Fortis shareholder has no shame

The situation is something like this: Not even that many months ago, the Belgian financial multinational Fortis had some megalomaniac desire to buy the – far too large- Dutch financial multinational ABN AMRO. The Belgians made a deal with the Royal Bank of Scotland and the
Spanish Banco Santander, who both bought different parts of the ABN AMRO. The deal for the parts of ABN AMRO that were to be bought by Fortis was approved by the shareholders. And everyone cheered with glee.

Convenient credit crunch
It was a ‘merger’ that might even have worked in some other space and time, who knows? All we know now is that the combining of both organisations turned out to be a disaster. Of course, everything could be blamed on the credit crisis. Fortis clients were withdrawing their money like maniacs and the company was hanging over the edge over bankruptcy, which would lead to complete monetary disaster in the Benelux. The governments of Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands decided to save Fortis. It actually only makes sense that as part two of this operation, the Dutch government took over the Dutch parts of Fortis of the Belgian government. All financial institutions were saved, everyone could sleep easy. Well, all except for the shareholders who approved the merger of Fortis and ABN AMRO in the first place.

Are thou without shame?
The original board members of Fortis were scorned, thrown out, dragged into the streets naked (well… figuratively speaking). Obviously, the greedy shareholders who approved he merge operation were just as responsible for this tragedy. But instead of bowing their head in shame and hoping no one noticed, they decided to go to the courts. Reason? In saving Fortis, thus saving the financial systems of three nations as well as saving tens of thousands of jobs, from the disaster that those shareholders are greatly responsible for, it is quite possible that in the end the Dutch government may make money off of this deal.

Soulless spawn of Satan?
That’s beyond shamelessness. It’s even beyond greed. Their greed got them into a mess that would have meant that they -and others- would have lost everything and now they want to sue those that saw to it that they -and others- only lost a bit. I hear a columnist say that those people must be the soulless spawn of Satan. I actually find it hard to find arguments that would make someone think otherwise. It sooner add ‘winos’ to that description…

Philip Kotler, a very misunderstood man

I started this post with a small lie, but that’s okay in marketing. Be honoust; would you have read this piece of writing had I called it ‘Jerome McCarthy, a misunderstood man’? No of course not. Mccarthy was the man that introduced the ‘four p’s of marketing’and Kotler was the one that ran of with the credits and the dollars. Which is also okay in marketing. But, I am sure you are absolutely dying to find out why I’d say that mr. Kotler (or mr. McCarthy)  is misunderstood.

Well,  a couple of days ago, our vacuum cleaner broke down. When we bought it, we were on a bit of a budget, so it was one of those cheap ones. At first, it worked okay and we figured ‘no one makes crap products nowadays, so what the heck’. But, within three years of service it broke down, in the middle of the housecleaning process and on a Sunday. Fixing the problem would not be easy. Fortunately, we ‘d always kept our old vacuum cleaner. A Philips one, handed down form one of the parents, to be used to vacuum the car or something. It had been been sitting in a cold, moist shed for five years, after it had been ‘in use’ for over fifteen years. This was one abused vacuum cleaner. We kept our fingers crossed, switched it on… not only did it work, it worked beautifully. It worked better then the crap machine had ever done. Hurrah for Philips.

This short event made me think back of one of my first clients I ever worked for when I was a marketing consultant. A grey suited, grey haired, dull (somewhere below the) middle marketing manager by the name of Peter D. The client was Philips. The assignment was to help mr. D. in getting a good perspective on their product; CD rewritables (I think many of us know how that one worked out for Philips…). Since I was new to the field, I hadn’t yetr lost my youthful enthusiasm and I told mr. D. about the Philips television I had at home. My dad worked for Philips and was a bit of a gadget freak, so we bought one of the first colour tv’s ever made. This thing was about 25 years old. And, like the vacuum cleaner, I had it in my house and it was still working. Mr. D. responded with a joke that really surprised me; “Well that certainly shows that it’s a good thing marketeers are taking over around here. Those technicians would have run this company to the ground. Har-har-har…” (well, something like that any way) What he meant was, that since consumers don’t expect a tv to work for that long, but -say- ten years or so, it would have been better for Philips if their tv’s lasted for only fifteen years (five years longer then expected, but ten years shorter that was, obviously, possible), their customers would still be thrilled and would buy another Philips tv. At that point, I couldn’t realy put my finger on it, but I do recall instinctively knowing that mr. D. was a complete douche-bag.

I think mr. D. was what you may call ‘the average marketing exec.’. At university he read his copy of  ‘marketing principles’, sort of read about the ‘four p’s’ and received moderate, but sufficient grades to pass and get a nice job at a leading multinational, where he made a couple of small climbs along the corporate ladder. However; he had never understood what marketing should truly be about. He could never understand a concept such as ‘in a great company, marketing could be obsolete, since it doesn’t add anything’. Things like ‘the experience economy’ is something consumers had -unknowingly- been into for decades but no one had named it yet. A marketing guru found out, gave it a name, and many of his followers made a big buck, selling an idea to corporations that was totally useless to them, but no one actually figured that out. consumers make their own experiences and if you’re lucky: your company is invited. Back to the product bit.

Philips did do something wrong concerning that colour tv. It wasn’t that they invested too much in technology to make sure it would still be playing after thirty years (which it does), but they never invested enough in R&D to come up with something new and revolutionary enough so that I would want to pass my old tv on to someone else, in favour of that new product. Consider the computer industry. When was the last you bought a new pc because the ol done was broken? In my case, this never happened. I discarded several pc’s in perfect working condition (I donated them to school in developing areas) because I wanted that newer, better product. So, I’m still buying stuff from the company that I feel connected with, and I don’t have to throw out all sorts of old broken tech-stuff. Seems to me, everybody wins.

So, now I’m off to buy a new vacuum cleaner. Not because the old Philips one is crap, but because there’s something better out there. Lighter, more silent and more efficient in use of electricity. First, I ‘ll check if Mr. D. is still working for Philips and if he is, if he’s been transferred to vacuum cleaners. If he’s not, I’m going to buy the Philips one.

Watching tv does not influence your behaviour?

Whenever it’s convenient, advertisers and agencies make the claim that ‘advertising does not influence your behaviour, it merely influences your preferences’. This is convenient when it comes to stuff like ‘tobacco’ and ‘alcohol’. On the other hand, no agency has any problem in telling a potential client that their campaign will drive consumers to their stores like maniacs, but that’s an entirely different discussion. It is also a well known fact that the advertising industry has a big problem with science and research. Especially the creatives claim that ‘great campaigns’ have too often been ruined by ‘bad pretesting’ or ‘unreliable reasearch’. Both claims are, of course, wrong. 1. When the clients knows what he/she is doing (granted; this is also rarely the case) if a concept does not do well in the pre- or concept-test, then the concept the creative has come up with is shoddy. 2. Finally there is some research thats hows a direct link between media confrontation and behaviour.

Watching sexual explicit tv-shows is linked with teen pregnancies
I actually believe that many advertising people believe that what they do is mereley steering on preference. After all, we’ve all learned about mass media theories and we all knwo that there is no direct link between behaviour and watching tv; Watching Child’s Play may have been named as the main reason for two teenagers to murder someone else, there are millions of teenagers that do no go out and kill people… so there can be no scientific connection. While this may be true in the case of ‘murderous behaviour’, it appears it may not be so in the case of sexual behaviour. The American RAND Corporation has conducted research that showed that teenagers that watch a lot of sexual content on television are more likely to become, or make someone, pregnant. The article that was published in Pediatrics, the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics describes a longitudinal survey of teens during a three year period. Teens who were exposed to high levels of television sexual content (90th percentile) were twice as likely to experience a pregnancy in the subsequent 3 years, compared with those with lower levels of exposure (10th percentile).

watching sex = having sex or having sex = watching sex?
Sexual content in this case is not: porn, but ‘Sex and the City’ (for example). Most likely, it will not be long before a network executive, when confronted with these results will go public with the claim: ‘Well, obviously teens that become pregnant, will have ha dsex. And obviously teens that have sex are interested in sex and will be more likely to watch sexual content on tv.” The RAND head researcher, dr. Anita Chandra has said that the main problem is that sexually explicit tv shows generally only highlight the positive sides to sex and not the dangers. This also stresses the importance of talking openly about sexuality for parents with their children.  You don’t leave it up to the advertising and media industry to teach your children about driving a car, you shouldn’t leave it up to those people to teach your children about sex either.

The highlights quickly and easy to understand on the BBC website.

Lidl is cheap

That’s the actual pay-off of the Lidl supermarket: ‘Lidl is cheap’. and when looking at the yellow and blue logo, all the boxes in the places where there should be shelves and the tiles on the floors, you know it’s true. This is one cheap supermarket. But in the case of Lidl, that might not be a bad thing.

It’s easy to draw a parallel between Lidl and Aldi, the other German ‘discounty’ supermarket. No major brand names, almost everything under ‘made up’ private labels. But there are big differences as well. Lidl has a choice of ‘biological’, ‘Fair trade’ and even ‘ecological’ products whereas Aldis generally have none. Where Aldi usually makes the headlines because of the high levels of poison find on there fruit’n veg, Lidl was rewarded by the Dutch watchdog program (Kassa) for having the best (in terms of biological) vegetables of all Duthc supermarkets.

In marketing terms, Lidl is going the other way around as the other supermarkets. Traditionally, a supermarket would communicate on it’s quality and once you got there, you’d find out that they might be affordable as well. Marketeers try to convince advertisers that we are in an ‘experience economy’ and that shopping at your supermarket should also be an ‘experience’. Lidl probably flipped them the finger and told them to piss off. Good choice, I’d say. Lidl is cheap. And apparently you can get quality stuff there as well, a lot of which is fair trade, which makes it hard to slag them off because of preying on developing nations or child labour. I’d say that’s quite a clear position there taking. Shopping for groceries might just b shopping for groceries. I’ll get my experiences somewhere else, thank you very much.

(ps, obviously there are some skeletons in Lidls closets, but aren’t there always?)

Taxes benefit the entrepeneur

Populist politicians and dumb authors generally oversimplify matters. Like: we should cut taxes to stimulate entrepreneurship and reduce the governmental burden on businesses. Taxes are there to keep those nasty left-wing treehuggers happy. As the more intelligent reader will recognize: the truth is actually quite different.

First of all, it is important to realize (as populists and many journalists tend to forget) taxes are not a matter of ‘them‘ taking money from ‘us‘. Taxes are a way of making sure that everyone chips in for the stuff that we all need. So, evading taxes, should not be an acceptable subject during birthday parties, but seen for what it is: making others pay more for the stuff that you are equally benefiting from.

Anyhow, that’s a little beside the subject. What I would like to explain, in a clear and easy to understand manner, is that entrepreneurs (and all sorts of wealthy people) actually benefit from taxes and do not suffer from it. And I will conclude with: so, stop whining about. Don’t say I didn’t warn you in advance.
Below, seven easy to understand reasons why anyone who says taxes are theft and should be cut back to the absolute minimum did not really think it through, or might be slightly bonkers.

1. Taxes can help to make sure that everyone in society stays a consumer. In several developed countries (i.e. the countries that rank highest on the UN list of ‘countries with a high standard of living)’taxes are used as a means to provide citizens that have virtually no income with an monthly allowance. This means people remain consumers. Which means capitalism is the winner.

2. Takes can help to make sure that everyone in society has something to lose. If you consider the alternative, say: through no fault of your own (an accident) you lose your job and you income and you are unable to find employment after that. If you have no income you may end up with nothing, which also means: nothing to lose. Who would not start stealing to feed his/her children? And some might end up doing far worse than stealing alone. These taxes are a more efficient way of providing safety in society than jails.

3. Taxes pay for a safe society. And we’re not just talking ‘crime-fighters’ like police-officers and the military here. How about traffic lights? How about providing a legal system that can settle an argument between you and your neighbour over that fence, without having to stab one another? How about the laws that say what the minimum safety requirements are for a children’s bicycle?

4. Taxes build and maintain infrastructure. Don;t you think that might be helpful for commerce?

5. Taxes in a democratic society is an effective way to prevent corruption. Nothing is as bad for an economy as corruption. If you do not have independent civil servant or a well functioning justice system: just forget about the economy and get out of that country. The people that work to keep the economy functioning -meaning: the ones on the governmental payroll- deserve to be paid. Taxes make sure they don;t have to get creative in finding payment.

6. Taxes make sure your long term interest is looked after. Small companies, large companies, no one cares about the long term. Shareholders preferably want their money yesterday. So no one is willingly going to invest in care for the elderly (which will be you in the future), of the environment (which is where you will be living in in the future). If you’d like to be a healthy and wealthy pensionado in a couple of decades, the best way to make sure that happens is to pay your taxes.

7. Taxes will pay for education for the generation after you (like it paid for your own). Teaching children might be a calling, it is not a hobby.

Obviously, all these reasons to pay taxes go right out of the window if you’re living in, for example, a non-functioning democracy. And of course there are improvements to be made in terms of efficiency within every governmental organisation. but the same applies for every commercial organisation as well. Heck, you are not a 100% efficient yourself. And of course some taxes are spent on things you do not think are important or necessary. Some stuff you feel is important probably isn’t important at all to someone else.

Taxes have paid to build a society (schools, safety, infrastructure etc) that made you as prosperous as you are today. So, making use of all those benefits and then pleading to cut back on those benefits (by cutting taxes) for others, or even leaving the country for a so called low-tax state, is nothing short of immoral. Taxes make happy. So stop whining about it.

When was the last time Coke did something cool?

‘Creating a hype’ has been much more than a hype itself among the big multinational consumer brands. Almost every marketer is looking for ways to create a big hype around it’s brand. Whisper campaigns, guerrilla marketing, brand buzzing what have you not in the idiom of the A-list marketeer? In the mean time, the biggest brand name of them all, Coca Cola, does what? A bit of tv ads, sponsoring of the big sports events… that’s about it. Seems very innovative. And smart. All this ‘ trying to create a hype’ is, excuse me, complete bollocks.

The Hush Puppies effect
Every brand that has ever been successful by getting the cool kids behind it and then seeing it expand to the masses has been extremely lucky. There are not that many brands that can say they have actually succeeded in doing this. In fact, it is a shockingly small number of brands considering the vast amount of brands out there that all employ professional marketeers, trendwatchers and advertising creatives. It a matter of pure statistics that a couple of them would in fact get that lucky and be able to copy the ‘Hush Puppies effect’, made famous by Malcolm Gladwell.

Chaos and blind drivers
Am I saying that marketers do not know what they are doing? Well, actually: yes. I truly believe that many marketing exec tries his/her best at it, but the continuously mistake pure random success with events from which they can derive scientific knowledge which they can then use in completely different situations, for completely different target audiences and completely different brands. The world simply doesn’t work that way’. There’s too much chaos there to be able to use simple rules and apply simple theories. Advertising creatives are blind drivers: some might get you to your destination, most will end up in a ditch leaving you shaken but unhurt and a couple of them will actually crash into something.

Randomness
Hundreds of thousands of new brands emerge very single year, a couple of dozen of those make it into more or less well known global brands and a couple of those every decade will become real A-listers. That’s not cleverness, that’s merely statistic odds. Obviously there are a couple of things you can do to get some better odds for yourself, like ‘make a good product’ or ‘don’t spend too much before you start earning’ and of course, a bit of advertising will be necessary; who will know you’re around. But don’t expect to become very successful by trying to achieve that tipping point; you won’t.

Coke for the brand
Statistics for businesses is different from that in match class, where with every time you achieve success the chance of being successful again decreases. In business, when you’re successful, the chance that you’ll be successful again actually increases. If you combine that with the ‘winner takes it all’ effect (like WalMart destroying all it’s competition, or Microsoft holding the pc market captive) you get a situation where a couple of big brands will hold all the cards and new competitors have no choice but to aim for that hype effect be become successful, most will fail, but some will get lucky and increase their chances for future success. The big brands in the mean time wisely spread their odds. So Coca Cola introduces Coke Zero, which isn’t too risky and they sponsor the Olympics. get lucky once, twice , perhaps three times, then spread the odds…

Google for the brand
An alternative route to take would be to try and do something different. Google is perhaps the biggest example for this. First they took on Yahoo, then switched to Microsoft and perhaps Apple will be next. Google entered a market where they still had good chances; search engines. They become successful because the Google brand got ‘picked up’. With their success they penetrated the online advertising market and now they’re going for the Mobile telephone market (not with a gPhone mind you, but with a Linux approach to Mobile software…) Google never went looking for the Tipping Point, but they found it anyway. They had a good product and (virtual?) street credibility and they turned that into success. No marketing professional needed. What if Google manages to turn the mobile telecommunications market upside down as well? If I were working for Coca Cola, I’d be very very afraid indeed…

Dare to be the same as everyone else

I do not necessarily hate the automotive industry. Nor do I have a personal vendetta against advertising people. Hey, I even wrote something nice about the good people at Ford some time ago. But, somehow, advertising brings out the worst in everybody (like people that have had to witness the Fortis adcampaign-disaster surely have noticed…)

As I was on my way to work this morning, I caught a glimpse of a big Ford billboard. On it, a nondescript vehicle, that has apparently been manufactured by Ford’s designers is shown in the traditional advertising way; a little diagonally, very shiny and metallic…

The header on top of the billboard read: “Dare to be different“. Which left me stunned by the complete and utter lack of creativity of both copywriter (and entire agency) and client. How generic can a payoff be? How very ‘not different’ to say ‘dare to be different. I would think it would be absolutely impossible to think of a tag-line for a car manufacturer that says ‘me too’ product more than ‘dare to be different‘. If I were the CEO of that advertising agency I would fire the copywriter and give the account director an enormous raise immediately.

It’s such a strange combination. People that actually dare to be different, or the people that aspire to be someone who dares to be different would never in a million years want to be seen in that car. The header that makes sense would have to be ‘dare to be just like everyone else‘. And would that be so bad?

In the world of NGO’s the fashionable term is ‘leadership’. All NGO’s are looking for people they can turn into ‘leaders’,which means that -since everyone is leading- we’re not actually going anywhere. There are too many people that consider themselves to be leaders anyway. We need followers. People that do the actual work. We need people that dare to buy a Ford Kuga since it makes them just like their neighbour. I can only conclude that the Ford ad people have got it all completely wrong….

More intel, less security

All over the ‘free world’ there are plans to monitor and store all your web-surfing habits, your (mobile) telephone conversations and your whereabouts in the ‘public domain’ through various CCTV cameras. The idea behind this is that it will provide us with more security in our ‘War Against Terror’. As politicians put it: we have to give up a little of our privacy for a whole lotta security.

Well, this is a whole lotta BS, and not security, I’m afraid. First of all: I agree with the privacy lobby who feel that the price we have to pay for this so called security it too high. The phrase “there’s nothing to be afraid of, if you have nothing to hide” is grossly untrue. What if your government decides that will start persecuting smokers that show up on one of those CCTV cameras? From there it is only a small slide to your internet-provider handing over data about you placing an order on www.pizzahut.com to your health-insurance. Or how about that call you made to that other company about a job… what if your current employer could find that out? Face it: you may not have anything you wish to hide, that still does not mean that you want everyone to know everything about you.

But this is not the point I want to make. My message is: more information, makes us less safe. Let’s say that our world is under a very very large threat indeed and that no less than 0.01 percent of all communication that takes place is concerned with terrorist attacks. And let’s make a very, very conservative estimation about the number of calls made on mobile phones a day is 10.000.000 the number of e-mails sent is also 10.000.000 and the number of sites visited is 1.000.000. The number of communications in which our terrorist fighters should have an interest in would be, roughly: 100 calls, 100 emails and 10 web-visits. The number of ‘communications’ that are mere clutter is: 9.999.900 calls, 9.999.900 emails and 999.990 web-visits. problem is: we don;t know which is which. And even terrorists make ‘normal’ calls, ordering those pizza’s and e-mailing about holiday-weekends. If we are going to have to -potentially- follow up on all those leads… it will be absolutely impossible to filter out the tiny bits of useful information with which we can all feel safe and secure and prevents attacks like the one experienced on 9/11.

Fact is: all the needed information to prevent an attack like 9/11 was already there… unfortunately nobody was able to fit all the pieces together, probably because there were just too many pieces.

Gathering more information does not provide us with better intelligence and more security. that reason alone should be more than enough for all of us to stop those stupid politicians trying to steal more privacy from us.

You are a thief… and a liar.

On the Cultblender blog I recently wrote about how workers that have internet access on average spend five and a half hours on personal things. This was investigated by researching accountants at E&Y who are probably jealous of those other people that actually have a personal life and to put insult to shame; the named it ‘theft’. Should you be unaware of how ludicrous that is… read the posting on the cultblender blog.

While I’m writing this, I’m watching a news item on a company that rents out lie-detectors to companies who want to investigate its workers. A combination of those two facts will have any normal office dweller break out in a sweat. not only is the word out that you’re update your myspace page in the boss’s hours, he can now rent the lie-detector to prove it. The first thing that came to my mind when I was watching the item was: What the hell is wrong with you people!? If you, as an employer, actually need a lie-detector to know that those you have on the payroll are not stealing from you, perhaps the theft itself is not the biggest problem you have. If you agree, you won’t need further explanation, if you don’t agree.. you won’t understand.

Personally; should any employer of mine ever ask of me that I taker a lie-detector test, I will quit my job immediately. I have no desire to work at Orwell’s 1984.

Unarmed conflict

I am sorry,

but I believe your right to drive a Hummer,

is conflicting with everyone elses right to a healthy planet.

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You never chose to buy one anyway,

marketeers put that thought in your head,

believe me, you don’t need it,

*

Perhaps you could trade it in,

and own one on SecondLife?

please don’t cry.

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