10 Things About .com

10 Things about websites they never tell you;

 1 There is scant correlation between what you pay for a website and how good it looks

2 How cool your site looks has zero bearing on Google rankings. Google is a 'bot. It can't see your site. It can't see images. It's sole quest is relevance not aesthetics

3 None of us can promise Google rankings. We don't know how much it will cost or how long it will take to achieve your best rankings. We are always guessing

4 How many links point to your site and from who ? You can see for free. And you need to.

5 Google judges your website for it's index based mainly on things happening away from your site. Your code and content is important. But not the most important determining factors

6 Before you "go after" a keyword, you'd be wise to qualify it. For free, you can see how many people in the UK enter a keyword per month. Stuff you fancy turns out to be obsolete. Check it

7 If your site is not ranking, you'll never get new business. No matter how good your site looks

8 If you rank well but have a poorly designed site, you'll never get new business. No matter how prominently you rank

9 To pick up new foreign business, host locally. Get out of the UK to get the business in

10 If you don't use hashtags on Twitter, you're not using Twitter! #SEO not SEO

The North Is Risen!

How the north has left it’s indelible mark of a tainted past on modern business sentiment;


Dickensian manufactories. The hard slog. Armies of frowning underpaid workers. The mental grime of hard toil. Dragging yourself to work before sunrise. Accepting the truth that work is to be endured not enjoyed. Putting up with an ungrateful boss who thrives on micromanagement of your every detail. Criticism is the only currency. Never a “thank you” in sight. Get in and get out as fast as you can. Clock off, run home and savour every second before, all too soon, another day beckons.

Sound familiar ? Until recently this was history. Orwell’s “the Road To Wigan Pier”, Scrooge’s references to “the workhouses” in Dicken’s “A Christmas Carol” and LS Lowry’s doom swept mill-gate landscape masterpieces could be enjoyed safe in the knowledge that this sordid past was securely condemned to the history books. The service sector boomed as the sun set on the long days of mindless hard labour. Those iconic quarry-stone factories of Richard Arkwright and Titus Salt re-opened as museums and tourist attractions all across the Pennine mill towns of Yorkshire and Lancashire. Surely a lesson learned ?

Not so. Yet it all began so well.

As London led the new dawn of a sophisticated and brighter tertiary sector, populated by a labour force that actually enjoyed adding value to people’s lives, the forgeries of Sheffield and the harsh cold infrastructure of Cotton-opolis fell into terminal disrepair. New bespoke professions added a layer of creativity to the offering, from the genius of the ad man to the nuanced sophistry of stylists, artists, IP lawyers, high street accountants and PC game designers. Waterside glass atria stood tall as the signature of a sensitive, hopeful and just out-right brighter future. These were the 70’s, ‘80’s and ‘90’s. Commercial evolution encapsulated a new promise.

Internal hierarchies tumbled. Office wall divides fell in true Berlin-esque fashion. First name terms abounded, job titles became optional and/or meaningless, junior staff members were consulted on daily business strategy decisions. Even the days of women being treated like the blacks and Irish before them sounded their death knells. If one wasn’t very much mistaken, human respect was on the up. Oh joy of joys.Surely things can only get better from hereon in. Evolution is a one way street is it not ?

Eh....No.

Naomi Klein was quick off the mark with her visionary and devastating critique of the deeper, long-term effects of globalization in “No Logo” - a work of seminal genius probably too ahead of it’s time for it’s message to be gotten whole if you devoured it, as I did, in 2001.

(For a counter-argument on globalization - which focuses more on the clever technological advancements of modern times - Thomas Friedman’s “The World Is Flat” is recommended.)

The full power of a good analogy or case-study is often utilised by deployment of a polemic or extreme example, and Naomi (first name terms, remember!) duly obliged with a brave exposee of child labour in far off lands courtesy of Nike and Gap, and environmental vandalism courtesy of Dunlop and such like. But all this was too, well, far away. Too indirect. Too un-affecting of me and my every day small life.

Skip forward ten years and the real effect of the new business model has made itself apparent much closer to home. Now it’s real!


The massive march toward pure efficiency and productivity that is synonymous with the new global mobilization of labour and capital doesn’t just wreck the odd rain forest or condemn young Indonesian kids to the 21st Century’s version of Dickensian workhouse misery. Though it sure does this too.

It also regiments the new hope that I was describing just now. It pitilessly removes the new creative expressions of a more cultured and humane service sector and plummets it right back to the depths of Arkwright’s Derwent valley factories. It re-instates the old mindless arrogant hierarchies, internalizing them safely out of sight of the prospective customer base. Ordered instructions make a return, replacing the short-lived consultancy bosses who sought your opinions and valued your input. As all focus turns to the bottom line, the dollar, the share price, the gross profit margin - and as all higher ambitions are trumped by the myopic obsession with today’s or this week’s figures and unit return-on-investment, what we end up with is a shiny new office on the outside that is nothing more than a mechanical slave labour device on the inside.

Not only are we ditching the job satisfaction of the more junior employees, but customer satisfaction eventually takes a back seat too. Countless call centre oriented businesses around the UK are more interested in a one-hit culture where customers are fleeced once never to return. Knowing this, lots of modern outfits (and I’ve worked for a few so I’m not making unfounded opaque platitudes here) face a stark choice; increase the quality of the service on offer or make sure that if you fleece customers in a one-off never-to-return style, you fleece them real good. They choose the latter.

We wind up right back where we started. Jaded hoards of sullen workers giving over their lives to mindless robotic chores that yield up absolutely no sense of worth, nor any opportunity to learn and grow. In return for this, they receive multiple digs daily from the boss. Feeling just enough of a failure continuously to carry the blame for their predicament and feeling that target-soaked nirvana is just close enough to warrant another stab at tomorrow, underpaid un-thanked workers, rather than seeing their bosses for the manipulative tyrants they are, blame themselves for underachieving and clock-on first thing the next day. Alas the cycle rolls.

Sure, this trend is phenomenal right across the UK but up north it’s just so much more in your face, it makes me laugh. Twenty years ago, before the IT comms explosion, all sectors of my field - media - had fewer players in the market and a bigger emphasis on quality. Barriers to entry meant that it cost a fair whack to set up in business - whether you were a designer, a publisher, a creative ad man, a media planner or buyer, a PR agent or an image photographer. Hence the emphasis on quality and hence why London boomed at this and the provinces couldn’t get a look in. The qualities of Account Management and Business Development resonant of this era perfectly matched the qualities of the London-centric approach to service-based work. Knowledge-based, pro-active, intelligent lead-sourcing, post-curricular business consulting and an all round professional and intensive bespoke offering from semi-autonomous individuals who would be willing to meet clients over breakfast, lunch or dinner to strategize and impart trade news and shape product launches and brand-repositioning campaigns based on the latest intelligence. Up north at the same time, such top end service was anathema.

Lawyers, journalists, accountants, creative ad men and media salesmen have all witnessed a job description similar to that last paragraph disintegrate into a homogenized factory floor of mindless monotony where the software does the thinking and you churn out the numbers.

I'm not addressing every profession and sector here. Or even sales in it's entirety. Music and sports rights, law, intellectual property and education still retain a rude streak of integrity and knowledge-based creativity even in their sales arms. I've sat around the table closing deals with the likes of Sony BMG, Manchester United, Vodafone, O2, T Mobile, Budweiser and Motorola. I'm aware of the Third Tier commercial team at University of Manchester and I've strategized with ISM or "International Sports Management" over digital content syndication. The quality is still rife here. Yet elsewhere the journey from professional consultant to call centre fodder is all but complete. Skills decline. Salaries become risible. The worth and craft of the job-proper totally disappears and everyone becomes time-poor and miserable. But the profit margins for the stakeholders are now astronomical and so that’s OK. In this sense we have totally out-Thatchered the Thatcher years. We have out-nineteen eighty’d the power dressers in our deification of the profit line. It’s just that it’s all so out of sight these days. You never actually see it anymore.

Sure, you’ll still get the Ben Elton parody hanging around his 911 on the main street of Alderley Edge, complete with his missus who took Footballer’s Wives a little too seriously. And Wall Street traders will always publicly worship their hundred dollar bills in the eateries of downtown Manhattan. But the real money-soaked masses have mainly decamped to the Cayman islands surrounded by their bunches of dancing girls. They got richer and largely more private.

And so the north has risen!

When quality, integrity and style were the essence of doing business, London ruled. Cue the new dumbing down and suddenly the provinces are back in power. How so ? It’s because the new money-drive is really a return to the days of yore. As I mentioned already, office culture has turned full circle and the sales arms of anyone from software developers to search marketers now seek to be housed in Dickensian modernia. Who better than the north to provide this ? Sons of Orwell, Dickens and Lowry take a bow.


Stroll, if you dare, through many an office in central Leeds, Newcastle or Manchester and you’d see what I mean. They’ve laid out the banks of PC workstations like the lines of the old cotton weaving textile looms. These are populated by a substrata of wordless juniors who scurry to their desks at 859am, head bowed with flask and plastic box of home made sandwiches in hand. They gingerly log-on seconds before nine, thereby avoiding the wrath of the well dressed and upright male boss whose office is in full view to the banks of his minions and whose PC is automatically notified of any late comers logging on at 901am. I’m serious. Out onto the shop floor he swaggers like Caligula and everyone tenses up, waiting for the vocal jibes and the public accusations. They duly arrive.

Hats off to the north. They’ve done offices the only way they know how. They’ve done them like factories.

Some things don’t change.

…..................................

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.