Oh dear. Diageo have got themselves in a bit of bother with small brewers BrewDog. You only need to look at Diageo’s apology to see how they got into trouble in the first place (and why BrewDog deserve to win more awards than them).
When small independents learn big companies’ tricks
As of today the contents of my fridge have changed. Bye-bye big name labels and uniform vegetables. Hello real food delivered from local shops by Hubbub. If you haven’t come across them already, Hubbub is roughly what you get when you cross the good bits of buying local with the convenience of ordering from Ocado. It’s as good as it sounds.
Tone of voice. No tone of voice.
What is tone of voice? And does it really matter?
We can show you. All we need is some butter and a Jedi Master.
Buy-in? No we don’t.
When we hear the words ‘stakeholders’, ‘engagement’ or ‘buy-in’ at the start of a project our hearts sink. On paper it makes perfect sense to make sure the people who should be involved have their say. But in practice, the process often takes over at the expense of any good ideas.
The School of Life parish newsletter.
Guest starring us.
Ad man Rory Sutherland gave a sermon this morning at The School of Life about influence. And we guest wrote the parish newsletter to go with it.
The day we went to Selfridges.
To speak not to shop.
Here’s Rob talking about stopping brand slop in Selfridges at an event set up by It’s Nice That.
Photo: It's Nice That
We were tickled that the soundbite flying around afterwards on Twitter was: ‘If you feel like a berk saying it you shouldn’t write it down. – Rob Mitchell’. We’re determined to bring the word berk back into conversation.
If you’d like us to talk about brand slop at your event,
drop us a line.
Jargon isn’t the problem and ‘Plain English’ isn’t the answer.
Every year the Plain English Campaign gives out gobbledegook awards to the worst examples of incomprehensible writing at work. But most writing problems in an organisation can’t be solved with a Plain English crystal mark.
An open letter to Sir Richard Branson
Hello Richard,
A lot of newspapers this morning are talking about how you’ve bought Northern Rock for a bargain price at the expense of us taxpayers. We’ll grumble to the chancellor about that. But seeing as you (and some private equity suits) have bought it, we hope some good will come of it.
Richard, this is your chance to shake up retail banking: some of Britain’s most unloved high street brands. Here are some ideas to get you started.