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July 2009 Blog Archive
31 July 2009 Out with the Old...
Considering that I spend a large portion of my working week helping clients to effectively communicate change to their audiences, I am notoriously bad at practicing what I preach. Over the last month I have got lots of new things and am not coping well with the changes they bring…yet! My new things include:
- A new pair of glasses which are so strong that I feel like I am constantly about to topple over. Another problematic side effect of this new-found ‘super-sight’ is reaching for things which I think are nearer than they actually are thus looking like I have some weird spasm where I end up slapping things.
- A new iPhone, which isn’t properly working yet so I am carting two phones around with me everywhere I go. I am worried about the changeover, I think I am going to miss my Blackberry.
- A new house. If you think I am suffering with adapting to the other two items, this is far bigger. Literally. I spend my whole time running up and down stairs (3 flights of them!) trying to remember where I have put my iPhone, glasses, etc.
Attempting to type in my new glasses!
One thing I do wish would change is Sven Goran Eriksson’s sheer determination to live in England no matter what. Every time I think we have finally got rid of this weedy, mono-drone little man, who somehow women find irresistible (not me I hasten to add), he pops up somewhere else. Like a mole, he has this time managed to burrow from Mexico to Nottingham County to fill the ever-famous role of ‘Director of Football’. Whatever that means!
Speaking of burrowing, or rather using ready-built tunnels, I couldn’t help but have a little giggle yesterday when I heard about the ‘Killer Siberian Chipmunk’ (yes, chipmunk!) that had managed to travel down the Channel Tunnel from France to end up terrorizing a young mum from Wolverhampton. The woman in question is apparently so scared that she has not been able to go outside for a cigarette since, but it does beg the question, who has a sofa in their garden?! It did make me wonder though how streetwise some animals are getting. I have seen many a fox casually strolling down the suburban streets of Manchester and always have to resist the urge to ask, “Is you the fox?”
The killer chipmunk story did make me recall another funny story that I read several years ago, but which has always stuck in my mind due to its sheer randomness, here is an excerpt from this article: “ Six years ago Salisbury magistrates fined Mr Holme £1,050, plus £250 costs, for attempting to preach to a local housing estate from a motorised hang-glider equipped with a megaphone. The case was brought by the Civil Aviation Authority, who claimed he had been flying too close to a populated area, even though his ill-starred flight was at times barely 6ft off the ground.
After his 1998 flight, which narrowly missed bird tables, trees and an electrified fence, Mr Holme said: “I thought that maybe if they heard this voice booming out from the sky, they would think it was God. I wanted to get through to kids on council estates, and I needed some cred.”
Nuff said.
Finally, if, like me, you were hooked on the BBC2 programme ‘On Thin Ice’ you will share the same admiration of Ben Fogle, James Cracknell & Ed Coates that I have. Their race to the South Pole was fantastic television; it was an incredible journey and an amazing personal achievement. Well done lads!
Also, Happy Birthday to my sister Sophie who has successfully fought off swine flu to reach the grand old age of 25 today!
24 July 2009 Half the world away...
Those who keep up to date with the Rapport news stories will know that Chris has been in shanghai this week. Visa issues on his flight there meant he missed he longest solar eclipse of the 21 century but all was not lost as he saw Lily Allen in the departure lounge - every cloud! For a country we consider quite developed and in many ways one which is slowly developing a certain 'western' culture, Chris came across a few 'interesting' aspects to Chinese life during his stay. It is thought that there is a force of over £30,000 'internet police' monitoring the web in China who will erase any content they deem illegal within minutes and the country contains more than imprisoned journalists than anywhere else in the world. Chris found he couldn't access any social networking site - meaning his 'tweets' had to come via the Rapport Office! The word Twitter wasn't even allowed to be sent out in an email so he had to adapt it to 'Tw00ter'! For special occasions, such as presidential interviews and the Beijing Olympics, some of the internet blocks have been lifted for a short time, but unfortunately it appears Chris business trip was not special enough! Another interesting part of Shanghai life Chris found out was that the city has lifted its 30 year old-one-child policy to certain parts of society in the city, it is thought this is to balance the ever-growing over 80 population.
Some might say that having a web address which is extremely similar to one of the most popular sites in the world would be a bonus; you would get alot of traffic through your website (albeit it by accident, which is how I came across it!) and all publicity is good publicity. This isn't the case for the Steve Crawford who, five years ago, developed software to help the blind use computers more easily, he called the software the "Talking, Wordprocesser, Internet, Typing Tutor, Email Resource"- not the catchiest title, so Steve used the acronym 'Twitter' and set up the domain name www.twitter.co.uk to help promote his product. The promotion didn't go too well and the project was put on the backburner, but the domain name remained, then a few years later Jack Dorsey develpoed a new kind of "Twitter"...
Due to a fundamental flaw in the registering process to Twitter it is possible for new users to give out their Twitter address as ??@twitter.co.uk instead of ??@twitter.com meaning that everytime one of these people gets a new 'follower' an email is send to Steve at twitter.co.uk notifying him. The Guardian caught wind of this and published an article, which finally caused Twitter to take action and the problem was solved...for 4 days. Not one to let an opportunity pass him by, Steve is now using his site for people to advertise on and donate to Twitter, if you ask me this wouldn't this be the perfect time for him to promote his original product? Its worth a look though: www.twitter.co.uk
17 July 2009 What's in a name/title?
Variety is the spice of life and all that, so this week we all got a little taste of what it would be like if we were high-flying advertising execs, we had to come up with a print advertisement to feature in a business to business magazine, although the tasks was mainly undertaken by our (highly qualified) design department, the rest of us couldn't resist a go at copy-writing and as it turns out its quite hard! A witty pun or cheeky innuendo apparently just won't cut it in this cut-throat industry, so here is Paul's guide to a successful advertisement:
- MUST contain the product name
- MUST explain why buyer would want the product (ie. the promise!)
- MUST appeal to target audience
- MUST get across the key messages
- MUST contain the words 'reliable' and 'affordable' (granted this may have just been for this particular client but still...)
And all this has to be done within in a snappy, eye catching headline and support copy, so as you can imagine all this didn't leave us much room for 'clever' word play; think I'll stick to writing my blog!
While all this was going on Chris was situated on the other side of the world in Abu Dhabi on 'business', learning (or should that be marveling at) the local customs. We were all aware that men and women are treated differently in the middle east, however Chris was lucky enough to see a traditional wedding, and it seems even at this ceremony they men and women are segregated. We are still unsure as to how the man and women actually marry without spending the day together and Chris admitted how difficult he thinks it would be to adapt to the customs over there, although the weekend does start on Friday, I am sure I would be able to adapt to that.
After ALOT of drama and 9 months of searching, panicking, worrying, imagining, visiting and finally signing, good luck and well done to Abi who has finally moved house! Perfect timing for the summer and she even has remote control blackout blinds for the sky light - what more could you want?
13 July 2009
Mission Impossible 4: Getting a New Passport
(Working Title)
As the holiday season is upon us I thought I would keep things topical. I was unfortunate enough to have my passport 'stolen' in Ibiza (to be fair it could have been lost as I did have to pack for the airport during a blackout so couldn't actually see where anything was!). I have since managed without one for a year, until I decided I might quite like to leave the UK this summer. However it does beg the question, is a week in Greece worth it?
My ordeal began last Friday when I queued for 45 mins in the post office just to pick up the form and, after informing the cashier I had 'lost' my previous passport, I was handed an extra 2 forms, on top of the original one to fill in - my dreams of a stress-free weekend dwindled away... By Monday I was feeling confident that I had completed the form to the best of my ability (despite not knowing the issue dates and passport numbers of all my previous passports and that of my entire family), now all I had to do was find someone' of standing in the community' who had known me for 2 years to be my counter-signatory. The only problem now was that this lucky person had to handily happen to have their passport on them at the time in order to supply me with their number also!
This done, on Tuesday I headed back to the Post Office, completed form in hand, to take full advantage of their 'check before you send' service. On this occasion I was pleased to find no queue. It seemed that although the sign on the side claimed it was 'passport picture approved,' the photo booth (positioned on the ground floor of Piccadilly Station) actually created a strange grey shadow behind my head which, I was told by the man in the post office, deemed my picture "unsuitable". Further to this an insignificant 'date error' on one of my forms meant that they would not stamp it so i would have to fill the whole thing out again. I went back to work to try to correct the 'date error' thinking I would risk sending the weird 'grey shadow' picture anyway. Upon changing the 9 to an 8 on the 'date error', I took the form back all ready to send, this time queued for 25mins, only to be told it could not be sent as it was too obvious that i had tried to correct said 'date error'.
Due to work commitments I was unable to have my passport pictures taken again until Friday when I took a trip to a much more reliable photo booth in Boots, Sheffield. Here I accidently smiled with my mouth open in one set of pictures (not sure why I was still smiling at this point) so reluctantly put in another £4 (please note I had now spent £12) and was thankfully pleased with second attempt. I returned to Manchester and filled in the three forms all over again, again having to find a person with passport handy to counter-sign. I then set back off for the Post Office.
Things started well as there was, again, no queue, however this time I was told that my form may be sent back as my hair was too big... although I had positioned my face perfectly in the 'oval' in the photo booth, unfortunately this meant that the top of my hair was slightly out of shot, we all know how important the top of a hair style is for facial recognition.
At this point I politely told the cashier to send the form anyway, but to round my passport trauma off when I came to pay I realised that because of the delay I had missed the deadline and the government had upped the fee by £5.50!
My advice? never lose your passport, or maybe just don't try to pack in the pitch black!
3 July 2009 Game, Set and Match!
What a week it’s been, between this tropical heat (I’m not complaining), Andy Murray (I’m loving his steely determination), the unfolding of the whole Michael Jackson saga and Brian O’Driscoll missing out on his 100th Lions cap due to injury (gutted for you mate). I also have to thank Abi for introducing me to Iced Macchiatos with caramel (I know… I’m probably the last person on the planet to have had one!!)
Personally, I’m feeling sad about the death of Farrah Fawcett at 62. For those of you old enough to remember (must have been the repeats I remember!!!) Farrah was one of the original and very gorgeous Charlies Angels and at the time was responsible for singlehandedly bringing the male population to their knees. She tragically died of cancer but unfortunately any tributes to her were totally smothered by the news of Michael Jackson’s death. I would just like to say a big thank you to Farrah for raising the profile of this horrible disease and most importantly the need for better cancer screening.
Now on to happier things... the heatwave has been a great excuse for us girls to have a shop (as if we need one!!). The fact that the last two summers have been non-existent has mean’t that any summer clothes that we did have are now very clearly de-funct (or in my case a bit tight!!). The sales have started, and the battle (a.k.a. bargain hunting!!) has commenced in war-torn ‘Pri-armani’. May the best girl win!! We’ll keep you posted on our battle finds. Whilst on the subject of fashion, what’s going on at Wimbledon with Ferderer’s and Sharapova’s military jackets and Serena’s trenchcoat - jackets in this weather, someone needs to have a word!! And what about our Georgie Stoop's crimson pants - clearly not her LUCKY pants on this occasion!
Lastly ‘Good Luck’ Andy, we love you!!!
