Twenty-eight
Wednesday, April 13th, 2011
I turn twenty-nine tomorrow. Happy birthday to me.
These anniversaries in life feel like suitable times to reflect on the past and speculate on the future.
I achieved a fair bit aged twenty-eight.
James and I have built a business with a six-figure turnover.
With the help of Jen, I’ve started running (and completed a few 10k circuits around Alton Water).
Bill, Clarkey and I gave up smoking on New Year’s Day. I haven’t had a puff since.
And most importantly, my wife and I are expecting our first child in less than ten weeks.
Twenty-eight has taught me that if you want to do things that are difficult but ultimately worthwhile, it makes sense not to do them alone.
Success and happiness are a bit on the rubbish side if you’ve nobody to share them with.
The plan for year twenty-nine, then: surround myself with more brilliant people who love making things happen.
And believe me, the plan is in place.
It’s not me, it’s you
Wednesday, April 6th, 2011
I hope you’re ready for relevance marketing.
This will be the next creepy form of CRM based on data pulled from The Social Graph.
(If you’re new to all this abhorrent babble, consider it a crude algorithm that tracks social media accounts associated with your email address, processes some data, and spews out some assumptions about shit you might like.
Let’s assume you tweet ‘BT is a company sodden with cocktards’, or something similarly elegant. Sensing an opportunity, Murdoch and his team of droids will be quick to serve you ads about Sky’s brilliant telephone and broadband services. Especially if you’ve downloaded the Sky+ app for your iPhone at some point in time.)
Relevance marketing is hardly new. Horrible, desperate insurance companies have been doing it for ages: bombarding you with price-driven false promises every time your car insurance is up for renewal.
But the fact that most of us are happy to upload every facet of our lives into a wall of servers owned by Twitter and Facebook means brands are hardly struggling to target potential customers. We’re gladly giving marketers all the data they need through inane status updates that we burp into the ether via whatever wi-fi enabled device is nearest.
And so some marketers think they’re winning because of the amount of data they have at their disposal.
Poppycock.
Relevance is no good without interest.
Single people don’t start dating because they both like bacon or hockey or The Smiths. Yes, it helps. But without the spark, the magic, the no-you-put-the-phone-down-first feeling, all your data means nothing.
Data? That’s the easy bit. The magic is a different quest entirely.
Monday I’m In Love
Friday, April 1st, 2011
I’m writing this from my bed. It’s just gone ten o’clock on a Friday night.
Maybe I should be out drinking copious amounts of lager before throwing a fiery curry down my neck.
But I’m not.
I’m under the covers, tapping away on my iPhone; blogging for nobody in particular.
And it’s not because I’ve fallen out of love with booze and a lamb jalfrezi. It’s simply that Fridays lose their appeal when you really love what you do.
I used to hate my job. (Insurance, if you didn’t know.) I was bored stiff from Monday to Friday, staring at Excel spreadsheets, sending emails, and adhering to mind-numbing protocols.
So Friday nights were a release. The frustration of being in a job I hated would fuck off for a couple of days, and I could get hammered drunk.
Saturdays were spent dealing with hangovers. Because the quicker the hangover subsided, the sooner you could go out again.
Sundays were a terrible comedown. Full of dread and resentment.
And then I changed careers.
I no longer work in insurance. I no longer hate the job I do. TFI Friday? Not so much.
Perhaps I’m just getting old, but living for the weekend seems like a wasted opportunity.
Anyway. Night night.
Smokers don’t smoke boxes
Wednesday, March 9th, 2011
The news is awash with stories about how the Government wants to further curb tobacco companies’ powers.
It is expected that proposals will force tobacco companies to sell cigarettes in plain, unbranded packaging.
I think they’re targeting the wrong packaging.
Smokers are incredibly brand loyal creatures; their decisions are not made at the counter based on the packaging.
How many times have you stood behind somebody buying cigarettes, and watched their head bounce around looking for their favourite brand? More than once, I’ll bet.
Smokers seek out their Bensons or their Marlboro Lights no matter what. The unbranded packaging will only make it more difficult for shop assistants.
In my opinion, the Government is focusing on the wrong packaging. Target the stuff wrapped around the tobacco – the paper and the filter.
The white paper and the brown filter are iconic; everybody knows what a cigarette looks like. You can slap a health warning and a shocking picture of a cancer-ridden throat on the box, but the cigarettes still look the same. And that consistency provides a certain comfort to smokers.
Make the paper green or purple. Change the paper stock, and thus the feel of the cigarette between the fingers and on the lips. Make cigarettes uncigarettey.
If you really want to change people’s behaviours, habits and addictions, you seriously have to change the interface.
If smokers can open a box and pull out a cigarette that looks like a cigarette, nothing changes. What’s on the box doesn’t matter one iota. Smokers don’t smoke boxes.
Turn off your analytics.
Tuesday, March 1st, 2011
Google Analytics is a great piece of software. Copy and paste a script, stick it in the footer of your website, and measure all the traffic your website receives.
Turn it off. Delete the script.
You won’t, of course. Because you need to measure all those precious clicks. You need to trawl through those bizarre keywords that brought you traffic. You absolutely must lower that bounce rate: Forty-five percent? Tut tut.
Go on. I dare you. Turn it off. Delete the script.
Then you won’t be measuring how pathetically acceptable your website is – you’ll be thinking about how to make it truly remarkable.
No more add-another-article-for-SEO-purposes crap. Write stuff that is genuinely interesting, insightful, thought-provoking, or just plain useful.
Write to thrill your readers – and then let them spread the word for you. They will – but only if it’s worth sharing.
Write with vim and vigour. Use interesting words like vim and vigour. Or cantankerous. I like that word.
Care about your copy – not just the spelling and grammar, but the rhythm, the pace, the goddamn soul of it all. Break the fucking rules if you need to.
(Cursing isn’t always clever, but a swear when you’re not expecting one will reignite your reader’s attention.)
Is it taking you ages to write? Are you bored of it? If you are, we haven’t a hope. In fact, don’t bother. We’re already bored.
You’re probably using big, silly, dull words in a desperate attempt to sound professional and businesslike. In reality, you’re slowly suffocating your business because nobody – not your staff, not your customers, not even your mum – wants to read your inane drivel. You’re lucky search engine spiders don’t have anything better to do.
So switch off your analytics. Delete the script. Stop writing for robots and PDFs full of line graphs and pie charts.
Write for us. We’ll love you for it.
Most restaurants are still missing the point
Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011
I do love a succulent fillet steak. Medium rare, with french fries and a black pepper sauce. Add a nice bottle of red, and I’m in food heaven.
My wife doesn’t share my meaty enthusiasm.
At the age of eight, she decided to become a vegetarian because her teacher was. Her mother thought it would be just a phase. Twenty years later, she still hasn’t grown out of it. I don’t suppose she ever will.
Which is fine by me – I’ve never dated people for their ability to demolish a bacon sarnie. But our differences – or, rather, choices – often pose a problem when we’re eating out. Especially as she’s also allergic to nuts.
Now, it could be that we’re just an awkward couple. But I find it somewhat difficult to believe that vegetarianism is still a novel dietary choice in the 21st Century. And, to my knowledge, nut allergies are a tad more common than golden fleeces.
So why are restaurants still so ignorant towards people like my wife? In such a competitive business environment, you’d think that businesses would avoid alienating customers at all costs. But the next time you eat out, count the number of vegetarian, nut-free options. You’ll probably only need one finger. If that.
Of course, many restaurateurs will tell you that they’re happy to cater especially for vegetarians and people with food intolerances. Which is very nice of them, but they’re still missing the point.
Let’s assume you’re out shopping for new clothes. You find a sharp suit or a striking dress and decide to try it on. Except you can’t find your size.
You ask an assistant, who explains you’re a weird size that they don’t stock. But they might be able to take one off the rack and adjust it for you. Because you’re, well, y’know … special.
Most people don’t like drawing attention to themselves. (I guess I’m not most people.) You might call it special treatment. They just find it embarrassing.
Maybe it’s because chefs prefer to cook with meat and fish. And with so many textures and flavours, perhaps it’s no surprise that restaurant menus are light on the vegetarian stuff. (I’m not having the “vegetarian options don’t sell well” excuse – you make the effort to rustle up something more than a mushroom risotto once in a while, and see if that’s really the case.)
Anyway, frustrations aired. An inclusive menu would seem to me to be a profitable menu. But as I mentioned, maybe we’re just the awkward ones.
WordPress 3.1
Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011
Hello from WordPress 3.1.
New things to note, the internal linking system: beautifully simple, yet fast and powerful. Perfect for making sure you’re cross linking posts for SEO purposes … or just randomly linking to old ones.
Also new is the ability to query multiple custom taxonomies. This is something we were trying to accomplish earlier today without WordPress 3.1 and it was bloody impossible – even with some serious SQL hacks. So let’s hope this update has sorted that issue, for our client’s sake.
For a brochure / listings / blog website, there is still no better CMS.
WordPress remains a gleaming jewel in the open source crown.
Retail, we want you to lead us
Sunday, February 20th, 2011
I think retail is going to have a fascinating few years. Perhaps I’ll open a toy shop or something.
We’re led to believe that the iPhone 5 will have an NFC chips (which stands for Near Field Communications, I think) as standard. And with NFC trials kicking off, everybody’s getting giddy about the possibilities.
Meaning sooner rather than later, we’ll be buying bog roll through our iTunes account by waving a handheld device near a sensor.
This also means our phones will become key tools in our shopping experiences. Apps will lead us around the store, alerting us to deals or things our friends like (through Facebook integration). We’ll scan our items, get instant reviews and recipe ideas – all before we’ve reached the till. (Will we ever go to a till? Will tills become a thing of the past?) And, of course, all this will be paid for in some way by the brands on the shelves vying for your attention.
Barcode-based apps already exist (and we had Barcode Battlers in the 90s), so this is hardly flying saucer stuff.
What I think it really interesting is that this technology provides opportunities for retailers to influence shoppers through unique, personal experiences by removing the limitations of selling goods in a physical space.
That sounds a bit grand.
On a basic level, it means that no longer will we need to search high and low for the products we crave; our phones will lead us. And the deals we’ll be alerted to will be of interested to us, because we’ve mentioned the brand in the social sphere.
The question is whether retailers will hand over their influence so easily? After all, shops are designed to entice us into spending.
Having said that, you can bet your bottom dollar that the same amount of thought will go into their apps, so perhaps apps will add to their control of where we choose to spend our money.
This is particularly cool, because it’ll place increased value on the psychology, design and UI of apps. Not just the code behind it.
Anyway. It’s all interesting digital stuff for physical, box shifting companies.
And, perhaps most importantly, you’ll no longer need to fish around in your wallet for a bloody loyalty card every time you go to the check out.
Trade Forex Like A Pro
Monday, February 14th, 2011
If, like me, you 1. enjoy watching football, and 2. have the attention span of a hungry goldfish, you may have seen Trade Forex Like A Pro on a television set near you recently.
That’s because it’s the strapline of Fulham FC’s sponsor, FxPro.
I don’t really know what Forex is, but regardless, this is a quite brilliant strapline. And for three reasons:
1. Because everybody who knows what Forex is gets to feel smug. (Customers even more so: “I use that! I’m on Match Of The Fucking Day!”)
2. Because people who don’t know what Forex is ponder what it might be and may even look it up. The really weird ones may even blog about it.
3. Because you can guarantee that somebody in that company wanted to avoid using the word Forex because they were scared people wouldn’t know what it meant. And then somebody with more sense told them to piss off.
If you’re trying to sell to everyone, you’re wasting your time. My nan doesn’t give a shit about your trainers, my sister doesn’t give two hoots about your blog, I’d rather sniff my cat’s farts than go skiing.
Alienating the mainstream can make your true customers feel special. That’s a good thing. And the next time somebody tries to convince you otherwise, tell them to go and Trade Forex Like A Pro. (Which is my new favourite euphemism.)
An Idea Manifesto
Monday, February 14th, 2011
Adrian says ideas are free. And because they’re free, there’s no value in an idea until you do something with it.
So here’s an extension to that: it’s not an idea unless you commit it to paper or pixels.
Scribble it on a napkin, visualise it with Photoshop or plasticine, model it with Google SketchUp, tap some numbers into a spreadsheet.
We’re lucky enough to live in a world where creating stuff – especially digital things – can be dirty, quick and easy.
And once you get it out of your head, you can start to shape your idea.
Give it a name, a colour, a logo, a strapline.
Give it a folder on your computer; a space in your real world, not just your head.
Share it with others (because if you can’t explain it to friends, your idea could probably do with more definition).
Start it. Improve it. Reject it. Return to it.
I doubt this stuff is revolutionary, but it was buzzing around in my head.
So I’m taking my own medicine.