Kevin Harrington // marketing // blog

The book “Scroogenomics: Why You Shouldn’t Buy Presents For The Holidays” was published just in time for the Christmas gift market. It is written by Joel Waldfogel who outlines why we should turn our backs on the Christmas gift market. It’s all a big waste, he believes.

Waldfogel’s surveys have asked people how much they would have paid for gifts had they not received the items. The average the recipient would have paid comes out at nearly 20% less than was actually paid. This results in a global loss of value of some £15bn, yes billion, pounds.

An interesting theory and you can read a little more about it in this BBC article. When I heard this item on BBC Radio 4 it seemed to ignore the value gained by the giver of the presents.

What are your thoughts on this subject? There are some wonderful examples of bad gifts in the comments section of the BBC article.

According to the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE), the “median” gross annual earnings in the UK are £20,801. If you are earning that sum a year it means that half the surveyed working population earns less than you and half more.

The BBC analysis of the ASHE survey shows that the top 25% of people have a gross annual salary of £31,759. The top 10% is from £44,881 and a gross annual salary of £58,917 gets you into the top 5%.

I was listening to Radio 4 this morning and there was an interesting item about how our children are brought up.

The aggressive pursuit of personal success by adults is now the greatest threat to British children, a major independent report on childhood says.

The report, called The Good Childhood Inquiry and commissioned by the Children’s Society, concludes that children’s lives in Britain have become “more difficult than in the past”, adding that “more young people are anxious and troubled”.

According to the panel, “excessive individualism” is to blame for many of the problems children face and needs to be replaced by a value system where people seek satisfaction more from helping others rather than pursuing private advantage.

See the full article on BBC News.

My point of raising it here is the effect that a good interviewee can have with well chosen words. It is rare that I remember exact phrases hours after the event. But this morning a man used these three phrses in his responses:

1. The third parent, the television.
2. Day orphanages (meaning nurseries).
3. Confusing pleasure with happiness.

All of them are short and snappy but carry a bit of an emotional message. A very effective technique if you want to get people to understand your message.

On a personal note, it got me thinking: our television is not a replacemenent parent; the nursery we used to use was an introduction to all manner of great things; aren’t pleasure and happiness often the same thing?

I guess most Wii owners know that they can connect to the internet using the built in Wi-Fi internet capability. But not everyone realises that you can also use this to connect to BBC iPlayer, 4oD from Channel 4 and the rebranded service from ITV called iTV Player.

4oD is difficult to use via a Wii and the iTV service thinks the Wii is a mobile device. Full marks to the BBC who actually manage their video service to work via a games console. And it’s all included in the licence fee

There is a fine debate on price, value and consumer choice on the BBC Magazine.

“There is a tendency in this information age to compare prices, and say whichever company will sell me this product at the cheapest price, must be the one that I should purchase.”

Click here for more.

The carrot and the stick

I could not prove the point but I just felt that The Labour Party, New Labour, spent most of their time legislating to get things in the order they wanted. In the world of carrots and sticks this would be the stick.

Then I tripped over a great little quiz about law on the BBC website. One of the questions asked was, “How many Acts of Parliament have been passed since 1801, based on estimates calculated by House of Commons researchers?” The answers is 3,679, but that is only a best guess. Nobody is quite sure.

So, how many have been passed by Labour since it came to power in 1997? The answer is a truly staggering 460. Put another way that is 12% of all legislation since the 1801 Act of Union.

Yes, you can feel the stick now can’t you?

I had heard of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle – in essence by introducing tools to measure a situation, we can affect the situation itself. Then an article appeared on the BBC website. Excellent stuff, all about making decisions, and a recommended read.

If you want the heavy science follow this link Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle on Wikipedia.