Russell Davies

that's influence at Media 360

Jim Hytner of Barclay's is talking now. Easily the most engaging speaker so far, perhaps he's got interesting stuff to say, talking about all the instore stuff they've been doing. (I think a lot of it done by Vital. ) NDG has been talking about this stuff a bit, and while some of it's mixed I think it's a decent step forward for a bank. (Not yet, Ziba and Umpqua, but a really nice start.)

And he's using Adam Morgan's challenger brand stuff to talk about how they've changed the way they do everything. Now, that's being an influential planner. I don't know if Barclay's paid Adam for any consultancy, but they should.

(Still loving, Spell with Flickr)

sun, sand, R.O.I.

I have to say, reservations about the actual conference room aside, this is a brilliant place to have a conference. (Though I imagine it's pricey). The hotel people are very nice and very efficient, as are the Haymarket people. And it's a long way from the London media village which is refreshing; and eliminates the people who aren't that committed. And, for those who are interested (and many media 1.0 people are) you can play golf.

And during lunch (when you're supposed to be networking) you can nip down to St. Andrews, which is lovely, and have a haggis roll on the beach. As I did with Anne, Arthur and J'onn J'onzz.

anti-creative spaces

I'm at the Media Week Media360 conference in St. Andrews. They offered me a gratis ticket and though it's not really core to my job I love hearing/talking about media so I thought I'd take a couple of days holiday and come up. And Anne and Arthur have come too.

The hotel is grand, (our room is bigger than our flat), the organisers have been very efficient and very kind and the speaker-list looks interesting.

And then you walk into the actual conference room and it looks like this. God, it's depressing. Exactly the same sort of room as every other conference. Same chairs. Same tablecloths. Same bottles of mineral water and mint imperials.

No natural light, no air, no atmosphere.

I know there are all sorts of logistical issues with rooms like this, they have to be flexible, controllable blah blah blah but surely there must be a better way. This is a new hotel, they could have thought harder about this, created a room that at least felt like you were somewhere specific. Or somewhere that stimulated some thought or excitement or stimulation.

There's all this gorgeous scenery outside, could we perhaps have a hint of that?

And I suspect that I'm the only person blogging in here. I don't see any other laptops. But maybe they're all doing it via neural implants.

lunch through a child's eyes

Sorry, this post is a bit sappy. Normal cynicism will be restored as soon as possible.

One advantage of working close to home is that every now and then Anne or I can take Arthur out for lunch from school. Of course I'd never actually done it before today, but what a laugh it was.

He said he wanted to go to 'the place where they have everything' which stumped me for a bit, until Anne said he meant the food court at the Plaza on Oxford Street. Of course, that's what a food court is, not a dumping ground for every global food franchise, it's the place where they have everything.

Walking along Oxford Street was brilliant too.

He took a leaflet/flyer from every leaflet/flyer person we passed becuase he said how boring it must be standing there, with people not taking your stuff. Which is true. And he made each one of them smile. As an adult you're trained to avoid eye contact, stay in your bubble, ignore the streets incase they're troubling. Not a five year-old. Not Arthur. He walks around with his eyes, head and heart wide open.

Told you it was sappy.

funky lunch

I just had lunch with Funky Dave. At the Breakfast Club. What a nice and interesting man.

idle moment from the archives

I was touring the Davies archives the other day (ie I was looking under the bed) and I found this old copy  of The Idler from 1994. And then I remembered I'd written an article for it - click on the above to read it. It's rather quaint. Very cliched view of the web, you could tell I'd not lived in the States yet. What dates it even more is that on the next page there was a piece from Ivan Pope explaining things like what a URL is.

when you're five...

There's nothing better than standing on posts.

Except maybe hide and seek.

Proper British miscommunication - me and HP sauce

So here’s a story about brands, blogging and PR people not really ‘getting it’. (While still being quite nice and quite smart.)

As many of you may know I have a couple of blogs about cafes. And I’ve written a book about cafes. And in there I talk rather fulsomely about HP Sauce. Which is, in my opinion, the king of sauces.

A couple of  weeks ago someone from a PR company contacted me and said that HP are thinking about doing a PR stunt about saving the proper British cafe from decline and fighting back against the Americanisation of the High Street and all that, and would I like to be their spokesman and publicise it on my blogs.

I eventually said no. For various reasons, discussed below. But I must confess to hanging on to see how much they would pay.

Which has led to all kinds of debate (in my head, nowhere else really) and confusion about the value of blogs, the relationships between what I do here and the commercial world and how irritating the average PR stunt is.

I don’t have a coherent argument to make here but some of the things that crossed my mind are these:

1. If they’d bothered to read the book or the blog they’d know that I don’t necessarily believe that cafes are in decline and I’m not against Starbucks or all those latte based places. Some cafes are going (especially the older style formica palaces, often because formica has a limited shelf-life, which is a shame, but is also how business works and cafes are, above all, businesses). But cafes are born every day too. I’ve yet to see any compelling evidence that there are fewer independent cafes now than there were 10 years ago.

2. When I raised these doubts about the basis for their campaign I was told they’d done online research (which sounded like they’d done an poll asking 50 people if they thought cafes were in decline). And they’d done ‘desktop research’ – saying ‘desktop’ like it was some special sort of research which only yields the truth rather than just typing the words ‘cafe’ and ‘decline’ into Google and Lexis/Nexis.

3. I absolutely hate this kind of faux-research nonsense. PR companies have learned that they can guff up some research to say anything they want to and that journalists are too lazy or ignorant to question the basis of that research. So you’ll get a quick fun item on the news based ‘research’ but it’ll be completely meaningless. Which undermines anyone who actually does some proper research.

4. I have to say though, I’m behind them doing a campaign on behalf of British cafes. I think that’s a good idea. If they’d just asked me to stick a link of the site and left it at that, I probably would have done. Though their idea of giving £5k to a winning cafe seems pretty cheapskate. That’s not going to keep the wolf from the door.

5. If HP/their PR company had done any homework they’d have realised that I love HP, love cafes, love many of the things they’ve done (like the Paul Smith limited edition sauce) and I spend my life thinking about brands and communications – and giving lots of that thinking away for free on this blog. Would it not have made sense for them to ask me what I thought they should do online? I’m probably just being arrogant about that but it might have been a good idea.

6. But I’m not a saint, I’d have put all these quibbles aside, and would have lived with it if they’d offered me enough money to be the spokesperson and do the link and stuff. Typepad have to be paid every month. But the fee they offered was just silly. Again, I don’t think I’m being arrogant, but I think I’ve built some real value in eggbaconchipsandbeans.com and I don’t think I should sell that cheaply. I might give it away, but I’m not going to sell it cheaply.

7. The PR bloke who called me wasn’t stupid or bad. He seemed smart and nice, if a little too busy and glib but I don’t get the impression that he understood the dynamics of blogging. I think maybe he thought there was some kind of lower threshold of caring with a blogger because I’m not a real journalist or author. Wheras I think the threshold is often higher, because this isn’t just a job, this is a passion (well, maybe passion is too much).

8. They told me this campaign was going to break last week, but I’ve been googling “proper British” and HP sauce and I’ve not found much, just the ad they did earlier in the year. (Quite good, filmed at the S+M cafe Ladbroke Grove, I think). Maybe they’re not going to do it. But it led me to the official HP site, which made me realise, for all their PR and sauce smarts, maybe they’re not that up on the live, personal nature of the blogosphere.

Anyway, thoughts anyone? Has anyone heard of this campaign? Anyone think I should have done it?

russell's rabbit

Which of us hasn't realised that the missing link in their life is a wifi-enabled rabbit? Well, my life is now complete. This rabbit arrived a few weeks ago and I've been trying to get it to do various things on and off since then. It's French technology so it's, well, quirky. I love it but I suspect Nabaztag might meet with the same global success as Minitel.

So far I've got it to:

1. Tell me the time every hour (well, about 8 minutes after the hour, it's French)
2. Tell me when I've got an email
3. Flash a bit, make some funny noises
4. Read messages out that I type into my computer. Sometimes startling Anne when it reads them out after I've left for work

But I've completely failed to get it to read RSS feeds like it's supposed to. Or do Tai Chi. But it's got something of the future about it. I'm going to persevere with it, because

1. It's important to support and explore technological artefacts that aren't products of Japan or California. Its Frenchness is part of its charm, its provenance, its quirks are part of the point.

2. Information, communication has to get out of computers and into objects if it's going to be any use. Ambient devices aren't getting to Europe quick enough for me to play with, so the rabbit it is.

If you're a fellow rabbit owner send me a message - the 'pseudo' (which seems to be the French equivalent of username, perfect) is archibaldleach. And his email address is archibald at russelldavies.com

youth marketing

Someone rang me today to ask me to speak at a youth marketing thing.

I probably sounded a little bit odd to them because while talking I was trying not to laugh at my own ridiculousness.

While getting their call I was uploading photos from my holiday, including the one above which, for me, defines holiday happiness - a vintage Roberts radio (Radio 4, of course), a nice cup of tea, a hot-cross bun and a large-print detective novel (my eyes aren't what they were).

Surely, I have no business talking about youth marketing. I'm patently a middle-aged fuddy duddy.

And yet, and yet, I do know a bit about youth marketing. And the fact that I can like all the above and still be OK at talking to 'young people' probably says something about the changing face of youth. Or maybe it just says I should start thinking about 'greys'.