Archive for September, 2009
never mind the groups, what about the catering?
I was at a viewing facility on Monday evening where they seemed to be hell bent on fulfilling their duty of care to clients and moderators in making sure we were looking after ourselves properly. As well as the usual fruit basket and fridges filled with water, Coke and Red Bull, they offered fruit juices and no less than six different flavours of vitamin enriched water (I can report that the lemon one is particularly nice).
I was feeling quite pleased with myself for managing to arrange a healthy, tasty, yet dairy free fork buffet to cater for Client no. 1’s dietary needs…until Client no. 2 piped up just as it was all being served that they only ate Halal meat. Sigh. You can’t win ‘em all.
general roundup
I’ve been busy recently on the writing front – you can read my thoughts on Stocking up for Christmas in this week’s issue of The Publican (on p.41 in the digital edition here) and I’ve written a feature looking at how to get more Quality Time with your horse (if you spend more time mucking out than hacking out) in this month’s Horse magazine.
I’ve also cuddled an eagle, bought a van and had four different focus groups with Mums all unexpectedly turn into the Daniel Craig Appreciation Society. It’s been a random week.
a brief message for European marketing directors
I seem to have spent a fair chunk of the last four years engaged in indirect battles with the marketing directors of the European parent companies of some of my UK clients. On the off-chance that any of that illustrious group are reading this, you are (indirectly) paying my agency a lot of money based on our understanding of your UK customers, so please bear in mind that:
- British commercial TV is not the spawn of the devil
- The UK cut off age for participation in social networking activity is not 25
- What may be hilarious to a Spaniard, does not always go down the same way in Southport
- Although simply translating the German campaign into English may save you a lot of money, it will probably be rubbish and not work
- Sometimes we like working in beta – try something on a small scale, see if it works, if it doesn’t, try something different. It’s a cunning time and money saving plan. It’s just a bit difficult to put on a spreadsheet to email to you.
- We are not trying to waste your money. If it goes wrong, we look bad too.
- You might be the brand owner – but your customers have ownership of the brand. What works for them, will ultimately work for your bottom line.
- Trust me, I’m a Ad(wo)Man.
newsflash – my dinner party survey shows social technologies NOT mainstream in UK yet
Just in case you were under the impression that everyone in the UK with a degree and an internet connection must surely ‘get’ social media, I had a very enlightening conversation with a bunch of (normal, female, early thirties) accountants at a dinner party last Saturday night.
They asked me to explain what ‘blogging’ was, what did a ‘blog’ look like and what was twitter? Was twitter the same as a blog?
I did my best, but it was a real wakeup call. On the basis of this (admittedly small) sample, social technologies have NOT gone mainstream properly yet.
On Forrester’s Social Techographics Ladder these ladies would be classed as ‘joiners’ as they use facebook – but they’re really ‘inactives’ – not only do they don’t know about blogging, twittering and uploading, they don’t care much either.
I think I love the Andaz
While I was in London for Interesting2009, I decided to made a weekend of it and thanks to the wonders of google found the Andaz hotel in Liverpool Street.
This is a hotel so cool that it doesn’t have a reception desk (just helpful blokes in suits wandering about with laptops) and thinks that Bosse ipod docks are essential hotel room equipment. I must have got some kind of internet-only-advance-purchase-second-Saturday-if-there’s-an-R-in-the-month deal as it was incredibly cheap for a nice hotel in London (like under £100 a night cheap).
Sadly, I don’t think my work travel budget will stretch to the Andaz’s normal rates next time I’m in town, but if yours will, or you need to put important clients up somewhere nice, I highly recommend it.
insights from Interesting 2009
Despite a few technical hiccups and so many speakers that it overran a bit, Interesting2009 lived up to the fine reputation of its 2007 and 2008 predecessors.
In the unlikely event that you’re not up to speed, Interesting is an annual day long shindig organised by Russell Davies and the main rule for speakers is to ‘talk about something Interesting but it can’t be your job’.
Roo Reynolds has posted a great (and very thorough) round up of the day over on his blog, but for me the highlights of an Interesting are always the random facts, observations and insights you come away with, like:
- Sailing very, very fast involves the boat not really being in the water
- Stan Laurel’s (offof Laurel & Hardy) Dad was an awesome guy
- Chernobyl wasn’t technically a nuclear explosion, only killed 56 people and didn’t cause birth defects
- Bees can’t see purple
- E is the most common letter in the English language
- Sir Frances Galton sort of invented the dog whistle, only his version didn’t work on dogs, it just scared ponies
- The ability to generate ideas isn’t a well that might run dry – it’s a muscle that needs exercising
- Evolution is a bit like Chinese Whispers, i.e. people further down the line doing stuff a bit differently. In genetics it’s called Random Drift
- People remember stories, not facts
Big thanks to Russell & his band of helpers for organising the day and thank you to my agency’s lovely clients for proving Interesting snacks for everyone – cheers to Traidcraft for the Geobars and Henry Goode for all the liquorice.
Links:
my Interesting2009 photos on flickr (2008 and 2007 pics here too)
everyone’s tagged photos on flickr
official Interesting2009 website
Interesting09 recent tweets
nearly time for Interesting 2009
It’s Interesting 2009 on Saturday and I’m a bit giddy about it. I’ve managed to turn it into a shopping and catching-up-with-mates London weekend-a-thon and will be boarding the train Down South at stupid o’clock on Saturday morning.
If you’re going to be there too, please come and say hello – I’ll be the one enthralled during ‘Ponies I Have Loved; Both Real and Imagined’ (and I look like this).
(If you’re still looking for a ticket, the Interesting Ticket Exchange wiki is here)
