Happy New Year! I hope the holiday season was a good one for you, and that you spent it with people you love. I did.

Now it’s Monday the 12th, the day when I told several people I’d be back at work. My body’s back at work, but I don’t know about the rest of me!

Of course, I’m passionate about what I do, so my thoughts are never far from business and online and people and society etc… but I really appreciate how holidays give you the time to think big, without having to react to everything so fast.

Just in case you’re still on holiday, and you’ve got some time to read, here’s what I’ve been writing in the latter half of 2008:

In Idealog I wrote about a brilliant up-and-coming business, YMedia. It’s not the first time I’ve come across this talented duo, and I’m sure it’s not the last!

I’ve reviewed the book Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns in Idealog Magazine and also on iJumpTV.

I also reviewed The Game-Changer: How You Can Drive Revenue and Profit Growth with Innovation in Idealog and on iJumpTV.

And quite a bit earlier in the year, July in fact, I wrote (in Idealog again) about how businesses can gain insight in order to innovate. Much of the inspiration for that article came from Nathan Baird, founder of The Hive. Not surprisingly, I also interviewed him on iJumpTV. Hmmm… I see a theme here.

I also wrote a couple of articles for Startup Magazine, one about targeting a niche market (with a couple of examples) and a column simply introducing social media, which was republished in the NZ Herald.

There’s more to come this year. At the moment I’m doing most of my writing day-to-day on MadYoungThing, followed by some more polished pieces for the iJump blog. Enjoy!

And as always, this isn’t a monologue. I want to hear what you think!

It’s an overview of where the industry’s at, particularly in New Zealand, and gives a few clues as to where it’s going in the future!

Read it online, buy a hard copy from any good bookseller, or subscribe.

Online column: how to podcast – and why.

Marketing education – a special report uncovering how marketers keep up with the play, and whether traditional universities and polytechs have anything to do with it.

Available by subscription or on most newsstands in New Zealand.

Have a read of some of my old articles.

May 2001, NZMarketing Magazine – Marketing Gets Mobile

Nov 2001, NZMarketing Magazine – Champagne Hopes, Beer CV

Sep 2002, NZMarketing Magazine – Tale of the Shopped

March 2003, NZMarketing Magazine – Email Marketing and Privacy

May 2003, NZMarketing Magazine – Why Sales Fail

Nov 2004, NZMarketing Magazine – Logging Into Blogging

March 2005, NZMarketing Magazine -  D Day for the DMA

March 2005, NZMarketing Magazine – Public face of PR

I’ll come back and update this post as I add others.

In the latest Idealog (lucky number 13), I got the chance to explore how to create a company that attracts and retains great staff. I got the chance to interview Larry Summerville, one of the original pioneers behind More FM, and Brent Impey, the current boss of More FM’s parent company MediaWorks. It’s amazing how the culture of More FM has stayed positive, even when the upstart pioneer became part of a large corporate. Brent has a few secrets to that culture in the interview. Well worth reading.

I also got to interview one of the founders of Squiz, an entrant in the EEO Trust Work and Life Awards. This small software development firm has nurtured a culture that’s not just about the latest release. They admit they haven’t done everything right, but the great thing is, they get to learn with their team.

I also got to edit the Creative Showcase section on sustainability, featuring exciting case studies from Matisse Furniture, Warren & Mahoney Architects and a fascinating development in Auckland’s CBD called Rhubarb Lane. Lucky for you, it’s available as a PDF download.

The other articles will eventually be up on the Idealog site, but in the meantime, treat yourself to the real thing – certified sustainable paper and ink, available in a bookstore near you.

In this month’s NZMarketing Magazine I try to boil down and dejargonise the amazing developments in academia in the last few years. Service-dominant logic is the name of a new … well, it’s not even a theory yet, so maybe it’s a concept. So what does it mean?

It means that everything we buy and sell is essentially a service. It’s a pretty simple concept, but our entire commercial infrastructure – from education to business structure to the way we measure the economy – is based on goods.

Many things will need to change, and they’ll take time to change. Best get your copy of NZMarketing now and get a head start on the people who’ve never heard of service dominant logic.

Update: here’s the full story (PDF)

Pick it up and check out the back section first – it’s a new, extended feature called Workshop, where I uncover the secrets of licensing your ideas. It’s a big area, and I’ve tried to make the complex simple, using real-life examples of how companies and individuals have made a whole heap of money by licensing, instead of selling, their intellectual property.

Check out what else is in this issue here. Just quietly, the Creative Showcase (PDF) was also edited by yours truly – but don’t tell anyone!

(Update: Here’s the licensing article online)

Immigration Nation – Simon’s latest Idealog article

Re: Immigration Nation – Simon’s latest Idealog article posted by Eric 3:55 PM, 11 April 2007 NZST Hi,read your article today in a taxicab. Great magazine. Good article.I arrived in NZ two years ago exactly- as a skilled migrant. We (my wife and I) have lived in quite a few countries, the U.S, Sweden, France, Holland and the UK. In addition we have both travelled extensively in business as well as privately. I am sorry to say this about my new country, but the truth is that I have never anywhere experienced the level of exclusion and hostility that I have in New Zealand. It comes through in every aspect of daily life. It is always patiently explained to me that I do not understand this market, and that I have no local knowledge, etc. I am also constantly reminded that I am “foreigner”- as thought I wasn’t already aware. I have been a “foreigner” in all the other countries I have lived and never before been accused of not being capable of understanding the market or the local donsitions. I am often told how “unique and special” NZ is. It is utter bollocks. it is not unique and special in my field at all, and not hard to get ones head around. It is just about 10 years behind most comparable markets, but that doesn’t make it hard to understand. The sad thing about all this is that like most migrants I do love this country. Why migrate to New Zealand ? Well it certainly isn’t for the career prospects. It is not to make money (my salary ehre is about 20% of what I earned in Europe). So, for most skilled migrants we actually come here because we love the country and we really care quite deeply about it. This makes being treated like some piece of shit the cat dragged in even more hurtful and annoying. So much for professional life here. In my private life, I happen to be married to someone of a different ethnicity than mine (I am white European). This has never really been an issue anywhere else in the world were we have lived- it is here though. Here’s some quick stats for you. We lived in Sweden for over ten years and in that time encountered one racial incident. During 11 years in London there was one racial incident. Over seven years in Paris, 2-3. In the first year in New Zealand 5 incidents, two of them directed towards my toddler son, including being called a “halfcast” to his face, and a car attempting to run over my wife and two kids when in their pram with while the passengers shouted racial abuse. Daily at work I hear racist abuse and views being aired openly which any educated person in any other country I have lived in would know would be completely unacceptable, as well as factually incorrect. It is absolutely true, but also scary, that I met more Maori people at my work in London than I do here. I don’t know what the answer is here. I don’t really know why Kiwi’s are like they are when it comes to foreigners- they certainly don’t act this way when abroad. All I know is that I would really like to stay and I would love to keep contributing to the future of this country (I am currently working on a project which is critical to the nation), but I feel that having this constant career disadvantage as being labelled as a “foreigner” is depressing and may make us leave in the end. Maybe the answer is what a friend of mine, a migrant from the UK , proposed yesterday “us foreigners have got to stick together” , he said, “and do business with each other, because the Kiwis will never trust us”. The painful truth about migration, which politicians in almost all countries hesitate to air because they know it would not go down well is: - There is a net profit from migration as the tax revenues from migration in any given country outweigh the cost of migration over time. - All areas of the world currently primarily occupied by people of white European descent need rapid mass migration to pay for the care of its ageing white population. - There are only a couple of areas from which this migration can come if the objective is for migrants to be well educated; North Africa (yes Muslims, shock horror), Southeast Asia, India.

• how are NZ companies doing at customer service? We quiz David Russell and Kiwihost GM Simon Nikoloff
• We quote the only quantitative and qualitative research done on customer satisfaction in NZ
• We look into two exciting new pieces of PhD research, one into respect, the other into customer co-creation (a very exciting trend)

and most important of all…

• what can YOUR business do to improve your customers’ experience?

Don’t settle for last year’s advice. Customer service is a moving target, and this article can help you meet the real needs that customers are expressing today.

Plus check out Simon’s regular online marketing column – where else – online!

Simon wrote an article for the Chinese magazine Film Art, profiling New Zealand’s film industry at a time of explosive growth.

He also penned two pieces for Australian marketing publication B&T, profiles on New Zealand’s television and newspaper advertising markets.

Meanwhile in New Zealand, Simon’s articles continue to find a home in NZ Marketing Magazine, AdMedia, iStart and Idealog.

*I only discovered the other day that Chinese characters are the same for most dialects, even when the pronunciation is different. And yes, I know Australians speak roughly kind of sort of the same English as we New Zillunders, but we do it better – Simon.