As it happens, the oscillator of my Superlative Certified Swiss Chronometer has always exhibited arrhythmia. Over the course of a few days, it will happily gain a couple of minutes but I’ve got used to its idiosyncratic approach to time-telling which for the most part has generally made me slightly more punctual.

Anyway, this isn’t an attempt to deconstruct the rational or irrational behaviour of spending several thousand quid on something that one could spend £5 on and find it does the primary job of telling the time just as well if not better than your average chronometer.

No, this is about the relationship the brand continues to have with you when things go wrong or there is a need for some kind of dialogue. You see, Rolex recommend that the watch is serviced around 5 years mark.  Not that they’ve ever reminded me.  Mine is about 6 years old now but over the Christmas period something inside the stainless steel, expertly crafted one-piece oyster shell of my Explorer II started to vibrate whenever I moved my wrist. And then, just before New Year, the precision-engineered Oyster movement, the ‘height of precision, robustness and guaranteed long term performance’ just kind of….stopped….

So, last weekend I marched into my authorised Rolex agent, expecting staff to jump into action, the watch to be gently but expediently strapped to a watch stretcher, the Rolex helicopter to land  and my watch whisked off for the very best private-care and convalescence before being chauffer driven to my own front door and returned to my wrist in full health a couple of weeks later.

But no. Apparently, I was nonchalently informed, events like this are perfectly usual issues for swiss-engineered superlative chronometers. True or not, the fact that owning the watch might imply I’m a high-octane, adventure fuelled, every second counts kind of guy who relies on their choice of timepiece for accurate split-second, life or death decision-making doesn’t resonate in the quiet corridors and laboratories of Rolex. It would seem there’s no

time like Rolex time. I’ve got to wait between 14 and 16 weeks – yes upto 4 months (or 10,368,000 seconds to be accurate) before I can be repatriated with my son’s heirloom and I’m going to be expected to pay for the pleasure too.

So come on Rolex, if you can’t crank up your servicing mechanisms, surely there is something you could do at this point in the relationship to reaffirm my investment or even better re-ignite my relationship! How about offering a ‘courtesy watch’? Might that not encourage the idea of multiple watch ownership – trialling something a bit sportier or dressier in the interim period?  Oh, and it’s my wife’s 40th birthday just around the corner. But then you didn’t know that did you because you’ve never asked. Tant pis!

To anyone who’s read my previous posts it will also come as a surprise that I would be praising a rail company, but believe it or not here it comes…

Just before Christmas I had to make an urgent trip from London to Essex. I arrived at Liverpool Street station, checked the departure time of my train, shovelled a big wedge of cash into the ticket machine and just as my tickets printed out the automated departures and arrivals board lit up in a frenzy of flashing lights as one-by-one the trains changed from ‘On Time’ to ‘Cancelled’, ‘Bus Service’ or ‘Delayed’. Mine was cancelled. The tickets, still warm from the printer, cowered in my clenched fist.

I then embarked on the most excruciating train journey of my life. Both the outward and return journeys were subject to cancellations, delays, lack of onboard refreshments due to a broken boiler, overcrowding and general displeasure.

On my return I set about drafting a letter of complaint to the train company responsible, National Express. Seeing as there has been a lot of talk of will they/won’t they mergers with Stagecoach recently I wasn’t holding my breath in getting a positive response to my request for a full, and immediate, refund.

As Christmas set upon us I received a letter from National Express to inform me that they had read my letter and would attempt to come back to me within 6 days. Actually, it was more like 15, but hey, it was Christmas and who’s counting? I was stunned to receive another letter the other day profusely apologising for the ‘unforgiveable’ experience I had had to endure that day on the train, and explaining the reasons for the delays/cancellations but in a tone that was more apologetic and responsible than blame-ridden and bitter. Neatly tucked in the folded letter were vouchers for rail travel (on ANY network in the UK) for not only the full return fare but for the full fare + 25%.

Now, I’m not too sure whether it should be a big cheer for National Express per se, or a big cheer for the cranky insistence of a grump like me, but regardless, I thought the communications tone, and the ‘above and beyond’ value of the vouchers were a great example of a brand’s ability to create a positive experience out of a bad one. Well done National Express.

The answer from @hjonesy (that’s our Helen) was as profound as it was immediate: it’s a social experiment; something to try to see if it works. And I think she’s hit the nail on the head.  This isn’t about music. This isn’t about the X-Factor, Simon Cowell, wee Joe, or some funny fellas in hoods. It’s about the most seismic shift in consumer behaviour that has happened for a generation, that has started in earnest in 2009.

If there is one thing that we are to remember 2009 for it must be the rise of social media and its ability to empower people, en mass and as individuals, as never before. For providing the opportunity for a single voice to express an opinion and for that opinion to join with others that are similar; growing, developing and coagulating as more and more join in, until their presence can no longer be ignored.  Until their presence is so great that it becomes more significant than the subject that inspired the first voice to be raised. Until the desired and necessary change occurs.

Think Jan Moir. Think Trafigura. Even watch Gordon Brown on TED (no, do). In 2009 we have passed the tipping point at which the balance of power shifts from corporations and institutions (the brands) to the people. It marks the point at which brands have to start to think and operate differently. The point from which no organisation can ever be forgiven for putting itself first and for not taking its responsibilities to its audience, or the wider world, seriously.

Now, the RATM movement isn’t quite the real thing just yet. As Helen says, it’s an experiment rather than a genuine desire for a Christmas No.1 of one type versus another. It’s wrapped up with the irony that the real winner is Sony BMG who have both artists on their label – some will argue that the ‘enemy’ ends up winning after all. But that’s to miss the point. The enemy here isn’t Sony, or Cowell. It’s the old way of doing things. The past. And, in 2009, it’s been defeated.

I’m looking forward to 2010.

Welcome to Manchester

When considering my journey, I flirted with the possibility of traveling first class in order to be able to get some work done. I’ll admit, I was seduced by the idea of a quiet haven where you could focus on your work, undisturbed other than to be offered coffee at your seat, and would generally be made to feel as though you could just get on with being ‘terribly important and busy’.

So, 2 weeks before I was due to travel I popped on to thetrainline.com and looked up times and fares for the date I needed. £66 for an off-peak standard day return. Lovely. Seems reasonable.

My eyes scanned down the page to where the first class fares were listed…

What was that?

Sorry, what was THAT?

£355 for a day return?

Wrestling my eyeballs back into their sockets I began to contemplate what one would get for their £355 ticket. Seeing as I could fly BA (return) to Milan and have a night in a 4-star hotel for the same price, I imagined that a train company commanding the same money must do something pretty special. Do we travel via Capri with a night in a luxury villa, where I’m massaged to within an inch of my life and fed fine cheeses and cured meats until I burst? Do I get to dress in black tie, be drowned in expensive champagne and flirted with by top supermodels for the entire journey whilst, in the background, the London Symphony Orchestra play a collection of my personal favourites? Nope? What do I get then?

A coffee and a newspaper. Fantastic. For the bargain price of £289 I can get some coffee and a newspaper.

I’d be intrigued to have a chat with the head of the particular train company in question and ask him “So, Richard, how do you develop your pricing structure exactly?”

I wonder what the answer would be…

So yesterday via Twitter I received two identical tweets from the same ‘company’. Being a little more specific, one form the ‘official’ Twitter feed of that company, the other from the ‘personal’ Twitter account of the MD of that company. I say personal, however in the profile he states that he is MD of X…. so in my book, that counts as a representation of that company is a ‘pseudo corporate’ feed. So, two identical tweets, sent from the same ‘company’, to the same individual, me, in the space of a few seconds.

Now if that happened with email, to which I had subscribed, i.e. which is permission based, as is Twitter… I’d be annoyed and think ‘what a stupid company’. Well the same thing happened with those tweets, I thought ‘what a stupid company’. Just because they are short, possibly less intrusive than email, it’s still really dumb to send identical messages over different accounts when you have the same person subscribing to both accounts on the other end! We wouldn’t do that with email would we? And as the business that did this was, surprise surprise, a social media agency (ROFLMAO)… that makes it, as we say on the Internets, an EPIC FAIL.

So, to an extent you have to say ‘bless’, let’s face it a lot of people working in social media, on the face of it, aren’t that experienced in the grand scheme of things, email is for old people right? But more seriously it points to the fact that platforms such as Twitter, even when combined with some of the 3rd party corporate tools, are still massively lacking in maturity and functionality to run at the same level of ‘permission’ and accuracy as email or more traditional direct communications. To my knowledge, (I did say this was ill-informed) no tool exists to manage Twitter subscribes across a companies multiple accounts in the same way as email (i.e. with really thorough, get prosecuted if you mess up, list and subscriber management… yes I get that Twitter is a little less complex in that if you unsubscribe that’s that, to an extent). If it does I get the impression many companies aren’t using it. As far as legislation goes, again I’d welcome an update on this… however, if the law doesn’t hover channels such as Twitter in b2c communications, isn’t it about time it did?

But there is another category of films – films that are so bad, they’re good. To celebrate these ‘car crashes’ of celluloid, we stupidly decided to set up a club – a bad film club – an opportunity to have a drink, a laugh and revel in the acting horror.

Each month we will be showing a ‘special’ screening. Our opening film was no exception having become an internet and cult legend. Here is our resident film boffin, Robert Ball‘s assessment of what has been described as ‘the ‘Citizen Kane’ of bad films‘: The Room…

You are tearing me apart Lisa!

The Room (2003)
There are films during which you can feel the obsessive precision of a master craftsman at work. The films of Kubrick, David Lynch or Hitchcock. The Room is their terrible dark twin. Whereas truly great films are perfect in every detail; framing, pacing, screenplay, visual and sound design, The Room is monotonously, heroically unperfect. In every last detail. All of the time.

The star, producer, director and probably caterer of this meandering debacle (Tommy Wiseau) gives himself the plum role of Johnny – a benevolent, teetotal philosopher and adopter of street kids. He is misunderstood, betrayed, and cuckolded in turn by those around him. He cuts a tragic figure. In fact it’s possibly the most tragic screen performance ever committed to celluloid. Imagine Christopher Walken wandering lost after near fatal electro-shock therapy in one of Cher’s old wigs reading a pile of Clinton Cards through a mouthful of cold porridge.

The rest of a central love triangle is, quite literally, rounded out by a femme fatale (shot from such consistently harsh camera angles and in such cheap dresses that she looks like a pound of pork sausages spilling out of a Christmas cracker) and the handsome best friend (A walking piece of MDF with a beard). And talking of cheap furniture, The Room looks like it was filmed in an MFI showroom. During business hours. Which perhaps explains the characters that randomly appear out of nowhere only to look confused and and wander off again without serving dramatic or expositional function.

So, take some terrible acting, a screenplay written by a horny teenager (two stomach churning sex scenes occur in the first ten minutes that feel about as erotic as watching a giant snail trying to fondle his sister), cheap sets, a handful of stock footage, production values that would shame a school nativity and this is the result.

And I’m just scraping the surface. A thin veneer of mere awfulness covering depths of ineptitude studded with pearls of unrewarding crap just waiting to be discovered. The worst film ever made? Perhaps. I’d give it six out of ten.

But in this case, no such conversations need take place.  That’s because the drawing has been produced not by a well-remunerated corporation, but by a child. It is the work of nine-year-old Florence Jackson, from Bristol, who was one of 17,000 children who entered a BBC Blue Peter competition to design the new coin. The media, the public, most (not all) designers, when they know that it is designed by a child, will soften their eyes and celebrate, rather than criticise its flaws. And, even if they missed the press release, no one’s going to be in any doubt about its youthful provenance because the design is so obviously juvenile. Crude, puerile and naïve her art may be, but in the context of such a competition these are exactly the criteria that the competition judges would have desired. Indeed, I am confident to assume that many more accomplished submissions will have been rejected for being too good; not childlike enough. This competition was never about the quality of the design but what it is that the design represents.

This highlights a crucial aspect of human judgment that applies to design and much more widely beyond. It’s the reason why brand consultancy is not only the most important discipline in the marketing mix but a critical component of modern business strategy. It might even help us to define what “brand” means. Yep, I’m making a big deal of this one, because I think Florence has hit on something important here.

To up the ante a little from 50p, let me ask you a question about another piece of art. If the Madonna of the Pinks that hangs in The National Gallery turns out, as some suspect, not to be by Raphael but a fake, is it worth less than the £22M it cost to buy? Philosophically, the painting could be said to exist in two parallel universes. One, where it marks a brave and progressive watershed in the history of religious portraiture that inspired not just art but generations of social history. Another, where it is simply a derivative work by a talented, yet insignificant forger. Physically, the two universes of the paintings collapse into one – its tangible attributes are the same. Intellectually, they are forever apart.

Old Masters may be an extreme example but the point is this: we judge things not for what they are but for what we think they mean. To truly understand something we need to look beyond its tangible qualities and consider its intangible attributes too. We seek to explain what we see (hear, touch, taste, or smell) by giving it a back-story – a meaning beyond the physical experience it provides. The Madonna of the Pinks is not just a well-executed painting of the Madonna and child but a landmark moment in art history. Florence’s coin is more than a badly drawn picture, it represents the hope, potential, and the carefree joy that only a child would have the courage to see, yet to which all adult human beings aspire.

Don’t just take my word for it. This aspect of human intellect is a fundamental philosophical concept. In the 4^th Century BC, Aristotle defined hypokeimenon, literally meaning the “underlying thing”, as the quality that sits behind a thing’s physicality and persists through any change. In the 13^th Century John Duns Scotus described haecceity, literally “thisness”, as the quality of a thing that differentiates it from another with identical form (where its form expressed in generic terms is called quiddity, or “thatness”). Neuroscientists have explored these concepts in their analyses of how the human brain makes decisions, examining the complexity of the relationship between rational and emotional processing. Some, like Chris Frith, even suggest that rational decision-making is an illusion created by our own brain to defend us from the incomprehensible reality of our truly irrational selves. The scientific and philosophical facts are clear: things are not as simple as they seem.

And this helps us explain what a brand is. A brand is the complete set of criteria upon which the human brain decides. (Note that lower order mammals don’t use ‘brands’, just sub-conscious instincts; they don’t ‘decide’.) Brands are a complex interdependency between rational and emotional propositions where each works to shape and explain the other. They are about hypokeimenon (essence), haecceity (differentiation) and quiddity (experience) and touch not just logos and marketing but every aspect of what an organisation thinks and does. It follows then, that managing a brand requires profound and holistic consideration, with the intellect and imagination of a deeply enquiring mind. If we are to believe Chris Frith, then it’s the most important thing that any business should consider, overriding all the rational considerations that businesses typically prioritise in their plans.

Of course some philosophers (the empiricists and phenomenalists) disagree with this point of view. For them, a thing is no more than its tangible self: The Madonna of the Pinks is just paint on canvas, worth no more than, say, 50p. They would consider a conversation about brands to be an exercise in vanity and a waste of money and time. Such people should be introduced to Florence. Sometimes it takes the perspective of a nine-year-old to help you open your eyes.

The Partners has once again teamed up with Richard House Children’s Hospice, heading back into the City to flex their fundraising muscles with another fantastic event, the Richard House five-a-side football tournament.

Aimed at naturally competitive City workers the idea highlights the rivalry that exists in the office and encourages them to bring that to the pitch. In total 20 teams competed with Baker McKenzie becoming the champs in a stunning 3-0 win.

The Partners has designed a logo, posters and other promotional material for the five-a-side event.