Posts from date: July 2009

Look at me, Look at me!

I went to see 'Moon' at the cinema last night (not great in my opinion) and on my way home I went via Trafalgar Square to have a look at Antony Gormleys 'Fourth Plinth'.

For anyone unfamiliar with this project, the Fourth Plinth is the name given to the empty plinth in the north-west corner of Trafalgar Square in London. Built in 1841 there were not enough funds available at the time to create a statue and so the space remained empty. This summer, sculptor Antony Gormley has invited the people of the UK to occupy the plinth - a different person every hour, 24 hours a day, for 100 days without a break.

When I went last night, the chap on the Plinth was dressed as Henry VIII, talking to the assembled crown about his life and times. As I type this, the current inhabitee is a girl whose objective on the plinth is to "invite people in the crowd to create statues or shapes with their bodies to translate abstract concepts into visual metaphors or mudras". Hmm, not to everyones tastes then.

You can see this for yourself by visiting www.oneandother.co.uk and watching the live streaming. To date, the live online coverage has clocked up 2,900,000 page impressions, 658,000 visits and 407,000 unique users. The average time spent on the site is 10 minutes and 18 seconds.

To date, over 29,000 people have applied for one of just 2,400 place available - me included. If I get picked I'm taking bets/dares for what I should do. Any ideas?

Maxus Goes Sporty

This Wednesday (22nd July) marks the inaugural Maxus softball tournament.  With the agency being split into three teams, (Milly's Masochists, Emily's Extremists and Louise's Lunatics) you can practically feel the adrenaline as you walk through the office...... Waggers and Jonesy have come up with a feasible sounding game-plan, Milly is confident that she has the strongest team and P.Rick, well P.Rick is American so is genetically programmed to do well!

For those of you less familiar with softball rules and regulations you may find the following useful:  http://www.ehow.com/facts_5184173_basic-softball-rules-regulations.html

Now we just have to hope that the current forecasts for 22oC of glorious sunshine ring true.

BBC Denies Accusations of Ageism

The new series of BBC's "Strictly Come Dancing" is expected to hit our screens in September and there already seems to be quite a bit of controversy surrounding the show. 

After last years voting debacle (in which irrespective of how many public votes he won, Tom Chambers could not be saved from the dance-off;  high drama indeed) one might have thought it would take a few episodes before people were given a reason to start complaining.

This time around however, the furore is surrounding the judges, not the contestants.  It seems that Arlene Phillips has (allegedly) been given the elbow for being too old (she's 66) and will instead be replaced by Alesha Dixon (30), the 2007 winner.  The BBC denies accusations of ageism, though accepts that they are trying to pull in a younger audience than their average 52 year old.   Slightly mixed messages?  I'm not really sure, but what is clear is that out of the 5-strong regulars (Brucie - 81, Len Goodman - 65, Bruno Tonioli - 53, Craig Revel Horwood 44) it was the lady of the show who was shown the door.   

Given previous allegations of the BBC treating the more mature lady rather unfairly (namely Moira Stuart being axed from her Sunday morning news bulletin) you can understand the consternation surrounding the decision.  I for one am not really sure whether it is about ageism, or a pre-show publicity drive or just that Arlene didn't really add anything extra to the judging panel.  What I am certain of though, is that throughout all of these discussions Ms Dixon is being lauded as a "youthful" creature, giving hope to fellow 30 year olds everywhere!

Fingertips

Welcome to news at your Fingertips-uk

http://www.fingertips-uk.com/

Fingertips is a news and interest RSS aggregator, that gives users the chance to create a unique newspaper 'homepage' (think iGoogle homepage) based on their individual preferences.

Its quite easy to set up and gather all of the RSS feed you like. It went live in April ‘09, and claims to monetise the product through selling adspace that, targets usership via age, gender, location, interests etc. They claim " they can enable Fingertips users to develop strong and lasting relationships with your company and your products"

It appears to be a good product and easy to use and set up but I don't think it will catch on in any major way due to the amount of work involved in creating your homepage. In addition to this people may have 1 or 2 preferences of content providers but across the board are willing to buy into an existing provider for their news and interest i.e. Skynews and The Guardian

In addition to this it doesn't seem to be marketed very well, unfortunately there SEO isn't very strong as a search for "fingertips" ranks Psoriasis at Your Fingertips: The Essential Reference Guide to Dealing with Psoriasis: Amazon.co.uk: Tim Mitchell, Rebecca Penzer, Gillian Clarke, ... 2 higher places higher.

This is just my opinion - have yours.

Top 10 Companies by Reputation

The Reputation Institute have published the results of their  'Global Reputation Pulse Study' with some interesting results. The study uses a sample of 5,000 British consumers and calculates how reputable they believe a company to be against 4 key areas; trust, esteem, admiration and good feeling.  All pretty obvious stuff if you ask me, however highly subjective which leads me to question what, if anything we can take from this.

The top 10 companies ranked by reputation are;

1. Marks and Spencer

2. Smith and Nephew (Specialise in medical equipment and technologies)

3.Cadbury

4. Morrisons

5.Rolls Royce

6.Tate & Lyle

7.Sainsbury's

8.Intercontinental Hotels

9.Thomas Cook

10.Inmarsat

Anyone surprised by Smith and Nephew?

Interestingly, WPP came out at number 25.