Interview Series V4 - Pat Cusack
It’s fun seeing what the creative minds of our industry think… well what about the techies? Pat Cusack, HotHouse tech guru and founder, plus industry legend has his say…
Q1. What is the number one thing about your job that gets you out of bed in the morning?
I love the way they turn the interwebs back on each morning. It’s always there in time for work each day. I figure it’s like the film industry, and no matter how wretched, you *show up* so everyone can do their thing on the day.
Q2. What are your favorite sites/digi campaigns right now?
Hmmmn. I’m still amazed by the fact facebook works at all. Anything on that scale starts to acquire its own laws of physics, and I’m quietly in awe of any app that manages to evolve during the few hours we all sleep while the internet is turned off each night.
Q3. Who is the new kid on the block - the agency/business to watch for the future?
New kid? That’s easy - Julian Assange is our greatest ambassador since Bradman and Australia should be ashamed of any government that doesn’t get this.
Agency? Anything that isn’t falling over itself to be an ‘agenc’y”. Yes - we are in the ideas business for our paying customers, but the conceit that we do all this for anything but money was lost when you gave up fine arts. It’s a job guys, and that job is to help the customer scratch a buck off the world.
Q4. What sector would you say is furthest ahead in digital marketing at the moment?
Anyone that isn’t waiting for a banner click or uptake on some vanity Flash micro-site. Tom Markham championed gaming developers’ inroads a while back, and I’m inclined to agree, although anyone who figures out how to sell a &^%$# hamburger online (FMCG) probably deserves the Nobel prize.
Q5. What technology or initiative is most likely to revolutionize Web/mobile marketing?
The one that pisses Steve jobs off. It’s our web. The devices must come and go.
Q6. If you could wave your magic wand and change one thing about digital marketing what would it be?
Digital Marketing? Show me one person who wakes up and says “know what I’ll do today” I’ll jump on the web and check out some Digital Marketing!”
I’d like it to be more akin to industrial design, so we’re judged by whether or not our teapot/car makes good tea/gets you home with a smile. Outcomes. We’re not curing cancer, so it can still be fun, but FFS get on with the job and give people what they came to see/get. Some epic budgets would have been much better spent if the agency just dropped a kilo of charlie into the boot of the marketing manager’s Saab and just left us all alone.
Q7. What’s the biggest mistake people are making in mobile/Web marketing?
Flash. Love him or hate him, Steve Jobs has made the technology argument, and if you need to hear the usability/search/marketing argument from me you are in a *very dark and lonely* place.
Q8. What is the most useful resource site/blog you use?
Google. What better bridge between the real world (or at least its language) and the geyser of publishing we’re all now using to decide on anything from sheep dip to fissile nucleoids?
Being on the receiving end of the algorithm changes is jolly stimulating! That Panda thing has really rocked some people’s world, and I’m just not sure what to say in some cases.
Still, nobody dies, and, for the most part, it is just advertising we’re talking about, so it’s important not to take it all too seriously.
I love this guy’s take on things.
Here too
Visual-ly looks interesting
Here’s a_ great_ ad for the very thing:
