Seamless bollocks: real life versus corporate life

Twenty years or more ago, David Ogilvy sent me the draft of a speech he was planning to make in France.

It contained more or less the following.

"Our world is divided into two warring camps. Those who have no idea what their efforts produce. And those who know to penny. Those who measure. And those who do not."

I have long believed there are two other warring camps. Those who write down-to-earth English that can be understood; and those who write business gobbledygook.

Those who get on with things because they realise they have to get results - or else. And those who think more about whether the corporate guidelines are being followed.

Real people - and the rest.

One reason the Financial Services Authority failed dismally to do its job is that they were all so busy fucking around with people's copy to ensure "compliance" - and still are - to notice that the financial world was infested with unqualified crooks.

This unseemly outburst is prompted by the way the serene calm of my morning toilette was shattered when I saw a message selling a CRM seminar that contained the following:

Envision a sustainable CRM solution specially tailored to the unique needs of your company. A technology that is not afraid of growth and change. A solution intuitively capable of delivering efficiency and sales optimization in order to bring your business to the next level. At Intelestream, we believe in the simple truth that technology will seamlessly increase effectiveness and performance when properly implemented and administered. We believe your CRM solution should work for you.

Intelestream Inc. is a Chicago based consulting firm that delivers solutions to clients seeking enhanced sales, marketing, and customer support related business processes. The company specializes in enterprise resource planning (ERP), and all customer relationship management (CRM) related workflows. Intelestream’s development team builds custom tailored solutions for organizations, industry verticals, and plugins for open source software applications. The company’s team of consultants deliver an unparalleled quality of service and support. Intelestream’s leaders previously held executive positions at Fortune 500 companies, founded successful technology firms as entrepreneurs, and have expertise developing strategic customer focused business processes. If your company is evaluating a new enterprise application, looking to replace an expensive legacy system with a more affordable enhanced solution, or considering developing a new web based internal application, contact Intelestream.

Would you buy anything from a firm that talks such pretentious tripe? Can you imagine anyone not off their rocker "envisioning" a sustainable CRM solution?

Unfortunately plenty of people do fall for this stuff. They think if they can't understand it, it must be clever. They think that some magic bullet will solve their problems, removing the need for hard graft. And they deserve whatever they get.

In the case of CRM the only figures I have seen - from Gartner - show what they get is, on average, bad results, chiefly for three reasons.

1. Many buy CRM programmes - but never use them, train people properly or explain to everyone why they matter.

2. To build a customer relationship you must care about customers. Most people in large firms care more about promotion. As Jack Welch put it, people have "their heads facing the chairman and their asses facing the customers". That is why so many arseholes end up running big firms.

3. No computer programme can think. It will never be able to write words that charm customers and make them believe they are valued; and if you think starting with the deadly phrase "As a valued customer" will do the trick, believe me: it won't.

Having got that off my chest, my heart goes out to those of you trapped unwillingly in the great corporate quagmire. Fight back! Instead of doodling in meetings, think of ways to start your own thing. Stick subversive messages on the notice boards. Take the piss. Cause trouble.

By the way, I see this witless government is planning to track and record everyone coming in and out of the country. If they do this in their usual manner, the information will be automatically forwarded to every burglar in the country.

PM overtakes Becks as dullest speaker

Thanks to Georgia Kennedy of Western Australia for passing this one on. I knew it, but never knew everyone else agreed.

A new poll rates Gordon Brown as Britain's most boring speaker, ahead of footballer David Beckham and actress Kate Winslet.

Brown's "cerebral style" placed him ahead of Beckham. Brown once used the phrase "post neo-classical endogenous growth theory" in a speech.

The phrase he should try is "I'm fucking useless and I'm leaving". His ratings would shoot up instantly.

The real difference between the Great Lying Haggis and Becks is a) Becks is good at what he does and b) he's a nice guy.

Some curious paradoxes – and one moral

I am not quite old enough to remember the days when the German Mark was so devalued that you needed a wheelbarrow-full to buy a loaf of bread.

But I do know that it all started with printing money – Mugabe economics – which is what Gordon Brown has resorted to

The Daily Mash came out with a good take on this the other day.

“So the Bank of England will today start pumping £75 billion of brand new cash into the economy. It's going to do this by giving it to the high street banks we already own so they can lend it back to us with interest.

Many economists have written long, complicated articles explaining why this is a good idea, but no-one has, as yet explained, why it's a better idea than just giving each of us twelve and a half grand of free money to spend on cars and gin.

Well, Mr Economist?”

As I mentioned, two weeks ago I did a talk for the Market Research Society. Much of it revolved around something said by the gent above, Leo Burnett, for whom I worked in the early 60’s in my first job in London.

“The public does not know what it wants … there is no sure way of finding out until the idea is exposed under normal conditions of sale. If people could tell you in advance what they want, there would never have been a wheel, a lever, much less an automobile, an airplane or a TV set.”

I was reminded of this when reading about a self-serving piece of research in the Aussie trade rag, B & T. which claimed that outdoor branding advertising would save the banks, and that the least effective way of banks gaining the public’s trust is on-line.

Immediately below this an equally self-serving piece said that PR is better than advertising.

Ignoring the fact that both pieces of research were probably conducted among 23 resident marsupials of Rottnest island, and the fact that almost all bank advertising is meaningless pap, and the fact that everybody and his mother is an instant advertising expert, what is a body to do?

Especially when yesterday I also read that for the first time in 60 years, US direct mail volumes are down, whilst online continues to thrive. What is a body to do?

Here's a hint. Among the people who are coining it online by the million, the online entrepreneurs I was talking to two and half weeks ago in Washington, the smartest are looking at direct mail.

They realise, unlike so many of the cluckheads rubbing marketing departments, that there is no one-weapon answer.

They realise, unlike the big-firm know-nothings whose lives are governed by corporate guidelines and interminable, pointless meetings**, that you just have to go on what works.

So THAT is what a body has to do. Go on results. Not on phoney research. Not on the current fad in marketing La-La land.

I am off to Warsaw today, where I shall say what I have been saying for a long time, even if one half of the people weren't listening and the other half were busy rewriting their wanky "strapline".

Focus on three things – only. Get more customers. Get them to buy more. Keep them longer.

There are no other ways to make more money. If what you plan does not do at least one of them, save your money. You're going to need it.

** Not long ago I was in a meeting where 12 people - TWELVE - were discussing a direct mail campaign. There's a lot of corporate flab to be cut away yet, friends.

Avert your eyes, sensitive readers

My ex-partner Glenmore Trenear-Harvey is an intelligence expert who appears fairly regularly on screen . Here he is on Russian TV, looking as though someone had just made an excessively obscene suggestion.

To me, though, his most agreeable speciality has been a never-ending fund of jokes.

The latest is about the man who walks into a library and asks for a book on
Tourette's. The librarian says, "Fuck off, you cunt."

The man says, "Yep, that's the one."

This is the more polite of the two jokes I have on Tourette's. Another one is unspeakably obscene, and never fails to convulse me with laughter. I did warn you not to read this if you're easily shocked didn't I?

You can blame my son Nick the musician for this one.

An out of work pianist with Tourette’s Syndrome is strolling around the streets and bars of Soho one unemployed afternoon.

Walking down Dean Street he sees a lounge bar with a sign in the window 'Pianist wanted for evening performances'.

'Fucking get in there, you cunt!' he says to himself and goes enters the bar.

'Get the fucking manager of this pig-shit middle class wankhole please, you cunt', he says to a somewhat startled barman.

The barman however obliges - and his manager comes upstairs. 'Can I help you, sir?' he enquires

'Yes you can, you fat piece of shit, I saw your poxy advert in the cunting window and I'm here to audition – wanker!'

The manager is naturally put off by the man's abrasive manner, but his dire need for a top class pianist forces him to agree to an audition.

The first tune the Pianist plays is an uplifting jazzy number - not too involving, yet utterly melodic.

At the end the thrilled barman cries, 'Wonderful, wonderful. What was that called?'

'That song, you big-nosed twat, was called "Excuse me, prime minister, but I just jizzed in your daughter's eye, and now the cunt's blind”

'Oh' says the manager. 'Er, can you play me another? Something a little less "lively".

'Wanker!” interjects the pianist before launching into a powerful ballad which leaves the manager in tears.

The manager, through his salty teardrops, asks him the title. 'That little number was called "Sometimes when you do a bird up the shitbox you get crap on your bell end.'

'I see' says the manager, 'Have you any songs with less offensive titles?'

'Well, there's my jazz number "Do you want me to split your ringpiece", or there's the epic "I don't care if you're older, my dear, you've still got gorgeous jugs".

'Look' says the manager interrupting, 'I think you're a superb pianist, but the titles of your songs are a little "racy". I will hire you on condition that you do not introduce your songs or speak to the audience.'

‘Fuck it' says the pianist 'Why not?'

On his first night everything is going superbly; the crowd is lapping up his repertoire and his silence is being perceived as modesty.

The only thing putting him off is that in the front row there is a gorgeous blonde in a black evening dress with a split up the side revealing the tops of her stockings, and a plunging neckline which boasts a proud and inviting cleavage.

During the interval the pianist has such a stonking hard-on that he decides to go to the bog and knock one out.

Just as he has shot his muck he hears himself being re-introduced over the tannoy, so he rushes back to the stage and finishes his act.

After the show he is at the bar relaxing when the blonde approaches him. 'Hi' she says in a sultry voice.

'Hello' he winces, struggling to hold in the expletives.

She leans over and whispers in his ear, 'Do you know your cock is hanging out of your trousers, and spunk is dribbling onto your shoes?'

'Know it?' says the pianist putting his beer on the bar confidently …

'I fucking wrote it’.

So what are you REALLY doing now?

Yesterday I had lunch with my partner in a firm that runs events in a few countries, together with a lady friend he wanted me to meet.

The excuse was to discuss an idea she has had for an online community which I think is frankly brilliant. So we met at the Frontline Restaurant off Praed Street, which I thoroughly recommend. The wine list is superb, the food excellent.

The restaurant has fond associations for me, because across the road in one direction is the office where 40 odd years ago I got much of my education in direct marketing and a few other things, whilst in another is a porn shop whose owner at around the same time asked me if I'd like to pose for some dirty photos.

I refused because I felt I wouldn't be able to rise to the occasion. At the time I thought it was a great career opportunity lost, but I was quite right. I can tell you from subsequent experience that it's very, very difficult. Anyone who can get a stiffy to order without chemical assistance when someone says "lights, camera, action" gets my complete admiration.

Anyhow, being not only startlingly attractive but clever, my partner's friend had taken the trouble to read this blog before meeting, and when I admitted that many of the entries are written at highly unsociable hours, she said, "I can tell!"

So that is why there are so many typos, gentle reader.

But this entry was prompted by that question they have on those social networking sites that says, "What are you doing now?" I have no idea why so many of us are prompted to tell this to the world, especially as for the most part the answers are unspeakably banal and clearly omit many of the most common human activities, as in "Having a wank" or "About to take a dump" or "Farting uncontrollably" not to mention "Picking my nose",

Apart from all the above, what I have been doing recently is reading a biography of Silvio Berlusconi, Mr. and Mrs. Bliars' good friend. He is the chap who runs and owns a fair percentage of Italy. Every time I moan about the Fat Haggis or the Bliar my radiant partner who is Italian only has to say: "Berlusconi" in a menacing way to shut me up.

The book really does make the point that compared to Silvio our lot are a bunch of boy scouts (those are the people Obama had more time for than the Haggis yesterday). Berlusconi was clearly closely associated with, helpful to and funded by the Mafia to the tune of at least three hundred billion lire - either that or he found the money in a paper bag someone left in a public toilet by accident.

He's only running Italy instead of being in jail because he's repeatedly managed to rig the law in his favour, and his skill at bribing judges is one reason why Mr. Mills, "estranged" husband of our Olympics Minister, Tessa Jowls, has been sentenced to jail. I bet he never serves a day.

Incidentally, for those of you who think I'm really a secret agent for the Tory party, I spent a fair bit of time over the last few days reflecting on how all those mawkish pictures of David Cameron cradling his dead son got into the papers. Is there nothing politicians won't do to win votes? And why do our crapulous media make it so easy for them?