24 Very Long Years
It’s been a long time since we won the Rugby World Cup. A very long time. Here is my guess at the likely team to be selected. Not the team I’d want ncessarily, but the team I think will get picked. It’s the same team Michael Brown selected for APNZ:
- Backs: Jimmy Cowan, Andy Ellis, Piri Weepu, Dan Carter, Colin Slade, Ma’a Nonu, Conrad Smith, Sonny Bill Williams, Richard Kahui, Isaia Toeava, Cory Jane, Sitiveni Sivivatu, Mils Muliaina, Israel Dagg.
- Forwards: Corey Flynn, Andrew Hore, Keven Mealamu, John Afoa, Ben Franks, Owen Franks, Tony Woodcock, Anthony Boric, Brad Thorn, Sam Whitelock, Ali Williams, Jerome Kaino, Richie McCaw, Kieran Read, Adam Thomson, Victor Vito.
I still think it is a mistake to pick Ali Williams. Maybe he will peak in time. Just look at the stats from the game in Sth Africa this last weekend:
It took six minutes of this game before Ali Williams hit his first ruck, and he was immediately penalised for going off his feet resulting in the first three points to the Boks. He didn’t hit another ruck until the 18 minute mark. Overall he had the least ruck arrivals of any of the starting pack, and in the first half was even eclipsed by Sonny Bill Williams, Richard Kahui and Hosea Gear for workrate at the breakdown.
Colin Slade will shine if he can get faster ball. Jimmy Cowan’s ball distribution is just too slow – or at least was against Sth Africa. Two steps and a pass won’t work against a team advancing that quickly. He needs to tidy up his goal kicking but will do well.
Adam Thomson is impressive but can’t concede penalties like he did against Sth Africa – by accounting for 40% of the All Blacks penalties on the weekend he became a real problem and slowed the teams momentum.
I feel for Gear and Guildford. Both could make any other team. And injuries could still see them in.
Going for a Guinness World Record
Commonwealth Bank are supporting the ProstateCancer foundation by attempting the Guinness record for longest BBQ! Hungry Sydney-siders can visit the stand, donate and then choose from an incredible feast. Of course, OzHarvest will be on hand to collect any excess food to deliver to Sydney’s needy.
More here: Sydney BBQ-fest aims for Guinness World Record – Food.
The 10 biggest brands on Facebook
Just look at this list. Personal brands – or people as brands – beat businesses as brands in terms of Facebook. The question here is what makes them “biggest”.
I’m not sure followers or likes are the best of metrics. Sure, they are metrics but should we be really looking at engagement at a deeper level – or revenue? Does their success on Facebook afford them more margin or customer loyalty? I like Joe Tripodi’s ideas for measuring Expressions.
So, in addition to “consumer impressions,” we are increasingly tracking “consumer expressions.” To us, an expression is any level of engagement with our brand content by a consumer or constituent. It could be a comment, a “like,” uploading a photo or video or passing content onto their networks.
It is stunning to me that 33,764,986 like Coke on Facebook… (including me). We’re on our way with some 55,370 people liking CBA.
For more, read… The 10 biggest brands on Facebook- what’s hot and what’s not – TNW Facebook.
Tracking Twitter
Twitter’s changes last week mean lots of marketers – anyone with a social dashboard should see a change.
In short, as of last Wednesday all links (longer than 20 characters) posted on Twitter.com or any Twitter client are now marked with a t.co URL. As NextWeb says, “this means all analytics tools are picking up t.co as the referrer as opposed to a particular twitter client (Twitterrific, Tweetdeck etc.) or just twitter.com”.
Now Twitter should get the attribution it deserves. Not that this is the reason Twitter is using. They say Twitter uses the t.co domain as part of a service to protect users from harmful activity, to provide value for the developer ecosystem, and as a quality signal for surfacing relevant, interesting Tweets.
Super. The real rub though is that marketers will now get to see the impact and influence of the entire Twitter ecosystem – a key metric given so many posts and links don’t occur on Twitter itself.
NextWeb has a great overview.
