Wednesday, 15 December 2010

Baby Hockley

After the longest birth in history (it took 19 years according to Craig Hockley), at 10PM Monday night baby Hugh James Hockley came into this world.

Like all clickDM babies, little Hugh was given his first bath, an iPad and a facebook page.

On behalf of THE DM GROUP, congratulations to Craig and his wife Susanne.

We look forward to seeing the future of digital marketing.

Friday, 3 December 2010

We’ll party rain, hail or shine

Melbourne sure knows how to put on a good weather display and yesterday was no different with THE DM GROUP encountering four seasons in one day for our Christmas party.

 It was not looking promising leaving the city for the Elwood Croquet Club but sure enough by the time everyone arrived the sun had come out and provided nearly 3 hours of perfect weather to play a few “friendly” games of croquet. Craig Hockley and Jesse Steinfort emerged as favourites with competitive egos to match.

We then ate a delicious gourmet BBQ lunch and opened Kris Kringle presents from the safe confines of the marquee as the heavens opened up with a torrential downpour of epic proportions.

By the time dessert and tea were served, the sun was out again so we could get in a few final matches.

Naturally we kicked on for a “few” drinks at the Windsor Castle and this is where the details become sketchy but by all accounts and judging by the subdued mood today a fun day and night was had by all!

Wednesday, 13 October 2010

Going gaga for Gaga!

Love her or hate her (we mean you Craig!) Lady Gaga is leading the social media wave with over 20 million Facebook friends (Barack Obama has a measly 14 million friends).

People in this office average 200 Facebook friends so imagine the pressure of updating your status knowing that 20,124,040 fans will not only see it but most likely comment or ‘Like’. A recent status update was ‘Liked’ 39,522 times with 6923 comments. And this all happened within hours of being posted!

This constant attention and continued popularity allows her to not only publicise upcoming tour dates and increase music and merchandise sales but push her political agenda. Using social media Lady Gaga has received overwhelming support for her fight to abolish the ‘Don’t ask, Don’t tell’ law. Her message is probably reaching more people via Facebook than traditional political forums.

Thursday, 30 September 2010

The hidden side of everything

Suicide bombers should buy life insurance. Revered sumo wrestlers engage in match fixing. Great doctors have higher mortality rates than mediocre ones.

On first glance, these facts don’t make much sense. The data behind these statements however, tells a very different story.  Freakonomics and the sequel Superfreakonomics do an amazing job of explaining how, sometimes, counterintuitive thinking is the best kind of thinking.

At THE DM GROUP, we think the most exciting part of our job is to find the strongest market insight we can for our clients, and then do our best to exploit that insight throughout all of our communications.

After reading both books, Craig Hockley, Stephen Flewell-Smith and Brandon Clark each have another way of understanding the challenges facing our clients and a real thirst for understanding why things happen the way they do. They may well ask more questions and chase down more data but in doing so, aim to deliver much more exciting insights to base your strategy on.

Give them a call to talk about uncovering the hidden side of your marketing efforts or, if like them, you’re just looking forward to the Superfreakonomics movie and just want someone to take you!

Wednesday, 29 September 2010

Take him back!

Recently digital planning director Craig Hockley has moved into the Account Service area, away from the scary dark hole we call clickDM.

But Craig found out the hard way that you dont mess with office manager Georgia Rudin, who is now his closest neighbor.

While taping very important boxes to be sent to very important places, Craig asked if Georgia could “tape quieter”.

The comment was not appreciated.

So naturally Georgia taped him to the chair and wheeled him back to where he came from.

Needless to say, Craig now chooses his words carefully.