Just in case you can't sleep: a new Gold Standard in jargon. Any skilled translators around?

This just in from Wandsworth Cemetery. It's only a shame that the member of the Undead who wrote it can't spell "seamlessly".

Performance Canvas Planning is the first fully unified Information Synthesis, Performance Management and Planning tool that uses the collaborative power of Office 2010 allowing business users to communicate and maintain different dashboards seemlessly. Also, our unique BI Wiki functionality used to top of Office 2010 allows users to monitor, analyze and plan collaboratively. Performance Canvas Planning allows users to work within Excel 2010 and to further push data out into the web, allowing multiple users to interact with dashboards and mashboards from any internet connection, even from mobiles.

Isn't that just great? But there is more ...

Performance Canvas Planning integrates flawlessly into MS SQL Server 2008 R2, the latest data warehousing release from Microsoft and as well as the newest release of SharePoint 2010. Working with Power Pivot, Microsoft Excel users will be able to further drilldown and perform comprehensive forecasting and modeling. They can create, monitor and control plans from every department. With native integration in Excel, Managers are able to instantly report not only financial and operational data, but to pull data from departments such as marketing, human resources. The limit to what data that can be pulled into a report is not just within the company, but users can pull data from external sources such as financial websites and news sources, making reports on customers and competitors valid, in real time. The best part about this software program is the native excel functionality and the ability to access these resources from the web without having to learn a complex, new software platform. Performance Canvas Planning goes beyond data collection and analysis but allows a management team to have a clear, common perception of the business and plan for its future.

Find out what how Performance Canvas Planning can help you make the most of your companies data today!

Love the exclamation mark for the easily excited. You can just imagine a night of passion with the author, can't you?

What a nasty, suspicious, curmudgeonly, hypercritical old git I am

I don't know what comes over me some of these mornings. Maybe it's a light coating of imaginary volcanic ash.

Why do I doubt the promise of Rocketfish that they will "Launch (or blast) Drayton Bird Partnership website into first place!"?

Is it because they keep sending me the same message every bloody day, which bespeaks a certain lack of imagination - or a belief that boredom is the key to persuasion? Is it because names like Rocketfish summon up visions that make me puke?

Or maybe it's because this sort of claim must work, so quite a few mugs out there must fondly dream that being in first place will solve all their problems, when of course many other things matter more.

Or is it just that since the Drayton Bird Partnership hasn't traded for quite a few years they must be utterly useless and are wasting my time and their money? If they can't get that right, why should I trust them to do something serious?

Then again, why do I have qualms about a Mr. Grant who keeps sending me messages about the joys of crowd conversion? Is it just that he keeps pestering me too often? Or it is because if he spells controversial as contraversial I wonder what else he isn't good at?

The head of a big airline suggested some years ago that if the seat-back trays are dirty you have a lingering fear that the same approach is applied to servicing the engines. Hmmm.

File under "Blinding glimpses of the obvious", "Fancy that" or "I just landed from Mars and this is all new to me"

God, you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find a prince.

I subscribe to all sorts of things in the hope that every now and then somebody will say something interesting. The result is I get messages of such stunning banality that I sometimes rub my eyes in disbelief.

For example, this from someone who has clearly just visited their first ever supermarket and drawn the obvious conclusion, which takes us all the way back to the dawn of business history:

As I was out on my usual rounds at the supermarket I noticed something REALLY interesting.

Let me tell you... you can really learn a lot of sneaky marketing tricks and strategies by analyzing what these big supermarkets (such as Wallmart or Tesco) do on their shelves in order to sell their own products.

First, they analyze the marketplace to see what is selling well.Then, they enter that market with their OWN branded product and retail it ALONG SIDE the dominant competition for that food product at a much lower price.

The REALLY clever thing that they do here is...

They make THEIR branded version resemble that of the packaging of that premium dominant competitor for that food product!

After this astounding insight, the writer carries on with some pictures to make the point for half-witted readers, then concludes:

So how can you use this knowledge in internet marketing?

Well...

Step 1: find a solid product in your market.

Step 2: create your own 'similar' version of that product. (Note the pointless quotation marks round similar). You'll try and make it BETTER than the competitors in terms of quality/substance and even by adding MORE into it.

Step 3: come in at a competitive price!

Why the exclamation mark?

This is followed by a threat:

I hope you found this stuff interesting today... we'll update you with new finds, techniques and strategies as we find them.

Not if I see you coming first.

I was irresistibly reminded of Abe Lincoln's line, "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt."

I apologise because that was a bit unkind - just couldn't resist having a bit of fun.

As chance would have it I have a client who does the most extensive research into what goes on in supermarkets. You'll have seen their name every day during the election. And nigh on 50 years ago I worked at Leo Burnett for an organisation called The Supermarket Association - I was actually shown round Tesco by its founder, Jack Cohen.

But there is a serious point here - one that is costing a lot of people a lot of money and a lot of time needlessly.

Countless enthusiastic people have discovered marketing via the internet. It did not start last week. They would be wise to look back and discover what others have learned and written down over the last 160 years or so. It will save much heartache and misery.

If you're new in this game, please, please read Ogilvy, Caples, Hopkins and even if desperate, Bird. You'll find a list on www.draytonbird.com or - if you want a few things for nothing - www.draytonbirdcommonsense.com/free-learning.

A smile between sneezes

I have a filthy cold, but decided to take a look at the usual flood of messages. The most extraordinary, by far, was headed "Validation".

Only someone suffering from incessant curiosity would read on, but I did, and read a further 423 words starting with:

Dear Reader,

Through our 3rd party sources, we obtained your email address to enable us to send you this message about our services, which we would like to make available to you. We are a specialist digital marketing agency and we act on behalf of a wide range of clients.

Our Service

We would like to send you from time to time emails with information or offers from our clients which we believe will be of interest and value to you as it has been to many other key business decision makers in your position on our database. This information will be relevant to someone with your responsibilities. Nevertheless if you want to specify further the types of information you are interested in receiving then please follow this link to amend your profile.

Opting Out

We do not send spam or unsolicited information. If you do not want to receive this valuable information from us, please use one of the opt-out methods at the bottom of this email.

And so on, and so on.

How wonderful that there are still people in the marketing business who are so totally, blissfully, unencumbered with even the slightest smidgeon of knowledge about what they are doing - and have so clearly never thought to waste precious time finding out.

I can't say this made me feel any better, but it did make me wonder how the hell it could have some from anyone purporting to be a digital marketing agency.

What does slightly worry me is that these people might actually suggest their clients try this sort of died-last-Wednesday-but-never-buried approach to copy.

How did I ever fail to come across Tom Fishburne?

For a long time I wrote a column for Marketing - in fact some people think I still do, although I stopped well over a decade ago.

Anyhow, I was replaced by Mark Ritson, a very perceptive commentator, much better looking than me, with lots of hair - and a business school professor, which didn't stop him talking a lot of good sense.

He recently wrote a very good piece called “Hoodwinked by the Emperor’s New Tweets”, which in turn was brought to my attention via the brilliant cartoon above left.

Mark wrote, “Most brands don’t have the newsworthiness, broad appeal or dynamism to have any chance of making Twitter work for them.” This all reminds me of the days when lots of fools were conned into thinking customers wanted to have "relationships" with their boring products. Who wants to make love to a bag of crisps?

That is by the by: I just think Tom Fishburne is wholly admirable. And that's all from me today.