Archive for June, 2009
Lovely things for lovely weather
The Marvellous Tea Dance Company
The Cromer end-of-the-pier Seaside Special show
Summertime and the office is boiling
While I was off on bridesmaid duty is seems that it has been scorchio in the office. No thermometer needed – I just checked out the number of blokes in shorts (with accompanying footwear crisis) and girls trying to pull off sundresses as office attire…
update, 02/07/09 – today the thermometer is pushing 30C and even my chief exec is wearing shorts…
Glamping – not new news, apparently
My sister and her new husband are off on their mini honeymoon today to the Lake District (with an exotic maxi-moon to follow later in the year). They’re going Glamping (Glamorous Camping) – staying in a luxury yurt, complete with double bed, wood burning stove and decking.
I was telling some family friends at the wedding what the honeymoon plans were and all about Glamping when they pointed out that it’s not exactly a hot new trend. For twenty years this particular couple have been kitting out their tent with carpet, duvets, wash stands and even rocking chairs and can’t understand what all the fuss is about.
A cut below the competition
My hairdresser tells me that business is booming for him and I’m not surprised. Apart from the fact that he is some kind of hair genius who manages to turn my uncooperative mane into a series of non-stop good hair days, as a village operation he charges about half of what city centre salons do.
He tells me that the industry is reporting clients increasingly trading down from paying over £100 for a cut and colour in a high profile, prime location salon to more affordable rates nearer to home.
However it seems that the problem comes for the suburban salons that five or ten years ago were flying, with more business than they knew what to do with and were advised to steeply increase their prices.
The expectation was that although some customers might leave, they would still be doing less work for the same amount of money and could start behaving more like the branded urban businesses who were charging the same money. A brilliant plan until their recessionista clients started tightening their belts.
Now apparently some of these upwardly mobile salons are £4k down a week, whereas on a wet Wednesday morning at my local salon you can hardly swing a hairdryer for clients.
surfing from dry land
In the unlikely event that my Dad ever had to fill in a TGI lifestyle survey he would tick the box marked yes next to ‘do you use email’. But this is how he actually emails:
- I check for new email on the home computer and print out anything intended for him
- he reads the print out and drafts a reply longhand
- which I then type up and send
His version of shopping online involves sitting next to me at the computer while I find what he wants and then passing his credit card over.
There must be a fair few 60-something captains of industry and retired 70-somethings that have the world convinced that they have cracked this internet malarkey, when in fact they just have very accommodating secretaries or daughters.
Yet again, the data only tells half the story.
insight has to come from an interesting idea
Since work seem to have woken up to the fact that I can string sentences together in a relatively coherent written form, I have become Insight Led Think Piece Mailer Woman.
Pulling together interesting trends, anecdotes and research feedback to come to an 800 word point of view about a given topic or trend is a fairly enjoyable way to spend a day or two in the office but it seems that some of my co-workers can’t get their heads around the actual process required to arrive at some kind of insightful point of view.
In my experience, fresh insight generally comes from an interesting idea, a nugget or an observation that needs further exploration to back it up and arrive at a considered point of view. “Can you write something about XYZ industry” doesn’t really send me skipping down the path towards insightfulness…and if the starting point isn’t interesting, it seems likely that the finished piece will be equally unenlightening…
A blast from my past
For long and complicated reasons, I still have my first car at home. It was my Mum’s car before that, so the Honda Civic Shuttle has been in the family since it was brand new in 1985.
Now, the whole point of this car was it’s practicality, a precursor to today’s MPVs – you could fold the seats flat to get loads of stuff in, it had lots of cubby holes to tidy away the detritus of family life and it was easy to drive with great visibility.
How do you think Honda choose to demonstrate all this in the original sales brochure which I discovered today tucked into the service book?
ideal for collecting models and their luggage from the airport
handy if you own a light aircraft
perfect for tennis fans
Although the brochure calls the Shuttle ‘a considerable leap forward in integrated technology’, it lacks power steering, electric windows, ABS, central locking, or any of the other ‘standard features’ we take for granted today.
It also drives like a tank and has a manual choke, which flummoxes anyone born after 1975. But I secretly rather love it.
Crafting nostalgia for traditional skills
The theme of home crafts making a comeback keeps popping up at work. Using newly-acquired but very traditional skills to create unique items for yourself or your home seems to be enjoying a real revival.
I don’t think its just that we’re all feeling the economic pinch or cocooning madly, there does seem to be a real nostalgia around for make do and mend, a sort of retro Fashionable Frugality.
Channel 4’s Kirstie’s Homemade Home helped craftyness go mainstream by being evangelical about using traditional crafts and second hand bargains to achieve a rustic, personal, retro look for your home without spending a fortune.
Of course, Kirsty had to be taught (or re-taught) skills like knitting and cushion making since until lessons sprung up all over the country in the last few months there can’t have been many 30-somethings around who could proficiently knit-one-pearl-two.
In fact, there’s a new wool shop just opened down the road from the office, with (as you can see above) a prominent ‘learn to knit here’ sign hanging outside. It’s a very sweet business called Baa Ram Ewe and has a lovely website – plus of course blog, facebook and twitter, as befits the New Traditionalists.
Interesting 2009 tickets news
The first 100 tickets for Interesting 2009 (Conway Hall, London, September 12th) go on sale June 17th. Two more tranches of 100 tickets to follow in subsequent weeks in case you’re on hols/pitching/poorly/whatever that day and can’t get online.
If you don’t know about Interesting, it’s sometimes billed as ‘a one-day conference of ideas for people who want to know more about the world they live in‘ and you can watch the videos from last year’s talks over at The Guardian to get a flavour, including mine here.
It’s always a brilliant, memorable day and the tickets sell out in hours so stick June 17th in your diary now.
UPDATE 18/06/09 – apparently the first 100 tickets sold out in 48 seconds! The next lot go on sale 1.30pm (BST) on Thursday June 25th at the eventbrite site.
UPDATE 30/06/09 – 100 more tickets will be on sale at 9pm (BST) on Wednesday the 8th of July here
and finally – an extra 50 tickets go on sale here at 11am BST on Friday the 17th of July
06/09/09 really, this time, finally – the brand new wiki ticket exchange is here if you’re still looking for a ticket…
I’m going to be there – anyone else planning on attending?
a day in the (reality checked) life
You know those ‘day in the life; and ’24 hours with’ pieces that turn up in trade mags and the business section of the newspaper? They make working in AdLand sound very glamorous, but I’m afraid the life of this Planner is rather more mundane…
8.40 Arrive at work. Go to kitchen. Coffee pot is empty. Decide life is too short to wait for a new pot to filter so settle for Nescafe instead.
8.50 Read 47 new emails in inbox. Delete 44 of them.
9.05 Creative time booked for today. Decide to leave briefing until they’ve a) turned up and b) had a cup of tea.
9.30 Brief Creative.
10.00 Internal meeting. Hunt down other meeting participants in manner of herding ducks.
10.15 Found them! Go on hunt for empty meeting room.
10.30 10am meeting starts.
11.30 Read 20 new emails, delete 18. Brief in desk research. Chat about last night’s groups with the quallies. Decide amongst us that Leeds is the most over-researched city in the UK, closely followed by Milton Keynes.
12.00 Talk to New Business team about a hot new lead they have. Get sidetracked into talking about Lisa’s hot new necklace.
12.30 Lunchtime. Have missed the Sandwich Man and it’s monsooning outside so would need a snorkel to walk to the shops. Stick soup in microwave.
12.33 Stick soup back in mysteriously underpowered microwave.
12.35 Check hotmail, bloglines etc. Call blacksmith. Write blog post (check spellings).
1.10 Skim read Mintel report. Wonder who on earth writes the editorial bits which seem to specialise in stating the blumin obvious.
1.50 Take laptop up to boardroom ready for 2pm client meeting. We have chocolate biscuits. Excellent.
2.05 Clients are not here yet. Can’t do any work because laptop is in boardroom hooked up to projector. Sit at desk looking like computer-less work experience person.
2.20 Clients turn up. They have spent the last 20 minute trying to find a parking space.
2.25 Reach for chocolate biscuit to go with cup of tea. No-one else in meeting does likewise. Feel like immature greedy guts. Eat it anyway.
3.00 Client has decided to do complete 180 turnaround with npd launch strategy. This will obviously cause us no additional work whatsoever…
4.00 Meeting finishes. Write To Do Again list. Read 25 new emails, delete 23.
4.15 Go and see how Creative are getting on. Or not.
4.45 Get sucked into account team strategy discussion of the ‘too many cooks’ variety.
5.00 Dig out obscure facts & figures for the PR team to use in a press release. Remind them that a show of hands in the office does not equal ‘our survey said’ for PR purposes.
5.30 Move car as according to the tannoy I am Blocking Someone In. Delete more emails, tidy desk, check hotmail.
5.45 Try to leave. But someone is Blocking Me In.
