Pippa Logan Duets with Telstra's Sol on Moblogging

pippa logan
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

"Pipping Australia is a satirical creation of Telstra Corporation Limited. This advertisement is fictional and for humorous purposes only. Invented names have been used, except in cases when public figures are satirised. Any other use of real names is coincidental and accidental."

Yeah I complain that Australia has no local blog search (we're building), local blog enablement (we're building) , local tagging/ranking (ditto), tier A blogs or networks (stay tuned), as well as many other products I'd like to localise in the future - incl social bookmarks, image and video communities. Tell ya fools, aint no biting that can eat into whats happenin in da hood. Y'all too slow, and u'll need to show da bling to enter Skid Row and pick da produce. And that's just at the horizontal and consumer angle. Dont even start me on verticals and the enterprise.

Just have a look at the prices charged by the increasingly profitable Melbourne IT for a domain, email management (its your f'n dns already), a 3 page website (1996 joke) and hosting (huge ripoff) : If you are like me, you can't recommend any to your mother even if she just wants to get rid of the spam from her outlook and communicate with her family and friends. (step 1 : get a mac - optional (or upgrade to windows vista when out) then ditch outlook for 2gig free with gmail, get a free blog from wordpress or blogspot, and grab a $8.95.com US web address - yourfamilyname.com - from godaddy.com is step 1. step 2 : coming soon, but read on to get an idea homes) The Dancing with The Stars Violins could equally play on Yahoo7 (who offer a hosting package from ozhosting.com, which they havent updated, that is actually part of destra.com) but anyway if you are a small business used to getting ripped off by companies, why not continue to pay $700 for a 3 page website and $40-85 a month hosting. Um, instead - how about a free blog with 100X more functionality free, or $5-$9 a month with your own .com/com.au domain ?

Instead of 3 pages, choose a blog, you'll get unlimited pages, unlimited updates with no programming skills needed, and specialised design themes to fit your business, forget html - its like word so no more costly phone calls to developers. And if you are also the marketing manager, the secret weapon of blogs is their structured xml and rss that naturally indexes much higher than SEO/Spam in search engines - so you dont need as much or any paid google or yellowpages ads - The Day is Nigh, 2006 Downunder. (as what happened in US 2004/5, gravity)

So the point of this local rant : Telstra is getting into blogging - thats great. Except its starting by enabling mobile blogging (which is just a 3min plug in anyway from flickr !) and guerilla marketer Sol is supporting the pipping spoofster Pippa Logan. I wish I was joking. Who said Fairfax journalists dont have an ultra-dry sense of humour. hehe : "The BigBlog launch forms part of a content line-up that Telstra chief executive Sol Trujillo has flagged the company should be pursuing. Another piece of content Mr Trujillo has praised internally is a spoof website, pippingaustralia.com.au, which the telecom has created for some reason only known to itself."

Pippa + Sol, sitting on a beach : "At just 19, this young Australian is not even 20. Beautiful and glamorous, she brings a certain 'je nais se quoi' to the sport of Pipping, even though in her own words she's "not a big fan of French food". When not on the Pipping court you'll find Pippa on the beach shucking oysters with her bare thumbs for the local fisherman, or tending the vegetable patch of her Southern Highlands estate where she personally grows her own championship grade melons. Until recently, Pippa believed her thumbs were possessed by her late Grandmother's spirit. Tests have since proved otherwise." Oh yeah, Sensis, double revenue in 3 years and decrease headcount by 20%. The Three Amigos and I are going on a holiday. John Singleton - get your on and offline agencies to make me some spoof ads. I'm off to a Barbie with Eddie. How Pipping.