Bus shelter politics

My local bus shelter is currently sporting the latest campaign from the Scottish Government. Perhaps weary of telling the good citizens of Edinburgh that they need to regularly wash their hands, eat five portions of fruit and vegetables every day, stop smoking, drink less, walk to school, have a flu jab, embrace our multi-cultural society and sleep in a bed (OK, I made this last one up), the folks who run the country have trained their sights on murkier stuff.Above a picture of a police car with flashing blue lights there’s a stern warning for the old ladies, commuters and kids standing at the bus stop – THIS IS THE CAR YOU’LL END UP KERB CRAWLING IN.

And there’s a strapline too just in case you didn’t get the message – Kerb crawling. It’s criminal.

While I concede that the Government needs to find some way of communicating new legislation to the wider community, and potential offenders in particular, is my bus shelter the place to do it?

Two minutes of Googling reveals the scale of the problem in Scotland. The new law, which criminalises kerb crawling, came into force towards the end of last year. In the first 12 weeks of enforcement (when presumably the police threw extra resources at the problem in order to show they mean business) 40 men were charged in all of Scotland.

That’s just over three a week. Now, far be it from me to trivialise the social damage done by street prostitution. That’s not the issue here. The issue is the wanton waste of public money (money that perhaps could have addressed the problem more effectively) on advertising campaigns that are doomed to failure from the start. Mass media isn’t appropriate for niche interests and there’s no need to tell kerb crawlers that their leisure pursuits are both socially unacceptable and illegal - they already know.

Stupid advertising. It’s criminal.

Britain’s most wanted

While skimming through the sports stories in my online Scotsman on Friday morning (which, incidentally, I now generally read instead of actually buying a paper) I couldn’t help notice a flashing square box telling me that I was ‘more likely to BELIEVE an ad because it’s running in local media’.Ignoring the obvious anomaly that I was actually viewing this ad in a global medium, I clicked through to themostwantedads.co.uk, a rather tacky little mini site appended to newspapersoc.org.uk (the The Newspaper Society – ‘The Voice of Britain’s local media’).

Once I got there, I discovered loads of fascinating stuff that they’ve found out thanks to a ‘six figure research project’. I say fascinating with my professional interest hat on here. I can’t even begin to imagine why they’re trying to entice ordinary punters from the sports pages to follow the link, but I digress. A quick rummage around reveals some interesting stuff lurking amongst a graphical holocaust of a website which even includes little banner ads that take you back to the page you’re already on.

Local media, they say, allows me to reach ‘over 80% of the UK population across all life stages, lifestyles and income levels’. While I can’t imagine any situation when I’d actually want to do this, I have to temper my excitement with the news that in order to achieve this I need to advertise in over 1,300 local newspapers, more than 1,100 local newspaper websites, 750+ magazines, 36 radio stations and 2 TV stations.

Uh, OK, this is sounding promising…

They’ve got some stats, too. More than half of the 5000 people who responded to their survey said that they would prefer it if there were no ads on TV and 37% longed for ad-free radio (let’s not mention that to the guys at their 2 TV and 36 radio stations). Yet only 14% would like an ad-free local press. Having said that, 17% of their readership claims to be ‘actively avoiding’ the ads but that’s considered good news compared to the 47% who are actively avoiding the ads on television.

Then it all goes seriously downhill. One of the downloadable ads that they’ve put on the site plays havoc with the stats. Citing the belief of ‘industry pundits’ that ‘the days when you turned to advertising for information are long gone’ they suggest that this widely held view amongst such ‘silly, whining attention-seekers’ is only 80% right. The 20% of ad-spend in local media is thoroughly justified, they claim, because ‘ads in the regional press are up to twice as relevant and twice as useful’. Reassuring stuff, don’t you think?

Waiting for Godin

Two things happened in the last week or so that got me thinking. First, one of my former colleagues quietly opened his new agency, Hush Communications, and then I received my copy of Seth Godin’s latest book Meatball Sundae, which I'd pre-ordered at Amazon and I was eagerly awaiting.I like Seth. I like Seth a lot. Seth is a man who always seems to make sense for me. Seth is so sensible and so straightforward that his views often seem radical.

For example, he is a great believer that marketing (in its broadest sense) is what any business is all about. His view (which I share) is simple. ‘Marketing doesn’t support the organisation. The organisation supports marketing.’

That’s how it should be, right? The loudest voice in product development, customer services, human resources, corporate affairs, IT, management, the boardroom or any other department in your business should be that of someone who has a profound sense of how every decision affects the relationship between the business and its customers. If the marketers come in at the end of the decision making process in the vain hope that a sprinkle of fairy dust will turn product development’s frog into a handsome prince then we’ll all be cursed with a life of eternal frustration and failure.

Which brings me back to my chum and his new agency. They’ve just opened the door. Right now, they can be anything they want to be. So what’s appropriate for the new world of marketing? How can they best make an impact on the businesses they’ll advise and should they be spending as much time with the chief executive and the folks in IT as they do with the marketing department? I’d like to think so, but I reckon it’s unlikely.

Lazy blogger

No matter how many excuses I have tried to sell myself over the last few months about my lack of posts on Brand Republic, the truth is I'm just a lazy blogger.

Sure, I've been busy. Trying to raise money for a start up venture in the current market is hideously time consuming. Trying to keep the wolf from the door at the same time doesn't half put paid to a chunk of the day. And that's without even considering the social whirl ...

But being a good blogger - well that takes time and effort and something worthwhile to say. Which, I guess, makes good blogs worth reading and, ultimately, makes them influential in the great scheme of things too. 

So, I'll resolve to try a bit harder this year ... starting tomorrow, maybe.