Have you been heaving the odd sigh of relief at not getting a peep out of me for a few days?
I’ve just been too damn busy on a couple of projects, and getting ready for a trip to Australia.
However, a frisson of fury motivated me to write this after seeing the news on the TV channel called More 4, which they really should consider renaming CrassTV.
1. The lady announcer, not content with sitting quietly and telling us what’s been going on insists on walking up and down. Why? Is she just showing off – “I can read a teleprompter and move at the same time”? Or does she think we all suffer from attention deficiency syndrome? Maybe she fears being pelted by rotten fruit and veg.
2. The director – or whoever pulls her strings – certainly deserves to be. Every time she mentions something, the idiot seems to feel the need to show something that tells us what it’s all about, as though we’re half-wits.
3. For instance, there was an item about Wales – and all of a sudden you saw shots of waves and pebbles on a beach and seagulls, as if to say “this is what Wales is like”. Come on, there’s more to Wales than that. Why not someone singing or playing rugby or shagging a sheep? At least it would be involving and suggest something happens in Wales.
4. Then the story moves to Heathrow. Instead of the woman saying what is happening at Heathrow, they feel compelled to cut to a man at Heathrow telling us. What a waste of money. Don’t we all know what a bloody airport looks like? God knows we spend enough time queueing in them.
The world is being run, lock, stock and leaking barrel, by wankers.
Tonight’s News, as delivered by patronising twats who think we’re as thick as they are
About the Author
In 2003, the Chartered Institute of Marketing named Drayton one of 50 living individuals who have shaped today’s marketing.
He has worked in 55 countries with many of the world’s greatest brands. These include American Express, Audi, Bentley, British Airways, Cisco, Columbia Business School, Deutsche Post, Ford, IBM, McKinsey, Mercedes, Microsoft, Nestle, Philips, Procter & Gamble, Toyota, Unilever, Visa and Volkswagen.
Drayton has helped sell everything from Airbus planes to Peppa Pig. His book, Commonsense Direct and Digital Marketing, out in 17 languages, has been the UK’s best seller on the subject every year since 1982. He has also run his own businesses in the U.K., Portugal and Malaysia.
He was a main board member of the Ogilvy Group, a founding member of the Superbrands Organisation, one of the first eight Honorary Fellows of the Institute of Direct Marketing and one of the first three people named to the Hall of Fame of the Direct Marketing Association of India. He has also been given Lifetime Achievement Awards by the Caples Organisation in New York and Early To Rise in Florida.
I love visiting this blog and miss it when there’s a gap.
I’ve heard of More4, but feel compelled to watch it now.
How does that work?
Is it a new form of indirect marketing?
Tonight I was reading an article on creating disagreement on a blog because people get bored of inane back-slapping. They want debate.
And then I came here. Hmmm. Debate and disagreement? Yes you have that in spades.
Many of the posts are built on a good old rant. So the disagreement is in the subject matter rather than the comments.
But your subject matter would make us look like twats too if we disagreed with you!
While I was reading I was laughing out loud. To such an extent that my wonderful better half interupted her viewing of the TV show she’s been waiting a week to watch after the cliffhanger to ask what I was laughing about.
Now put yourself in my shoes. How do I explain that one in the 3.7 seconds I had to satisfy her curiosity and get her back to the gogglebox?
I hasten to add that she wasn’t watching More4…
Condensed news while 99% crap does have occasional compensations. The SUN had a brilliant headline last week: “BASH THE BISHOP” (explain that one to your overseas readers ;-))
In America, there was a similar half-witted notion attempted some years back. The idea was that the newsreader (called anchorman, then anchorperson, then anchor…and not a drop to drink) would stand up while reading the news rather than sitting at his-her-its desk. Dynamic! Dramatic! No?
Ah! Proof that a depressing number of things that travel across the Atlantic in either direction are bad ideas, taken up enthusiastically. We got Macdonalds, violent teenagers wearing caps back to front, spitting on the pavement and shooting each other over drug turf; they got Simon Cowell,the Beckhams and the Blairs, who unfortunately keep coming back. Would Sharia Law be popular?
Like the punch line. Is it yours?
I allways thought ‘Twat’ was a harmless derogation. I just looked it up to learn how offensive it might be.
I did find this amusing tidbit:
twat
1656, of unknown origin. A general term of abuse since 1920s.
The T-word occupies a special niche in literary history, however, thanks to a horrible mistake by Robert Browning, who included it in ‘Pippa Passes’ (1841) without knowing its true meaning. ‘The owls and bats,/Cowls and twats,/Monks and nuns,/In a cloister’s moods.’ Poor Robert! He had been misled into thinking the word meant ‘hat’ by its appearance in ‘Vanity of Vanities,’ a poem of 1660, containing the treacherous lines: ‘They’d talk’t of his having a Cardinalls Hat,/They’d send him as soon an Old Nuns Twat.’ (There is a lesson here about not using words unless one is very sure of their meaning.) [Hugh Rawson, “Wicked Words,” 1989]
The last line is indeed my own – even if a poor thing. I know the story about twats. I always suspected Browning was one, to be honest.
You are without doubt, one of the foremost authorities on direct selling. David Ogilvy was a hero of mine all the 35 odd years I’ve been in this strange business.
But your email today, February 14, crossed the line. How dare you say that Bush and Blair lied. I don’t give a damn about your politics, but I resent the hell out of your arrogant pronouncement of a politically motivated piece of rubbish. A lie itself.
Bush and Blair are honorable men. They were going on what was the consensus of world opinion, even that of the UN. Intelligence at the time was such that more than 70 countries agreed than Saddam was hiding weapons. All but Germany and France decided to take action. And we have come to learn why they did not. Money.
Bush and Blair did not lie you old goat. They did what they thought was the correct thing at the time.
It’s old news now, but you’re the one who brought it up. And I might add, you brought it up for the reason that you could still get in another sucker-punch lie. Your point could have been made in any one of a number of ways. You chose a dishonorable one. That’ is to your everlasting shame.
I have canceled my subscription to your emails although they were interesting and informative. I don’t want or need advice from a half-baked political sop with an axe to grind. If I really want to know about convincing people to change attitudes through advertising from some political dupe, I suppose that could as well study the propaganda work of the Third Reich. They were masters of it.
But I won’t do that either.
I don’t abide liars and falsehoods. Indeed, as Ogilvy said, why should I believe what some copywriter says. You,sir, are a copywriter that is full of shit.
And the record of the events you bring up say more about you than about Bush and Blair. They made an honest mistake. You did not.
May you have a fine time in your stodgy little world. And know that you are perpetrating lies. Who would trust you, now a well-known liar, to do a project? I hope that your insult to the integrity of more than half the world was worth it.
Doug Kelly
Douglas Kelly & Associates, Inc.
U.S.A.
Well, I’m sorry anonymous, who would appear to be masquerading as Doug Kelly, has given up on the old goat.
But I’m also a little taken aback that anyone alive who follows the news or reads history is unaware that the phrase “honest politician” is an oxymoron.
And I certainly cannot believe that anyone who follows these matters even vaguely is unaware that our Tony is a shocking liar. Maybe not of Clintonesque proportions, but he has an enviable track record in that department. Ask just about anyone you happen to run into over here.
Mr. Bush is his problem, I guess, in theory, though our troops seem to be paying for the Iraqi and Afghan adventures.
Enough politics!
Poor old Doug Kelly. If Bush and Bliar made an honest mistake with Iraq, why haven’t they done anything to correct it in the last few years? Clearly, as Bush is dyslexic, he thought that they were going for Iran whilst Bliar thought that sucking up to the Americans would be more successful than his attempts with the EU.
Very funny. The thought of Bliar running Europe fills one with mingled alarm, terror and disgust … within weeks the whole continent will be buried under a huge new mountain of bullshit to add to the wine lake.
Dornbusch’s book on Altbier is priceless. I think the word ale is used 15 times per page on avaerge. I love this one:”In Schumacher’s innovations lies the roots of the modern altbier style: a robust, coppery, slow fermented, lagered ale.”A lagered ale!! Hahahahahahaha!!!