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Marketing Society editor, Elen Lewis reviews the weekend papers for nice to know highlights from collectible hair to kissing
Strands of Justin Bieber’s hair will be sold at £20 a pop with a photograph and certificate to prove its authenticity.
5% of people over 45 have more than 30 kisses a week.
8% of married people fail to kiss their partner for a whole week.
Posted: August 8th, 2011 | Author: elen.lewis | Filed under: Nice to Know, morning papers | | Leave a Comment »
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Elen Lewis, Marketing Society editor selects the nice to know highlights from the weekend papers from wolves to murder on a surf board.
66 wolf attacks have taken place on livestock in France.
Crime writer, Agatha Christie, was one of the first people in Britain to stand-up surf.
33% of parents think it’s fine to take a child out of school during term to go on holiday.
Posted: August 1st, 2011 | Author: elen.lewis | Filed under: Nice to Know, Uncategorized, morning papers | Tags: elen lewis, morning papers, Nice to Know | Leave a Comment »
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10 Things I learnt in July from calling the speaking clock to skinny wives, pyjamas in bed, stick insect sex and buying female hedge funds by Marketing Society editor, Elen Lewis
The key to a happy marriage is based on the wife remaining slimmer than the husband.
Only 3 per cent of hedge funds are run by women. But in the last nine years, female-managed hedge funds have outperformed male-managed ones by 55 per cent.
Lions will most likely attack humans just after a full moon.
The Speaking Clock still receives 30 million calls each year.
Stick insects can go without sex for one million years.
The ideal slice of toast should be cooked for exactly 216 seconds.
Listening to the radio is what makes Britons happiest.
Less than 15 per cent of Wikipedia’s contributors are women.
More than four in ten Britons wear pyjamas, up from 29 per cent in 2000.
The most boring day in history was 11th April 1954: a general election was held in Belgium, Turkish academic Abdullah Atalar was born and footballer Jack Shufflebotham died—but that was it.
Posted: July 25th, 2011 | Author: elen.lewis | Filed under: 10 Things | Tags: 10 Things, elen lewis | Leave a Comment »
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In the first of a monthly article on decision making, David Wethey, founder, AAI muses on the way that game shows are infiltrating all areas of life
I like game shows. There’s something compelling about having a vicarious interest in a long-running process of choice by elimination, as in the late lamented Big Brother, I’m a Celebrity, Britain’s Got Talent, Strictly Come Dancing, Skating on Ice, The Apprentice and so on. Inevitably we identify with our favourite contestants, and obvious goodies like Len Goodman and Cheryl Cole, while loving to hate the power brokers and baddies – Simon Cowell, Lord Sugar and Craig Revel Horwood. We fall easily into the rhythm of daily or weekly episodes.
Decision making is a bigger subject than choosing – but it was the choosing of agencies by clients that goes on in pitches that led me to take what has now become a massive interest in decision science. I find decision making a compelling subject, because it needs discipline in framing questions and problems, before you can look for answers and solutions. It also demands precision in setting criteria, identifying options, and applying reward/risk analysis to both upsides and downsides.
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Posted: July 21st, 2011 | Author: elen.lewis | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: David Wethey, game shows, marketing society, The Apprentice | Leave a Comment »
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In the third of a new weekly feature, Haystackonline selects two of the freshest, most innovative campaigns from its collection – Team Sky and Maximuscle.
Team Sky
Antidote
And this is a really neat idea. How about combining sponsorship with social media with CSR with a promotional competition? Sounds too complicated. But, this is exactly what Antidote have just done with their elegant work for Team Sky the Sky Cycle team, who are currently powering their way around the Tour de France. The problem – the bad taste left in spectators mouths when the cyclists have passed through their local town or countryside by the water bottles that are left behind littering the roadside. The solution, make the bottles green for visual impact and then offer an incentive to recycle the bottle. Launch it on Facebook and within no time at all – over 100,000 fans are following you and the bottles are getting collected by the very people that were originally complaining! Simples!!
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Posted: July 19th, 2011 | Author: elen.lewis | Filed under: Uncategorized, haystackonline | Tags: Antidote, haystackonline, marketing society, maximuscle, Team sky, The minimart | Leave a Comment »
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Marketing Society editor, Elen Lewis reviews the weekend papers for nice to know highlights from boomerang kids to monsoon weddings and pets on Facebook.
One in ten pets has their own social media presence.
27% of this year’s graduates are heading home to live with mum and dad.
Indians splurge £12bn a year on weddings, more than twice as much as the UK’s £5.5bn.
Posted: July 18th, 2011 | Author: elen.lewis | Filed under: Nice to Know, morning papers | Tags: morning papers, Nice to Know | Leave a Comment »
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Marketing Society editor, Elen Lewis combs the weekend papers for nice to know highlights from yellow bugs to pet crocs and a hairy industry
Since 2006, the US has imported over £1.2bn worth of human hair.
There has been a 250% increase in sales of reptiles and reptilian accessories and food, according to Pets at Home.
All ladybirds start out bright yellow.
Posted: July 11th, 2011 | Author: elen.lewis | Filed under: Nice to Know, Uncategorized, morning papers | Tags: morning papers, Nice to Know | Leave a Comment »
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In the second of a monthly series, Elen Lewis, The Marketing Society’s editor offers some guidance on better business writing. This week, some rules on apostrophes. These strokes of genius are woefully ignored and scorned by greengrocers trying to sell apple’s and banana’s, even Jeremy Clarkson hasn’t got a clue
When Barack Obama visited Ireland on his way to the UK recently he made a joke about punctuation. “My name is Barack Obama, of the Moneygall Obamas and I’ve come home to find the apostrophe we lost somewhere along the way,” he said.
Marketing Society Fellow Gerry O’Donnell, director of Famous Grouse asked me to write this column. He’s sick of the way website registration pages scorn the apostrophe. ‘Is there any hope or do I have to change my surname back to Son of Donnell?’ he writes.
Apostrophes matter. Just ask John Richards, the chairman of The Apostrophe Protection Society. This is a father-and-son operation whose favourite occupation is to write to offending shops and restaurants with a letter that begins: ‘Dear Sir or Madam, Because there seems to be some doubt about the use of the apostrophe, we are taking the liberty of drawing your attention to an incorrect use.’
The apostrophe isn’t an arbitrary mark, but, like its use, in ‘it’s’ meaning ‘it is’, it marks a missing letter. In Anglosaxon, possession was expressed by the genitive case: “Godes engel” meant “God’s angel”. In time, the ‘e’ was dropped and the missing letter marked by the apostrophe.
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Posted: July 8th, 2011 | Author: elen.lewis | Filed under: business writing | Tags: business, elen lewis, marketing society editor, writing | Leave a Comment »
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Martin Hayward says it’s time to redefine what we really mean by good customer service
I’m beginning to wonder whether our understanding of what constitutes good customer service is going to have to undergo a redefinition, as there seems to be potential for a growing mismatch between what companies and brands believe is good service, and what consumers really fundamentally want.
Talking to older consumers is illuminating as they remember a more local, personalised era of consumption that was slower, probably less efficient, but generally a nicer human experience. Today the onus is less about the experience, but more about the efficiency – speed, choice and minimal face time.
There seems to be a real shift occurring from right brain satisfaction to left brain satisfaction. This is clearly reflected in the metrics of ‘customer satisfaction’ dominated by wait times, transaction length, number of complaints etc. This is understandable as our lives have become commercially busier and more focussed on consumption. The benefits of choice, and value and speed have to date outweighed the declining pleasantness of the interactions.
But where will it go from here? Either the next generation of consumers will accept that there is no time for small talk and pleasantness in dealing with companies and be happy with the cost benefits of this, or maybe we will see a growing demand to be treated as a human being rather than a transaction.
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Posted: July 7th, 2011 | Author: elen.lewis | Filed under: Customer Champions, Customer Stream | Tags: Customer Champions, customer service, martin hayward | Leave a Comment »
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Alex Batchelor writes on lessons in normative herd behaviour from News of the World.
Apologies for anyone not from the UK wondering what all the furore is about. It would appear that The News of the World, the largest tabloid Sunday paper, has crossed a line – a line it may not even have been aware existed.
The revelation that it had been going through the bins of celebrities for years appeared to have no significant impact – people throw things away and then they are fair game, seemed to be the view – and all the papers must have used this tactic, at one paper they even had an employee whose nickname was “BinMan”. Even the revelation that they had been hacking into the voicemail message boxes of various celebrities for years generated little real anger, there was a suspicion that not all papers were untainted by the practice – as so long as it continued to feed our desire to read celebrity exclusives maybe it was alright. Squidgygate and a few choice words from Prince Charles were among the most notorious early stories – but the practice clearly continued. More recently, a very belated criminal prosecution and a few apology payments to the celebrities involved seemed bring an end to the noise pretty quickly. Indeed if anything, the majority of the public has been supportive of the tabloid journalists ethos as revelations about Super Injunctions showed that an elite were trying to control what was published about them and where – particularly when their behaviour was likely to cost them money or reputation or both.
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Posted: July 6th, 2011 | Author: elen.lewis | Filed under: Makes You Think, Uncategorized | Tags: alex batchelor, brainjuicer, herd, News of the World, phone hacking, the marketing society | Leave a Comment »
