After a few pints in the pub I am fullof ideas for blog entries. A good sleep, however, and they have all vanished from my mind the next day. As this morning I am in the unusual position of remembering them, I though I should go to print sharpish. So here goes.
Tiger Woods is used to scoring a few birdies in his day to day working life, but the 9 and counting who have come out of the woodwork claiming to have had private lessons with the main man over the years is brewing up quite a storm , and Tiger probably feels at the moment that he has shot an albatross.
The ladies he has been philanderering with (good word that...ed) have all been well pubicised and will no doubt do kiss and tell for months to come.
What I want to know, though, is what part Tigers long term, and very loyal , caddy Steve Williams has played in all the goings on?
Correct me if I am wrong, but I understand the role of the caddy is to point out the projected target and indicate how far his man is away from it, he should then advise which club to use, and line his player up to the hole. He then cleans the club after the shot and puts the club back in the bag himself. He also keeps the score.
I think there is more to this than meets the eye.
Wednesday 9 December 2009
Simples
The power of TV advertising is a very strange and wonderful thing. Some of the best adverts will stay with you for ages. Guinness and Carlsberg, for example, have a real heritage for advertising campaigns going back decades. Other Companies use a particular style, and, dare I say it, IBM is one such with their blue banner wide screen format.
Catch phrases such as 'not just any mince pies....' or '....three weetabix' are instant hits and make their agencies a tidy profit.So too the awful adverts which none the less leave you with an indelible image of the product in your mind. You've been Tango'd, E-Sure and pot noodle all have that cringe factor build it, but boy, we remember the adverts.
The adverts which hit the bar are, if course, the wonderfully produced efforts which fail to burn the brand into our minds. We end up extolling the virtues of the 45 seconds of great TV but have no idea what its advertising. I would give an example, but I can't remember any!!
Then there is the merchandise spin-off aspect, which is what this blog is all about really. The Esso tiger in the tank campaign in the seventies had half the nation driving round with tigers tails dangling from the rear view mirror, self raising flower men from Homepride were found in every kitchen in the land, and, the classic, of course, the Robertson's gollywogs were a class act.
Many special items are issued attached to boxes of tea, and t-shirts can be obtained for a nominal sum and a few box tops, but the latest and greatest merchandise promotion surrounds Alekandr Meerkat, the main man in the comparethemarkets.com advertising campaign.
Harrods have the sole contract for providing the dolls based on Alekandr, they have a limited edition of 5000 and were selling them at £19.95. As is the case with many such limited offers though, demand from around the world has been huge. So the owner of Harrods, in another attempt to get UK citizenship, has decided to withdraw them from sale and present them to a number of childrens charities including Great Ormond Street and the Shooting Stars Hospice. A noble gesture, and one I hope will not generate a black market on e-bay. In the meantime I will have to look for another collectible for my son, this Christmas.
All this talk of adverts reminds me of the way a cruise ship singer gauged the age of her audience. She threw out a few punch lines like bum bum bum bum.... and....you'll wonder where the yellow went.....and waited for the strength of response. Very clever, but simples.....
Monday 7 December 2009
Strewth
I have until Friday this week to decide whether to take the offer from my Company of early retirement. They have had an early retirement window open for two weeks now and the option to leave on 5th February has been offered to me.
The changes being proposed are well documented in the public domain, and as far as I am concerned I would have needed to work until I was 62 to reap the benefits of retirement which I am being offered now. A no brainer you would think?
And so did I until an update was issued last week. Now I have had some knocks on this blogger with regard to punctuation and proof reading, but if ever an e-mail needed another e-mail to explain the first one, then this update did. It clearly was not thought through or tested out on a peer group so now the whole Company are charging round saying, do you know what this means? Do you think this applies? and getting several different answers.
As far as I am concerned it gives me a lifeline, in as much as it looks like I can work through to 60 now to get the pension I had previously budgeted for, or, in the interim, leave when I want to on terms I have time to think through. Well, at least, that's what I think it says.
It is endemic at the moment though that employers are wielding the axe wherever there is opportunity to cut costs. Vauxhall Motors up here in Ellesmere Port are still to be absolutely black and white when laying out their employment/redundancy plans. The 8000 Corus employees who have just learnt they are to be laid off had expected a better and longer stay of execution when the firm was sold a few years ago.
Then at the other end of the scale, the City bankers, many of whom would not be in a job but for the government bailing them out, are now bleating about the threat to their bonus schemes. A draconian tax on banking bonuses would be a brave move , but there are many people in the non-high street banking sector who would suffer unjustly. On many fronts, watch this space.
The changes being proposed are well documented in the public domain, and as far as I am concerned I would have needed to work until I was 62 to reap the benefits of retirement which I am being offered now. A no brainer you would think?
And so did I until an update was issued last week. Now I have had some knocks on this blogger with regard to punctuation and proof reading, but if ever an e-mail needed another e-mail to explain the first one, then this update did. It clearly was not thought through or tested out on a peer group so now the whole Company are charging round saying, do you know what this means? Do you think this applies? and getting several different answers.
As far as I am concerned it gives me a lifeline, in as much as it looks like I can work through to 60 now to get the pension I had previously budgeted for, or, in the interim, leave when I want to on terms I have time to think through. Well, at least, that's what I think it says.
It is endemic at the moment though that employers are wielding the axe wherever there is opportunity to cut costs. Vauxhall Motors up here in Ellesmere Port are still to be absolutely black and white when laying out their employment/redundancy plans. The 8000 Corus employees who have just learnt they are to be laid off had expected a better and longer stay of execution when the firm was sold a few years ago.
Then at the other end of the scale, the City bankers, many of whom would not be in a job but for the government bailing them out, are now bleating about the threat to their bonus schemes. A draconian tax on banking bonuses would be a brave move , but there are many people in the non-high street banking sector who would suffer unjustly. On many fronts, watch this space.
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