Esea 27 what's on the box? by Maersk Training

eSea EM AGA ZINE FROM M A ERSK TR A INING

M A R I T I M E / O I L & G A S / W I N D / C R A N E Â· N O . 2 7/ 2 0 1 6

What's on the box?

content Rachel’s New Board Meeting

The New Blade Runners

In the past where to go, what to do in emergencies, at best relied in moving magnetic markers around a board, or a military style sand box talk. Rachel looked at the magic white board and saw a bigger picture. >

The first generations of wind turbines are now starting to feel their age. There is a demand for a whole new workforce that needs to be ready to climb into action and deliver some TLC, tender loving care. >

My Name’s Joshua, So Call Me James Every so often you bump into somebody who doesn’t just break the mould but destroys it in order to create a new one. Joshua Golden is one such bump. >

16 Golden Moments It was all in the Olympic spirit, if you don’t have someone from your own country to support, you settle on a temporary favourite, chosen at random for their good looks, their athletic ability or maybe just because you like their national drink, food or flag. >

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9 Vessels Supply Something Dynamic In the workshop storage area of Maersk Training in Svendborg, sit six Kongsberg Dynamic Positioning units. They were ‘liberated’ from MS and now face bright futures training crews. >

20 Commitment to Constant Cake There’s a story that the shipbuilders at Harland and Wolff in Belfast couldn’t quite understand why whenever they launched a new vessel, it resembled, down to the smallest detail, several other recently launched ships. >

When Lessons Are A Gas

Piracy Silent, Not Dead

Maersk Training in Aberdeen launched special education days for primary school children. It’s a day out from school, but no escape from learning. >

It would be tempting, and wrong, to believe that piracy on the high seas all ended with Captain Phillips in 2013. Last year there were 190 reported incidents and to date in 2016, 139 have occurred or are ongoing. >

22 Media Motivated It is quite staggering how Social Media has crept into our lives. If Facebook, with 1,1 billion people signed up, were a country, only India and China would be more populous. Through it every day they view 100 million hours of video. >

24 Nudge Nudge, Wink Wink ...say no more The first recognized bit of product placement came in the early days of the movies. There was a Buster Keaton film, The Garage, in which a brand of motor oil regularly appeared in shot. >

editorial If

diversity can be a red line, then we have a red line in this eSea. The subject matters share just about one thing in common, they are in English. Well after Brexit and the French delegation in the European Parliament deciding it is redundant, somebody’s got to use it.

We didn’t have to translate our chat with Joshua Golden into English, his slow southern drawl is truly global, having being exercised in most of the ports of the world and now put to the test in multi-national situations as he trains rig crews on board and often, on the move.

We’ve agreed with a Danish maritime magazine to reproduce some of their words and take a truly independent view of something that goes on within the maritime world, but has long been central to Maersk Training. Piracy has all but evaporated from the news pages however the need to be prepared for extraordinary trauma has not. Maritime Marine recently sat in on one of the SPAR* courses and have now kindly allowed us to précis it into English.

Joshua is golden as so too are opportunities like dangling from a rope one hundred metres above the sea and repairing turbine blades. It is in response to a growing need for specialist rotorblade technicians that a new course has been launched offering secure employment for those with no fear for heights. The ‘rotormen’ are a new workforce for tomorrow. But what about the day after tomorrow? The mystery of what goes on out there on the rigs has been revealed to classes

Richard Lightbody rli039@maersktraining.com

of schoolchildren in Aberdeen. Perhaps it allows them to understand their parent’s workplace, maybe it inspires them to a career, whatever it is a good day out from school. Rachel Booker is somebody who listened when at school – she’s taken a technological innovation and innovated it again, coming up with the ultimate situational walk through tool. Designed for use on or about rigs we can see it having a much broader usage, in security and perhaps even sport. Talking of sport, the Olympic flame has gone out in Rio, but the passion lives on. We talk to those who partied and worked through it. *SPAR Surviving Piracy and Armed Robbery

Rachel’s New Board Meeting ‘We all have ideas, I am just blessed to see one of mine come to fruition.’ ‘Yes sir, that’s my baby.’ Rachel at the board

hat do the car heater, the fire escape, the lift raft, the syringe, natural gas central heating, the retractable dog leash, the submarine telescope, windshield wipers and chocolate chip cookies all have in common? They were all invented by women. Add to that list a new safety management tool called RESCUE.

This time the lady in question is Rachel Booker, an instructor in Major Emergency Management Training with Maersk Training in Houston. What she did was see an extension in the possibilities for using white board technology. In the past talk-through demonstrations about where to go, what to do in emergencies, at best relied in moving magnetic

markers around a board, or a military style sand box talk. Rachel looked at the magic white board and saw a bigger picture. She took what was essentially a PowerPoint and by developing the right software it meant that her RESCUE – Realtime Emergency Situation Communication Update Exchange – brings the whole

process to life. It is rather like comparing the weather forecasts we used to get twenty years ago to the free flowing predictive action of today. With RESCUE you can click, drag and move about a generic or specific rig with ease and even call up live CCTV from various parts of the rig or platform. Moving from deck to deck with ease the OIM can get

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a father ‘who has been in the oil industry forever’ she started with Transocean and then after a brief time expanding her knowledge elsewhere joined Maersk Training in November last year. Her invention was created because she could see a purpose and need for it in the oil industry. It doesn’t take much further imagination to see it being adapted for use in planning security situations and sandbox exercises. There could even be a use in sporting terms with managers given a free flowing tool to show players where, when and why to do things.

Communication is clearer when you have an overview at your fingertips an accurate overview of what is happening. ‘You can stand back and clearly see what is going on without being drawn into it,’ says Rachel. BOARDS RIG SPECIFIC One of the features is that everything that happens on the board is recorded along with the audio, so you can review the

whole process later – try doing that with a handful of magnets. It is a very flexible tool and its obvious situational relevance gives learning a briefing a more tangible effect. Currently the patents are being sought and a marketing plan drawn up. ‘We can make them rig specific and there has been a lot

of interest once they know that,’ she adds. RESCUE can be used for planning as well as training with the additional bonus that through a live feed Rachel can be onshore and still observe and contribute to operations offshore or wherever the RESCUE is placed. Rachel herself hasn’t moved too far. Born in Houston and having

Rachel displays a high degree of humility when talking about the invention; she puts its potential ahead of her contribution. ‘As for me,’ she says, ‘I am just someone who had a vision and the opportunity to bring it to life. In reality, we all have ideas, I am just blessed to see one of mine come to fruition.’

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The first generations of wind turbines are now starting to feel their age. For decades their lofted turbines have been serviced to keep the power flowing, but now more and more attention is being drawn towards the blades that have rotated many millions of times. There is a demand for a whole new workforce that needs to be ready to climb into action and deliver some TLC, tender loving care.

t the end of last year there were 314,000 wind turbines spinning around the world – by the end of this year it mean about a million blades, a million vital objects exposed to the weather that will need constant inspection and at some point professional first aid. That’s where the new workforce will spring into action, but to get there they need to be created and trained. In the past there have been awareness or basic

level courses, but, just as the height of turbines has increased considerably, the need for greater technical skills has also risen. Maersk Training in Newcastle has, with the help of 8.2 Aarufield, a UK-based renewable energy consultancy, created the Competent Roterblade Technician course. It’s an intensive tenday hands-on course that takes someone with no prior experience and trains them to become a competent entry level rotorblade technician who is able to work and support an experienced technician. SOARING BEYOND BASIC There have been basic and introductory courses in the past, but to get on this course the technician has to have completed specialist inspection and repair training and if possible have a background in composites, industrial coatings or general engineering. There are three basic ways to inspect and repair a blade. The

most involved, and expensive, is to use a crane to bring the blades down to a vessel or to ground level, secondly the use of platforms and thirdly, seemingly the most precarious, working at height with ropes. What they are keen to do with this course is not to leave the newly trained technicians dangling – either on a rope or career structure. Stuart Cameron, Managing Director of Maersk Training in Newcastle points out, ‘we created a supplementary programme to make sure the safety imbedded, the skills learnt, the competencies acquired, get the best chance of being fully used. We’re not a job agency, but by giving the new technicians help with CV’s and pointing them in the right direction, we help them make the best use of the opportunities that are in front of them.’ The Career Transition Training Programme takes 23 days and is tailored to best suit the needs of the individual. In the past many courses within the industry

have been designed to cater for one company, but as Andrew Bellamy from 8.2 Aarufield who support the training company with technical back up explained, ‘the Rotorblade Technician course is configured to give knowledge in multiple blade types, multiple technologies and materials to give the graduates the opportunity to move into the sector in multiple roles and disciplines across a number of potential employers.’ The Newcastle-based special trainers believe that the development doesn’t end when the job is landed and have a series of specialist courses aimed at taking careers and the working lives of the blades even further.

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Gaffer, Duck or Duct?

robably the most useful invention in the world – but what do you call it? That roll of tough, but easily ripped tape. You see it here being used on the turbine blades, but what is its history? It has a number of names, a variety of backings, adhesives and colours and a million uses... and several possible origins. One is that it comes from cotton duck, a linen canvas the Dutch call doek. It instantly had a broad usage, from lagging steel wire to strengthening canvas shoes. It has an aluminium pigment powder which gives the silver look – the black version is called Gaffer after the head electrician on a film set. It is non-reflective and does not leave a mark when removed.

It already existed in many forms by the 1940’s but it’s big break came when the mother of two navy sailors, Vesta Stoudt, who worked in an munitions factory, became worried that the traditio nal way of opening ammunition boxes was dangerously timeconsuming. She wrote to the President suggesting sealing the boxes with a fabric tape that could be ripped by hand, not cut with scissors. It was nick-named ‘duck tape’ by the soldiers who found multiple uses for it and when the war ended its popularity stretched into hardware shops. Duck tape became Duct when used for repairs to air ducts. So it is appropriate that it is now used on wind turbines thanks largely to one Vesta S.

Ten Things You (maybe) Didn’t Know About The Wind Industry One quarter of the world’s population are Chinese One third of the world’s wind turbines are in China 3.7% of global power is supplied by wind power The largest rotor diameter is the Vestas 8 MW turbine at 164 meters The longest blade is LM Wind Powers at 88.4 meters and is made in Denmark 42% of Denmark’s energy comes from wind power – on some days in June 2016 all of South Australia’s power came from wind

1.1 million people are employed globally in the industry today, in the EU they expect it to reach 520,000 by 2020 5,500 is the average number of households in the EU supplied by one 6 MW offshore unit If you increase a blade’s length by 5%, it generates 10% more power – look out for extension rings on old turbines The average turbine has 8,000 parts

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Vessels Supply Something Dynamic A last gift from Supply Vessels to tomorrow’s seafarers

he hard times in the oil industry in recent years has caused top management to rethink strategies. Staffing levels have been hit and rigs and ships that might have been in operation for a further decade have been taken out of service, many permanently. Looking ahead to the big turn up, companies have put aside sentiment and ships and thought of what kind of vessel or rig might put them at the forefront in possibly five years’ time.

Vessels like Maersk Supply’s S-type, launched in 1997, might have been expected to work for another ten years at least, but with built-to-purpose ships on the slipway and pipe-line and demand low, rather than mothball, they have been consigned to the breaker’s yard.

awaiting a tow to their final destination. They were highly efficient and employed equally high spec equipment – that equipment to a crusher was just another piece of metal, but to a training organization, a priceless tool in insuring that they too were ready for the up.

Maersk Shipper and Maersk Searcher have crossed the globe with their last assignments in Argentina and West Africa and are now currently in Fredericia

In the workshop storage area of Maersk Training in Svendborg, sit six Kongsberg Dynamic Positioning units, each the size of a cooker; in total worth the price

of a flat. They were ‘liberated’ from MS and now face bright futures training crews. Some will be used to upgrade the Svendborg facility, one is already earmarked to head to the sun and be set up in the Dubai centre. There are other bits of equipment, some sizable like a crane, that might escape the crusher to start a new life in a more benign environment than the North Sea.

Pupils get a chance to see what it is oil about

When Lessons Are A Gas T

he conversations at some family evening meals in and around Aberdeen have been a bit more two-way of late. The opening line of ‘so how was your day?’ has had a bit more behind it, particularly if dad or mum had just returned from working on a rig or platform. The oil industry flows through this part of Scotland, it contributes more to the local economy than whisky, and realising that there was a gap in knowledge about what goes on out there Maersk Training launched special education days for primary school children. It’s a day out from school, but no escape from learning.

The pupils visit the two very different sights, Portlethen and Kingswells, what might be termed real and surreal, to learn about the importance of teamwork, communication and training in the offshore world. In the first the emphasis is on safety and survival using actual equipment, the second is largely driven by impressive computer simulation. HANDS ON In both situations the children and teachers are given an insight into life within the industry, geology, give basic first aid training, and learn why training and teamwork is essential – and life-saving. They are also given hands-on experience of the crane, maritime and drilling simulators.

‘Most children in this area are either directly or indirectly affected by the oil & gas industry, whether it’s via their parents, family or friends,’ says Managing Director John Abate. ‘We want to give the children a special insight into this industry so they can better understand it, and also inspire them about the future, the endless possibilities in front of them and to make their day fun and memorable.’ The courses are on a monthly basis and were booked out until the summer break, but now the classroom door of opportunity is open again for the rest of the academic year.

"We want to give the children a special insight into this industry so they can better understand it, and also inspire them about the future."

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Much better than Nintendo, a ten-year-old gets to grips with the controls of the crane simulator.

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SPAR as seen through the eyes of others

Piracy Silent, Not Dead I

t would be tempting, and wrong, to believe that piracy on the high seas all ended with Captain Phillips in 2013.

Psychologists Frank Lamberg Nielsen and Ivan Doulgerof strike a pose on board. Photo courtesy of Maskinmesteren and photographer Michael VenĂ¸

Last year there were 190 reported incidents and to date in 2016, 139 have occurred or are ongoing.* The change has largely been geographical with incidents increasing in Indonesian waters whilst activities in the Gulf of Aden have greatly quietened. Elsewhere, the Gulf of Guinea and the Caribbean have a number of

"The course is not to scare people, but it is important that the way is reality tested participants' perceptions of how they will react in an acute critical situation."

reported boarding or attempted hijackings. Alarmingly there have also been cases of hostage-taking and demands for money onshore. Since a large number of marine engineers are posted abroad but never get to sea and are shorebased, the Danish engineering magazine Maskinmesteren was interested in the broader aspects of surviving the ordeal and wrote a four page article in their September issue. The subject was based around the Surviving

Piracy and Armed Robbery course. The SPAR-course is based on survival psychology, which is a niche in psychological research and practice and has been run for several years by Maersk Training in conjunction with two external consultants. BROADER THAN PIRACY ‘Here we will guide participants through the first frantic phase where, among other, must try to regain control. Our students are typically officers, all leaders, and by an assault and a hostage situation, they are no longer in control as before, but they should still try to remain in the lead role – even if it is difficult,’ says Ivan Doulgerof, chief psychologist at the Red Cross, who developed the SPAR course along with psychologist Michael Linde. The course is based on instruction, integrated with roleplaying and group exercises.

Figures courtesy of the International Chamber of Commerce – Commercial Crime Services ‘The course is not to scare people, but it is important that the way is reality tested participants' perceptions of how they will react in an acute critical situation and what they imagine, that can happen during a hostage taking,’ he was quoted in the Maskinmesteren article. The article went on to point out that SPAR was of a much broader value than just waiting

for a piracy situation – it is about remaining calm under the most testing and stressful situations and they suggested it should be run parallel to firefighting and other safety courses. You can read the full article here (in Danish in the September issue): http://www.maskinmesteren.dk/

My Name’s Joshua, So Call Me James Hamburgefintsiv

The life and times of a global ‘redneck’

very so often you bump into somebody who doesn’t just break the mould but destroys it in order to create a new one. Joshua Golden is one such bump. From the outside he’s what you’d imagine Colonel Sander’s grandson to look like. It doesn’t take a flight of fantasy to see his face on a BBQ sauce bottle, the broad southern smile topped by a buffalo horned moustache. He starts the conversation in a melodic drawl by placing his

heritage firmly in front of you as a statement of intent. ‘I’m a Redneck, and proud of it.’ He means what you see is what you get and what you give is instantly, and permanently, how you are viewed by the guy from Mississippi whose home is in Louisiana, his office base in Denmark and his workplace, the seas of the world.

It’s fitting he’s done all the seas and ports of the world, for Joshua came to Maersk Training through Transocean. He’s a human element in the deal which saw the Danish-based global training company take over the educational needs of the huge American drilling company. CROSSING THE LINE X22 It was his knowledge of the Transocean rigs that has seen him delivering courses quite literally worldwide for the past 18 months. Literally because he delivers ‘on the move’. His record of 179 consecutive days offshore was the result of two back-toback deliveries of drill ships. He joined the first in South Korea and taught the crew all the way to the Gulf of Mexico where he flew back to South Korea again and started over with the second ship. He didn’t know exactly what he was training when he set off as the crews only come together at the last moment.

The last trip was the 22nd time he’d crossed the Equator, by ship, ‘not bad for a boy from Mississippi’ he says. He wouldn’t have seen the sea if his doctor father had had his way. At the age of seventeen Joshua stubbornly went against his father’s advice. ‘I didn’t think school was for me. Dad said if you are going to live under my roof you are going to school; I said I wanted a job. He had a friend who was a pipeline superintendent on a barge in the North Sea, and he said ‘send him up to me, I’ll freeze him to death, I’ll work him to death and he will want to come back home and go to university – didn’t quite work out like that. I loved it, it was someplace that I could excel,’ he says, half smiling, half laughing. ‘I grew up on a dairy farm and worked hard, I went to the North Sea and worked very hard and I came back after six months with more money than my dad, who

was a doctor, earned in a year, and I said I know what I’m doing for a living. That’s how it started.’ THE SACKING OF JAMES At the age of seventeen he shouldn’t have been anywhere near a North Sea barge. In fact he wasn’t as far as the company and his workmates believed. Joshua was at home, they were working with a guy called James, or so the birth certificate said. ‘On my 18th I came out and told them I’d been using my brother’s birth certificate. They sacked me as James on the spot... and then re-employed me as Joshua immediately. When he is home it is about half an hour’s drive, or ride, outside of New Orleans. You drive cars but you ride motor bikes and getting on board one of his Japanese quartet of machines is his favourite way of getting about. This year is the first time since he started going that he’ll miss the three-day drive to Sturgis,

South Dakota for the mother of all bike rallies. That’s because he’s working and has become a father. Eighteen month old Truitt Delaney Golden is in pole position for his off work hours. Along with and wife Martye that is. ‘It’s 3711 miles from my front door to Main Street, Sturgis. I do it in three days with a group of buddies , my myself 29½ hours. Coming back it will take me two weeks because I’ll pick a State I haven’t been too. I’ve only six left to cover on my motorcycle.’ Motor cycling isn’t ideal transport for a family of three, but school teacher Martye who he met on the net, caught the bug, well sort of. ‘My wife used to ride with me on my bike, but it got to the point she just wanted to talk too much, so I said, “you need your own motorcycle”.’ There’s only so much graciousness a polite 40 year-old Southern Gentleman can tolerate.

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Golden Moments The Olympic flame is out but the memory burns on

Top: The choir being ferried out to the training ship Danmark. Middle: the main stadium: Bottom: weightlifting medal ceremony

he girls didn’t quite know what they were watching; the guys hadn’t an earthly clue why the girls were cheering them on.

It was however just part of the huge party that was the Rio Olympics, the month the world came to town. Now the party is over there is a time to reflect.

It was all in the Olympic spirit, it you don’t have someone from your own country to support, or hepper as they say in Denmark, you settle on a temporary favourite, chosen at random for their good looks, their athletic ability or maybe just because you like their national drink, food or flag.

PAST NOW PART OF THE FUTURE ‘There were many good things,’ says Managing Director Leonardo Cesar Avila Machado, unlike the World Cup where the whole of Brazilian culture was on show, here the focus was Rio. The creation of many new venues will last a long time, but it was in getting Brazilians to do things they normally wouldn’t do, that there might be a longer legacy.’

The office staff from Maersk Training in Rio de Janeiro had tickets to the weight-lifting, a sport they knew nothing about. There was no Brazilian in the competition so they chose to support the Cuban team. Even although they couldn’t communicate with each other directly, the Cubans responded to the home grown encouragement, but not quite enough. They lifted everything except the last weight and a medal.

Leonardo pointed out that many of the museums were refurbished and that in the weekends after the games had ended, the locals were still going to them, discovering their past and themselves. There had been anxiety before the games that there might be some violence, but the whole mood was

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From left, Prince Joachim shares a joke with his brother Crown Prince Frederik, Leonardo is introduced to Prince Joachim, Leonardo snaps a selfie with some of the Rio ‘team’ and the action they went to see.

one of pride and party. Running a business during the month was very difficult. Hotel rooms were impossible to come by so some courses had to be cancelled. Then there was an additional disruption to normality when the city’s mayor kept calling public

holidays, sometimes at only a day’s notice. The logic behind the six extra holidays he called for was to insure that the roads were freer of traffic so that the athletes could get to the stadiums. It meant that

if work went on as normal the company would have a doubletime wage bill. The courses, where accommodation was not a problem, ran as normal, but the back office staff benefited from some extra free time.

A ROYAL FEAST On the plus side of business, never before did the companies have the opportunity to be visible on such a vibrant stage – Leonardo visited the Danish and German ‘houses’ which were set up to promote, but the best moment was dinner on

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board the training ship, Danmark. A dinner attended by Crown Prince Frederik, Crown Princess Mary and Prince Joachim. ‘You don’t get chances like that every day,’ he said.

Whether or not business will come out of the whole massive event remains to be seen. There was a feeling from the visitor that much of the pre-vamped image of Brazil was re-written and for the locals there remains the feel-good

factor and the fact that for all the disruption of the recent past, the roads and facilities of Rio have never looked so good. ‘On a personal point of view, it was really great being introduced

to so many new sports, in so many new stadiums. They were privileged days,’ says Leonardo.

Total Commitment to Constant Cake There’s a story that immediately after the war the shipbuilders at Harland and Wolff in Belfast couldn’t quite understand why whenever they launched a new vessel, it resembled, down to the smallest detail, several other also recently launched ships.

hey were being out-produced by an Asian ship-builder, but what they couldn’t understand in Belfast was why the Japanese were thinking design along exactly the same lines. They realised someone was passing on their architectural drawings before they could even lay the keel. So they designed a new vessel; from the outside it was a 1950’s conventional freighter, but inside they placed 70% of the weight on the port side. They left the plans as usual in their

drawings office. Some months later halfway across the world, on a launch day the new vessel barely reached the end of the slipway before she toppled over. Industrial espionage has been a feature of industry ever since the first patent was issued in Venice in 1420 for making glass. After the process of copying was effectively forbidden in law, stealing ideas and concepts became part of the way of business. It was a job of stealth. In the old days, pre-computer, a key to a steel cabinet might have opened a draw or two; today however we are in a different league, a code or password can expose a whole company to the dangers of being out-played in a competitive commercial world. But it is not all digital piracy, in 2001, soap giants Procter and

Gamble got their hands dirty: they admitted they’d paid someone for six months to go through the rubbish skips of rival Unilever in a search for details of a new haircare product they were working on. The rubbish that fills the bins starts on the desks of the employees and that is where the leak can first be drained by those with outside interests. Then there is the bin by the desk, the uncollected print matter, the discarded copies, all can be a threat to secrets and security – we have entered the world of Data Protection and it affects all of us. As an individual you are very much a target. Maersk as a company, has always had a reputation for keeping things ‘shipshape’ and is one of a number of companies that has recently implemented a scheme

to help cut down the prospects for opportune espionage. Ahead of new EU data protection laws, which come into being in 2018, they have started a progamme called Commit. It’s like an awareness campaign based on not leaving a trail. Michael Bang, Maersk Training in Svendborg’s Managing Director summed up what Commit means to his team, ‘It’s sort of like tax laws. They are very difficult to understand but you have to live up to them anyway. If you don’t it is not the fault of the system, it is the fault of you.’ ‘It is all about safety, the safety in how we do business. Over the last year there have been numerous fraudulent attempts. The chain is a strong as the weakest link, so if I leave an IT back door open somewhere, bad guys can use

that to harm the whole company,’ he points out. ‘But it is not the company that is at fault, it is me for leaving the door open by not following the rules.’ The problem with the rules is that they are being written as we live and breathe. Digital fraud is a whole new world of crime and in these relatively early days people will see threats and solutions differently. That’s why part of the Commit exercise is to gather thoughts, observations and actions. Michael’s set up The Commit Challenge. ‘We have a team called “the Spanish Inquisition” who observe each department and deduct points for likely breaches. These breaches might form the guidance rules for the future. The department with the best score at the end of the week gets to choose a cake for next week – we have a Constant Cake tradition here,’ explains Michael. ‘It’s a way of turning a fairly dull duty into fun, sort of “stick and carrot cake”.’

Media Motivated A simple message runs freely

t is quite staggering how Social Media has crept into our lives. If Facebook, with 1,1 billion people signed up, were a country, only India and China would be more populous. Through it every day they view 100 million hours of video. The professional network LinkedIn has 450 million users, 25 million alone in Brazil. The most used word is ‘motivated’ and 13% log on at least once day. Even so it can be quite surprising how a small item can be picked up. A photo and 53 words about a course run by Maersk Training

in Dubai was uploaded by a participant and was viewed by 927 people in just four days – a total that included 48 sales people, 33 CEO’s, 20 business managers and 17 human resources specialists. It was not quite viral, but it created a nearinstant reach that would have been impossible to imagine in a pre-social media era. How difficult would it have been back in the 20th Century to get the attention of 33 CEO’s, even if it were for only the half minute they spent on reading it? Statistics show that CEO’s have on average 930 connections so who knows where the observation by David Conroy of the IWCF might end up.

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or years there was a brilliant marketing maneuver conducted by a champagne house that went undetected by everyone except the perpetrators. At a racecourse, a slim girl in a smart red suit would step forward immediately after the presentation of the trophy to the winning owner and hand them a magnum bottle of champagne, the label always facing the live TV cameras. It was so slick and seemingly natural that for years no one questioned the action â&#x20AC;&#x201C; or the

fact that the champagne house was not a sponsor. The cost, two people, a magnum of champagne for each televised race and admission to the course. The result, a sublime bit of free, and legal, product placement. The first recognized bit of product placement came in the early days

Nudge Nudge, Wink Wink ...say no more

of the movies. There was a Buster Keaton film, The Garage, in which a brand of motor oil regularly appeared in shot. Whether it was effective is open to discussion. Where’s Red Crown gasoline today? Engulfed in BP is the answer. INNOCENCE AVOIDANCE AND ACCEPTANCE Product placement seems to have existed in three eras. The Age of Innocence, when they didn’t know what they were doing. Look at the fabulous shot in the 1958 movie, Ice Cold in Alex with John Mills and the glass of Carlsberg. The Age of Avoidance when they stumbled over backwards to cover labels and in the process only made their identities more intriguing. When the Kink’s released Lola with the line, ‘champagne and it tastes just like Coca Cola, C-O-L-A cola’ singer Ray Davis was made to fly the Atlantic to change it to Cherry Cola for the UK single version. That was in 1970 and to this day the LP and American version is Coke, the UK version Cherry.

More recently in Slum Dog Millionaire, Mercedes said it was OK if the gangsters used their cars, but not in poor areas – so the badges were removed. It’s so hard to tell a Mercedes when badgeless. Look at the first Herbie movie, Disney didn’t have approval from VW, so there’s no badge and no possible way of working out it was a Beetle! Mars had earlier missed out when they refused to let MM’s be written into the script of ET. Hershey’s Reese’s Pieces stepped in and profits soared 65%. Hello to the Age of Acceptance where product placement is a core backer for most moves. Heineken paid $45 million for Daniel Craig to drink their beer in Skyfall – quite frankly it wasn’t enough. What brought Poopdeck to this point was the picture that is the cover photo for this issue. It was a fabulous bit of free marketing. Maersk Line or maybe it was Maersk Container Industry, received this bit of gratis promotion in Bremerhaven

recently. I’m not sure if they targeted the action or it was coincidental, but for several days the name dominated the skyline of the rejuvenated old fishing port. WHAT CAR? The event was a sponsored free open-air cinema. The sponsor, a local garage, wanted to put one of their new models on top of the screen. The screen needed to be 25 metres high and withstand whatever the North Sea would throw at it. Shipping containers are designed to face up to such elements. They also provide a sturdy support for a cinema-sized screen. From the front the movie goers could not help but notice the containers on the first level with Maersk all over them. From the back, every arriving boat was greeted by a Maersk wall of ten containers. Looking up on top, I’m not sure if in these days of ubiquitous car design that they ever worked out the make or model.

Of course the movie goers won’t instantly go out and order a Maersk container or the car, but the subtlety in marketing is that an undercoat is laid and the foundations for a genuine warmth towards the company quietly planted. In one of the very first eSeas we carried the story of the American family who had a hobby of snapping Maersk containers wherever they were in the world. They should try Venezuela. Apparently it is the world centre for abandoned containers. According to industry sources a container costs $100 a day in rental; Venezuela’s overdue bill is currently more than a billion. They just haven’t bought into the concept that they are reusable for the purpose they were built for and they are more often than not re-commissioned as local storage, or a home for chickens, or they are simply abandoned. Or maybe it’s just that the Venezuelans are big into open-air movies.

Hamburgefintsiv

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