Archive for November, 2009
all I want for Christmas is a sensible v-neck jumper…
Somewhere in my blog reader this week (I really should have saved it) there popped up a post about how perhaps this year’s crop of festive ads were a little too knowing (if you know whose post it was, please comment & I’ll link to them).
I think the post referenced in particular the new M&S ad, which is based around festive celebrity vox pops and includes Phillip Glenister’s announcement that Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without “that girl prancing around in her underwear”.
By breaking the fourth wall, M&S move away from their previous festive fantasy lifestyle approach (Take That and Twiggy in a country house at Christmas and Bondesque fantasies) and sort of get back to basics, but I’m not sure that the M&S brand needs much help in the ‘sensible jumpers and nice quality stuffing for the turkey’ area.
Given that Morrisons have spent the last few years using celebrities to push shopping trolleys through unlikely locations in pursuit of their freshness message, perhaps M&S’s new chief exec will encourage something slightly more lifestyley for Christmas 2010?
Your Horse (and friendliness) Live
I went to Your Horse Live yesterday, which is a bit like Top Gear Live, only with horses instead of cars. (Disclosure, I write occasional features and product reviews for Your Horse magazine).
Since everyone there was obviously heavily into horses, it was really interesting to see how all the usual British reservedness broke down. I happily chatted with strangers in the queue waiting to see a dressage demonstration, in the queue begging for a go on the riding simulator (there was a lot of queuing), to the proud owners of horses in the Breeds Village stables and we even had a good giggle on the bus back to the car park.
Women outnumbered men at the event about 20 to 1 but even the non-horsey husbands/boyfriends/fathers who had been dragged along (then abandoned while their female companion dived into yet another trade stand in pursuit of the perfect turnout rug) were gathering together for support and having a good natured chat/moan.
Perhaps it takes a common interest to bring out the best in us British. Does the same thing happen at Top Gear Live?
photos borrowed from here
a glass and a half full of dogs
T’interweb can’t seem to agree whether a less sunny version of this has already been shot and/or aired in the UK, but this ad for Cadbury by Saatchi and Saatchi Sydney and Fallon London is just joyous:
2020 vision – help needed with charidee consumer trends presentation please
I’m doing a pro bono piece of work for Traidcraft, the UK’s leading fair trade organisation. Its to help the Traidcraft board with their 10 year vision and 3 year strategic plan and the rough title of the presentation they’d like me to give is the customer environment – thinking ten years ahead.
Gulp. I know, looking ten years ahead is a bit of a finger-in-the-air exercise and with a remit that includes UK demographic trends, broad brush consumer trends, shopping behaviours, what we’re likely to be buying (food and non food) in 2020 and ethical consumers, it’s a VERY big ask.
Which is why I’d really like some help. Inspired by Neil crowdsourcing his online communities speech, I asked Traidcraft and they said that they’re happy for me to use this blog to ask if any of you might be able to help me out a little bit with this?
Have you recently stumbled across something interesting on t’interweb that relates to this? Got strong opinions on future shopping behaviors (especially mail order/online)? Are you a keen futurologist in your spare time?
I have to pull this all together in three weeks – if any of you can help out I promise to share the final presentation (minus any commercially sensitive bits) here on the blog and to fully credit anyone’s contribution, however small.
Thankyouverymuch in advance.
(my email is sevensteps at tiscali dotcodotuk)
“We’re going to need considerably bigger buns”
A bit of fuss in the press today about London tube bosses asking for Kelly Brook’s best assets to be more substantially covered in posters for the play Calendar Girls. The producers must be thrilled as the character Kelly plays does have a little trouble adequately protecting her modesty with iced buns at the calendar photo shoot, promoting the classic line “we’re going to need considerably bigger buns”.
But it can’t have been quite enough of a story for the Daily Mail, as they seem to have decided that they can use photoshop too. Have a look and decide for yourself whether they’ve, erm, maximised Kelly’s assets for the sake of the story…
before and after the bun adjustment:
the Daily Mail’s version:
Precision Shoppers (but possibly imprecise research)
Sitting in the hairdressers and flicking through Grazia magazine this weekend, I was surprised to read that they had commissioned an ‘exclusive survey’ into shopping habits.
In fact the article doesn’t actually reveal any kind of audience, sample size or methodology (my best guess is that they slapped a survey on the Grazia website), but the results are pretty interesting all the same.
Forget Recessionistas, for fashion forward females its now apparently all about Precision Shopping. It seems that the buy less, wear more mantra has finally caught on and 90% of these shoppers are put off by sales rails and go out of their way to avoid them. 62% want their shopping experience to be ‘calm and peaceful’ with helpful staff (not like braving Primark on a Saturday afternoon then) and 98% now won’t buy something without trying it on.
It seems that the quality over quantity message is really getting through – and in terms of the shopping experience itself as well as material goods. In fact 23% preferred an experience like a make up lesson or spa treatment to a new purchase as a pick me up.
Perhaps GIVe, with its ‘affordable luxury’ mantra, style advisors and focus on customer service might be onto something after all…
