Posh nosh and French polish – giving brands a makeover

February 25, 2010

So Greggs the bakers is getting the Eliza Doolittle treatment. The high street snackerie famous for its pies, pasties and pastries has announced that it’s going posh to broaden its appeal. The bakers, which began life in the North East in the 1960s, is giving its London stores a makeover – wooden floors and moody lighting – to tempt its target white-collar customers into tucking into this week’s flavoursome star buy sticky toffee muffin or lunching on a steak-filled pasty and yum yum combo.

The firm’s chief executive, Ken McMeikan, says the changes will enhance the buying experience of all customers from “barristers to builders” as the company competes against the likes of Starbucks and Pret A Manger.

Of course, Greggs is not the first brand to attempt to refashion itself. Skoda, once the object of mirth among car drivers, was taken over by Volkswagen in the 1990s and, while cleverly satirising its own image for nerdiness, carefully built a reputation for reliability and affordability. Skoda now tags itself “the manufacturer of happy drivers” and boasts that 98 per cent of Skoda owners would probably recommend them to a friend. We are presumably expected to skim over the word ‘probably’, but you get the drift.

visitBlackpool

A still from the visitBlackpool campaign.

It is not just cars and shops that can get the sort of facelift that would make Mickey Rourke envious. Blackpool, once the go to destination for hen parties, is now billing itself as a cultural hub, must-see visitor attraction and conference host for the working classes. It has done so in a very imaginative and witty promotional video that applies some French polish to a destination which now attracts 13 million visitors a year.

According to Natalie Wyatt, Head of visitBlackpool, the aim of the video, which shows a young French woman waiting listlessly in a restaurant, was to encourage visitors to take a fresh look at Blackpool and highlight the resort’s attractions.

She said: “We have received many positive comments from journalists, visitors and locals and I am certain that our increased visitor numbers are thanks, in part, to new visitors coming to try a spot of ‘otpot and a glass of champagne after viewing the ad!”

Champagne and ‘otpot – sounds like a new menu option for Greggs.

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Posted by Julien Deamer

Will ‘Toyota Man’ decide the election?

February 18, 2010

Remember Mondeo Man? Much derided and a feature now of our urban dictionary, he has been credited with helping to swing the 1997 election in favour of Labour’s Tony Blair. A Conservative voter by instinct, Mondeo bloke was a 30-something, middle-income family man, who identified with the new-world aspirational vision articulated by New Labour.

Psephologists searching for the successor to Mondeo Man believe that Motorway Man could hold the key to this year’s general election. Typically living in new homes in corridors close to the major motorways, these voters are young, probably a childless couple, and drive extensively for their middle manager sales jobs. With many of these voters living in marginal seats and encumbered by traditional party loyalties, they are being wooed vigorously by the Labour and Conservative political machines.

But I wonder whether there is not another voter constituency that is being completely overlooked? To maintain the vehicular theme, I will call him Toyota Man. Of course, it doesn’t have the alliteratively pleasing quality of those other voter groups, but I believe it successfully suggests a person who feels that the whole system has failed and let them down, who believes they are owed an apology which is only grudgingly offered and given the choice again would probably have chosen something completely different – the colour of which is immaterial.

I expect the local party activists are zeroing in on Toyota showrooms as I write.

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Posted by Julien Deamer

Responsibility has dropped out of fashion

February 3, 2010

After telling his famous lie to Parliament, Jack Profumo devoted the last 40 years of his life to helping at a hostel for the homeless in the East End of London. It was his way of seeking to take responsibility for a lapse of judgment and personal failings.

How different things are today. Dr Rajendra Pachhauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change says he will not apologise for a fallacious claim made in a report by his organisation that Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035. “You cannot expect me to be personally responsible for every word in a 3,000 page report,” he tells the Guardian. True enough if the mistake was of molehill proportions, but we are talking about an XL cock up here. According to the panel’s own description, the glaciers form the largest body of ice outside the polar caps and act as a reservoir serving the Indus, Ganga and Brahmaputra river systems that support millions of people living in South Asian countries. A statement issued by the IPCC says the wider conclusion of the report is robust but it “regrets the poor application of well-established IPCC procedures in this instance.” Were these people not told by their mathematics teachers to show their working out?

Last week at the Chilcot Inquiry, Sir Michael Wood who was the chief legal adviser to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office when the decision was taken to go to war with Iraq explained to the panel why he did not resign over his doubts about the legality of invasion. His colleague Elizabeth Wilmshurst did resign as a matter of conscience because the proposed course of military action amounted in her view to “a crime of aggression”.

Sir Michael said he had been expecting that question and argued that resignation was a matter of personal conscience and, besides, he didn’t actually have to defend the decision to go to war personally. The logical consequence of this argument is that you can do what you want if you think you will never need to answer for it. Sir Michael retired in 2006.

And today Toyota has been embarrassed into making an apology over the recall of millions of its vehicles over an apparent fault with the accelerator pedal on certain models. And the best Miguel Fonseca, managing director of Toyota GB can come up with is to say he is sorry for the concern felt by his customers. As grudging apologies go this is a corker.

Still we live in hope that the Chelsea and England player John Terry will make a full mea culpa, forsake his £170,000 weekly wage and start slopping out at a soup kitchen near Cobham. Watch this space.

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Posted by Julien Deamer

Hare’s trigger fails to fire on bankers

January 26, 2010

A visit to the theatre last night to see David Hare’s The Power of Yes which examines the causes and exposes the villains of the financial crisis was well timed; banker bashing is in full swing.

Earlier in the day the city minister Lord Myners articulated public outrage at the banks’ failure to act with due penitence after receiving state aid and promised regulatory reform to prevent a similar collapse happening again. Meanwhile, President Obama is squaring up with the titans of Wall Street who have trousered millions in bonuses.

courtesy of Metro newspaper

What was really in those boxes?

The play opens with the narrator – an actor who takes on the role of Author – explaining: “This is not a play. It is a story.” And the story is compelling. The audience learns about the Nobel prize-winning economist who created a formula to remove risk from the market in ‘options’ and the growth of the financial services in the UK to the point where it accounted for 9 per cent of GDP. We learn more about sub-prime, what was really in those boxes being carried by Lehman Brothers’ staff from their offices on the day the firm went bust and how Fred ‘the Shred’ Goodwin was groomed to be nice for a media appearance.

Drawing on interviews from important players in the banking industry who saw the events unwind first hand, the play moves briskly and employing an Author figure to ask the questions the public would want asked is a clever device. The play attempts to provide some answers. The Author as Hare tell us that the current crisis represents the death of an idea and the invalidity of the much-spouted wisdom that capitalism is self-healing and works for the benefit of all members of society. The pay-off lines are left to the George Soros character who says that while the bankers reap the benefits of capitalism they rarely pay the price of failure.

But Hare, perhaps surprisingly for a left-leaning polemicist, seems reluctant to pull the trigger on capitalism. He hesitates to come out and declare greed is not good, instead saying that it is fallible and that it got it badly wrong this time. There is only one short section of the play which offers an insight into how ordinary people are struggling with debt caused by the crisis. As a result, I am afraid the play lacks real emotional punch. I left the theatre with answers but not the anger I expected to come away with.

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Posted by Julien Deamer

How many people work here? About half.

January 22, 2010

I was recently asked what I thought the ideal length was for an article on the web. It reminded me of a quip a previous boss would routinely trot out when giving prospective clients the red carpet treatment around our offices. To the question “How many people do you have working for you?” he would casually respond: “Oh, about half of them.” The point of his joke, and one answer to the question, is that efficacy is not a simple numbers game; if an article is good enough it is long enough.

Of course, it is rarely as straightforward as that and a writer for the web needs should be conscious of the way people read online. According to MediaCo’s David Mill most readers ‘skim’ and ‘jump’ online articles, enter via different points in the text, don’t like deep scrolling and find reading on screen more difficult than reading print. The corporate writer needs to be aware of all these considerations and additionally weave a business narrative that draws in and engages with a reader who is “already 10 minutes late for my next appointment, so if you could kindly get on with it and tell me what your point is…” Well, you get the idea.
 
It is a truism that writing for the web and for print is different. Michael Kinsley, reflecting on the differences in The Atlantic, argues that one reason seekers of news are abandoning the printed word in favour of the internet is not the convenience of technology but is a consequence of style. Printed news is, he says, too long and is filled with unnecessary verbiage, opinion and scene setting that correspond with a series of outmoded conventions that are “traditional, even mandatory”. These conventions have implications for online writers (avoid them at all costs) and publishers who when they recycle long articles from print to the web may be improving their bottom line but are doing very little for user readability. And when web publishing begins to resemble a Ford production line – you can have any sort of news you want so long as it’s cut a paste job from our morning edition – readers can rightly feel short changed.

It is impossible to talk about writing for the web without also considering how technology is challenging and shaping readers’ expectations. (And than you to those Twitter-conditioned readers who would normally drift away after 140 characters but have generously stuck with me this far). The launch this year of next-generation mobile communication devices, including the new Google phone and Apple’s keenly-anticipated iTablet, could change the rules again for how we want to receive and view news.

Emily Bell, writing in the MediaGuardian, says the emergence of such technologies could move us so far away from the page-centric world we grew up reading and writing for that “it raises the question of how long it will be before even the concept of a website becomes old hat”. Writers will need to acknowledge and adapt to these innovations so they have the answer to the next big question, whatever it is.

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Posted by Julien Deamer

Applying some positive thinking

January 15, 2010

It is better to light a candle than curse the dark. If living proof were needed of the truth of this paean to positivity then it is Justin Brown a radio DJ from New Zealand.

Initially angry after losing his job of 10 years hosting a breakfast show, Justin considered creating a website called My Boss Made Me Redundant. Instead he created one called http://www.wehaventlaidanyoneoff.com/ to highlight how featured companies had toughed out the recession and managed to keep a full workforce. He calls these companies The Good Guys and gives each a space on the site to explain how they did it.

The stated purpose of the site is to brainstorm options and solutions that could be applied by other firms and organisations faced with having to make staff cuts. The sites creator admits he has come in for criticism from a number of employers who feel he doesn’t understand the economic realities facing companies today, but he says most people understand his message is a hopeful one.

He says: “Although the site hasn’t set the world on fire, it has spread the word, started a healthy debate, challenged thinking, changed a few attitudes, and, I hope, cheered a few people up.”

Someone who seems to need very little cheering up these days is the perma-grinning former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair who is apparently in discussions to become an advisor to the high-end French handbag retailer Louis Vuitton.

Tony Blair on holiday

Mr Blair relaxing on holiday

On first reading this I questioned Mr Blair’s credentials to work in the world of fashion. Yes, he experimented with Nicole Farhi casual knitwear and turned an eye in his silk-lined Paul Smith suits, but there were some fashion howlers too, including those floral swimming trunks (see right).

But on reflection his oleaginous charms will serve him well in his ambassadorial role, working closely with the CEO of LVMH Group Bernard Arnault – the two men have been close acquaintances for several years – and “attracting new clients”, a role that presumably requires him to glad-hand major investors rather than flog luxury leather goods in person.

We should also be reassured that despite attracting a reported six figure sum, it will only be a part-time role, giving Mr Blair plenty of time to pursue his other consultancies with JP Morgan and Zurich Financial, fulfilling his lucrative speaking engagements and working with governments to promote trade through his company Tony Blair Associates.

In fact, so numerous are Mr Blair’s commercial activities that one is left thinking that if he only stepped back from just a few and allowed others to take his place, he could solve the global jobless crisis overnight. It gives me an idea to create a website to promote my idea. I might call it www.giveusajobtony.com. Let us all apply some positive thinking and it might just happen.

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Posted by Julien Deamer

Content is king, but will it always be free?

December 15, 2009

In case you have had your head turned in recent weeks by the denouement to X Factor, Rupert Murdoch’s news empire and Google are engaged in a media scrimmage over the future of online content, specifically, over Murdoch’s desire to turn a profit out of his journalism posted on the web. The media boss says he would like to put his news behind paywalls, but this strategy is being undermined by search engines that provide free access to news, including content from his paid for titles.

It is not an edifying spectacle; Robert Thomson the editor of the Wall Street Journal set the tone for the debate when he described companies that aggregate news without paying for it as “parasites or tech tapeworms in the intestines of the internet.” He has also accused aggregators of encouraging “promiscuity” by undermining readership loyalties. I had never considered myself the web equivalent of Tiger Woods stalking search engines for shapely headlines, but it is a thorny issue and one that divides opinion.

Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson, wrote recently about the benefits of the internet –looking up where the actor James Garner was born, ordering Sunday lunch and watching funny clips on YouTube (his list not mine) – but also acknowledged its dangers: “The fact is this, if something can be digitised, it can be stolen.”

And theft is the nub of Murdoch’s accusation. Other companies, he says, are piggybacking on his content to generate advertising revenues for themselves – income which by rights should swell the News Corp balance sheet.

Technology writer Ian Betteridge says that the traditional publishing model – creating words and pictures into branded products and charging people to see them, then gathering audiences together into coherent niches which advertisers can sell to – has been broken apart by the internet which atomizes audiences and breaks down brand loyalties.

“Why is he (Murdoch) circling like a shark around Google? Because he sees Google differently to (almost) everyone else,” says Ian. “He looks at Google’s search results and he sees content next to ads – and it’s (in part) his content. Content and ads are what publishers do, and that means that Google, to Murdoch, is a publisher. The veneer of being a technology company is just that – a veneer.”

“And if Google is a publisher that means it’s a competitor to News Corp.”

Google recently blinked first in the stand-off by announcing plans to restrict users to five searches per day on a paid site, any more and they will be required to subscribe to the site. It is unlikely that this move will be enough to satisfy Murdoch who is refusing to brook compromise and is apparently courting Microsoft to put his content exclusively on its search engine bing.

There is a great deal of speculation about where this debate is going and the likely endgame for Murdoch. Ian says: “In any media revolution, the first people who make money are the geeks. The second wave, the ones who make the ‘serious’ money, are the businessmen who understand how to turn the stuff that the geeks did for fun into big cash. We’re moving into that phase now.”

And as for Murdoch, well, you underestimate him at your own risk.

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Posted by Julien Deamer

St Albans cinema flickers back to life

November 29, 2009

As we drove through diluvian conditions to a public meeting on Sunday to hear more of ambitious plans to bring a city centre cinema in St Albans back to life, it is fair to say I travelled more in hope than expectation. The team behind the cinema restoration campaign need to raise £1million before the middle of January to buy the site and a further £2million to restore the 1930s building to working order. Given the current economic climate and my perception that most people consider Blu-ray rather than box office to be the future of film, I suspected the meeting would attract only a small crowd of civic do-gooders and that I would be forced to skulk in a quiet corner until such a time as it was polite to slope off home.

But as we arrived at the venue for the meeting, The Rex cinema in Berkhamsted, a large crowd had spilled out of the main auditorium into the foyer area. [I would like to put a number to the crowd but it was impossible to get into the main hall area and the business of the meeting had to be relayed to us outside via a public address system]. People listened with great interest to how James Hannaway, the man behind the success of The Rex, hopes to secure funding to restore the cinema in London Road, St Albans, to its former art deco glory, bringing a welcome catalyst for regeneration to a part of the city which has fallen into sorrowful neglect since the cinema closed in the early 1990s.

As someone who grew up in St Albans and has a nostalgic fondness for the London Road cinema despite its unprepossessing exterior, I have my fingers crossed that Sunday’s enthusiasm can be transformed into tangible support. As Hannaway said, that could mean large cheques now or simply buying a ticket when the cinema opens again. There are many obstacles ahead, but when the cinema does re-open (let us be positive and say when rather than if) then I will be in the queue for my ticket to the stalls and a little piece of history.

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Posted by Julien Deamer

Virgin: Happy to be different

November 21, 2009

Virgin companies pride themselves on being different: thinking differently, acting differently and encouraging individuality among their people. The equation is a simple one – happy people equal delighted customers.

But it’s not just the company that thinks it’s doing something special. Virgin Media was recognised recently at the VMA Internal Communications Showcase Awards for its approach in encouraging people in all parts of the business to have their say and for taking notice of what was said. As someone working in internal communications, I wanted to understand a little more about how Virgin Media achieved this success. How do Virgin Media walk the talk?

For Alexandra Smith, Head of Internal Communications at Virgin Media, ‘people engagement’ is not corporate wrapping paper or tokenism, it is a core part of who Virgin is and is wired into the company’s DNA.

Virgin Media“Wherever we can, we ensure that our people are able to contribute their views and influence opinion,” says Alexandra. “The strategy is based around treating people as adults, meaning that they take responsibility for what they say and respect other people’s views. Very few of our channels are anonymous, so people have to stand up for what they say if challenged. Openness and honesty is part of the Virgin culture.”
 
Virgin Media has designed a number of tools to connect with and build networks among its approximate 15,000 workforce spread across a number of sites and in the field who are engaged in a range of activities (e.g. call centres, customer services, sales and technicians). So people can comment on every story on the company’s intranet, post questions and air their views. There are discussion forums and a wiki tool for people to build content that is relevant to their part of the organisation.

The leadership team is put on the spot using regular live online Q&A sessions and at roadshow events, and a voicemail and text system keeps field staff in the loop about hot topics and enables them to leave a response to information messages and rate how useful they found them.

The use of Twitter is encouraged to build employee communities and foster collaborative working while a series of ‘summits’ allow employees working in the company’s different product areas to share best practice or just simply get work issues off their chest.
 
Reaction among Virgin Media people to greater empowerment has, in the main, been enthusiastically positive. One member of staff said: “I would like to say I am impressed that you have listened and acted positively on the feedback. Excellent.” While another effused: “OMG! We were listened to :) Good stuff!”

While Virgin’s open and people-focused culture has been a factor in the success of this approach, Alexandra admits that there have been challenges along the way and there remain pockets of resistance in the organisation.

“Just because we’re a Virgin company doesn’t mean it’s been easy and there’s a lot of education still to do at all levels in the company. But the benefits of doing it are clear and there is a strong business case for all companies to engage in new and interesting ways with their employees.”

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Posted by Julien Deamer

Dulce et Decorum Est

November 9, 2009

Britain’s role in the war in Afghanistan is at a crossroads.

As the roll call of those killed and seriously injured in service mounts (more than 90 troops have been killed this year alone) public support for the military strategy appears to be ebbing away.

A recent poll shows that two thirds of Britons believe that the war in Afghanistan is unwinnable (up from 58 per cent in July) with a similar percentage saying that British troops should be withdrawn from the country as quickly as possible.

While the larger-than-normal crowds that turned out to pay their respects at war memorials up and down the country on Remembrance Sunday demonstrate that the British public is full square behind the troops, there is growing unease at a perceived sense of drift and confusion in the conduct of the war.

There are echoes here of another conflict some 90 years ago when a young officer recuperating in England from his injuries sustained on the battlefields of France wrote an open letter to The Times expressing his growing disillusionment with a war which “is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it”.

The soldier, Siegfried Sassoon, railed against the political errors for which his comrades had been sacrificed and the failure by politicians to state clearly the purposes of the war.

It would be artful and wrong to push the similarities between the situation 90 years ago and today, but it is worth reading A Soldier’s Declaration to gain an understanding of the brutalising effect of war on those that witness it first hand.

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Posted by Julien Deamer

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