No commercials today ...
Dr. Calvin Rickson, a scientist from Texas A&M University has invented a bra that keeps women's breasts from jiggling and prevents the nipples from pushing through the fabric when cold weather sets in.
At a news conference, after announcing the invention, a large group of men took Dr. Rickson outside and kicked the shit out of him.
Now THAT is what I call a joke.
Thanks Glenmore Trenear-Harvey, Phd and bar.
I'm so sorry ... part of this slipped out yesterday.
Once again, whiz down to the joke if more guff about EADIM is not your bag ... and you've heard enough about business to last you a lifetime.
But if you really want to make more money on the internet, you'll love Karl (who really WAS a rocket scientist) and Ben of Conversion Rate Experts. They were the first ever authorised Google Optimiser Consultants in Europe.
Go and look at their site if you want to download lots and lots of free advice - but if you wanted to get the knowledge you need to succed with your websiteand be entertained as you go, you'd have loved yesterday.
First, to general delight they revealed their mascot, which is actually a squirrel in human form ... talked about what we say to dogs – and what they hear ... how you can end up paying £55 for “free” business cards – and lots of essential good advice.
After them Toon Vanparys of www.netmining.com amazingly managed to look good, even after Karl and Ben ... as he showed a “magic” way to get up to 5 times as many people to leave details on your site ...and did it all live.
Lastly, when we were all worn out, Guy Stainthorpe, who runs an amazingly complex mail order business managed the impossible. He made the maths of direct marketing entertaining – and did so at the end of the day. How can you make tired people laugh as you explain the concept of lifetime value? Ask Guy!
Enough already. Here's the joke.
An elderly lady who had been widowed ran an ad in the paper.
HUSBAND WANTED:
MUST BE IN MY AGE GROUP (70's)
MUST NOT BEAT ME,
MUST NOT RUN AROUND ON ME
MUST STILL BE GOOD IN BED!!!!!
ALL APPLICANTS PLEASE APPLY IN PERSON.
On the second day, she heard the doorbell.
She opened the door to see - much to her dismay - a grey-haired gentleman sitting in a wheelchair.
He had no arms or legs.
The old woman said, 'You're not really asking me to consider you, are you?
Just look at you...you have no legs!
The old man smiled, 'Therefore, I cannot run around on you!'
She snorted. 'You don't have any arms either!'
Again, the old man smiled, 'Therefore, I can never beat you!'
She raised an eyebrow and asked intently, 'Are you still good in bed???'
The old man leaned back, beamed a big smile and said...
How d'you think I rang the doorbell?
I bet you thought I was going to drive you crazy every day with loads of dull stuff to flog you Eadim, right?
Wrong. You misjudge me: only every other day. And don't worry - there's a joke at the end.
Tuesday was quite different to laugh-a-minute Monday – lots of rather deep stuff about databases ... especially from one of my partners, Professor Dirk Van Den Poel of Gent University, one of the highest rated data analysts the world. Important if you want to make money and you had to concentrate.
Then came a bit more comic relief from Bird and a wonderful talk by Andrew Boddington who used to work with me on Mercedes and a few other things - and who makes highly technical things seem so simple.
Then we had (Oh, God) even more Bird, after which things improved.
Martin Chilcott made CRM seem simple, showed lots of ludicrous charts from firms who rip dumb marketers off with CRM "solutions" - and told stories about his experiences around the world as a marketing director for firms like Amex, M & G, Thomas Cook and so on. He had us all in hysterics about the bollocks marketers talk about having relationships with customers. "Customers don't want a relationship with you" - Sir Terry Leahy of Tesco.
And he talked about his experience as a spattered-with-spit bouncer for Madness, a part-time DJ ...and all the things that make him a real person and about ten times better than all those corporate drones who lord it over marketing departments for a year or so before they get found out and fired.
Then came Steve Harrison, widely regarded as the best direct marketing creative in the world today, certainly the most awarded and a damn sight better speaker than me AAAARGH. So, no surprise, he had everyone in stitches as he showed some extraordinary work - including how they sold Pizza Delivery in Lima, where people are afraid to open their doors to strangers.
He's speaking in Las Vegas in a bit; a change from Jermyn Street -- I believe every single member of the audience bought his book on How to do better creative work. In fact Romania's rather gorgeous Diana Stoiescu who was at last year's EADIM came in specially to have her copy signed.
If you're beginning to think this little shindig is quite good fun, utterly different to the usually snore-a-minute marketing gabfests - and maybe even quite good - you're right. But you probably don't give a shit, do you? So ...
Here's your joke for today.
I urgently needed a few days off work, but, I knew the Boss would not let me take leave.
I thought that maybe if I acted 'Crazy' then he would tell me to take a few days off.
So I hung upside-down on the ceiling and made funny noises.
My co-worker (who's blonde) asked me what I was doing.
I told her that I was pretending to be a light bulb so that the Boss might think I was 'Crazy' and give me a few days off.
A few minutes later the Boss came into the office and asked, 'What in the name of good GOD are you doing?'
I told him I was a light bulb.
He said, 'You are clearly stressed out.' Go home and recuperate for a couple of days.'
I jumped down and walked out of the office...
When my co-worker (the blonde) followed me, the Boss asked her, '..And where do you think you're going?!'
She said, 'I'm going home, too. I can't work in the dark.'
Boom, boom.
Most of this will only interest you if you're in business and you want to do better, so scroll down if you just read my stuff for laughs.
The first part of today's heading comes from Rowan Gormley's talk yesterday at EADIM. He pointed out that doing what everyone else does is the quick route to disaster - and made some pretty cutting remarks about the way many businesses operate - and fail.
He had us all in fits of laughter describing his one-day career in accountancy, his work setting up three businesses with Richard Branson and one on his own. Mostly, he discussed his mistakes. He claimed he had made more than anyone in the audience. He should have asked me ... and I forgot to ask him how he got Jamie Oliver to work with him at Naked Wines, his latest venture.
But what he said about what worked and didn't in the businesses he has founded and run made us all think - especially about the catastrophic results of going to big database and direct marketing agencies - who nearly ruined him with needless segmentation and lunatic creative ideas.
I then came on and my usual selection of old jokes about animals and teenagers plus a goodly helping of glimpses of the obvious made him look a lot better then me - because he is. Things picked up a lot when Marta Caricato managed to make the subject of planning not only clear and interesting, but funny.
But the BIG surprise of the day was from a client of ours whom I invited at the last minute. Chris Griffiths offers the only authorised on-line version of Tony Buzan's mindmapping.
Chris - who was already a highly successful entrepreneur - turned down millions in financing to work on this for ten long years and what he showed had an audience who should have been snoozing after very long day really sit up and pay attention.
For example: did you know that NASA research shows a 5 year old is 98% highly creative ... whilst a 25 years old is only 2% highly creative? Did you know that doodling during a presentation doubles your chance of remembering things?
And you certainly don't know that I'm filming all this stuff - so if interests you, keep reading tomorrow.
Did I promise you a joke?
The Funeral Procession
A man was leaving a convenience store with his morning coffee when he
noticed a most unusual funeral procession approaching the nearby
cemetery.
A long black hearse was followed by a second long black hearse about 50 feet behind the first one.
Behind the second hearse was a solitary man walking a dog on a leash.
Behind him, a short distance back, were about 200 men walking single file.
The man couldn't stand the curiosity. He respectfully approached the man
walking the dog and said, 'I am so sorry for your loss, and this may be
a bad time to disturb you, but I've never seen a funeral like this.
Whose funeral is it?'
'My wife's'.
'What happened to her?'
The man replied, 'My dog attacked and killed her'
He inquired further, 'But who is in the second hearse?'
The man answered, 'My mother-in-law. She was trying to help my wife
when the dog turned on her.'
A poignant and thoughtful moment of silence passed between the two men.
'Can I borrow the dog?'
The man replied, 'Get in line.'
Would you like to know what all the people who are busy ruining your life are really like? Now's your chance. My mole in Whitehall sent me a report from behind the scenes at the Labour Party shindig last week, with an introduction that read:
"Knowing your preoccupation with the venality, incompetence, hubris and self-absorption of politicians, I thought this might be of interest to you".
This distinguished mole is, as you will see, a very good writer, so I have changed very little.
"Life is experience and experience, life; when offered the opportunity to indulge fascination and revulsion in equal measure I could no more decline the invitation than could an investment banker ignore a £50 note poking from a crack-whore's cleavage.
So it was that last Tuesday evening I boarded the Brighton train for a night at the Labour party gala dinner.
I learned several things including a surprising amount about the economy and political governance of the Isle of Man, after talking to their Agriculture Minister.
Tax haven and homophobia was how one of the Labour party faithful characterised the island's chief exports, upon being introduced to him, suggesting that whatever PR purposes the Minister had in mind when he applied for his conference pass, he still has some work to do.
Did you know that Delaware is an offshore tax haven? I didn't. The Isle of Man is quite keen that everyone knows about this, so I'm just letting you know. This is the kind of stuff you learn at these events.
Harriet Harman is barking mad; delusional; not safe out on her own. "Why?" she wailed, "why can't voters see the flaws in Conservative policies? Why?" she demanded, "do they not see what a good man Gordon Brown is?"
Harriet, dear, I thought to myself, you have been in this game too long; you need a bit of a lie down and then some time out in the ordinary world again. I didn't share these thoughts with her. She'll find out soon enough next May, bless her.
Ruth Kelly was sitting nearby. She was very nice, in fact she exudes a curious manly charm that I find slightly beguiling. She seems very normal, unlike dear Harriet, which makes the Opus Dei Christian fundamentalist stuff all the harder to deal with. Give me zealots with straggly beards and a tea-towel on their heads and I know where I stand. If they have a prosthetic hook instead of a hand, that helps too.
Ben Bradshaw came over after dinner to say hello. Obviously he hadn't a clue who I was, more a case of working the room and perhaps casing out potential dance partners for later on. He and and a few others were ejected from the Grand hotel bar at 1.30 the following morning after raucous renditions at the piano of Jerusalem and other popular favourites (see the Evening Standard for details).
A friend tells me she was at college with Bradshaw and that he had the hots for her. When she spurned him he found solace in arms of a chum. Perhaps so.
Lesley Garrett not only sings with quite astonishing gusto, she also displays the same brand of myopic party loyalty that makes the Harperson such a hazard to the civilised world. It's a shame really, I quite enjoyed the singing, in an 'applying a pair of tweezers to unwanted nasal hair' kind of way.
Then there was Gordon, the great toad himself. He tried to tell a joke. You could tell his aides had taught him it. It probably took quite a while, judging by his performance. He does have presence, but then so does a two week old horse cadaver.
There used to be a culture in insurance companies that people would be promoted to the level of their own incompetence, reaching a pay grade one step beyond their natural ceiling, at which point they would get stuck. Gordon Brown is the epitome of that tradition. He has frittered away the good fortune he inherited as Chancellor and is now floundering in a role which is clearly beyond his capabilities.
He may indeed be a good man, as Harriet insisted, certainly his wife seems fond of him, but he's not much bloody good as a prime minister."
By the way, folks, though Cameron could hardly be worse, will he be that much better? A piece in the Sunday Telegraph "by" him is full of piffle about giving power back to the people with hardly a practical example in sight. They hate detail, these pols.
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