Latest news with #Boomer
Sydney Morning Herald
2 days ago
- Politics
- Sydney Morning Herald
The right to disarm
'Further to Craig Forbes' piece about political chew toys [C8]. I recently found a Donald Trump squeaky dog toy,' reveals Jonathan Vincent of Emu Heights. 'My puppy loved it, but within five minutes she had removed both his arms. This silenced Trump's squeak [Result! – Granny], and the disarmament is great for world peace.' 'My siblings and I learnt about antimacassars [C8] very early in life,' says David Pigott of North Parramatta. 'The letter 'A' was my mum's favourite when playing I Spy with my Little Eye.' Warren Menteith of Bali describes the antimacassar as 'a classic marketing ploy. Create the problem so you can flog the solution'. He also explains that 'Macassar, the capital of Sulawesi (Celebes) gave its name to this item. It seems long before Brylcreem and other pomades, ebony oil from Makassar was the top-selling product.' While well aware that former PM Bob Hawke was a bit of a ladies man, Ron Besdansky of Northbridge was still taken aback when viewing Wikipedia 's Born on This Day page: 1929 – Hazel Hawke, Australian social worker and pianist, 23rd Spouse of the Prime Minister of Australia (died 2013). Jeff Stanton of Strathfield has a decidedly European take on signalling (C8) when he says: 'using indicators is seen by many as providing information to the enemy'. 'Mishaps really do come in threes,' reckons Viv Mackenzie of Port Hacking. 'A friend should be enjoying the best snow in ages. However, she has been hospitalised with asthma, her husband has come down with COVID and another member of the party has broken a knee. Otherwise, everyone else is having a great time.' Generational talent Greg Leisner of Blackhead writes: 'I'm of an age now where the only comfortable shoes are expensive stretchy sneaker types (black for weddings and funerals) but resist the pejorative term 'Boomer', and I am proposing that we be called the INDY generation. As in, 'I'm Not Dead Yet', any thoughts?' Column 8's recent Coldplaygate (C8) headline got Richard Jary of Waitara thinking: 'Perhaps at 61, I'm too young to remember, but why does every scandal now have to be somethinggate? What did they call scandals before Watergate?' 'I purchased a mood lamp which soon put me in a bad mood as it required an app to set it up,' laments Susan McLaren of Windradyne. 'This 'free' app was soon asking for my credit card details.'
The Age
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Age
The right to disarm
'Further to Craig Forbes' piece about political chew toys [C8]. I recently found a Donald Trump squeaky dog toy,' reveals Jonathan Vincent of Emu Heights. 'My puppy loved it, but within five minutes she had removed both his arms. This silenced Trump's squeak [Result! – Granny], and the disarmament is great for world peace.' 'My siblings and I learnt about antimacassars [C8] very early in life,' says David Pigott of North Parramatta. 'The letter 'A' was my mum's favourite when playing I Spy with my Little Eye.' Warren Menteith of Bali describes the antimacassar as 'a classic marketing ploy. Create the problem so you can flog the solution'. He also explains that 'Macassar, the capital of Sulawesi (Celebes) gave its name to this item. It seems long before Brylcreem and other pomades, ebony oil from Makassar was the top-selling product.' While well aware that former PM Bob Hawke was a bit of a ladies man, Ron Besdansky of Northbridge was still taken aback when viewing Wikipedia 's Born on This Day page: 1929 – Hazel Hawke, Australian social worker and pianist, 23rd Spouse of the Prime Minister of Australia (died 2013). Jeff Stanton of Strathfield has a decidedly European take on signalling (C8) when he says: 'using indicators is seen by many as providing information to the enemy'. 'Mishaps really do come in threes,' reckons Viv Mackenzie of Port Hacking. 'A friend should be enjoying the best snow in ages. However, she has been hospitalised with asthma, her husband has come down with COVID and another member of the party has broken a knee. Otherwise, everyone else is having a great time.' Generational talent Greg Leisner of Blackhead writes: 'I'm of an age now where the only comfortable shoes are expensive stretchy sneaker types (black for weddings and funerals) but resist the pejorative term 'Boomer', and I am proposing that we be called the INDY generation. As in, 'I'm Not Dead Yet', any thoughts?' Column 8's recent Coldplaygate (C8) headline got Richard Jary of Waitara thinking: 'Perhaps at 61, I'm too young to remember, but why does every scandal now have to be somethinggate? What did they call scandals before Watergate?' 'I purchased a mood lamp which soon put me in a bad mood as it required an app to set it up,' laments Susan McLaren of Windradyne. 'This 'free' app was soon asking for my credit card details.'
Mint
3 days ago
- Business
- Mint
Marketing's missing heart: Are brands losing the plot in the age of AI?
Late last year, a 'leaked" HR email from wellness platform Yes Madam showed the company firing two employees for reporting high stress. The mail was a marketing stunt to promote stress relief services, but the backlash was instant and brutal—It was criticized as tone-deaf and insensitive for trivializing job loss and mental health, dealing a reputational blow to the company. This wasn't an isolated incident. Increasingly, Indian advertising is stumbling through an identity crisis—hyper-targeted and AI-optimized on the surface, emotionally hollow at the core. From ads served next to tragic news stories to brands defaulting to generic performance content, the industry seems stuck in a loop: efficient, but forgettable. 'Retail is moving towards intelligent, not just personalized. That includes empathy, not just efficiency," said Isabelle Allen, global head of consumer and retail at KPMG International. 'Consumers today expect brands not only to understand their habits but to reflect their values." And yet, in a rush to optimize everything, emotional intelligence, the very thing that creates memorable brands, is becoming endangered. Sandeep Walunj, group chief marketing officer at Motilal Oswal, argues that financial marketing is one of the worst offenders. 'We're not just speaking to portfolios. We're speaking to fear, ambition, even guilt. But BFSI marketing has long buried that truth under numbers and charts. It needs to be more human." Even consumer brands that once built emotional moats are under pressure. 'The CMO's role today is no longer just creative. It's a business mandate," said Nikhil Rao, CMO of Mars Wrigley India. 'You're expected to understand every lever—sales, trade, R&D. That's important, but we also need to remember what builds long-term love for a brand." Rao's team is trying to balance that tension: 'Even our ₹1 Boomer gum carries our brand story. We don't chase scale at the cost of quality or trust." But many marketers aren't walking that line well. Asparsh Sinha, managing partner at an independent brand design and transformation consultancy Open Strategy & Design, puts it bluntly: 'When everything becomes a performance dashboard, brands risk becoming utilities instead of cultural actors. Data must be interpreted, not just applied." Sinha believes the anxiety is visible in client briefs. 'They're not more functional, they're just more nervous. Nervous about justifying spend. About defending quarterly outcomes. That fear pushes brands to play it safe—and safe is forgettable." Vishesh Sahni, chief executive officer of White, a brand experience company, says cultural fluency is the new metric. 'We worked on H&M's 'Sound of Style' activation at Lollapalooza India 2025. It wasn't built for virality, it was built for resonance. Gen Z doesn't reward attention-seeking, they reward authenticity." He adds that building emotional equity is still non-negotiable for serious brands. 'Some of our most memorable briefs are the ones focused on building brand words, co-creating culture with audiences, and forging a sense of trust and intimacy. The challenge is meeting emotional resonance with rapid results and this is where data helps sharpen the storytelling." Saheb Singh, strategy director at independent advertising firm Agency09, warns that performance marketing is making all brand voices sound the same. 'Optimizing for clicks has come at the cost of emotional nuance. The soul is being traded for speed." He adds, 'We treat even a six-second short as a brand moment. Short-form doesn't have to be short-lived. But it can't be soulless." Singh also believes that younger marketers sometimes over-index on tools rather than people. 'Great marketing begins with empathy. Tools are powerful, but empathy is irreplaceable." A Deloitte whitepaper on the evolving CMO mindset highlights that brands are under pressure to deliver immediate value, but long-term relevance comes from human-centric design. 'More than 80% of leading CMOs are embedding emotional, cultural and societal relevance into brand decisions," the report notes. 'Human-centricity isn't just a talking point—it's a measurable growth driver." The paper also warns against 'signal overload", where an over-reliance on data leads to chasing micro-metrics rather than macro impact. As one section notes, 'True brand leadership in the AI age will come from using automation to inform action, not dictate it." But as automation deepens, so does the risk of 'context collapse", a term used to describe ads appearing next to inappropriate content, or messaging that completely misreads the cultural moment. Programmatic ads placed next to videos about war, terror, or tragedy are a grim example. 'The machine didn't know better," one agency executive admitted. This is where the consequences become cultural. For Gen Z and younger millennials, tone-deafness isn't just cringe, but a dealbreaker. 'Empathy is a superpower," said one strategist. 'And right now, most brand playbooks feel like they've forgotten how to use it." Some brands are trying to evolve. They're building diverse creative review teams. They're testing tone frameworks and running sentiment analysis pre-launch. But there's no AI tool for common sense. Or timing. Or taste. Equally concerning is the blurring line between transactional experiences and emotional cues. QR codes, shoppable videos and personalized coupon drops have their place, but when the creative layer vanishes, what's left is commerce without character. And that rarely builds long-term memory. AI can tell you who to talk to, when to talk to them and where to reach them. But it can't tell you how to make them care. That still takes emotional intelligence and a little bit of soul. In the age of full-funnel metrics, maybe it's time to ask: What's the one thing your brand will be remembered for: its CPM, or how it made someone feel? Because at the end of the day, reach without resonance is noise. And in advertising, noise doesn't convert. Emotion does.
News.com.au
17-07-2025
- Business
- News.com.au
‘Acting like they're on parole': Proof Aussies are straight-up paranoid at tax time
Aussies love to chew the fat over just about anything, except if it is about their tax returns, apparently. From July 1, Australians can start lodging their tax returns for the financial year from July 1, 2024, to June 30, 2025. This is a shock to approximately no one, as that is how the financial year works. However, when hit the streets of Sydney's CBD to find out if Aussies were clamouring to submit their returns or putting it off, the vibe was off. People acted less like we were asking if they had submitted returns, which is something pretty much anyone who earned money in the last 12 months needs to do, and more like we were asking them to admit to a crime on camera. Some were happy to stop and chat, but as soon as the word 'tax' was dropped, they immediately fled, one man even broke into a jog. Is anything worth jogging over? Keep in mind, we weren't chasing, I said, 'no worries have a good day!' At one point, the Gen Z cameraman I was with pointed out that everyone was straight-up 'acting like they're on parole'. Aussies were acting suspiciously, and there was a lot of nervous laughter. Finding out if people had lodged their returns yet felt as taboo as asking a Boomer how much money they earn. The response was nothing short of cagey and borderline paranoid. We spent over three hours approaching people and got five people to agree to be on camera, with the rest seeming genuinely terrified at the prospect. The most amusing part was that the people who did stop to chat certainly didn't say anything controversial. When asked one woman in a fancy scarf if she had gotten around to doing her tax return, she said she was on top of things. 'I have, yes,' she said. The woman then explained that she was happy with what she got back, but it would be going towards something pretty boring. 'Cost of living expenses and paying off a number of debts' she explained. Similarly, another woman who had already completed her tax return said she was planning to funnel what she has received back into her savings. 'Saving for a house and marriage. All that good stuff,' she said. She did add that she used to have way more fun with her tax returns. 'Not one cent went into savings. It went straight into shopping,' she said. Meanwhile a man in a trendy blazer admitted he was less on the ball. 'Definitely have not done it yet,' he said. When he does get around to doing it, though, he certainly doesn't have big plans for the tax return. 'I'm not much of a spender so I'll probably save it,' he said. Although he did add, 'I have a partner that likes to spend.' Another man said he was in 'the middle of doing' his taxes right now and the 'vast majority' would be going back into his savings. A tradie that filmed us chatting to him for his Snapchat story admitted he hadn't gotten around to it yet either. 'I haven't,' he said. Accountant Linda Mirams told that she's unsurprised that we got a frosty reception roaming the streets of Sydney. 'It is so much to comprehend and that is why people get nervous,' she said. Ms Mirams argued that people get nervous around tax time because there's not enough education around it. 'Most ordinary people don't have any idea about the basic tax system. It is crazy,' she said. 'There's also so much publicity and hype around audits.' The accountant advised that Aussies shouldn't worry so much, as long as they're not actively trying to deceive the tax office, any issues can usually be sorted. 'If you're way outside the norm, which is when you get flagged. There's so many little tricks around how you're allowed to claim stuff,' she said. 'If you do get flagged there are two parts. Firstly the ATO will go 'you're outside the norm' and you've got 28 days to respond.' Ms Mirams said as long as you can justify the expenses, then you're fine, and she stressed that there's a 'review process' and it isn't a witch hunt. 'You're not out having coffee and next minute you're audited and then being dragged away by the police,' she promised. The accountant said that, even if you make a mistake on your tax return and the ATO flags it, you don't need to panic. 'People think 'oh my God', but if we put everyone in jail that has a tax debt half the country would be in prison,' she said. Ms Mirams said that often, when you make a mistake, the ATO adjusts the outcome, and you pay back any shortfall. If you can't afford the bill, you can then go on a payment plan.
IOL News
15-07-2025
- Sport
- IOL News
Donald Trump weighs in on soccer's age-old GOAT debate: 'This player was tremendous'
GOAT according to Trump Chelsea's Cole Palmer is congratulated by US President Donald Trump after being awarded the Golden Ball trophy during the award ceremony for the FIFA Club World Cup 2025 Champions. Photo: Franck Fife/AFP US President Donald Trump has weighed in on the age-old debate over who is the greatest soccer player of all time. Trump, who attended Chelsea's FIFA Club World Cup final win over European champions Paris Saint-Germain in New Jersey on Sunday, snubbed both Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, who are seen by modern football fans as the greatest to ever play the game. While names like Messi and Ronaldo have dominated the conversation in recent years, the likes of Pelé, Diego Maradona, Johan Cruyff, Eusébio, Alfredo Di Stéfano, Ferenc Puskás, and Zinedine Zidane have also been mentioned. But, due to being part of the Boomer generation, His Orangeness opted for a player who graced the pitch in the 1950s and 1960s when asked who he thought was the greatest footballer of all time.
