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Author: Geoffrey McDonald Bowll

Emotional media: building brand on radio

You’re sitting in your car in peak hour traffic on your way home listening to two idiots talk about ‘crazy things their ex’s have done’. You can’t see them but you know they’ve got heads like dog poo because they’re radio announcers. If they were good-looking they’d be on TV. The only exceptions to this rule are ...

Vodcast: Retailing in tough times

In his latest vodcast, Geoffrey McDonald Bowll, MD of Starship and author of the monthly column Guerrilla Guide in Marketing magazine, interviews Nicolas Georges, operations manager of NQR and Demetrios Carakitsos, business development manager of Ezygas, about retail marketing in tough times. Check it out below ...

Vodcast: Geoffrey Bowll discusses psychographics

In his latest vodcast, Ana Bosnjak interviews Geoffrey McDonald Bowll, MD of Starship and author of the monthly column Guerrilla Guide in Marketing magazine, about psychographics and why people wear many hats. Check it out below now! And stay tuned for his second post coming up in the new year on retail marketing ...

Vodcast: When the fan gets dirty - or what marketers can do when recession looms

In his latest vlog (video + blog = funny word!), Geoffrey tackles the difficult question of what to do when the proverbial hits the fan and recession looms. There's been plenty of talk about the economic climate here in Australia of late, and even with the five major banks passing on the Fed's quarter percent interest ...

Bowll bites back: Geoffrey responds to the AMI

This post is the sixth in a series looking at the AMI. Click below to read the others: What's wrong with the AMI The Great AMI Debate: Round 2 The Stark Reality of the AMI The AMI Bites Back Marketing the Marketers: the UK perspective Bowll Bites Back: Geoffrey responds to the AMI Over the last couple of ...

What’s wrong with the AMI?

This post is the first in a series looking at the AMI. Click below to read the others: What's wrong with the AMI The Great AMI Debate: Round 2 The Stark Reality of the AMI The AMI Bites Back Marketing the Marketers: the UK perspective Bowll bites back: Geoffrey responds to the AMI You can read the full version ...

Do we need marketers?

Where will it end, this constant blurring of the lines between us and them, the smelly public. This blog is further evidence of our fundamental interdependence. We marketers write, they write. Who is they and who is us anymore? We are blending together into a mass of postulating self-connected human genome mass. ...

Guerilla Guide: Managing your marketing career

Geoffrey McDonald Bowll explores the freedom that can exist when marketers own their own business I’m on a boogie board. Crashing into my 11-year-old as he spins around on the wave next me. He banks left then slams into me again. This time my sunglasses fall off and I have to slip into the surf to find them. With ...

Guerilla Guide: Briefing ad agencies

The inimitable Geoffrey Bowll delivers the inside line on briefing ad agencies. I’m sitting in a city café and it ain’t as simple as ‘white with one’ anymore. Skinny cap, soy mocha, skinny soy latte in a mug with the handle facing south. So many variations. People have too much time, too little to do. Here I am ordering ...

Guerrilla Guide: Selecting an agency

The inimitable Geoffrey Bowll delivers the inside line on how to go about selecting a creative agency I’m sitting spinning on my ‘director’s’ chair, drumming my fingers, scheming up something evil I can suggest to a client, to rip more precious lucre from their customers’ plastic accounts. And I’m wondering what lunch ...

Guerrilla Guide: Professional stereotypes

What else could I do? I’m at a Networx function, sipping a beer and chatting with Frank Chamberlin, who also writes for this esteemed publication. We’re talking about the pitfalls of penning a piece without a decent brief, when I notice to my right a woman who is staring at me. Being a well-brought up boy, I put ...

Guerrilla Guide: Direct mail, telemarketing, internet and TV

Shorter ads, punchy promise, weird but memorable taglines, strong website and telemarketers to take calls. You’d be puffin muffins to do it any other way. I’m in the office, it’s 10.03am. Mat walks in, tosses my mail at me, walks on doing the same for the rest of the crew. Some people get half a dozen letters and ...

Guerrilla Guide: E-marketing

Geoffrey McDonald Bowll explores e-marketing and its revolutionary impact upon traditional marketing communication mediums. The wonderful thing about e-marketing is you’re almost never paying for the media itself. It’s this that causes so much angst, so much intrigue, so much bull. And here I am again, sitting up ...

Guerrilla Guide: Pitching to a board

Selling an idea to your bored dad I’m at The Hyatt, all glitz and glamour and ordinary food. It’s a lunch organised by the Australian Institute of Company Directors and there are some 400 of them crammed in. The subject is ‘Marketing and the Role of the Board’ and Sir Rod Carnegie is speaking. He’s about 80, has three ...

Guerrilla Guide: Keeping marketing simple

Geoffrey Bowll explores the success of simplicity to communicate marketing messages and how major corporations such as BMW and Coles have adopted this principle. I’m at Byron Bay. Mecca for the socially aware. Spending a couple of hours with an old mate who has taken every holiday over the past 10 years here. He has ...

more about our blogger

Geoffrey McDonald Bowll

Geoffrey McDonald Bowll (pictured with junior art director) is MD of The Starship, a Melbourne-based ad agency. Besides running mainstream campaigns since 1991, he has conducted hundreds of marketing and advertising research projects for major corporates.

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