As we have already established, the SMS has been a wildly successful exercise in creating “perceived value” of a service in the eyes of the bogan, while not actually costing the phone companies a damn thing. This magical cash fabrication process is commonly referred to as marketing genius. Not content to only exploit the bogan in this way, telecommunications overlords realised that this rort could be taken so, so much further.
A marketing manager for a digital media company was walking through a megamall one day, and was struck by the amount of loitering teenaged bogan clusters. Being a marketer, he wanted to know what they were up to. Sidling past groups of them at a distance close enough to hear, but not so close as to be labeled a sex offender, he listened to their verbalisations.
“Ha suck shit, your phone has the shittest ringtones ay”…
“Oh totally, like, I wonder if he’s my perfect match or not. Ohmygod.”…
“As if anyone even knows the answer to that hard question, fag”
The marketing manager, who was previously walking on a tiled foodcourt floor, felt his feet leave the ground. Soon he was walking through the clouds, and the clouds were lined with other littler clouds, which were in turn lined with millions and millions of $5 notes. He rushed back to the office to tell his boss. “I think we can make bogans pay for ANYTHING over the phone”. “What?” said the suspicious employer. “Well, we can make a random number generator from two lines of computer coding, and sell each random number to bogans thousands of times for $5 as a love match calculator. Then we can pay a music student $200 to make a gimmicky 10 second tune, and sell it to 50,000 bogans for $5 each as a ringtone. Then we can pay a uni student to provide inane and vague answers to the bogan’s inane and vague questions about its life for $3.50 per message, about 5 times per day. Then we’ll just spam them with ‘opt out’ stuff that they have to pay for each time.” “Commence your evil ploy at once”, said the boss.
And he did. Twelve months later, our ambitious young marketing executive was driving a Porsche, luring bogan females with his new bling. Meanwhile, phone bills for thousands of dollars were landing in bogan letterboxes nationwide. Bogan parents were outraged, complaining en masse to Today Tonight about their kids getting ripped off, and nodding approvingly at the resulting story from their interest free lounge suite. In a moment of despair, the same bogan teen cluster observed in the shopping centre consulted their favourite $3.50 per message “answer any question” service: “Dear Bongo, how r me n Tyleesha going 2 afford 2 pay our bills this month lol?!?”
Things Bogans Like 
(LINK)?
Bloody hell you guys are quick. Cheers! TBL
Oh, and a fine article also folks. I’ve never been able to understand this phenomenon.
Has anyone actually heard a reason from a Bogan as to why they actually do this stuff?
Clearly the marketing folks deserve their Porsches. They are a lot smarter than I am.
the more i read this site, the more i wish i got into marketting/advertising. what an unbelievable goldmine the teenage (and sadly, sometimes adult!) bogan is. in terms of dollars and sense (ha!), the bogan is there to be fleeced…
But could you live with yourself if you were in marketing/advertising?
It’s basically the occupation for people who weren’t smart enough for law/med school and not limp-wristed enough for art school and they have little talent or drive for anything other than stating the obvious.
It is a relatively lowly paid (compared to bankers) job for barely educated bogans that went to uni instead of completing a trade
Where do you come up with this dribble?
You’re in for a rude shock if you ever enter the corporate arena.
I’m in the corporate arena
There’s even a hint as to which arena
Well, it seems you have no excuse for your ignorance.
Are you hinting that you are in the finance sector? In my opinion, if there is a group of people with a more unjustified sense of slef-worth than those in marketing, it has to be the cowboys in finance.
Here is a hint for you; marketing is far more than advertising. It has become integral to almost every decision in business and people in the upper echelon of that field are paid accordingly.
As the dearly departed Bill Hicks once asked of his audience;
“Who of you here tonight works in advertising or marketing?”
**sniggers and a couple of ‘yeahs’ from the audience**
“Kill yourselves”.
I concur with that assessment.
No better than hairdressers, nail technicians or people that have a higher understanding of The Classics.
Bill then went on with a long piece regarding sucking satans cock etc etc and the world seemed…right? Only for a bit until some fat tard nearly hit me in a black shiny SUV/Box that had MRKET as the numberplate…..
Advertising/Marketing is MGABGAN.
FLSTOP.
The word you’re searching in vain for is ‘drivel.’ English is such a difficult language, isn’t it?
“It is a relatively lowly paid (compared to bankers) job for barely educated bogans that went to uni instead of completing a trade”
Is that why they clearly know their market so well?
From the Simpsons (IIRC)
Q: How do sleep at night?
A: On top of a pile of money, with many beautiful ladies.
I should only have to mention one name; Don Drapper.
I would rather be his character than Doctor House thank you very much!
That is quite possibly the biggest load of shit I have read from anyone on this blog Tubesteak.
I also disagree, people in marketing/advertising jn the high-end of the industry anyway are pretty genius (and your kidding yourself if you don’t think you’ve ever succumbed to the results of their genius). The low end of the industry on the other hand…well its a bit tacky yes. I don’t understand why every proffession is compared to law/medicine, is it such a shock that perhaps everyone doesn’t want to be a doctor or lawyer? (despite them and their dramas owning my tv every night).
I didn’t work my ass off at my HSC and then for 3 years at uni to get into Graphic Design (does that mean I have a limp wrist as well as a lack of intelligence?) only to be called a “barely educated bogan”.
Bogans who don’t choose to learn a trade work in call centres or excell in some sort of sport.
Pitching crap at low-hanging fruit and occasionally getting it right is not genius.
If that is your concept of “genius” then I pity you
all the possessions you own you bought because of advertising, not because of an independant/free thought that you had, its because advertising made that item desirable and then you wanted it, if you weren’t a victim of advertising you would only buy what you need..which is very little.
So everything you own that you love e.g mp3 player, tv, food, furniture, car etc advertising manipulated you to select that particular item to purchase, if you really think that people in the advertising industry are dumb-asses in cushy jobs then why are they able to have so much control over an truly intellectual genius such as yourself?.
Don’t kid yourself, the only way your argument could have footing is if you lived off unpackaged foods, knitted your own clothes, rode a horse to work and entertained yourself by playing the lute
…but then again advertising would have a role to play in what brand of wool you bought
I’m wondering if you consider listing a price and consumer information (e.g. Ingredients, material, features etc.) to be advertising. I like to think I have a high resistance to advertising but before I buy something, I like to know what I’m buying.
yes all parts of packaging design is marketing/advertising…a very important part actually
This type of information is usually due to legal requirements. Without government intervention here (btw – much more intervention is still required in this area) marketeers would still be telling us that ciggys and burgers are healthy.
Yes there are some amazing marketing minds out there.
Unfortunately they practise a black art of manipulation and trickery, which the lower end of town are especially vulnerable to.
A friend of mine is a marketing executive, his biggest client is a casino. He manages a team who together devise plans that will strip pensioners, addicts and stupid people of as much money as possible. He has a friend who is in charge of marketing for a large fast food franchise. His team tries to trick as many fat bastards as they can into eating massive burgers.
Jo – did I buy a mobile phone because I succumbed to marketing? No I bought a mobile phone because it is a convenient technology. Ditto for everything else that I buy.
Sure marketeers prise money from the conformists and the stupid who must have the latest iPhone, Nike Air Max, LVMH product, etc, but I think you are giving them far too much credit above.
In addition they encourage wasteful consumption, leading to pollution, lard arses and glassed cunts.
Scum of the earth.
When you chose what brand to buy, what colour, handset style etc advertising played a part in that choice. The discussion is about the generalised statement Tubesteak made that everyone in advertising/marketing are unintelligent. I don’t think you’ll find anyone who will disagree that a lot of the advertising industry is evil, but that only goes to further my (and many other poster’s) point that advertising and marketing quite often requires a substantial level of genius, criminal mastermind if you will.
maybe that’s true for you, but for me it was based on features, reliablity and price. I still use an old Nokia 1110 because its compact, light, tough and has a screen I can actually read outside in full daylight (unlike many of the thousand dollar units). I want a phone to be a phone, I have a laptop and a PDA. Combining them is to me senseless as without a bluetooth headset (more problems) I can’t really access my diary or my notes while I’m talking … a common need.
but you rightly point out that many are indeed victims of advertising. It seems only us Gen-X people seem to grasp this and the boomers and the Y’s just seem to be prey
Tubesteak, this may come as a shock, but advertisers do not solely pitch their products at impressionable bogans. Only a small proportion of the population (albeit a very vocal one) are actually bogans (or nouveau bogue’s)
So that means that advertisers have to be clever in the way they target ‘normal’ people, who are much more intelligent and discerning than the lowest common denominator targeted by premium SMS services.
And some of their methods are actually quite genius…
Your assessment of marketing is a bit simplistic.
Yes there are geniuses in Marketing. You probably won’t notice them, for they will have you buying stuff and doing things without you being aware of the fact that you are being subtly manipulated.
There is both an art and a science. I recently sat through a lecture from a Marketing PhD from the University of Cambridge, and it was one of the more interesting and insightful lectures I’ve experienced of late. Essentially it is psychology (or perhaps headology) and there is space for both education and genius. You’d be amazed the stuff that these folks know about people and how they behave – most people (both you and me included) are less in control of our decisions than we believe.
Remember also that not all marketing targets bogans.
I say this as an engineering type – a group of people that have a reputation for despising marketers…
Plenty of the criticism leveled at marketers is valid. The author of this particular post doesn’t have a PhD in Marketing, but he does have a Master’s in it. One of the more noble (and therefore secondary) aims of this blog is to the improve the critical analysis skills of consumers, so that they can better filter out marketing messages that work against their best interests. TBL
Masters isn’t possessive? Or is it?????
It is a degree held by a Master, so yes it is.
As someone who did graphic design and now is studying medicine, I hate to break it to you, but yeah, you are barely educated.
Not necessarily a bogan though :).
you chose to move from graphic design to medecine, having not finished a degree in graphic design, or worked in the industry I don’t think your opinion counts for much, also way to play into the “I’m a holier-than-thou medical student” sterotype
*stereotype
* medicine
(I wouldn’t want to be berated by the high and mighty medical student for my typo’s)
marketing/advertising/salesman,a most undignified vocation,top-line echelon of the parasite class but they do sleep well at night!-sociopaths incoporated
i also love how the ‘premium sms’ is written in that lobotomised sms speak too. “if u want 2 cancel sbscptn, txt 123 2 10010101010”; they CLEARLY know their target market!!!
one last message, if anyone has had the (mis)fortune to either teach high school kids or be stuck on a bus/train with them after/before school, you’ll know how much of a security blanket it is for them. they’re a gaggle of geese with their phone. they can’t function without it! it’s so sad, a whole group of kids, all together, looking at their phones in isolation. what’s even sadder is what these people turn into when they get to their twenties. i’d love to see ‘heathers’ (late 80s highschool movie with christian slater) remade for the mobile phone generation…
omygod. like, so true. and then i was like, a lot of them are, like, so already in their twenties. and then she was like, omygod.
I am going to crack the next person who uses like more than once in a sentence and out of context!!
I hate to say it Simon, but it’s destined to say. The first time I heard it used in that way was the early 80s from the Zappa song ‘Valley Girl’
Near 30 years and it’s still going strong… like, you know.
How many years until bogan is listed under gullible in the thesaurus?
The quizes with questions like: “What is the capital of France: Sydney, Paris, or New York?” crack me up.
No doubt, the young bogue answers believing it’ll be “easy as, bra” and under the belief that they’ll win a PS3, only to get done by a question later on and wind up spending more in texts and cancellation fees than he would on the machine in the first place.
Caveat emptor. Though I suspect the only Latin the average bogue knows is something like Eythay ippedray emay offway eythay idday!
You’re kidding yourself if you think a bogan even knows Pig Latin!
haha, true that.
Great post TBL. @hindustan – I think you need to be able to spell marketing before you can get into it 🙂 Reminds of the Simpsons episode where Homer starts reading an advanced marketing book, then an introductory marketing book then just looks up marketing in the dictionary.
It is amazing how many TV advertisments there are for these products on ‘late-night’ TV…
Again – obviously the marketing department knows their target audience… because when a lonely bogan comes home alone after glassing come c#nt at the local watering hole… and he’s sitting on his bed (numbing his hand to perform ‘the stranger’) and all of a sudden, the TV flashes with “3 russian hotties on your phone, SMS 19 26426 (19 BOGAN)…
Of course there is a million ads for this between 1am and 5 am… plenty of time to fleece said drunk bogue of all possible phone credit…
Pure marketing GOLD…
hwta about the sex text’s, $10 a go to get a “Hot and Sexy” message from a babe that is hot for it, (translatation) a fat slapper who has just finished putting her four kids to bed and it making a little extra on top of her single mothers pension
Or randomly generated responses from a computer. Whatever floats your boat, I guess.
I used to work for a Telco and have seen bills run into the thousands $$$ for Premium SMS…and especially SEX messages. Wives ringing up adamant that their innocent husbands wouldn’t be messaging ‘ busty sheila’ at $10 a pop and how did ‘1900 fuc kme’ appear on her bill??? Her 15y/o son would NEVER think of things like that!!
Not confined to bogans, I’ve found that almost all women think that their guys are not the kind to look at porn, visit a strip joint etc. I work in IT and could, but don’t, tell them that their guy must be one of the very saintly few.
Semi OT, but why on earth *are* women so bothered by men watching porn or “flying solo” on occasion? I really don’t get it. If I’m seeing someone and they want to watch porn, as long as they still have a healthy amount of time and energy for me it’s not really my business. Other girls, care to weigh in?
I didn’t realise that us women were supposed to be “bothered” by men watching porn or flying solo…
Not all of us, but the general consensus seems to be that it’s not ok… I’ve heard so many women express disgust or offense at the idea of their partners watching porn. I always find that reaction odd, porn’s fantasy, it has nothing to do with the relationship IMHO. Glad to know I’m not the only one who doesn’t see what the fuss is about.
So true Jodie, I couldn’t careless, if my boy goes to a strip club then i hope he has a good time, doesn’t get beaten up, and is home around the time he said he would be. I don’t know a lot of women who do care about porn, strippers etc; but I am sure they are out there…It’s been my experience that Princess Bogans are the ones to get their bedazzled g-string in a knot, not normal chicks.
It would be cheaper for said innocent husbands to withdraw cash from the ATM, and go to a brothel…
* At least you actually ‘get laid’
* There is no printed record of the transaction
* They’re upfront with the price (ie: halfway thru they don’t ask for an extra $50 to finish the job)
* Its REAL
Sounds like you have a fair idea of what brothels are like ; )
“The quizes with questions like: “What is the capital of France: Sydney, Paris, or New York?” crack me up.”
Do you think the bogan would get the irony if one of the questions was“What is the capital of the bogan masses: $100 mill, $200 mill, infinite?”:)
The never ending quest of the bogan to be unique (like all the other bogans) and have the most vacuous and banal ring tones is astonishing. They they would actually pay squillions for the dubious privilege is bewildering, that they think they are x-treme and hip just sad.
spend $5 a pop on a ring tone, or ten minutes ont he internet to download (for free) an application that can create my own ringtone, and put them on my phone myself??? mmm that a tough one….
Are any of these premium SMS companies publicly listed? I would like to buy some shares and get back some of my taxes that have been wasted on doll payments to fund these services.
‘Doll payments’ as in ‘spending way too much money buying Slutz dolls for little Maddysynn and Bryttnee’?
(sorry, I don’t normally pick people’s spelling, but I just wanted to have a microrant about how much Slutz dolls piss me off, and you gave me an opening … thanks, da! 😛
Let me know if they are…I’ll buy in!!
You are a tight arse and a bogan.
The worst part is, having paid for the “premium content” such as loud, obnoxious ringtones, they feel the need to maximise their ROI by broadcasting it loudly in public spaces.
I bet public transport is now more of a nightmare than ever before.
Hey!
Don’t knock those Premium SMSes…without them I would never have found my perfect match.
I hope you used the x-ray scanner and metal detector to check who they said they are! If not, you can always use the partner tracker to find them and check.
The Chaser sketch about the love match phone app was the funniest thing they did all last year.
Sensational post.
Off topic question: at dinner the other night I overheard a suspect femmebogue mention the construction of a Lisa Ho wedding dress for her forthcoming marriage. Surely Lisa Ho is a boge preferred brand? I mean the name alone sounds edgy enough with its inference of negotiated affection.
She also quoted a figure for the dress that would feed a third world family for two years. Her interlocutor asked of the femmebogue if she could possibly have the same style of dress made by a seamstress/dressmaker elsewhere thus saving a goodish bit of money. However the question was met with a blank stare, a shrug of the (sloping) shoulders and a nervously giggled, “yeah-nah”.
Strange of the femmeboge to choose a designer of Asian-Australian decent…I think Sass and Bide would be a much more bogan-approved choice
pronounced Sass and Bidet
brilliant work TBL! I see the dodgy SMS ads on the TV and think what numbnut would actually fall for those sms scams… and yet clearly thousands are… and thousands more… It’s very sad really that society is just turning into lemmings that will do anything TV tells them to.
Remember those awful late night tv shows dedicated to a similar concept?, I remember one was hosted by Big Brother’s “Hot Dogs” (during his 15 minutes of fame he pretty much was the King of the Bogans). It was like a game show where you ring/txt in with the answers to the questions to win money…it was awful, I never thought I’d say this but thank god they brought back infomercials!
Had Quizmania still been around now I’m sure that would have been another TBL entry!
Informercials, now that a topic for future discussion.
Oh yes. Bogan sort-of-friend facebook status in October: CAN’T WAIT FOR CHRISTMAS…. I WANT THE AB-CIRCLE PRO NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!:(:(:(:(:(:(:(:(
I stumbled upon that advertorial the other night due to a green tea binge that was keeping me up. “In just three minutes a day you could go from flab to abs” or something like that. I LOLd.
And the Mister T informercial is comedy gold.
The greatest information commercial (otherwise known as infomercial LoL) ever produced is for the Total Gym, endorsed by Chuck Norris and Christie Brinkley. It, probably didn’t work, however the commercials were utterly hilarious; featuring Chuck in action on the Total Gym “feeling the burn” as he put it, yet always remaining expressionless in his own stereotypical way. I should mention something about Christie Brinkley but Chuck was just the stand out act; 5 Stars!
It is not the actual infomercial sorry as I remember it was an hour long special, but you can still see Chuck at: The greatest information commercial (otherwise known as infomercial LoL) ever produced is for the Total Gym, endorsed by Chuck Norris and Christie Brinkley. It, probably didn’t work, however the commercials were utterly hilarious; featuring Chuck in action on the Total Gym “feeling the burn” as he put it, yet always remaining expressionless in his own stereotypical way. I should mention something about Christie Brinkley but Chuck was just the stand out act; 5 Stars!
It is not the actual infomercial sorry as I remember it was an hour long special, but you can still see Chuck at: http://www.totalgymdirect.com/
I still split my sides thinking of that commercial; good burn Chuck, good burn!
I still split my sides thinking of that commercial; good burn Chuck, good burn!
Que?
Because of that comment, Chuck is now hunting for you. I will send flowers to your widow.
Did you know:
Chuck Norris is the only man to ever defeat a brick wall in a game of tennis.
Did you know:
You can’t do a Google search for Chuck Norris because Google knows you don’t find Chuck Norris, Chuck Norris finds you…
Guns carry Chuck Norris for protection.
Superman wears Chuck Norris pyjamas.
Thank you D.A, Begonias would be the best option as they will inform her to beware that he may come for her next.
If I don’t survive the end of this day I just want to say it has been an honour to be on this earth and I couldn’t possibly think of another more dignified way to go, than at the hand or fist of Chuck Norris.
Ethan R.I.P.
(Waiting with baited breath)
Don’t be hating on the T.
I pity da fool….
Cut yo jibber jabber, honky.
Don’t forget about the Slap Chop, absolute classic (and the re-mixed youtube video for the bogues)
What about those late night quiz shows? You know the ones, the one on Ten used to have Hot Dogs from Big Brother. I’ll never forget the game where you had to guess sandwich fillings and ‘fried oysters’ was the top answer.
Then again, they should probably be listed under ‘Things Bogans Used To Like’, along with The Chaser, USA hoodies and Korn
Oops, started this post during smoko, now it’s lunch break and I didn’t see someone had already mentioned it.
so tell me why we are so totally shafted for prices of mobiles in Australia? Is it because we have a majority bogan population who are as thick as you imply?
Here in Finland I often call someone because its 3 cents per minute *no call connection fees* and per second billing.
With a low population density, just about the least urbanised nation in the EU and a large area to cover I can’t get why the Telstra Optus cartel system is flourishing
I love the mobile application that calculates you and your partners’ “Perfect” baby name. How the fuck does texting your name and your partners’ name work out what the “perfect” name for your offspring would be? And furthermore, have any bogues been dumb enough to choose their baby’s name because of what a random sms message told them? Now THERE’s a baby who needs to be taken away by child services!
HAYLEIGH and BRAYDYN = BRAIYDALEIYHNAH
Seeing the names they come up with I would say the answer is yes. Somewhere a uni student is laughing his ass off.
Sorry Arse, what do donkeys have to do with this?
Hello TBL et al
Long time fan, first time post. I agree with Chris, prices for media (phone, cable TV, internet) in Australia are exhorbitant. Especially considering how profitable the aforementioned Bogan market is for Australian Telcos. Living in Europe has been an eye opener as to how much the good folk of Australia are being held over the barrel.
Fiona, was that you I spotted at the GUM near Red Square perusing furs?
Actually where is Fiona? Did her Internet break?
I can picture her now… demanding the internet technician remove his shoes at the door and to mind brushing against her walls.
No – she tried out the Toorak La Porchetta’s, and her chef has sent her to sleep with the fishes.
Tragic.
Antosha
indeed … the pittiful down load limits (and perhaps the repressive copyright laws) make services like spotify essentially impossible in Oz-e-trail-ya
mind you, some things remain cheaper and better in Oz … watch the migration out when that changes however 😉
Chris, you are 100% correct.
Download limits and dial up speeds are considered the norm in Oz, nowhere else.
It is cheaper for me to roam on my EU sim in Oz than it is to use my Optus sim card during so called “peak periods”.
Telstra is making a loss…??? How.
Throw in copyright laws, internet censorship and mandatory sentencing laws and we’ve got a good little backwards police state thing going down here.
How?
well incompetence, disorganisation, massive losses in outsourcing contracts which do not work and last but not least when someone gets a AU$2.2Million bonus it has to come from somewhere. When I’m involved with businesses costs are pushed to the customers in increased costs.
There was once a fellow called Chris who worked as a systems analysist working for a company starting with T … I knew him quite well
🙂
“not actually costing the phone companies a damn thing.”
I agree with you, the next big one in process is by governments, to tax air! (CO2 to be precise)
you can keep the CO2, I just want the O2 … the C02 is what my body calls a waste product. If you’ve been taking some extra chlorophyll from the healthfood shop and that’s been helping you to make use of the C02 in the air then let us all in on how please
????
You referred to the government taxing CO2.
Humans breath “air” including 02, not C02.
chlorophyll is a reference to plants using C02. If you ingest enough chlorophyll you could (in jest) become a plant and hence make use of the C02.
On your main point, the government is not taxing the air we breath, in fact the opposite they are seeking to tax those who pollute it (ie thereby taking it away from us).
The trickle down effect is that they are taxing CONSUMPTION – not of air but of goods, because most if not all consumer goods have some inherent CO2 involved in their production.
Yes it stops being funny and becomes painful when someone explains it.