Now that's impressive

You may have noticed the ads on the right of the page. Google bot 'reads' all the posts on this blog and places ads that it thinks will be of interest to the readers (there is more than one of you, isn't there?). I mentioned Kwik Fit in the last post and within 6 minutes there's an ad for Kwik Fit. That's impressive.

The trouble with old people

We were recently invited to offer an opinion on a number of options available to an organisation as it planned for the future. Sorry to be so cryptic but I don’t want subjectivity to get in the way of my argument. It seems that upon reaching a certain age some people loose or choose the ability to think beyond their own purlieu. It doesn’t feel right to me so I’m not going to entertain it, is their position. Logic doesn’t enter the proceedings; ad hominem argument always does. Unable or unwilling to consider any position other than their own, they usually attack the person opposing the status quo. It doesn’t feel right; if you are someone who feels you’d feel the same way. Codswallop. With the exception of psychopaths and tax inspectors everybody feels. It’s just that some of us can put our feelings aside for the greater good. Oops! I appear to have turned into an old person attacking the arguer rather than the argument. Let me try again. Many years ago I worked on the account of a national tyre and exhaust retailer. They were a big fish but were a long way behind Kwik Fit and so tasked their agency to come up with a strategy to address this. Considerable research led to the findings that people didn’t really trusts fast fit centres and what the market place really needed was someone trustworthy - like Marks and Spencer.

Now there were a couple things that didn’t sit right with me, green horn though I was. Firstly, if people genuinely didn’t trust fast fit centres how were Kwik Fit making such a success of their business? And secondly, this was around the time that Marks and Spencer was nose diving into irrelevance and major losses.

The fact that people didn’t trust fast fit centres I don’t find surprising. There are some immutable facts about visiting these places: it’s going to cost you money; the coffee is awful; the tea is not really tea; mechanics can out-sneer a teenage girl and most of us wouldn’t know if our tyres were legal or not, let alone whether our brake disks met the manufacturers recommended minimum thickness. We have no idea if we are being ripped off but we still part with our hard earned. The same way that many of us put up with a poor meal in a restaurant and complain about it in private after we’ve paid the bill in full. Being asked if we trust fast-fit centres by a clipboard wielding ‘official’ is our chance to get back at them, let them know how we really feel.

The fact that people (the account and planning directors in particular) had declared a Marks and Spencer of fast-fit centres to be the way forward was genuinely surprising. It took Marks & Sparks quite a few years to turn their fortunes. (Of course any red blooded male could have told them that having a French supermodel in her underwear appear in all of your TV ads was the way to go.) What people were really harking after was a time gone by. Marks & Spencer were no longer relevant. The buying public had gone elsewhere; maybe reluctantly, but there was no turning back. Despite what they might declare in questionnaires. And perhaps there in lies the problem: to truly glean our attitudes and feelings from a questionnaire is a costly and time consuming process. few companies have the budget and few people in the street have the inclination to be psychometrically analaysed in the interest of market research.

So how does an organisation deal with change? Undoubtedly the opinions of the ‘doesn’t feel right’ brigade are just as valid as mine. So do we just wait for them to die and then move our organisation forward? I’m not a fan of waiting for anything. I am an advocate of strong leadership. Change and be damned. Around 5% of us are totally opposed to change, 10% embrace revolutionary change, while 20% of us welcome a combination of revolution and evolution. Most of us (the remaining 65%) accept small changes as long as they are referenced to the status quo. So what does this all mean? Well you can’t please all the people all the time. In fact one of the two ‘all or nothing’ groups will always be aggrieved. So change and be damned. Of course your stakeholder base might have a higher than average number of luddites, but statistically speaking most of us are going to go with the flow as long as the flow is nice and steady. Of course once things begin to change for the better you have a frame of reference for bolder changes.

So what happened to that fast-fit company? They’ve bounced from agency to agency over the past 10 years, doubtless briefing them all that they want to be the Marks & Spencer of fast-fit. Meanwhile M&S is once again a success story so the original market research might finally prove to be correct. I await the ad with baited breath: Noemie Lenoir wiggling beneath a Ford Mondeo wearing nothing but a basque and a mechanic’s sneer. Marvelous.

From the people who brought you Donald Trump's hair...

...comes Jeremy Clarkson's Eyebrows

Jeremy Clarkson, the man’s man, the voice of reason in a world of politically correct madness, that walking, talking curly topped reminder that even a Doncaster lad can make good and have his own world war two aeroplane at the end of his drive to annoy the neighbours, is a big puff. He may not lift the shirt tails of other men but take a look at his portrait on the Top Gear website and tell me that those eyebrows are not the product of time spent with Mrs Clarkson’s tweasers and a protractor. They are perfectly triangular (a scalene triangle, no less) and trimmed to within a grade 2 mowing of a porn star’s mirkin. Yes, it seems old Jeremy is a fully blown metrosexual. Perhaps now we know the real reason 6 foot 7 inch Jezzer backed down in a confrontation with (in his own words) ‘an eight year old hoody’ recently. It wasn’t because he feared suffering at the hands of the Law, as have-a-go-heroes are wont to in this country, it was because he might have broken a nail.

Keeping fit and elfy

You can scare yourself too at www.elfyourself.com

A sales promotion idea

We've got a 300g jar of Nescafe in the cupboard. It's nearly empty and it causes me real existential pain to try and get a heaped spoonful of coffee from the bottom of the jar because our standard length Ikea tea spoons are just too short. So, Nescafe: why not give away a long handled tea spoon with your big 300g jars? An ice cream spoon would probably do the trick. They have long handles to get the last bits out of your knicker bocker glory (what a great name for a dessert).

You read it here first...

A rather weak pun

New Squids on the Blog

(sorry, I couldn't resist it)

At your service, Sir...

Whilst I was cogitating over a piece of cake this morning, an email dropped into my inbox. This happens from time to time, usually its something to do with work but every so often it's someone trying to sell me something. In this particular case, good old Apple - evidently not happy that they're getting enough custom from me already.

But I suppose they know how this works. People who already buy Apple stuff tend to have a loyalty towards them. These customers fall into two categories:

The most 'hardcore' are The Apple Worshipers. A rather geeky bunch, they're the sort that cheer and applaud and wolf-whistle at Apple's product launch keynotes and would rather like it if they put Steve Job's bottom on a postage stamp just so they could lick it every day, were it not for the fact that putting something in an envelope and giving it to a person to deliver is so passé is this age of technological marvel.

The second category contains those who just believe there are greater and lesser degrees of crap. Windows PCs are crap, Macs are slightly less crap. Oh and they look prettier too... but what's really wrong with a biro anyway?

I guess this email was targeted at the biro contingent. It's primary message being that rather than tapping keys and clicky clicky-ing on the Apple online store, then waiting for the People's Post Office with a big parcel, one could actually visit a genuine bona-fide Apple store, inhabited by real human beings, and stocked with shiny things to buy.

At this point, allow me to quote from the aforementioned email:

We're here to help. Introducing the in-store Concierge, just in time for the holiday season. The Concierge (in the blue shirt) is your guide to finding anything in the Apple Retail Store. If you need any help, just ask and they'll point you in the right direction.

The Concierge! Well I must say I'm glad i found that one out. To think I was going to go and ask an ordinary shop assistant to help me find whatever elusive piece of technical gubbins I was after. Evidently your average common or garden Apple shop assistant isn't capable of such superior service - they must only take the very highest calibre Sixth former/Media Studies Student/2 Star McDonalds Employee and give them a whole extra half hour of training before they can don the exclusive Blue Shirt of a Concierge.

But then, Apple have a history of this. Let's take a completely hypothetical situation: Computer broken? No whirring? No clicky clicky? No amount of swearing or death threats seem to fix it? What you need is some kind of technical support person... or in Apple's parlance, a Genius.

Take it to the Apple Store and find the Apple Genius - that spotty scouser they pay minimum wage to stand there and spout technical mumbo jumbo at you. He's often found, apparently at the 'Genius Bar'. Well, either there or at the Frog and Tadpole Bar, or outside having a fag and scratching his arse. When he's eventually located he will give your machine a cursory glance and say something which is eventually decipherable as "It's %$@&ed mate, buy a new one."

At this point I presume I'm supposed to find my Concierge, to tell me what I need to buy and where to find it. They are apparently the only employee on the premises with this secret magic information.

What the ordinary shop assistants are doing throughout all this, god knows. Maybe they've buggered off to get a job where they wont live in constant fear of getting some stupid job title slapped upon them.

Which brings me neatly around to the question - is that their actual job title? Is is written in their passport?
Occupation: Genius

Not even Einstein had it that good. It almost tempts me to go and work for Apple.

Now I'm not accusing Apple of being the only company in the world to try and fob us off with these ridiculously unconvincing attempts at customer service, but they are one of the few who give them a silly name too. But i suppose it gives me something to laugh at.

Genius? Genie Arse more like.