Creative Agency Secrets

Getting out of touch with other generations than your own is a fact of life.  I had personal experience of a  couple in the pub tonight, and another courtesy of my Uncle Malcolm (thanks, mate!) this Christmas.

First Malcolm.  He’s studying at Nuffield College Oxford right now for a year.  And since he has real white hair, the staff asked him to be Santa for their kids party.  He did the usual "hello kiddie, what do you want for Christmas" line and all was going well until a little boy said to him
"I’d like a wee!"  Well, uncle M sent him back to him Mum quick-o…… but later it was explained what the boy really wanted, a Wii!!

Tonight in the Coach and Horses, Waterbeach, I read a sign behind the bar.  "Meal Deal, £1 pack of crisps and a pickled egg".  Says it all, really!

And overhearing a punter place his order which included a "posh wine".  Apparently this is wine (red or white) with lemonade.  God I’m out of touch.  Plus it sounds about the only way to drink unspeakable pub wine. Tell me I’m wrong, someone, please tell me…..

(more…)

If you plan your charitable giving fror 2008 and want to try something new, copy me.  I gave $25 to Kiva earlier last year and this has been aggreagated with others’ to make a loan to a storekeeper in Ecuador who wants to expand his stock.  To date he has repaid $85 of the $700 loan. 

here’s an extract from the Kiva newsletter.

Dear Kiva Friend,
Happy Holidays!  We hope this finds you well.

Thank you for believing and participating in the Kiva.org movement to connect people through lending to alleviate poverty.

Because of your support, 2007 has been an amazing year for Kiva: over 170,000 lenders like you have funded 25,000 entrepreneurs to date.  That’s more than $16 million in loans across 37 countries - and at this time last year, we had just crossed the $1 million mark!  This explosive growth hasn’t gone unnoticed - Bill Clinton, Oprah Winfrey and others have caught the Kiva bug, and enthusiasm continues to spread around the world.

Reading the holiday edition Economist, they add in a load of great "wider reading" articles including this one on Beauty and Success entitled "To those that have, shall be given".  Sub titled, ‘The ugly are one of the few groups against whom it is still legal to discriminate.  Unfortunately for them, there are good reasons why beauty and success go hand in hand.’

They surveyed salaries for men and women in a range of countries and found that beauty has a premium and ugliness is penalised around the salary norm. 

China:
men -25% and +3%
women - 31% and + 10%

Britain:
men - 18% and +1%
Women - 11% and +1%

USA / Canada:

men - 9% and +5%
women -6% and +4%

Quite telling!  But what made me laugh was that Dr Daniel Hamermesh of the university of Texas studied Dutch advertising firms and showed that those with the most beautiful executives had the largest size-adjusted revenues - a difference that exceeded the salary differentials of the firms in question. 

And so the lesson for 2008 is that if you want to grow your revenues, hire beautiful folk to work for you!

I joined Twitter a while ago but have only just started to get it working and am now trying to use it.
Anyone else want to join the experiment?  My twitter id is on this feed.

Anyone else wanting to join up.  Here’s a helpful video on how to do it.

UPDATE   

Just downloaded the Vista plugin to put Twitter on my sidebar.  Here.  It’s called a Twadget.  Ugh.

The long-running BBC radio 4 programme was just playing.

One round is new definitions from the “Uxbridge” English Dictionary.

Ones I enjoyed with a sporting theme from today’s show

Gondolier, something you can catch from a boatman.

Picaninny, the process for selecting an England coach. Sent using BlackBerry® from Orange

These are not my questions… but they are good ones.  I have added in my own in italics.

1. What are "desirable" customer experiences, and how can you create them? And continue creating them regularly?
2. How can marketers turn customers into brand evangelists? 
3. And is WOM the only method they use to promote your brand?
4. Which social technologies help marketers better understand customer feelings, affinity, and sentiment? 
5. And how to engage through social media without appearing trite and mee-too-ish.
6. What is customer-centric marketing planning, and how should companies practice it? 
7. What is the role of marketing agencies in planning and supporting customer engagement? 
8. And how do specialist agencies collaborate around the client’s marketing campaigns in an appropriate manner?
9. How can you measure involvement, interaction, intimacy, and influence?
10. And do these 4 Is replace the 4 Ps of yesteryear?
11. How do B2B and B2C engagement tactics compare? And contrast.
12. How will marketing budgets change as a result of the focus on customer engagement?

I think the last question is spurious, customer engagement is far less of a force for change than media fragmentation…. but hey, that’s my view.

Any other things we should be planning for in 2008?

At one of my former companies we had an ongoing competition to find businesses named after people who shared names with our colleagues.

I just found out what Gabrielle Shaw of Gabrielle Shaw Communications does in her spare time…. she writes bodice rippers….

I had a meeting today with a charity that shares offices with SATRA who test products for health and safety.  On the wall of the meeting room was a big montage of products being tested by mechanical devices to simulate people sitting in chairs, lying on beds, setting fire to furniture…. and this little image….


It’s rather sadder than seeing animal experiments in laboratories…  And how many times did the mechanical arm pull little teddy before his arm fell off?  sniff.

BIMA do the BEST dinner debates.  I’ve attended a couple in the past. 

I am going to this event, and it promises to be a fantastic debate to add to the discussions that I started here and here.

Jamie
Galloway, Director of Digital Media, Central Office of Information. The
subject of the conversation for the evening is: ‘The future for PR in a
digital world’

[Nice use of English.. the future FOR not, you notice, the future OF….!]  Pedants of the world unite.

I have had three potential new customers approach me recently asking to work with me "for free" in order to try out what it may be like.

I am in two minds about this.  One of the difficulties about being freelance and working as an external consultant is that personalities matter and your customers generally like working with people they like.  Until they work with you they don’t know your style, the detail of your techniques or whether they like you.  [One of the difficulties is that what I do is not unique…. the base service is provided by many people-like-me but my expertise and experience is what delivers the unique service to my clients.  It’s hard to persuade everyone that this is the case and that it supplies them with better outcomes.]

And so to the freebies.  To do or not to do? 

I don’t have an answer.  To date I have said yes to two of the enquiries.  I facilitated a session for a City Law Firm and now have been asked by a listed PLC PR firm to give an hours talk to their business development teams. 
If I’m honest, both sessions have grated a bit.  But what do you do?  It is all about confidence. 

when you are building up your profile, sometimes you have to give a bit free (or just for expenses) in order to gain an audience.  But, once you are well known or more confident, a fee is entirely appropriate.

I have sliding scales of fees with different charges for large and small organisations and contra-deals for those who can offer me something in return that I value.  It’s worked well to date.

But back to the question.  Are they being cheeky?  Is this me being ignorant and taken advantage of?

P.S.  One has offered me a full list of internal department contacts who might buy my services with the understanding that I can pitch them afterwards.  This might be a useful contra that I can take up.