Anatomy of a communications failure. What is a SharePoint architect? Why is an English translation necessary?

I got this email this morning. It is an unimpeachable example of total business bollocks.

Note the gripping heading. That'll have them foaming at the mouth for more.

SharePoint 2010 Implementation and Upgrade Super-7 


I have recently been working extensively with our key clients who undertaken SharePoint implementations and upgrades in a range of organisation of varying sizes within both the private and public sector. The overwhelming feedback I have received from the hiring managers has been that historically they have found it extremely difficult to find the necessary expertise to fulfil their business objectives. In response to this I have compiled a team of SharePoint 2010 experts who are available and willing to help you maximise the benefit from your SharePoint system. Whether you are looking at implementation, upgrade or maintaining your system – we can provide the expertise to meet your requirements. 


 I am currently working with experienced contract SharePoint Project Managers, Architects, Consultants, Developers, System Administrators, and Test Analysts and below are a selection of the screened and referenced candidates I am currently exploring new opportunities with. To book an interview with any of these candidates, contact me on 01628 771 811 – if you have another requirement that we can assist with, call me for a frank discussion as to how Ninesharp can help you deliver on your business objectives. 

Ok, after I wrote that, I went online to see if I could find out.

And, lo and behold, there is an explanation at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s12Jb5Z2xaE.

This was given 11 years after the thing was first launched. A bit late.

I commend it to you not because it explains what SharePoint is, nor because of the astonishingly irritating voice used, but because of the very funny comments about the sexuality of the protagonist, an androgynous creature called Monique.

SharePoint is a Microsoft thingy, which may explain a lot - starting with the confusing name (I thought it was some sort of incentive programme).

But these comments illuminate the vast chasm between the people who make and sell these things - which are generally called "solutions" and the normal human beings they try to sell them to.

Having said that, here is a serious point.

If people fail to explain what they sell in plain English, they will either fail or do far less well than they deserve. A lot of very good ideas - this seems one - get buried alive beneath a suffocating mountain of linguistic garbage.

I cannot leave this subject without directing you (YAWN) to  http://draytonbirdcommonsense.com/b2b-letter-webinar - the free seminar I put up yesterday for anyone who is interested in how to sell complex stuff to business people.

I love my cleaning lady, who is called Anya. She is Polish. Before her we had Kasia, also Polish. But here is a hilarious message to a cleaning lady who lacked their skills

This was sent to me by Richard Hanrahan in April on Facebook. I only just saw it.

That's because no matter how "social" Facebook fondly thinks it is, I read messages sent me directly every day - not ones sent indirectly, which I look at once every three months. It is a message from Werner Herzog to his cleaner.

I doubt if she appreciated it, but I do. And so will you if you like good writing. Though I think the second sentence in the last paragraph but one is a mess.

Rosalina. Woman.

You constantly revile me with your singular lack of vision. Be aware, there is an essential truth and beauty in all things. From the death throes of a speared gazelle to the damaged smile of a freeway homeless. But that does not mean that the invisibility of something implies its lack of being. Though simpleton babies foolishly believe the person before them vanishes when they cover their eyes during a hateful game of peek-a-boo, this is a fallacy. And so it is that the unseen dusty build up that accumulates behind the DVD shelves in the rumpus room exists also. This is unacceptable.

I will tell you this Rosalina, not as a taunt or a threat but as an evocation of joy. The joy of nothingness, the joy of the real. I want you to be real in everything you do. If you cannot be real, then a semblance of reality must be maintained. A real semblance of the fake real, or "real". I have conquered volcanoes and visited the bitter depths of the earth's oceans. Nothing I have witnessed, from lava to crustacean, assailed me liked the caked debris haunting that small plastic soap hammock in the smaller of the bathrooms. Nausea is not a sufficient word. In this regard, you are not being real.

Now we must turn to the horrors of nature. I am afraid this is inevitable. Nature is not something to be coddled and accepted and held to your bosom like a wounded snake. Tell me, what was there before you were born? What do you remember? That is nature. Nature is a void. An emptiness. A vacuum. And speaking of vacuum, I am not sure you're using the retractable nozzle correctly or applying the 'full weft' setting when attending to the lush carpets of the den. I found some dander there.

I have only listened to two songs in my entire life. One was an aria by Wagner that I played compulsively from the ages of 19 to 27 at least 60 times a day until the local townsfolk drove me from my dwelling using rudimentary pitchforks and blazing torches. The other was Dido. Both appalled me to the point of paralysis. Every quaver was like a brickbat against my soul. Music is futile and malicious. So please, if you require entertainment while organizing the recycling, refrain from the 'pop radio' I was affronted by recently. May I recommend the recitation of some sharp verse. Perhaps by Goethe. Or Schiller. Or Shel Silverstein at a push.

The situation regarding spoons remains unchanged. If I see one, I will kill it.

That is all. Do not fail to think that you are not the finest woman I have ever met. You are. And I am including on this list my mother and the wife of Brad Dourif (the second wife, not the one with the lip thing). Thank you for listening and sorry if parts of this note were smudged. I have been weeping.

Your money is under the guillotine.

Herzog.

***

From the sublimely droll to the boringly practical:

Tomorrow, all being well (which it may not be as I am off to London for some frolics) I shall put up a free 25 minute webinar on copywriting to sell to businesses.

You may find it helpful.

But then again, you may not.

They don't make them like this any more; a flotilla of freebies; and some eager beavers

My friend Andy Owen sent me this. This man had the car for 82 years, and died at 102.

Something to aim for.

Andy said “They certainly don't make them like that any more.”

I heartily concur. I had a Rolls for about ten years. It was bloody useless. Now BMW owns the firm, I think. I am sure the cars are reliable but God, what great big ugly things they are!

That car has 1,070,000 miles on it, still runs like a Swiss watch, is dead silent at any speed and is in perfect cosmetic condition.

I wish I could say the same.

It is now in a museum. I have no desire to end up like that.

***

But enough of this frivolity. I am putting together a series of free seminars or webinars or whatever you like to call them.

At the weekend I recorded one about copy for business to business, which people keep asking me about.

I didn't like the way it was edited: made me look even more like a Galapagos tortoise than usual, so Chloe is re-doing it.

That will be up next week, and I have two more lined up. One on copywriting for charity, and one I found lurking on my computer called "The 10 best ads of the last 10 years."

But tonight at 2000hrs (UK Time - GMT+1) I shall be interviewing Daniel Levis, who is one of the best copywriters I know, and one of the few whose stuff I read.

He has made some very sweeping claims about the power of storytelling. Can it really overcome people's reluctance to pay you decent money? Will it really strengthen the bond between you and your customers? Does it really "vaporize buyer resistance"?

He makes one very interesting point: 

Doubling, tripling, or even quadrupling your profit margins actually has nothing to do with your product at all.

It's not about products. It's not what your products do that makes people value them.

Does a Rolex watch tell time 150 times better than a Timex? 

Well, you can join us if you follow this link.

***

Now that we've mentioned tortoises, how about beavers? 

Yesterday a kind reader bought me lunch. He said, "I know I can't afford your fees".

I replied, "I have a suggestion. I have three copywriters I have been training. If you like I will give one of them the job, and I will supervise, edit, rewrite and so on. I am quite good at that."

Those are the eager beavers.

The truth is, they usually come with ideas I never would have thought of. The youngest is incredibly fast. The oldest is very experienced - he's worked successfully as marketing director of a firm.

So there you are. 

Bird on the cheap. 

Kindly note that I resisted any puns at that point.

I guess you could run a worse ad - but it would be hard

You might think that if there were one kind of advertiser really concerned about not wasting money it would be those involved with money.

But if ever I want to marvel at the largest possible quantity of bad, clueless, ugly advertising in one place I turn to "Money Week".

There, without fail you will see God alone knows how many thousands pissed away by people who should know better.

I featured this ad as a typical example in my recent Bristol copy day.

Nobody in the audience commented, nor did I notice, that the man leaping up is Jose Mourinho.

So here we have  case of stupidity redoubled.

Not just a bad ad with a silly headline and copy carefully reversed out to be hard to read.  It's a  silly picture, too.

Amazingly, when people see football being played they think an ad must be about football. But to compound the folly, can you imagine how much these witless squanderbugs must have paid to get The Special One?

I know he makes a lot of money. But ask yourself, even if the ad were not so bad: is a football manager an investment expert?

For that matter I have long wondered what tortuous logic led somebody at Santander to portray Lewis Hamilton as your best guide to where to bank.

But I always wonder how many millions of investors' good money is frittered away on this kind of bilge.

Is it entirely beyond the realms of reason for those who commission it, those who create it and those who approve it to acquaint themselves, however slightly, with the kindergarten basics of advertising?

Pushing water uphill:: the Portas delusion; why everything "they" tell you is wrong; and the Gospel of Less

Mark Twain said the principal task of each new administration is to make the last one look good.

But that's enough about Mr. Cameron. Let us turn instead - if we can without laughing  - to his shopping "Czar" Mary Portas. She is the woman who calls herself the Queen of Shops - the one who's going to "regenerate the high street", remember?

Since this is impossible she has written a report. Like all these wretched people she has a vision. The vision will not help, because she cannot wave a wand and make three things vanish. They are the Internet, shopping malls and supermarkets.

I too have a vision, part of which came to me yesterday when I was walking down School Road - the high street in Sale, Manchester where I lived as a child. I remember walking down there on a sunny day, holding my mother's hand. I must have been about five. 

Just past the station the road becomes Northenden Road - and 30 yards on there's a Wetherspoon's pub, the J. P. Joule. If you ever want to see a heart-warming selection of eager strumpets go there on a Thursday night. But I digress, because in the pub are old photographs showing Sale before it was decreed that shopping is good for you.

You'd never believe it, but there were far fewer shops. People used to live in houses on each side of these streets, and there was a rather agreeable serenity as a result. I do not think it will be a national disaster if this happens again.

Nor do I think it will be a disaster if people decide there is something better in life than working harder and harder in boring jobs to make more money to buy stuff you can probably manage without.

If I were a preacher I would preach the Gospel of Less.

I think we need fewer laws - the ones we have had for centuries if carefully applied will do just fine. I think we need less government and fewer ministers with silly titles like Minister for Sport and Minister for Culture. Shakespeare, Dickens and Stanley Matthews did just fine without some ass presiding.

We need fewer enquiries, committees, consultants and money wasted by government. Which reminds me: we would get by with fewer broken promises from people like Cameron - sorry to mention him again, but he is such fraud.

I am sure we need less tax and lower top rates. But equally sure that my old boss Martin Sorrell doesn't really need over £16 million a year to rub along.

I also keep thinking it must be possible to reorganise one thing that seems insane. One part of the nation is working like mad in what they used to call private enterprise to pay the other half who work in what they call the public sector.

Many of these people hate their jobs. Many of the jobs involve managing all the other needless stuff that's been foisted on us. Take our tax system. Did you know it's the most complicated in the world? An entire department is devoted to explaining it. Can working at something so stupid be satisfying in any way?

Maybe people trapped in such ghastly jobs would like to migrate to our side of the fence. There would be fewer of them to pay and more doing useful stuff - so we would all have to work far less.

It makes sense to me, but there you are.

Who first said "less is more"?

To my surprise I see the poet Browning wrote it in a poem about the painter Andrea del Sarto.

But I bet someone in Greece said it earlier.