05 Jan 2009
Well, I must say, I thought that I was ready for pretty much anything the financial marketing world might care to throw at me, but I was a very long way from ready for Iggy Pop as the new TV advertising presenter for Screentrade. You really could have knocked me down with a feather, if you’d kept one from their previous campaigns with the chickens. “No clucking call centres” indeed.
17 Dec 2008
Actually, he’s not a recruit to my club at all. He doesn’t know I exist, and, of course, I don’t actually have a club. But anyone who’s read even a fraction of the outpourings on this blog will know how strongly I believe in the need to communicate about money and financial services in ways that people find interesting and engaging. And judging from his column in last week’s paper (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/13/saturday-ian-jack) the illustrious Guardian journalist Ian Jack agrees with me.
10 Dec 2008
In the last few days the FSA’s interminable Retail Distribution Review process has entered a new phase, with the publication of what I think is its third 200-odd page tome on the subject. Needless to say, it represents a more or less complete change of direction from the last one, which, needless to say, represented a more or less complete change of direction from the one before, but that’s not the aspect that caught my attention.
05 Dec 2008
(Sorry, you’re too young - American nuclear reactor, near-disaster, meltdown narrowly averted, basis of movie The China Syndrome.)
03 Dec 2008
I’ve never understood why the media always present base rate cuts as good news for mortgage borrowers rather than bad news for savers, but in a year when I finally paid off my mortgage and, for pretty much the first time in my life, put some money into a boring old savings account, I’m even more puzzled than ever.
28 Nov 2008
When I’m stuck for a subject for this blog, I can always bang on about a current ad campaign. Well, almost always. Maybe I’m overlooking or underestimating something, but I really can’t think of anything of any interest at all in financial advertising at the moment. And even in the bigger wider world of non-financial advertising, pretty much the only thing anyone is talking about is the return of Lego’s 1981-vintage “kipper” film.Â
27 Nov 2008
We’re working on an interesting pitch at the moment, and having hovered around on the sidelines for a while watching my colleagues come up with ideas I don’t like much, today I decided to pile in myself and write some stuff. And thanks be to God, I’ve come up with a couple of things I quite like.
25 Nov 2008
Tending to believe, as I do, that a problem is a problem and an opportunity is an opportunity, I like the story of the boss who was always delivering this particular cliche to his underlings, until an underling told him one day that he feared the firm was facing a number of insurmountable opportunities. Â
24 Nov 2008
Last time I came up with an analogy for the death and destruction in today’s financial markets, it involved wildebeest and hyenas. I thought it was pretty good, although if I wanted to update it now I’d add an extra paragraph about the way that the wildebeest (banks) are now protected from the hyenas (short-term investors) by a defensive screen of elephants (governments).
11 Nov 2008
As Edwin Starr said, absolutely nothin - or next to nothin, anyway, as far as figuring out how to build financial services brands is concerned.