Marketing Muse

Sorry, Mr Osborne, We're NOT all in this together

Recently the British political classes have been trying to persuade us that they are fit to lead us next year and beyond. Most recently, George Osborne repeated numerous times during his speech that we are all in this together. Well,sorry, Mr Osborne.

I'm a pretty classic, middle class, typical swing voter. Well, I think so, anyway. I don't belong to a political party. I have voted differently in different elections. We're NOT all in this together.

Why isn't this phrase going to resonate with me or with many in my position?

I don't have lots of borrowing, so don't feel part of a phenomenon where it is OK to remortage and spend every time your house price has gone up, and where it is OK to max out multiple credit cards and just pay the minimum off each month.

I'm not one of the people who benefited from city bonuses during the boom. I just suffered from inflated house prices because my chosen area has lots of big shots with more money than sense driving up the prices.

My pension is mostly the money purchase type not the final salary type, so it got hammered when the market collapsed. So much so, it is probably a good thing I don't have to retire at 65 and both parties are considering raising the age when my mediocre government pension starts to pay off. I doubt that I will ever be able to retire and still have a decent standard of living.

My savings are also not growing because all the banks are busy recapitalising at my expense, widening their margins by not paying savers a decent return. There isn't much incentive to keep your money in the bank. Nor is there much option where else to put it because I don't have time to earn a living and watch the market for short term volatility gains. Nor does property seem particularly attractive. Nor do bonds.

In short, a plague on all your houses. Look at Canada for a model of how to run the country's finances and how to regulate their banking system. A good start would be to make sure that the future profits that the banks and the bankers make are taxed as windfalls when they are excessive. Then come back and tell us we're all in this together.

My Blackberry is an essential pack item for holidays

I returned to work on Tuesday. In the past that would have meant a lot of stress as I got back up to speed with issues and actions over the past two weeks. But not this time. It was stress free.

As a relatively recent convert to the blackberry revolution, it was the first long vacation where I had my phone with me. My team knew that if they needed help they should put urgent in front of the email or the sms. There were none.

I checked in every couple of days and scanned down the list of new emails. Took about 15 min but meant I had a good idea what was going on, and what issues would need my attention. Reduced stress, made me more relaxed. I also listened to voicemail in that time. Never felt the need to call anyone, and forcing people to make their own decisions was extremely successful.

So, contrary to received wisdom, an email device is now an important part of my vacation plans. I know it works, I know how to manage it for me, and I feel better coming back to work on day one. Thaks RIM and Orange. You made it a great holiday and a great return to work.

Priority: Low for customers at Marinestore Chandlers

Today I got an email with some special offers from a marine store. As a keen sailor in the middle of sailing season, I was pleased to see a special offer on deck shoes. Nice copy, nice picture, good price. So I clicked on the link.

Mistake 1 - the price on the site was different than the price in the email blast. What's even worse, the "normal" or "retail prices were different. Then the discounted price was a LOT different. Higher of course. So what trust do I have in their pricing policies?

Mistake 2 - I forwarded the email to the address that they suggested I contact. What I got was the biggest slap in the face. At first glance the response is just neutral. 

Peter,

Thank you for contacting us. This is an automated response sent to you in order to confirm the receipt of your message. We will attend to your ticket as soon as possible. We've listed the details of the ticket you created below for your records. When replying, please keep the ticket's ID in the subject to ensure that your replies are tracked correctly.

   Ticket ID: JEO-265217
   Subject: Wrong pricing. Mens shoe shows as £52.99 not the advertised price.
   Department: General Enquiries
   Priority: Low
   Status: Open

You can check the status of or reply to this ticket online at: http://marinestore.co.uk/support/
 Please use the following credentials when accessing your account with us: 

   Email: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
   Password: xxxxxxxxx
Kind Regards,

Marinestore Chandlers

The text of the email could be better, but they did give me a way to check the status of my complaint online.

However, I do object to their system automatically prioritising my priority as LOW. I think my query was pretty important. It prevented me from making a purchase. I was trying to do them a favour by letting them know they had a problem. 

Would it have hurt to set the default state to HIGH? After all, they could always intervene and change the default down later once they had evaluated the severity.

So, what do you think the likelihood is that I am going to patronise Marinestore Chandlers in future? In a word: LOW.

Apple built brand values by building people

This weekend I met up with two old friends who I hadn't seen for years. In fact, it had been so long there were two teenage children who hadn't even been born the last time we met up. Ooops. 

What we all agreed was that very quickly we picked up where we had left off many years ago and carried on the conversation, almost as though it was a week ago. Lots of things had changed but the personalities hadn't, nor the buzz and excitement of exploring new things.

As you can imagine there was lots of talk about mutual friends, where they were now, who we had kept in touch with. Between us, we were still in touch between us with a broad number of people who had worked at Apple in the UK or Europe while we were there. The people were literally spread all over the globe and ranged from previous bosses and senior managers to people who had been just starting their careers at the time. Many have taken their skills, learning and values to a range of different companies, but there did seem to be a thread that for many, their time at Apple was extremely special, and they tended to stay in touch with a broad range of colleagues.

When we worked there, Apple was in constant turmoil and struggling to find a sustainable market for its products. Lots of change, both people and strategies, tons of uncertainty and reorganisation, just as many companies are experiencing today in the aftermath of the credit crisis. But although we understood the challenges, we approached them with tons of positive energy and enthusiasm and felt able to generate solutions, get them implemented and make a difference.

What our old friends and I agreed was that Apple, in addition to building great products, also built great people and that their values and beliefs were a great foundation for the rest of our working lives. The question is, what are you doing to make sure that your company has the strength of values, shared passion, and skills and are passing it on to everyone in your business? Are your people making a difference to help your organisation cope with the turmoil in the market?

Blurb 2.0 is a good step forward

I first found Blurb about a year ago. They publish books. Your books. I have used it to do a photo souvenir album of my trip to Australia. Recently I decided to do another photo book and discovered that some of the frustrations I had with Blurb have gone away. They now allow you to create your own layouts, mixing text, pictures, etc in your own format. 

This sounds like a simple change, and it probably was a nightmare for them to implement, but it makes a huge difference to the experience. Even if all I want to do is tweak the amount of copy space on one of their layouts or move it to a different part of a page, I can now do it quickly and easily.

I was a huge fan of their ability to make creating the book very easy. Now they just made the whole experience a lot better. They deserve more loyal customers who want to make more books than I will ever create, so go on, give them a try. If you have a recipe book, photo book, souvenir book, or a graphic novel just bursting to get out there, give them a try. Not vanity publishing in the normal way, because you pay for what you order, and they make it easy to publicize your book to other people as well. Blurb - slightly strange name, but they do what they say on the tin. Real books, made by you, order just one copy if you want.

Beken of Cowes - do you know this brand?

Beken are an extremely famous name to a relatively small group of people. If you own a boat and have raced your yacht in the Solent, you may well have a picture in their archive.

A few weekends ago we were sailing off the Isle of Wight and their boat was nearby. The  photographer took a number of photos.

To cut a long story short, we ended up buying an electronic image for an astounding sum of money. But do you know how difficult it is to take a picture of your own boat with you sailing it? How much is that worth? Well for us, quite a lot and Beken have priced their keepsake beautifully. A great example of how to serve a niche market very well. They have been based on the Isle of Wight for years and have a fabulous collection of boat photos in action. Check them out.

Visitors are second class at Port Solent Marina

As a keen sailor I have had occasion to go to Port Solent Marina twice this season. It is a huge marina with a lock that you go through, a number of restaurants, a cinema and housing all surrounding the floating "boat park".

There are some good things that Port Solent do. They charge for fuel at cost, having correctly decided it is a service that they make relatively little money out of. So better to have some goodwill from customers. As a yachtsman I use relatively little fuel, but I am sure the power boat customers appreciate the gesture and understand that Port Solent's pricing power means they won't get the same prices as the supermarkets.

I also was very glad on the second visit to be told that we were going to be moored away from the restaurants. On a nice sunny Saturday evening the noise makes it difficult to concentrate or sleep if you aren't actively in one of the bars or restaurants.

Sadly we then got to experience what it is like to be second class citizens. When we went to use the toilets, berthholders are directed to one way where they get...

"very high quality unisex wet-room style 'bathrooms' being constructed with individual facilities for berth-holders."

Being visitors we were directed to...

 "separate facilities for visitors and those crews involved in large events."

The quotes come from the proud marketing folk at Premier Marinas who trumpet the new facilities for berth holders.

These turned out to be portacabins parked in the parking lot. They were tired facilities with poor lighting, inadequate space in the unisex showers to get changed, and an air of neglect. I know where I am going to spend my money in future, and it isn't likely to be at Port Solent until they have upgraded the facilities for visiting yachtsman. There are too many other options in Portsmouth. Sadly, this marina's loos are anything but premier. And that's not good for their brand or reputation.

More important than MPs' expenses are their outside interests

We have heard lots of stuff about MPs' expenses, but much more interesting and much more important are their outside interests. Below is a list of what John Gummer lists as his outside interests. Without picking unduly on Mr Gummer, how will his vote be affected by legislation on financial services advisors?

When we do get to question future MPs for the next Parliament, the most important question is - who pays you and for what?

GUMMER

, Rt. Hon. John Selwyn (Suffolk Coastal)

1. Remunerated directorships

Chairman, Sancroft International Ltd.; consultants providing advice and monitoring in

corporate responsibility and environmental, social, ethical and planning issues.

Chairman, Veolia (formerly Vivendi UK); water companies.

Chairman (non-executive), Valpak Ltd.; not-for-profit organisation for compliance with

packaging waste directive.

Chairman of the Association of Independent Financial Advisers; a representative trade

organisation.

Sovereign Reversions Limited (non-executive); home reversions.

Catholic Herald (non-executive); newspaper.

Sistema-Hals (non-executive director, corporate governance); Moscow-based real estate

development, management and investment company.

48

2. Remunerated employment, office, profession, etc.

Articles in: Catholic Herald, Country Life, Estates Gazette, Planning, Evening Standard. I

also chair conferences. The subjects in both cases are usually property, sustainable

development and religious issues. The commitments arise largely from my previous

profession of journalism and all payments go to Sancroft which provides research staff,

information services, and all other facilities. Currently Sancroft would expect about £100,000

in payments, in respect of which I would receive some £30,000 in fees and dividends.

5. Gifts, benefits and hospitality (UK)

My wife and I received tickets for the Conservative Party’s ‘Black and White Party’ on 4

February 2009, paid for by Mr Christopher Moran, of London.

(Registered 20 March 2009)

8. Land and Property

A residential and commercial property in London, owned by family.

9. Registrable shareholdings

(a) Sancroft International Ltd.

Why British Airways will never be my favourite airline

To British Airways from a consistently disgruntled customer over many years.

1. Your customer service email responses do not have an email address you can reply to. If I took the time and trouble to write to you, I want to engage in a dialogue. I know it costs you money. But if you answered my questions right first time then we wouldn't need to go back and forth. Putting barriers in my way only makes me more upset. And more upset won't make me feel better about you.

2. You designed a new state of the art terminal at Heathrow where a significant proportion of the flights do not have a jetway attached. So now we have to go back to the 60s and ride around in airport buses. This not only adds to the journey and slows me down, but makes me feel even more like cattle than the rest of the journey. And lets not talk about security lines, check in hassles, baggage reclaim hassles, etc that are still going on every day. Oh, and you screwed up the public transit to all the terminals by the way in which the Heathrow Express/Connect services were designed. Instead of a nice circle between three terminals we now have an abortion of a changeover at T1,2,3. Great.

3. I feel like a third class citizen when I use free miles to travel, with worse seating allocations. Pay attention here - I used your service enough to get enough miles to travel somewhere. Apart from the fact it isn't free because I have to pay significant charges to USE the air miles, please pay attention to the fact that I should be your MOST favoured customer, not some piece of trash that fills up your empty seats.

4. In all the years I have flown you I have been upgraded once. Its not your policy to upgrade people unless it is for your operational convenience. Well guess what? I fly Star Alliance instead. They understand that upgrades are appreciated by their customers and rewarded with loyalty. I like being able to buy exit row seating for a small extra charge in economy. Made my flight to Australia last year much more comfortable.

5. Your cabin baggage space is a joke. Why do you want to have the smallest bins in the air? Expecially when they are using real estate that you cannot cram any more seats into? And why do you insist on putting stuff like oxygen and crew apparatus near the emergency exits when that is the space that is most needed by passengers for their stuff so as to keep the emergency exits clear?

About the only think I really like about BA is the website. Clean, easy to navigate, fast. Good online checkin.  Perhaps your web team should go sort out the baggage problem at T5? Redesign your customer services? Speed up your security checkin?

Good news for consumers from the latest record industry figures

There is a big shift to digital in both North America and Asia in these figures that is probably causing some concern amongst recording industry execs. I'm really glad and really hoping that in future more of the money spent on music will get into the hands of artists and record companies who develop talent.

Today retailers take a third of the retail value of physical music for doing very little. They carry some inventory but send back any they don't sell. Their service is inferior to the online offerings because you can't sample, find out more or get any expert advice. They are crummy at cross selling. So we should all be celebrating that the new business model includes online retailers and the iTunes store. We should also be pressuring the new channels to reduce their prices. I won't buy online digital content for the same price as a physical equivalent. If the record companies want me to buy more, price the content to the new model and the new costs of doing business. Oh, and getting rid of cds will have some benefits for the planet as well.