Looking at the news, I’m glad that snow didn’t hit Manchester. Mind you, that’s not to say I might not have to content with it tomorrow if I start heading off away from Stockport. Which I will. Mind, I have checked the Internet and the only reference I can find about ’snow’ in respect of Liverpool is a bit about Snow Patrol appearing at a concert there next year. There’s a relief.
Current listening:
I find myself befuddled at the power of crap advertising. I’m sure most companies spend dissimilar amounts on advertising - some, like car ads, no doubt involve massive sums of cash falling into the hands of marketing people you wouldn’t care to share a meal with (for fear they might cause it to come back up again mid-way through). On the other hand, you would hope that the confused.com Internet insurance broker paid a reletively small amount - and just happen to have got themselves a winning formula.
I mean, the ads stink. Seriously. All that odd nonsense with 2-dimensional props - I don’t even know what that means. Does it mean anything? Perhaps, it means - we spend all our money on caring for you, and get a bunch of crayon-hungry orphans working for toffees do all the scenery work for our adverts. Also, what’s with the ‘Charlie Higson-a-like’ they have grinning and gurning his way through the recent ads. I’d rather have a quiet drink down the pub with the elephant from elephant.co.uk than that guy. You’d probably end up wanting to punch him a lot if exposed for more than 30 seconds at a time.
What works is the tagline, for some reason. “Con-fused-dot-com” or however you might render it in type. Suddenly, I find myself engaged in (and listening to) conversations where people feel the need to end their sentences with a “dot com” rather than a full stop. “Did anyone see that internal memo… I’m confused.com.” … “Anyone planning on doing the washing up… dot com?” … “I’m just off for a Number Two dot com.”
I’m not certain it’s necessarily selling more insurance, but like Micheal Winner’s “calm down, dear”, it has that catchphrase quality about it that allow it to linger on long after the adverts that spawned it have passed into oblivion. I’d be interested in seeing any studies about the phenomenon that might exist, and whether these catchy soundbites have any particular impact on behaviour.
Relevant reading:
Monday morning, I noticed that the motorway sign somewhere between the Altrincham turn-off and the M6 on the westbound M56 had the message “Don’t hog the middle lane”. On the way home, I found the sign on the opposite side of the road at the same point echoed this message. I wish, oh I wish, that people would take notice of this. I certainly noticed one car, upon nearing this sign, shift from the middle to the inside.
Unrelated to middle land madness, I had a great experience of over-competitiveness this morning from a driver with a stupid hat in a silver Fiat something-or-other. On the road from Runcorn Bridge to Speke, the speed limit goes from 50 to 70. The Fiat overtook a car in front of me after passing the national speed limit sign and I promptly had to slow down, as I was already pushing past 60 and he overtook still doing around 50. After a moments hesitation, he pulled in and I went past him. Or tried. Quite suddenly, he decided he was going to do 70 after all. I decided not to push the matter and matched speeds… but he lost out on the chicken run as something lay in the lane ahead of him and he didn’t really have an option but to slow down a bit.
Of course, he couldn’t leave it at that. After I overtook a dozen cars ahead and then finally pulled in, he zipped by once more… almost like claiming the last words in a heated argument. I’m sure it must be some primal instinct stored somewhere in the DNA of all human beings - male and female alike - the drive to get the upper hand if you’re on the wrong side of a bad mood. Judging by the frown on this guy’s face, he definitely qualified as being in a bad mood.
Maybe he was fed up with people pointing out how stupid his hat looked?
Relevant reading:
Concentration slipping. Can’t listen long. Can’t read more than a sentence. Good article. Not seen before. Intranet rots your… Um… What was I saying?
