Prisoner 46664

Following last week’s comments on the snow and wonky weather, aka global warming, it has been pointed out that we should not judge the extent to which the world may or may not be warming up based on the weather outside our own front door. Exactly outside whose front door should such assessments be made? This sounds like typical eco-mentalist obfuscation.

And please note this is the last dose of wit and wisdom and spiritual enlightenment you are going to get this year. But there are plenty of back copies to keep you amused through the Saturnalian revels. And we will back for more fun and frolics in 2011 once the lums start to reek, as the Celtic tribes to the North say-which means when the chimneys start to smoke to everyone else.

You will know that Cicero no longer has responsibility for the protection of your security and the maintenance of your freedom and that for the past few months he has been advising businesses on how to do marketing better.

In recent weeks Cicero has been spending a lot of time trying to develop a set of words to describe various wannabe brands. This is the kind of thing that gives marketers their kicks. It is legal, doesn’t spoil your nose and still gives a great buzz. Sad I know.

No matter the brand, company, category, product, or service, the most common list of attributes everyone wants to be associated with goes something like this: honesty, accessibility, innovation, invention, forward thinking, collaborative, friendly, and easy to work with, trustworthy, leader, fun. Recognise the exercise? Now who wouldn't want to be all those things? Anyone want to be the opposite?

You might now better understand how difficult is the life of a marketing guru when every other brand has the same words on their list. This is not at all helpful when you are trying to make brands distinctive.

And so here is an exercise which is useful to move things forward.

‘Shout out the attributes of Nelson Mandela’ asked your favourite Marketing Guru ‘I’ll write them on the white board.’

"Brave," came the first response. "Courageous!" quickly followed. As did a whole list of attributes like "altruistic, heroic, peaceful, wise, thoughtful, giving, caring, loving, fearless" and so and so on. You will by now have caught the drift.

"What is the problem with this list?"

Deathly silence.

Then your Marketing Guru pointed to a colleague in the room, let's call him Bernard, and mused, "The problem with the list is that it describes Nelson Mandela, and it describes Bernard, a caring, wise, thoughtful, loving, giving and peaceful father and husband. But Bernard is not Nelson Mandela. Sorry, Bernard.

‘So what does Nelson Mandela stand for?’

‘Freedom’ they shouted with one voice.

"That," said Cicero, ‘is not just the difference between Bernard and old Mandiba, that is the difference between a true brand stance and an easy list of attributes.

‘ Understand your stance in the world, understand your true values, what you're actually up to and the why, your reason to get up in the morning — get that right, pursue that mission with full force and fury — and all the attributes you desire will surely follow’

Thirty people created a list of attributes that could describe anyone. But those same people also recognized instantly that Nelson Mandela is not a collection of attributes but a man of purpose, stance, value and pure mission in the world.

And from this we learn that that your brand will never be remembered for attributes but you will be remembered for what you do with them. Nail your market stance and all else will follow. It's not so much what you make and what you sell but why you do that matters and how you do it.

Don’t chase and measure yourself against a long list of attributes, many of which are just the price of entry for all. But instead always work hard to stay on mission and always execute against your stance and not against attributes. Measure the market's understanding of your reason to be — who you are and why you do what you do.

And if you can do all that, my son (and daughter of course), you will have built a great and strong brand. Just like Prisoner 46664. The man we know today as Nelson Mandela.

Is it only me........but what is happening to our sportsmen?

I don’t know if anyone else has noticed but aren’t our footballers getting soft? I might be mistaken, and sometimes when you get old your memory does start to play tricks, but I thought football was a tough, physical, manly sport played by real men. No longer.

Sure the laws have been tightened up so that the kind of guys who revelled in names like ‘Chopper’, ‘Razor’ and ‘Machete’ did not permanently disable you when they tried to get the ball from you, so I guess we must consider that good thing. This not an argument to re-instate football as a blood sport more suited to the Coliseum in Rome than the Emirates.

However I do draw the line at Fancy Dan Footballers with grotesque wages unable to spend a mere 90 minutes in the cold without feeling the need to insulate themselves from a drafty breeze. In my day, and here we are talking long before some Mad Scientist decided that our weather was warming, the only thing that stood between our pale white chafed skin tinged with pinky-blue shading was a thin nylon pair of shorts and top, though we did tend to wear thick socks. We got warm by running around for ninety minutes, a novel thought I know but it did seem to work.

But this does not seem enough for our Fancy Dans.

First they wore under-garments. I could live with that on basis that these help keep your muscles warm which is essential to avoid injury. Little did I know that this was merely the first step to them dressing like wimps. Then they started to wear gloves. And now they are wearing some fashion accessory called a snood, whatever that might be. In my book if it goes around your neck it’s a scarf.

Where will this wimpy behaviour end? It can’t be long before they start to wear trilby hats in the cold weather to go alongside their matching glove and scarf, sorry snood, combo, and overcoats in team colours for when it is especially cold. We might even get to see our Fancy Dan heroes in cashmere pashminas some day soon.

Now it might just be me but could I just point out that the football pitch is exactly that and not a fashion cat walk. It is where you do manly stuff like get stuck into other men who are wearing different colour tops from yours. Got it?

Do you have any views you might wish to share on this matter?

Have a great week and enjoy the Saturnalian revels.

We will see each other after our lums have started to reek.

Felix dies Nativitatis

Black Magic

Well it seems that last week’s dose of wit and wisdom upset the Guardianistas. It is always pleasing to see them upset.

However as always Cicero will not shy away or censor the critics who exercise their right to disagree and to contend. It is what we are here to do. In the words of Mao ‘let a thousand schools of thought contend....... let a thousand flowers bloom’. Of course this statement did lead to the horrors of the Cultural Revolution so maybe not.

Today we are going to use a card trick to illustrate this week’s key leadership thought. Given that card tricks are highly visual this might be as tricky as ventriloquism on the radio to pull off but if you are prepared to apply your imagination this might just work.

And if it does this will amaze and amuse those relatives, friends and visitors with whom you might be choosing to spend the forthcoming Saturnalian revels.

First of all write down the suit and number of a playing card on a blank sheet of paper, seal it and give it to someone in the room to hold. Tell no one the card you have written down. For the purposes of this exercise you might wish to heighten the drama at the outset by pretending to read minds. Of course you are doing no such thing.

Are you still following this?

Ok to make it easier to follow let us say you wrote the Jack of Diamonds.
Now you need to find a willing volunteer from your audience to be your Debbie McGee. Got one? Now to proceed with a trick which will baffle, astound and confound.

Ask Debbie to name the suits.

‘Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades’.

‘Now pick two of those suits and tell me which two you have selected’, you will ask. And this is where it gets tricky for she could pick any two suits at this point.
‘Hearts and Clubs’.

At this point you now need to start to vary and adapt your answer dependent on the answer Debbie has provided.

‘You have elected to throw away the Diamonds and the Spades. Now I find that very interesting choice and I would like to go a little bit deeper into your choice.’

At this point you as the master magician are waffling madly to ratchet up the tension and suspense and also applying distraction techniques to divert the minds of your rapt audience away from what you are in fact doing.

‘If I asked you to select either Diamonds or Spades to hold onto, which one would it be?'

‘Diamonds’ replies Debbie.

‘Ah Diamonds, a girl’s best friend. A great choice if I may so though it would be interesting if we had the time to discuss what you have against Spades. Ok. In the suit of Diamonds what are the five highest ranking cards?’

‘Ace, King, Queen, Jack, 10’.

‘Now pick two of those’

‘Ace and Jack’, replies Debbie.

‘Of the two you have selected, which one do you favour?’

‘Well the Ace is the highest so I guess that is the one I prefer’.

‘So if you give that one to me what is the card that you now hold in your hand?

‘The Jack of Diamonds’

‘Now let’s see what card I wrote down’

Drum roll. Unfold the piece of paper. Study it. Frown. And show your paper to the audience.

‘The Jack of Diamonds’.

Gasps from the audience. Wild spontaneous applause. The room erupts. The card discarded from the pack by Debbie McGee matches the card written down before we even knew that Debbie McGee would be doing the card selection.

And the moral of the tale, and this week’s useful business lesson, if you know where you are trying to go and what you are trying to achieve, you will get there, and take everyone with you, by making sure you ask the right questions along the way.

And if you still don’t get how this ‘trick’ works, re-read the story and try to work out what was happening as we got to the result we were looking for.

It is not black magic. It’s leadership. Or is that just black magic? Discuss.

Is it only me......but this is snow joke.

Apologies for the dreadful pun but we could not let this week go without reference to the snowy weather of the past few days.

And in passing let me say, is it not strange how all those previously making wide eyed wild claims about global warming have gone suddenly quiet? Where are the enviro-mentalists now, we wonder? As we have pointed out countless times before, it is just wonky weather. It happens. Live with it.

But back to my point.

It is annoying in the least when every time we get a few snowflakes in this country, someone, usually dressed in a matching Day Glo high viz vest, the wardrobe of choice for unctuous busy bodies in this country, advises that we should only travel if our journey is ‘absolutely necessary’.

Now when such announcements are made there will no doubt be quite a few shirkers, skivers and slackers (and for the avoidance of doubt I know no one fitting any or all of these descriptions) who will take this as an official recommendation for an extra duvet day. But at what point does a journey stop being absolutely necessary? I think we deserve some guidance on this point.

I think we should consider Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and while I am prepared to concede that journeys done for my self- fulfilment and other self actualisation needs, of which I do very few, might not be ‘absolutely necessary’ in the eyes of Mr Day Glo, anything to do with my basic biological and physiological needs such as shelter, heating, food and water, and earning the spondooliks to buy the same, must be considered an absolutely necessary trip. Would you not agree?

But what about my esteem and achievement needs? Are these absolutely necessary? My belongingness and love needs? My security and order needs? You see Mr Day Glo and his Health and Safety Gualeiter friends do not think about these kinds of things when they make such wild pronouncements on taking trips in the snow and ice.

Fortunately I do.

Last week we even had a senior policeman stressing that this time he really meant the advice about unnecessary journeys. Which does beg two questions.........did he not really mean it before every time he urged us to take an extra duvet day? And next time he issues said advice will he mean it this time? This is the kind of mess such warnings get us into.

It might only be me but I have a solution to help resolve this dilemma. Perhaps when such warnings are issued going forward the advice should be linked to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and instead of linking the warning to some vague reference to necessity we could get warnings like ‘police today advised drivers only to venture forth if they are seeking to satisfy their needs for belongingness and love’. Or in extreme weather only journeys linked to basic biological needs will be allowed. That way we will all know where we stand.

Do you get my drift on this one? And we are not talking snow drifts here.

Have a great week.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.

Like water off a duck's back

It is pleasing to note that there are people out there who don’t just add their opinion to and comment upon Cicero’s opinions, but who also take the time and trouble to help Cicero understand better the vernacular of the modern world. We are all indebted to Anonymous for defining the word ‘mojo’. And if you don’t what we are talking about, please see last week’s dose of wit and wisdom and the comments subsequently appended.

And as you will no doubt agree wholeheartedly, Cicero has lost none of his ‘uncanny personal power or influence’ as projected through these words.

And so to this week’s soupcon of wisdom and enlightenment.

Last week Cicero had to persuade a mightily important Head Honcho heading up a business offering services to other businesses that his newly carefully crafted marketing strategy could be likened to ‘throwing bread on the water for the ducks’.

To say he was puzzled was an understatement but after explanation he soon got and understood the analogy and this analogy will be relevant to many of you also marketing to other businesses.

For what happens when you throw bread on the water in front of ducks? They will take a nibble of some of your crusts. And the more bread you throw, the more likely you are to get the ducks to nibble. Sometimes marketing is just so simple.

For unlike marketing to consumers, it is mightily difficult with B2B services to stimulate demand. Customers are not going to buy more engines, machine tools or even accountancy services just because you have tried to market to them. No matter how good your marketing might be, and we know it will be very good, such decisions are not taken spontaneously or without deep and detailed consideration of all the options, suppliers and costs. We are talking here about major purchase and investment decisions.

In market places like these therefore the role of the marketer is to keep the spotlight on the name and the proposition through as many channels as possible so that when the buy decision gets made, your brand remains top of mind. It is just like feeding ducks.

And to make this happen great marketers will use every means at their disposal to communicate with the market through as many broadcast and narrowcast media as possible-ads of course, but also things like PR releases, surveys, events, thought pieces, seminars, direct marketing, tweets and so on. The list is endless. And the challenge is on to find interesting ways to keep your name in lights and to keep renting space in the mind of your target and potential customers. Even Christmas Cards, ooooops sorry, Season’s Greetings Cards, we must not offend the Politically Correct Brigade, and diaries emblazoned with the brand, get sucked into this battle and at this time of the year get drafted in as bread for ducks. And you thought it was because someone wanted to be nice to you. Foolish and naive child.

Take a look at service firms’ websites. You will see them loaded with blogs, newsletters, press releases, events and sign up opportunities. And every one of these pieces of communication is designed to get their name into the market place and in front of customers and to keep it there. They are always finding reasons to communicate, something to say, opinions to be expressed. In short they are constantly throwing bread on the water. And this is what lies at the heart of a great Quack Quack Marketing Strategy-it is all about finding things to talk about with your market.

And hopefully you get it now........just like Cicero’s Head Honcho.

You may think that the things you read here a wee bit bonkers. This time the idea really is quackers. Quack, quack.

Is it only me........but I’m not so sure that this really is good news.

While reading widely the other day to ensure my knowledge and wisdom were being kept up to date, I came across an announcement from the latest and newest government Quango, the independent Office for Budget Responsibility, and was struck dumb.

It seems that this Quango now expects 330,000 public sector Apparatchiks to lose their jobs over the next four years, far fewer than the 490,000 it forecast in its June report. This is no doubt good news to the 160,000 Apparatchiks who will be kept on at taxpayer expense. But what about the rest of us?

The OBR Quangocrats have said it had changed the Apparatchik job forecast because the government of the Two Caesars ‘ had put more emphasis on welfare cuts and less on departmental spending cuts since it made its earlier forecast.’

Now far be it for me, a humble marketing personage to query the role and capability of this economic Quango but I do not greet this announcement with vocal whoops of joy, a lot of high fiving and heaps of knuckle knocking. Is this really good news-fewer Apparatchiks than previously thought to be culled?

But surely the OBR is looking at the issue through the wrong end of the telescope. And given that the key word in the title of the OBR is ‘responsibility, might I respectfully suggest that the Head OBR Quangocrat listen up and pay attention before he, or she, becomes the Head of the Office of Budget Irresponsibility.

The real issue is not that fewer Apparatchiks than previously thought might need to learn to SatNav to their local Job Centre Plus but how many we actually need or how many we, the hard pressed tax payers, are willing to pay for. And this is what I would like the OBR to examine if it wants to retain its moniker.

In short at the end of the day whether it be 330,000 or 490,000 fewer, we are just circumcising gnats. Tough on those involved but no tougher than the circumstances being faced by those in the wealth creating sector for a good while now. And given the size of the Apparatchik sector, this level of circumcision should be accomplished relatively pain free and should be well within natural levels of people turnover.

Hopefully one or even both of the Two Caesars is reading and sharing my thinking. Just trying to be helpful as usual.

What do you think?

Have a great week.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.

Protect your assets

Greetings once again. It is great to see you back. And great to be back.

And if you were one of those wondering if Cicero was losing his mojo, last week’s blast of enlightenment and wisdom will have convinced you that no mojo has been lost.

Could someone please enlighten this old man and explain exactly what mojo is. How can you expect Cicero not to lose his mojo when he has no idea what mojo is? This is a bit like Donald Rumsfeld, the former American Secretary for Defence, or Defense as they ignorantly spell it, and his ‘unknown unknowns’ although perhaps for Cicero this is a ‘known unknown’. Whatever.

In past few days those very clever chaps at MORI have published some interesting research findings. Every few days it seems that someone or other has undertaken some research among one group or another with their findings eventually hitting the airwaves and confirming the axiom that there are lies, damned lines and statistics.

And of course we should never forget that 81.3% of statistics are made up on the spot.

But back to MORI, surely they would not put their name against numbers that were made up. Or would they?

Anyway MORI have recently spoken with 187 senior board directors of the UK’s leading companies and found out that “94% agree that the asset which offers the greatest protection during an economic downturn is a strong brand”.

Of course this will not come as great news to you but there are people out there in senior positions who do not act or speak like they agree with this statement, the most notable of whom are the Bean Counters in many of our businesses.

So why is your brand your most important asset in a recession? Three reasons immediately spring to this aged and wise mind.

Firstly there is consumer confidence. Loyal customers retain confidence in a strong brand even when the going gets tough and confident customers are less likely to switch brand. Secondly in tough economic times potential customers, staff and shareholders are more risk averse. A strong brand mitigates this risk in the mind of the stakeholder, providing an anchor of certainty and surety when all about them is turmoil and uncertain. And lastly company value is more likely to remain buoyant in an economic downturn when it is supported by a strong and profitable brand.

And if you want more support for this argument, the Profit Impact of Market Strategy (PIMS for short) database has since the mid 1960s with great rigour and credibility been tracking data to identify the relationship between business action and business outcomes and they too have reached the conclusion that those enlightened and far sighted businesses which stand up to the penny pinching Bean Counters and continue to invest in their brand assets, have in the medium term added greater value than those businesses where parsimony prevails.

But surely this information perfect sense. And surely too it is important that said Head Honchos continue to invest in this asset. After all you would not invest in a spanking new factory and neglect to maintain it, would you?

So don’t be tempted to stop investing in strengthening your brand, even when all around are losing their heads. By neglecting your brand, you risk exposing the business at a time when recovery is much more costly and much less certain of success. Brand profitability is the ultimate goal but it takes investment. Short term budget cuts may lead to immediate relief of pressure, but they will surely lead to long term heartache. Stand up to the Bean Counters. And protect your asset. If you don’t, who else will?

Is it only me.............but I think I have been incredibly stupid.

I have had an epiphany moment of such great impact that I have suddenly realised that I might not be as clever as I thought I was. Wow! No doubt that has left you reeling.

As you will know the 1832 Great Reform Act did away with rotten boroughs, bribery at the polls and all sort of electoral corruption. Now in the spirit of Emil Zola j’accuse governments of all persuasions, and most notably the Last Lot, of acting in breach of the Great Reform Act, the foundation stone of our democratic system.

Stay with me on this one.

If you look at the map showing the distribution of our money masquerading as government largesse, you will be struck, as I was, with the extent to which government generosity is concentrated in pockets dotted around the country. In some towns, cities, regions and nations, the share of GDP you can put down to our money is greater than 50%. And when you get to this level of concentration there is such a hugely critical mass of vested interest that change is impossible. Is this not exactly the same conditions that the 1832 Act was designed to prevent? If it wasn’t, could you please explain the difference to me.

And my solution to this cancer at the heart of our democratic system? Simple. Deny the vote to all those dependent on government largesse and let only those without a vested interest, who are not in receipt of patronage, or who remain un-bribed, have the vote. In this way we can return to the ideals of the Great Reformers and to ensure that all those who died on the massacre fields at Peterloo or who were banished overseas, did not sacrifice themselves in vain.

Of course this would mean that the Apparatchiks would be denied the vote but this makes perfect sense. They work for the government of the day and are supposedly neutral and apolitical. Having a vote clearly makes this a nonsense so it is just that those on the payroll, those with their snouts in the trough so to speak, be removed from the political system. We do not want the politics of the pork barrel over here, methinks.

Anyone else think I have been incredibly thick?

Have a great week.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.

The marketing triangle

Mea culpa for the absence of last week’s dose of enlightenment, wisdom and entertainment. Some questioned whether the criticism received may have resulted in a loss of mojo, whatever that may mean.

Sadly the fault is far more prosaic in that the enlightenment you crave was not given sufficient priority over other commitments. A state of affairs which must not be allowed to re-occur. And it shall not.

Earlier in the week Cicero was engaged in robust dialogue with a pupil seeking, and paying for, marketing wisdom. You will not be bored with the details of the discussion, no doubt to your delight.

In essence Cicero was being upbraided for initiating work in advance of budget authorisation notwithstanding the strangling tightness of looming deadlines. A fact which was of little interest to Cicero’s interlocutor who was only concerned that due process was not being followed. Even although in Cicero’s extensive experience when the marketing genius does get delivered, it will be the quality of the output and the outcomes delivered against which Cicero and his people will be judged, not whether or not due process was followed.

This is a classic case of the Marketing Triangle, an approach and axiom used by Project Managers which even Cicero is willing to stoop to apply when circumstances dictate.

And what exactly is the Marketing Triangle in this context, you are no doubt asking at this point?

Now think triangles. On each angle of the triangle will be a word-Time, Quality or Cost. In this context do you think it possible to deliver great work very quickly and at low cost? If you say yes then you are a marketing genius. Conventional wisdom dictates that at best you can have two out of three angles but not all three.

Consider the dilemma outlined above. Some ads had to be developed and produced for a fixed price as budgets were very tight, eye wateringly so. Now we don’t do OK work, we aim for great work. But if we had waited for all t’s to be crossed and i’s dotted it would have been impossible to produce great work in time available to us. Or at least not without throwing people at the problem which affects cost. In other words the time available to the Luvvie team to produce the work would have dictated the quality of the output and no doubt the outcome.

And that, mei amici, is the Marketing Triangle.

And if you think you can square the circle and oblong the triangle, please do tell and share. We are all eager to learn.

It might only be me........but I do believe that the world is at last coming round to my way of thinking........or has it?

Did you read a week or so back about the call to relax airport security checks? A position with which Cicero wholeheartedly agrees. It was pleasing to see that a Head Honcho in the airline industry had pointed out that many of the checks forced on innocent travellers, and the key word here is ‘innocent’, by the Airport Goons are totally redundant. Hear,hear.

Cicero has long pointed this out both in word and deed, to the point of imminent arrest, to the Gestapo-like figures who man airport security and whose work you dare not challenge or question. Indeed Cicero has been known to point out that there has not yet been one known case of an Eskimo trying to down an airliner or a 90 year old wheelchair bound woman or even a baby in a pram. And yet all who wish to fly are assumed guilty of being a terrorist until proven otherwise, an axiom which flies in the face of Common Law in this country.

It is also interesting to note that from the official HMG response it would seem that many of the checks put in place for UK citizens are determined by the US. Sorry. This is baffling. Surely we are a sovereign nation. Or have I missed something? At what point did we agree as a nation to become Uncle Sam’s poodle?
At least at this point the Two Caesar’s Airport Man looked like he was going tom relax the rules and look for ways to improve ‘the flying experience’. So far so good.

And then just as it looks like the world is yet again coming around to my way of thinking, and not before time on this one, what happens-someone ‘finds’ a bomb made from a printer carriage on a couple of planes flying out of some Stone Age land. Funny that.

Methinks that this is no coincidence. Methinks there are too many vested interests intent on making life difficult for flyers. Methinks that the enviro-mentalists might even a hand in this.

And so, mei amici, we are foiled yet again from our common sense prevailing. But never mind our time will come. Maybe our sense needs to become a little bit more common.

Have a great week.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.

Thomas the Tank Engine

Cicero’s comments over the past few weeks have led many of you to wonder and some of you to believe that Cicero is a big fan of the policies of the Two Caesars. A few have even made noises that Cicero might be a big fan of the Blue Caesar in particular.

Let the record be set straight.

Those of you with a classical training will be aware that Cicero is acutely suspicious of factionalism and the dangers inherent in supporting one faction over another. And so Cicero is strictly apolitical neither favouring nor condemning one faction over another.

Cicero does however have thoughts, views and opinions on a range of topics and issues and it is these that he is expressing through these words. Should these views coincide with the thoughts of the Blue or Yellow Caesar or even of the Last Lot, that is purely coincidental and is not meant to imply support for any of these factions.

It could well be of course that someone close to a current or past Caesar has read these words and saw they were good. Did you think of that?

Now last week Cicero spent some time in the company of a wise man and we talked choo choo trains and such was the import of our discussion that it seemed appropriate to share the conversation with you. Hopefully you will be inspired.

In any organisation think of the leader as the train driver up front setting the speed and the direction. And behind him (and not forgetting her) he is pulling three coaches, each one filled with members of the business or business unit.

The first coach is the modernisers coach filled with people who want the train to go faster, who are hungry for change and modernisation and don’t think it’s happening fast enough. This coach will usually contain about 20% of your people.

The next coach, which is crowded with about 70% of your people crammed into it, is filled with those who are happy with the status quo and the speed the business is currently going at. These are not reckless types and they can provide useful stability to those in the moderniser coach and while they will go along with train increasing speed a bit, if you go too fast they will start to feel sick and nauseous. And given they comprise the bulk of your people you can’t afford to have too many of them off sick or getting off at the first available opportunity.

The last coach and bringing up the rear is the remaining 10% of your team who not only want to apply brakes but also to engage reverse. Life was so much better 10 years ago for these people who constantly hark back to a golden age that in truth probably never existed. These must be exited or shaken about so much they fall into the second coach.

In which coach are you? In which coach are the members of your team? And at what speed do you drive the train?

Now while the modernisers want to drive the train at 100mph all the time this is way far too scary for those in the status quo coach who are happy with the business and the train being driven at 50mph. You can forget those in the braking coach for the purposes of this discussion. You need your modernisers for no business should stand still but you also need the status quo brigade.

And so your job when driving the train is to go so fast that you shake off those constantly seeking to apply reverse but neither too fast that you lose those in the second coach or too slow that you lose the modernisers. A neat trick to pull off but can we do it, of course we can.

Speeding up to round about 70mph and slowing down when you come to the bends will give those wanting a gentler pace of life to catch up and stay on board.

It used to be every boy’s dream to be a choo choo train driver. Now it is to appear on ‘X Factor’. But if you are a leader of a team or business, you are now driving the train. Dream fulfilled.

Is it only me......but it’s time for a lot of people to wake up and smell the coffee.
I am fed up and I am going to grumble. I know, I know, it’s so unlike me.

Every morning I wake up to a shrill of moans and groans from lobbyists and single issue whiners and moaners, annoyed about what the government of the day is doing or not doing for their cause and what it should be doing. A good early morning game to play is to count in any given time period how many spending commitments someone wants the government to make. Clearly this whining and moaning and raging has reached a crescendo in recent days and weeks as the Two Caesars and their cohorts decide how to re-prioritise the amount of our money the government spends on us and on our behalf.

And in the event that someone out there thinks of me as an apologist for the Two Caesars, I should point out that the single issue whiners and moaners were whining and moaning about the absence of government action, which is code for not spending enough, when the Last Lot were deciding how to spend our money.

Now I think it’s important that we all realise something and it falls upon yours truly to point this out to said whiners and moaners who need, especially in these straightened times, to wake up and smell the coffee.....we are broke. We are heading fast down Queer St. And we don’t even have a pot in which to pass bodily fluids.

Get it.

And let me point out one more thing, even though I know I am preaching to the converted on this, but everything we do as a country, everything the Two Caesars spends on us and all those services run by the Apparatchiks, comes from the money earned by the businesses in this country.

When a business makes a profit, it pays taxes. A profitable business will pay money away in dividends to its shareholders. And these shareholders will pay tax. A business that is successful will employ staff and take on more staff and their wages and salaries are taxed. And so on and so on.

Now do you get it? If we don’t have successful and profitable businesses in this country we will not have the spondooliks or sesterces to allow us to have the services and benefits provided by the Apparatchiks nor the standard of living we all want nor will we ever have the remotest chance of stop the early morning whining and moaning. It really is that simple.

Have a great week.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.

Pinball Wizard

Greetings and felicitations to one and all.

And as these words flow onto the paper in this corner of this green and pleasant land, winter is on its way, judging from the frost that needs to be scraped from the windscreens of the chariots up and down the via.

Many are now asking what Cicero has been doing since he left the warmth and comfort of the VTSSB, no doubt wondering whether the recent re-balancing of the State’s spending priorities are going to mean an especially bleak winter for Cicero.

Worry not, amici. Cicero is still in gainful employment.

And since he stopped being an Apparatchik, he has become a Marketing Luvvie, working with Creative Types dispensing wisdom and enlightenment and, quite frankly, marketing genius, to anyone willing to pay for said services. It might be said that, after toiling endlessly on your behalf to maintain the security and protection of the fine people of this land, Cicero has become a Marketing Mercenary. Now you know.

Of course you will still benefit from Cicero’s genius for free. And what a bargain you get.

And here is this week’s nugget of marketing genius.

Did you see any adverts on TV last night? And when you saw them, did you immediately jump from your chair and rush down the shops and buy the latest in toilet detergents, eyelash maximiser (whatever that might be) or mobile phone technology that seems to have the ability to make two people fall in love again.

Of course, you didn’t. Advertising doesn’t work like that. Although Cicero was tempted to give his eyelashes a boost. And yet too often Chief Bean Counters expect investment in advertising to behave exactly like that. Get real. And surely you of all people that marketing does not work quite that.

Indeed there may be quite a disconnect between your marketing being consumed and the point at which the consumer decides to get off the pot and buy your brand and in that time he or she, if we are still talking about eyelash maximisers, may well have seen more of your well crafted and well honed marketing communications. But that does not mean any of it is wasted. And beware the tyranny of believing that it was the last piece of marketing that was seen that drove the sale. Again the human brain does not work in such a structured way.

Instead we should come to think, and we should work to persuade our Chief Bean Counters to see, that our marketing activity slowly and imperceptibly nudges the consumer towards buying your brand. And when he, or she, is ready and when they decide it’s time to enter the market, it is the cumulative effect over time of all the nudges through all communication channels that gets your brand top of the mind in the filing cabinet that is the mind of our consumer.

And that, mei amice, is what marketing is all about, no matter what the Bean Counters might think.

And so, just like the Pinball Wizard in that iconic musical ‘Tommy’, use your nudges with care to deliver marketing that is highly effective. Reading these words may not make you a Pinball Wizard but we can help you become a Marketing Wizard.

Is it only me.......but I am not a criminal

It rather annoys me when supporters of the Two Caesars the media and other so called economic and financial commentators, who quite frankly ought to know better, lump tax avoidance and tax evasion together and threaten dire retribution on tax avoiders and tax evaders. It is even said that tax avoiders are as bad as benefit cheats.

For the avoidance of doubt, tax avoidance is perfectly legal. Tax evasion is not and nor is benefit cheating. Therefore anyone who so arranges their finances to minimise the size of their tax bill is only doing the right, sensible and sane thing. Why would anyone in their right mind want to hand over any more of their hard earned sesterces to the tax collector than is strictly necessary, especially when you know that much of what you hand over will be squandered?

Anyone who has an ISA is guilty of tax avoidance. Or has a pension. Or who does a salary sacrifice. So before anyone gets onto their moral high horse on this one and become sclerotic with fiscal policy rage, let he (or she) who is without sin, throw the first stone. Methinks we might be waiting rather a long time for the first stone to be thrown.

Now it might only be me but perhaps we should stop using the term ‘tax avoidance’ with all its pejorative connotations. Maybe the term tax efficiency should be used instead. And Cicero for one will do all in his power, which admittedly is not saying much, to continue to make his tax bill as efficient as possible. Cicero is not a criminal.

Have a great week.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.

Are you talking to me?

As you know Cicero is not at all political and normally eschews making political comment lest he be seen as partisan. But this week he is going to break this habit and policy. Sorry to all who come here expecting a politics free zone of calm meditative thought.

But Lord Browne is wrong. A university education should be fully funded by us taxpayers. End of. A university education offers great potential to transform lives and a great opportunity to deliver a well balanced society. And as taxpayers we should be investing this. Given all the other stuff we as tax papers invest in which are nowhere near as liberating for individuals, why are we even debating how much students should be paying?

If we are prepared to invest in keeping people in dependency, why are we not investing in giving people the means to make more of their lives?

And if, as will be the case, we have issues with the affordability of going down this route, the answer is equally clear. We should be paying for fewer but better graduates and universities. It does not say in the Declaration of Human Rights that everyone has the right to go to university, does it? No.

But we say that all, regardless of race, gender, creed or size of wallet, should have the opportunity to get there. And should anyone fail to seize that opportunity then tough. You are not good enough. Get over it. But if you are good enough, you can be assured that Cicero will willingly share sesterces with you to allow you to get a truly great university education. For free.

Think again, Lord Browne.

And now normal service will be resumed.........

Imagine if someone you worked with failed to remember your name or called you by someone else’s name, or got some information about you that you would expect them to know about you, wrong. How would you feel? Probably not very valued or respected.
And yet every day that is exactly what brands do to their customers. And no matter how much we try to endow with human characteristics such as personality and tone of voice, brands can still come across as impersonal, faceless and anonymous. Just who exactly are they talking to?

A few months back Cicero received from his local chariot dealer a letter offering a summer holiday service check to ensure ‘you were not stuck in the car on the way to your hard earned holiday with the kids screaming in the back’.

Great idea. Great proposition.

Somewhat spoiled by addressing it ‘dear customer’ even though all customer details were on the system and were used to address the letter.

And what is the point of talking about ‘kids screaming in the back’ if, as in this case, there are no kids to scream in the back.

How well does this business really know and understand its customers? How much does it show it recognises its customers? Is this the sort of business that puts the customer at the heart of its marketing?

Now is the time for us as Marketing Grand Fromages to think about ‘brand personalisation’.

The more businesses can personalise their brand the more it can meet the consumer need of ‘, recognise me, know me, understand me’. And all of us like dealing with brands and people that know and understand us. We trust people and brands which can deliver against this promise.

And how do you personalise a brand?

Think 4 Ds-Data, Decisioning, Digital, Direct.

In other words let the data and insight held on your customers inform your digital and direct marketing strategies, creative and messaging. Of course it should go way beyond this with the data informing all touch points on how to feel and look and sound personalised to the consumer but let’s face it getting the direct and digital messaging coming across as personalised would be a huge step in the right direction.
Data from or about the brand’s customers informs the insight that drives the decisioning that allows you to make your brand feel personal and alive to your customers across as many touch points as you can and lets the brand demonstrate the deep understanding that earns customer trust, making it more responsive to changes in customer behaviour, more relevant to customers’ individual needs and more rewarding in the way it treat its customers.

And customers will repay by buying more, staying longer and introducing others over time. Or, to put it more simply, will drive the bottom line.

Seize the chance, fellow Marketing Grand Fromages, rise to the opportunity and make your brand relevant to market of one. It can be done. Think 4 Ds and don’t be a D for Dumbo.

Is it only me......but does anyone else care that we are losing skills?

Walk down any High St these days and you will be hard pressed to find a thatcher, a cooper or a blacksmith. And yet a hundred years ago these traditional skills would have been in plentiful supply in towns and villages across this green and pleasant land. No longer. These skills have gone and once gone they are gone forever as there is no one around to pass down ancient skills like these to a new generation.
And if we are not careful and take action now, a host of skills that many of us take for granted will also be lost.

Take the simple task of basic arithmetic. With the advent of pocket calculators young people these days are rapidly losing the ability to add, subtract, divide and multiply, whether on paper or in their head.

We are similarly losing the skill to map read and navigate, something at which the males of the species are especially adept at, relative to distaffs. Nowadays we just jump in car and just ‘sat nav’ the way to our destination. And should the ‘sat nav’ be left on the kitchen table or pack in, well, quite frankly and quite literally, we are lost.

We no longer know how to use encyclopaedia and other interesting fascinating books to find out what we need to know, instead we choose to ‘Google’ or, and this is even worse, ‘Wikipedia’ the information we need to know.

In passing, it is interesting to note that we are not only losing skills that people like me take for granted but we also are creating new verbs in the process as we have just demonstrated.

And finally we should be worried about the long term cognitive development of our society caused by mobile phones, iPhones and the like. Have you noticed how few telephone numbers we all now remember? When we were lads and lassies we could ream off the phone numbers, birthdays and house address including postcode of all our friends and relations, many of which we can probably still remember to this day. Nowadays we rely almost entirely on the memory banks of our mobile gizmos rather than our own. What will this do to our brain power going forward? We should set up a medical study now before it’s too late.

Now it might only be me but I find this all very worrying but, given that we can’t put toothpaste back in the tube and stop the onward march of technology and progress, I don’t really know what to do about it. I just thought you should know-a problem shared and all that.

Anyone got any suggestions?

And on that depressing note, have a great week.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.

Film Noir

Salvete, amici.

Great to see you back again.

And in response to a question asked last week-no, Cicero does not know everything and that is why you will never read thinking on topics as unexciting, uninteresting and unnecessary as finance, operations or even audit and risk. Instead you will read about those issues that contribute to business growth-people and customers. But it is pleasing that some people think Cicero does know everything.

Now here’s a question to get you started this week-would you rather go to a film or a meeting at work? If you voted that you would rather attend a meeting at work, there is every likelihood that you are on your own. Or if not on own, at least you are in a very small minority.

Now why might that be?

If you think about it, films and meetings have an awfully lot in common and some key differences.

Each will last for about 90 minutes. And each will contain a cast of varied and interesting characters.

And yet meetings are interactive, unlike films-you can’t shout at the actor on the screen and expect the actor to pay attention. And more importantly films have no real impact on our lives. In any meeting we get to have our say and the outcome of any given discussion can have and should have a very real impact on our working and business lives. Agreed?

So meetings are actually more engaging and more relevant, yet why do we hate meetings so?

Probably because they’re boring. And why might they be boring? What stops all films becoming boring? What is the key ingredient that all great films have that boring meetings lack? Anyone know?

Drum roll.............

Conflict. Name a great film that lacks conflict whether it be physical conflict, emotional conflict or conflict of conscience or any other kind of conflict.
Too often meetings, and by extension teams, avoid conflict. They avoid real discussion and debate. As a result they are boring but more damaging is that the team has artificial harmony so no one gets upset but in reality no decisions get made. Great teams engage in productive, ideological conflict and debate. It is its ability to engage in passionate unfiltered debate that sets it apart. Not everyone has to agree but they have to feel they had their chance to say something. And when the arguing is over great teams agree and all commit to it.

It’s easy peasy to build and lead great teams. All you need to do is go to the movies.

Is it only me.....but the EU needs to get off its high horse and drink up its milk.

Those of you who know me can easily tell from my shape that I love chocolate. Indeed I love anything sweet. To ask if I have a sweet tooth is akin to asking the Dalai Lama if the Pope is catholic. I love chocolate. I adore the brown stuff. I can consume so many thick slabs of it in one go that I risk a diabetic coma. Yes, I like chocolate and Cadbury’s especially.

And now it seems that Cadbury’s has fallen out of favour with the unelected Apparatchiks in Brussels and it is time for all chocoholics to man the barricades in defence, yes of Cadburys choccie bars, but more importantly to defend common sense from more Apparatchik nonsense.

For it is now illegal for Cadburys to refer to a ‘glass and a half’ as a key ingredient in its Dairy Milk bars, the Rolls Royce of choccie bars. According to Monsieur Jobsworth and Herr Nitpick such descriptions contravene European regulations. Instead Cadburys must now say that its Dairy Milk bars contain ‘the equivalent of 426ml of fresh liquid milk in every 227g of milk chocolate". Now that really does trip off the tongue.

And no I am not kidding. And nor is it April 1st.

Yes, difficult as it is to believe, some nameless and faceless Euro-Apparatchik did in recent days decide without a shred of humour or a soupcon of common sense that Cadburys must change their strap line. And do you know what is worse, as this proposal no doubt trundled its way up and down and along and down and up the corridors of power across Europe, no one, not one person, no monsieur, herren or senorita, thought this was a dumb idea and should be stopped.

Now it might only be me, and this time I doubt it is, but this is surely what happens when we let Apparatchiks run the asylum. I don’t know about taking action to re-claim the streets but I do want to re-claim my sweets from the evil clutches of the Apparatchiks of Europe, or even our own home-grown ones.

Have a great week.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.

Excuse me, is this seat taken?

Salute.

Now it seems that we are upsetting people by coming across as too political. Ok, let’s see if this works better for you all, regardless of gender, creed or political hue. There is just no pleasing some folks.

In discussion this week with some younger colleagues it became readily apparent that when entering a room to join a meeting, not much attention was being paid to the seating arrangements. How wrong can people be? And when Cicero started to expound on his theories on where to sit, mouths fell agape in shock and awe. And so this week’s words were born.

Remember the marketing maxim, everything communicates.

And even in meetings this maxim holds true. Even the place where you park your gluteus maximus communicates. Now read on to find out how you can improve your communication and influencing skills and learn from a master communicator. They say you should choose your words carefully. The same goes for your seat. Choose your seat with care. It is the road to power and influence in the meeting.

Clearly the leader, whether de jure or de factor, sits at the head of the table and wherever he or she sits, that is the head of the table. But where should everyone else sit? Where should you sit if you are not the leader?

Theory suggests that when a group sits around a table the person sitting on the leader's right will generally be the most loyal and aligned to the leader's thinking and wishes. A (likely) mythical origin is said to be that in Roman times a leader would place their most loyal supporter to their right because this was the most advantageous position from which to attempt an assassination by stabbing (given that most people then as now were right-handed). Assassination at least by stabbing is rare in modern work meetings but you can never be too careful.

In any event those who group around the top of the table whether to the left or right will usually be those who have sited themselves there to support the leader. Is this where you want to sit? Is this how you want to exert influence? Do you want to be seen as a brown nose?

Alternatively the seat directly opposite from the leader can be a great source of alternative power and influence. This is the alter leader space and from this position you can directly maintain eye contact with the leader and those around the table. This is a great place to sit and is usually the chosen position of the backside of yours truly. From here we can agitate, thought provoke and stimulate constructive healthy discussion and debate. This is the seat of the persistent devil’s advocate and end-of-the-table folks are usually the most active participants in the room.

The last place to choose to sit is round the side. From here it can be difficult to exert influence and power. Difficult to engage with those in the room. Tricky to assert your point of view. Avoid with dexterity unless of course you have the force of personality to turn a seat to the side to become the head of the table, the seat of power, the source of influence. It can be done but is down to you.

And one final tip for you-when someone is speaking, and no matter how much they might be droning on and on and on, every now and again nod your head to at least give the impression you are listening intently. The effect of this apparently small gesture will be massive. At a stroke the speaker will engage with you, and he, or she, mindful as we are that women are now a significant factor in leadership positions, will build and maintain eye contact with you, ignoring all other attendees to give you their full and undivided attention. You in their eyes are now the leader in the group and such will be the group dynamic that others too will see you in this position. This trick works every time.

And so, dear friends, we end this week’s lesson. And hopefully you will start to consider that where you park it can be as important as the ideas and questions you bring to the table. And just like educationalists who think they can show that where you sit in class can affect your grades, and in this particular case that might explain a lot, so where you sit in meetings can affect your career.

As we have said before, everything communicates. Even your bum. And no this is not what we mean by the phrase ‘talking out of your backside’. Thought it best to clarify.

Is it only me........

In a serious effort to keep the body toned and fit and now that Cicero has more discretionary time than previously, two to three times a week before work and just as the sun is rising, Cicero will make a visit to his local baths for a swim. This is a great pleasure and recommended to all. This truly is a great way to start the day.

Much to Cicero’s surprise however even at that time of the day he does not have the pool to himself and as he ploughs up and down the water filled lanes he has to take great care to avoid others similarly intent on following a fat reducing, fitness inducing lifestyle. For believe or not even at that time of the day, with the sun barely above the tree tops and the dawn chorus just warming up, a great crowd of swimmers is out and about before they head into their shops, offices and VTTSBs to earn their daily crust.

Or at least most of them are.

For a significant majority of this swimming community have quite clearly no work to head towards, given the amount of wrinkles on their skin and the elastication in their trousers, always a dead give away of age. For these people have retired and as a result have all day to enjoy their leisurely lifestyle. So why, oh why, do they insist on clogging up the water ways, and other civic amenities no doubt, at the same time as wage slaves like Cicero and no doubt you. Unlike superannuated wrinklies, who are no doubt enjoying these facilities at some reduced rate thanks to taxpayer funded largess, salatariat members have few options when they can attend and it irks that capacity is reduced somewhat by people with the time to attend at other times of the day.

Now it might only be me, and it would not be the first time that it was, but surely it is not beyond the wit of highly expensive and obscenely over paid local council quangocrats to put in place a system that restricts usage at peak times to full payers and not those whose presence is subsidised? That way we all might get more enjoyment and space to enjoy our splashing and paddling around.

Have a great week.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.

Planet of the Apps

Greetings.

Cicero is still here and has come back for yet another week to share education, enlightenment and enjoyment. It is pleasing to note that many seem to have missed your weekly dose of such sentiments. Again my profound apologies but hopefully you will over the coming weeks see and receive the benefits arising from the previous long absence of this page.

And to satisfy those of you still complaining let us see if we can be a wee bit more controversial this week. And in doing so hopefully too these words will not be too cerebral for many of you. Another oft repeated complaint from last week.

In previous weeks Cicero has not been averse to complaining about the pointlessness Of Apple apps. We even held a competition to identify the most useful and useless.
On further reflection Cicero was wrong and after prolonged consideration through the summer recess, and having himself acquired an iThingymybob, it is clear that the Apple model has much to offer to the Apparatchiks Class as they struggle to come to terms with the spending dictats of the Two Caesars. Indeed it might also point a way forward for those of us toiling away generating the wealth required to keep the Apparatchiks in the style to which they have become accustomed and to pay for the spending priorities of the Two Caesars.

Get this right and we can change the way we generate wealth and deliver public services in this country forever. Now there’s an incentive.

Now let us be clear, Cicero has absolutely no idea what makes an iThingymybob work in the way it does but he does greatly admire the model whereby a cottage industry has grown up cheaply developing a range of useful and useless apps for use on said device based on open access to the knowledge, information and codes required for said apps to work.

Why can’t this thinking be applied to the Apparatchik sector?

Let me give you an example. Why does government need to use taxpayer for expensive and glossy ‘quit smoking’ advertising? If we apply the Apple model the government would open up to anyone who wanted to know, all the data and insight it had on people who smoke, why they smoke, what stops them from stopping smoking, and letting others use the insight to develop strategies, programmes or ‘apps’ to encourage smokers to quit. We could easily envisage companies that make patches and nicotine replacement products picking up the baton and developing effective programmes and products for this market. Everyone a winner. Charities and other self help support mechanisms could also be developed to fill this space. And so we begat the Big Society.

A similar approach is already being applied in education. Why does the State have to run schools? Where is this decreed? What is wrong with the State providing open access to the all the information, standards and protocols they require from schools and letting anyone who wants to set up and run a school? How is this so vastly different from the Apple model?

And on we go. Surely this thinking can be applied to all the nooks and crannies of our Apparatchik run bureaucracy to work out where it is more cost effective, efficient and viable to provide the services on the Apple app model and where it can only be done by the State, with examples of this being minimised and limited? All it takes is imaginative and creative thinking and a willingness to let go of State-sponsored, taxpayer-funded sacred cows and contrary to popular belief such attitudes and capabilities do exist in the VTSSBs.

And why stop there?

Such thinking can also be applied to those creating wealth. Too often those of us working in business think we have to come up with the next great idea, the next best selling product, the next fantastic idea to reduce costs.

Why?

Sure we employ consultants and agencies and other third parties from time to time to do our thinking for us but why not change the model. Make our data, our insight, our problems and challenges more freely available and encourage anyone out there to develop income generating or cost reduction apps which can be applied in our businesses. Why do we think that only those who work in the business have the ideas and the brains? Let’s use the virtually combined brain power of the world population to come up with the next great idea. Surely it will be possible to create a community of interested people to generate money spinning or cost reducing apps for our business.

It might be a batty idea and it might require more thinking to be done, but it might just be a brilliant idea.

They say an apple a day keeps the doctor away but thinking like Apple could well keep the Chancellor or our business banking manager away too.

Is it only me..........but we are not made of money.

As you will no doubt have gleaned if you are addicted to and follow avidly all the latest news, the time is fast approaching when the Two Caesars will announce how they are going to spend a lot less of our money. And for the record it is worth pointing that the terminology used by the media is constantly wrong. It is not about ‘cuts’ which is what everyone bangs on and on and on about but reducing the amount of our money they spend on our behalf. Surely far less emotive than the C word which is henceforth banned from these pages.

And are you equally fed up with the whining and moaning and groaning from Apparatchiks fearful about jobs? We could fill these pages with comment on Apparatchiks whining about the indispensability of their jobs. Maybe we might have more sympathy if said whining Apparatchiks focused more on outcomes affected than their own employment situation. We do not pay our taxes to keep Apparatchiks in jobs. Get over it. We pay our taxes for services which deliver meaningful and substantive service outcomes and this is where the debate should be focused.
But this is not the main gripe this week though this is surely a topic to which we will return in the coming weeks as the Apparatchiks become ever more whining the closer we get to the two Caesars announcing how they are going to reduce the amount of our money, and that of international lenders, they think it prudent to spend.
Earlier in week Cicero had the great pleasure of attending a business dinner to celebrate examples of successful capitalism in ‘The City of a Thousands Trades’. The dinner was a joyous and pleasant enough event but something struck Cicero when there and it niggled.

The dinner was sponsored as is the wont of these occasions and the venue was festooned with the logos of those businesses that had paid to have their names in lights. In total there must have been about 10 logos prominently displayed, 8 of whom were from the public sector. In other words there were only three real sponsors-two real businesses and us, the taxpayer.

Now is it only me but quite frankly we do not pay our hard earned taxes to subsidise the troughing of well fed business folk, do we? What in God’s name motivated a collection of taxpayer funder Apparatchiks to think it was a bright idea, when we are on cusp of a re-balancing of the levels of money sneaked from our pay packets, to think this was a good idea?

Ideas and thoughts please on this most welcome.

Was that controversial enough for you this week?

Have a great week.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.

How conscious are you?

Cicero is well and truly back.

And for those of you agitating and worrying about the lack of presence from Him, sorry. The time off stretched on a wee bit longer than planned. Hopefully you were able to cope.

As you know the VTSSB and its Apparatchiks have by now been left far to stern although Cicero still retains a special affection for the people left behind there and wishes them all well as they deal with the Two Caesars. Good luck.

Anyway it is good to be back and for the past few weeks Cicero has been collecting many new experiences and developing many new ideas and thoughts to share with you.

So let’s get started.......we have no time to waste......we have a lot of catching up to do.

We are going to start with a little exercise.

We will start by signing our names. Go on, do it. Yes, you. Do it now.
Good. Now how long did that take? Not long. No doubt you did it in less than the blink of an eyelid. Nor was it especially painful. You will have expended less than one hand’s worth of brain cells doing it. Correct? In essence you signed your name without even thinking about it. Aren’t you clever?

Now swap hands and repeat the exercise.

How difficult was that? It is surmised that, unless you are ambidextrous, that took a lot longer, was far more painful and you had to think long and hard before making any move with your pen on the paper. Correct? And no doubt too your new autograph is far less legible than the one you scrawled with your natural hand.

And therein lies today’s lesson. For you have just demonstrated the difference between being consciously incompetent and unconsciously competent and such understanding is of vital importance and a critical concern to any leader in any business.

Most of us for most of the time are unconsciously competent. We know what we are doing. We do it well and without fuss and without thinking about it. Just like signing our name with our writing hand. And in this state we are no problem, not an issue.

But sometimes some of us can be unconsciously incompetent. We don’t know we are doing a bad job, unaware that we could be doing things better or differently. This is worse than writing our autographs with our non writing hand.

As leaders we cannot ignore this state. It is our job to point this out to our people and to root out unconscious incompetence. Incompetence at this level if unchecked drags down the performance of the team and saps the morale and motivation of our star performers. It must be checked to stop the spread of incompetence through the team.

In taking action we move our unconscious incompetent to being consciously incompetent. We now know that we could be doing better, that we are under-performing compared to peers and to the standard of the job. In this state the leader can take action and move to the next level when our incompetent is transformed into being consciously competent. The work is taking a time to be completed but the quality is good and improving though much effort and concentration is being applied to make sure the job is being done right.

And then we reach nirvana, a heavenly state of peace and tranquillity. We have arrived at unconsciously competent. We can do the job to a high standard without thinking about it. We don’t think about how we sign our name, how to breathe, how to drive our cars, we just do it. We have arrived at our destination.

In this journey it is our role as leaders to move our people from unconsciously incompetent to unconsciously competent as quickly and as painlessly as possible. There have been many times in past few weeks when Yours Truly has felt hopelessly incompetent (yes that is difficult to believe) but with the help and support of some great leaders, you would be amazed in how many new areas Cicero is now unconsciously competent.

So just how conscious are you? Let us know.

Is it only me......but paper cuts can be good.

As you may know Cicero treats his body as a temple and he works hard to keep it young looking and in good shape through regular exercise at a local gymnasium. A few days back Cicero headed off there to refresh, renew and re-invigorate his ageing, though well toned, body, only to be told that he had to renew his membership and hand over some sesterces before he might exercise to ensure sano in corpore et sano in mente. Not a problem.

What was a problem however was the insistence that before he might renew his membership he had to re-complete an application form and hand over exactly the same details that had been supplied previously. Cicero was not chuffed and made his feelings known. Given that Cicero’s details were already held on the system, Cicero wanted to know why these had to be re-provided.

‘I appreciate what you are saying but nothing to do with me. Its Head Office’, was the reply. Grrrrrrrrrrrrr. The kind of response that Cicero just hates. Do some organisations require staff to have frontal lobotomies on joining to render thinking and the application of common sense redundant?

Now it might only be me but it is time that in businesses across the land, in TSSBs and VTSSBs, we made a stand to get paper out of the system. Paper clogs up our processes and adds cost where cost is unnecessary. What happens to all the bits of paper which are only backing up information held on computers? Do we employ someone just to file them away just in case?

And have we considered the environmental impact of all this paper we needlessly produce? As you know Cicero is big on the environment and is concerned about the de-forestation effects of pointless paper.

So from now on Cicero has a new mission in life-to rid state and private sector bureaucracies of pointless paper. Will you join him?

It is great to be back.

Have a great week.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.

To infinity and beyond

Salvete.

The first week away from the VTSSB and the Apparatchiks has been very relaxing as Cicero awaits the call to help and assist some other business seeking marketing enlightenment.

In meantime it is great that the affairs of state are now in the hands of others. That the pressure of ensuring and assuring your liberty, your freedom and identity has been lifted. And that others have shouldered the burden of manning and guarding that wall that marks the boundary between freedom and anarchy. It can be tough as an Apparatchik.

But with time on his hands this week Cicero has been watching cartoons and is struck by the creativity and imagination of those who put together these films. In particular he is in awe of those who make cartoons like ‘Toy Story’, ‘Finding Nemo’ and, his particular favourite, ‘Cars’.

Delving deeper Cicero has discovered that these films are all made by the one company, Pixar, who seemingly have found the formula to produce hit after hit, and the process to produce creativity and imagination.

Now you might say that creativity and imagination is not a process. And you might be right but all businesses can create the environment where creativity and imagination is allowed to flourish, grow and develop, and not be stifled. And here Pixar are doing some great stuff from which we can all learn.

And on your behalf, Cicero, with time on his hands now that the burdens of state have been lifted, has investigated the Pixar story to bring you tips and wisdom.

Firstly Pixar puts people before projects and ideas. It does not start with the idea and then hire the people to execute. Instead it hires creative people and then encourages them to generate ideas. In this way their people are a creative and enduring asset with real ownership of the idea from end to end. How often do we see in business people being brought into execute something they don’t own, who adapt and modify the idea to fit their paradigm and then walk away when the results don’t materialise?

Secondly Pixar devotes a lot of effort to getting people to work together. Usually people collaborate on specific projects but pay little attention to what’s going on elsewhere. With Pixar a sense of collective responsibility is fostered with its people showing unfinished work in daily meetings and so get used to giving and receiving criticism. In addition any member of the team can at a regular time in the day ring a big cow bell summoning anyone with 30 minutes to spare to gather around to collectively brainstorm a problem. What a brilliant idea? As they say no one has a monopoly on wisdom. These systems of constant and collective feedback are designed to stop problems becoming a crisis and to provide teams with a constant source of inspiration. Surely all businesses might benefit from that.

And thirdly teams are encouraged to conduct formal post mortems once their films are complete with each review having to identify at least five things that did not go well as well as five that did. How often is that done in your business? How often do you sit down and review marketing campaigns, product launches, projects and the like along these lines?

None of this can guarantee that your company will be as creative or as imaginary or as successful as Pixar. Creativity depends on serendipity as much as planning. Managing creativity involves a series of balancing acts: giving people the freedom to be creative but doing so within a corporate structure; creating a powerful and successful corporate culture that is not too stifling.

But getting it right is in itself an act of creativity. And getting it right means too that for business success the sky is truly the limit. Or as Mr Lightyear would say ‘to infinity and beyond’. Are you and your business ready for the ride of a lifetime?

Batty? Brilliant? The choice is yours.

Is it only me…….but this should be child’s play.

It would appear that the Health and Safety Gualeiters did not disappear into the long grass with the Last Lot.

As evidence Cicero has heard about a young couple keen to encourage their children to be independent, are letting their two primary age children cycle to school through the leafy lanes of south London unsupervised.

Shock! Horror! Naughty parents! What kind of an example is this to set young people? Do they not know that 4x4s were invented just for that sort of activity?

It would seem that this is the views of the Nanny at the school, no doubt advised and counselled by some taxpayer funded Health and Safety Gauleiter, who is now threatening to report the parents to social services for some level of child abuse or neglect. What has the world come to?

Not it might only be me, though I doubt it, but surely social services would be better employed looking after the Baby Ps of this world rather than harrying and harassing middle class yummy mummys who choose not to send their young people to school by 4x4.

And in any event when was it decided that it was wrong to teach our young people independence? Was I out of the room when this was decided? Surely independence is a good thing. Why is it good for a country to be independent but not its people? Is this so the State and all its apparatchiks have something to do? Is this why some fear independent thought so much?

It is a miracle that Cicero has survived to such a ripe age. When he was a wee laddie the Health and Safety Gauleiter had not been invented. He had no one tell him when and where he could not cycle; he was able to play freely in the streets and fields without fear with all the other wee lads and lassies until it got dark unsupervised; he did not require a high viz vest, safety goggles and hard hat to play marbles. Ah those were the days.

Cicero hopes that the parents of the Biking Two have the courage to challenge and ignore the Gauleiters and Nannies. And that the Two Caesars take urgent steps to stop such errant nonsense.

And now for some really really bad news.

Cicero will not be around for next 2 weeks. He is off to learn new skills and experience new experiences. Enjoy the break. You will be able to get through the weeks ahead. Support and counsel each other. You will be fine.

Have great two weeks.

Et semper sis felix. Semper sis fortunatus.

Pro civilis muneris

Like Elvis, this week Cicero has left the building.

Yes, that’s right, Cicero has left the VTSSB to move onto pastures new but uncertain. He has laid down his career in an effort to help the resolve the Two Caesar’s wee financial headache. And as Edith Piaf might say at times like this ‘je ne regrette, je ne regrette ne rien’.

But fear not for this column does not depend on life on the VTSSB for inspiration and stimulation. This will continue and will live on. Bet you glad about that.

And it is noted that quietly and gently the flags are no longer fluttering from the chariots. Enough said

To mark Cicero’s departure from the VTSSB and as he wanders off into the sunset, this week’s dose of enlightenment is going to be a wee bit different and a wee bit self indulgent. Hopefully you will not mind.

But this week Cicero feels that he must speak up on behalf of the Apparatchiks with whom he has worked for the past 15 months, with whom he has toiled to preserve your security and freedom, with whom he has produced some great marketing stuff.

This week we speak out ‘pro Civilis Muneris’ which for those of you, remarkably few no doubt, who do not have the Latin tongue, means ‘in defence of the Civil Service’.

Now you might think at this point that Cicero after 15 months working amongst the Apparatchiks has gone native. This is most definitely not the case but the current attitude towards the Apparatchiks raises some serious issues, questions and concerns for the nation that must be debated and understood. And Cicero is just the man to lead said debate.

There is no question that the Civilis Muneris is too large and expensive. Undoubtedly its pay and pension policies need over hauled and reformed to align better with those creating the wealth in the country. And indubitably there is an excess of jobsworth zeal stifling creativity, imagination and simplification. But let us put such issues to one side for one moment and look beyond this.

We need to remember that the Apparatchiks are essential to us. They keep out streets safe and secure; they educate us; they keep us healthy; they collect our taxes; they pay our pensions and benefits; they provide support to business; they give us passports; they help the unemployed find work; and so on and so forth.

And yet we as a nation have in recent weeks and recent months taken against these people. And if we are not careful we will end up with the Civilis Muneris that we deserve.

It is easy these days to kick and pummel the Civilis Muneris but we must never forget that the Civilis Muneris is at the end of the day a collection of people trying to do a good job in difficult circumstances on our behalf. And if it is true that in any business people are its greatest asset then surely that is equally true in the Civilis Muneris. So let’s look after them.

This is a business where training and development in its people has been cut back to the point where it is non existent; where it is impossible to get a free cup of coffee; where you cannot buy pot plants to humanise the office; where there is paranoia about spending any kind of money to help make the Civilis Muneris a great place to work. And when you get a great place to work, you do great things for your customers.

And then when your Apparatchik wends his weary way home he is confronted with news of massive redundancy cuts, of changes to pensions and pay, of the value of his or her job being questioned and whether necessary, of salaries being published. How would you react to trying to do your best work in this environment?

Cicero fears for the health of the Civilis Muneris. The Apparatchiks are demotivated and demoralised. And how can it ever hope to recruit the brightest and best to work for it when this is the state of affairs. And that is why Cicero feels he must speak out in their defence.

A smaller lower cost Civilis Muneris, yes. A demotivated, demoralised, de-skilled de-humanised Civilis Muneris, no.

Batty? Brilliant? Please do tell.

Is it only me………………………………….but is this why we pay our taxes?

When news of the Two Caesars’ plan to reduce the amount of amount they wanted to spend, the Last Lot were a wee bit miffed. And as the Lot who worked with the Last Caesar, and who still wanted to be Caesar, pointed out ‘this is going to cost jobs in the public sector’.

Similar feelings of annoyance were expressed by a series of spokespeople from a consortium of unions and other lobby group supporters of the Lot that wanted to be the new Caesar but are not.

And here is question for you as an aside. Why are all Trade Union Head Honchos, Scottish….well a lot of them at any rate?

But back to my point.

Clearly if the Caesars want to spend less of our money it will have an impact on the Apparatchiks across the VTSSBs and TSSBs. If you have less income then you need to reduce the costs. You will know this from your own business. It is not nice and it does have consequences for those affected (yes, contrary to popular belief, Cicero does have a heart) but sometimes we have to do unpleasant things to do the right thing.

Now it might only be me but surely the role of the State is not to provide jobs but to provide critical services which cannot or do not want to be provided by anyone else. It should not be about jobs but outputs and outcomes. That is why we pay our money and we should be talking more about the value delivered rather than the cost of the inputs.

The primary role of the NHS is to cure the sick. Not to create jobs for marketing folk, for example. How exactly do you create demand for the NHS and why would you want to?

Schools should be about teaching kids to read and write and it would be good if they did that well. But why do they need folks to produce engagement strategies and to manage communications? Getting young people to spell ‘engagement strategy’ would be a great start.

And why does a local council need someone promote walking? All we want them to do is empty the bins and keep the lights in the libraries on. Spend money on that kind of stuff and not on something most of us do naturally and without promotion. If people want to get fat and lazy, leave them to it.

There was even a discussion overheard with one of the Last Lot who said with all seriousness that the decision not to be so profligate with our money meant that, and we are quoting here, ‘there would now be cutbacks in non-essential services’.

Hello. Wake up. Smell the coffee. If it is non-essential why is it being done in the first place? And if this means job losses, so be it. But quite frankly surely we only want our money spent on essential stuff and not non-essentials. We can debate what is essential and what is non-essential and that is a worthy debate but if it is non essential stop wanting to spend our money on it. Government is so simple.

Have a great week.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.

Smart arse

Greetings

It has been made known to Cicero through private back channels that you have noticed that the sentiments, views and opinions expressed here are becoming increasingly populist. This is most certainly not the intention and while Cicero is keen that his words remain accessible to all it was not a conscious policy to dumb down or seek popularity. Instead these words are intended to stretch minds, challenge sacred cows and provoke thinking. An effort has been made this week to restore stature and gravitas. Please advise if this has succeeded.

And in keeping with this policy of refusing to court popular appeal or to seek mass adulation, Cicero will proffer no comment on recent events in South Africa. There are plenty of other outlets to cater for those seeking nationalistic news, OTT analysis and jingoistic hysteria on events in that region. Needless to say it looks like that chariots will continue to bear aloft flags for a wee while yet.

Last week’s big news in the VTSSBs and TSSBs and other places where the Apparatchiks gather, was the Caesars’ big plan to reduce the amount of our hard earned money they want to spend. For Marketing Grands and Petits Fromages, the biggest implication of said plan was the almost complete freeze on marketing investment. And please note that Cicero sees spend on marketing as an investment and not a cost. Many should see it this way too.

Now we could spend a lot of time and expend significant amounts of energy debating the wisdom of the Caesars’ policy but it will change nothing-marketing investment is to be minimised. End of.

This is not something to be feared but should be viewed as an opportunity for marketing Apparatchiks to step up to the plate, to think creatively and laterally, and develop low cost, and preferably no cost, marketing programmes. What an opportunity to prove how good we are at marketing as opposed to briefing others to do work on our behalf at cost of course. For the era of Smart Marketing has arrived.

By chance Cicero came across a thought the other day that might help those seeking to practise Smart Marketing. There are more thoughts out there on this, and we might re-visit this subject in the coming weeks, but here is something to get you going.

Too often little thought is really given to what we want our marketing communications programme to deliver. And too often when planning these programmes we pay limited attention to where we are today. Are we trying to build brand awareness? Or improve purchase propensity? Or close the sale?

But do you really understand how well you are converting awareness to purchase propensity to sales? Have you looked at your awareness, propensity and sales numbers recently and done the ratios? Do you really understand where the weaknesses in the buying chain are? Are you sure? Do you want to go 50:50 or phone a friend?

It might come as a surprise to some unenlightened folks out there but marketing is not just about logos and pantones and pictures. Real marketers do this but also need to think more strategically about what they do. And for this they need an abacus or a modern calculator.

Let us look at one example.

In high growth, low share markets with plenty of potential it might make great sense to spend large dollops of shareholder or taxpayer money on fancy pant, and expensive, advertising programmes to build brand awareness because it looks efficient when you divide cost by impact or prospect.

But think again.

If the brand is already well known why spend more on getting more people to know you or to get the market to know you better. Surely the challenge is to better understand why high levels of awareness are not translating into purchase propensity and sales. And with this knowledge design a marketing intervention programme to drive up the numbers in these areas. Perhaps investing in programmes to close the sale might improve growth and cost effectiveness.

Conversely in or low growth markets where it might look too costly to advertise to build awareness, no amount of investment in programmes to close the sale will be effective until awareness and consideration reached higher levels. Here you should think about investing in a fancy pants advertising programme to build awareness.

Think about it. It might sound obvious but no one is going to buy you unless they know you exist and you can give them strong reasons to buy you. You need the interventions in place that make you better or different to your competitors.

Smart Marketers understand the buying chain and can identify the barriers to growth in the chain and then choose the messages, vehicles and other interventions required to overcome these barriers. Simple really when you think about it. Smart Marketing is only common sense but sense is rarely common. So to do Smart Marketing don’t be afraid to be common. It does pay dividends. Trust me. And if you do you too can become a Marketing Smart Arse

Batty? Or Brilliant? Do tell.

Is it only me….but is there nothing else on the telly?

And no, on this occasion this is not more words on the World Cup though no doubt such sentiments are being expressed in households across the land.

Instead we are going to return to the environmental and business disaster that is the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

As many have already pointed out this is also a PR disaster for Tony Hayward and the wider company with a series of insensitive and undiplomatic remarks from him and the other Grand Fromages at BP.

It is astonishing that throughout this episode BP has kept the camera running showing the black gold spewing forth and gushing from the broken pipe. As a result the news media, and no doubt You Tube, are able to beam a live feed of the disaster unfolding and continuing. It might not be riveting TV but it is highly damaging TV for BP, its managers and it shareholders, reminding all and sundry that the disaster remains un-fixed and worsening.

Now this might only be me but you would think that one of the first things BP would have done, and it is not too late, would have been to turn off the live video feed or even to switch channels to show the people of the world what a well functioning well head looks like. Why persist in showing you are still polluting? Why persist in showing the damage as it unfolds? Sure the BBC is similarly showing the disaster that is the England World Cup attempt unfold, but that is different. Lives and livelihoods and the fishes are not being damaged by this.

Would you still be showing the live feed if this was your business, and you were hated and reviled by the country you were polluting, and you had just been sliced, diced and skewered by its politicians?

Have a great week.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.

We need to talk

It seems that Cicero is now attracting comment from poets. Great to know that we are now attracting the attention of the literarati. Happy to allow poems but no limericks. Deal?

However our amanuensis who pores over the taxonomy on your behalf each week to assure its quality has complained that Cicero is displaying evidence of sesquipedalianism or a propensity to use big words. It is only showing off.

Hopefully the use of big words does not inhibit your enjoyment of these thoughts. It is a legacy of working in a VTTSB with apparatchiks who too display this tendency. Why use three syllable words when you can use words of more than 5 or 6 or 7 syllables to make your point backed up by the frequent use of TLAs or three letter acronyms? No wonder the Apparatchiks think no one understands them.

You will be aware from previous words that Cicero is a big fan of using nudge as a marketing tool empowering consumers to make the right behavioural choice without a Nanny, or even an au pair, approach.

It seems that such tactics are becoming widespread and Cicero was made aware of the gents’ urinals at Schipol airport which now have a small fly painted or etched onto the bowl. Results show an 80% reduction in spillage. You can work how this impressive result was achieved.

And no we are not taking the p#$%.............................quickly moving on.

We need to talk. Four small words guaranteed to send a chill racing through the blood of any male. Yet ‘we need to talk’ can sometimes be a powerful marketing strategy.

Before Cicero become Grand Fromage to a marketing team of Apparatchiks, Cicero worked for a business whose business was to facilitate connections. Last week the Head Honcho here called Cicero in his VTSSB to ask if he should start to twitter.

‘Go for it’, yelled Cicero, ‘Your business is all about making connections and to do that you must learn to use all the means you have to make connections with your customers and to allow them to make connections with each other.

‘Twittering is a perfect medium for doing this. It shows you are keen to talk. It demonstrates that your business is modern and progressive and not just for male, stale and pale businesses allowing you to appeal to a different demographic.

‘Sure there are risks. But your customers are going to talk about you whether you twitter or not and I’m sure these are overstated. And make sure you use the language of the medium to allow your followers to join in your debates and not the dry wonk speak of your usual debates.

‘You must go for it. It is 100% on brand for your business.

‘Now be about your business while I attend to matters of State.’

This conversation, however, set Cicero thinking. He wanted to understand why people, why customers feel the need to want to talk.

Is it right for brands and for businesses to starting or create conversations or to break into other people’s conversation which seems to be the basis of most brands social marketing strategy? Is it not more about allowing your market to talk about you with each other, a practice that is as old as ….well Cicero himself if not older? And that is saying something.

Talking about brands is part of life’s social fabric. It goes on. You do it. We all do it. Take a count of the number of times you talk about a brand or a business today that is not your own to friends, relations and colleagues. You will need more than one hand. And you do not need the tools of the age to allow you to do this. Nor are you playing ball with any social marketing strategy. You are just doing it.

You don’t talk to your friends about brands to persuade people to buy said brand or go to said shop but to let others know what is important to you and who you are. It allows relationships to develop. It gives people something to talk about, something to share.

So how do you use this insight of human behaviour to inform your marketing strategy?

You make your brand as interesting as possible so people want to talk about you. Make it part of the self identity of your market so that it says something about them and the tribe they belong to. Innovate often so that it gives people little things to talk about and often and fresh reasons to make contact. And be great at what you do so that people want to talk about you.

Last week Cicero purchased a new fangled plasmatic TV screen to adorn his living quarters from a local electrical retailer as opposed to a megalithic electrical superstore. The service and attention to detail from this retailer was second to none. He had gone out of his way to make sure Cicero was seen an individual with special needs, albeit one with no understanding of new technologies. And ever since Cicero has praised this guy across as many media and to as many people as he can.

People want to talk, they need to talk, some more than others. So use your Twitter, My Space, Linked In, Facebook etc etc etc, channels carefully and sparingly and strategically. You don’t need to talk. If your brand is good enough and strong enough it will happen whether you want it or not.

Is it only me…….but what is so special about this relationship?

Cicero finds the American reaction to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico very interesting. Sure it is an environmental tragedy and hard on all those whose livelihoods depend on fishing and tourism in the region but this is no excuse for the Brit bashing, populist, xenophobic, partisan, biased, jingoistic, error-strewn, blame-pointing, finger wagging, lecturn thumping, self indulgent, diversionary, arse covEring rhetoric being spouted by Obama and spewed forth by every other rabble rousing politician to the south of the 49th Parallel. It was an accident. It was not some sort of delayed response for Lexington and the War of Independence. Accidents do happen. Get over it.

It is sad that 11 people died and for the families of those oil workers who died it is indeed a tragedy but it is worth pointing out that America is no stranger to leaving behind a trail of death and destruction but they move on without even a glance back.

How much death and destruction was caused by the Yankee in Vietnam? Iraq? Afghanistan? And here we are not talking shrimps, guillemots and sea gulls but people. And let us not forget Bhopal where in an instant an American company, yes an American company, slaughtered 3000 people in an afternoon and left thousands more chronically ill. And yet here the victims only received a little over £300 in full and final settlement. No talk there of ring fencing billions to pay for the clean up, to compensate victims. Nor any talk about preventing dividends from being paid.

So unlike BP, which is promising to pay billions in costs for the damage it caused putting at risk its very existence. And, Mr Obama, it’s BP not ‘British pause for emphasis Petroleum’.

Now it might only be me but quite frankly I fail to see what is so special in the relationship we have with the US. Unless of course it is so special because we honour our obligations and commitments to the rest of the world. Compared to America that is not just special but unique.

So lay off us. Those in glass houses should not throw stones.

Have a great week.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.