Archive for September, 2008
Estimated time of completion
Yesterday’s client meeting went on a little longer than planned, resulting in a mad dash back down the A1. So I’m working on a formula to calculate what the actual length of any meeting might be:
Turns out that the Economist was also a Futurologist
Having spent more time wading through his book, it turns out that Robert Beckman (of The Downwave and Into the Upwave fame) was ahead of his time on the technology as well as the economics front:
All individual knowledge will become more and more a question of knowing where to look for information…by the year 2020 we will have refined the process of gaining teleaccess to digitalised libraries – which will effectively be a vast databank of information, discovery and theory – old and new.
It looks like google book search and google scholar are going to get there 10 years ahead of schedule.
ready to drink
On the way to get ready for a party the other night we made a quick cashpoint-and-wine stop and picked up this example of truly ‘ready to drink’ packaging (sorry about pic quality, dodgy cameraphone, must upgrade it). Apparently the wine itself was quite drinkable and this packaging solution would obviously be fab for picnics but does this take ‘convenience’ a bit far?
worth a watch
New Hovis ad spanning their 122 year history (factoid: their competitor Warburtons has been going for 10 years longer):
Sarah Palin / Hillary Clinton spoof on Saturday Night Live:
Beemer brand love
I’ve been thinking a lot about Brand Love recently. Not quite in a Lovemarks relationship/performance expectation way, but in a (perhaps more British?) understated, mostly unacknowledged way.
Take my relationship with BMW. I drive a little One Series. Do I really need it? No. Was I probably always destined to own it? Yes. Just after I was born my Dad bought a BMW on the recommendation of a friend who said that his Beemer was quiet on motorways. Five cars and thirty odd years later and he’s still got one – and so has his mate. As a child I even had a BMW car seat, an enormous thing in matching black upholstery fabric that seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth (in that I can’t find any pics on the internet to share with you).
As a brand, BMW to me means security, strength, family, comfort, safety and a sense of belonging – not perhaps the brand values you might usually attribute to ‘the ultimate driving machine’. Since its also an easy and fun car to live with, I think this might be a new generation of BMW ownership off to a flying start, perhaps despite rather than because of the BMW marketing team’s best efforts.
There must be lots of people knocking about with slightly off kilter brand associations & random Brand Love. I suppose the best way to harness this is the good old internet, where niche marketing sits best. Incidentally, I did visit BMW’s website looking for some old pics but there were none to be found. How about an online museum BMW marketing guys? Lets share the love.
pic from here, GNU license applies
The Downwave Revisited
I found an old copy of ‘Into the Upwave’ by Robert Beckman at home (loving the author pic). It was published in 1988 but some of it is so relevant right now that they might as well save money on economists and read the first few chapters out loud on the Ten O’Clock News every night.
The gist of the first part of the book seems to be that everything is cyclical and looking at economic events over recent centuries it is possible to predict where we are in an economic long wave model. So ours would have several minor recessions over a 25-30 year ‘upwave’ period (1980/81 and 90/91 in the UK I’m guessing), followed by a period of sustained growth and then prices and/or inflation peak, leading to recession (now-ish). This recession is longer and steeper than anything that took place during the ‘upwave’, lasting 8-10 years.
The only thing is, what if the timeframe is longer and our relatively recent minor recessions were really the cumulative downwave to the post war upwave and therefore we are seeing the beginning of a period of full on depression as per the right hand side of the graph?
Update 27/01/2012 – a kind friend has just sent me a copy of The Downwave (I only had Into The Upwave before):
The copy on the back cover is spookily familiar:
Would you follow them?
I’m due to meet up soon with my old Planning Director from years ago. He’s completely changed industries, but I always thought that if he ever opened his own agency, he’s one of the few people I’ve worked with that I’d seriously consider following to a start-up.
I suppose it’s the ultimate test – do you respect/admire/trust this person enough that you’d risk leaving your job to move to a (potentially) risky start-up to work with/for them? Over the last 10 years I must have worked with over 500 people one way or another but I can only think of maybe three that I’d even think about dropping everything for and following to a start-up.
But in the very unlikely event of W+K deciding to open a Leeds outpost I’ll be beating the door down demanding a job…
How To Survive In Business
As we tried to get our key cards to work in yet another soulless business hotel earlier this week, it struck researcher Louise and I that what recent graduates really need is a post-grad course on How To Survive in Business, i.e. the stuff they never teach you at Uni but you need to know to survive in the real business world. We think the modules should include:
- Effective use of hotel bedroom key cards (obviously)
- Powerpoint 101
- Photocopying for Beginners
- Advanced use of SatNav
- Transferring Phone Calls – beyond the call pickup button
- Office Kitchen Etiquette
- Business Travel: laptops are heavier than you think
- Final exam case study: M&S Simply Food – saviour of motorway dining
quote of the week
From a respondent in a mail order group I was viewing last night:
Moderator: “So what do you do with your catalogue when it arrives?”
Respondent: “I take it straight to the toilet”
