I've moved

I've moved.

You can now find me here

Hope to see you there at some point. If you're feeling generous you could even update your links.

PS I went for wordpress because I'm a tightwad

see you on the other side...

Picnicked from http://tinyurl.com/phototheft

I should have done this a while ago really.

On the very remote chance that is still read via a rogue feed somewhere in cyberspace, I've got a bit of news. As of today, planning for fun is no more. Frankly it's been moribund for a quite a while (some may say since the first post) so I thought it was about time I put it out of its misery. Who would have thought that something so small could have stopped such clearly vital discourse?

But, dear reader, fret not. For with this bad news also comes good (although clearly that statement hinges on your own point of view).

Last month, I was lucky enough to be offered a job at Wieden + Kennedy as Strategy Director, which of course I accepted. Aside from a rather tedious entirely reasonable four month notice period (of which I'm a meagre six weeks in) I'm obviously very excited and just want to get started. And with this, will come a new blog. I guess it's kind of expected. Out with the old and in with the new and that. Except it won't be on this platform, it'll be a wordpress or typepad jobby. I haven't decided yet. I'll pop a link up on twitter when it's sorted.

Until then, friends, adieu. See you on the other side.

In the meantime, I'll be lurking around at:

delicious.com/graemedouglas
twitter.com/doug_graeme
tinyurl.com/graeme-facebook

Yes we can

Obama via Wordle

Post-digital Parenting

Via Twine

Respite

Pic credit here. Usual yaddy yadda applies

After a wickedly frenetic start to 2008 (do the first four months of a year all count as a start?) I'm away for a bit. I figured that what with a new baby, and last Friday being the very first day in 2008 that I wasn't under any kind of pitch pressure, I probably needed it.

So I've retired to here for a while (well, until the end of the week - just before I march down to Elland Road and watch the mighty Leeds send Gillingham down to League 2 on Saturday).

I'm kind of hoping that I can muster the energy to start blogging again properly (reading and writing) so hopefully a bit of Yorkshire air in the system will provide the requisite catalyst. We'll see.

I can haz CRM

Call me a language fascist, but surely if you're planning on adopting a CRM strategy you'd employ someone who can write with at least a modicum of eloquence to manage the communication?

Homecall+ clearly don't agree. I received this email from them today:

Hi there,

I'm Ayesha the Sales Manager here at HomeCall+, and this is your 1st weekly Newsletter from myself.

As a valued customer of ours already I feel that it would be beneficial to you to recieve my weeekly Newsletter and be kept up to date on all our exciting products & services.

Therefore over the next couple of weeks I will be emailing you our informative weekly Newsletter showing you what other service's we do, introducing you to the team here at HomeCall+ and more importantly how we can save you money.

HomeCall+ is a national company who understands the importance of a quality service and providing best value, we also have invested heavily in our own 'in-house' training facilities, so that the engineers are constantly updated on technological advances and changes to regulations. We have in place our own Health and Safety Officer, Corgi Gas Service Technical manager's along with a network of quality managers who continuously monitor the quality of the engineers and their workmanship.

Kind Regards

I must remember to write to the Mail to complain about the failings of the British education system (or at least to Homecall to advise they run their spelling and grammar checks a tad more regularly).

For the moment, however, I await the next informative weekly newsletter with baited breath bated breath. (oops - that'll teach me)

Dates for your diary

As I make my daily emergence from the typhoon of nappies and sterilisers to take temporary refuge within the bowels of Parker Tower, I have once again begun to make - albeit brief - forays back into the plannersphere.

Good job too. Because if I hadn't, I wouldn't have been aware of these two little shindigs that are bound to be of interest to the discerning reader. Amazing what you miss when you're out of the loop.

First up (in a couple of weeks in fact) we have Iris presenting 'Under the Influence', which as far as I can see is a booze-backed gaze into the future of the comms industry, held across five London pubs with all manner of interesting speakers sharing their view. Looks like a corker. All that - and it's free. What are you waiting for? Oh, the link, right, yes. Details are here.

And talking of interesting (see that link?) who could forget Russell's magnum opus of last year? Well guess what. It's back and coming to a Conway Hall near you soon. Ticket's aren't on sale yet - but keep up to date with speakers etc. here. It'll be interesting. Again.

Good afternoon.

Germans ARE funny!

click to enlarge

Hahaha. Hans Zoff.

As run today in a few UK daily newspapers

Clinton hearts Obama

Carrying on the political theme...

Is this a spoof or did it actually run? Either way, I love it.

Spotted here

It's nice to be wanted

Isn't it nice to be a client in demand?

The Sunday Times yesterday reported a small furore around the amount of money that Saatchi and Saatchi were charging the Labour Party to run their ad account. The issue seemed to be that, at £8,000 per month, the retainer was, as one 'leading advertising executive' said, "ridiculously low" and therefore should constitute a non-cash donation which should be declared accordingly.

All good stuff if you're a Labour voter. I was less interested in that however, than the seemingly ill-judged comment made by Eleanor Conroy, a spokesperson for S&S:

“It is heavily discounted because we are so keen to work on it and so passionate about it,” mused Conway. “They pay for the costs. We give them a massive discount".

“It is not a charity but there’s stuff that you feel passionate enough about to want to work on. You are not going to charge the same as you would charge Toyota.”

Hang on a minute? Is that the same Toyota that spent (according to Nielsen data) north of £38m in 2007? Clearly money doesn't equate to passion for the chaps down in Charlotte Street - which is refreshing in ad land - although I'm sure CHI are smirking a little and are making every effort to demonstrate how passionate they are about the Toyota UK business...

Pops

After a marathon twenty-nine hour labour, my wife Tasha gave birth to my new little baby boy, Rory Hector Douglas, yesterday.

As such, blogging operations will be temporarily suspended while I learn how to be a dad :0)

A broken Egg?

Pic rules as usual. Credit

Under the looming spectre of the credit crunch (where the hell did that phrase come from by the way) and the - ahem, problems - faced by Northern Rock over recent months, certain financial institutions have starting becoming a little antsy.

Last week, Egg made its own contribution to calming down the public by announcing that it was to strip almost 10% of its customers of their credit cards with virtually immediate effect. No longer would they be able to spend any more on the cards, but, graciously, Egg have permitted those affected to continue to pay their minimum payment until the balances are settled. How very kind. (Only the cynical would suggest that Egg highlighted the 'minimum payment' route because it's by far and away the most profitable course of payment for them).

Commentators are split about this decision. Whilst some herald it as a masterstroke and an example of extreme business prudence, others (often found residing within the letters' pages of the press) are screaming about how grossly unfair it is ('I called Experian and I have a perfect credit score'). I'm probably somewhere in the middle. As a customer of Egg (clearly their risk algorithm isn't that effective as I still have my credit card) I can see the business logic of the move, but as an individual with a professional interest in world of branding, I think they've gone about this in utterly the wrong way - in fact, in a way that's got the potential to do some long term damage to their brand.

Granted, this is a difficult gig to pull off. You're always going to piss people off. But this can be managed, and as such I have two major issues with the way Egg have handled the situation. Firstly, who on earth thought it was a good idea to continue hawking for new business whilst this was going on? On one hand we have them quite loudly recalling thousands of credit cards, whilst simultaneously on the other we have them touting 0% deals in the pages of the national press. For me this behaviour is grossly incongruous (bordering on offensive) and simply fuels the image of the greedy, faceless corporation (which Egg have spent years trying to avoid) - couldn't they have waited a week or so before beginning another assault on the nation's debters? Wouldn't it have been better to use the space to communicate exactly why they had taken the decision in first place rather than expect punters to piece together the economic rationale from hearsay and comment?

The second issue is the seeming lack of return path for Egg customers to debate and discuss their situation with the bank. As an irate consumer there is nothing worse than feeling utterly cut off, with no room for further conversation. The 'they don't care' mentality is powerful and hard to shake off once established - and one which, if the customers' comments are to be believed, Egg are doing their best to cement.

Egg should be careful. When the economic issues eventually blow over (be in six months or six years) they will still exist and possess a brand that will be required to sell product. How a brand behaves during tough times could well have a major effect on its success when things are brighter.

Back in the chair

photo taken on the wise advice of Victor :-)

It's been a brutally busy January.

In seeming anticipation of the baby-based workload that's likely to hit mid/late Feb my early 2008 workload has front-weighted itself (four pitches and counting) to create a maelstrom of busyness so fierce that it's not only knocked any blogging opportunities (reading and writing) on the head, it's also prohibited any semblance of a social life either (so if you happen to be one of the people I've cancelled/postponed/ignored in the past four weeks or so, do please accept my apologies).

On top of that I have managed to inexplicably shift from a person who almost never got ill (a descriptor valid from roughly March 1979 to November 2007) to a person who almost never gets well (December 2007 and beyond). The highlight - although clearly that's the wrong word - of the plague stories was the great tooth abscess, which was more pain than anyone should have to suffer - marginally worse than the pain suffered by those unfortunates who followed my incessant twittering of the saga.

In the midst of the pitch-based carnage and plague-ridden suffering however there have been some bright things emerge elsewhere in the plannersphere; two of the finest young minds have got jobs (good work chaps, and well done to the lucky establishments that have snapped you up) and my mate Faris has upped sticks to take his unique brand of, well, farisness, to Naked in over in the big apple - and I know he'll make a great impact over there. Good luck one and all. On top of that, the awesome Torchwood has returned, and I saw Moz at the Roundhouse last week before he cried off ill, so it ain't all bad.

Anyhoo. This is all a roundabout way of saying I'm back in the (blogging) chair. I've been tagged by two fellow bloggers - thanks Neil and Katy - I'll have a little think and get memeing (can meme be a verb?) shortly. Just what the doctor ordered to get me going again.

---BUSY----

Apologies to the legion of readers (chuckle) that frequent this lil ol' corner of the internet for the distinct lack of, well, anything for the past month or so. All's been a bit busy what with Christmas, pitching early in the new year and the wife moving into the final throes of pregnancy and I seem to have lost the blogging bug a wee bit.

Well I'm determined not to let this site join the pantheon of neglected weblogs so normal service will be resumed shortly. Pitch on Wednesday first to negotiate though....

Merry Christmas

from me, Bowie and Bing. Have a good one!

The Festive Long Tail

It's good to see that even during the Yuletide season, the Long Tail is in full effect. Just take a look at the Christmas 'classics' that have reappeared in the UK hit parade (it's still called that, right?) in the run up to the big day.

#8 Mariah Carey - All I Want For Christmas Is You

#12 Pogues & Kirsty MacColl - Fairytale of New York

#23 Wham! - Last Christmas

#25 Andy Williams - It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

#27 Wizzard - I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day

#33 Shakin' Stevens - Merry Christmas Everyone

#37 Slade - Merry Xmas Everybody

#38 Band Aid - Do They Know It's Christmas?

All we need now is a bit of Bowie and Bing, Stay Another Day and Stop the Cavalry and that's my Christmas playlist sorted.

Here comes another bubble

"Won't you blog about this song"

Er, yes. Because it's funny. And because it's true.

(Clearly not at all because it's an easy post and I'm really rather busy at the moment. Oh no.)

The glamour of advertising

Me, wearing a psycho butcher-style apron, getting up close and personal with a dairy cow yesterday. All in the name of being a better planner. You know how it is.

The prize for best milker went to Matt Boffey, who demonstrated that he has clearly honed far more than just his planning skills at Wiedens....

It was messy and interesting - but above all, bloody scary.

We're Hiring

Fancy a new gig?

I know it's hard to do a recruitment post and not look desperate, but I'm going to give it a go anyway ;-)

Due to a number of large wins during the year (with nice shiny accounts such as Johnson & Johnson and Mattel joining a current crop that includes Diageo, COI, Adidas and Renault) we're looking for interesting and talented comms planners of all levels to come and join the Carat UK family over in the big blue tower.

I won't bang on about how great we are (except that we've won 'Media Agency of the Year' an unprecedented two years in a row), instead, if you're interested, drop me an email for more details.

Oh, and we're all very nice too.

Amazon Kindle: will it be a success?

I love reading, and the concept of next-gen reading devices really does intrigue me. As such, it was with interest that I read Amazon (which I also love) launched their own effort today - the Kindle. But will it be the product to really kick off the e-reader revolution? I have my doubts...

- For a start, it's almost $400, which is probably $100 too much.

- $9.99 for a book download seems a bit excessive. I would assume that represents a sweet margin. Knock 30% off that and it'd seem like a reasonable bestseller rate to me.

- It's really, really ugly. In fact, it looks like it was designed by Clive Sinclair on a grey industrial estate sometimes in the winter of '85. I know it's in the eye of beholder, but the iPhone this ain't.

- Real books rule. Fact. Always have, always will. Nothing beats beauty of a wonderfully designed hardback. I have my doubts that until these new fangled things look and feel a bit more like a book, they'll never really take off, no matter how good the technology.

All that said, anytime wireless downloading of literature is very cool, there's bound to be a green spin, 80,000 titles at launch is pretty impressive, the display looks awesome, and if anyone knows how to flog this, it's going to be Bezos and co. Oh, and apparently Neil Gaiman likes it too.

But of course, if anyone wants to send me a UK compatible version for me to test, I'm more than happy to oblige ;0)