Cocktails and Records

A scammer attempted to scam me today. It was quite amusing.

He called the office this morning and attempted to convince me that the free listing our organisation had been enjoying in something called City Map which was now sadly coming to an end. To confirm that we didn’t want to continue with this generous offer in a ‘well known’ publication I’ve never actually heard of, I just had to sign and fax back a form that he was sending over right now.

So the fax duly arrives. It is a poorly laid out sheet of A4 utilising three different font types in eight (count them!) sizes and contains a proof of ‘our ad’. Our logo is wrong and our company information incorrect in both content and spelling.

The fax includes some humorous instructions like ‘The advertising will materialise after the placing of the order’ and other contractual information which is clearly made up. It also includes some crafty clauses indicating that if you sign this form you’re not actually cancelling the free listing that you’re not aware that you have, but ordering £1,697 of display advertising which you can’t cancel for two years instead.

But, small print aside, who would fall for this scam? This is people working in marketing and communications that they are targeting – vacuous people like me who judge things entirely by how many font sizes and spelling mistakes there are. Such a poorly executed scam deserves to fail. Put some effort in scammers!!!

We haven’t had a good list round here in a while. So from the time-wasters at utalkmarketing.com comes this scintillating snippet of suprise. Or not as the case may be.

These, folks, are apparently the celebrities most likely to persuade UK customers to buy stuff:

1. Jamie Oliver
2. Gary Lineker
3. Myleene Klass
4. Carol Vorderman
5. Lewis Hamilton

And these are the celebrities least likely to persuade UK customers to buy stuff:

1. Victoria Beckham
2. Wayne Rooney
3. Katie Price
4. Kate Moss
5. Kerry Katona

But, and I genuinely ask you this, what is the difference between these two lists? They’re all berks of dubious credibility in my eyes.

I would no sooner buy some kitchen cleaner/pasta sauce/insurance because Gary Lineker advised it than than I would Wayne Rooney. They’re both football players after all. I do not shop in Sainsburys because Jamie does and I don’t not shop in Iceland because Kerry Katona apparently did. And isn’t Myleene Klass on The One Show, that well-known bastion of taste and credibility?

Help, I don’t get it!

A recurring theme in this blog as well as many others  (yes, I mean some of you listed over there on the right hand side) is fretting about the state of manners in the world today. People are just so rude we complain, wringing our hands and feeling generally exasperated.

Well, I’ve had my comeuppance this week.

Our mailing house at work has screwed up royally, sending out our latest missive to the wrong names at the right addresses. Now because all the recipients on this list have signed up to receive the mailing, are expecting it, have received it for years and could probably guess what it was from the envelope, I hoped that most of them would recognise that there had simply been a stuff up and open it anyway.

But no.

We’ve been besieged by calls from people asking what they should do. In response, I carefully explain the problem to them, stress that as usual there is nothing personal inside and that they should feel free to open it anyway. ‘But it’s not addressed to me!’ they say, ‘It’s not right, it’s impolite to open someone else’s mail’.

Grrr.

Just when I want people to rude and impolite, they’re not.

Typical.

I caught a brief glimpse of the BBC’s pre-emptive review show, The Story of the Noughties, last week. The bit that I saw was waxing lyrical about the importance of big name brand handbags and how, just two weeks ago, way back in 2009, no woman was complete without a vile, expensive but strangely tacky handbag on her arm.

By delicious co-incidence I happened to be reading a book called Factory Girls: Voices from the Heart of Modern China at the same time. Amongst the captivating and inspiring stories of the young immigrant women who make our shoes, mobile phones, televisions and trousers, was a chapter or two about a feisty young woman called Min who worked in yes, a handbag factory in Dongguan, a major manufacturing city in south-east China.

Min’s factory made loads of big name brand handbags and she and her colleagues nonchalantly nicked the bags left over at the end of an order.  Leslie T. Chang, the author who followed Min’s life over several years, describes her factory dorm room as ‘awash in Coach bags’.  For Min, the handbags’ value came as an easy gift for friends e.g. as a quick thank you to someone who let her kip over when she was job-hunting. But on most days the £££ bags were ‘worthless because almost no one in Min’s circle had any use for them or knew what they were worth’.

Maybe it’s just me, but I love the idea that somewhere in China a factory dormitory full of  20-something year old girls is disinterestedly kicking posh £300 handbags out of the way as they go out for a night on the town with their mates. And that’s how it should be.

Do you ever get tired of blogging? I don’t mean the actual writing, but having to use the same old dreary standard keyboard all the time?

Well, I have the solution for you. It’s the Luxeed Rainbow Computer Keyboard.

This keyboard, with its 430 LEDs, will put the pep back into your blogging. The illuminated keyboard changes colour with each keystroke – a bit like the dancefloor in Saturday Night Fever. It can also do some ‘amazing’ tricks, like flashing a mini animated rainbow across the keys as you write. Giving yourself a headache has never been so much fun.

This little beauty will only set you back around £100 so you’ll be devastated to know that it’s not yet available outside of Korea.

NB: Works best when blogging in the dark. May not be suitable for office use.

I overheard an interesting snippet from a meteorologist on Radio 4’s Today programme this morning. He was attempting to explain why Britain is not basking in the ‘barbeque summer’ that the Met Office predicted back in April.

Seasonal forecasting is difficult, he said, and in any case, it’s the fault of those people in the Met Office’s press office who always put a ridiculously positive spin on these things and who came up with the stupid concept of the ‘barbeque summer’ in the first place.*

Now having spent my summer holidays reading Nick Davies’ Flat Earth News and its expose on the state of world journalism (or ‘churnalism’ as he describes it), I really shouldn’t be suprised by this. In his book, Nick Davies devotes several chapters to how PR has provided a valuable lifeline to overworked, under-resourced, budget-cut journalists around the world – the PR’s supply of easy oven-ready press release filler is perfect for an ever-hungry 24-hour news world. The downside of this of course, is that without time for proper truth checking from journalists, we are all made more vulnerable to spin, deceit and lies from everyone from celebrities, the government and the CIA to corporates, lobby groups and er… the Met Office.

I know that we all like a good weather story and I would fully expect the Met Office to have a busy communications department shooting out exciting weather news across the country, but embellishing the actual weather forecast? Come on. We’re not that stupid – we all know that it’s going to be rubbish anyway.

* yes, I am paraphrasing here.

Amongst the usual ads for pizza delivery services, cab companies and bargains from Lidl, we received the following flyer through the letter box this evening:

Do you ever have the feeling that everything is going wrong in your life?

Don’t hesitate to call the most acclaimed medium. God gifted and well known for his competence and efficiency. For immediate help in looking for love, family reunions, un-betwitchment, love between man and woman, to make yourself loved by someone, relationships, sexual problems, courtcases, strange illnesses, bad luck, bad spells and black magic. Stop unwanted relationships and bad dreams. Enhance your career prospects and make your business a centre for customer attraction. No matter the problem, the solution is in sight once you consult.

100% guarantee. You will get results in 6 days.

So don’t suffer in silence, call today for an appointment.

Desperate times call for desperate measures I guess.

Although this doesn’t apply to everyone, I’m sure that many of you have experienced ‘difficult’ board members, trustees or colleagues whose heart might be in the right place, but who have their own ‘unique’ approach to ’selling’ your organisation.

Well, spare a thought for Liberty, this countries main defender of British human rights. As a dutiful member, I went off to the 75th Anniversary conference last Saturday for a day largely devoted to intelligent and thought provoking discussion and debate about civil liberties and the governments usurping of them. Speakers as diverse as Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Tony Benn, Nick Clegg and er, Jon Gaunt spoke eloquently about the impact of id cards, anti-terrorism laws, police powers, freedom of speech and constitutional reform (if only we had a constitution to reform).

Then Liberty Trustee Dame Vivienne Westwood came to the platform. Did she arouse the audience with inspired rhetoric about protecting human rights in these challenging times? Or even share some amusing anecdotes about her life in fashion? No. Instead she treated us to a spectacularly random rant which encompassed everything from climate change and The Times’ book review section not taking it seriously to the BBC failing to commission her idea for a TV show about 7 year old painters who are very talented you know, and how she doesn’t like TV anyway, or the internet either because the only good thing about the internet is that it tells the truth about things like 9/11 which was a clearly an inside job and everyone knows this but won’t admit to it and what is wrong with the world today and what is wrong with Any Questions?, that show just doesn’t make any sense does it because no one ever asks any proper questions and where do they get those stupid people from anyway?

By the end the audience were openly snickering and the panel she was sitting on (including MP Diane Abbott and journalist Kate Adie) were shifting nervously in their seats.

You could argue that this is exactly the sort of presentation you would expect from an eccentric known for bringing bondage trousers, razor blades and safety pins to the world of fashion or that the audience response was pure snobbishness from a typical liberal lefty audience. Both are probably right, but either way, Dame Vivienne’s performance made me feel pathetically grateful for my work’s motley bunch of trustees.

This morning a new magazine arrived in the work post. On a black background its cover depicted a clenched hand with a defiantly upright middle finger. The words next to it read ‘No surrender: Standing up to the NGOs’.*

This delightful offering comes from a magazine called Communicate which is clearly targeting the corporate PR market. God knows how it arrived on my desk.

The feature story inside advises people (probably like that delightful spokesperson from Tesco I mentioned earlier in the week) how to deal with tiresome Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and their annoying criticism of your company’s record on the environment, human rights, child labour etc. In the article we’re lucky enough to get an insight into the lives of the poor PR team at E.ON (owners of the infamous Kingsnorth power station in Kent) who have to deal with crazy people such as the RSPB, the Women’s Institute, Oxfam, Tearfund, Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund and their concerns about global warming.

The writer advises that companies in this position should try talking (gasp!) to NGOs about their concerns, suggesting that it is better to engage with your critics then to ignore them. He also points out that it is often better for senior management to do this because surprisingly it seems, NGOs ‘understand corporate hierarchy and won’t be fobbed off by a PR department’.

Good to see that Communications magazine is really helping to bridge the gap between corporates and NGOs with that ever so subtle cover then.

* Sadly, try as I might I can’t find an image of the cover – it has to be seen to be believed.

Haven’t the lovely twin worlds of PR and the media been working particularly well this week?

1. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall versus Tesco. If you watched Chickens, Hugh & Tesco Too on Channel 4 on Monday or have generally been following the saga of ‘celebrity chef’ Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and his campaign to improve the welfare of battery chickens over the past year you will have noticed that Tesco hasn’t exactly been taking him very seriously. They are generally obstructive, fail to return phone calls, refuse interviews and when they concede to speak to Hugh, they put forward the type of media spokesperson who gives PR an even worse name than it already has. Although you’ve got to admire Tesco for not bowing down to the whims of celebrities (unlike, say, the government and its love-in with Jamie Oliver) this has to have been a bit of a PR disaster for them. By thinking that they above having to answer to annoying TV programmes, Tesco are missing the fact that in these days of subjective, lobbying mission TV, people think that they should. They will pay for their arrogance. Hopefully.
2. The BBC versus the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC). The BBC are sticking to the notion of journalistic objectivity by refusing to promote the appeal for the crisis in Gaza. Regardless of whether they are right or not, they are indirectly doing a fabulous promotional job for the DEC -the BBCs refusal to promote the appeal is itself promoted in every second news bulletin across the country. This sort of media coverage is surely something the DEC can only usually dream of…