furtherandfaster

Why can't every day be like this

Today was a corker - I drove down to Mike Imm's cottage to work with him for the day on a training course we're writing on how to develop customer insights. He lives in an idyllic village within sight of the sea close to Arundel with Chichester and even the Isle of Wight visible. The weather was glorious. When we paused for lunch we went into the garden to gather the bits for the salad. Mike is a gardener whose interest borders on the obsessive. For dessert - icecream and fresh figs - picked from the tree - just perfection.  And when we were done Mike took me on a promenade around the village - stories about local residents past (Eleanor Farjeon, DH Lawrence, Hilaire Belloc) and current (Johnny and Claire Hornby). We dropped by Chateau Hornby but they were clearly still in London grafting so we left a business card with the nanny (which felt very Jane Austen). Walking through a village with the hollyhocks in full bloom by the roadside and a classic English country garden to be negotiated if you wanted to get to the post office it reminded my how much I love my current occupation and live in fear of having to work in an office all the time which would be a demotion and I think would lead to a different quality of work.   Then it was away to the Lewes Guitar festival to meet a couple of mates to go and see Bruce Cockburn perform (for the second time this year). As I said. Perfection.

Congratulation to Iraq..

for winning the Asian cup. Sometimes you wonder if it wouldn't be better if football was declared a religion - would it have sufficient power to unify? It seems to have done this in Baghdad temporarily. Inevitably there is a surreal footnote. The celebrating crowds fired into the sky to celebrate. Clearly Baghdad is a place you can still fire guns around the place without being shredded by nervous US or British troops. Forty people were injured by falling rounds and 2 people died. Sheesh - you can't even celebrate in Baghdad without fatalities.

Disengagement party

I know this is going to make me sound like a grumpy old so and so but we went to an engagement party last night which in the hour we were there turned into the party from hell.  The happy couple had an alcholic mother apiece and one of them was given a drink. That's when it all got gruesome. The couple went into the middle of the dancefloor to dance but mum wouldn't leave her darling boy alone so it turned into a bit a threesome on the dancefloor. Then mum got a bit upset and went outside and apparently went and stamped on the head of a local (literally) so he went off to get his mates. In the mean time the bridal party and the groom party were proceeding at a 10 metre distance hurling abuse at one another for not managing the mother issue better.  Englishness is about feeling embarassed and guilty about the whole thing when really it wasn't the fault of any of us - just caught in the crossfire. The vending machine in the loo was particularly interesting but I'd forgotten my camera and mobile so couldn't take a picture for you. The marketing strategy clearly covered all the bases. Condom on the left, herbal viagra in the middle and nurofen on the right. Which reads green amber and red in my book.

Too posh to pay

Greg Rowland gave me this bon mot. Too posh to pay is when you have a longstanding relationship with a client who becomes so senior that they no longer have day to day budget responsibility so cannot be tapped for lucractive projects. Of course we still love 'em!

Spoils from Romania

The treasures I returned with are suitably eccentric.  First the megaphone - essential for attending Romanian football matches and making as much noise as possible - bought for a ludicrous price from a man at the roadside junction on the way out to Otopeni.   Lastly in the supermarket at the airport I managed to find peach tea - a treasure since you can't find it anywhere in the UK. I first got a taste for it in Canada where the summers are also hot. 

Code Red heatwave Bucharest

Tue 24/07/2007 11:45 24072007(007)

41 degrees outside the car. Actually the temperature fell to this by the time I shot it. Code Red means on driving either. But no one paid any attention.

Mugshot of Jamie Oliver

Tue 24/07/2007 12:39 24072007(010) I hadn't believed it but here's some mugs on sale in Bucharest airport courtesy of the geezer himself: Jamie Oliver who is big in Romania at the moment. I had at least 2 school dinners conversations while I was in Romania. Laurence LB?? no comment

My first Romanian house?

Not really - this was in a brief trip down to the Peasant's museum where Diana Ceasu, Mihnea and Alex did a brief podcast interview for their blog. I have yet to cross the threshold into a Romanian home so for now an 18th century lodge for a prosperous landowner will have to do.

Bathroom scales

Tue 24/07/2007 09:35 24072007(001) The bathroom at Sister. Note the bathroom scales in the foreground. Alex Tinjala the founder likes to strike dramatic poses and thunder 'Because I'm a woman!' when questioned about the fabulous decor in Sister's offices. This has to be a first. I've NEVER been to an agency which kept bathroom scales in the loos. Until now. All going to show it doesn't take much to be different from everyone else.

Storks on telegraph poles - now THAT is simply surprising

Driving in Transylvania this was enough for me to ask to stop the car. Storks on their nests all the way down the high street of a village.  Storks are bigger than herons - it was remarkable to see them sitting so calmly above the houses largely ignored and ignoring everything below them. 

It reminded me of the current campaign running on the London Underground crosstrack posters to encourage people to visit London. Which features the line Simply surprising. With images which simply aren't. Mountains seaside there's nothing surprising about them. But this? This was surprising. And not a breath of it in the tourist brochures because here storks are so part of the landscape no one thinks to make a feature of them. Apparently they get bears rummaging through the dustbins as well...

Lake Balea with Teo and Andrea

T eo from GMP and his girlfriend took me on what seemed to be a typical Romanian day trip. In our case a 500 mile round trip to the Lake Balea on a pass over the Transylvanian Alps. We must have been over 2000 metres in altitude.  Teo was mildly appalled that so many had opted to day trip up the mountains. Lake Balea is a haven for snowboarders in winter and is suppose to be hard to get to. The place was heaving with daytrippers. All the way up the mountain road were carloads of families lighting fires to have a barbecues right by the road - a forestry ranger's nightmare. Apparently its not allowed but there's never anyone around to enforce it. What I really took from the day was how family oriented so much of Romanian life is. No one was by themselves. Or even in twos. Every house in the villages we passed through - had a bench on which people were sitting and talking. Towards evening individual cows were being led back into the courtyards by their owners. And by being in the mountains we had endured temperatures in the middle 20s - nothing compared with the city.  The photo shows how beautiful this part of Romania is - we walked to the far side of the lake away from the worst of the crowds.

European pocketbook

I've been leaning heavily on the WARC pocketbook for my preparations for the IAA School Friday and Saturday. It is invaluable because it allows such swift comparisons between European countries. It was evident that media is concentrating on TV - now nearly 90% of the spend is on TV - which cannot be healthy for advertising or for the development of the economy. EVen more interesting was looking at these figures on European league tables where Romania is the 20th biggest economy but the 8th by advertising spend. But based on ad spend per GDP per capita Romania leads Europe. I tentatively mentioned this being all too aware that my hosts were the official advertising body for Romania who might take exception so some of the conclusions I might draw from the data. I was interviewed for the IAA website and if your Romanian is better than mine you can read it here. 

Rubbish training

I had been concerned that too much emphasis was being given to surfing the web to 'research' markets instead of using rather more oldfashioned methods. So to emphasise my point I had asked Costin to locate me the rubbish from two households. Complete with a pair of yellow marigold gloves I had purloined from my own household - I went through them to the mild consternation of the students on the course. Part of the fun of course was that the offices were brand new so dumping rubbish on the floor was hardly likely to endear me. But it turned out to be a very useful exercise. The households were from different economic groups - we had a good idea who and how many were in each household though it was difficult to estimate age.  And one of the households had been doing some redecorating - we even found this out because of the old dried up papers and cement dust. It was interesting the amount of skin care and medications which were being put out as well. It is very hot in Romania at present so headeaches, dry skin - the symptoms were all present in the rubbish. They had also removed a lot of the rubbish as well (but gave us a list of what they had taken out) research information in its own right.

Nettled

It is clearly a dodgy thing to take photos in loos - but sometimes you can't help it. I saw this poster about athletes foot using nettles as a very effective reminder of how itchy it can be. I thought it was an inspired piece of media placement. Because you are particularly aware of your feet when using such facilitites.... my evidence? Ramachandran the neurologist who has identified the close proximity of feet to genitalia in the brain mapping of the body - so much so that some leg amputees experience orgasms in the missing foot.. which is probably more information than you really wanted to know but still shows that peeing and feet have a strong connection..... dear reader be sure I shall leave no stone unturned...

Amsterdam Mk 2

Since the Amsterdam in the Old Town was being renovated we relocated to a bar next to the Atheneum also owned by the same group. There I met Diana Ceasu and Bogdana Botnar - leading planner bloggers both now working at McCanns. I told them about the Eastern European report in London's version of Campaign magazine where Romania hadn't had a particularly good write up - but then the main mention was of some senior McCanns honcho who came to Bucharest and got bitten by a street dog so had to have the full anti-rabies treatment. So didn't make much of Romania after that. This story causes much hilarity because the packs of wild dogs roaming the streets of Bucharest are a real feature here - even turning up as gags in advertising. Apparently when he announced his mad dog bite at McCanns expecting sympathy he was told he was lucky. A Japanese tourist had died of a dog bite in Bucharest the previous year.   I therefore include shot of wild dogs which clearly I was giving a wide berth to.

Making Strong Propositions course

Thursday I began the training with a sore head - too many dark beers in the Green Hours bar with Costin and Diana the night before. We were in the brand new offices of the Romanian IAA - the formal opening was due the Tuesday after I left. I had done my best to customise the casestudies. I've taught this course at the IDM half a dozen times now so it was interesting to adapt it to the Romanian setting- the practical exercises I set them were for mineral water and selling all in one printers to local businesses.

Chemical Brothers

While on the store check I was introduced to a uniquely Romanian phenomenon: the Chemical Brothers who have ruthlessly carved out market share in soft drinks. You can see how chilled cabinets are used to protect the presentation of brands and by and large the fridges held the brands they were supposed to. The Fruiti brands have flourished because of aggressive advertising for the first couple of years after each product launch, hard selling store by store to ensure they are stocked and low low prices for the drink. They're not called the Chemical Brothers for nothing - the drinks are full of additives guaranteed to make your children hyperactive. The other thing the brothers are famous for is the crassness of the advertising - sometimes just plain incomprehensible because of peculiar cuts to ensure adequate appetite shots. Also because the young daughter of one of the brothers is the final arbiter of whether the ad gets shown or not. And lastly because if the daughter doesn't like the ad then the Chemical brothers won't pay for it.  This nickname is widely used in the Romanian ad community who know the pair well.  They have just passed the billion mark - the formula is working well.

Storechecking with Costin

Quite a lot of Wednesday was spent collecting local material - I'm wary of jumping off the plane with a load of case studies that just don't relate to Romania. So Costin provided local case studies which had won Effies or were otherwise wellknown in Romania. In the afternoon we went out storechecking - again demonstrating how you can use simple techniques to find out what is going on in a market place. It was very hot 40+ and we must have been round a dozen stores at least before my eye started to read the common features and I felt I was starting to read the stores. Note that we stayed right away from Carrefour and the latest retail temples. These are bringing a whole new experience of shopping but for most Romanians the cornershop complete with counter and a person to serve you - that's the norm.

Jon Steel - in Romanian

Wed 18/07/2007 10:20 18072007 - Spotted this on Costin's desck - the set text these days for learning the advertising planning game. Now translated into Romanian. You saw it here first!!

Yup speed that is the issue

Tue 17/07/2007 15:07 17072007

But I'm already a customer and you didn't even ack my letter of complaint..

Off to Romania -unplugged

I had to finish a piece of research this morning and running low on time to pack for the trip to Romania through everything in a bag and left within minutes without checking. Big mistake. I had taken the wrong power lead - leaving my laptop with at most 2 hours of juice. This dogged me for the week I was in Romania because Sony love selling you laptops - but they're rubbish at selling you the addons for when you forget things. It wasn't until the day before I left that I found that GMP had a VAIO and I borrowed their power chord for the last day.

1st mention

I really must publish my review of Mark Earl's Herd book and post the long interview with him I recorded back in March (outrageous). Today I got my first feedback from Will who had read the book and found the co-creation case study in it about the research I ran in 2003 to explore ways to counter binge drinking. The book was out and I didn’t have an opportunity to check the details of what Mark wrote. Can I assure you that we didn't pay respondents to get drunk – which would have been a clear breach of the MRS code?  The Market Research Society thought we had at the time and got rather bellicose about it. We interviewed respondents before during and after hanging out with them for a typical Friday night - we didn't ask them if they were going out on the town nor did we encourage them to. And we took care that incentives were paid AFTERWARDS and not before. Thank you Mark for immortalising us in aspic (or should that be absinthe?)  This was one of 2 occasion when I have tangled with the MRS sheriffs - the second time for proposing to hypnotise pensioners. Which by the way the research code does allows us to do if we ask respondents nicely first. I have discovered rather too late that running research projects on the radical fringe is a lot of fun and gets you loads of brownie points from your peers but doesn't make your phone ring because research managers client side regard you as a bit of a Han Solo - you're supposed to be boarding Imperial Cruisers not outflying them.. Ah well.

Tesco Prague. The site where the Velvet Revolution started

Sun 15/07/2007 13:32 15072007

There is a certain irony that the place where demonstrators faced down baton charges triggering a national but bloodless revolt is now marked by the presence of the ubiquitous Tesco. But there you have it the triumph of the market. I looked for the commemorative plaque but could only see shopping trolleys.

My face In your face. Clare Simpson on social marketing!

My Space My Face, your Facebook Spacebook whatever.  After a couple of glasses of wine social marketing gets to be a bit of a blur. This was at the Inferno mobile marketing themed night. Clare Simpson planning director, Fiona Blades of Mesh, Christophe Burgdorfer from Minicke and myself were talking nineteen to the dozen about those killer social marketing apps. Christophe mentioned the idea of weak links. Which got us onto friends of friends. And the powerful 2nd degree which is usually more useful to us than 1st degree friends or 3rd/4th/5th. Because they are far enough away to provide interesting connections but close enough to be trustworthy. Great concept. I shall return to Linked in and Facebook with renewed interest. By the way the other 3 in the conversation were all second degree friends. Nina Mynk introduced me to Fiona many years ago. Fiona introduced me to Clare at Claydon Heeley and Clare introduced me to Christophe.

Competition is not about being the same

Thu 12/07/2007 17:46 12072007(002)

Now the free newspapers are handed out in twos. It would be cheaper to bind them together and have one person hand them out.

Orange Coke

Thu 12/07/2007 14:49 12072007

Whatever next ? Fanta with a caffeine hit. Call this brand extension ? Limited edition too! Oh please..

Romania going going - and with the correct flag now..

Booked my flights rather late for Romania last night - off in a week for a week. Very exciting - now all I have to do is prepare ..  Right well Costin has now corrected me - I just picked the lefthand flag with the pic on because it said Romania - which is the sort of detail which is useful on the web. Actually the flag on the left is the old Romanian flag which takes us right back to Communist times. Ahh so. The proper and correct Romanian flag is much more discrete and you'll see it on the right hand side. Thanks for the hint :-) Oops I'm a liability me!

Busy day..

spent reviewing online research. With a very interesting lunch to sit back and agree best practice. My favourite kind of work. It's not just the work you do. It's how you do it and how you do it better. The more radical the technique the more interesting it gets.

What else? Passed Mark Earls like a ship in the night - same building even but too busy to even coffee when we had been trying to orchestrate a coffee elsewhere.

And had a brief conversation en passant with Malcolm chair of the APG about an idea to do with the APG awards  which in summary he wasn't too keen on but I'll spare you the details. 

Musical Gestalt theory

I've been a subscriber and avid reader of Computer Music since their first issue. And its just astounding how computer based music has progressed since the mag came out in the late 90s. But as well as all the techy reviews - they also like you to get more experimental.

So Rachmiel - who's their most experimental columnist did an article in the June issue 113 about the principles of musical gestalt (with music samples to demonstrate) in the June issue. It was so interesting - as I read it travelling up to London today on the train I though I'd share them:

1. Proximity. We tend to instinctively group elements the closer they are to each other. Its a classic way to create meaning.

2. Similarity - we treat objects of similar size colour, shape and texture as part of the same gestalt 

3. Closure - we tend to enclose spaces by completing contours and ignoring gaps.

4. Figure and ground - we divide the visual field into figure and ground - and can't normally see both at once - perception is selective.

5. Symmetry -  We perceive complex images as wholes because of their combined symetrical forms rather than their individual asymetric parts.

6. Pragnanz  - the most mysterious. Perception is holistic so given inputs of complexity and randomness we instinctively simplify, regulate, balance and impose perceptual order.

I've come across these before in my reading around the area of design. What intrigues me is how gestalt can be applied to strategy and the orchestration of ideas. Because strategizing is usually verbal the connections made are verbal and logical. When the creative outputs are closer to gestalt. Gestalt gives us some pointers for how to go about non verbal strategizing - how humans instinctively create associations and how using persuasion we can inform the creation of perception.  Advertising works this way rather than logically anyway. But it seems bizarre that we can't use these foundational principles to sort the messaging before the creative brethren get to turn it into a creative idea.

Debrief summit Mk2

took place today and I have to say (with complete bias as a tutor) that I loved it and it was brilliant.  Mike Imms and Audrey Niven als train on it and its such a pleasure to work on - its like a group mind the way we all chip in. The two them do a presentatinos course but what is so good about this one is that it really gets you thinking about how to debrief differently and the alternatives to Powerpoint. I'm sure we'll run it again. And I'll be looking forward to it.  Next on the slate is writing a course with Mike for the autumn all about getting hold of insights and what exactly an insight is.

Internet Research

Getting very tired again. Tonight I was running for the second time this week - internet groups - a very different way of moderating but unusually rich in the data it throws up despite not having the benefits of face to face interaction. And fortunately for me the client was content to communicate via an independent channel rather than direct me over the phone.  Good stuff

Might be worth keeping an eye on eh?

Had a creds meeting with a jewellery company this morning. Interesting hearing how the jewellery trade is having to change. What I found slightly more disturbing was a couple of hours later leafing through the Week - wonderful magazine - only to read a piece about the fact that the world's supplies of silver are going to run out in 10 years. Silver is used for industry as well as for jewellery so the pressure is on. Assuming this piece of news is true - it would probably be a good idea for those in the category to start to think about what the alternatives are.  scary stuff. Without silver there would be a massive gap in jeweller's armoury.

2020 hindsight - Wedding anniversary July 1987

Blimey - married for 20 years - and so busy at present that I am reduced to leaving flowers in the house as I run for the train - and opening a bottle at 10pm after getting in from a busy day. Expecting to make up for it in Prague in a couple of weeks time.

Ginni Valentine crowned research revolutionary

Tonight there was an award ceremony for Ginni who had topped the poll as a research revolutionary. She was chuffed to bits having beaten off some stiff competition. As some one murmured to me as we gathered at the Edinburgh Castle in Camden - we've got royalty in tonight.  And so it proved. Wendy Gordon and Gill Ereaut spoke about the contribution Ginni has made to the market research industry. Fiona Blades presided over the ceremonies. When it was Ginni's turn to speak she said how much she had appreciated getting this kind of recognition unofficial as it was. She praised the idea behind the Set Reseach free fringe as the politicising of research which was long overdue. She also paid tribute to her marxist aunty who was still thinking radical thoughts in her mid 90s. It was a magic night.   

Off the scale??

I was doing a Tickle questionnaire today - Tickle is a website which engages people by seting lots of questionnaires an awful lot of which lead to a pretty crass event to join an internet dating service.  This questionnaire was supposed to be about Gardiner's 7 intelligences.  What amused me was that my social intellegence quotient was off the scale. It had to be. What they told me in the report was that I had scored better than 100% of people who had taken the test. Which is mathematically impossible. Surely I was one of the 100%?? Try it yourself.

bombs and the internet

This morning the papers and radio were all a flutter about the number of websites where you can find plans so you can build your own bomb.  A couple of polticians promised they would put a stop to this for good.  Which seemed very ridiculous.  I've got a better idea. Flood the internet with lots of designs for bombs - but all fake or deeply flawed.  A terrorist is hardly going to go to the trouble to build a bomb if he doesn't know if its going to work or not.  There's a serious point to this. We're not honest enough about the amount of spam which floats around the category - marketing junk, me too claims and the rest. It would apppear that a lot of marketing cretes spam. Presumably this is OK otherwise we wouldn't do it - no one would buy. because they couldn't work out what was true and what wasn't. There has to be a optimum level of spam which favours one brand rather than another. Some brands must want spam free categories. Others must revel in them. The trick for each brand is figuring out how much noise you ideally want. It isn't just about signal.

Ready to crumble..

The rhubarb has been getting out of hand down the garden - so high time to go get a crumble into the oven. Blogging rarely stretches to these heights - in another 10 years smells will come as standard via a plug in. And its pretty obvious I don't have a future as a food photographer

Missing wet wipes

At the school fete today I ran into Phil a friend who was polishing off an icecream. He was bewailing the fact that now his kids are growing up his wife Nicola doesn't carry a change bag on her person. So there's no wetwipes just when you need them. Sad but true - it gave me a wetwipe twinge as well.