So why is it that people can’t read their own data?

I received a piece of DM from a marketing agency recently. It was creatively good. It inspired me to delay its arrival in the bin. I opened it. So far so good; most DM doesn’t get that far. I even spent a couple of minutes reading it.

The call to action invited me to follow a personalised URL, e.g. agencyname.com/myname. I duly did this and arrived at a website where I answered the questions. The last question said words to the effect of ‘can we talk more about this/can we call you?’ I replied no…for more than one good reason.

Since then I’ve received an email from one person and a phone message from another.

I said NO.

For goodness sake; if businesses are going to use this type of B2B marketing please listen to the answers given!

The reason I’ve not named and shamed the agency concerned is that I actually like the director I’ve met from there. But really, as we already know each other, I do wonder why he is sending me DM rather than something a bit more personal.

“Sorry I’m late. There was an Ocado jam in the road.”

I think I may get an Ocado van so that I can leave it in the middle of the street while I’m dropping things off. Perhaps they pay a higher road tax for the privilege?

It may be why Waitrose don’t use their own branded vans…to protect their brand image?

The upside of all this is that I’ve learned a bit about Ocado. Look at the Ocado history and you’ll see that Goldman Sachs are significant shareholders and the John Lewis Partnership transferred their ownership into their pension fund.

Also, Ocado are making good use of iPhone apps and Android apps. Maybe I should give the Ocado service a try and then apologise to my neighbours

Is Lord Digby Jones right when he says, “The last thing in the world we need is the younger generation thinking they don’t have to work.”

Well, of course I agree with the above raw statement. But in context, on the BBC website, he seems to make the link from Glaceau Vitamin Water consumers to young people to days off sick. Now that seems a bit unfair to me.

Anyway, my experience is that questionable employee sickness is not the preserve of any particular age group.

Of course a major part of the BBC news item was Digby Jones moaning about Coke’s use of humour in advertising. Personally I think we need more Coke humour and less Digby Jones concern.

But the great thing about it all is we are allowed our opinion. In fact I’ve been out to vote today as part of my democratic rights. Marvellous.

May 2007 saw the start of this blog. Three years on it’s still here! The cosmetics have changed a couple of times, it’s moved from Blogger to WordPress, but it’s still here.

It made me wonder how old some of the more famous blogs are. It appears that the top 100 blogs had an average length (mean) of blogging of 33.8 months. And the median figure was 28 months (ie half the blogs have been going for longer than 28 months and half shorter than 28 months. Source: Problogger.

Overall it looks like there are around 150,000,000 blogs globally(source: Hat Trick Associates). So I’m always rather chuffed that this one gets so many readers. Thank you.

A lot of my activity on this blog has been about learning what works and what doesn’t. It’s helped me form an understanding to help me do things better elsewhere. But, as is the way with these things…on with the learning.

Charlotte Graham-Cumming, joint managing director at Ice Blue Sky started a debate recently on LinkedIn about B2B marketing.

B2B Marketing Focus – is there an appetite? I have had a couple of discussions with Marketing Society members around increasing the amount of events and information that the Marketing Society provides for B2B marketers. I wanted to see if there is anyone else in this group that would have an interest in B2B specific information?

I’ve been following the debate and comments (in the Marketing Society group area) and it has helped me observe other things going on. And yes; B2B marketing does take second place in many magazine titles and trade organisations. Charlotte debates the point further on the Ice Blue Blog.

Like Charlotte, I’m keen on the idea of trying to raise the profile of B2B marketing. Oddly one of my fears is a bunch of agencies using it as an opportunity to sell to me. But the reality is always going to be that FMCG and consumer marketing disciplines are the sexier and more attractive areas.

Differentiation in marketing is key, whether you are managing a budget or a premium brand. It is important that the consumer can quickly see why your product or service is better, different or beneficial to them. Whole chunks of the marketing industry are invoicing clients daily to help them with differentiation.

And then there’s UK politics. Now we know what Rizla cigarette papers are for…to fit in the gap between the main UK political parties.

But the great thing about our democracy is that we can all get involved and challenge the status quo and come up with new ways of doing things. So, well done to the parties that have differentiated themselves with ideas like:

• The 99p coin.
• The £ sterling to invite other European countries to join it.
• Increase the minimum statutory retirement age to beyond death.
• Public officials who are convicted of abuse of office offences to have their pictures printed on toilet roll packaging.

Read who is campaigning for these ideas, and a lot more from the BBC News website.

A bit more of this lateral thinking by us all may help us break out of the cycle of developing ‘me too’ offerings.

I like it when a new agency gets into gear. Sometimes the benefits of this comes through with some really simple, clean communications.

We’ve been working with Hunterlodge for a while now. One of the things they have recently delivered is a range of posters that address different reasons why someone might buy and use childcare vouchers.

These need to cut through in busy work noticeboard environments. This example and the rest in the range I really like and they appear to be working well…have look.