4 Fuks Saké

"Do Me A Favour Instagram. Oh, You Have."

5 times a week I'll use the phrase 'Oh for fuck's sake." It's been eight months since I've done that and then felt compelled to write something on my blog with the same name. It's Instagram again.

I refer you to my April post, about Silicon Valley entrepreneurs' ingenuity at duping people who wear expensive trainers for their own commercial gain. This week, they've said they're going to sell photos of your kids to McDonalds, who'll in turn advertise Big Macs. That's what I've understood it to be anyway. 

Four things.

1. This bloke nails it, citing this collective sense of self-delusion. Search #coffee and look: there's your shot of a latte, filtered in Hudson, alongside 450,000 others. 

2. Your photo was rubbish. Instagram made it look nicer, so much so, that you felt compelled to share it with others. As far as I'm aware, you haven't paid them since you opened your account.

3. Instagram have been stupid. The more avid a user of social media you are, the greater your propensity to attention seek. So attention seekers (their core audience) pour through social T&Cs with the meticulousness of a Manhattan lawyer. They do it for their own benefit, not the crowd. I don't believe Facebook and Instagram want to sell pictures of my kids to Exxon, nor do I think lawyers will allow them to. If they can, who's the bell end for putting them there in the first place? Howevere, if they want to sell pictures of my uncooked ribeyes or empty espresso cups, that's a fair deal for me.

4. If you don't like it, vote with your feet. Go to Flickr's new app or the next photo sharing network you've yet to hear of. They'll end up doing the same thing to you.

"Hey Guys, I'm A Bit Uncomfortable You Made A $1bn. Let's Have A Diet Coke And Talk."

I've held an opinion for a while that a large proportion of people working in social media had sand kicked in their faces at school. Technology has always been 'nerdy' and there is a revelling in the outsider term 'geek.' Naturally, social media in its infant years attracted the types who worked their way up from Star Wars figures through to circuit boards. 

Woe betide anyone that leaves the geek crowd and gets accepted by the in crowd. Backs will be turned.  

Like Instagram. They had the audacity to take $1bn off Facebook. They have "sold out."  People get fucked off and talk of betrayal. The issue seems to be that:

a) They took money off the big enemy, Facebook.

b) That Instagram made the user feel special and important, and now they don't.

I would suggest the following.

1. People come up with ideas and go to work to try and make money. That includes the founders of Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, and whatever a couple of people in San Francisco are working on right now, that we'll fall in love with later this year or early next.

2. People with relaxed dress codes, white teeth, and nice smiles from California, are adept at making geeks feel special. Like the Instagram "guys" pictured. Wouldn't you just love to have a Diet Coke with them? They give them things to play with. Coax personal information out of them to make money, and then persuade them to promote the whole process.

3. If someone makes $1bn out of something like nice pictures of babies, cats and food - rather than oil or guns, then that's a good thing. 

4. If you are uncomfortable with Instagram making money in the social media industry, stop doing it yourself. Stop walking into publications and/or businesses asking for much smaller amounts of money to advise on how to use Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest etc...to make money. 

5. If you don't like Facebook, delete your account.

Congratulations to Instagram. I love your product, I love your work, and I'm glad you're making money. As Paul Carr, said "They didn't sell out, they just sold. They're a company, not the fucking Rolling Stones."

 

Tesco. Fat And Knackered.

I think they’re in trouble. Well, I say trouble. Tesco announced profits of £3.7bn in the UK this morning so they’re hardly in shit. More than we made last year. 

That said, shareholders aren’t going to take too kindly to days when the share price drops 16%.

The headlines say the supermarket's Christmas campaign failed to entice shoppers into store. This won't be a marketing issue, but an operational one. This is a company that is massive, bloated and listless. Its non-food businesses have done bonkers numbers in the last few years, and now occupy enormous acres of floor space. The shrinking core food business retracts apologetically, literally in front of the eyes of customers.

Its massive bloatedness and no doubt hideous bureaucracy, will be hampering clear thinking and communication. Its nearest and dearest rivals remain crystal in the conscious of the public. ASDA – price. Sainsbury’s – value. Waitrose – posh. Lidl/ALDI – cheap. Tesco? Huge and "I don’t know where everything is."

For a large of the population that’s the level of decision-making as the keys go into the ignition.

You've got to feel for CEO, Philip Clarke - the Wilf McGuinness to Sir Terry Leahy's Matt Busby. They’ve got a few issues in there, and they're not going to be fixed in a quarter. 

Pic: MrLomo/Flickr

Democracy. Rubbish Commercially.

Ever so slightly nauseated this week by The Guardian's decision to publish its newslist. "You can help us make the news." "Have your say." All that bullshit. It's the sort of move that grants some swooning at a Haymarket conference with words like "progressive," "open" and "bold experiment," bandied around.

I love The Guardian and its variety of digital and paper products. I'm 38 years old, work in something media related and crucially, know who Korn are. On that basis, it's the only paper I'm allowed to buy. The only downside to The Guardian unfortunately is that for all its cleverness - the bastard hemorrhages money.

If you want to make money one day (retain readership, properly monetise that large global audience etc) don't cheapen the product. Handing the editorship of the paper over to bored people in train carriages with smartphones seems counter to what you ought to be paying for. I'd like to hand my money over to an editor, who selects some great writing and presents it to me in a nice typeface on a couple of screens and on paper. I'm not giving it to the bloke sat next to me.

Dennis Wise Up

"We haven't considered making them a big offer because we believe that they are fans of Chelsea Football Club and want to do what's best for Chelsea Football Club and we've offered them a couple of things relating to their role as a fan." Bruce Buck, Chairman, Chelsea FC. 

So concludes one of the most objectionable, offensive and idiotic quotes from a football businessman since...er...since probably Garry Cook tried to pin the cancer gag on the IT guy.

Nearly 20 years ago Chelsea were shit, playing in front of 20,000 South/South West Londoners. Today, visiting fans to a packed Stamford Bridge sing the simple song: "Where were you when you were shit?" Answer: anywhere but there. 

Except for a minority. A minority were actually there when they were shit, and some organised themselves to buy the freehold to keep football in SW6. Nice little patch that for property developers, after all. You could imagine a hotel there, maybe some restaurants. Oh, hold on. 

Since then, a lot of people have got rich at Chelsea. Players. Managers. Sacked managers. Peter Kenyon. Marco Pierre White. The hotel people. A bunch of other knobheads.

A lot of people have got poorer at Chelsea. The fans. Football is more expensive than it used to be, but the game is the same.

Football is big business as Buck, Richard Scudamore are keen to tell the FT and Asian-based sponsors. Fans become a customer database. The club becomes a vehicle to talk to a global market. Fans will stay in line of course, do what they're told, they'll be 'loyal.' Clubs beseech them to be 'true fans.'

Hypocrisy, insensitivity and ignorance knows no bounds in football. CPO: you're part of the business not the football. Tell Buck to do one and pay the market rate. You deserve recognition financially for the commercial value of your contribution.

Yours,

A QPR fan.

This Is The Self-Delusional Society

 
Is Bryan Ferry alive or just a high res jpg?

Ferry - to whom you can add Jo Wood, Ed Vaizey, Tamara Mellon, Time, CNN, airline gold cards, and the phrase "I just can't live without my iPod Nano" - all operate in the parallel universe that is business travel lifestyle. It's a place that has no relation with reality. It is a phrase that is the definition of an oxymoron.

Travelling on Eurostar this evening, I look at my bag on the rack and have to ask myself the uncomfortable question - why have I got a Cathay Pacific gold luggage tag attached to it? I haven't lived in Hong Kong for four years. I'm clearly no longer 'gold.' Marcus Wareing's face smiles benignly at me from the cover of Metropolitan magazine. Looks interesting - 'I wonder what his latest "pioneering restaurant venture," will be?' Or do I. Do I fuck in fact. Marcus sorry pal, off to Nando's with the kids on Saturday. And actually I've no idea who you are.  

Amongst all this, it's not abundantly clear that any woman has ever travelled. Boys collect football stickers, then they get a career and collect air miles. It's only men who wear airline luggage tags on their business. It's only men who absorb all this then subsequently have mid life crises. It's probably the reason Tiger Woods lost it - believed his own Accenture airport billboards.

Publishers - there is a gap here for someone to fill. I give you some leeway - you can create an iPad version if you like. But how about a title that is more reflective of the reality?

Boredom. Poor phone receptions. Dinners for one. Dinners with men you don't know very well. Propositions at 2am next to lifts. Unnecessary or unwanted drinking. The darkness behind a hotel room door. 

Probably not the most uplifting of reads - but then again, I enjoyed Nil By Mouth. 

What Makes Good Content?

Next Thursday I have a slot on a meeting agenda. I am asked to give an opinion on what makes good social media content.

The simple answer as far as I can see is this. The people decide  - not a bloke sat a desk in London. 

So please, help me answer the question - 'What Makes Good Content?'

Send me a picture. A slide. A video. A book. One word. 

I will credit every entry, and I will send out the finished document.

Thank you for thinking about it. 

This idea is stolen from Neil Perkin, who did a similar thing once before.

I'm here or at:

jimd@cakegroup.com

@jimdowling

i Is Feeling Slightly Patronised. You?

A few years back, I remember a pretty senior client being damned by one of his colleagues. "Ah 'xxxx.' He is an ocean wide but an inch deep." He sprung to mind this morning when I spent 20p on i, the newspaper "designed for people with busy, modern lives."

The product itself reeks so much of a supercilious focus group, you can smell the lukewarm samosas.

Indulging in uncomfortable business small talk, we invariably ask 'how's business?' The guaranteed answer is always the same. "Busy." (Focus group = tick, they're busy).

It's only after the meeting, and several more, plus a few pints one night that those same people admit that they watch X Factor and quite like Aiden. You don't get that insight in a one hour focus group of showboating strangers. The result - i is a smartly designed Metro without the pictures of Lily Allen. And you have to pay for it.

Turn to Kelner's opening editorial and the insecure get more reassurance. i is "the perfect way for an intelligent person to start the day...at a more affordable price than a cappuccino."

I prefer to start my day with a double espresso. It delivers. It doesn't fanny about. And that's the issue.

If I'm busy, am I better to read, think and learn from 2 or 3 pieces of quality writing in the morning? From learning and engaging in a piece, we absorb and think. From understanding comes knowledge, ideas, insight and ultimately, output. Sounds pompous but I think that's true. 

It's tempting though to spend 20p, skim read and bullshit your way through til 6 o'clock. Worked for client xxxx and a load more I've met since.  

Walkman, b. February 2, 1983. d. today, 2010.

February 2, 1983. My 10th birthday and arguably the greatest birthday present of my life. My parents - still freshly divorced - knew they had to make Christmas and birthday count. The early to mid 80s boom in consumer spending allied to a messy separation was the perfect storm. 

And so it was, I unwrapped the paper, genuinely oblivious to what lay beneath. The paper peeled back and a silver and blue box marked Panasonic winked at me. Inside, the main body of the product was hugged by a pair of headphones with blue foam. I hadn't asked for it - but my parents had second guessed me. I opened it up and inserted the Ever Ready batteries. We had a student lodger - Nick Carter, 9 years my senior. He handed me a TDK - C90 of Duran Duran's 'Rio,' nodded sagely, and said, "try this."

I put the headphones on, pressed the play button in hard, and the opening swooshing sounds of the title track kicked in. In stereo. I'd never heard anything like it in my life. The future had arrived. 

The Sony Walkman. What a brand. What a monumental fuck up. 

Cultural Intelligence

I once wrote a small book on the nuances of global culture and their effects on communications campaign. It's "How To Create Global Talkability," and you're free to download here. This is from The Poke is equally as insightful - Europe, as viewed by Americans.