Archives for the month of: March, 2014
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An Alternative Top 10 Film List

March 31, 2014 //
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I was chatting with an old mate of mine the other day. By old, I mean both his age and the length of time he’s been a mate, which as I write this is into its fourth decade. We got talking about films and he shared with me his all-time top 5. Describing it as an alternative top 5 film list is doing it a disservice. It’s not even iconoclastic, it’s just plain, well, odd. Maverick let’s say.

We’re both huge fans of the path less trodden in life, and this list certainly epitomises that path. I asked Baz – for that is his name – to expand his list to 10 and send it to me. I should stress at this point the genuineness of this list. Baz added: “I’d like to emphasise that these really are my favourite 10 films. Not for me the temptation to fill the list with ‘film noir’ and French language piffle I’ve never actually watched.”

Here for you, dear reader, is that list in descending order of favour, complete with helpful annotations. Brace yourself…

“1) This Is Spinal Tap (nuff said – Plato’s Form of a flawless film)
2) Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (still have nightmares about the Childcatcher)
3) ABBA: the Movie (a thing of wonder, and I’m not just talking about Agnetha’s derriere)
4) Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (everything’s so wrong about this, it’s right!)
5) Murder on the Orient Express (I’m actually word perfect on this one)
6) Brimstone & Treacle (best soundtrack ever and Sting’s actually good!)
7) The Da Vinci Code (the perfect nonsense romp – who cares about the plot holes?)
8) The Wicker Man (the original, not the dreadful remake – plus Ingrid Pitt in a state of undress!)
9) Sink the Bismarck! (I won’t tell you how it ends…)
10) And Soon the Darkness (original 1970 version and the reason I sold my bike)

Citizen Kane was an unlucky four hundred and fifty seventh.”

Now that’s a list. You should acquaint yourself with its contents. I know I plan to, I’ve only half of it done.

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Categories General

The Global Phenomenon That Is Paddy’s Day

March 28, 2014 //
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I can’t explain it either, but it’s fascinating.

Why is St Patrick’s Day celebrated in such style and with such fervour in so many places around the world? Ireland boasts a diaspora of 70 million people, but that can’t be anywhere near the largest. Only the Chinese New Year comes close, and we’re talking about a national powerhouse of 1.4bn souls, fully 350 times Ireland’s population.

Paddy’s Day – and that’s not a pejorative term by the way, not is it ever St Patty’s Day, my American friends – doesn’t even occur on the weekend most of the time, yet still hundreds of thousands of Americans take a holiday to celebrate it and their Irish ancestry.

Ireland – and I’m talking about the Republic here; I’m mildly embarrassed to admit I don’t know much about Northern Ireland, except that it has great tourism advertising – seems to have cultivated the art of charming the pants off you while taking ever so small liberties. For example:

– a corporate tax rate that is the envy of most countries except the ‘offshore’ ones and the bane of the EU’s life

– peaceful nation status with a peace-keeping force, for the best of both worlds

– a genuinely warm welcome unless you’re English (an 800-year reversal of fortunes, let’s not go there) and then if you are it’s a genuinely warm welcome until they know you better

– the high wire act of leveraging a world renowned stout without getting bogged down by unhelpful links to alcohol and its abuse

– genuinely friendly and talkative while also using swear words like definite articles

– cutting edge in areas of business like IT, and antediluvian in its tolerance and memory of shady business and political practices

– great on innovation and entrepreneurship, less so on infrastructure and healthcare

– lovely scenery, without ever being out-of-this-world lovely as boasted by other countries 

For all these reasons Ireland is the most transportable of brands and punches way above its weight in cultural and touristic terms. How this translates into the global transplanting of Paddy’s Day once a year – beats me. I do love living here though…

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Categories General, Language, Marketing, Technology

Le Shuttle – Bonne Vitesse, Mauvaise Experience?

March 26, 2014 //
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I had occasion, dear reader, to go to France and Italy a few weekends ago. It was a bit of a road trip – with some planes and trains thrown in for good measure – and one of the earlier legs was the Eurotunnel from Folkstone to Calais. I’ve been on the Eurostar from London to Paris, but never the car-train thingy.

I didn’t know what to expect. I hadn’t booked the tickets as it was a surprise held in my dubious honour, so I hadn’t gone onto the website to see what it was all about. I was going in cold, which is always interesting from a marketeer’s perspective. It is always incredibly valuable to experience the customer journey through your product or service for the first time, because once you’ve got your feet under the table and you know where to look, what to do and what to expect, you can’t help first-time visitors navigate big idea any more.

I was expecting something like a cross between the car ferry and the Eurostar. Drive on, dump the car, chill for a couple hours, drive off. So, imagine my surprise when we drove onto a ‘carriage’ that houses about 3 or 4 cars and sat there. You can either sit in your car and feel mildly seasick as the train speeds through the tunnel, or you can get out of your car and walk up and down the side. There’s an emergency loo, but no cafeteria, no entertainment, no view, nothing.

I examined the inside of the carriage. There were lots of emergency notices and information about what you can’t do. What I didn’t know was that the journey is only 35 minutes long and there’s not much you can do.

One thing that struck me was that there was nothing to manage expectations for the first time traveller. You have to find stuff out for yourself, when it’s too late.

How hard would it be to produce a 3-minute video that runs in the terminal and the carriages to give you more information on the customer experience? It would put you at ease, enhance the experience and make you spend more money in the terminal, knowing that you would be without food and drink for the best part of an hour.

I’m not saying Le Shuttle is Le Shittle, far from it. It’s a massive investment and a huge time and money saver. It’s no nonsense, not quite ‘quick and dirty’ but certainly at the functional end of travel. What I am saying is that they need to work on the customer experience. And, when they do, everybody wins.

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Categories Communication, Customers

Deja Entendu Part II

March 24, 2014 //
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A while back I wrote a post on how a sound can instantly bring you back to a time gone by. It can evoke a feeling in much the same way as a distinctive smell can.

The other day, I was watching the Champions League footie on the television and they were having some sound issues. The noise cancelling function of the commentators mike wasn’t working, so it was picking up crowd white noise as well.

The weird thing was this: it sounded just like the football commentaries of world cup games in the 60’s and 70’s. I was spirited back to a time of David Coleman or Kenneth Wolstenholme and those legendary voices that sounded slightly dislocated, strangled almost.

I guess that’s why music is so good at evoking a feeling or a certain period in our lives. It makes ‘guess the year’ on the radio so much more penetrable.

We’re used to hearing music on marketing videos. Perhaps it is the next great ploy to be exploited via the browser and web sites…

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Categories Communication, Marketing

Why the BBC Rocks

March 21, 2014 //
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Even though I live in the Republic of Ireland, my browser home page is always set to the BBC. It really is a very good website indeed. The broadcasting institution has undergone quite a few changes of late, but if you’re British it’s an inescapable and vital part of your life.

Here are 7 reasons why the BBC rocks:

– No ads.  Even though I’m in marketing, I love watching television on the BBC because you’re guaranteed uninterrupted coverage and no falsely imposed breaks of flow or thought.  You get ads on the BBC website if you view it from overseas, but who cares? That’s routine behaviour on the web

– Great value for money with the license fee. The quality of programming is still peerless. In Ireland you pay a similar license fee – and you still get ads. With Sky you pay a monthly subscription – quite a high one – and amazingly you still get ads, which I would find infuriating and a bit of a con

– Accessible to people in Ireland under a range of subscription arrangements, so us expats don’t have to go without

– Fantastic music montages. No-one caps off a televised event with a montage as good as the BBC’s

– Still the best documentaries around.  History, music, you name it

– Superb natural history content. OK, so I’m biased here and my brother does work in this area, but it’s still superb

– Flawless sports coverage and camera work. Think 6 Nations, the British Open, Wimbers…

They’re not perfect, but my they’re pretty close to it.

I do have a gripe that on the website you can’t see certain sporting footage because of licensing arrangements and you get the ‘UK viewers only’ message, but it’s a small gripe.

The phrase ‘thanks to the unique way the BBC is funded’ is sometimes used as a stick to beat the Beeb with. Not by me. We don’t know how lucky we are.

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Categories Communication, General

The Kindness of Strangers In Small Places

March 19, 2014 //
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One of the several things that I really like about where I live is that people say hello to you in the street. People you don’t know. Strangers.

I live in a small town – it would be considered a village in my native country – in the west of Ireland. It’s quite normal to say hello, smile, nod or exchange a view on the weather with people you don’t know a few times during a walk through the town. I really like it.

People are familiar with the friendly welcome of the Irish – cead mile failte, or a hundred thousand welcomes and all that – but I suspect you get this level of friendliness in all small places.

You don’t get this in a big city, at least in not a single one I’ve ever been to, and I’ve probably only been to a couple hundred in my life. People don’t make eye contact, their body language is self-protecting, they avoid making any kind of acknowledgement of your presence. Maybe this is because it feels like everything is transient, unsafe, or unfamiliar in a seething population, but to me it’s a pity. We’re social animals after all, and interaction with fellow humans improves our mood, most of the time.

Next time you’re out and about in a city, try saying hello to a couple of passers-by. Better still, when you’re in a city with an underground system, strike up a conversation with someone across from you, across the central walkway I call ‘the well of souls’. The looks you get can be hilarious:

‘What are you doing, talking to me? You’re breaking the code!”

‘What code?’

‘The unwritten code of the city. No talking to anyone you don’t know. Loser!’

Give me the kindness of strangers in small places any time.

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Categories Communication, General

Hunters and Farmers – An Unnecessary Separation of Church and State?

March 17, 2014 //
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The majority of sales organisations and sales people intuitively distinguish between two types of sales person and sales role. The hunter is the new business person who gets the deal with the new customer in the door and then moves on to the next. The farmer is the account manager who develops that account and nurtures the relationship.

The received wisdom is that each role is suited to a particular type of character. Some folk are suited to the rough and tumble of closing the deal, others are better at deepening the rapport.

Then there is another view, propounded principally by companies like The TAS Group who are behind the Target Account Selling methodology. They argue that the best, most strategic and most successful sales people are those who strategise on target accounts, figure out where the need is, develop the opportunity for a sale and then close the opportunity themselves.

Where do you stand on this? Are opportunity management and account management dedicated, specialised roles that should stay separate, or should they be part of a combined, more strategic role? The answer, of course, is that it depends, but I’d be interested in your views on the matter.

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Categories Customers, Sales, Strategy

Luck or Karma? Planning’s Big Lie

March 14, 2014 //
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A few years go, as a recent recruit to a sales effectiveness company, I briefed the powers that be on how I wanted to run my session. I wanted to start with a story on how it was lucky I made it to the US that day at all. I had a new smartphone and set my alarm for 6am on the Saturday, unaware that my alarm was set for weekdays and not weekends. I awoke at 6am anyway, and realised my error. In any event, the thrust of my story, I said, was that you can do all the planning you want, but sometimes you need a bit of luck.

The powers that be looked at me askance. This was not what they wanted to hear. You see, they said, the whole point of sales methodology and planning is that you remove luck from the equation. You leave nothing to chance and you control the eventualities of the sale with your ideally perfect knowledge and assessment of the situation.

That said, loads of us believe in luck, hope for luck, are counting on luck. Luck and hope may not be great strategies, but even with the best planning in the world you get the feeling that luck still has a role. That bluebird deal comes in when you thought the customer gone dark. A change of key personnel plays right into your hands, or takes the deal away from you. Sometimes you feel that stuff happens that you just can’t legislate for.

The concept of luck is an interesting one. Some folks believe in it, some don’t. There was a great Greek tragedy writer called Euripides writing about 2,500 years ago. I reckon he was better than his much vaunted peers Aeschylus – who wrote The Persians – and Sophocles – he of Oedipus the King – and only a handful of his plays like The Medea survive from the 90 or so he wrote. He believed that there was no such thing as good luck. There was either no luck, or bad luck.

I take a different view of luck from my erstwhile planning perfectionist employers. Great planning means you can allow for luck or karma, or you know what to do when the luck rolls in. As Gary Player once said: ‘The more I play, the luckier I get.’

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Categories Customers, Planning, Sales, Strategy

The Phone That Rings Out

March 12, 2014 //
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Have you ever been in a company, institution or building and you hear a phone just ringing out? No answer machine, no voicemail system to let them know you called and to ask them to call you back?

That’s because they don’t want you to be able to put the ball back in their court. You’re the customer but they don’t care about you.

My favourite places for this to happen are public sector organisations, local government offices, state and semi-state institutions. They don’t understand customers, they don’t acknowledge you as a customer. You’re not a priority to them; they are a priority to them. They are part of the bloated state administration system and they wouldn’t last five minutes in the private sector.

This is the equation: Your call is not important to us + we don’t care about you = your call rings out.

Your solution: bypass them. Find another way to get what you need to get done.

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Categories Communication, Customers

Full Stops

March 10, 2014 //
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The full stop, preferable to a comma according to the good folks from Coldplay, is also called a period by our US friends.  Period has never really caught on as a term in the British-English speaking world, perhaps due to its association with what the older generation called ‘women’s things.’

On the surface, a full stop is a pretty easy concept.  You use it to finish a clause or a series of clauses and give the reader chance to pause for longer than they might at a comma. When you’re writing for business, though, sometimes it’s tough to know when you really should use a full stop, especially when you have bullet points or indented paragraphs. Super formal documents, like those produced by Her Majesty’s Civil Service, are very formal:

– they have a comma at the end of each bullet,

– until they get to the last bullet,

– and then they finish it with a full stop.

My own preference is not to use anything at the end of bulleted text, even at the end of the last bullet:

– it looks neater

– it’s also easier for me.  Even if it’s a longer bullet with a couple of sentences in, I still don’t put a stop at the end of the bullet

– it allows me to use this convention both for short bullet comments and longer indented paragraphs

Whatever you decide, make sure you consistently apply the convention through your document.

In the normal parts of a document, of course, you should have a full stop at the end of each paragraph. It’s not a luxury you can do without, as a former colleague of mine is fond of arguing. And that former colleague knows who they are :-).

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Categories Communication, Language
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