Thursday, December 28, 2006

Leaving an impression and making a sale

Today I did the sales shopping. With two young children this isn't easy, after several hours and lots of shops it's even harder.

I needed some new jeans so we ended our day in Debenhams sale. I found a few bargains one was a great coat. It should have been £70, but was reduced to £32 and then reduced further to £25. It was a total bargain so I took it to the till.

The assistant scanned my label and £32 came up. I said that the label said that the coat was £25 so the assistant checked with the girl in charge. She said "That's been marked with a red pen, we only use Black, I can sell it at £32 but not at £25."

It was busy, and still a bargain at £32 so I bought it anyway.

Later my wife pointed out that she thought the assistant had inferred that we had tampered with the label, without saying as much.

I'm sure the manager didn't mean any harm, but that perception is there now.

I wonder why with a full shop the manager didn't just sell the coat at the price marked regardless. She would have had a very happy family of customers and not left a bad taste in our mouths.

She was busy, but for the sake of a few quid she could have had a raving fan not just a happy shopper.

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Like a finger pointing to the moon

Finally found the clip of Finger pointing to the Moon, from Enter the Dragon. Priceless.

Bruce Lee Video Clip

This is the best adaptation of a Bruce Lee Clip I've ever seen. Plus it uses Star Wars effects.

This is 70's kid heaven!

Invest in copy

Seth Godin, points to one of the greatest sins in advertising.
  • Just do pretty pictures

People forget the copy. On a bill board, pictures are king, the copy should be minimal (how much can you read at 40mph?)

On press ads and all other handheld print, not forgetting websites. Copy is king all the pretty pictures will get you is two more seconds attention. In that two seconds you need to grip the customer and get them to buy.

Only words can do that. Invest in them and they pay off 100 times.

BBC underestimate cost of translation

A recent report by the BBC into the cost of Translation by the UK Government estimated that they spend £100 Million per year.

The nation gasped, how could they spend all that. Well the nation don't know the half of it.

I work in translation and I recon that the cost is more like £500 Million! It's all hidden costs you see. Translation disappears into Marketing (yes me again), mysterious project costs and a million (500 to be exact) other things.

If only they bought it in a more sensible way and used Translation Memory and Telephone interpreting they'd save a huge amount.

As you'd expect, as Head of Marketing for Applied Language, I've done a bit of work on this already.

Here are the press releases for more information, oh yes and the podcast.