Waitrose and Kitcatt Nohr have got the essentials wrong

I'm a big fan of Waitrose and a customer for nearly 30 years. I'm also a genuine admirer of Kitcatt Nohr, one of the best agencies in London. So there was a double sense of disappointment when I received the new Waitrose essentials mailing fanfared in Marketing Direct yesterday.

To start with, I fear that it was one of those jobs where the format came first and the creative was then shoehorned to fit. Why else, for a concept focusing on 'the week', would you have Monday and Tuesday on one side and the rest of the week on the other? Oh, and I never understand why brands feature illustrations of fresh food when good photography is so much more effective.

There are more important flaws. If you are going to suggest meals, then please give the recipes. That means the ingredients and how to cook it. Saying "you can find the recipe for this delicious meal in store" is just annoying and people won't remember to do it. Besides, if you give the full recipe you encourage the shopper to buy all the necessary items on their next trip.

Worse than that, having taken up 7 panels with suggested daily meals, only 2 panels remain to feature no less than 56 essentials products! They are therefore reproduced so small, you have little idea what many of them are. I genuinely struggled to identify the product in column 1 row 3 on the Monday side. Or column 2 row 4 etc etc. If you can't easily recognise the packaging and labelling of a range, the whole point of the pack is lost. A more conventional format could have allowed sufficient space.

Through years of working on Nectar, Sainsbury's, Persil, PG Tips and many other Lever brands I confess to being a coupon junkie. But I thought everyone knew that in retail you stagger coupon validity dates to encourage repetitive behaviour? What Waitrose has done is basically given me £4 off my next shop. That's not quite the behaviour they want to encourage.

They should be offering more than 4 coupons. Better to do 8 x 50p coupons than 4 x £1. It looks a better deal. You should then allocate half those 50p coupons to specific essentials products. That way, Waitrose oven chips (for instance) are no longer £1.25p but a massively compelling 75p! A few 'allocated coupons' will do more to promote the range and the value concept. Net coupon value often makes little difference. Shoppers either use coupons or they don't. Always worth testing though.

I hope this campaign works well because I admire both organisations involved. It just could have been a lot smarter. Doubtless it will win an award.

Should postal workers deliver BNP leaflets?

Certain postal workers are refusing to deliver BNP election leaflets. They claim they are offensive and they don't have to do so due to a 'conscience clause' the CWU agreed with Royal Mail that means its members don't have to deliver material "if they feel threatened or it is against their personal beliefs". The Royal Mail has a constitutional obligation to deliver these leaflets.

As with all these issues the question is how far do you go? Would we want postal workers to distribute child pornography? Of course not, but child pornography is illegal. Do we want fundamentalist postal workers (of any religion) opting out of delivering atheist material? Not really. Being an atheist is still legal in this country. If you accept a job as a postal worker, you are inevitably, on occasions, going to distribute material you don't agree with or is against your personal beliefs.

The BNP is still a legitimate organisation, although both its leaders and membership indulge in questionable activity. Sharing platforms with the Klu Klux Klan I don't consider to be acceptable politics. And they are driven by racism. They promote repatriation, an end to all immigration and support the rights of 'ethnic white Britons'. Whoever they may be. The Ghurkas' cause must have confused them big time.

Campaign magazine quite rightly got an earful for offering a platform to the BNP's deputy leader Simon Darby, a man with white supremacist sympathies. Campaign had a choice and made the wrong decision. Under current legislation, the Royal Mail does not have that choice. But I can see why a black or Asian postal worker would not want to distribute something that is designed to create hostility towards them.

The traditional, liberal part of me says that democracy dictates that the postal workers should deliver these leaflets. The political, instinctive animal in me tells me they should not. I'd follow my instinct every time.

After Chelsea v Barcelona, do brands want the passion of football?

Take it from me, there were highly-charged scenes at Stamford Bridge last night after we were denied a number of nailed-on penalties ultimately leading to the cruellest of defeats in the 3rd minute of extra time. I've rarely, if ever, felt as low after a game. You can't help feeling that this was the result that UEFA really, really wanted.

Do brands worry about allying themselves to such raw emotion? I totally understood the anger at the end of the game yesterday, including Drogba's frustration. I'm not sure all the marketing suits do. Many would prefer an anaesthetised version of the game football, with the best side winning and the losers, along with their fans, generously shaking hands with the opposition and cheerfully admitting they were beaten by a better side. The dispassionate, disinterested, half empty boxes at Wembley perhaps being the ultimate icon of this brand-friendly, corporate football. They don't want us questioning the parentage of the referee or the opposing fans in traditional anglo-saxon. Or worse.

Anyone who goes to football regularly knows it is not like that. There is misery, fear and loathing alongside joy. Palace v Brighton is still a throw back to the worst of the 70s. Liverpool fans still taunt United about Munich. Watch the Dutch continue the war against Germany. Real v Barca is the civil war that never ended whilst Rangers and Celtic do the same for religion. Villa v City is tasty. Even the smock-wearing East Anglians will join battle. I also accept there is a still a neanderthal element amongst Chelsea support, as there is with all clubs (possibly excepting the MK Dons franchise).

But I wouldn't swap it for anything. And certainly not for the supposed better manners and sportmanship of middle class English rugby. I just wonder how many of the big brands in football really understand the values they have bought into? And whether they are still prepared to accept raw passion rather than turning the game into a bland day out, more acceptable to corporate guests.

Twitter is really really great.....for porn!

In the brilliant musical Avenue Q, Kate and the Trekkie Monster sing about the internet."There's always some new site....for porn, I browse all day and night....for porn, I'm surfing at the speed of light...for porn." You get the idea.

Last week, my Twitter updates informed me I was being followed by Louise, Now, I know a Louise and when I checked her profile it didn't look like the Louise I know. Either that or she has grown her hair, dyed it very blonde and found herself to be struggling to make ends meets with more conventional work.

Louise was followed by Imogene (Thursday), Ava (Friday), Imelda and Jody (Sunday) before Jami (Monday). Unfortunately, tucked in the middle of them was Jessica (Saturday) who I assumed was another lady offering favours, but in fact works for a PR agency we're talking to. Sorry Jess.

Maybe I should feel flattered to have such attractive and generous women wishing to follow me everywhere. But it is getting a little tiresome and I fear they are not really interested in my bike ride to Wycombe.

A web guru I admire once told me that if you REALLY want to know how to use the web effectively, study what the porn operators do. They are the first to trial any technique and learn how to best manipulate it. They test, refine and roll out with a degree of professionalism that would shame most direct marketers. It's no surprise they are amongst the first to exploit Twitter commercially,

Unfortunately, they taint what they touch and devalue the medium. Already touted as the perfect tool for stalkers, the increasing number of bogus followers could destroy Twitter's, as yet undiscovered, potential as a marketing medium before it ever got going.