I’ve always thought the ‘p’ in PR could stand for so much more; promotion perhaps, provocation perhaps, or simply just - persuasion…

I’m reading a book at the moment called ‘Yes! 50 secrets from the science of persuasion’ (their stupid little exclamation mark not mine, I find the little beasts louche and lazy)… but, exclamation mark aside… I’m finding the book it rather riveting…

Whilst I fear this sort of book with inevitably find itself propping up the front of the store at Christmas in Waterstones (Uncle Clive loves a bit of persuasion pet), it’s a terribly neat little anecdotal book about marketing, brands and the little things that make a damned difference… Take copywriter Colleen Szot’s decision to change the ‘normal’ ending of an informercial… Instead of ‘Operators are waiting, please call now’ she cunningly quotes: ‘If operators are busy, please call again’… Did you see what she did there? Clever huh… Now, instead of thinking of bored operators hunched around waiting for our call, we seeing phones ringing off the hook in the hurry of it all. Cripes, whatever Szot was selling, I think perhaps I want one…

The power pull of the public is something we’re increasingly understanding and reacting to. As used as we are to Amazon’s ‘Perfect Partner’ or ‘People who brought this item also brought’ adage we forget often how much we trace, track and respond to these notes and nuances… Indeed, teaching dissertations at the moment, I’ve come to see how many students are using these recommendations to create their own reading list… It’s an easy way for them to navigate through the required reading to get real results, and since so much attention is given by the people marking these damn things to the ‘literary review’ of the subject, it’s an easy peasy way to cover off cultured ground…

Even the way we are asked to ‘recycle’ our towels in hotels can be affected by attention to detail and the introduction of ‘others’. Whilst most of us are politely asked to consider the environment when we ask for new towels (and often do), the ’social proof’ that others have reused their towels can elevate this behavior even more. By changing the wording on the sign in the bathroom to include the fact that ‘the majority of people who check in to this hotel reuse their towels’ we also will. The authors took this perceived similarity one step further and had the hotel guest read a sign that explained people that stayed in the same room they were staying in, reused their towels… Then the take up is even higher, at this point, it becomes almost personal…

There’s something to be learnt here, as - since we are driven by the clout of crowds, we are also seemingly ‘excused’ by the behavior of others. If, for example, 85% of the population don’t pick their litter up when they leave a bus, we probably won’t either - negative social norms create inaction or compliance. Your doctor’s surgery, for example, probably has a sign telling you how many people cancel appointments every week and what effect that has on the poor staff and sick among us… Oh well, at least when you don’t turn up you’re not the only one. What they should do, however, is congratulate those that do turn up… ‘46% of our patients turn up on time and get seen by the doctor at once. We thank them for their cooperation‘. Suddenly, you want to be in that gang, you want to be a good egg…

So if you have positives to promote, sell ‘em. If you have statistics proving that other people enjoy your product/service/offering, - tell ‘em that too. If you’re trying to change the behavior of a group, don’t smack them round the head with the bad news and sullen stats; haul them in by the hand loads by pointing out they’re not the only ones. In fact, if you reuse your towel, pick your litter up or turn up for your appointment, you’re part of the pack. Well done you.

I got some direct mail in the Guardian on Saturday; in fact – I got it twice in the same edition, gosh - that’s an expensive slip of the hand huh…

Inside you’ll find a catalogue, a strange little wall chart thing of consumers’ comments and 4 little sample size products, in three different colours (an ill looking green, a toilet shade of blue and then – happily – something see-through). The samples remind me of the shampoos and such you might find in a hotel, except – I’m not sure there’s any hotel that would offer you Olive Virgin Oil (sic) as a moisturizer…

And so began the companies mission… DHC, you see, needs to convince me why on earth I – or anyone else – would be comfortable putting oil, yep – oil, directly on to my face…

The catalogue begun with simple, straight forward copy… Something about ‘from the homelands of Japan via our abundant olive groves in Spain… (Hullo air miles)… DHC’s skincare range finally reaches its next destination here in the UK… (Which makes me wonder what took them so long by the first sentence)… It’s been quite a journey, they carry on, spanning twenty years and taking us to countries across the globe (as opposed to countries across the galaxy yeah?)… We started out with 3 special products, building a loyal following in Japan, Korea, America and the world over (but not here, right… Why?)…

I could go on, I shan’t.

The reason this products don’t sell, and are probably – in all honesty – ‘landing’ here for what I reckon is the third, fourth or fifth time ‘lucky’ (they won’t be), is that the packaging is appalling. How anyone can spend 20 years selling products so crudely packaged I’ll never know (yes, I know, they’re not the only ones).

 I took the mail-out to show my oldest brother this weekend, because I don’t know anyone who’s quite as smashing at packaging, it’s signs and signals as him – and he said:

‘I think it’s the worst packaging I’ve ever seen’.

It is. It looks like its copied lots of other famous, celebrated products badly; from Neutrogena to ROC, to Yardley (whom The Future Lab have taken it upon themselves to re-brand, but more on that another time). I showed it to my cousin, she’s 21 and she said:

‘It looks like it was done on a computer’

It does, and Funny, Clever Older Brother Tim said the same thing. It is simply, horribly, terrifically the worst packaging I have ever known. Stupid bubble writing; horrible colours, poor logo and cheap tat thrown all over the show. Nasty, nasty, not nice.

I’ve never written about packaging before, but with this – I just had to. Tim and I finally consoled ourselves with the fact that it must have been the idea of a rich husband’s wife. Because he loves her so much, he won’t let anyone tell her how awful her design skills are. Because he loves her so much, he leaves the packaging as it is. Because he loves her so much, he spent lots of money on the mail out this weekend. Because he loves her so much, he’ll probably count his advertising losses and book them a nice weekend away somewhere instead. We also decided there can’t be an agency behind this, because no agency in their right mind would let their client’s product going out looking like this…

If you think I’m just being Monday morning mean, have a look first at the Blotting Lotion (blotting, are you mad?) and then at the Washing Powder (yea, because that has connotations of being kind to my face you silly old fool doesn’t it)…  And, if you can bear it, weep your way through the rest too… (I’ll apologise now)…

Women like things that look nice in their bathrooms, we like stuff that looks nice on our shelves, we like stuff that looks nice on our dressing tables. We don’t like stuff like this… Even Avon does it better. We like our packaging to look uniformed; I for one was overjoyed that my shampoo recently went with the tiles on the floor (okay, you can call me simple). We like iconic, pretty, expensive looking things, not rip-offs of all and Yardley…

As an end note, I have no idea what DHC stands for either, they didn’t tell me quick enough… Perhaps it stands for Damned Horrible Cosmetics, it’s seems to fit.
 

I may be pointing out the obvious here; but we’re living in an age of conversation and complication. For brands that don’t realise we’re talking amongst ourselves, that’s where the complications begins…

This bad brand example is so amusing Jason popped it on Twitter straight away… twitter twitter talk talk…

Gridskipper is a clever, caustic kind of blog where cool people tell each other other cool things – terribly helpful. They comment on stuff, write about bits, point out pieces – as, well, that’s what blogs do. Recently, they wrote about a silly, seemingly senseless product called Travelkeen – quite rightly pointing out that it was, well – useless, redundant and down right ridiculous. Travelkeen, seeing this, wrote them the below reply:

Hi

What’s going on?

Your comments are distasteful.

Please remove your comments from Google, Yahoo, etc.

Thanks,

Travelkeen.

… Really? As in, REALLY? Someone thought that would be a good idea? Are they on crack? What was the conversation in the offices, ‘oh no, that won’t do, we must ask them to take down their comments, no, no, can’t have that at all, it’ll ruin our pathetic product’s reputation’.

No dear, you just did…

Gridskipper, of course, posted their comment, and then shot up their own, clever reply… Sorry, what was that about ‘no PR is bad PR’?… Hmmm…

Sometimes it gets to the point where you have so much you meant to say, and so much that you meant to post, that you end up doing neither. It then gets to that dratted time of year when the tax man is after you, asking you to fill this form in here and that form in there and also – whilst you’re at it – could you try and remember who you were having all those meetings with in regard to your pretty pile of £7.60 taxi receipts?

Nope.

So when I read about an ex-tax inspector who has been jailed for trying to extort around a million pounds from supermarket giant Tesco, the to-do list goes out the window, the receipts get popped in a pile (their normal mode of receipt recline if you must know) and up pops a post…

Phillip McHugh had debts of £37,000 because of a gambling addiction. Because of this he threatened to contaminate yoghurts with caustic soda and sent hoax bomb warnings to 76 Tesco supermarkets on July the 14th, on a day he self-proclaimed ‘Black Saturday’… Whilst he didn’t get his £1m, he did – in fact – cost Tesco £1.4million – something he referenced in a menacing note as ‘a cost of your business operation’ (there’s the tax man talking, huh?). He also pointed out that, if his wishes weren’t met, it would ‘destroy’ Tescos business and ‘others will pick up (their) customers’…Savvy businessman isn’t he… Perhaps he’s been reading the Undercover Economist whilst plotting his pastimes?

Yet his thinking here wasn’t my favourite bit, no quip-siree… My favourite, giggle-out-loud-on-the-tube bit was this sentence:

‘Please don’t think there is anything personal in this (I like TESCO and enjoy its shopping experience)’

Amazing. I mean, truly, ‘we-talk-about-discerning-consumers-all-the-time’ amazing… He mentions ‘the shopping experience’, as if it’s common parlance, as if it something everyone considers before deciding whether to buy their caustic soda yoghurt in Tesco or not. He mentions business models and economics, all whilst apologising, seemingly, for what he’s doing… And you’ve got to love the brackets…

The shopping experience, (fake contaminated food and an out of control consumer in this case) is one I’ve been reading about a lot recently. Rookie kindly sent me Paco Underhill’s ‘Why we buy: The Science of Shopping’ which is common sense hitting you smack clever bang between the eyes. Except the most common thing with common sense is that is it so… well, uncommon… especially with some of the brands Underhill mentions. Before his book, I was reading the seminal ‘A Theory of Shopping’ text, by Daniel Miller. He’s fantastic. A third of the way through the book he suddenly proclaims his own work as ‘sanctimonious clap-trap’… If anything makes me keep reading its humility, grace and humour… I also love that fact that he’s selfless enough to call it ‘A’ theory of shopping, not ‘The’ theory… If you haven’t read either of these books, you should… Hell, you can even pop them on your tax return…

For me, the nonsense of common sense has never been seen so clearly as when we’re looking through the cloudy glasses of our everyday… Why, for example, does my Oyster card not have a tube map on it? Not even a small, condensed tube map of the center of central town? Why doesn’t every car have a brake light system whereby you can tell how heavily the person in front of you is braking (my favorite idea since I was a kid) and why - still - do airports have restaurants in whereby I have to go up and order? I’m juggling a laptop and luggage God dammit and anyway - you keep telling me not to leave them unattended. I want that table by the window and I want you to come over to me to get my order. End of.

Yes we have to save this world since no one else surely will, but also - let’s save our silly selves. Sanity is significant and common sense is key and - for the idiot that wanted both a huge percentage of my wages and then to poison my food - 6 years inside is far from common sense.

Read the full story here.

Blogs, I find, are often that kind of cathartic techno tool with which to lay down our thoughts when we’re not sure who else to tell or text. Through them, we can gradually build a redirective route, a way through which we can meander on our own mutterings and pop down our proposals, points of view and somewhat sentences. Later, when people ask us if we know about this, have an opinion on that, or are aware of these/that/those, we can retort, ‘yes, I posted about it a week ago. Here’s the link’. In a time-strapped society, of course, this is all jolly helpful. I suppose I’ve started this post with the above introduction as I have been looking for a pretext with which to write about the damned departure from this world of the infamous Mailer, ‘the pugilist who wrote the story of America’ as The Observer puts it. Mailer was, primarily, introduced to me in the way of his ‘The American Dream’ a book I was given in February, with the words ‘Will you be my Valentine?’ scribble scrawled on the inside. Whilst the inscription was traditionally touching, it did, however, jar somewhat with the sentence ‘she voided her bowels’ within its elegiac strains and grubby glam pages (one of the ugliest sentences ever written, but one that I’ve never forgotten, go figure). The rest of this year has seen me coupling this seminal, sexist text with the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s majestic ‘The Beautiful and the Damned’, Kyril Bonfiglioli’s bright, brilliant books and many more, perfect Penguin classics in between. Yum. Oh, and my Google Reader of course…  

Mailer was a madman, a missile and a metronome of malcontent … The reason I’ve brought him up, mind, was that it seemed such a shame to not say anything, since – well, he hardly knew how to keep a lid on things did he?  How I was going to bring him in the text of a blog about brands, however, I couldn’t think… Imagine my relief, then, when I remembered that he’d said the following: 

‘A really great novel doesn’t have something to say. It has the ability to stimulate the mind and spirit of the people who come in to contact with it’…  

And so here we finally are. Excuse me Mister Mailer, in using your words to explain some capitalist claptrap I’m sure you would have found far better, brilliantly bruising words for, but I did so want to express my sadness that you have slipped and slunk away. But, when something is put so well, in so wise words, it inevitably opens itself up to mime and mimicry. It’s almost a fond farewell from me…  

Brands must, indeed, have more than just a great advertising campaign, a pretty plan to puncture our lives with whether on banners, billboards or buses. It can’t just have clever copy and an industry award, it has to have soul and it has to have something… Brands must, as we are more than aware, perpetually attract those that are distracted, those that no longer have brand loyalty in their materialistic midst. In the Sunday Times ‘Customer Experience Awards 2007’ supplement this weekend, for brands to win they must deliver on ‘all fronts to win, satisfy and retain customers better than the competition’; seems simple so far, but come on, are we living in the 80s? (Whispa would wonder so).   

Indeed, to me, this is slightly slim in terms of what we ought really to be judging brands by, especially since – the Future Lab has previously told us – some high street banks have only retained customers and heightened customer satisfaction by filtering the smell of fresh coffee through their branches (satisfaction went up by 40% by the way… Ridiculous). It seems odd to start at the polite pinnacle, when the down and dirty is far more important further down the satisfaction scale. Some companies, for example, are brand beasts;

Halifax is still billing me for an account I closed 3 months ago. They’ll also be affecting my credit rating even though it’s their fault they can’t read their own letters not mine. Tesco’s tends to get my custom because it’s nearer, thus locality counts. And for anyone with a ‘loyalty card’ you do end up going to those stores because we’re more than aware that we pay too much too often, so any kind of cash back, reward type thing expels our indignation.  

Should we not, instead, be judging brands on how similar they are to ourselves? Are they prepared to answer the phone when we call in the middle of the night and can they rouse a rapid response to our queries? Do they promise, promise, promise never to call me on a Sunday, around 6pm, because hell their parents told them it was downright rude, and if I’m sick, can they come to me instead of me dragging my aching head to them (or at least hold off until I’m better)? Can they fit around my schedule and send me things they think I’d like when I’m too busy to talk and do they have conversations with me on a level where they understand me and what I truthfully, bloody well need? Do they scheme and seduce me to such an extent that, inevitably, they do indeed rouse my spirit and move my mind? 

There aren’t many brands we can truthfully tell to be doing this at the moment. Yea, we’ve got some great campaigns swinging their wise way around the web, but little else besides. Who makes your top brands and really… why? Even celebrities these days are leaving us little to lust for, with all my icons being dead and (now), definitely buried. There used to be brands I loved; Cosmetics to Go before it was stinky old Lush was one, because it was helpful and kind and delivered to my door. It had pretty pictures hand drawn in their mailed out catalogue and a stamp on the envelope. In fact, I loved them so much I stole a pot of lip balm from the Clothes Show Live back in the 90s… Now, don’t tell my mother, but hell if that’s not a sign that they meant something to me I don’t know what is. I coveted that pot for soft lips sake… Can’t think of a darn thing I would want to steal these days though (a Mercedes 280sl hardly being the easiest thing to thief)… 

This entire furore about the iPhone is interesting mind, because it shows that people want something, desperately, again. Every new console launch and even – after Halo 3 – the game launches are another one of the few factors bringing the crowds in. Community clout is key and brands must recognise this. Love spreads, as the Stone Roses told us, and any product that invites others in has a higher chance of champions.  

So champion this maverick man Mailer, perhaps through the tribute group already gone up on Facebook (another good way to express yourself when you don’t know how else to make yourself heard huh?)  It’s easy to find, it’s called ‘Fug, Norman Mailer is dead’. Genius…

It occurs to me that something mildly odd has occurred alongside our inexorable journey towards 2.0 and beyond.  Certain brand marketers have quietly dropped the ‘but what about my brand’? rant that so beset us PR folk for the best past of a decade at least. It seems that, in an age of User Generated Content, there has been a silent and implicit acceptance that ‘getting the brand in there’ just ain’t what it used to be.

Just imagine if marketers had taken the same laissez faire attitude when considering (and then usually rejecting) the carefully thought-through strategic celebrity campaigns of the nineties and early noughties. But there’s a rub in here - and maybe even the whiff of conspiracy. Who stands to benefit but the Brand Icons among us? It’s OK if you let consumers play/ co-create with the Nike swoosh, a Levi’s tag or a Shell pecten (usual moral standards need apply) … it just becomes a re-enforcement of the brand’s iconic status. Look how cool we are. How relevant. How we stand among a branded societal elite in this Conversation Economy. We belong. 

But what happens to the little ‘uns - the up-and-coming funky, challenger brands that also need oxygen on their way to fame and fortune? How will they reach their own Tipping Points? Maybe the Icons should initiate an adopt-a-baby-brand scheme - a new sense of brand philanthropy and purpose? We do need to think carefully here - otherwise we are in danger of creating a two-tier society of brands. Ironic, really, when everyone is talking about Democracy.

We’ve just had our PR 2.0 weekend in Berlin, which has left me exhausted, but with lots of new friends. Yum. Whilst I’m sure I’ll talk about it more at a later date (perhaps on one of those days when I don’t have 89 things to do within the next half hour and an 80 page document to read through by 3pm) I thought perhaps I’d try and explain (with a little less nerves) what I spoke about on the Saturday after our esteemed leader swung out with his fantastic comment ‘Google Never Forgets’… damn that’s good.

 So here are the 4 points I made on a simple, silly slide:

1. Accelerating our way to perfection

2. Know-it-alls & the demise of cult

3. We are all human

4. Man cannot leave by Net alone.

The first point (and others have made it too) is that our jobs have never been harder to do, whether market men, planning people, PR rascals or advertising ambassadors - we’ve all got a tough time on our hands (and don’t we know it). One of the main reasons for this, and this is something I ‘warn’ clients and companies about all the time, is that the consumer is honing their sense of authenticity more than ever before. We no longer live in a time where we can sell products that don’t work, services that don’t serve, or dreams and ideals that are just plain silly. Products that claim they are something when they are very obviously not is ridiculous; what we might have got away with in the past is no longer feasible. We cannot over-claim, lie, fib or cover up; we must understand what we’re selling, and sell only that. If it doesn’t do what it says on the tin, don’t pretend it does dammit.

Perfection is difficult, because it’s hard to attain. But in a culture that chats louder than every before and can find anything out it wants, whenever it wants… we’re cazooming our way towards it at a rate never seen before.

And yes, cazooming is a word. It’s mine.

Which leads me to know-it-alls & the demise of cult. Back in the day, when I was being interviewed at Nike, they asked me about ‘the underground scene’, and what did I know about it. I replied that everyone increasingly knew about it, because it’s increasingly difficult to be different, hidden or secret when we share so much information so often. I actually quoted Harmony Korinne, who - at 19 - wrote the seminal film ‘Kids’. Korinne quite rightly said ‘no true underground exists anymore’ and that was three years ago. Imagine what that means today when we are throwing our knowledge and insights ‘out there’ within 140 characters every 8 minutes, crafting posts, catching images, telling each other what we saw, when, how and where…

And the demise of cult has had an effect on us all; it’s meant that exciting things don’t stay exciting for long, that we are yearning for anticipation (having relinquished waiting for anything) and that the borders of novel are now sky high. It has never been more difficult to be different and that’s not fun at all.

 We, are after all, human. Thank the Lord for that. (Oh yea, I know where to put my capitals when it comes to speaking about the Big Man, don’t you worry). My last two points are linked together, because - with all this automation - we will, and are, seeking out that which calms, connects and compells us, more than ever before. We are over-automated and in desperate need of some good conversation. We need to light fires, smoke pipes and sit around and smile, blogging about it doesn’t count. For me, whilst we had some truly fabulous panels (thank you to Jason from Nike and Jeremy from Penguin in non-client particular), it was the conversations that surrounded the weekend that captured my imagination the most. The drunken discussions (oxymoron anyone?), the morning musings, the hallway over-heards, the elevator elaborations… these were the moments when I thought, cool - we’re having a good conversation here. Sure, blogging is brill, but so is interrupting someone, waving your arms in their faces and looking in to their eyes. Some of you out there don’t even know what colours my eyes are… Odd that isn’t it?

The other thing about us lot being human (or at least, mostly human), is that we cannot forget the person behind the post. We cannot forget that - as smashing, prolific and important as he is - Russell Davies has feelings. We cannot forget that the little hotel run by a nice old couple have bills to pay. We cannot forget that - if you wouldn’t say something to someone’s face, don’t type it down. There are manners to be remembered in this blogging game, and sometimes I think we all forget. With citizen power, comes citizen politeness. Sure it’s brilliant to be able to say ‘no, no - don’t go to that bar, it’s well rubbish and I got my drink spiked’ but there are people trying to make a living out there and unless they truly don’t deserve to be, be nice.

Finally, this human ’streak’ (well, we’ve become a touch removed haven’t we) means that we will wander away from the weird, wide web. We will continue our coffee mornings, we will flick and flounder through brilliant books, we will buy direct from the farmers, we will pick things up and put things down, meet up, raise glasses, talk.

 Oooh… and all off-line too.

I get paid to try and figure out ‘what happens next’. A while ago I mentioned a backlash to the internet… It’s still happening. Kids are sending parcels, people are writing letters, people are turning off their phones. It isn’t the end of everything and you needn’t start panicking yet, but hey - it leaves you something to talk about.

 Now, I don’t know how good this summation is, but I’ll tell you what. Sit down in front of me, buy me an espresso and I bet I can explain it a lot better. 

So here is a radicaly opportunity that, I think, Zac and friends might kick themselves for not including in their Quality of Life recommendations this week… It’s time for us to re-think International Direct Dial Codes, where the USA is currently 1, the UK 44 and Fance 33. Poor old Ireland is 353 and Finland 358 (or is it the other way round?) How about we do a Green Audit on every country, evert year - with the resultant rankings defining the Direct Dial Codes for the twelve months ahead? Suddenly, we will see the Nordics soaring and the Asians dipping. Inconvenient, I know, for those of yus who pre-programme all our mobiles, but a nice little thought provoker and a sure-fire way of knocking the US off the Number One spot.

There is one terribly scratchy problem I have with this whole, discursive blogging banter - and that’s the fact that often, by the time you wish to post something, someone, somewhere (often, Russell, Faris and Friends) has already said it, with longer words, better punctuation and a lot more of a power punch, which is why I’m probably a little late on referring to this post by Richard on his well maintained musings, but decided to do so all the same…

His post, ‘No more Mister Nice Guy’ readdresses the ‘are planners creative’ argument as well as introducing the idea that there are two types of planners in this world; the nice and the nasty. Whilst I think some people would scowl heavily at the screen should I suggest I was either, let alone a planner (having not nearly put in the hard work others have), it is, however, one way of explaining what I do, or at least, an element of it. Since future proofing also comes in to it, I was particularly amused by Richard’s ‘proof poodle’ ponder (delighted at the fact that my mother might finally have a word and a way to explain what exactly her poodle poppet does)… But I digress… Whilst I couldn’t wade my way through all of the comments, (which seemed to drift towards a talkative tome on That Gorilla Ad), I was left there wondering why we were busy talking about what a planner should and shouldn’t do. Perhaps it’s the fact that I’m routed in PR (in which instance, Jon Leach ought to jaunt on in) but also confused as to why or whether we were the third ‘man’ or not on the creative block.

Yes I agree with Richard that we should ensure that ‘work works’ and yes I agree that planners should be ‘wise and aware enough to define his or her role based on passions, strengths, interests and agency needs’ (to ‘A’s’ point) and yes – I also agree that sometimes we should stand resolutely alone to get the best out of a brief, but – and here’s the itallic, bold type thing – I don’t know why we’re talking about the efficacy of our – and our colleagues – hard work in terms of an IPA award. Our best barometer, always – is the consumer, how ever much professional bloggers, marketing men and industry savants talk about a piece of creative, positioning or planning. And this ‘3 men in the creative team’ term, surely that has to stop too, and not in a fiercely feminist retort type return either (although, gosh – aren’t they trendy at the moment). More, because we need to understand the consumer needs to be in this team too. Enough acronym already with the UGC given, let’s look to who buys the product to genuinely understand if the work we felt worked, well, worked. And all this talk about changing people’s behaviours, sometimes – surely – we should be asking the consumer to stick with a certain strain, reminding them why they buy the same product day in and day out. These people are our brand ambassadors, our myth makers and our legend lenders. Sure, we start new conversations, but we don’t walk away from ones we’ve been having for years, it’s a bit like ignoring your Granddad at Christmas…

That said, I’m sure I’m picking up dog ends, and doing a darn mess of a job at it too, spilling sentences all over the place and the like when – should I have the luxury to have the time to wander wonder through Richard and pal’s past posts, I’d find all of this explained far better, more brilliantly and a lot brighter than I’ve done so here, but hey – I was writing for my mother anyway; she loves a Ruby rant…

The Innocent Village Fete this weekend, in all its over-capacitated, Glastonbury for the organic gluttonous glory, was asking people to pay for Innocent drinks… Seriously. It was their highly visible, sponsored event – why didn’t I get one, for free, on entrance? And if that had been too much for them, why weren’t there little chaps with a rocket pack on their back doling out little cups of the well marketed juice? It just seemed so bloody rude to ask people to spend £1.60 or similar on a juice that in all honestly we were there doing the PR for, especially when we left for the day, smiling, sunburnt and with their little lanyards around our necks.

There were, admittedly, some things I loved about the day. The staff in ‘I work for Innocent, fancy a chat?’ tee shirts who were just hanging about getting drunk, (obviously didn’t have to queue in the 2 hour line for a Pimms then huh?) to the ferret racing were both smashing, sweet and terribly British, but the event was a mess. Those clever copy writers at Innocent had told me in quick quips about not taking bottles in, how my bag would be checked and other funny, tongue in cheek rules too before a colloquial little email that morning reminded me to register my ticket for the scanners before turning up… but there were no scanners, no bag checks and not nearly enough members of staff for anyone to have too much of a great time in all innocent, honesty (actually, this is a lie - I know loads of people had an amazing time, I think I’m getting bitter of brands and twisted).

Consumers don’t expect to pay for everything; sure – they know when they should have to and when they shouldn’t – but in my mind (and correct me if I’m wrong and it’s just that I stumbled across the only two outlets that were making you pay for the drinks) what meeting of mavericks thought that paying for smoothies on the day was a good idea? ‘So we charge them £5 to get in and make sure that we go over capacity in case some people don’t turn up, and put lots of reminders up everywhere of how lovely our little drink is and then – get this – we’ll put them in jaunty little fridges across the plateau of a place and… dah da! Get people to pay for them! Whattayasayhey?’

I’d say: Are you loosing your genius little mind Innocent?