with the largest amount of the target demographic. Therefore, these elements need to mirror society and often exaggerate those trends to achieve instant recognition within the few seconds the advertisement, billboard or poster has to make an instant impression. A marketing campaign can not, and should not, muddy the message by mixing in idealistic agendas, unless this is the campaign brief.

Ideology

The theory of cultural ideology is that media reflects the ideas and beliefs of society. To take some broad examples, there were many films focussed on nuclear war during the 1980's due to the extreme nature of the Cold War at that time. Once the Berlin Wall came down, the Russian's were no longer portrayed as the bad guys and nuclear plots decreased. After 9/11, more villains were portrayed as coming from the Middle East. In recent years, there is a growth in corporate villains in popular culture, reflecting society's growing distrust in big business.

Ideology is about far more than where the villains come from in James Bond thrillers. Every aspect of our society represented in our media, stories, art and advertising is influenced by the state of the world at the time of it's creation. This is where we come to the chicken and egg situation.

As media can - supposedly - influence society (as the critics insist) and society cannot help but influence media, there is a complex and continual looping of ideology. Deciding that a new television drama will featurea 50/50 split across gender roles - male nurses and female carpenters - may seem novel and striking a blow for gender equality, but it would most likely have very little effect on society as a whole and may find that it fails to find an audience willing to buy into the fiction. The world doesn't feel like ours.

Ideology, therefore, shifts very slowly - as does society. It doesn't like being shoved in a particular direction, because artificiality stands out and is often rejected by the audience as false - even if it represents a higher ideal.

Marketing will continue to represent the genders in the same way it always has and will only gradually shift to equality if genuine statistics show the same is happening to society.

On Sunday, Shelley and I were driving back home down the Parramatta Road when a billboard caught my eye. The creative was a striking photographic image of two male faces - one caucasian in appearance and one indigenous. The headline above read "Which of these men is unemployed?" In the few seconds I had as our car zoomed past, I looked for the tagline that would complete the message and provide the necessary context. Who's campaign was this? What was the answer to the question? More importantly, what idea or action was I supposed to take away from the sign?

In the bottom right corner of the billboard, away from the road and barely visible from the car, was a single line in a small white font.

For the rest of the journey home, I found myself wondering what I had just missed, but also - more importantly - which marketing genius thought a person in a moving car with approximately three to five seconds of reading time (if you are lucky) could read a tiny line of text that seemed to have been placed more for the convenience of the pigeons on the surrounding roof tops.

I was so incensed by this complete billboard failure, I performed a Google search for the headline phrase - and up popped the campaign. Turns out the tiny tagline read "We're hoping you couldn't answer that," followed by the website address reconciliation.org.au. I couldn't find an image of the 'unemployed' campaign to illustrate here, but another in the series suffers from the same problem, reproduced below.

Before I continue, I need to point out that I fully support the aims of this campaign, designed to promote Reconciliation Week 2009. There is still a deep divide between new and indigenous Australians and campaigns like this one are terribly important in moving community attitudes to a more harmonious society.

But the noble aims of a campaign brief shouldn't protect a campaign from criticism when it drops the ball as badly as I think this one did.

Epic billboard fail

The obvious problem with the creative design for this campaign is that the closing argument is completely lost and unreadable on most roadside billboards - leaving the confronting question in the viewer's mind without the context or clarification needed. How many people would see the question and the faces and leap to the very thought the campaign is trying to argue against without ever being confronted with the point of the campaign? Remember, a campaign like this isn't about preaching to the converted - those of us who get the point without the clarification. There is no value in getting those of us without prejudice to agree that prejudice is bad. The target audience are those people who do make snap judgments based on skin colour or background - the very people most likely to reach the wrong conclusion without the benefit of the tagline.

I don't know how many of these billboards are out there. The campaign has a series of such images (presumably on billboards) and is backing it up with a website and online resources. Whether all the billboard placements are equally as bad or whether a better position makes the tagline clearly visible I can't comment on - but in designing a billboard and buying roadside placements, the agency responsible has overestimated the ability of motorists to engage with their content.

The effect is that the billboard can actually create and promote prejudiced thoughts rather than exposing and reducing them.

Offending you for your own good!

Another confronting advert that used shock tactics to attempt to change perceptions is currently available at www.antiprejudice.net. This entry into The Gruen Transfer pitch segment - where two agencies create competing adverts to fit an unlikely or ridiculous brief - was censored from broadcast by the ABC on the grounds that it may offend some viewers. This particular brief was to create pride amongst overweight people and end shape discrimination. Whereas the first ad took a humorous angle - as most pitch entries do - the second, by The Foundry Agency, took a particularly serious and confronting approach to the issue of shape discrimination. Thankfully, the producers placed the advert - and the ensuing panel discussion which is highly worth watching - on the net for interested viewers to make up their own mind on a sticky topic.

Warning: may offend.

I'm not going to discuss whether the ABC should have censored the advert or not. That topic has been ably discussed elsewhere on blogs including Mumbrella and Media Hunter. What I do want to use this advert to illustrate is how using prejudice to fight prejudice can seriously backfire. Whether I think this advert works or not is immaterial. The issue is whether it would work with the target audience - and that I have a problem with.

Many commentators believe this is an effective advert and have defended it from claims that it misses the mark. But, as Todd Sampson on the panel pointed out, this campaign also risks losing the audience by offending them so strongly before they reach the all-important tagline. How many people would be so offended by the first few jokes that they would either have switched over or plunged into a rage before the final line is thrown to give it all context? How many of those viewers who actually do tell those sorts of jokes (and they are definitely out there) would actually see this as a source of new material for down the pub, furthering prejudice against other highly sensitive targets instead of lessening it against overweight people? How many people will really equate a 'fat chick' joke with the others and how many will see them as inherently different? The first three jokes do far more than insult a minority group; the 'fat chick' joke doesn't advocate violence or genocide against overweight people. Can a joke about beer goggles really be held in the same class of offense as a joke about the Holocaust?

Shock value can be a powerful tool to get a point across but there are other factors to consider. There is a crucial element missing in deciding the success or failure of an advert like this - placement. Who is the audience for this advert? How do you find the audience who a) won't be offended by the previous jokes so greatly that they miss the final issue and b) are offended enough by the first three jokes to see the irony in the fourth? It's a very fine line to draw between failure on one side and actually causing the offense the ad seeks to lessen on the other. Just maybe the right ad placement could find that line. Maybe the right placement was as a discussion point on The Gruen Factor and would achieve it's best cut through by being discussed in this way across the web.

In the real world, campaigns like this don't have the luxury of The Gruen Transfer to close the concept circle for the audience. The agency behind the Reconciliation advert don't have the opportunity to come into my living room and explain how the billboard was put together and how I really should interpret the campaign.

In both cases, these campaigns designed to reduce prejudice, risk inflaming just that by placing the most controversial message up front and burying the true message in small type or in the final frame. One buried the message through poor billboard placement and terrible font size - the other buried the message (ironically) by pushing the prejudice issue too hard so that it overwhelms the viewer. The anti-prejudice message is simply not delivered with anything approaching the same punch and power as the offensive discrimination message.

That can only be classed an epic fail.

I am completely incapable of watching a movie like a normal person. Years of learning structure and writing scripts in the hope of becoming the next William Goldman have distorted my brain into an analytical, critical mess, completely unable to switch off the deconstruction of even the most banal flick.

Continually, my eye catches the clock on the DVD player, timing the beats, identifying the Act changes and turning points and mentally pinning plot beats on little cards to the corkboard in my mind. "Six minutes in, that piece of dialogue must be a statement of the movie's theme." "Twenty minutes in, the major turning point signals the end of Act One." "Twenty five minutes in; here comes the love interest," etc, etc. Each minute equates to a hypothetical page of script, gradually rebuilding a mental version of the screenplay and analysing it from all angles.

Almost any film can be broken down in this way, matching beat-for-beat the structure, timings and plot developments used by screenwriters ever since the first lens cap was taken off in Hollywood. In fact, almost all successful films can be fitted within Blake Snyder's simple 15 point beat sheet from his book Save the Cat. But, for 99.9% of the audience, the structure is invisible; mere scaffolding beneath the outer walls. To those of us who work with and understand scaffolding though, we can spot the signs as clearly as if a subtitle had just popped up shouting "This action scene is the mid-point reverse - you're half way through Act Two".

This analytical nature means that every movie watched is a lesson in writing. I can't help but focus on how the script was put together. Yes, I have found myself distracted from what is happening within a scene as I try to guess how a particular moment was worded on the page. I miss dialogue, fretting over whether a stylistic device owes more to the screenwriter or the director taking artistic license.

Yes, it's sad. It can mean I sometimes don't enjoy a film as much as I would like. I can certainly still tell a good film from a bad one - I know what I like - but I sometimes miss the totally immersive nature of a good film. Even in the cinema, I catch myself glancing at my watch; not because the film is boring, but just to confirm my suspicions as to where the beats fit within the structure. I just can't switch my brain off and constantly seem to have one piece of grey matter on the story and one piece on the writing.

Next month, I'll be trapped with a roomful of similar film structure addicts for three days for Robert McKee's Story seminar weekend (find out more). In that room, there is no such thing as padding, there is no such thing as a plotless film or a structureless one, and every story can be deconstructed to reveal the scaffolding.

For three days, I'll be surrounded by people who also can't watch a film like a normal person. They will all know the obsession that comes with analysing story structure. I'm not alone in my compulsive behaviour!

If one thing is true about marketing, it's that it can be unpredictable. One truism that was drummed into us in the various social media panels at CeBIT 2009 is that you can't plan to go viral, you can't predict a hit and you can't control human behaviour. Makes my job as a marketer more interesting!

Nowhere else was this more evident than in the online reaction to the Netregistry stand at this year's CeBIT. (Read the Netregistry blog). Depending on who you listen to, we in the marketing department are either creative genius' or denegrators of women who should be flogged. What seemed such a simple idea has divided commentators and resulted in national press coverage on news.com.au.

View the stand

The day started positively with popular Crikey journo and prolific Twitterer Stigherrian commenting on the "naughty nurses". The ensuing Tweets from (predominantly male) CeBIT attendees, agreeing with Stilgherrian or asking for more information or pics, prompted Pia Waugh to tweet...

Suddenly, the mood changed. Pia's comment was retweeted around the web and others added their voices.

The Twitter Effect

We know how effective Twitter is at disseminating information and content. In this case, the idea that Netregistry had a couple of women dressed as nurses was fed through a filter of chinese whispers so that others who weren't even in attendance at the expo began commenting. It wasn't long before the 'Netregistry naughty nurses' were frequently being described as 'scantily clad' and 'sleezy' and that Netregistry was using sex to sell products by those who had not seen the stand or the pretty well covered up nurses.

In contrast, the vast majority of those who did attend the stand had nothing to complain about. We were continually complimented on the creative and humourous approach we had taken to a boring topic and quite a few people made a point of coming to the stand because of this. As a result, we obtained more leads and generated more immediate sales than we ever expected - and before you ask, from both male and female business people.

But the Twitter stream is an unstoppable beast when it gets going. All mention of the medical theme, of the doctors and other staff, of the wider creative campaign, were forgotten on Twitter. It isn't surprising that those outside the event who saw these tweets interpreted a far different image than was the reality.

The 'Twitter uproar' resulted in a couple of online IT stories on TechWired and ZDNet and most CeBIT coverage led with the controversial Netregistry stand. Thankfully, the majority of comments responding to these stories were broadly supportive of the stand, of Netregistry and of our marketing. Some typical responses appeared on the various stories.

Well obviously the marketing worked; before today I'd never heard of netregistry - now I have.

I am a female in the IT industry .. and I am not in the least bit offended. Some women need to get a life and stop with this victim mentality.

With all the fuss they created by doing that, I just registered 5 domain names with them and I never heard of them before! Good marketing!

Of course, not all comments were supportive, but the vast majority were, and praised the marketing that managed to get national coverage out of a small stand in a busy expo. Yet, that would be to give us credit when there was no way we could have predicted this media reaction.

Dressed down for dressing up

There is a distinct irony here. The Netregistry stand was not the only one to have attractive women fronting it. Various stands had promo girls in hot pants and tight singlets, pouting and flirting with passers-by. Yet none of the uproar was ever directed at these stands - no tweets complaining of shabby brands or sleezy tactics. Therefore, we can only conclude that the issue was that we used nurse costumes, not the use of women on our stand - booth babes as some derogatorily call them. This point really interests me, especially as we had taken great pains to find nurse costumes that were not of the - ahem, bedroom variety. The girls also wore leggings under their costumes so as not to show too much flesh, as we were so concerned with the 'booth babe' tag.

But all our precautions failed as the mere suggestion of dressing as a nurse was enough to have us pilloried as sexist, mysoginist neanderthals by some.

Let's analyse this for a moment. One of our rejected ideas was to use a 'superhero' motif. (yeah, yeah, bad idea - that's why we rejected it). But think about what would happen if we had a Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman on the stand? Would we be accused of using sex and denegrating women because we dressed someone in a Wonder Woman outfit - all lycra and short briefs and gold brassiere? After the last three days, I'm begining to think that yes, we would, despite the broader theme and the blokes in related costume. I could argue that the blame should lie with the original creators of Wonder Woman, but that's not the only character, and nurses not the only industry or dress-up concept that has become fetishised and associated with sex and/or sexism.

Does this mean that costumes are out? Creative ideas too dangerous? Women dressing up completely off-limits? I would like to think not. I would like to think people have enough intelligence to know when someone is dressing up as a nurse as part of a medical theme and when they are dressing as a nurse specifically to be fetishised or titillating. Maybe I'm wrong for thinking so.

Gender Stereotyping

Given the outcry, one of the claims aimed at me this last three days has been gender stereotyping. Why are all the men doctors and the women nurses? Many of the commentators missed that we also had two male nurses dressed in green scrubs, but because they weren't controversial they weren't discussed and became forgotten in the Chinese whispers. It's not like we could put two blokes into the same nurse costumes we had for the women; you go to a shop and ask for scrubs, which is exactly what we did.

So, you ask, why weren't the female nurses in scrubs too? Marketing is often required to present an instantly recognisable concept. When people think 'nurse' they think of a costume similar to what we used. So we did. Just as we put our doctors in white coats and plastic stethoscopes, not because that's the reality but because that is what people expect to see.

Therefore, by presenting what people would expect to see in order to convey the theme, it could be argued that we bought into and further contributed to that same gender stereotyping.

There is no doubt that gender stereotyping is an issue, but it is still rife throughout media and marketing. That isn't to excuse our stand (as I don't particularly feel it needs excusing), but to explain how gender stereotyping is still a commonly used shorthand to achieve a fast message. In TV commercials, business people are still predominantly men - particularly if they are either bumbling or corrupt. Housewife ads still proliferate, despite the shift in men sharing more household duties and women now more commonly having careers. The marketing shorthand remains. Yes, it's lazy and yes, it's unfortunate but, on a certain level, it's understandable when conveying a specific marketing message in an easily recognisable way. What is interesting is that the male nurses were ignored, demonstrating that the high recognition of a female nurse outweighs the low recognition of a male nurse in scrubs, suggesting public perception still contributes greatly to this stereotyping in a feedback loop of attitudes.

Our two doctors were members of our sales team. Sadly it was mere bad luck that, for the first time since I started with Netregistry, we don't have a woman working in our sales department. Therefore, our gender stereotyping was complete in the eyes of our critics, even if it did come about more by chance than design.

The terrors of timing

I had a long and interesting chat with Kate Carruthers of Silicon Federation about what was evolving into a very interesting marketing case study. She raised the interesting point that on the eve of the expo, ABC's Four Corners program had broadcast a highly controversial and publicised documentary that revealed wide-spread and shocking allegations of rape, group sex and female abuse within Australian football. The program received wide-spread coverage and resulted in major reputations turning to mud overnight.

The community outrage following the program was what would have been on people's minds as they entered CeBIT. Righteous indignation is a powerful thing. Once your gander is up, it doesn't take much to keep it there. It could well be that the unfortunate timing of this program, hours before our stand opened to the public, coloured the perception of some people on hearing we had dressed two attractive women up as nurses. Could we ever have predicted such a thing? Probably not. Public perceptions can move, shift and change at incredible speed and the zeitgeist is beyond anyone's control. With the current zeitgeist being highly critical of, and immensely sensitive to, any misreperesentations (perceived or otherwise) of women, we may well have been victim to bad luck.

Or were we?

Do the ends justify the means?

The naysayers will hate me for saying this, but our stand was the most successful strategy we have ever carried out - and definitely owes a lot of that success to the media coverage following the criticisms. I'm not normally a subscriber to the adage 'there's no such thing as bad publicity', yet there is no doubt the brand saw real value in reaching the front page of News.com.au and various other websites. Netregistry had the most talked about stand at CeBIT. The name has reached new people who may never have otherwise heard of us. Sales have been generated as a result. The amount of press we have received would have cost us thousands if we had used normal PR channels, but instead we rode a rollercoaster of free publicity for three days and came out the other end relatively unscathed but incredibly better off.

I'm also not a fan of 'the ends justify the means' argument that some marketers put forward when they release controversial campaigns. There is no doubt my bosses are hugely impressed with the result and the handling of the coverage. Goals achieved and smashed, brand recognition raised - job done. Sure, I could sit back and cast off all critics with the knowledge that Netregistry is extremely happy, but I would like to think I have a little more consideration for how goals are achieved. The explosion of coverage of the last three days was certainly not planned, was pretty stressful and was definitely outside of our control for the most part. If we had planned this, it wouldn't have happened - you can't predict the zeitgeist. But even if we had intended a PR explosion, it is a risky proposition to court criticism. I don't recommend it.

A couple of days ago, I posted my thoughts on why Twitter isn't the catch-all ultimate social network some marketers and the media would have us believe. Twitter just isn't for everyone.

Of course, there is way more to say on the topic, especially when it comes to "follow you, follow me" behaviour, as was raised in the comments. I was going to produce a detailed answer to the question of whether mass-following Twitter users is a good or bad idea, but there is no way my post could come close to bettering the excellent article - Twitter Marketing: Why You Don’t Need to Mass Follow Users - by Dosh Dosh (follow).

"It’s not about the follower count, its about conversions. A carefully cultivated list of 1000 followers can beat a list of 10,000 twitter followers anytime when it comes to spreading content or getting traffic/sales. A social media strategy that only involves mass following all sorts of people and shooting out links in order to hook buyers or readers is quite inadequate."

I couldn't have said it myself, so I didn't.

It is true that, particularly among new Twitter users, there is a belief that following people back who follow you is simply good manners - "Twitter etiquette". But it won't be long before your Twitter stream becomes choked and diluted with irrelevance, spam and inanity. Suddenly, finding the quality tweets of relevance to you is like panning for gold dust in a fast-moving stream of trivia and spam.

I do still follow some people in the hope that they'll follow me back, but only those who have a strong chance of contributing to the 'hive mind' of my Twitter stream. I might follow other Australian writers or marketing bloggers or perform a search for those people who regularly retweet my content. I sometimes use Tweepsearch to find those Twitter users most likely to be of direct interest to me and with whom I would benefit from networking. Not all follow me back, but those that do are far more valuable to me - and, hopefully, I to them.

Everyday, I receive a large number of new Twitter followers. Most don't get followed back. Those accounts most likely to be ignored include those;

• with less than one or two tweets. Not giving me much to go one, are you.
• without a bio. Why should I follow you if I don't know who you are?
  
• without an avatar. If you can't be bothered to upload an avatar to improve your Twitter account, I'm not expecting quality tweets.
• that promises to make me money, claims to be an online entrepreneur, contains dollar signs in the avatar, or otherwise indicates that I am a 'prospect' rather than a contemporary.
• where the update history indicates that they very rarely reply to others or interact with the @ symbol and merely tweet one-sided posts promoting themselves or their business.
• that predominantly post in another language. Yeah, why are you following me? You can't even understand me!
  
• that regularly put out tweets offering a sure-fire way to be big on Twitter. I don't need your help.
• where they have clearly followed the maximum 1000 people Twitter allows each day and has only just opened the account. If following to the limit was the first action you took on Twitter, rather than engaging in conversation or tweeting, then I already know where your priorities are.
  
• where they can't even spell their username correctly. I swear, I was followed by an account called "weath_builder" or something similar the other day. You're not going to build much "weath" that way and you certainly won't convince me that you can help me make money.
  

In short, treat users like genuine people and not just numbers to pump up your stats. No one is impressed by follow numbers these days. Sure, you may have 25,000 followers, but that only says that you can click 'follow' enough times to trigger enough automated 'follow-back' systems or enough newbies being polite. It just isn't that hard anymore. Far better to work on improving your influence score with Twitalyzer or - even better - not worrying about stats altogether and simply working on providing and sharing good content with those people that matter.

Believe it or not, simply focussing on providing quality tweets is still the best way to build active, valuable followers.