Happy New Year and welcome back to the office. I hope you’re rested and recharged to tackle 2016 with renewed enthusiasm.  Maybe you’re thinking about what changes you can make to ensure 2016 is a success, or at least better than 2015.

The first quarter of the year is the perfect time for focusing on your business plan and setting new goals and objectives. Not just for your business, but also for you, your staff, your customers, and your stakeholders.

Successful entrepreneur, Richard Branson, stands by his words: “If you look after your staff, they’ll look after your customers. It’s that simple.” But what exactly does “looking after” mean? HR does an awful lot to hire, train, and retain the best. But there is more to business success than ‘simply’ looking after staff. Innovation, opportunity and communication, are as essential as the perks.

People like working for and being associated with successful businesses. But if your company, accountant, recruitment firm, and IRD are the only organisations that know your success, you might be limiting your opportunity to grow.

If you really want 2016 to be a milestone year, then look after all those involved with your business, by recognising, appreciating, and communicating with everyone involved with your business – customers, suppliers, stakeholders, associates, as well as your staff.

Improving both your internal and external PR and marketing efforts is known to help raise business profile and provide more opportunity for success.

Here are a few PR and marketing tips that can help make 2016 your milestone year:

• Check all online stats using Google Analytics now and mark areas for improvement. Benchmark progress throughout the year.
• Add fresh, interesting and informative content to your website and social media accounts often.
• Provide free information resources i.e. tips and ebooks for visitors to download via online forms.
• Build your contacts (prospective customers and/or referrers) and encourage more visitors to your website by writing blogs, starting and commenting on relevant discussions, and contributing articles to relevant key media in your target markets.
• Ask your customers if they’re willing to support your marketing with testimonials and case studies.
• Keep in touch. Share your company news and case studies with your staff, customers and stakeholders. If it’s really newsworthy, tell the media too.
• Enter business awards and use your customer testimonials and case studies to highlight your achievements.
• Sponsor an initiative, good cause, and/or an event. And tell others about it.
• Encourage staff to be ambassadors for your company. Provide them opportunities to present at events and conferences, and write articles.
• Be involved with the community. Work with local schools, universities, incubators, community groups, and business development organisations.
• Share your successes and case studies with the media, and add links to any published articles online, in social media and in your newsletters.
• Network at events, or host a networking event. Open your doors and welcome others to learn about your business.

Essentially the more proactive you can be with your marketing and PR, the more opportunity you will create for your business. Onwards and upwards!

We’re very proud to have successfully coordinated key media placements for our client Canterbury Scientific in two of their top laboratory media in the US.

After introducing the scientific directors and their consultants to the science editorial teams, two feature articles and an interview on the subjects of diabetes and HbA1C were lined up for the respective November and December 2015 issues of MLO magazine and ADVANCE for Laboratory.

In addition, to commemorate Canterbury Scientific’s 30th anniversary, we coordinated advertising in both publications (a mix of print, web and enewsletter) to complement the articles.

Read Dr Maurice Owen’s article on ‘Glucose vs HbA1c controvery‘ in MLO Magazine, and his feature article that explores the ‘Common Pathways linking obesity and Type 2 Diabetes’ in Advance for Laboratory. Canterbury Scientific Consultant, Prof Chris Florkowski, was also interviewed by Advance for this ‘Diabetes Trends‘ feature.

Diabetes Trends

Not All Calories Are Equal

The glucose vs. HbA1c controversy

New building incorporates features designed for staff wellbeing and future flexibility

Press release, 11 December, 2015, TE Connectivity, Christchurch, NZ: TE Connectivity Christchurch, one of 80 plants owned by TE Connectivity worldwide, has been supporting local industry with contract electronic manufacturing services for many years.

On Thursday 10 December 2015, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, the Rt. Hon John Key, officially opened TE Connectivity’s brand new facility at 14 Mary Muller Drive, Hillsborough, Christchurch.

TE Connectivity Plant Manager with the Rt. Hon John Key.
Photo Copyright Neil Macbeth

TE Connectivity’s New Christchurch Facility.
Photo Copyright Neil Macbeth

The building has been custom designed to meet very high standards and to enhance employee health and wellbeing with a light, airy, flexible, and futureproof fit-out. It also takes advantage of its spectacular surroundings, with huge windows that enable all staff to enjoy a breath-taking view of the Port Hills.

Read the TE Connectivity Press Release.

We’re very excited to announce that Canterbury Scientific has been nominated one of three finalists in the Company of the Year category of the NZ Bio Awards 2015.

The awards will be announced at the NZ Bio conference on 23 September at the St James Theatre in Wellington, NZ. We wish all the very best of luck to all the finalists.

On Thursday, 1 October 2015, Canterbury Software will again be hosting the popular Canterbury Software Summit at the Airforce Museum of New Zealand. This must-attend event has grown hugely over the years with now over 500 attendees amongst NZ’s growing tech sector – from techies to senior management, to investors, HR, marketers, and students alike.

As well as learning about new technology developments, gaining insight into success stories and exploring new business opportunities, the Summit provides delegates with plenty of opportunity to connect and engage with industry peers.

This quality half-day conference guarantees great value for attendees. Twelve accomplished speakers will present across two streams – business and technical – plus a range of Master Classes and technical deep-dive sessions. There’s also a large networking and exhibition area where companies will be showcasing their latest innovations in products and services.

To see the full programme and details visit www.softwaresummit.co.nz and follow the Twitter hashtag #CSSummit.

Communications is beautiful. It’s how we’ve been exchanging knowledge and ideas with other people for millennia. And it’s so simple. If you can speak, write or sign, you can communicate.

Does it need a second thought? Absolutely. Because, if winning the approval of your audience is important, you really wouldn’t want to risk upsetting them over an inappropriate piece of content or image that might be sexist, racist, political, et cetera.

When you communicate with an audience, think about how they might interpret your content. Some deliberately use risky content/images to reflect their viewpoint, or challenge an opinion, because they want to evoke a reaction from their audience. Others use it inappropriately, accidentally, or naïvely, resulting in unintentional offence. Giving your content a second thought and even a second pair of eyes will help you to choose your words and images wisely.

A Man’s Day vs. A Woman’s Day

Knickers are best left unknotted

Humour is an interesting example. We often incorporate humour with our communications to share a laugh or break the ice, and lighten the mood. If the humour is relevant, inoffensive, and funny, that’s great. Use it. We all love a good laugh. But a joke or reference that’s in poor taste and doesn’t meet your audiences’ expectations can have the opposite effect.

For instance, recently a woman’s business group posted on their Facebook page this emoticon picture showing the difference between a man’s day and a woman’s day.

In the image the emoticons throughout the man’s day were all happy-go-lucky smiley faces, whereas every emoticon in the woman’s day was different in the extreme – depicting women as unstable psychotic emotional hazards.

Many will see it as just a harmless joke and nothing to get anyone’s knickers in a knot about. But remember the audience of this group is business women – many of whom will have had experience of sexism or gender inequality at work.

Many of these business women also, at some point in their career, may not have been considered for a job or a promotion because they are a woman, or a woman of ‘childbearing age’, or because they requested flexible hours to help juggle childcare. They also may not have been taken seriously, called over-emotional, and asked if it was their ‘time of the month’.

Does the content meet your audience’s expectations?

When I saw the emoticon image, it did not meet my expectations. Instead of finding it funny and making me laugh as the administrator intended, I felt that it was inappropriate for this particular group to reinforce a stereotypical image that smacks in the face of every woman fighting for equality. To me it reinforced an offensive stereotype, and corroborated sexist reasoning as to why women shouldn’t get the same employment opportunities as men.

If you’ve seen the recent powerful #LikeAGirl campaign that changed the stereotype “like a girl” from an insult to a compliment, you’ll understand why we should think about the impact of our content and avoid reinforcing negative stereotypes in our communications.

Thankfully, the admin person of the group saw my point and immediately deleted the image.

So, unless you actually intend to provoke or offend, take a minute before your next public missive to think about how your audience might react to your content and images.

“It is not just a game fail, it’s a disgrace, a sham, and a massive PR fail.”

Kids expect their parents can solve anything. Even widely promoted computer games with expensive plastic characters and accessories can be fixed, right? Wrong.

Seven months ago Santa’s Christmas present of the heavily advertised new “Skylanders Trap Team” tablet game (which cost Santa more than $100) ended up being incompatible with our son’s 1 year old tablet. As he was so excited to get the game, we were forced to pay $650 to get a new compatible tablet – a Samsung Tab S – which was one of the latest notebooks listed as compatible with the Skylanders Trap Team game.  We installed the software and the game worked – resulting in a very pleased son with a very expensive early birthday present.

Over the next 6 months our son got more involved with the game, and eagerly spent his hard earned pocket money every month buying as many Skylanders figures and accessories as he could afford (worth between $20-$30 each).

Last Friday, after being awarded a certificate from school, we treated him to three more Skylanders characters. He excitedly opened them up when he got home and fired up his tablet only to see his game crash over and over again with a simple message appear on the screen saying ‘Unfortunately Trap Team has stopped’.

What the …?

Showing his empty wallet after buying useless Skylanders characters. Top right insert is the error message saying ‘Unfortunately Trap Team has stopped’.

He tried again and again. But his precious Skylanders Trap Team game was dead. Unplayable. Unfixable. And his figurines, games portal and console had become little more than expensive plastic ornaments.

Being tech savvy, I tried everything to fix it – right through to deleting everything on the device and doing a hard factory reset. Nothing would get the game to work. I searched everywhere for help online to no avail … that was until I came across the many reviews on Google Play from other upset parents venting their frustrations with Activision – the game developer.

I found suggestions that it might be a software incompatibility issue between the Samsung Tab S and the latest upgrade of Android Lollipop 5.0.2.  Yet nowhere on Activision’s site can you read anything helpful about this. No explanation given. No advice as to when it might be fixed. No link to help. And yet the site still confirms that the game is compatible with the Samsung Tab S!

So we’re left in the dark.

Except Activision of course. In this connected world there is no way Activision can possibly have failed to notice the climbing angry reviews and dramatic rise in one star ratings for the Skylanders Trap Team game – a stark contrast to the former 5 star rating.

Judging by the feedback dates it seems Activision has known about this for months. Yet they’ve done nothing.

With over 50,000 downloads of the Skylanders Trap Team game, I wonder exactly how many parents around the world have children like mine who are deeply upset with the loss of their much loved Android game? And how many are annoyed at the huge expense they’ve had to fork out for just a few months of joy? And what do the retailers think about refunding us?

Whether it is Activision, Samsung, or Google Android that is to blame for this game fail, Activision should by now – at the very least – have shown corporate responsibility with a demonstrated commitment to fixing the problem, and communicated and apologised to the many children they have let down and to the many parents and care givers they have frustrated.

It is not just a game fail, it’s a disgrace, a sham, and a massive PR fail.

Fix it Activision.

** Update 17 July, 2015 **

In the last two weeks I have had three games reviewers, one toy buyer, and a supplier all trying to get response from Activision without success. The retailer had even given my contact details to Activision on request, but they neither called nor emailed.

Today our local retailer came back saying their buyer was told by Activision that they’re working with Google and Samsung and hope to have a fix within the next 2-6 weeks. It’s now four months since this issue first appeared in reviews on Goggle Play when parents started complaining. Should we trust that anything will be done in 6 weeks? Thankfully our retailer has very kindly agreed to refund every Skylanders figure and the starter pack we purchased.

Activision, tell us. Do you deserve the benefit of the doubt?

** Update 19 July, 2015 **

I just read this update in Activision FAQ online. No date, no timeframe, and not truthful. Other reviews on Google and Amazon confirm the incompatibility is not just limited to Samsung devices; Kindle and other Android devices are also incompatible with the Skylanders Trap Team game for tablets. 

Q. The latest Android update has made the game unplayable. What happened?

A. We are currently investigating the reported problems with the latest Android update. So far, it seems these problems are limited to Samsung devices on which users have recently installed Android 5.0.2 Lollipop. We are working to determine the exact cause, and to develop a solution for impacted players as soon as possible. If you are experiencing gameplay issues after installing Android 5.0.2 Lollipop, please call 1-844-HELP-EON.

** Update 29 July, 2015 **

OMG, Activision has finally made contact – a direct Twitter message, and an email via support.activision.com. And get this the email offered me a Skylanders character for compensation! Below is their email and my reply:

Activision’s email:

Hi Shelley, Your name was brought to my attention in regards to the issues you’ve been experiencing with Trap Team. I’m reaching out to you to let you know that we are aware of the situation and working towards a solution. I apologize for the bad experiences you have had with the game and as compensation I would like to provide you with some compensation in the form of a video game (no unreleased games) or Skylander figure (no special edition or legendary figures) of your choice. Please update this case when you can and I’ll see what we can do. Thank you for your time and patience in this matter. Activision Customer Support

My response:

Dear Activision,

I have spent literally umpteen hours trying to:

1) find out why your game wouldn’t work

2) search everywhere on the internet and your website for clues as to what I could do to try and fix it

3) try every suggestion I could find – including those in your responses to other parents’ questions on your community pages. From deleting the data and all our files, photos and videos to free up over 6GB of space, reloading your massive game about 10 times, and resetting the tablet about 5 times. All to no avail.

4) I have questioned you myself and regularly logged in in vain for any response over the last few weeks.

5) I’ve asked games reviewers if they knew how to contact you. They looked into it, asked their contacts at Activision with no response. Finally they gave me an 0800 number, which I called and managed to talk to someone at last and relay my frustrations.

5) I have had to explain to my 8 year old who hasn’t a clue about hardware/software compatibility and programming, or who is responsible for this mess, why I can’t fix it – almost EVERY DAY this month.

Activision, I am a working mum, a tech PR person of 22 years, and a former programmer – so I’m very tech savvy. I know how a large corporate such as yourselves should respond. Activision hasn’t met my expectations, or that of the many parents who’ve been asking you why Skylanders Trap Team has not been working since their tablet updated to Lollipop 5.0.2 from April this year.

Do you honestly think I will be placated with a video game or a Skylanders character, when I have just found out that you are dumping Android support in future Skylanders games? I have had to pay $700 for a Samsung tablet and accessories just so my son can play the Skylanders Trap Team game that Santa got him, plus a further $300 on characters. That’s a $1000 PLUS all the hours I have spent on this matter!!

But let’s say I were to accept your measly offer. I’ve just read that you will not be supporting Android when you launch Skylanders Superchargers in September this year (see: https://www.reddit.com/r/skylanders/comments/3a0e5s/ios_or_android_tablet_for_trap_team/). Why should I believe that you will continue to support Skylanders Trap Team on Android? How much more should we spend on your characters until you drop the game, even if you manage to fix it?

Correct me if I am wrong, but even if you do manage to get Skylanders Trap Team working on the Samsung Tab S again, you won’t support it for long. And I would still eventually have to purchase an Apple iPad just so my son can continue to play your game.

If you want to offer me compensation – buy my son a top of the line 10.5” iPad and give him assurance that he can use his existing Skylanders toys and portal with the iOS version of the game.

Then I want you to do the following:

1) Make a public announcement to all parents, toy buyers, stockists and retailers that there is a compatibility issue with the trap team game. This game is still being sold. You have a responsibility to your consumers to provide a product that works.

2) Apologise for taking so long to address this issue.

3) Commit to a date when the game will be fixed and for how long.

4) Provide assurance this won’t happen again with future Android updates, and

5) Explain why you are not supporting Android when you launch Skylanders Superchargers in September this year.

I am reluctant to waste another minute or cent on your game and toy combos if you can’t be bothered to support them or help frustrated parents for months. And I will not purchase any more similar games from you that hold parents to ransom like this.

I await your response with anticipation.

Shelley Grell

** Update 2 September, 2015 **

Unbelievable! Today, thanks to a 1 Sept review on Google Play, I discovered that Activision has finally updated Skylanders Trap Team on Lollipop!!!!  After three months questioning them in vain, it would have been nice if they informed me directly. So I wrote to my contacts in Activision customer support and discovered that they too didn’t know that the update was done. Way to go Activision development team – keep everyone in the dark and pretend like nothing happened. My son will now force me to suffer this upgrade … until the next Android update. Thankfully the retailer has said that they will honour their offer of a full refund when your #gameFAILs again.

Put a note in your diaries that entries for the NZ #InnovatorsAwards open on 15 June.

The New Zealand Innovators Awards celebrate New Zealand’s emerging high growth businesses and places them on a national stage, profiling their innovative, products, services and ventures. It has helped organisations across many industry sectors to get connected to a wide range of partners, multinational organisations and private investors searching for great kiwi companies to work with.

Monday 15th June is when the Awards officially open for entries and nominations, and we recommend you nominate yourselves and/or all other deserving innovators you know. The Innovation Council is encouraging all Kiwi innovators and organisations to enter the Awards; particularly those who have invested in developing new products, services and ventures as well as improving the performance of their people & teams.

Key Milestones 2015:

• Entries Open – 15 June 2015
• Entries Close – 4 August 2015
• Finalists Announced – 10 September 2015
• Awards Ceremony – 21 October 2015

Congratulations to our amazing clients Reuben Bijl of SmudgeApps and Madeleine Martin of Ossis for being named finalists in the Young Achiever category of the NZ Hi Tech Awards 2015. And big congratulations also to our awesome client Canterbury Scientific for reaching finalist position in the NZ International Business Awards 2015.

Custom-designed implant innovations are helping patients with severely damaged bone and joints, or facing permanent disability or amputation, to regain mobility and independent lifestyle

Press release, 10 December, 2014, Christchurch, NZ – Ossis Ltd is revolutionising orthopaedic surgeries by using advanced 3D technology to custom design and manufacture world leading titanium bone and joint implants. These implants are not only breaking new ground, they are beyond the research stage, proven, accredited, and with over 55 successful operations to date.

Read the press release

See the TV story on Seven Sharp. Read the coverage in 3ders.org