Go Compare - Go Fuck Yersel

Just to be clear, the point of this piece is that I want to live in a world where anyone can freely graffiti billboard adverts without fear of prosecution for vandalism or hate crime. We are bombarded by outdoor advertising with no choice as to whether we see it or not, if people could freely amend adverts as they see fit, marketeers would be forced to take into account the views of local communities.

It makes me gag with frustration, there are actually people out there who think that this is a spontaneous eruption of hatred and vandalism against one specific car insurance comparison site, and not just a slightly edgy marketing job.

I'm genuinely concerned that people think that out of all the things in modern life that a spontaneous uprising of graffiti could be about, it would be about one TV advert.

Not the Aleksandr from compare the meerkats, or Churchill the disagreeable/agreeable bulldog or that dapper Admiral.

A lot of people think that its genuine amusing vandalism, then so be it.

What I think would be awesome if if some lads with spraycans went out and cranked the Go Compare graffiti up a notch and added their own unauthorised graffiti. "Go Compare - Go Fuck Yersel", "Go to Compare the Meerkat", "Go back to Italy", "Go anorexic you fat fuck"

If this is the reality that folk think they live in, then embrace it. I eagerly await the same graffiti creeping into other adverts, a wholesale takeover of billboard advertising by lads with spraycans, inspired by Go Compare.

Especially around the Olympics

That would be awesome.

Any advert that annoys you or rubs you up the wrong way, just grab your cans, don't say it, spray it. If anyone stops you, tell them you have implicit permission from the PR company to purely and genuinely express the feelings of the local community towards advertising.

When I used to stay round Shields Road in Glasgow, an area with a large Muslim community, whenever the clothing companies put up posters of scantily clad women wearing £4.99 bikini tops, a few days later the skantily clad woman would find herself covered up. Someone had been out with a ladder, a tray of black Dulux and a paint roller, and covered her modesty.

This happened a few times until the advertisers got the message that you don't do scantily clad women in some areas.

I guess in a sprawling metropolis like London, it doesn't matter if an advertiser pisses off a large section of the eyeballs.


A few weeks ago the same thing happened in Walthamstow (and Tower Hamlets according to the Evening Standard), with this year's H&M £4.99 bikini tops adverts. By Blackhorse Road underground someone had tried to paint over the skantily clad women and failed miserably, only one of the four ladies was covered.

Our awesome MP tweeted about it, we have different views on this. I think its a pure and genuine expression of a community's distaste for advertising that's vulgar in their culture, and she thinks its a hate crime. Some people feel threatened by it.

I was tweeting about it yesterday and received this

I don't really want to invoke Venn, but it is possible for graffiti to be both vandalism and hate crime, and also for vandalism to look like hate crime when it clearly isn't, in much the same way that a marketing job can look like vandalism when it clearly isn't.

One person's hate crime is another's censorship. If you're going to mush all these concepts together to match whatever your worldview is, then you'll find me up a ladder painting beer bellies on posters of Olympic Team GB and complaining that they're already airbrushed to unrealistic perfection and encourage the youth of today to develop eating disorders.

Anyhoo, the Go Compare graffiti campaign is a rather sweet anachronistic affair, harking back to a time when people did things differently.

We don't use ladders to deface adverts now, these days we use software, like on MyDavidCameron and the anti-terror hotline remix

 Alas, if Go Compare created a macro generator website, no one would use it, no one feels strongly enough about their adverts to actually go out and vandalise them.

Only in the dreams of marketeers.

Yeo Dairy

I don't watch X-Factor very often, but staying at my brother's place this weekend, it was on TV. Gotta say, this advert for Yeo Valley milk was the best thing on.

Raising a heavy head

A few days ago, after a moan from the missus, I resolved to write some kind of feminist blog-post, or pimp some feminism story on Facebook, just anything to get me feminist brownie points. I was briefly going to write about fat, cos its a feminist issue, but then couldn't be bothered.

Until today, when I see from all over the internet that Size 16 Chloe Marshall has made it through to the Miss England Finals.

Sadly this is old news, everyone's linking to a BBC Newsbeat report from 2008, so its rising up the Most Popular Stories ranking.

As the internet goes crazy at the thought of a curvy bint in a bikini, greasy fingers double-clicking, flecks of spittle slowly oozing down chins, the BBC story becomes ever popular. But it was a long time ago. It was 2008. She didn't win, she came second, and then got signed up to a modelling agency specialising in curvy chicks, or 'BBW' as the fetish sites would call people of her size.

The BBC really ought to do something about this, like putting the date of articles in the most popular list, or some kind of timecap, anything to stop the past trending like this.

Chloe's got her own website and everything now, and its all professional like, with photies of Chloe with plenty of slap on. Alas the blog's not been updated since October and she only posted four times last year.

If you want to see her in person, she's judging the finals of Miss Natural Curves 2010 at the Civic Hall in Bedworth on Saturday 24th April 2010.

**UPDATE**
Oh Jesus Christ! Even topical news website The Daily Mash is punting this a new story in their piece MEN PUZZLED BY DEBATE OVER BOUNCY GIRLS

As the first size 16 contestant prepares for the Miss England beauty pageant, women said it was an important breakthrough while men said they could not imagine the circumstances in which this lovely big girl would be deemed unattractive.

Helen Archer, an official woman, said: "This is the culmination of years of determined struggle against a male dominated culture that enslaves women and demands they conform to a perfect ideal of sexual attractiveness."

But Nathan Muir, a completely normal person in every way from Hatfield, stressed: "What the hell are you talking about?

It was two years ago, get over it.

Dancing in the street

As I walk to work through the cold rainy streets of Wembley, quietly observing the world, I see plent of government adverts for dance classes.

Free dance classes.

Well, not really free. Just paid for with your money against your will. In the depths of the recession the government have decided to spend our money providing dance classes, whether we turn up or not.

Its like those old joke phone numbers in the back of eighties kids comics where you phone a premium rate number to hear some jokes read out, but here you have no choice. The money's spent.

It went to dance classes in 2008 on my own accord. Lindy-hop dancing, it was fun. I had to pay for it myself from my own pocket. Six quid a session for eight weeks. If I don't go to the government's dance classes can I have a refund.

Its the way dance classes are an interchangable commodity in the government's eyes. Just dance, it doesn't matter which dancing school or organisation is conducting the classes. There's no sign of it on the adverts, just the government.

Its vulgar.

'Power up your robot'? Robot dancing was cool for a week in 1983 before every seven year old in school started doing it.

I guess it was cool again last year when that Britain's got Talent mob won their thing, but that was only funny when Perri did a backflip and fell on his head. Besides, is the winner of a talent show any guide for government entertainment policy. In which case I would rather do 'chick chick, chick chick chicken, lay a little egg for me'.

Could they no have just made advertising tax deductible for established dance schools, rather than this shit?

Benefits anxiety

I walk to work, its about 2.4 miles, I do it not to save petrol but to save money and ensure I get to work on time. As a result of this walking, I get to see lots of adverts.

You know, of course that the government is the UK's biggest advertiser.

I am fraught with anxiety. I see lots of adverts against benefit fraud. They catch benefit thieves, 56,439 of them last year.

I'm not sure if I'm a benefit thief or not. Maybe I am and I just don't know it, maybe I made a mistake on a form, and as a result I'm getting benefits that I shouldn't be. If its just an innocent mistake, they won't prosecute and fine me, will they?

Like, last year I claimed Housing Benefit for a few months, and Job Seekers allowance, but they kept cancelling it for a variety of reasons, so I got further and further into debt. The Housing Benefit was a particular pain, cos I lived in the middle of West Hampstead, its pretty expensive round there and I could barely afford it even when I had a job, so there was something that made me feel uneasy about getting the state to pay for me to stay there. If I was the state I wouldn't have paid any benefits, I would have insisted I moved out to somewhere cheaper, like Hull.

But no, the State, they paid vast sums of money for me to stay. Maybe that was the mistake that will get me done. Anyhoo, I moved away to somewhere cheaper, Wembley and stopped relying on Housing Benefit.

I heard about some bloke who works 50 hours a week, but still claimed Housing Benefit cos he couldn't afford the place he stayed in, he had a big family and needed a big house. He was advised to work less so he'd be able to claim more benefits, it was the only way he could stay were he was. Is that cheating? Not working as much as you possibly can? Or is it just the way the system's geared.

I was on Job Seekers Allowance, but that kept on changing, and getting cut and I'd have to reapply for it and then discover that it was the Job Centre who made a mistake and not me. But maybe it was all a mistake and I wasn't due to claim anything. It could go either way.

Besides, if its not the claimant who makes the mistake, does the person in the benefits agency get fined and imprisoned? No? Is there any penalty for them cocking up? Any incentive for them to not mess up?

There was a Dick Puddlecote piece the other day about how his business has to keep doing stuff to keep up with changing regulations, just to stay in business. Maybe the benefits malarkey is like that, one week I'm all law abiding and lawfully claiming and then some legislation changes or some statutory instrument and a week later I'm a benefit thief without me actually doing anything.

Right now I get a single person's discount on my council tax, 25% off, which is nice of them. But I'm concerned that when I phoned up, I just told the nice person at Brent Council that I lived alone and they believed me, and didn't require any proof or anything. What if I was lying? What if its some kind of trick, some kind of test?

I swear I'm the only person who lives at my flat, no one else has slept there or stayed the night since I moved in. The bed remains unchristened.

Then again there was that thing with Islington Council taking itself to court about parking fines, maybe the council folk have gone rogue against themselves. Its not my fault, I'm just caught up in some council schizo split personality battle.

Maybe its the Working Tax Credits? First time I applied I figured out how much I was due to earn in 2009/2010 and the nice Working Tax Credit people gave me a regular amount of money every week. But then a month or so later, I recalculated how much I thought I'd earn in the same financial year and came up with a different figure, so now I get paid a different amount in Working Tax Credits, but I don't know which number was right, or what I did differently the first time.

What if it was right before and wrong now? What if I'm a benefit thief?

I don't think I am, I don't think they'll ever catch me, but that's what the people in the adverts thought. Or they would do if they were actually benefit thieves, and not just models paid to appear in adverts holding signs.

In fact if they're not really benefit thieves, and just pretending to be, how do we know that the 56,439 figure isn't also just pretending to be the number of people caught? How can we believe any of it?

Adverts as news stories

I think this is wonderful

A controversial Scottish brewery has said it has reclaimed the title of the world's strongest beer from German rivals - with Sink the Bismarck at 41%.

BrewDog, of Fraserburgh, made headlines last year when it unveiled a 32% beer called Tactical Nuclear Penguin.

However, Schorschbrau released the 40% strength Schorschbock.

BrewDog said its newly released 41%, Sink the Bismarck, would cost £40 for a 330ml bottle and would only be sold online.

More here

This 'pensioners burning books' story

God, its everywhere, in all the newspapers, in all the blogs, everywhere. In the Guardian, The Metro, The Seattle Post, EU Referendum, the list is endless.

Volunteers have reported that ‘a large number’ of elderly customers are snapping up hardbacks as cheap fuel for their fires and stoves.

Some PR/marketing company have done a great job, and some sites are smelling a rat, The Civil Society quotes the Association of Charity Shops as having heard no evidence of this new trend, and has firmly declaring that there is “no truth in it”.

I reckon it was a bit weird the were no charity shops named and the folk in them also nameless.

Workers at one charity shop in Swansea, in south Wales, described how the most vulnerable shoppers were seeking out thick books such as encyclopaedias for a few pence because they were cheaper than coal.

One assistant said: ‘Book burning seems terribly wrong but we have to get rid of unsold stock for pennies and some of the pensioners say the books make ideal slow-burning fuel for fires and stoves.

A lot of them buy up large hardback volumes so they can stick them in the fire to last all night.’

Which leaves only Jonathan Stearn from Consumer Focus and Ruth Davison from the National Housing Federation as the shameless publicity seekers.

Jonathan Stearn, energy expert for Consumer Focus, said: ‘If pensioners are taking such desperate measures to heat their homes it is shocking. With low wholesale prices and increasing profit margins, there is clearly room for energy companies to make price cuts immediately.’

Ruth Davison, of the National Housing Federation, said: ‘The spiralling cost of energy means heating homes has become a luxury rather than a necessity for many people – particularly the elderly, low paid and unemployed.’

Both of them? or was one just a witness dupe, tricked into providing a quote for a groundless news story. Kind of like that bit in Brass Eye where Labour MP Syd Rapson said that paedophiles were using "an area of Internet the size of Ireland".

I reckon Ruth is the dupe and Jonathan Stearn is the Chris Morris with a message to put out, demanding energy companies make price cuts right now.

Maybe the companies could, but according to the internet here, the wholesale cost of fuel makes up 50% of yer power bills, so a 10% drop in the wholesale price, would be a 5% drop in your fuel bill. Actually, there's this neat document here from early December detailing how profitable energy companies are.

I dunno where Stearn gets his info from but the NERA report says

Even though wholesale energy prices have fallen recently, gas and electricity suppliers are earning very little margin on their sales to domestic customers, according to analysis by NERA Economic Consulting (NERA). The analysis takes the energy regulator’s own research, and builds on it using data extracted from public sources or supplied by the energy companies.

The energy regulator, Ofgem, has previously estimated a “gross” margin between the domestic customer bill and some of the costs of a notional energy supply business. At the request of Energy UK, NERA has updated Ofgem’s method to current conditions and has extended it to include a more complete set of costs.

Based on current tariffs, Ofgem’s method would show an annual gross margin of £204 per dual fuel customer. NERA’s analysis shows that additional costs reported in public sources (including Ofgem itself) absorb £133 of this gross margin. Accounting for more realistic customer characteristics (e.g. average consumption and tariff discounts given to customers who shop around) absorbs another £39. NERA also estimates that the cost of specialised energy trading, needed to match energy purchases to customers’ demand, costs another £34 for a dual fuel customer. As a result, suppliers are not quite breaking even on dual fuel customers. (The annual overall margin is actually minus £1 per customer.) For customers who take electricity and gas from different suppliers, NERA finds that suppliers make on average a small positive overall margin – £9 and £10 per customer per year, respectively.

Process Engineering on the Postal Strike

From the Guardian today

But if the industrial dispute between Royal Mail and the Communication Workers Union (CWU) drags on and more strikes are called, some letters stuck in the system will take even longer to reach their destination.

Jonathan de Carteret, founder of broker Post-Switch, said that Royal Mail was using special warehouses to house the undelivered mail which will get topped up as and when more strikes take place. Letters waylaid by the first strikes will be the last to get delivered because they will be literally at the bottom of the pile.

"While Royal Mail works through the backlog of letters, it's unfortunately a case of first in, last out," he said.

It shows blatant disregard for their customers that they're using 'first in,last out'. It doesn't take much to have a door each end of the warehouse, or some kind or circular system marked out on the floor and a guy wheeling trolleys round.

Really, its not difficult, but for some reason the Royal Mail are just pissing on their customers. This tiny thing isn't much to do with the strike, it just how the organisation wheels round trolleys, they do it in the way that's less hassle for them rather than providing decent service for the customers, the folk who pay for stamps and expect their mail to get through on time.

Anti-marketing

Looks like Labour are pouring millions into google.
But it raises in me strange feelings, firstly I don't want no stinking money burning adverts on my site, especially the Labour party, thats worse than if the BNP advertised here, and secondly, well, I think a 10% cut in spending is a great thing, 20% would be even better.

And clicking through to the Labour website tells us that a 10% cut in spending would mean thousands fewer police officers. Here, read this story about how it took eight officers to arrest a cyclist or this one about police teaching primary school children to recognise terrorists or this story about a Police chief spending £3,500 on a chair for a poetry prize.

So, aye, I reckon the police could easily have their budgets cut, I would support such an endevour.

Advert as news stories #29

I know its the pinnacle of PR to get some gimmick featured on the news as a story. But is ESTATE AGENT TRIES GIMMICK really a good use of anyone's bandwidth?

(Insert generic rant about liscence fee payer's money)

They actually interviewed some real life teenagers! Who confessed to knocking over an ashtray last week! Its almost like that Brass Eye sketch where teenagers would sell ideas to roving film crews, "Yeah, someone pissed in the lift last week, it still smells."

I'm never going to make it in the world of PR and marketing, this sort of thing just makes me click, rant and switch off.

Ye gods, I watched Nathan Barley for the first time the other day. There's that episode where Dan Ashcroft has to write the article about the photographer who takes photies of celebrities pissing, but all I could think of was this round of articles I've seen lately in real life about an exhibition of photies of discarded bananas on the streets on London.

(Insert rant about the fall of civilisation when polished shit is raised to high art)

This is how the Roman Empire fell.

Oh, hang on, there's a goth at the front door. More later.

Adverts as news stories #28

From the BBC

Peter Kay voted UK's top comedian

Phoenix Nights star Peter Kay has been overwhelmingly voted the UK's favourite comedian in an online poll.

The 33-year-old, whose observational comedy routines are rooted in his Bolton upbringing, was chosen by 63% of the 3,000 adults polled.

...

The survey was conducted for the online bank Smile in November.

Its not an entertainment news story, its an advert for a bank.

And, hang on, a sample size of 3,000 is enough to get featured on the BBC news website frontpage is it? I could do that.