Marketing Dinosaur's blog

Have you ever tried to write a novel, or anything else for that matter? There’s an old adage that says everyone has at least one book in them. That may be so and many have tested the theory, but not many have proved its accuracy. Not through a lack of advice on the subject though. Type into your browser the words ‘Creative Writing’ and you will be astonished to see the number of hits…over fifty eight million! I thought for moment that I had misread the figure but I hadn’t.

 A year ago I wrote in my very first blog that. “As a general rule I believe dinosaurs should remain a part of their own time frame. There they have a relevance to each other and to their environment.” I was reminded of that thought yesterday when I visited one of the finest old estates in the South of England, owned by The National Trust. I could see very clearly the link between the social dinosaurs that ran the country when the house was being built and those who have inherited their legacy.

There was a programme on television last Friday evening that caught and held my attention. It was called “High Street Dreams”. It featured the hopes and ambitions of two quite different characters who hoped to take a product they had created to the marketplace and make their fame and fortune. They were discovered and advised by those who had successfully travelled that route themselves. The participants couldn’t have been more disparate. One, a male Doctor of Quantum Physics; the other, a female Blacksmith/Artist in metals.

As a marketing exercise it was brilliant. As a PR campaign outstanding. In every shop the Three Lions appeared on the packaging of virtually every kind of product and service you could imagine. Beer and Barbeques filled the isles of the supermarket at prices never to be repeated. Well they weren’t supposed to be repeated but I bet they will be now the furore has died down a bit. The flag of St George and England was on cars and flew from all sorts of posts and windows in every town and village. The Media was full of it, and still is.

I read during the week that the London Evening Standard has broken even financially. Both it’s circulation and readership has risen dramatically, all since it was acquired, at a cost of £1, by Russian billionaire Alexander Lebedev, who promptly turned the title into a free newspaper. Of course all the pundits said it wouldn’t work. But he seems to have proved them wrong. I have mentioned a number of times in previous blogs that I believe newspapers owned by corporations somehow lose their voice.

Does the media set trends or follow them? The question arose a while back when I read in one of the newspapers the results of a survey into what people thought of programmes on television. The enquiry was mainly concerned with audience attitudes to the growing use of foul language, excessive violence and explicit sex scenes on our screens. Is there too much of it? Are people offended by it? Does it change people’s perceptions of life or encourage the use of etc, etc, etc. It seemed to me, a chicken and egg question.

The game of football must surely be one of the marketing industry’s greatest successes. In a relatively short time it has moved from being a humble ‘working man’s’ game in England, to a world wide business played by men, and now women too, in every part of the world and at the same time become a multi-billion pound industry. How did it happen? It couldn’t have been planned, well not all of it anyway.

Every action has a reaction! So, has the action of changing the government had a reaction on your life yet? I ask because apart from the heavy duty PR programme that has us all breathlessly expecting something dramatic to happen, nothing so far really has. The pubs and eating places in our town were heaving as usual when I drove through last evening, the car parks of the out of town retail centres and supermarkets were still full, so were the trolleys in front and behind me when I was doing the weekly shop with my wife.

Did you watch it?  The Eurovision Song Contest that is. I had vowed not to, but in the end I did. I should have known better. A whole evening, and a Saturday evening at that, watching performers, most of whom would never get past the opening heats of a talent show, singing or perhaps performing would be a better way of describing it, songs that will never be heard of again. Were they even songs? Could you sing any of them in the way you can sing most pop songs? I doubt it. I confess I can’t remember a note of a single entry. And poor Graham Norton.

I don’t know if it’s still so, but the newspaper business used to be, for the most part, a closed shop. That meant all employees were required to belong to one of the printing trade unions whether they wanted to or not. In the Advertisement Department the admin staff, clerks, secretaries and others all belonged to NATSOPA (National Society of Operative Printers and Assistants) but the representatives who sold advertisement space in the titles were exempt from the rule.