The Musings Of An Opinionated Sod [Help Me Grow!]

After being insulted by Angus last week … histories most famous carpenter now faces the indignation of being part of a ‘3 For 2’ offer at Borders Singapore.

What a come down from when he was a global bestseller back in errrrrrrm, 30AD [approx]

Anyway, just like the alcohol company who associated with Jimi Hendrix in a desperate bid to boost sales, Ken Blanchard and Phil Hodges have decided to use divine intervention to try and flog a few management books.

To be fair, they’ve shown real ingenuity because by writing a book ‘inspired’ by Jesus – they’ve as near as damn guaranteed huge sales due to Born Again Christians relentless thirst for ‘life lessons’ from their hero. 

Of course I’m not implying they did this as part of some contrived sales strategy … god no [cough, cough] … but interms of demonstrating how to ‘create a market’ opportunity rather than simply engage a market, it’s quite a good lesson.

Infact it’s probably a better lesson than reading the whole of this book or maybe even sitting with Jesus over a Starbucks low fat latte. Maybe.

Anyway I wish I’d thought of this ‘market creation’ thing before I wrote my posts about the Mafia and Porno companies because while both have loads of followers, they’re not exactly keen on spending loads of cash on books that also advertise their beliefs to the wider public.

When will I learn!!

Just received this MSN from my Mum …

Are you alright? 

I am filling a bag for charity and I do not know whether you want to keep those black shoes you wore at Paul’s wedding.  They are practically new. 

Let me know when you have time.  Lots of love. xxx

Is it me or does this feel like the sort of thing you’d read in Adrian Mole?

You get all the really big issues here don’t you!!

And to answer your question Mum, feel free to chuck ’em – lets face it, I’m never going to wear them – plus Paul was the one who actually paid for them so you can’t even say I’m ‘chucking money down the drain’.

A classic ‘win win’ situation!  

PS: Dodds … can you stop stalking Emah, thank fuck Katerina isn’t on Facebook or you might wake up with a horses head in your bed.

[That’s supposed to be something to be scared of, not an attractive proposition! Ha]

For reasons I am still trying to work out, I realised there was a striking resemblance between Russell and Charles.

Now I know I have a very dodgy eye … but there does seem to be an uncanny similarity, don’t you agree?

Seriously, if you saw the picture on the right on CRIMEWATCH, I bet you’d all be ringing up the police telling them that the criminal was known either by the name Russell Davies or Charles Frith.

Not that they’d ever be on Crimewatch. Oh no.

Has anyone actually ever seen them in the same room at the same time? 

Maybe they’re one and the same person … it’s been known to happen … errrrm, in really bad Spy movies. 

Well at least they are both smart people … because whilst NP thinks I look like some freak from Harry Potter or Lord Of The Rings, the reality is I tend to be mistaken for this nutter!

For those of you who don’t know who it is … his name is Harry Hill and he’s an [alleged] comedian.

Mind you the bigger joke is that the photo features me IN A SUIT.

Yes it has happened … but it’s a long, long time ago when for some reason, I thought it was OK to wear glasses that made me also look like Drew Carey. [though he has hair!]

Mind you that photo brings back a nice memory because it was taken at a Horse Racing carnival where I was a guest of Coca-Cola.

Because I turned up in a suit [the first time they’d ever seen me in shoes and a tie], I won the “BEST DRESSED” competition which pissed off all the ladies no end. Hahaha!

So who is your ‘lookalike’ and please, don’t humiliate yourselves by saying someone gorgeous …

Saying that, a VERY drunk tramp once mistook me for Brad Pitt, however because even in my most delusional state I know I’m never going to be like him, I asked if he actually meant ‘Arm Pit’, but he was quite insistent which is probably the best ad for not drinking alcohol EVER, ha!

So folks, whose your mirror image? 

Go on, put it up and be proud, even if you look as sad as Harry Hill! [or worse, me!]

So that was a rather weird week.

On the positive, following my post about Hari not writing anything on his blog in ages, he finally got off his arse and started again.

Sure, it’s not much – but it’s a start and hopefully he will keep it up, even though he is now off for a few weeks waiting to be a Dad for the first time.

Then there was the visit from my past …

Some woman came onto the blog for the first time – dropped a few nuggets of my past [proving she truly did know me] then buggered off leaving all of cynic in the throws of mad excitement and rumour.

While this person didn’t [or should I say, wouldn’t] leave her name – I do have a sneaky suspicion who it was/is but given she’s chosen not to reveal herself, then I have to accept that and just pray to God I was never nasty to her, ha!

What made that whole ‘mystery woman’ situation weird was that I was in China – a place that bans WordPress blogs, so all I knew about it was the mad SMS’s and emails from people thinking they had … and I quote … “found the da Vinci code!”

However it wasn’t all bad – because while in China I had the joy of once again seeing the woman who was the cause of one of the most hysterical moments in my life … and to say she looked sheepish when she saw me walk into the meeting is one the biggest understatements on Earth.

As nasty as it may be to have your youthful fashion ‘sense’ brought into the open, it’s not nearly as bad as being in a meeting with a man who saw home-made porno photos of you before accidently broadcasting it to a conference full of your colleagues..

So with all that, lets see how this week goes … though I do have to admit I’m looking forward to something a bit more peaceful, ha!

I love social experiments – love’em, love ’em, love ’em.

Even before I met the astounding Paul Britton [he was one of the UK’s prominent criminal profilers and also worked with the FBI] I felt they were a powerful method to truly understand what people did/thought/felt rather than putting all my trust in something like a traditional focus group.

That doesn’t mean I don’t value things like focus groups, of course I do but they – like social experiments – are not the be-all and end-all to consumer understanding and should never be treated as such.

To be honest, one of the main reasons why I/we love to include this approach is that we believe it helps you [and the clients] actually SEE and FEEL what people do as opposed to just accepting what they claim.

Now over the years I/we have done all sorts of controlled experiments – including quite a few ‘questionable’ ones – and while this approach has got increasingly ‘trendy’ over the past few years [especially with things like The Tipping Point and the far superior Freakonomics] it saddens me this approach has been cheapened to some late night trashy television show, even though things like Candid Camera and You’ve Been Framed were around way before I was.

Anyway, whilst the entertainment version of ‘Social Experiment’s is limited to exploiting laughs [as opposed to truly creating a controlled – and as far as possible – quantifiable situation] the consumer insight value is still quite powerful, even if it is done on a very limited scale.

With that in mind, let me introduce you to a sick little film which shows how men [or at least this man] can be spineless and shallow little fucks!