Having a bad day at work and tempted to tell callers exactly what’s on your mind? For many people, indulging in a spot of under-the-breath mumbling is enough to relieve tension, but for one school in Australia, their infuriation at pupil absences and lack of parental support was eloquently spat all over their answering machine. In fact, a whole auto attendant message was dedicated to making their feelings very clear!

Did I hear that correctly?

With no fewer than 10 auto attendant choices, parents were encouraged to press a number most suited to their enquiry – covering everything from lying about a child’s absence or inability to do their homework to swearing at staff and complaining about lunches. It certainly makes for an entertaining listen – check it out:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pwghabw4N80

Office on meltdown or just a clever hoax?

If this is a real recording, we’re led to believe that the message had disastrous consequences for the school.  Well, such a courageous (or stupid) message would! So make sure your day goes a little easier by keeping customers informed with clear, concise and direct On Hold Marketing and auto attendant messages. And if you’re feeling a little close to the edge, just write down an imaginary auto attendant list. It’ll make you feel better… and it’s much more amusing than counting to ten!

Finding the right song for that great weather just got a little easier. We’ve recently stumbled across Musicovery.com, a clever site that allows you to find and listen to music based on its era, genre and tempo — and most importantly, your mood.

Musicovery is simple to use, too: just log on to the site and use the search panel to browse artists and songs by their sound. So, if you’re feeling calm, Musicovery will find the tracks to complement a laid-back mood. If you’re feeling a bit more downbeat, try something from the darker side of the spectrum.

Like Spotify, Musicovery is useful because it provides a large song library that plays exactly what you want it to. And, just as Spotify is redefining how and when listeners want to enjoy their music, Musicovery provides another way for listeners to find new tunes without much effort.

A kind of audio branding tool?

What we find really interesting about Musicovery is that beyond personal use, it also hints at a number of future possibilities for commercial users — particularly those who are interested in creating a soundtrack for their retail environment. As we’ve covered before, matching the right music to a visual brand is now a serious marketing consideration. It’s becoming more and more important to define what your audience, and potential customers, will respond to best.

With a system like Musicovery, you’re looking at a kind of flexibility a pre-determined playlist just can’t offer. And because it’s possible to plug the program into existing players like iTunes, it could mean that your already specific playlist can be tailored further to the time of day; the weather; the day of the week — even the look of customers in your shop right there and then. For instance, let’s say you’re a fashion retailer operating in a city centre. You might want to find the energetic, feel-good music in your playlist. By simply clicking ‘energetic’, or even by setting the tempo you want, Musicovery will filter the right tunes from your personal library, and you’ll be able to create the right mood without the hassle.

Time isn’t an issue, either — the tool will select the music for you, which means you won’t have to spend an age seperating your catalogue manually.

Agree with us? Have a look and take a few minutes to play with Musicovery at musicovery.com.

Fletcher Moss Rangers F.C. Under 13s, sponsored by PH Media Group, won the prestigious Manchester County Sunday Cup on Sunday 28th of March. They beat rivals Northside JFC, in what was a thrilling encounter.

PH Media Group – proud sponsors of Fletcher Moss Rangers F.C.

Fletcher Moss, who train in Mersey Bank, thrashed their opponents 7-1 to win the cup, scoring some wonderful goals and playing some great junior league football. PH Media Group officials watched their team bring home the silverware – another sound investment from PH Media!

Visit the Fletcher Moss website for further details on their famous cup victory…

For the managers at Carlisle’s Department of Work and Pensions, the best way to cope with the additional workload caused by yesterday’s Civil Servants’ strike was to instruct the remaining staff to impersonate answering machines. It must have seemed like such a good idea at the time.

During the lunch time rush of phone calls, the DWP managers told the overworked Civil Servants to read a script in the style of an automated phone message before swiftly hanging up, in an attempt to dupe their callers into believing they were talking to a machine. The script read:

“Due to the high volume of enquiries we are currently experiencing we are unable to take your call. Please call back later.”

Workers reportedly had trouble stifling their laughter and many gave up and revealed their true identity as a human being and not a recorded message. The scam was leaked through Facebook chat between colleagues on either side of the picket line, causing red faces all round.

The final word has to go to a DWP staff member who pointed out that it would have been much easier to simply have an answering machine message recorded in light of the current situation, rather than attempting to do it themselves.

The DWP is welcome to get in touch with PH Audio for a range of automated telephone messages – which won’t laugh or stutter – covering any situation when calls cannot be answered.

It’s 2010, which means it’s officially The Future. We’re all using jetpacks to get to work, using teleporters to go on city breaks, talking to family with our watches, that kind of thing.

Well, sort of. Google and Apple taking over the world besides, we’re not quite as advanced as our forefathers imagined. It’s easy to laugh at old science fiction stories, movies and games now we’re here, but some of them really did think we’d be in flying cars by now. Even Arthur C. Clarke, one of the most nerdy celebrated science fiction writers in the world, thought we’d be playing with gas monsters on Jupiter by next year.

So, in the spirit of predicting the future (and because it’s trendy to talk about the next decade), we thought we’d gather ideas about the way On-Hold Marketing might change and develop. Click ‘read more’ to see what we came up with.

The near future

Intelligent remote management systems

Soon, we’ll be launching a new on-hold player that allows us to load new productions onto client hardware remotely, at scheduled intervals, via the net. Web-controlled messaging means no more CDs, USB sticks or otherwise – and it’ll be simple because it’s remotely managed from our office, allowing playlists and music to be constantly updated.

Day parting

Day-parted messages are all about flexibility. So, if it’s 9AM when somebody calls, on-hold messages will say, ‘Good morning,’ and so on.  Eventually, clients will be able to manage what their callers hear before and after hours – with a different message for the day and another for the evening. Events and holidays would be covered similarly.

The not-so-distant future

On-hold video messaging

We’re already seeing rapid developments in the industry as telephone technologies grow closer to, and merge with, the internet. We reckon there’ll be a closer relationship between products like Google Wave, video and voice communications. In turn, this could mean that a kind of On-Hold Marketing shifts online if video conferencing becomes more widely used. Who knows: you might be able to SEE advertising while you wait…

The flipside is that more B2B and B2C communication is carried out live, via text, instead of on the phone. Companies like Dell already use live web chat to access and fix computers.

Targeted messaging

We also think that On-Hold Marketing, just like web marketing, will become increasingly personalised. So, you could ring a company, they could match your number to your name on their database, and when you’re put on hold, the messages you hear will reflect the services and products you haven’t used before.

The far-future

Your call, your choice

You’ve made the call to a company who doesn’t believe in music on hold with messages – so you get to decide what you want to listen to. It’d be a licensing nightmare for the company and the supplier, but you’d get your very own, hand-held pub jukebox. And if that sounds really far-fetched, don’t forget you can already get Spotify on your mobile!

Celebrity voice modelling

Call centre staff have their voices digitally altered into the voice of your favourite celebrity — alive or dead. You could be talking about your council tax bill with Arnold Schwarzenegger! And, when you’re placed on hold, Arnie’s waiting for you there, too.

Live on-hold messaging

Neural implants will play on-hold content to individuals at all moments of mental downtime: standing at bus stop, waiting for microwave oven, showering, scratching, etc. No boredom, only relentless information.

The Always-Factor

Phones might be unrecognisable in the future, but the value of a good-old sing-song is eternal. That’s why, whenever you’re asked to wait, scores of television talent show runners-up will be dispatched by orbiting satellites to sing on-hold songs to phone callers in person.

The ultimate on-hold technology

Voiceover artists will merge with playback equipment to become trans-human on-hold-borgs — the only people on Earth who can actually read this sentence aloud.

Have any ideas of your own? Share them with a comment below!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gPJHKTl2e4

Big claims might attract plenty of publicity, but if your business can’t live up to them, that exposure can quickly turn on you. So, only offer the moon on a stick if you’ve actually got a lunar lolly up your sleeve, or make sure someone’s recording it and then broadcast it for the world’s amusement!

The bedroom rock star, we’ve all been there – standing in mirrors with hairbrush microphones, playing tennis racket guitar solos, the acceptance speeches, sell-out gigs at Wembley and the interviews with Parky.

For some of us, the dream ended in our adolescent years. We’ve grown up, got ourselves sensible haircuts and moved into stable jobs.

But some of us are finding new ways to live the dream, and in this post you’ll even find out how you can make your computer sing the latest hits for you.

Tonight Matthew, I’m going to be…

The embarrassing scenes we tried so hard to suppress are resurfacing because pop culture tells us it’s okay. It’s okay to stand up in a room full of people you don’t know and bare your soul; belting out tuneless song after tuneless song – and we’re not just talking karaoke anymore! With popular games like SingStar on PlayStation and Guitar Hero on the Xbox, our once-hidden secret pleasure is in our living room, there for everyone to see — and you can even get your friends involved and ‘play’ together as a full band!

Make it stop!

And when the console is turned off and the TV switched on, there’s nothing that can prepare the earlobes (or egos) for the torrent of abuse that’s about to ensue. Yes, that’s right – X Factor, Britain’s Got Talent, P Diddy’s Starmaker, Orange Unsigned – the list goes on and the bedroom performer is now today’s entertainment.

Now is your time to shine

Of course, if singing in public isn’t your thing, but you don’t want to starve the world of your (ahem) natural musical talent, why not make the stars sing for you? Keep it mellow with a love song, make a rock classic or bust some rhymes – whatever your musical preference, you can make the magic happen with Let Them Sing It For You, a sound art project by Erik Bünger and produced by SR c. All you do is write the lyrics and this wonderful site will bring your words to life!

Okay, it might not have the flair or finesse of Timbaland’s (the producer not the clothing brand) latest offering, but you’ll have hours of fun constructing your own musical masterpiece! Check it out: Let them sing it for you.

Photo credits: Okinawa Soba and lyricsboy

We’re loving this Tenori-on style online synthesizer. Turn your speakers up!

If you’re after the real thing you probably should visit Yamaha’s website

Part musical instrument, part puzzle, Auditorium is a highly addictive browser-based video game.

Use your cursor to direct beams of light onto the graphic equaliser and you’re rewarded with beautiful music! Have a go here and see (or rather hear) for yourself!