Lighten Up Mr Grumpy! Life's More Fun When You Move Around

What is the core function of the gym ?

From the customer’s perspective, no doubt, to be and to feel healthier. From the gym’s perspective, alongside noble causes such as the provision of the best service in town, and so on, there has to exist, as a pre-condition, the stipulation that money must be made . At least enough money to allow the business to exist and to continue. Make sense ?

Like any retail business, making money is synonymous with customer footfall, or in more common parlance, getting as many members as possible and keeping them as members for as long as possible. (This target may contain demographic parameters to ensure the right “type” of customer). Besides getting and keeping members, gyms want to sell this same group as many additional items as possible - from sugary drinks and sunbed minutes to massage therapy sessions and the dedicated hours of a personal trainer.

These three goals are known as customer acquisition, customer retention and up-selling.

So what ?

Well, the disparity of function as laid out above gives rise to a problem. But let’s look at this from a different angle in order that I might illustrate:

What is the unstated consensus assumption behind every piece of marketing any gym ever does ?

The assumption is that the gym, per se, is good for you. And by good for you, from the depths of twenty ten and the biggest obesity epidemic known to man, many people will take that to mean that the gym will help them lose weight.

Agree ?

Well, that’s just it. Because no I don’t.

I joined the gym in March 2002, weighing in at thirteen stone at a height of just five foot eight. A penchant for playing regular team football at that time, and with a healthy dose of Viking genes, I was in shape at that weight, if a little un-toned. Peculiarly large thigh muscles and a hefty upper body bone structure saved the day for me. But I was close to being overweight if I didn’t watch out. I have used gyms continuously ever since, wherever I’ve been living and working.

This included local chains, such as The Arches in Greenwich, South London, and Beckenham Spa. It also included national chains such as The Fitness Exchange in Beckenham, Kent, LA Fitness and later Esporta in Brighton, Sussex, Cannons in Covent Garden, London, JJB Health Clubs in Leeds, West Yorkshire and in the last couple of years LA Fitness in Manchester and Esporta in Salford Quays.

I would average three days per week in early years, moving up to five days per week by 2007 and nigh on daily for the past twelve months. But across 2008 and 2009 my average weekly attendance was between 6 and 6.5 days. Which is some going.

Yet my weight crept slowly upwards, off my personal radar, as is the way with any momentum of increment, such that come Hallowe’en 2009 I was weighing in at 228 pounds or a smidgen over sixteen stone.

I was working hard at the gym. I wasn’t sat around socialising. My programmes featured a mix of cardio and resistance work, usually rounded off with a swim and sauna.

So what was going on ? How could I gain weight if I was doing this ? After all, the gym is good for you, yes ?

That’s just my point. No. In it’s own right, the gym isn’t good for you in that sense.

I’m not saying it’s bad for you - and it certainly boosted my upper body muscle mass, sense of achievement and my feel good factor. But I am saying that the way gyms market themselves is misleading and unhelpful and ultimately quite dangerous. And I am saying that they do this because, as I mentioned at the top of this blog, they have money to make. And in fulfilling such an obligation the gyms allow the myths and cons to creep in.

They don’t tell outright lies. Rather, they build marketing campaigns, slogans and fact sheets to entice new customers based on an assumption which, by remaining unstated, cannot be challenged. Now that’s clever.

In the last twelve months I have lost 61 pounds or 24 kilos. Or roughly a third of my own body weight. Now I am 11 st 10lbs and this gives me a Body Mass Index of 24.9 - in other words, a safe and healthy body mass.

The gym helped me with precisely none of this. It makes perfect sense if you consider it. The gym wasn’t responsible for me putting the weight on - so how can it be responsible for losing me the same ? I conquered the kitchen. Excess food grew me big. Lack of excess food grew me small again. The gym is a mere bonus activity to help me get definition and ideal muscle toning - you might say it’s a vanity-driven after thought in the scheme of the weight loss question. Nothing more.

So why do gyms display signs and billboards with perfectly formed beach bums accompanied by slogans along the lines of “You could be wearing this bikini instead of admiring it on someone else” and “escape the beer belly” and so on. Indeed, the heading of this blog is advertising copy from a Virgin Health clubs campaign in 2009.

I strike up conversations daily with countless confounded souls. Steam rooms and saunas are great debating chambers, I’ll have you know. And it’s always the same. Some bloke, mid thirties up to mid fifties, with built up pecs, lats and biceps and a swell mid riff tyre of fat, expresses his dismay to me.

“How can this be” he’ll typically exclaim. “I run for half an hour each visit. The machine even tells me I’ve burnt off hundreds of calories. So how come the fat is still here?”

I have to explain, vindicated with the authority of recent success, the way things really are. Kitchen for basics. Gym for the fancy bonus stuff. Yet the more I spread the word, the more I wonder why the gym itself isn’t teaching it’s paid up members the very basic essence of the gym function. Why am I doing what they should be ?

Are you seeing where this keeps coming back to?

Because if the gym told every keen newbie to save their fifty three quid a month as it won’t make a blind bit of difference to their general health until they cut out the curries, bread, pasta, lager, cake, biscuits and mid night snacks, well....your average guy with half a brain would run for the hills and probably decide to cut his (or her) losses, concluding that it ain’t worth the effort - and if it is worth the effort - the gym ain't where it’s at.

The trouble is that we only tend to voluntarily pay people we like. And if the gym tells me the truth I won’t like them any more.

Health clubs worked out a long time ago that even better than making people fitter is to leave people with the perception that they are fitter. Rather than give them health, give them what they want.

Remember, business goals include customer acquisition, retention and the up-sell. Actual improvements to health don't get a look in.

When you're flagging with eats fatigue come January, guilt-addled by the other half and waltzing through resolution Utopia with half an eye on the doormat flier from GymBox et al, don’t say I didn’t warn you!

Why Do Liars Never Carry Pens ?

To answer that question and in doing so unravel a little gem of eBay genius, it might help to ask another;

Why do the owners of bookies always drive fancy cars ?

eBay doesn’t sell cars. Yet eBay motors is this island’s biggest car market. In fact eBay doesn’t sell anything. Or does it ?

It certainly doesn’t sell anything that you can buy on eBay. But it does sell something much more valuable.

Have you noticed how most second-hand cars are cheap and cheerful ? Most second hand buyers shudder at the thought of the deed. One thing’s for sure; the seller knows a lot more about the car he’s about to try and sell me than I do.

For free markets to operate properly, prices need to be determined by scarcity. How scarce something is or limited in supply, means a high demand sends the price north. And into reverse for things with not enough scarcity - things that are in abundance. £5-00 glass of water, anyone ?

Whilst price focuses on scarcity, or lack of it, there also needs to be equal information. Buyers and sellers need to know roughly the same amount of stuff about the thing being sold as each other.

Really good second-hand cars are known by the car salesman, but the buyer doesn’t quite trust him. The price offered is too low and there is no deal. No sale. However, with run-around rust buckets, the buyer doesn’t care, and the cash tills ring.

For almost ever, the above was the reality. The beauty of eBay was that it levelled out the information playing field. Detailed descriptions, mandatory data boxes, photo’s and videos. But mainly, for me, the written word. Because humans tend to be a little less indulgent in the lying department when they are writing things down and publishing them to a wide and unknown audience.

eBay and all internet successes came good because they harness the power of the net. And it’s currency is information. eBay is an expansive bay awash in a high-tide of good data.

Who knows ? At this rate, we’ll all have cars like my local bookie. He always had a good reliable and great looking set of wheels. Because even in the old pre-eBay days, when the only cars that sold in the used trade were bangers, he was always on the outside smiling in.

The bookie’s car is brand new. The bookie is, and always has been, rich. A round about way of telling you something you knew already ? Yes, but tell me you didn’t enjoy the journey.

10 Ways They Put The Price Up Without Putting The Price Up

Revealed! Here's a list of ten cheeky tricks the shops are into, all in the name of the reddies. Your reddies. But first, a few basic rules of retail shopping by way of introduction;

The Secrets of the Head-Turners

A friend recently asked me "Why don't they make a ninety nine pence coin ?" She was, of course, missing the point. So I decided on an article to enlighten the non-marketers on the darker side of pricing strategies. You'll encounter most if not all of the following tricks that shops play on you many times every day, but you tend not to see it. That's how it works.

"Th' Arndale centre weren't built in a day" as they say in Manchester

Save means spend
A golden rule is that save actually means spend. I am a shop selling mobile phones and I want you to come on in and buy one from me. My phones are for sale to you for £50. You'd love a new phone. It would bring pleasure to you. But handing over £50 would bring pain to you. And my deal is that you only get the pleasure for the pain. Right ?

Well, not necessarily. If I turn your head away from the gap in your pocket where the fifty pound note was, and get you to concentrate on the remaining bits of small change you have left in your purse, then you'll walk out of my shop thinking about the new phone you have and the money you still have (rather than the money you just lost).

It works a treat. I bump in to friends and family all the time, laden down with retail goodies and keen to tell me, not of the damage affected on their bank accounts, but how much money they didn't spend. 

"I just bought this new iPod and saved £30!" would be a typical boast. The truth, which would sound more like "I just bought this new iPod and spent £200" somehow takes a back seat.

It's classic denial and we've all fallen for it. When humans are this dumb, marketing and it's sister competence, sales, becomes easy peasy. Don't worry I'm including myself in the insult. We are clever and dumb all at the same time. Good and flawed. That's the human condition. 

Such head-turning coupled with a lack of awareness of what just happened on the part of the customer has been the saviour of many shops for many years.

Psychology Pricing
The reason they don't make a ninety nine pence piece is that it would defeat the dual function of that price which is to disguise the fact that the product is really more expensive than it looks, and to enable the seller to put some change in your hand during the sales transaction. This is known in the marketing trade as "psychology pricing." They can advertise their prices with phrases such as "Less Than..." and "Under..." and like it or not, it works. 

Or to put it another way, the day they invent a ninety nine pence piece, watch everything in Britain go to £x.98. Overnight.

But this is obvious and its the kind of thing customers just put up with. Annoying but not catastrophic. Like bad street graffiti or ring tones. Likewise for Buy One Get One Free offers. Or is it?

How Shops Increase The Price Without Increasing The Price

1 Alter The Discount Structure

My local Tesco is a Tesco Extra - which means it's like a slightly large newsagents. It's more of a convenience store than a place to do the big shop. It caters for the lunchtime sandwich trade for local offices and performs the function of your old fashioned corner shop for local residents such as I. You use it to top up on staples, mainly.

I like fresh orange juice, and in my local Tesco Extra, all last year it was 99p per litre or you could get three for £2.50, thereby bringing the price per litre down to just over 83p. I'd go for the bundle - a step up on the classic BOGOF (more like BTGOF) - though it did mean heavier bags than normal for a visit to the corner shop.

Then, a good year into my habit, the deal changed. You had to look closely to notice the small print on the shelving text. All the imagery and fonts were the same, but it was now the same  99p per litre or four for £3-00. The classic BOGOF structure is still there but the minimum volume to activate it has risen. Four litres of juice is OK for the car boot but at your local corner shop, on foot, it's just a citrus squeeze too far. So I did what any logical orange juice lover with only two hands would do - I bought just the one for 99p and vowed to bulk buy at the big supermarket a the weekend with the car at my disposal. 

Yes, like a puppet on Terry Leahy's string, I put my own prices up from 83p per litre to 99p per litre. Beautiful. Strategy number one in the marketers list of "How to put the price up without putting the price up" is called "Altering the discount structure." And here are some more.

2 Stock Less of the Budget Line

Ever had to upgrade to posh bread, sausages or cheese slices because the economy range is out of stock ? It's not accidental. It allows the shop to increase your spend without giving you the impression it has meant to. You leave the building cursing your own bad sense of timing. They up the prices, you blame yourself. You know, us marketers didn't go to college for nothing.

3 Penetration 

I didn't even used to glance at Bachelors Mushy Peas until they were three tins for £1-00. Now I'm hooked and they're back at 48p per tin. Help!

Going in at low prices to gain market share and then upping the prices once need is established. We call it "penetration" pricing.

4 Skimming

There are always people willing to pay over the odds. The wealthy, the enthusiastic, the collectors - they are known in the trade as "early adopters". What's the point in JK Rowling pricing her new book at, say £7.99, just because she knows most people will pay that. Isn't she missing out on all those early adopters willing to pay twice the price ? What to do ?

Skimming is where you put your product on sale at a unrealistically high price for a week or two first, just to take the money of the over-zealous hardcore fans. Then drop the price to scoop up everyone else. Books in hardback at £20 when a fortnight later the very same book is a paperback for £7.99. New music releases. Likewise DVD movies, iPhones, and most gadgets and electronic goods play the "skimming" game. They are skimming off the cream, quite literally.

5  Seasonal / Event association
When VAT went back up to it's full rate last month, I noticed a requisite jump in the price of goods, right across the board, not just on VAT chargeable goods! When I asked staff at various places the reason for the hike, sure enough they trotted out the mantra - it was Gordon Brown not I ! But when I pointed out that the prices hadn't dipped when VAT dipped a year earlier, for example, on zero rated goods such as take away coffee and cakes, they smiled coyly. Better still, at a Cafe Nero in Manchester, the staff told me that the price had in fact dipped when VAT fell. All be it for just a number of weeks - just enough time for you to register the event before it creeps back up to it's normal level. Talk about sly.

Another great example of this is FairTrade coffee. The price goes up about £1-00 and the wording on the packet implies strongly that the price rise correlates to the new funds reaching the growers. Actually, it's usually the case that the grower gets a few pence extra and the shop is rubbing it's hands again.

6 Captive Product Pricing
Ever wondered why dishwasher tablets are priced at an ungodly premium, or snazzy razor blades, for that matter ? It's because having made the big investment with the Wilkinson Sword razor handle or Electrolux dishwasher, you've got to get the add-on or you can't use it. Doh! In layman's terms, they've got you by the balls. Marketers euphemism is "Captive Product Pricing". I call it Butlin's Holiday camp food provisions pricing. For obvious reasons.

7 Optional Extras

From BMW's being "famously under-equipped" to airlines charging you for ear phones to enjoy the  in-flight movies, these "optional" extras are more like mandatory extras. It's just a way of sending the price north. Come on, you knew it all along.

8 New Penalty Clauses Written into the Contract

Esporta, my local gym, of which I am a member, has just put some new notices up on the boards  where class schedules and details of the book and cinema clubs reside. Subtlety is the key again (as in 1, above) so it's blink-and-you-miss-it time. Replacing a lost swipe card goes from free to £10 and having a direct debit payment fail goes from free to a whopping £20 ! They'll tell you anything to cover themselves and shift the blame, should you choose to take them to task on such strategies. Don't bother. Take it from a marketer. They are putting up the price without putting up the price, so to speak.

9 Charging For Installation and/or Delivering

In 2008 I moved house and all incidental costs that go with such an activity almost wiped my bank account clean. I needed a BT router for broadband. BT insisted on a massive £125 installation fee, even though "installation" was "remote" and involves someone flicking a switch in Trafford telephone exchange or right-clicking a mouse. 

Before I even tried to negotiate the fee down I was offered the option of dividing the sum by six and adding it to my monthly bill. All that happened is that my monthly fee, billed on TV as a mere £14.99, boosted up to £36. It doesn't say that on the adverts, matey!

Likewise, when I order my food shop from Asda.com, I get the chance to feel environmentally friendly by booking a van already delivering to my block. But it still costs a fiver to order it. 

10 Changing the Physical Characteristics of The Product
Between 2003 and 2006 I was a member of LA Fitness gym in Brighton, England. I was partly sold on the idea that you get a towel on attendance. I didn't have a washing machine at the time so laundry was at a premium. The towels were occasionally acceptable but often disintegrated in my hands, didn't dry me at all - just displaced the water around my body in the direction I rubbed the towel onto my skin - and left half of the fabric as residue when I took it away from me.

Complaints were frequent but futile. By lowering the quality whilst keeping prices the same, they were effectively putting the price up. Without putting the price up.

The same thing in reverse can be seen at Starbucks. Don't you ever wonder why you are paying more for a Venti than a Tall coffee ? Hot water's just about free, after all. They are charging considerably more for a product that is effectively equal in value - just by changing the shape, size and name of it.

Pocket The Difference

In most of the above examples, the customer leaves the shop having spent more money either overall, or per item for the same goods, or both. And in most cases the seller can defend itself by pointing to the fact that the standard price per unit has remained the same. If prices go up in standard honest fashion, you may vote with your feet. Much better to charge more whilst ostensibly not doing so. That's a win-win for the shop and a win-lose for you. You're blissfully unaware so you're happy. But you're also lighter in the wallet.

It's like the bookmakers. No matter what new rules and deals they come up with, there's only one party ever going to pocket the difference. And it ain't you.

Turns out, when Napolean dismissed Britain as a "nation of shopkeepers", he may have been delivering a far bigger insult than you'd previously considered!

Product Placement is Here

The TV Commercial Break is Ending

Stand by your beds! Product Placement is coming. Last summer the government passed laws which will make it perfectly legal for TV soaps and the like to "mention" and feature images of branded goods.

But it's kind of already started. Unless it was just me that heard Kevin Webster or one of his neighbours advise someone to get some Arneca anti-bruising cream after the latest street brawl in Weatherfield. Actually, Corrie has been trying out product placement for some time, in a sort of dress rehearsal to test it's effectiveness so they can compile data with which to sell it to advertisers when the law comes in.

I caught either Tyrone or Kirk praising internet auctions about a year ago - which is termed "generic" placement - because although nobody mentions the brand, everyone who hasn't just landed thinks of eBay. Then there's the full-on treatment. Arneca right now, presumably the entire contents of the supermarket aisle all in good time.

All this is just a slippery slope to wholesale changes to the story props, if not the story plots. What's betting Tesco's acquire BetterBuys and Peter Barlow winds up working at Ladbrokes ?

Bold as brass and tight as the skin on me Cumberland ring

The Idiots Are Winning

Last September the British Culture Secretary, Ben Bradshaw, did try to appease the cynical (me for one) by reassuring that children's programmes will remain unscathed and certain product sectors will be excluded - such as gambling and over-the-counter medicines.

Well, in what version of reality do children exclusively watch children's TV and what is Arneca if not an OTC medicine ? Any offers ?

Come on guys. It's up there with plans to put illuminated adverts in the dark tunnels of the  London underground. Short of living on the moon or underwater there will be simply no escape from the babble and the relentless background noise.

I first saw Jim Carey in Truman Show in 1998 on a flight. I didn't get it - although flight movies often have that effect on me. The next time I saw it on TV I got the genius. It was always one of those stories set in the not-too-distant future, like Nineteen Eighty Four by Orwell or Cormac McCarthy's The Road. The idea that the TV would be manipulated so that seemingly genuine storytelling would be subtly and therefore one may argue deceitfully pumping out shopping recommendations, relentlessly, sounded preposterous. Like those subliminal Coca Cola flashes in the 1970's, or sleeping tapes under your pillow. 

And yet here we are ! What's annoying is that, media-specialist trade titles aside, the press just isn't talking about it. That was to be expected. I never see anything in the papers discussing how the Defamation Act amendments and the Official Secrets Act have re-shaped the press so that it's not free to tell the truth it's just free to make money. It's hardly going to tell you how unworthy of your patronage it really is, after all. Read All About It. We've Gone Right Down The Pan.

How Did We get Here ?

The money side and therefore the reasons for how we got here looks something like this;

In the days of five channel telly, audiences were huge and channels like ITV could command a jaw dropping thirty grand per second for prime time advertising. That's why you only ever saw the big boys in the Corrie breaks, such as BT, Coke, Goverment ads, Kronenbourg 1664, PlayStation, EMI music signings etc.

When we started tuning in to Jack Bauer on Sky One, Andy Gray on SkySports and re-runs of Inspector Morse on ITV3, audiences split and fell in size. Advertisers refused to pay the same high rates as back in the day.

ITV got itself in a pickle in a bid to counter the fact of it's declining importance, so it cut a deal with it's clients as regards future advertising contracts. It promised that if audiences fell in years to come, the fees for the telly ads would fall in proportion. Because of it's public service broadcasting duties (not only the BBC has public obligations) and it's woes potentially coming home to roost at Westminster, the government was also involved in how this agreement was structured. It became known as Contract Rights Renewal. 

Now, with audiences at an all time low and shrinking (don't forget Xbox360, Facebook, iPhone and SkyPlus are all nailing the coffin, not just the footy, Gregory House and Doctor Jack), the money appears gone for good and the politicians feel partly to blame. Really, Contract Rights Renewal was kind of like officially saying to the advertisers that you can have your future discounts set out in black and white, thereby making them irrefutable.

So to make amends, the government has brought laws in to bring Corrie and the like more into line with the spirit of Trumania. Money out, money in. 

The on screen script may not decline in quality. I fancy it will sound more realistic. Just how we all talk really, minus the expletives. (Actually, Shameless with product placement will be about spot on for real working class dialect).

But the whole thing's a sell out. It's all fake from here on in. Scriptwriting as a craft takes a back seat. Artistry wave goodbye. And for me, the stealth of the project roll-out is the lowest of the low. But just as the newspapers never announced that their mission to tell the truth was replaced with a mission to maximise profits round about 1980, the telly is hardly going to pump you full of hard facts about the death of genuine impartial creativity in it's scripting teams. 

Turkeys have yet to vote for Christmas. And you don't see them billboarding the big day either.

It's Just Not Cricket!

In the long run I can't see it working, and yet the old model of adverts isn't adding up either. That's why we're looking at product placement in the first place. ITV (and other channels) have already asked the government for a slice of the TV Licence money that goes to the Beeb. It got refused. So bang goes another channel for putting bread on the table.

My money says we'll all be paying for TV content in the future. The ad-break model is dying with analogue TV (which itself has about 2 years left to live). Digital TV is the future, from your Wii to your Nokia, from your main flat screen set in the lounge to your iPod. Anyone with an iTunes account who's paid on a show-by-show or whole series basis for TV (I did this for Sky One's Lost in 2008) knows that there are models of pay-per-show already out there. And they work.

Change won't come overnight like a cold hard jolt. More likely it will be seamlessly phased in but pretty quickly I reckon. When the British Olympics are a distant memory, so will the national grid's surge when kettles got switched on at 7.40pm every Monday and Friday. And like I used to warm up the telly for my parents in 1977, because the old sets didn't come on straight away in those days, the commercial break will be a quaint notion of the collective memory. But I'm not talking thirty years down the line. I'm angling at ten years, tops.

So quick! Come sit back down. The commercial break is ending.

Please leave your comments below, and pocket the difference at ASDA!

Michael Winner's No Loser

If you think "There's no such thing as bad publicity" is just a cliche, think again.

All week on both the radio and TV I have consumed stories about Michael Winner's inflammatory comments that northerners can't cook, that the food up north is terrible, that it's not fit for humans etc etc. 

I heard it first on Radio 4 and then saw it on BBC North West Tonight, BBC national news, and I heard it on Radio 2. In the following days the Lancashire Telegraph and various press and online media operations from Liverpool to Yorkshire were inundated with readers/listeners incandescent about Winner's outrageous comments. The old north south divide was back in the debating chamber. Emotions were max'd. The old flames of patriotism were burning bright.

Lo' and behold, browsing through the TV schedule on Friday, what do I find but a new TV series starting that very night. On ITV1. Called Dining Stars and starring Michael Winner.

Calm down dear. It's just a PR push.

By now, southerners love and northerners hate Winner. And there's no better way to ensure they all tune in. You only don't turn the box on if you're indifferent to him. And who could be so after the week's multi-platform onslaught ?

People calling in to on-air debates on the subject have totally "bought in" to the movement. Having invested in this manner, an affinity takes root. It's how humans are built.

If you don't believe it's all planned out and phoney then take it from someone who's done similar work. In 1999 I worked for Loaded magazine, published by IPC. To sell a new PlayStation game called Crash Bandicoot 3 (Warped!), I hired Battersea Park Children's Zoo for a morning and cast Joanne Guest to model the shoot. Jo was a member of the anti-fur lobby. I hired the photographer, hair and make-up, props etc but I then visited a sex shop in Soho called Libido and, armed with Joanne's measurements, I ordered a fake fur bikini for her to wear on set. 

Whilst the main photographer was shooting the take for the magazine promotion, the PR guys (from Jackie Cooper on Poland Street) organised a long-lens photographer to snap our activities through the bushes, as if to imply a non-complicit snoop by the paparazzi. The PR guys and the magazine (that's me) worked the whole project up from the ground together. Everything was planned and all parties were on the pay roll. Joanne was in the loop.

When the promo hit the magazine in the next issue, our long-lens chap made a call to the tabloid press to "leak" the fact that a known paid up member of the anti-fur lobby was modelling in fur to sell a PlayStation game. He was instructed to make a deal with the papers - that they could only run the story if they included a sentence which explained that the work involved the promotion of Crash Bandicoot 3 - Warped! by SCEE out now on Sony Playstation from all good stockist RRP £44.99.

Having paid me for the magazine page space and filming costs, this fake story ran across early pages in The News Of The World, The Sun, The Mirror and various other publications. All free. I calculated the like-for-like advertising rates for such publicity and filed it with the client. They'd spent about £30,000 and had generated media presence worth closer to £150,000. 

Job done. They'll be back for more when the need arises. Why go to FHM or GQ when the boys at LOADED will spin you additional tabloid "news" for free ?

This is how the system worked and this is how it still works, except everything''s been cranked up in the PR stakes since then, as the recession bites, reality TV grows ever larger to facilitate such activities and clients demand a higher and higher return on investment / bang for their buck. Call it what you will. 

I was responsible for that campaign and many others of the type, so let's be clear that I'm not rumour-mongering here.

The opposite of love is not hate

So would proud northerners tune in to watch Winner's new show, Dining Stars, after having taken offence at his remarks just earlier ? Yes.

Love and hate are both emotional connections to the target. If you have an emotional connection you have a connection per se , and if you have a connection you have a stake in the thing. And you will follow events as they unfold. 

The opposite of love is not hate. It is indifference. Marketers know this. We learn it and see it. Hence, there really is no such thing as bad publicity. Because the opposite of good is not bad in this media world. The opposite of good is indifference. Capiche? 

You tune in, ITV sees it's audience figures rise, the ad sales guys at ITV get on the blower to BT and Coke and GoCompare and they sell ads based on audience size. Now surely everyone knew it all came down to the dollar. But I witness so much dumbfounding naivete from my fellow citizens when it comes to TV and its PR arm that I just have to lay it out as it is.

How many people sit through Jonathan Ross on a Friday night without the slightest inclination that the guests only ever crawl out of their Palm Beach pads twice yearly just to sell you another book/dvd/cinema or concert ticket ? Too many for my liking.

Wise up guys. Money makes the world go round after all. And that's no bad thing. But lets open our eyes, yeah ?

I wasn't involved in it, but a few years back marketers were back slapping at an edgy London PR firm for coming up with a plan to boost the ratings of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? British law can make ITV remove a programme from a prime time schedule if it's audience market share drops below a pre-set threshold. If you move out of prime time, your advertisers move out of your bank account and ITV simply couldn't afford this to happen. 

How could you get people to tune back into Millionaire ? It was time worn and on it's last legs with nowhere to go. The fake fur bikini in this case was a coughing member of the audience and an upper-class cheating contestant. All briefed beforehand and paid accordingly for their inconveniences, which included lawful arrest. The tabloid spin, the sheer multi-media noise that constituted the fall-out from such an ingenious execution was not priceless. For you could calculate it's worth, as I did for Loaded magazine, based on current advertising rates at the requisite media channels. But it was priceless in another sense. And it worked.

Fingers on buzzers. All your feedback is sought, prized and welcomed.

Data Capture

Have you been clubbed ?

Your store card gets you discounts. So what's in it for the store ?

Here's a thing or two you might not know about store cards. I know that because every time I get chatting to people over dinner or in a bar, and the topic arises, my disclosures leave them pretty gob-smacked. It occurred to me, then, that the smartest thing about store cards and their ilk is the blanket of stealth or ignorance (call it what you will) beneath which they operate.

But whose advantage ?

The Myth of Loyalty

OK. I don't mean that quite literally. In that Nectar and your Boots card in fact do make you more loyal to those shops or groups of member outlets. But think about this; if many people already get their health goods from Boots and their weekly food shop from Tesco, what does the loyalty card do for them ? It makes them shop there more often and it makes them spend more than they would otherwise. So what ? you might say.

The deal as it's presented to Jo Public runs something like this; You buy more and the shop gives you a (slightly or significantly) larger discount than you'd get if you bought less. A fair deal ? For sure. 

But that's not the thing......

The thing (the really clever thing) is that the store-card doesn't stop there. The idea that loyalty is the primer behind Clubcard and it's friends is the myth in all this. Because the real holy grail for the shop is data. Your data. That's what it's all about. And they ain't uttering one word about it now are they ? I wonder why?

Here's what gives; using EPOS (electronic point-of-sale technology) and having got you to willingly hand over your name, address, phone number and "permission" when you initially signed up for the card, the company behind the store can sit back and watch clever computers build an entire profile of you and your life. Your daily behaviour. Your likes and dislikes. Your extra marital activities (I'm perfectly serious), and so on. It's like Crimewatch profiling those criminals  but much more complete and intrusive.

In the business we call it "data-mining".

Each time they scan your card for the big shop it's you telling them that you're shopping for a hubby and two kids. That you prefer white wine and microwave meals. That you do in fact cook a good roast on a Sunday. That you have guests round occasionally. That your house has a small garden. That one of your kids is a girl in year ten. That you take a family holiday twice a year, usually for a fortnight ski-ing in January and somewhere sunny in August. And that when you're away on business once a month the old man get's the bit on the side round for the night.

Come again ? Well, besides sun tan lotion, ski goggles, baking flour, trowels and seeds, school diaries and a few bottles of pinot, let's just say that your Iain Banks travel reads for the flight, new make-up for the power meetings followed in a few days by a drop-off in your Radox bath soak and scented candles, coincide nicely with romantic flowers and chocolates, a new man's shirt and aftershave and a distinct absence of the weekly six pack of beers synonymous with couch potato syndrome. And a little sexy number from the lingerie department. He clearly knows what he's doing.

You're calling home from your business trip at nine every night. Tucked in to your executive suite in the South of France (Tesco Mobile) but he's got the patter all prepared and everything's as it should be. In fact he appears to be putting a deposit down on a little cottage in the Cotswolds (Tesco Finance) but maybe you're not in on that particular project. No worries, the computer simply flags up a divorce in the making and a Do-It-Yourself divorce pack is already winging it's way to your other half in the post courtesy of the Tesco Legal Store.

How's that store card looking right now ? Still friends with it ?

The third party company that managed Tesco data from the early days, Dunn Humby, soon came to realise it was rather powerful in terms of the demographic and behaviour profiling it was holding on pretty much a sizeable chunk of the British public. Old Soviet block dictatorships had nothing on this, I like to think. Tesco came in and bought a chunk of the operation. It couldn't very well have Dunn Humby going it's own way with all that juice on it's computer servers, now could it ?

The point is that "data capture" is, and has been for some time, the chief driver of behaviour of the "loyalty card" variety. So much so that the concept of "loyalty" as the project header is misleading at best, and a sham at worst.

This blog is about advertising, and where advertising crosses the line of moral acceptability. At first one might think that all this talk of data capture is a bit of a digression. But hopefully now you can see that in actual fact, data collation of this ilk is really a very clever guise of the classic ad man. It is in fact advertising in reverse. Rather than the traditional method, whereby shops advertise their wares, here we have customers advertising their future needs, so to speak. If you ever considered that Tesco et al getting you to do your own packing, cutting down on till staff and no doubt pocketing the wages savings is a blend of mischief and subtle ingenuity, then know that they are also getting customers to do their own advertising these days. Each time you purchase skin cream, cleansing balm and make-up remover you are effectively sticking your hand up and shouting "Talk to me about health and beauty products! I'm a buyer!" Thanks to store cards, they have all they need to know and your in-depth profile is ever increasing in size and sophistication.

You got a pay rise, a baby on the way or an au pair in residence ? Guess who knows ? It's all in the data. Oh it's just beautiful.

I used to work for a large British data company where everything was done by the book and above board. So I'm not talking about cowboys. Having collected and cleaned the data (people's emails, age, location, marital status, income bracket, choice of car etc), I could often "rent" or "sell" that same data onto third party companies who could target the people on the lists about buying their products too. If I ran an online mechanic getting people to tell me just three things in order to enter a competition to win an iPod, and those three things were email address, their phone network and the date of expiry of their phone contract, and say if I got permission to sell on this data, by making it a condition of entry to win the prize that you ticked the "yes" box where permission was sought, I could then collate all the (let's say) O2 contract holders whose deals expire in the next three months, and I could sell them to, for example, Vodafone. 

Data isn't about loyalty. It is gold in it's own right. I speak from experience in the field.

Writer's Eye View; The Whitbread Group's Costa Coffee is getting in on the act. This is Sunday 7th March in The Lowry Outlet, Salford Quays, near Manchester. The Coffee Club roll-out is in full swing.

Laws do exist to ensure that each person on such a list has given their "permission" to be contacted, but I have used quotes marks over that word because it's not permission in the real sense. It's often awarded unwittingly by the individual in the small print T&C's (Terms and Conditions) that internet users will usually skim or skip over before clicking the "yes" or "opt-in" box. Or permission is acquired venally (see how it was won in the above "win an iPod!" competition two paragraphs back).

Tesco, as far as I'm aware, don't sell your data onto third party companies. They keep it for themselves. But if you've got a weight problem say, and the Clubcard's giving them the whole story so they'll know this, then it doesn't matter whether they're contacting you (by email, post, text etc) with double points for diet products or double points for cream cakes, the point is they know your weak spots and they're hitting you with them for the up-sell.

You have, by now, submitted control.

Tesco is looking at launching a new high street bank this year. It already sells finance, petrol, mobile phone services and a whole range of other stuff besides most groceries. Much like Whitbread PLC which owns Costa Coffee (the above photo) and is also the UK's largest hotel and restaurant company. Although they don't sell your data on, they are free to pass it within the group and given their diversity and size it amounts to the same thing. Your data will be seen and used advantageously by commercial operations much removed from the original service which gleaned the information from you. 

I possess, in sum total, a Nero's coffee shop card and a Waterstone's card. One is data free, ie it's non-membership oriented, and the other is, in essence, for a one-line product outlet (books, obviously). So I don't get too pestered or feel that my privacy, integrity and control is being compromised too much. But the point is that I am making an informed decision. I'm going in with my eyes wide open. That's just because I happen to have worked in the industry. For most shoppers, however, the wool is being pulled. Loyal shoppers are blinded with the smoke and mirrors of "loyalty cards" where they are really anything but. And moreover, they don't even know it.

Supermarkets famously place fresh fruit and veg back-lit with green lights at the entrance point to their stores to create a fresh wholesome impression, and pipe the smell of baked bread through the store, putting "pester power" kids sweets at kid's eye level at the check-out (where kids, like everyone else, have to stand still and wait), and alcohol at the back or far aisle (dedicated drinkers may nip in for the odd bottle but end up checking out with a tasty gamut of fayre having had to walk through most aisles to reach the booze).

Most of us knew about these time-honoured successful tricks of the trade. But loyalty cards are a pretty novel genre, so just think on. They can be a real bargain but the cost of them isn't always what you'd think. The cost is more than loyalty. It's privacy. It's manipulation of the information brought to light when that privacy is flouted and it's all this without your knowledge. Well you know what they say about the truth. Every little helps. 

I have run predominantly with Tesco in the illustrations above but the argument applies to most big-box discount stores and hypermarkets, nationwide chains and household names. The wider the range of products they sell, the deeper the data they can mine and the more intrusive and manipulative they can be. I shop often in Tesco but I don't carry a Clubcard, simply for all of these reasons.

Data capture is as stealthy as land banking*. Personally, I have lots of respect for the marketing genius of these key players. I am a marketer after all. It has been my career and it will be so again, I'm sure. There is intellectual fulfilment in the laws of marketing and it's application. But I'm also a public champion with a vision of transparency. Academic intellect is one thing. But sometimes advertising crosses a line.

Double points on feedback for a limited time only! File your thoughts in the comments space below.

* Big stores are known to buy all surplus land in a town when they build their superstore, thereby preventing competitor stores opening nearby. Tesco was alleged to have refused to yield on this strategy even when local government bodies needed the land in question for schools and local amenities.

Get Fit With HFSS !

The best laid plans, and all that..........

What kind of product endorsements do you expect to find in your gym ? Cereal bars, beauty products, healthy lifestyle accessories ?

Well how about Burger King and McDonalds ?

Fresh fruit....check, water.....check, Burger King? Worth a double take!!!

Above is what has greeted me for the last fortnight in my local health club. 
So I'm doing my work-out and I'm seeing fastfood logos on clean white backgrounds of A4 paper, supported with a beautiful display of product packaging  just in case I don't know what a BigMac might look like.

Now, having worked at the heart of media promotions for many years, it strikes me that there are two main consquences of this type of promotion in the heart of an urban branch of one of England's main health and fitness chains;

Consequence 1:

Club members (most of them, to my mind) will walk past the display (it's on the gym's main thoroughfare) and notice the logo's and product placement, but they won't look closer. This itself is classic "host endorsement" of foods that are controversially HFSS. We all know this. No need to elaborate on this point. The simple message, often stored subconsciously runs something akin to "McDonalds must be OK. My gym have their products and branding displayed in their outlets."

Consequence 2:

Club members (the more curious and time-free breed) will stop by and read the promotion literature. Behind each brand logo is a table of nutritional information for various product ranges offered by the respective brand. 

So I read that a BigMac has 520 calories. Now, before I had read this, I was of the impression that such food is to be steered well clear of. Afterall, one of my aims at the gym is weight loss. And if you'd have asked me yesterday to hazard a guess at the calorific content of a BigMac I'd have come in around half your recommended daily intake (that's about 1,250 cals for men, on average) at least. But now, I'm thinking, well, turns out a BigMac is only 520 cals, so if I forego the hefty lunch tomorrow, I could fit one of these babies into my diet without much fall-out. 

Hang on a minute, let me get this straight. I consider myself a discerning shopper. I see through the "I'm Loving It" hype on the telly, the radio, the press, the tube exit staircase and so on, choosing to exercise discipline and not let the junk food guys get their argument in. I'm not open to persuasion. The tough road to successful living, but worth it.

And yet, here is McDonalds, getting it's two penneth in and swaying me the other way, courtesy of my health club! Is this what I get for my membership fees ?

There is a third consequence, which is that the promotion gets ignored, But given it's prominence and positioning, such will befall a very small minority, if any, of my fellow gym-goers.

Now, in my eyes, that's a whopper!

The Interview

So I had a word with the employee who set this up. (names of staff and gym are omitted at this stage while I give them a chance to make good. But watch this space for changes/updates)

I pointed out the above. I asked if any money had changed hands (The PR offices of those respective brands, for want of a better phrase, couldn't buy such publicity in such an environment). And I pointed out that even if this was not the case, and even if intentions were wholesome, the opposite will happen/is happening. I explained that I work in media marketing, thinking this may reassure the chap that my comments are knowledge-based good advice.

Let me say right now that he did assure me (and I believe him) that this is a non-commercial project to highlight nutritional data on popular foods and was carried out in a purely pragmatic and neutral manner with brands being selected simply on the basis of local presence.

(There's also a string of decent restaurants nearby so why the burger bars get featured rather than balanced dishes of fish, meat and veg who knows ? Too much effort, perhaps ?)

I pointed out that the project was, and I quote "naive at best" and at worst, damaging in that it promotes junk food. I also said that your good intentions and hopes and aims pale into insignificance compared to your actions. Actions are all. If you mean well but act in a way that inadvertently has the opposite effect, it's just as damaging as if you were malicious. I suggested he remove the big brand logos for those HFSS giants and also remove the product packaging. (I'd sooner the burger boys pay through the nose to get product placement on Corrie than get it gratis through, of all places, my own gym!). 

But I was dismissed on site and nothing happened. ( I popped back in an hour later and all is as all was).

The replies I received were wholly unsatisfactory to say the least and included:

" I disagree"

" Well, that's why you (ie me) don't work in fitness because I know what I'm talking about"

and finally

"I'm not going to discuss this any more."

Clearly, personal offence was taken and emotions were roused. But this isn't good enough. And as to the second comment above, although the chap is a fitness expert, he has clearly strayed into the esoteric minefield of marketing and is refusing to accept either the fact of the matter or my advice.

The bottom line, and I speak from experience, is that bringing full colour oversized brand logos and product packaging into the gym is not the best way to raise a discussion about a healthy diet.  All publicity, to some extent, is good publicity, and this is a sure-fire way of bringing these brands under the health umbrella. Like it or not, blending this type of product seamlessly into the cardio room does not inform, it subliminally promotes. 

Reasonable questions to be raised are:

Is this some kind of co-marketing push ? Is it in any way commercial ?

Have any permissions been sought and received from the brands in question ? BK et al are not exactly in control of their own marketing destiny if you just put this stuff up on a whim, after all.

What are the rights and image licensing ramifications of such a stunt ?

Have you thought about the positive perception you are creating for unhealthy food ?

Are you not in any way aware of the power of endorsement from a gym to its members ?

I'm going to look into this a little further and raise the issue with a few bods and see what gives. So stay tuned for updates.

My interviewee did mention that, having run for a week or so, the campaign is due to be taken down on Sunday February 28th 2010. I just wanted to make this last point and to snap a photo or two of the promotion (as featured above) because, call me a cynic, but if at a later stage this complaint reaches higher levels I want to pre-empt the defence/mitigation argument that the promo has now being removed - implying that lessons have been learned and that I have been listened to. In fact, I was dismissed rather contemptuously and this campaign will have run it's full intended course, begging the question, whatever next? Lambert & Butler full colour branding in the spin theatre perhaps ? Crikey!!!

Have you had similar experiences from your health clubs? I'd love to hear about them.