I'm not a follower (or an admirer) of Miss World and all its works but I jolly well hope she wins. As proof of the power of context. We substitute one disgraced beauty queen who has a punch up in the wrong place with one who really knows how to throw a punch.  And as I find myself saying more and more often dear Reader. You really. Couldn't.  Make it up.

Oh and while we're talking about beauty contests here's an excellent one from Saudi Arabia Miss Morals which lets you leave your burkha on. Its a really tough contest - apparently the key thing is showing how well you get on with your Mum

What I also found interesting was the way in which Darwin's obsession with science seemed to eventually cauterise any other ways of knowing which didn't involve scientific proof. His wife remonstrates with him that lots of things are true that can't be proven scientifically. And one point he seems to have got stuck on which is the contradiction between the human brain as something that evolved in order to survive and the ability of the human mind to grasp truth. the one does not equate to the other. A naturally selected brain doesn't necessarily come up with the theory of natural selection and is not able to know whether natural selection is true.  What was so interesting about Nick's talk was discovering in Darwin a human being who became gripped with proving a theory which was around long before he arrived. But which he was the first to deliver a scientific proof for. He never considered this theory pretext for ethical relativism, eugenics, genocide or any of the horrors which some of those who followed claimed were logical extensions of the theory. Nor did he see natural selection leading inexorably to atheism.  An interesting man. Here's a Guardian article by Nick which you may want to read if you can't get hold of the CD and haven't time to read the book.

I turn to the second sample in our picture. Which was handed to me at Oxford Circus with 2 police in attendance. Mitchum Endurance 48 hours. There are no instructions. Or to be more accurate the can is covered in tiny illegible print. I remember taking it to look at later because genuinely I had no idea what it was for. It looks like a small aerosol. But are you supposed to spray it in your mouth, your armpit or your bicycle chain?  I therefore tried hard to find out what it did before using it in case I did something dangerous to myself. It says Ice fresh for men. Its also new and improved - but doesn't say how. So while it is probably a deoderant it could still also conceivably be a breath freshener.

The key benefit is that it lasts 48 hours. An odd benefit on the face of it - probably not a breath freshener then - but do I really look the kind of person who uses a deoderant only 3 times a week? (don't answer that!) Is sealing in my sweat for 48 hours a healthy thing to do?

Being an aerosol its is highly flammable - there was a visible warning on the back of the tin. So with 2 police in attendance somebody had been handing out hundreds of flame throwers in the centre of London at least half of which would find their way straight into the underground system.  Dunno why they make such a fuss at airports.

I've made a bit of a meal of this one but you can see from my account that one sample experience made me fanatically loyal and the other.. well I have no intention of buying Mitchells whoever they are even if I do ever see them on the shelf of a pharmacy.  Sampling is a tricky art. The point of sampling is to get people used to using the product. Its an expensive thing to do but ought to be very effective. These 2 examples give you some good pointers about how to go about it (and how not). The easiest way to sample is to give a real product away - not just a miniature. But the risk of giving away the real thing is that if your existing customers get it then there's no reason for them to buy any more.

So a small taster then. But if you're going to take this tack then make it abundantly clear what your product is - as Mitchell lamentably failed to do. That's a risk of going small. And consider that giving a small quantity away may not deliver the entire experience. Offering an alternative deoderant ought to have been an easy sell - it still astounds me that Mitchells managed to botch it up so spectacularly. On the other hand King of Shaves actually made a virtue of being small. I would actually have bought the sample becuase it was so portable. The product was genuinely effective in that small quantity. And crucially the fact that effectiveness came in such a small package meant that my perecptions of value were seriously disrupted. I genuinely didn't know how much the product was worth so paid what ever they asked for.  

I'll blog in the next few days about other renegades - Matt Mason and piracy from the margins, Stephen Brown , Harry Potter and putting magic back into marketing, Peter Kellner and what political hacks can teach us about polling. And finally my favourite - Tom Ewing and why an online survey are like online computer games - very bad ones at that. 

An interesting prequel to the 1950s which is really as far back as modern marketing goes. Because it demonstrates that the bogus science and white coats and chemicals brought in to reduce the drudgery of the post war housewife were overlays on a lifestyle which had made privacy possible The generation before had had to bath in tin baths in the kitchen filled by the kettle. The chamberpots had to be brought down every morning from the bedrooms. For the 1950s generation and thereafter the represssion allowed them almost to forget that human beings are animals too. Its interesting to compare how our sensibility is still affected - green marketing and the notion of what is organic and natural is dainty by comparison with life at the start of the 20th century. The prurience of the 1950s might have had a lot to do with the housing. It still has a hold on us.

There has been an amusing reminder of this in the flurry around securing churches from becoming viral agents in the spread of the swineflu pandemic. In July the Archbishops of Canterbury and York announced that the cup was no longer to be handed out. The response to this was varied - co-operation but also bluster, and (very Anglican this) disobedience - along the lines of If you won't tell the bishop neither will I. I have witnessed all of these reactions personally - and remember communion can only be carried out by the clergy.

What was never amended and couldn't be was the liturgy. Without which the church couldn't be the church. So every week words of Christ were solemly read out, words of Christ himself. That told us we were commanded to drink the wine (as often as you meet). And we ignored it in line with guidelines of health and safety. In the last few weeks most churches have found a way round it so we're back to drinking the wine in a way that won't wipe out the population. But it became clear to me that communion couldn't be communion in the Church of England unless those words were read. Even if we didn't drink. As peculiar as transubstantion must appear to those who don't mix their theology with Aristotelian science.  

Citizens should come to each others rescue - look even the Mayor of London does it

Its OK to ride around London on a bicycle - look even the Mayor does it

Boris Johnson's staff knew nothing about it till they read it in the papers.

As I said Lovely work. And my favourite bit is the incident not being turned immediately into a press briefing. Either Boris Johnson is a good man or a clever man - probably a mixture of both. Public relations is not what you say about yourself but what others say about you. Most so called PR agencies are really media relations agencies who are waking up to the realisation that its less about what journalists are writing but about what people are saying - the two aren't necessarily connected.  I had a great morning yesterday at measurementcamp where among other groups PR professionals are learning how to follow the herd and to stop pretending that they are leading it. Nice one Boris

Where was I? Oh yes giving a presentation at the Marketing in Direct Conference in Bucharest.  Now this was new territory for me - a request to include a reference to Intercontinental (the hotel where we were staying) as part of my presentation. Not too difficult - IHG is a former client of mine and I'd just had a conversation with the Marketing Director not two days before. Then came the next request - some one was going to make a demonstration during my presentation and a security firm (also an event sponsor) would deal with it. Not a lot of details were forthcoming. I asked in a jocular fashion if any fake weapons would be used? No fake weapons was the reply. Oh great - just real ones then! Whatever happened I was just to carry on presenting and I would have a bodyguard for personal protection. Well rather than tell you what happened just have look at the film shot by Leif Anderson one of the other speakers. My heckler/would be assassin is an actor. The security boys are for real. That's what they call the Stanislavski method I believe.. well him anyway not me. You can see me peering out from behind my bodyguard standing to take a bullet on my behalf. I don't think I looked scared enough. My assassin wanted a photo with me and the bouncers afterwards - for his portfolio? There you go.

My colleagues also had product placements during their presentations - one involving a suitcaes the other a local wine company. Actually the most interesting thing about the whole experience was how self conscious we visitors were about it. This was a commercial event for business people which was designed to make money. Why on earth couldn't you use a little product placement? Well in the UK we don't do it. In Bucharest we did.

Which gave me the perfect opportunity to talk about my first intro to Direct Marketing when I was running a band and discovered that DM made me money but advertising always worried me because I was never sure if it had worked. Funny how different it is when its your money!  To me the measurability and ability to run small scale tests is what makes DM special.  From what I learned at the event it seems that in Romania DM can often be an ad in an envelope with minimal targeting (or incenctive to respond). And the internet has made things a lot worse because of the ease with which you can dash off large volumes of email at high speed and negligible cost - further hacking off anybody who might have considered responding. That's my deck in a nutshell.

It seemed to hit the spot. Particularly because it annoyed the digital DM companies who had been telling people to abandon direct mail (which is so last century) and send emails instead. Barry Larson Strategy Head of the Royal Mail one of my fellow presenters had a great chart where he showed how direct mail and email complemented each other very neatly and overcame the weaknesses of the other format -must get hold of that slide. I even met a client who had been told not to send emails any more and to use Facebook instead. My counter was Great idea but why couldn't you run it as a side by side test and see which delivers you more response? Sheesh.

And then we come to the horses. The event was called My kingdom for a horse (the horse in question being Direct Marketing). I had been told that the MC for the day would arrive in the presentation room on horseback - which given the size of the venue - well it it was just as well that he didn't. But a couple of cowboys turned up at lunchtime to do some tricks on horses outside. And the promo girls did a nice line in jockey croptops and walked around carrying whips for reasons I never really understood but had absolutely no objection to.

We speakers cued about equine theme had gone out of our way to get some horses into our presentations. I managed a horse condom thanks to a great campaign by Proximity New Zealand for the Haunui Stud farm courtesy of the fantastic Directory (new ideas in DM) which Patrick Collister edits. That way all the examples I used came from further afield than the UK, many from developing markets so I could demonstrate how DM could drive business.

I wasn't quite sure about how I could make a line from Richard III relevant to a Romanian audience. But fortunately I didn't have to because Costin Radu rode to my rescue with a comic folk song about beating your horse because he won't take you where you want to go. Here it is in a couple of versions for you to enjoy.  But take a moment to think about the photos of the peasants - yes these are old photos but many of these communities haven't changed that much soo how to direct market to these people? They are the audience after all. And funnily enough they're not on the internet nor are likely to be in the near future. So can we frame direct marketing for everyone with a postal address or just people with a good job in the cities. With an internet connection?

This blog entry  is long enough so I shall leave the advertorials to the next blog - how product placements found their way into our presentations. See above.