furtherandfaster

More ponderings on publishing

Now here's a thing. I have a book by Nigel Slater called Eating for England. Which is a great read. But what to do about copyright? So here's me reading an extract all about Toblerone.

Download tobleronenigelslater.MP3

Something to chew on - Am I stealing from the author by reading out his work? If I had copied and pasted the text would that be theft? Should the publisher send me a writ or a cheque for promoting their work? Or should we split the commission and jointly invoice Toblerone? This is the problem content publishers have - what exactly is their product and how do they monetise it? At the moment the attempt to define what a text is leads to silly anomalies. But without the publisher would I ever have found the text? How much is that worth - a finders fee?

Check out this website for a very different feel to what a publisher's natural territory is. Is this about selling books, promoting authors or creating involvement in the process of writing?

Marketing training for publishers: introducing the peleton

No time to breathe – today  I ran a training course for the marketing team for a major publisher. Thinking through the implications for publishing leads to a new idea about developing a competitive offering. Most marketing in Western Europe works on the notion of establishing a point of difference. Whereas in publishing titles work best in groups where readers can find a similar author or title. So I use the idea of the peleton taken from cycle racing – the group take turns to lead the pack and bunch together to create a more aerodynamic shape, the slipstream also helps to pull along those at the back of the pack. Interesting idea to apply to titles.  At the end of the day there is a fascinating discussion about publishing, where it is going and how the business model is changing. Record companies are resigned themselves to almost free music but charging for concerts. What is the equivalent in publishing?

Focus groups the size of an airbus

Back on the plane I read another article in Wired. This time about Netflix attempts to improve the mathematical algorithm of their film recommendation service. It was an open competition but an obscure Brit called Gavin Potter has leapfrogged into the top of the listings alongside teams of postgrads from Princeton because he had taken a very different approach. Instead of trying to improve the grunt of the algorithm he had applied psychology to it. An example is that when you assign 5 scores on the trot you give different scores to if you had scored the films on 5 separate occasions. These psychological approximations were what was giving his method its particular power. This is a good example of the kind of program we are going to need for the next generation of focus groups. At the moment qualitative research is restricted to groups of 6-8 people because qualititative researchers can't cope with any more complexity in the dataset. In future I envisage focus groups as big as the complement of an airbus with a team of 4 researchers, 2 analysts and a raft of AI programs in support. 

And so to the airport

Today was a scramble to see a few people before my flight. I headed to Leo Burnetts for a coffee with Raluca, Joanna and Laurentiu.  They are just starting the latest LeoShe project called Cliches based in part on an idea I have been trying to persuade agencies to do for a very long time. They are running focus groups at which they ask people to write ads – the idea is to get at the generic category ideas. Useful for understanding the conventions before you get the creatives to break them. Unfortunately there is a polarisation between the clichés that are being produced and some really original creative ideas – which isn’t the point of the project – the great public aren’t supposed to be creative they are supposed to deliver clichés! So we have a discussion about the types of stimulus – perhaps getting them to draw key frames rather than write scripts. It is great to sit with some of the Burnetts crew again – they are a young department compared with planners in the UK. But in no way inexperienced. It was Elena and Razvan (the planning head) who won a silver in the International category at the last APG awards and currently hold the award for the best use of research on P&Gs Wash and Go.  I come away from meeting energized as I so often do in Romania because of the levels of imagination and enterprise – they work long hours but they are doing great and original work. To get a flavour - here's Razvan (he's the one on the right) appearing in a viral to encourage creatives to get involved in the Communication Olympics - a local award scheme to attract students into the advertising business.   Here are links to Leo's blog and other special projects (click on the glasses) including LeoShe.

And on to another coffee with another friend Alexandra from Sister. And so back to the hotel and the car to the airport.

Last night in Bucharest

Back in Bucharest I went for a candlelit meal with Cristina  - a local powercut meant the food had to be ordered and eaten mostly in darkness. And then I finally caught up with Felix Tartaru – founder of GMP and chair of the IAA. A meeting which started at 11.30pm and continued for an hour – a good time for uninterrupted chat across a wide range of topics.

He gave me a lift back to the hotel and as he did so said Have you heard about our radio station? It turned out I had - it had been a discussion point in the IAA advertising school. Itsy Bitsy is the only radio station in Europe aimed at  children. Which Felix had started as a project with his wife.  He described his frustration at the kind of television his children were watching and his desire to give them something that wouldn’t keep their eyes glued to screens for hours. Radio seemed an ingenious solution. The appalling traffic in most Romanian cities means that parents and children can often be sitting in traffic for hours a day. So grownups opt to have Itsy Bitsy on the radio to keep the children entertained and quiet. A captive audience – brilliant. Listening to music, stories and plays.  They operate in 5 cities now but intend to roll out to the other cities by the end of the year. The goal is to cover the whole of Romania within a couple of years. There are a few surprises though – Coca cola, Pepsi and McDonalds aren’t allowed. This station has strict editorial control over who is allowed to advertise. Money talks but it appears not at Itsy Bitsy. They are just extending to products the first being a fruit juice without additives.  As Felix described it This project is food for our souls – that’s why we do it.

Sunday - trip to the Black Sea

And the achievement of a long ambition. I have been trying to get to the ‘seaside’ which holds a huge hold on Romanians perception of the ideal weekend. But at more than 250 kms distance on the sole road which the entire country uses to get there the effort of getting there and the dire warnings about the odds of sitting in gridlock coming or going have meant I have never managed to make the journey. Enter Teo planning head at GMP and his girlfriend Andrea – who collected me at 9 and we headed for the outskirts of Bucharest and the road for the coast.  The road was quiet and led across a flat and fertile plain. At one point tens of storks flew over the road back from migration.  At another there was common land with 6-7 herds of cows grazing each with their own herdsman. It took me back to my farming days in New Zealand when the farmer for whom I worked had 3000 sheep and 3100 lambs plus perhaps 200 cattle. And ran it on his own till I came to work as a hired help for the year. Extraordinary how much of Romanian life needs people – when the drive for productivity has pushed us into mechanising and automating – this society doesn’t work like that.

Then into a spot of bother – a traffic policeman on his own pulled us over and said we had been speeding. Teo argued his corner. Police should work in twos so there is a witness and the patrol car had Bucharest plates – the city was now over 100km away so this looked very much like a piece of freelance work for collecting spot fines off likely cars to supplement a modest police income. After 20 minutes he let us go without paying anything.  This is a regular occurrence but complaining to some kind of police authority is not prudent or likely to lead to any kind of action – the letter communicating the speeding fine is never likely to materialize.

And on to the coast crossing the Danube a couple of times as it loops before going into the Black Sea. Constanta is where the road ends – there is no ring road so all traffic to the coast has to enter the town in order to go anywhere. Today was quiet but in peak periods the traffic must be nightmarish.  We turned south for Vama Veche.  This village is a mile short of the Bulgarian border – it became a mecca first for a hippy crowd and then for anyone not wanting a routine package holiday – which the rest of the coast line has been built up to deliver.  Out of season it just looks like a rather run down collection of wooden houses. In season Vama Veche is heaving – anyone can turn up and camp on the beach – and they mostly do.  We were welcomed by several wild dogs – looking thin and hungry – but they seemed friendly enough. And we walked to the Mare Negre – the black in the name comes from the colour of the water when storms stir up the water and discolour it.

 

We had a coffee then drove back up the coast visiting a couple of the resorts: Jupiter and Olympe – these were dated looking hotels built in the 1960s and 1970s and not in the best of shape. Olympe used to be the place where only senior party members were allowed to go. Even in communist times where all are equal there are always some more equal than others – and even Olympus has its place. These hotels couldn’t begin to compete for Mediterranean holidays and by all accounts are so expensive that most Romanians are heading over the border to the Bulgarian resorts where the prices are lower and the service is better. 4 million crossed the border in a single weekend last May.

We came back to Constanta – and here I was pleasantly surprised – it is a substantial port so I thought that was all it was. But down by the harbour was a Royal casino built at the end of the 19^th century.  It was here that the battleship Potemkin came when the crew mutinied. And it was here that the Roman poet Ovid was exiled after scandalising Caesar Augustus with his Ars Amatoria. He died here.  We ate in a seafood restaurant overlooking the sea wall – broiled sturgeon steaks and shark in a whisky sauce (no caviar was on the menu). And then the long drive back to Bucharest which took us until past 10 pm even though the roads were empty.  A wonderful day. Every time I go to Romania I see a little more and there is so much more to see than Bucharest but escaping the gravitational pull is difficult – it typically takes 30-40 minutes to clear the city limits. So I am grateful to my hosts for helping me to escape.

Very strange to be looking at a sea to the East which marks the border between Europe and Asia. The western ocean has long had a deep connection with adventure and (death even) in the Celtic imagination. But it seems no one has an urge to leap into a boat and head for Asia. This sea has its legends too. The Argonauts landed here at Constanta. Odysseus sailed up here. And so did Theseus of Athens. But these are Greek legends. The locals had other things to worry about – mainly the flat country made it easy for invaders to roll forward across it – so going foraging by ship wasn’t as appealing as riding and raiding on land.

Saturday IAA Advertising school Next Level Day 2

Day 2 of the IAA training – today we look at new marketing (thank you John Grant) the 3 Ps other than promotion then promotion during the afternoon. The students really seem to be getting into it. The highlight of the day seems to me when I cover off interactivity and give them 10 minutes to create a new cocktail serving/drinking ritual. I had plans to have dinner with a friend but technology defeated us. For some reason my mobile doesn’t do SMS at present. Her blackberry went down which knocked out audio and email and by the time communications were restored it was too late to meet, So I consoled myself by sampling another famous name from the Romanian winelist.

Friday IAA Advertising School the Next Level day 1

Friday morning and the start of the IAA advertising school – this is for young professionals from agencies and clientside. I got to the training room at 8.30 and experienced Romanian time. There were supposed to be 16 students but it took until 10 am until we had enough students to start the training which for day 1 is about 10 types of audience discontinuitiesand how to build strategies to exploit these.  Mine is the only module of the course which doeesn’t carry an exam and I had been concerned that this was likely to affect attendance, By mid morning the course organisers were in full flow communicating with employers and issuing dire threats if students didn’t attend so from that point I mostly had a full house.  It is a pleasure training in Romania – these students are the brightest and the best but it is a paradox – there is so much creative thinking but at the same time clients are very conservative and often imitate one another so there is a lot of frustration.

In the afternoon I got to do my showpiece for the second time. Costin had sourced me two bags of rubbish from 2 very different households. Which I emptied on the floor of the training room to get the students to work out the size, composition and demographic make up of each household. I do it largely for shock value because of the assumption that you can’t do this sort of thing or that you won’t learn anything from it. Not true on either count. This time one of the households was a 75 year old woman living alone. The students thought she was 45. Partly I supposed because they have never had to market to anyone older than 45 so it is largely an alien concept. Once again it was a lot of fun and really helped to energise the afternoon when often the energy levels start to drop.

Afterwards I dropped into the white church round the corner from the IAA for a few moments to catch part of the evening service – it is Good Friday after all in the UK – Catolica Easter as they call it here – Orthodox Easter is at the end of April. I didn’t realise until too late that I would be working right through Easter weekend and the family holiday. I appreciated the otherness of a service I couldn’t make head or tail of – the constant signing of the cross made by the congregation and the utterly gorgeous tenor of the priest who was the cantor. People were holding onto the robes of the priest and placing them over their heads. I hadn’t a clue what was going on. Sometimes worship is best without words and without understanding. 

Not a lot to report about Friday night except that I opted to wander round the centre of Bucharest – I am learning my way around now. The old town hasn’t changed much at all. I heard they were renovating it and taking it upscale. It turns out that as soon as they started to dig they found archaeological remains (surprise – not) so everything has been put on hold. Nothing in Romania happens fast. The Amsterdam café where I have had several fun evenings with the planners is now an antique shop. The owner of the bar left to make some money working behind a bar in London –and Bucharest is the poorer for it.  I had dinner back in the hotel and happened upon a fantastic Romanian wine from Delea Mare by the Carpathian mountains, a soft fruity red easily as good as the best I have tasted from Chile or Argentina – it turns out there are plenty more of undermarketed wines in this part of the world. 

Planning get together

In the evening it was time to head for the delightfully named Cafépedia (though they serve you – you’re not allowed to make your own coffee) which is the latest venue for the newly formed APG. Bogdana and Diana – queen bloggers from McCanns were hosting. I met a couple of digital planners there – interesting that breadth of planning being done is already growing to a level which must limit how much they can help one another. Also that the numbers were relatively modest – the meeting had been arranged at late notice and Costin was back in the IAA running APG training in the same room where I had been training during the day so several of the planners arrived later. But the working hours in Bucharest agencies are very long so it is entirely possible that planners may have too much work most weeknights to be able to attend even an 8pm meeting.

Thursday Web 2.0 online research training

5 hours sleep – which felt like a lot after the previous night – I got up at 6 to work up my materials (4am UK time) The course was a difficult one to describe it turned out. Web 2.0 was in the title – a huge draw since in Romania the latest thing always has huge interest even if the latest thing from Western Europe  may be largely inapplicable to the Romanian situation. I did a balancing act working through some of the latest case studies in UK online research while trying to work out what technical level Romania has actually got to.  It turned out there were hardly any digital planners there and a group of bemused media planners who patiently waited all day for me to get on to web surveys and web analytics. From the questions of this group it became evident that they wanted to use the web for broadcast push and targeting – a very web 1.0 approach. But there were also clients present who were interested in online panels and the casestudies from Virtual Surveys and in particular the mobile based tracking system being pioneered by Fiona Blades at Mesh Research.

Off to Bucharest

Wed 19/03/2008 09:25 19032008001

When I got home after the RLF event,  I had to work most of the night to prepare the files for the Romanian trip and load 2 USB sticks. 90 minutes of sleep I think. Flying to Romania from Heathrow requires me to cross London in early rush hour – not the easiest thing to do with a case. On the plane I read a great piece in the current issue of Wired by Chris Anderson on the power of free content. There were some useful casestudies including the business case for last summer’s giveaway of Prince’s new album with the Mail on Sunday which I tucked away for the IAA school later in the week.

Back in Bucharest

Every time I arrive in Romania something has changed. This time the overpass has been finished – the road has been in turmoil ever since my first visit in July 2006. Now you can roar towards Bucharest and only find the traffic jam when you are relatively close to the centre which I suppose is an improvement.  I missed my first meeting with a mix up on arrival times. I was due to meet Cristina and Afrodite who are involved in the IAA school for dinner to talk about the next module of the curriculum which I have to deliver during the autumn. I had discovered that one of my USB sticks had corrupted so the evening was marred as the IT guy from GMP came to hack the USB stick to try to lift the presentations off it which I needed for the following morning. Part way through the evening Costin Radu came to brief me on the Romania and the internet – quite important seeing as how I was due to run web 2.0 research training within 12 hours All this happened in a Mexican restaurant with a singer who insisted on bellowing Spanish ballads at the top of his voice while trying to make eye contact with the diners which made conversation more than difficult. Surreal – but that’s Romania and it is one of the things which keeps me coming back!

I apologise for the lag on these postings but the life blog app from my mobile isn't working in Bucharest and internet access isn't great so I have had to wait until returning to the UK to upload this next lot of blog posting.

Research Liberation Front Round 2

By the time I had finished the debrief from the previous night's groups it was time for the Research Liberation Front the second year we had run a fringe event alongside the Market Research Conference. The conference is in London close to the MI5 building so lots of tie ins on the website and facebook about espionage.  The main contributions to the evening was rants lasting 5 minutes. It was a good evening well attended and the attendees included some of our most distinguished researchers in the UK. In retrospect we had too much material for the time – a dangerous sign. One of the reasons for having a fringe event is to make a point about the earnestness of the main conference. A little alarming to appear quite so earnest ourselves after only 2 years of playing the court jester. Highlights included Chris Forrest’s rant that conference should be about partying and networking and that London was far too serious a venue, Richard Sheldrake’s scatological assault on internet research (with the best and rudest put down of the evening involving the honour of the heckler’s daughter who he had been imprudent enough to bring) , and lastly John Kearon of Brainjuicer’s robust assault on the ability of brainstorms  to generate and revive bad ideas endlessly. I was responsible for filming the event – look out for the vids on Youtube. I also played not so glamorous assistant to Mike Imms explanation that a research insight is rather like a kaleidoscope. He talked while I arranged the audience into a living kaleidscope throwing coloured balls at each other while someone with a torch created reflections in 3 large mirrors – you had to be there to appreciate it! Lots of friends to catch up with and with the Romanian trip looming there was time for heads-up with Chris Forrest and Mark Earls both of whom have run courses in Romania.

Research on the Bulgarian border

A day of research training at GMP – we worked solidly through the charts I had prepared.  Then in the afternoon we headed for Georghiu 40km to the south and close to the Bulgarian border – you could see the minarets of mosques in as we drove down.  And Teo and Mirela the planners pointed out to me the gypsy style of grand house – the architecture is different from that over to the East. We had travelled to Georghiu to do some basic field training exercises. We had two topics to research – beer and the up and coming national election to appoint local mayors. So in a couple of hours the plan was to do a couple of store checks in small food stores, talk to some locals and have a beer in a local bar to interview the locals to find out what beer they were drinking at home. Oh and who they wanted to vote in as mayor.  This was useful exercise for me – I have been wanted to design a quick and dirty (or messy – translates better in Romanian) research course focussed on practice rather than theory. It proved to be difficult to watch people in the stores – these are small and we were constantly being watched so an attempt to watch other people shopping would have created suspicion and potentially hostility.  After checking beer prices we retreated to the square to people watch. Kids were playing on skates and mobile phones were much in evidence even though the kids were 5-6 years of age.  We found out quickly that the mayor had an impressive track record – everyone we spoke to said they would vote for him.

As one woman explained – because of him I now have running water in my flat – before then we had an shared outside tap. And then a very interesting aside. The last mayor was honest but couldn’t get anything done. I don’t ask how this mayor makes his money because at least he does things for the community. Now not wishing to impugn the integrity of the local mayor it seemed rather interesting that an successful mayor was more likely to be crooked than not in the eyes of the electorate. And if the mayor got you running water in your flat for the first time – then wouldn’t you vote him in again?

In the bar we watched drinkers and their choice of beers. And asked a few about what they drank at home. It was a little alarming to discover that not many of those we spoke to were aware of having seen any advertising at all. Leaving the possibility that either it was targeted wrong – or was doing a great job only no one could remember having seen it! I attempted to use my mobile phone for the first time as the sole recording device – for audio recording, stills and video clips. It would be useful to be able to link mobiles to laptops to upload all this material and to have swift turnaround using a device which virtually everyone carries around with them. I will report back on the quality of the material I managed to capture.

Birthday saga

And a full morning in church. I had to make my vows publicly in front of the congregation in 2 services. Tony my vicar decided I might as well get into harness so I led both services. Robed for the first but for the second only long enough to take my vows. Which pleased the more traditional congregation and freaked out the more progressive one. Robes are double edged sword – it is very odd wearing them – it gives me strange impulses to perform strange and peculiar quasi ecclesiastic gestures. An impulse I resist. Now I understand why there is so much play acting in church – supply the costume….

The best part of the second service comes when I help the children to lead the singing songs which they know and which they have to help the adults with. Normally the children go out and sing by themselves, Our music in recent month has been dance led – involving vigorous actions which leave me gasping for breath. We have been making such a lot of noise in the hall out side of the church that adults have been sneaking out since Christmas to join in. Today Palm Sunday when the children scandalised the priests in the temple in the Bible story by racing around waving palm branches and yelling and shouting it is a great time to have them lead the church. The effect is pretty much instantaneous – and the grownups ‘get it’. Pandemonium ensues. My favourite service for a long time.

My family took me out for a pub lunch. And then for a muddy walk by our local river, This turned out to be a subterfuge to get me out of the way to set up a surprise party in the church. There were over 100 people there friends locally and family from all over the country. My brother who DJs acid jazz and latin in Newquay and Plymouth had set up his decks in the church.  Then came the high point – a mass Salsa lesson with over 100 participants, boys down one side and girls down the other. A wonderful picture of heaven where the music is also dansable and divine!  My family had prepared a Powerpoint presentation of images, 6 presenters – my 3 siblings on the one side and my 3 children on the other – these were dressed as teachers and gave a presentation of my life drawing heavily on school reports. I survived the embarrassment.  The scariest moment was a faked wellwisher’s call from a former French assistante who let us say had expressed more than a passing interest in me at the time when I left school. An unforgettable day for which I was so grateful to everyone. 

March 15th – or how I expected to celebrate my birthday

I had grand plans for the big birthday this year but I’m broke – the big party idea will have to wait. The substitute wasn’t bad though. Three and a half years ago I began to train as a lay reader (the Church of England’s obscure term for lay minister). Today I finish now I have got 14 credits for 14 assignments covering a whole range of topics. From today I will be permitted to preach, teach and hold funeral services in any church in the St Albans diocese. Why you may ask? Because the decline of the church in the UK is serious enough that within a few years the shortage of clergy will be chronic. Already the ordination of women has made a huge difference – 50% of new priests are women now. But it won’t be enough. So why not train as one of those who is available to help fill the gap. The ceremony took place in Bedford – 90 minutes drive away. The ceremony involved the licensing of 9 readers in all though 4 had transferred from other parts of the country.  For this event I had to wear robes for the first time – a very strange experience. My vicar was present to put the reader’s blue scarf on my shoulder at the right moment in the service.  The 12^th century church was full. I was overwhelmed to have 30-40 supporters as well as my parents and family come from my church to support with an age range of about 70 years. It was easily the largest contingent of supporters there – I took huge satisfaction from the Bishop’s double take when he saw so many.  But here came the surprise. This was a 2 way street – they weren’t just here to support me – they had chosen me  - which made me feel a level of accountability to them which I had not anticipated.  That for me was the most moving part of the ceremony.

Styles of Planning

This morning I enjoyed reading a paper by Xcott Lukas and Stephen Walker from the 2003 AAAA USAPG conference all about where planning is going. You can find it in the new book Readings in Account Planning from the copy workshop in Chicago.  A really good thoughtful read - I wish there was more writing like this. It amounts to a survey of clients in the USA and what they think of planning. I'm trying to think if this exercise has ever been done in the UK. What is shows is firstly that agencies and clients are out of step in what they think planning is delivering and that clients are starting to get the impression what they used to get only from planning they can now get from  more conventional research. They then go on to outline a number of different ways planning could evolve to address this.  There's quite a lot of input from Ma Newman the mother of US account planning - clearly she's a formidable figure and hasn't left off steering where planning ought to be going even if she seems to be spending more time in Africa these days. I'd love to meet her.

You can find the book on http://www.adbuzz.com/   

How to cram account planning - the jon steel crammer

I have been acquiring planning books at a rate of notes for reasons which will become apparent soon  - but this was one mispurchase I didn't mind a bit. I have read Jon Steel's truth lies and advertising but had never got my own copy. It is the best introduction to Account Planning - that trade I have followed for so many years. But what arrived in the mail wasn't the book but the crammer for the book so I could pass an exam in it.  The left hand side of each page is full of definitions so you can memorise the key terms then put your comments on each chapter on the blank page on the right.

Here's some definitions for you: Account planner refers to an outgrowth of British Agency structure where a planner initiates and reviews research and participates in the creative process. In some agencies the planner is considered the spokesman for the consumer.

An advertising campaign is a comprehensive advertising plan that consists of a series of messages  in a variety of media  that center on a single theme or idea is referred to as an advertising campaign

A brief refers to a statement of a party's case or legal arguments usually prepared by an attorney. Also used to make legal arguments before appellate courts.

A brand is a name, symbol, or design that identifies the goods and services or one seller or groups of sellers and distinguishes them from the goods or services from competitors is a brand.

There's also an online area I can sign up for where I can do practice tests - at last I can be an accredited planner..

I knew planning was getting academic - there are now several honours courses in the discipline - you can even study integrated communications for 3 years. What I had not anticipated was reducing learning to the memorising of key phrases and a form of mutiple choice testing which enables candidates to parrot back what they have 'learned'. This isn't training - this is mindless. Who is buying this stuff (me!) Who thinks it is going to help them get a job?

Don't let this put you off the original - that WILL help you get your first planning job. Here's a reference to the book and an interview with Jon Steel I put on my site last year.

 

Powers of articulation - Terry Pratchett on dementia

There was a very moving interview on the radio this morning with Terry Pratchett the author of Discworld series who has been diagnosed with Alzheimers at the age of 59. He claims he is now having to relearn how to type every day.  He has started to lobby for more funding for Alzheimers - having given away half a million of his own money.  He spoke of how the discourse of cancer was full of crisis and drama which made it easy to attract funds whereas the discourse of Alzheimers was muted and relentless and hopeless which was why so little was done for Alzheimers sufferers. It was very powerful listening to such an articulate man using the little time he has left before the disease 'takes his personality apart from the edges piece by piece'  to try and change the discourse so we do something about it and stop treating patients as passive units of health consumption to be put quietly to one side and left to rot.

Word of Mouth How to Workshop and Macatholicism

Today I was blogging at the the Word of Mouth Association's how to workshop. And very interesting it was too. You can find the full blog posted on the WARC website which will be open I think for another month for you to read even if you're not a WARC subscriber.  Word of mouth is an amusing topic because it is so endemic to human behavious you can't but get very self conscious about it. Even to lunchtime and whether saying you're going to have pudding tips over everyone else to say what the hell I was going to have pudding anyway. You'll be relieved to know that at the workshop bloggers got a lousy profile as influencerrs - lots to say (high traffic) but no one takes them seriously (low authority)

But there was a lovely example of a tipping point I though I would share with you.  Look at the flock of Mac Powerbooks by the power socket. Anyone attending a conference with a laptop gets there eariy these days to hunt for power. I managed to get to pole position. But I was amused to discover that in our laptop pod there were 2 Vaios and 3 Mac Powerbooks taking turns to share the power.  Of the 3 with Macs all had been bought within the last 3 months, 1 by a confirmed Mac user but the other two were bought by former PC users and 1 was running windows under VMLs virtual machine so could do Windows XP seamlessly in a Mac environment.  Hardly a robust sample but Apple must be selling a truckload of Powerbooks these days. How many of these are captured rather than retained sales. Have all the uber cool of planet Mac and you can still keep a toe in PC land. I had further proof of this afterwards when I dropped by the Apple store round the corner and discovered that every day at 6 they run a workshop for PC users converting to Macatholicism. Lucky you're not going to take this alarming trend as an influence on you because I'm just a blogger :-)

Quick and Dirty Research Weekend

It occurred to me today that it would be a lot of fun to run a course to teach a range of field techniques including ethnography and bits of bricolage by taking a bunch of people to a slightly dodgy sea side resort and giving them research tasks to carry out around the sea front and web cafes. Is this idea a goer?  Is anybody out there interested? Everything done of course in the best POSSIBLE taste!

If you want to fly you have to commit

I've been trying to sort out my flights to Romania for a fortnights time. And would quite like to fly with British Airways because they fly direct, and prices are reasonable. But they have this pilots' strike hanging over them. I tried getting some sense out of them over the phone and they just wouldn't commit - it was horrible - completely undermining of any trust they might have built up. They didn't know when a strike might happen. They couldn't guarantee to find alternative flights and so on and so forth. It was intriguing to ring a 3rd party who was terribly reassuring that based on track record industrial action would take a few days allowing them to put their passengers onto aircraft from other airlines. It was just ironic that the brand concerned was completely disempowered in a way that the intermediary wasn't. Wonder how much business they're losing.

Lord of the Rings

As a glorfied bedtime story I'm working my way through the full version of Lord of the Rings or should that be double bacon cheese burger? It is such an awesome piece of work - the scale and detail of it are just unrivalled. the films are so much better than my memory of the books. I find the Gollum thread especially powerful. How a character can be so repulsive and yet so plaintive at the same time.

WARC online research conference

  I've been blogging the 2 day conference for WARC the last coupla days. Lovely work to be doing - this is an area where there is new thinking coming out all the time. And its fun to be right next to the track watching the horses streaming past. As ever it is very easy to collect material at an event like this - you walk in with a camera and a digital audio recorder - that's the easy part - its the editing and posting that takes the time. But point your browsers here and you can take a look. I can't blog from the actual event - I need to stand back and take a position I don't think you can do that on the fly - its kind of like story telling. You have to leave before you can tell the story.

Research Liberation Front

I set up the Facebook page for the RLF event happening on the 18th Tuesday evening while the Market Research Conference takes place on the 18th. Round the corner from the MI5 building. It is great fun to do and very easy - that's the great thing about having a host organism which doesn't know how to cope with irreverence and playfulness. Luckily market researchers include many irreverent and playful practitioners.  Researchers aren't all earnest honestly. Research wouldn't be as strong in this country if researchers were dull.  You can visit the website here for more details - or head for Facebook.

Duffy and the UK divas

I got swiped by the Duffy tipping point today - started to forward it to people only to have them trying to do the same back to me. I feel as if someone should put her on a stage with Amy Winehouse and Joss Stone to give the US divas a run for their money.

Having said that the myth making is critical here. This isn't just a question of putting someone with a great voice on stage. I saw here on Jonathan Ross at the end of last year and wasn't particularly impressed. Duffy I thought was the name of the band - and I thought they were over from the USA.  After being exposed to her carefully crafted image - the naif from North Wales (lives off the beach?) who just sings it the way she feels it (I've yet to hear her be interviewed) for whom English is a second language. Who sounds like Dusty Springfield. (Lucky her surname is Duffy so her name even sounds like she's Dusty). But they've given here the same haircut in case you don't make the connection. I'm not whingeing honest - just pointing out that when you discover a singer and perceive them to be fresh and unique - it may just be that a professional image making team just did a number on you.

Clearly I can't be seeing a lot of ads at the moment but this feels a lot more interesting than any ads which may have impinged on my consciousness recently

Walkabout

Um hi well I'm back - no excuses really only managing websites, blogs and facebook is more and more like riding a bicycle. When you fall off it gets harder and harder to get on and start peddling again.  Call it walkabout. I just went off and did other things without telling you what I was up to. But I'm back on air and will try to keep you up to speed. Thanks to all of those who kept dropping in or who sent worried notes to check I wasn't in a morgue somewhere.

January and February were taken up with writing training courses mostly on the topic of web 2.0 and research and now the courses are starting to flow through There's articles in the pipeline for Market Leader and Admap but I'll talk about these a bit more when publication looms.

Sometimes you know its good to just go walkabout - not to keep the same pace of posting. Just stop for a bit. I blog therefore I am? I don't think so.  I really want to get the new version of the website up and running - lots of ideas for that but I need a couple of solid days to get CSS working properly - the web has changed so much since I started to post on the web - and I want lean pages which can bounce onto mobiles as well as PCs. And I don't want to keep leaping on and off social media trains and platforms - the writing is the fun part -and that has got rather lost in the last couple of years.  I hope I can use this blog to point at bits of writing I have put on web pages in the sure confidence that it will be still there in a couple of year's time unlike the flotsam of blogs.