Marketing Begins At Home

What other kind of wounding is there?

All over the news yesterday was a conviction for unlawful wounding. The phrase got me thinking and wondering if there was any other kind?

Wikipedia lumps unlawful wounding and grievous bodily harm together and references back to an Act put on the statute books in 1851. There is also detail on the different kinds of charges on the Crown Prosecution Service web site.

Finally I came to the realisation that doctors and dentists "wound" you in the course of treatment, if "wounding means the breaking of the continuity of the whole of the outer skin, or the inner skin within the cheek or lip". Mystery solved.

One simplistic technique?

I was visiting a marketing website today and was struck by the number of articles that had numbers attached. 7 Secrets, 5 lessons, etc. While I am sure that quantifying and making lists of things does help to get attention, it seems to me this particular trick is being overused.

Forcing your messages into boxes may be necessary in this cluttered world but once you get beyond a small number, do you really expect people to remember all of them? And if they can't remember all of them, perhaps you need to simplify your message?

The reluctant business traveller and enthusiastic team builder

I've travelled a lot over the years. Mostly for business, and often in tight bursts with longer gaps in between. I think I just figured out why. Right now I am spending more time working from home. Apart from driving my wife crazy, it has substantially changed my working patterns. I rely on the modern electronic methods of communication and much less on face to face. When I do go to the office, I spend way more time walking around and talking to people, and virtually no time at my desk.

I travel whenever there is a new team or new group that I need to meet or a new context or relationship with people I know less well. I didn't get this until very recently. That's because i can work quite effectively with people that I have a good relationship by email, im, phone and conference call. But for me to be truly effective, those relationships have to have been built with a personal meeting and working together.

Otherwise there is just way too much misunderstanding possible. Especially if there are different cultures involved. Right now I am having a lot of trouble with someone in Korea. I know them, we have worked together, but we don't know each other in the current context and we haven't been physically together to work on current problems. For it to work going forward, we will have to get together. Someone is going to have to travel, and we need to work together on solving both the business problem and the relationship problem. Or it won't work. I should be smart enough to avoid the cost and the hassle of getting on an airplane, but for me there is no substitute for face to face.

When is an express not an express?

I recently had to take a flight from Terminal 4 at Heathrow and took the premium priced Heathrow Express. Well, express it is not. They claim a 15 minute journey time from Central London. Their own web site admits that you now need to change trains at T123 and that "the frequency of the shuttle services between Terminal 4 and Terminals 1, 2, 3 is every 10-20 minutes".

My 15 minute journey actually took 45 minutes. The reason given is that because BA haven't moved their flights from T4 over to T5 there are more people wanting to go to T4. I am sure that the airlines scheduled to move to T4 will bve thrilled to know that their customers will have a slower journey. BAA want to move more flights to T4 and T5 so that they can refurbish the oldest terminals at Heathrow.

Heathrow Express have decided to go to T123, then to T5. Previously they went to T4 directly, so there is no reason that they couldn't today. But they decided not to. Instead they ask you to change to their competitor, Heathrow Connect.

All of this could have been avoided if the route had been planned properly and a nice circular route created between the terminals. But for whatever reason, this was not done.

The right answer is to recommend that anyone going to T4 should use Heathrow Connect from the start. You don't have to change, and the journey time is slower, but less hassle for people carrying baggage. Why isn't that advice given impartially to travellers? Also why haven't they increased frequency of service to reflect the increased need?

How are you perceived?

Part of being a politician is being in the public eye. British politicians have been fighting to keep their expenses claims private recently. What most people will remember is that they went to court to keep information private. Part of that information was the address of their second home. Unfortunately that is not what people will remember.

Instead they will remember that MPs were forced kicking and screaming to reveal information about how they spend their allowances. Allowances are important to them and they do incur real expenses in going back and forth to their constituencies.

Now, however, the perception is that a number of MPs are desparately trying to cover up the fact that they were slack with their claims and perhaps claimed marginal or inappropriate expenses. Why would they risk their careers over such relatively small amounts of money? What does it say about the integrity of these people that they are spending our tax money in court to protect their secrets?

Are you tired of being consulted?

I heard Gordon Brown yesterday talking about a new consultation on ways to fund elderly care. This appears to involve a compulsory new age insurance scheme (careful, don't call it a tax) to pay for the looming gap in caring for people who are living longer.

Allegedly there are no fixed ideas about how the scheme will work. So there will be forums for listening. Bottom line here, we have to fund our dotage somehow. The choices are either for people to save privately, the government to divert existing revenues, or raise new ones. The problem for the UK government is that people are not saving enough privately. That's because their taxes and cost of living are high enough that early in their careers people are in debt and don't get into the habit of saving.

Well, I'm tired of being consulted where there really is little chance that my opinions will be heard or will change anything. If you really want new ideas, fine. If all you want to do is sell the thing you have decided upon, don't call it a consultation.

Also recently there is a proposal to change the title of some Financial Services Advisors to sales people if all they do is sell one company's products. Good idea. Gordon, why not call your consultations something more honest? Sales meetings?

Shocking Statistics

Shocking, but probably not in the way that you think. If you read the recent UK housing news, you might remember that repossession orders have climbed 17% in the first quarter over the same period last yeat. Shocking....but the really shocking thing is how FEW people are affected, not how many.

Digging through the story, the following figures emerge. Mortgage claims are the triggering of the process that may ultimately lead to reposession, although often there are alternative arrangements made. And it is clear that mortgage claims are rising.

	Q1 2008	% of mortgages	Q1 2007	% of mortgages
Mortgage claims	38,688	0.33%	33,344	0.28%
Mortgage reposessions	27,530	0.23%	23,438	0.20%
Number of mortgages	11,800,000		11,800,000

But would you be shocked to learn that only 0.23% of mortgage owners got reposessed? One quarter of one percent of mortgage holders had to hand in their keys. Admitted that this is quite a lot families affected - approximately 27, 530, but given that nearly 12 MILLION mortgage holders are managing to pay their bills and keep their properties, it isn't a lot.

It also might not surprise you to know that where you live in the UK has a pretty big impact on the repossessions. The Midlands, North West and Wales are reposession hotspots, so what is it about those areas. It isn't unemployment, at least officially. They are around the national average. GDP per head in Midlands and North West are lower than average but not as low as the North East which has very little growth in repossessions.

Regional breakdown of possession orders and claims

Region	Possession claims: Annual change since 2007 Q1	Possession orders: Annual change since 2007 Q1
London	-1%	-6%
Midlands	22%	22%
North East	20%	1%
North West	24%	23%
South East	13%	9%
South West	17%	11%
Wales	21%	26%
Source: Ministry of Justice. Figures are not seasonally adjusted

The service called you

We have been thinking about completely renovating our flat in London. Most recently we asked a young architect and her partner if they would be willing to work with us. Because there is a connection we were pretty informal about the engagement. What they presented were three variations on a theme, all of which had some very interesting ideas.

If you feel a "but" coming, well here it is. We had agreed a price for the work, but the invoice ended up one third more than we expected. It turns out they charged us for the presentation of the work. They also charged us VAT. The invoice also included a 1.5% per day interest charge for late payment. Taking a look at the invoice, it didn't include the right details for a VAT invoice in the UK. We were offended by the usurious terms for late payment; the fact that they didn't include the right VAT registration details was perhaps inexperience, but seemed pretty basic. The financial issue was that they didn't understand that paying VAT that we could not reclaim made a huge difference to the bill. 

Sadly, the experience with the invoice left us with uncertainty about whether this very nice couple could in fact deliver work that was the right quality and could keep to a budget. The invoice triggered all kinds of doubts that had nothing to do with their professional qualifications, their design skills, their empathy with what we were trying to do. It is so easy to devalue your brand, and very hard to recover the position.

STOP PRESS - good news. I sent an email, they responded very positively, we cleared up a misunderstanidng, and got a solution that both of us could live with. So did they recover 100%? No, but they did achieve a successful outcome and the best they could hope for under the circumstances.

Does it dwisott?

Translation - Does it do what it says on the tin? A great marketing phrase invented by the clever people at Ronseal that now gets applied to lots of different products and has made it into OUP idioms.

What is sad is that so often the product promise is at odds with the product experience. I've just moved doctors because I moved house, and was dreading the experience. My last surgery wouldn't issue anyone an appointment more than a day in advance. This was because if they forced people to phone up on the morning of the day they wanted the appointment, they made the government's target for seeing people in less than 48 hours. You couldn't book a non urgent appointment to suit your convenience. And you had to call between 8:30 and 9 or there were no appointments. Too bad, call tomorrow. The staff were surly, the waiting room dreary and tired, the doctor's offices pretty dire.

When I went into the new surgery in Central London there were a number of interesting differences. There was a smiling person behind the desk, but there was also an automated check in for people who were willing to use the touchscreen with large letters and a very easy to use display. Because this was my first time, I got given  forms to fill in, asked a couple of questions, and had to show some id. I had my national health card, so the nice person behind the desk said, "good, one less form to fill in" and took one of the forms back.

I'm registered. I can call any time to book an appointment. They will do non urgent appointments at a mutually convenient time. They have a vampire service (sorry blood taking service) that happens every morning for routine bloodwork. And my nic shiny new national health card arrived in the mail less than a week after I handed it in.

You know, some of the investment in the national health service might just be paying off. My wife tells me that all the doctors that she has met at the surgery are nice, competent, helpful. Just maybe the practice does dwisott.