Having heard the interview with Stuart Rose this morning on the Today programme I nipped over to the website to ‘listen again‘ in order that I could bring the news of M&S’ internet sales to the readership of InternetRetailing.
Imagine my surprise, therefore, at my scoop! Since 0755 BST Stuart Rose has been ousted and replaced by Philip Green…
🙂
I’m assuming that this will be corrected soon, so in the meantime here’s the fuller running order so that you can enjoy the fun of stumbling across this for yourself.
Coup de boule. Headbut. Zidane. Folk hero. Cheesey song. Ringtones too. Just great – I’ve been humming it all evening. Go ZZ.
The record label’s site for the song is here while the BBC News story is here.
Clearly this blog does not condone violence on or off the pitch etc, and was tempted to make a long-drawn-out post about the differences in national psyche and mass forgiveness for World Cup Red Cards (Rooney, Beckham, Zidane). Frankly, though, with such a good tune it’d be overkill.
Knitta began in August 2005, when AKrylik and PolyCotN were discussing their frustration over unfinished knitting projects: half-knitted sweaters and balls of yarn gathering dust. That afternoon, they knit their first doorknob cozy. Then it dawned on them… A tag crew of knitters, bombing the inner city with vibrant, stitched works of art, wrapped around everything from beer bottles on easy nights to public monuments and utility poles on more ambitious outings. With a mix of clandestine moves and gangsta rap — Knitta was born! Today, Knitta is a group of more than 10 ladies of all ages, races, nationalities, religions, sexual orientation… and gender.
A council in the Australian city of Sydney is taking radical measures against car-revving youths – the calming tones of singer Barry Manilow. [snip]
Deputy mayor Bill Saravinovski said … “Daggy music is one way to make the hoons leave an area, because they can’t stand the music”.
Now, I totally sympathise with the residents, but can we be sure that:
1) there’ll be no subliminal damage either to the residents or the youth
2) that this won’t simply enrage them beyond their powers of endurance; and
3) we won’t have BM-singalikes in future years on Ozzie Idol (Idle?) saying ‘I was inspired in my teens at the local supermarket…’
They are conjuring powers which are greater than any single small town to contain… Be afraid.
Now I’m not particularly shy when it comes to speaking on matters many and divers (well, digital marketing, eCommerce etc) and I’m happy to speak where I like the people, the event and it seems ‘real’. We all get spammed to death with ‘expert conferences’ or ‘captive sales sessions’ (where “decision-makers” are locked on a ship and get free food/drink in return for meeting with suppliers. Yuk) so I try and avoid these.
One pet hate is the “Blue Chip Frottage” event, where you don’t really care who the speakers are so long as they’re from suitably large companies. I was asked to speak on one event this summer – The Marketing Directors Strategy Forum in June, run by a company called Inverin.
When asked I mentioned that I was leaving Littlewoods, and were they interested in me or in the company. It was the latter and so I gave them some other names who would (I hoped!) still be there. It was all very amicable, if a tad inept. The aim was clearly to create a haze of ‘top company’ logos and then trap gullible middle managers who would then become intimate chums with the BigCo Speakers.
Imagine my surprise then when a friend emailed me the marketing PDF for the Inverin conference, noting that there would be a ‘contribution from’ one Ian Jindall (sic):
Honestly. When you see the PDF you realise that for a given session there are four keynote speakers, 6-8 headline contributors and then ‘contributions from’ another dozen… Is there room for anyone not contributing?
I rang Inverin to query this and they’re still “looking into it”. How can people be expected to credit anything they say?
I was going to link to their site, but at inverin.co.uk this is all you could see:
Great – that cheers me up! I wonder if I’ll ever hear from them about why my name’s there (not that I’d expect people to be deciding to go just based on my mispelled presence).
If you’re one of the select, “C-level” lucky people to have been spammed with this, let me know your thoughts. Even better if you’re a “contributor” taken by surprise!
Egad, do I love the internet! Or, rather, I love that people with time, creativity, energy and humour put in the effort to create such wonders… The Blog of Geoffrey Chaucer!
GC’s ‘about me’ saith:
I here neyther that ne this, for when my labor doon al ys and have made al my rekenynges I goon hom to my hous anoon and, also domb as any stoon, I sitte at another book tyl fully daswed ys myn look. Certes, I oghte to get outte more. Thou kanst fynde myn feede for liveiournale at the username ‘chaucerhathblog,’ sum swete soule hath sette yt vp for me.
Sum swete soule indeed!
This reminds me of my anglo saxon teacher, Nick Jacobs, who would read Chaucer with fluency and enthusiasm that brought it to life. This is certainly one to watch for a while on ye rss-reader.
It wouldn’t be right to leave the topic of historic blogs by famous dead people (!) without a tip of the hat to the excellent Pepys’ Diary. Bravo.
Thanks to Antony, our ‘man on the ground’ in HK, I’ve just caught up with the global phenomenon that is “Bus Uncle”. This wikipedia article shows WP at its best: rapid, considered, analytical and giving an excellent cultural view – I can but point you at it and step back. The wonderful aspects of this are the way the “meme” (pur-lease) has spread so quickly and the immense enthusiasm of the parodists and spoofers: there are fake movie posters, spin-offs, catch-phrases… You know we’re in a digital world and that Steve Job’s cry that we’re all now media producers is true when you check out the footnotes to the story: here is one of the spin-offs:
Having written previously about ‘Da Turk’ this is the first example I’ve seen in action. Wonderful!
10,000 sheep images (all facing left) drawn for 2 cents each. Over 7,000 individual IP addresses contributed – how’s that for distributed working (or distributed sense of humour?).
Best of all, you can buy a sheep print for $20. That’s 100,000% of cost. Heh. That’s what you call the Amazon multiplier effect!
