"Lifestyles of the Not-So-Rich-and-Famous". And more political B.S. we will pay for - with out money or our lives

Did you ever watch Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous? It was a TV show quite beyond parody run by Robin Leach, an Englishman with the strangest accent.

An eerie parade of boundless vulgarity, mostly in Hollywood, it was one of those things you just couldn't stop watching. Anyhow this not so rich and famous person had his flat broken into yesterday by British Gas who installed a meter because they said he hadn't paid his bill.

This was not impossible, as neither I nor my beloved read our post that carefully. But it was pretty strange because I paid them in January. But I wish they'd told me where they put the damn meter. No doubt all will be revealed when I ring them today. I have a ghastly feeling it's something to do with the credit card I used to pay them.

Europe has about as much idea about prudent management as me, but on a rather larger scale. In December The European Central Bank pumped €489 billion into the eurozone.

It is part of the longer term refinancing operation (LTRO) which gives banks cash at a low interest rate of 1% for three years..

The idea is that the European Central Bank gives banks cheap money, allegedly so they can help small businesses, but really to buy all the sovereign bonds nobody wants.

This is pouring bad money after worse.

John Bennett, who manages the Henderson European Focus Trust simply calls it "a bit of a Ponzi scheme". Bennett says 'What it has not removed is the chronic lack of growth in many parts of Europe.

'Economic policy in the developed world has followed one overriding principle and that is the avoidance of recession at all costs. Politicians hate them because they're scared of losing votes and jobs.
'The ECB and Merkozy may say one thing but all along they've been doing another thing. Just look at LTRO. If that's not quantitative easing, I don't know what is.'

Meanwhile Greece – in worse trouble than anyone - is the world's fourth-largest arms importer. Who are they at war with?  Nobody.  Who sells them most?  Germany, the U.S. and France.

Who, one way or another will pay for this criminal activity? Taxpayers like you and me. But arms bring out the insanity everywhere, as noted in a splendid rant by Bill Bonner in The Daily Reckoning.

“We simply cannot continue to cut our defense budget if we are to remain the hope of the Earth,” says Mitt Romney.


Where do candidates get this sort of stuff? Who writes lines like that? Who takes them seriously?


According to Romney, the Earth itself longs for more US military spending.


His adversary, Newt Gingrich, says he thinks that Obama's Pentagon cuts will make the US as vulnerable to attack as it was before World War II.


But the Pentagon won't really have less money to spend. They're not really talking about cutting defense spending; they're talking about cutting projected military spending increases. Even after the 'cuts,' the US military will still be spending more than the next 10 biggest spenders put together.


All the candidates think the American people want war. Or...what?


Actually, Americans don't want war. The latest Pew Research polls show them more opposed to foreign military adventures than at any time in the last 15 years. They're more interested in getting a job...and protecting their retirements. Given the choice, they would probably want to see military spending cut back and the money put into their own pockets.


But they won't be given the choice. The system is rigged. Between them and the outcomes are 10,000 lobbyists and millions of zombies. This is why representative democracy doesn't work.


Decent people will generally have decent responses to decent questions. Put to a ballot, how would Americans vote?

Do these people actually READ their copy before they run it? And how does it get into print? What do you think?

We just got back from Milan, which I guess is now the fashion capital of the world. I was pretty stunned by how badly ordinary people dress. Not as badly as here or New York, but nothing special.

We were really there to pick up some bargains and visit friends. To get the bargains we went to Lugano where there is an incredible outlet with all the top European brands. I saved a ton.

We never really change do we? I still take the most childish delight from bargains. And I still collect examples of outstandingly stupid copy, a task in which many kind people assist, including Andrew Gadsden, Tea Merchant Extraordinaire.

Recently he sent me a classic: "Maximise your competitors' performance within minutes". Oh, what a tangled web we weave when we can't tell the difference between competitors and competitive. And oh what dire stuff we come up with when we try to be creative before lapsing into cliché. Under that unfortunate subject line was a weird picture of a pyramid emitting rays (maybe death rays?) with the line "Shining Light on Transparency".

Then the copy opens with (oh no, not again) "In today's highly competitive marketplace blah, blah, blah, blether, blether."

A shame really as what they are offering - for the first time ever - is a free report on what the reader's competitors are doing to get business in the public sector. Why the hell they don't just say so in almost exactly those words is a mystery. As is another classic Andrew sent me: ABC Racking - Shelving Your Ambitions.

Actually, that's not a mystery; it just shows yet again how people think some silly slogan is marketing - a delusion not confined to providers of pallets in the Midlands, but which pervades every level of marketing, from bibulous golf-playing marketing directors and incomprehensible planners to coke-snorting junior copywriters and art directors.

Incidentally, Andrew's firm - www.allabouttea.co.uk - which I've always fondly hoped is just Andrew and lots of girls - holds the Guinness record for the largest tea bag ever made. When I asked him which run-of-the-mill tea is best he said Yorkshire Tea. So I have bought it ever since. 

Want to be a good writer? Amidst the oceans of drivel, some good sense.

I have been amused lately by the torrent of messages from crooks promising to make anyone a best-selling author in two shakes of a dog's tale.

I have not found it that easy. 

One of my books, Commonsense Direct and Digital Marketing, has been selling steadily around the world since 1982, but it wasn't easy to write.

I spent a month trying to get going and failed completely. Then I had another go a year later and it took 6 weeks frantic typing followed by a couple of months of editing.

Revising it repeatedly has been a nightmare because it is fairly easy to write something long, then cut it, but very hard to write something short and expand it.

But I had no choice. In 1980 the computer was only used by clever people at places like The Readers Digest; the word database was rarely heard. And as for the Internet - what was that? Text marketing? There were no mobile phones.

So that explains why what was a slim volume has - like direct marketing - swollen until its fifth edition is excellent for propping up tables and keeping doors open

One of the few people who writes intelligently about writing is Ryan Healy.

I just read this in his blog: "Creativity thrives under limits, be they natural or imposed." It reminded me of the reasons why in 1985 I sold my agency to Ogilvy & Mather when we had been talking to no less than eight other big ad agencies.

David Ogilvy rang me up, which was vastly flattering. They had great clients and I thought we'd get business that way. They were nice people, which is as important as money. But a huge factor was their work, at that time the best in the world.

The guiding spirit was their worldwide creative director, Norman Berry, who had once offered me a job when he was creative director of Young & Rubicam. He said something I have never forgotten: “Give me the freedom of a tight brief”. Pretty much what Ryan says.

If I had written a brief for myself before I set about the great tome, I would have found it much easier. The title is often a brief. My second foray into business writing - How to write a salesletter that sells - was much easier for that reason. That, too, is still around after 25 years.

Bad work comes from bad briefs which is why in my seminars I talk a lot about the brief. It is hard to be entertaining on the subject, but I usually manage to raise a chortle or two.

The two books are available on Amazon at a sensible price, or autographed illegibly by me, for slightly more because I can't compete with Amazon. And if you want my jokes about briefing and other matters, you'll have to join me in Andalusia.

Ryan's blog is at http://www.ryanhealy.com/creativity-and-constraints/ 

I'm sorry - I just love this even though I've seen it before. Sent to me by Jeff Blenford

Stress

I am not sure exactly how it works, but this is amazingly  accurate.   The picture has 2 identical dolphins in it.   It was used in   a case study on stress levels at St. Mary's Hospital, London .   Look at both dolphins jumping out of the water.     The dolphins are identical.     A closely monitored scientific study revealed that, in spite of the fact  that the dolphins are identical .   A  person under stress would find differences in the two dolphins.   The more differences a person finds between the  Dolphins, the more stress that person is experiencing.   Look at the photograph and if you find more than one  or two differences you need to go on holiday....    No need to reply, I'll be on holiday.   Never take life seriously   Nobody gets out alive anyway

A far better Bird than me - but sad mistakes spoil his efforts

When you get to my age, unless you're one of the Army of the Smug (you know, those who stride along the street looking pleased with themselves) you start to wonder whether you've done much good with your life.

Well, at least one member of the Bird tribe has done a lot more good than me. He is John Bird, who founded The Big Issue, a magazine sold by street people as a better alternative to begging. A wonderful idea that has spread around the world. I envy him.

I buy the magazine, but not as often as I should. This is partly - believe it or not - because of the layout. For the first few years most of the mag was set in sans serif type with a lot of it reversed out. A deadly combination - proven to be almost impossible to read and comprehend.* More recently the type has usually been serif (far easier to read) but still with a lot of reversing out.

Design is a tricky thing, and most young designers are utterly unaware of what makes for easy reading. Nor are they aware of the observation of the great typographer Stanley Morison, who designed the Times face: "Any disposition of type that comes between the reader and meaning is wrong."

But they have just had a redesign. Whether this makes things better I don't know as I haven't bought it yet. However, since Dennis publishing are responsible I imagine it should be an improvement.

There is an excellent article, full of good sense, by Lucy Headley about the need to change - http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/blogs/lucy-handley/why-the-big-issue-brand-needs-a-rethink/3030458.article. Below the article is some good sense from a former vendor, too. I think John Bird's brilliant idea has never been marketed as well as it could be, and you can see why from the article and the comment.

That being said I just had a small fit when I saw an ad in The Week (a Dennis mag I read diligently) announcing the redesign.

The headline was "NO MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC WERE HARMED DURING THE MAKING OF THIS MAGAZINE." Oh dear, oh dear. That really is sad. Go to the back of the class.

There was a short cliché-strewn block of copy, starting with "All new magazine. Same old values." The whole ad reads like it was written by the caretaker at Dennis Publishing in about twenty minutes after a couple of pints.

There was the predictable wanky slogan: Journalism worth paying for. Why do so many fools think slogans are so important?

But there is also one rather clumsy sentence: "Your Big Issue seller has paid half the cover price of each magazine". Without clear explanation the significance of that is not that easily grasped. I'll lay money that even most of those who buy the mag are only vaguely aware of how it operates. More to the point, what about prospects?

That sentence, easily missed because nobody is going to read the copy after such a poor opening, sums up the very essence of John Bird's idea. The sellers do pay for the mag and sell it. The idea of those in distress helping themselves has enormous appeal. Who can decry it? Moreover The Week has God knows how many readers, and I wager they are disproportionately likely to be charitable.

That ad is a disgrace. Amateurs should never be let loose on something that affects so many lives.
What an opportunity missed to do some decent advertising that tugged at the heartstrings and opened the wallets of all those people!

And now I come full circle. It may not be like heart surgery, but time spent telling people how to create stuff that gets people to do something is well worthwhile.

*If you want to know what makes for design that works, I shall be talking about it in Spain during my copy weekend. Or you can read pages 311-18 of that excellent doorstop, Commonsense Direct and Digital Marketing, written by a less worthy member of the Birds than John.