furtherandfaster

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss..

make a strange pairing. They interview very weirdly together - it doesn't feel like there's a lot of chemistry there - I'm sure in bluegrass country Led Zeppelin is the devil incarnate.  But a friend sent me their new album. Musically they are just unbelievably good. I just couldn't figure the dynamics until T Bone Burnett their producer came into the interview. You were both nervous he giggled - which was just where I wanted you - I wanted you both out of your comfort zones. Burnett is a past master at getting great performances out of musicians and this album is something special. Plant sings so sweetly - I got the impression that he was keeping his voice down in case Krauss stormed out of the room. They have announced tour dates in May of this year. And T Bone appears to be touring with them to keep them on the straight and narrow.  Here's the  amazon.co.uk  reference though you have to be an american to get a link through to the audio samples so here they are. Why is it so good - great songs - brilliant arrangements and these 2 can sing anything like anything. Awesome.

Karen Brady - spotting the subtext

I usually make time to listen to Desert Island discs - as a character study the programme has never been surpassed - even when Professor Antony Clare was lifting people's heads off. Just by asking people to put on their favourite records and talk about their lives. This week it was Karen Brady's turn.  Energetic and accessible - she came across well  - dodging the obvious questions How she came to be working as a graduate trainee at Saatchi and Saatchi at the age of 18 because she couldn't be bothered with college. How she came to take over the running of a football club at the age of 23 because she talked David Sullivan into it when she had no track record in management, football is notoriously sexist and football clubs conventionally lose money.  It is clear she's a workaholic - back at work 3 days after her first baby. And she admitted that her son had wanted to destroy her blackberry last summer holiday - what a surprise. The giveaway was at the end of the show when in response to Kirsty's trademark Thank you for letting us hear your desert island discs, her response was  an  abrupt 'No. Thank you.' It was rather clear that despite the charm this had been Karen's meeting not Kirstys.

Shaping customer experience

There were 2 great stories on the radio this morning for the Youth Hostel and for Wetherspoons. The head of the Youth Hostel was trying to explain how applying for 24 hour licenses wasn't going to turn the YHA into a national chain of underage drinking dens. And as the rentacritic pointed out - it wasn't about the hours the booze was on sale - it was about the brand - youth hostels aren't supposed to be about sitting inside all evening getting hammered. And the chief exec just couldn't wriggle off a hook he had never intended to be on in the first place.  He's messing with the DNA of the YHA - and he needs to - they have had to close loads because the youngsters are getting cheap flights to get hammered in lots of cheap European destination. So this isn't more of the same - the YHA needs to reinvent itself - adding a bar just feels like a loss of nerve.

And onto Witherspoons who had told some outraged Scousers that they wouldn't serve them a 3rd round of drinks. Because they had children with them. They offered to switch to soft drinks. No dice. Nope. Witherspoons welcomes families who come to eat but when you're eaten and had your couple of drinks - take the kiddies and leave.  Outrage across Merseyside.

I think its brilliant. What do you mean you should be allowed to walk into a pub and drink as much as you like in it?  Why should pubs be customer centred - alcohold is bad for you. So there are a few house rules which involve ensuring you eat -(very profitable for Witherspoons) you have a couple of drinks then because too much alcohol and looking after kids is a bad idea. and having kids racing around a pub is an even worse idea then encourage the whole party to leave. The reason why I think this is brilliant is that it creates a clear point of difference between Witherspoons and other pubs. Some people will love this others will hate it. And having a clear and interesting policy and communicating that policy effectively does a lot more to make Witherspoons famous than telling people that Witherspoons is a great place to go out for a drink and a meal - which isn't news to anybody. I just hope that at the back of al of this there really is a strategist or two planning this sort of thing. I worry that its just one of those admin things that hits the tabloids and goes crazy. Because honest -this is actually good marketing. And once again it doesn't cost a ton of money to get the message across.

Announce a profit warning and cut your ad budget

I confess to shouting a lot at the TV this Christmas period. I've been watching more telly than normal and have been confronted with the pathetic standard of creative work in this country at present - sweeping generalisation I know -  it is time for the winter sales and we all know how hard it is to write decent ads which don't start with 20% off NOW. But really. MFI the furniture chain are busy telling us they've changed with an overproduced commercial - only to replace it with stills and price flashes when the sale really gets going which suggests very strongly that no they haven't really changed have they?

The most annoying ad has been PC World's TV campaign  which features the staff talking animatedly about how great the prices are and what a huge surprise it is that aforementioned laptop is quite so cheap. I know this is adland but I'm sure PC world staff have more to talk about than this. Whenever I see them they are rarely talking to each other because there are so few of them they have to spread out.

But then I realised that like the Halifax the ad isn't aimed at me - but at the staff. They're more likely to pick up on what the offers are and that they're supposed to find these offers exciting and attractive customers that they may be more likely to  back the ads when customers come sprinting in asking for technical  advice. I've never been given any information in PC World without joining a queue and waiting for 5 minutes so I hope the campaign works.

And then the Currys Group (which owns PC world) announced  a profits warning and I started to wonder why they had spent quite so much money on ads.  Sales are 25% down - they announce dolefully - then almost as an aside - they bought too many laptops. Which drove me straight to their website to see what the bargains were and if they were any good.

This is my fundamental problem with advertising - despite all the brand onion stuff and production values, advertising is a blunt instrument - you can see the strategy a mile off and it costs a small fortune.  It must have hurt a lot  to tell the City of London that the sales aren't looking too good - but its a much cheaper way of telling customers that there are big markdowns on the way. The really smart brands are finding ways to talk to their customers that don't involve adspend - until we figure out how to achieve ad effects without ad budgets the share of advertising is going to go on falling.

Happy New Year - new year resolutions and why I'm going back to the web

Hmm well the Christmas break is past us - its a new year and I'm looking askance at the blogs making predictions for 2008. What am I going to go this year? Well a couple of New Year resolutions - the first is to try to doodle every day. I haven't drawn anything since the age of 13 when my formal art education ended. So 2008 I intend to start to develop my graphic skills if I have any. The second is to pay a little more attention to marketing this year. I intend to put more time aside not just to do stuff but to ensure that the right people know what I'm up to - so expect me to communicate a little more regularly than I have been. The third is that I intend to readjust the balance I have been placing on facebook, blogging and websites. Basically I am midway through going back to work on the accountplanning website to redevelop it from scratch.  Why?

Firstly because the Facebook population has now passed the population of Brazil - by the end of 2008 when I supppose it will start to implode it will have passed the population of South America. As a way of staying in touch with yer mates Facebook works fine. As a way of co-ordinating the activities of the population of an entire content it is plain inadequate. As I believe advertisers will find. If advertisers know too much about you - you're going to get fed up with Facebook as a medium - if clearly they know nothing - rather like the google ads which I used to allow to appear around my website - then they can be just as annoying. Facebook is about people you know and no one I know has been crass enough to introduce any of the 100,000 brands who have entered Facebook to their friends. So as a medium for marketing and self promotion I believe Facebook is flawed.

Then we turn to blogs - which are self referential and which ought to have a past but despite technorati just don't. Tell me your favourite postings of 2006 - I bet you can't find them in a couple of seconds. Blogging just doesn't cut it as an indexing system.

What about websites then - were they ever that great? Well no they aren't. One of the biggest challenges is getting the architecture right - what works for 10 pages just doesn't work for several hundred. What I will say in favour of websites though is that they are as effective as they are made. And what has changed in the last couple of years has been the advent of CSS. Why? Because it means that much of the page design is being automated - which should make web pages easier to read, to update and to structure.  So I am in process of teaching myself CSS - and this year intended to develop a number of websites using the format. I may dabble in Flash but only for publishing multimedia. If you're interested in the content you'll start looking for it. And the search engines will find it and put it at the top of the list. Unlike facebook or blogs.  A fringe benefit is that CSS is also capable of delivering content to mobile devices - though I still struggle to see why it is imperative that wherever I am I have to stop and refer to  a website or go onto Amazon to buy a book - can't it wait until I get home?  BUt eventually specialised content delivered using CSS will be available for any device. So will facebook and the blogs but I still don't think they will port across as easily - and I have been posting blogs with Nokia's life blog for a few years now - its useful but not imperative and I never read blogs from my mobile.

There's only so much circulating of videos and writing on people's funwalls. In a little while we're going to have to make some new stuff. And I think we need more than social marketing containers.