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.

Mr Motivator

And so yet again the quadrennial soccer tournament has begun. This corner of literary excellence will aim to provide some relief from the hysteria and hoop-la but first a soccer-themed question.

What is it about the Angles and their flags?

The roads are full these days with flags fluttering from their chariots. You don’t see similar sights in Hibernia or Dalriada or across the Dyke of Offa. Sure these peoples are not represented in South Africa which might explain a lot but there is no record of flags on the streets when the Pictish tribes won the World Elephant Polio Championships. It is a tradition peculiar to the Angles. Soon no doubt they will quickly and silently disappear. Or be flown at half mast.

And why the constant chanting of the theme music from ‘The Great Escape’? How can we be talking escapes when the competition has barely begun? The Angles are a peculiar bunch. Maybe they might do better with some better tunes and triumphal songs. Constant repetition of the word ‘Eng-er-land’ is not a song. Read some Catullus for inspiration.

Soccer chat is now over.

The other day Cicero was perambulating through the corridors of power in the VTSSB heading for some important meeting or other called no doubt to ensure your safety and security were maintained in these troubled times.

By chance he came across a small assembly of Apparatchiks discussing leadership. Intrigued he broke off his purposeful peripateticism to see if he might obtain further enlightenment and wisdom. Cicero is not proud. He will seek and take learning and wisdom from anybody, anywhere.

It would seem that they were discussing the attributes of a great leader and one of the Petit Fromage Apparatchiks was overheard to say that his boss was ‘ a great leader because he was inspiring and a great motivator’.

At this point and with this description Cicero knew that the Petit Fromages were not talking about him. No one has ever described Cicero in these terms. And while there is always a first, this day was not going to be the day when it happened.

As often happens Cicero had something to say on this matter from his own observations and so without ceremony he muscled in on the conversation.

‘I say’, he said, by way of introduction, ‘I could not help but overhear your interesting comments and thoughts on leadership, and in particular what you said about your own Grand Fromage, and I wonder if I might be of some assistance. I have some views on this matter and I thought they might helpfully inform your discussions. I hope you don’t mind’.

‘Be our guest’, came the reply, ‘we know not who you are but you look wise and thoughtful and we would be interested in your thoughts and we are keen to learn more.’

‘Thank you for indulging me. I will try to be quick.

‘In my experience it is not your Grand Fromage or your Head Honcho who inspires and motivates you. It is you yourself who does that. No one can motivate you, but you.

‘I can see from the expressions on your visages that this is not the answer you were looking for. And you are no doubt thinking that you do not consider yourself motivating or inspiring. And wondering why Head Honchos and Grand Fromages reach such exalted positions if they are not seen as motivating or inspiring.

‘And so I crave your indulgence for a few more minutes to ease your troubled minds.

‘A leader cannot force you to be inspired or motivated. You choose to be and you exercise your free will when you make that choice. The leader should, however, do all in their power to set a direction and a course and identify a destination which is rationally sound and emotionally engaging. It is your choice if you want to believe it and be inspired by that thought.

‘Let me illustrate by reference to Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream speech’. A great speech powerfully delivered. Many blacks around the world were inspired by listening to these words. And many whites too. But some were frightened and fearful of it. Same words, same speaker, but different outcomes. Why?

‘Some chose to be inspired, some did not. Simple.

‘And the other key role of the leader and one which great leaders do very well, or so I am told, is to remove, minimise or marginalise those factors in the workplace or sporting field or wherever, that stop you being motivated.

‘You don’t wake up each morning and decide whether or not to be motivated. I work on principle that being motivated is our default setting and we become de-motivated by the stuff going on around us. Leaders try to stop or to make less visible this de-motivating stuff so that it does not get in way of you being motivated.

‘This can be big stuff like career prospects, whether or not you are going to have a job, or it can be trivial stuff like PCs that don’t work, wonky air con or, as in the TSSB, lifts that don’t work. Great leaders make this kind of stuff feel unimportant and help you stay focussed on the stuff that really does matter.

‘So leaders and leadership are important and they do do important work on our behalf but not in the way you might think. So treat your Head Honchos and Grand Fromages with respect. Show them love. They do a difficult job and a great leader is a rare and precious thing. If you have one of those, don’t lose him…or her.

‘And now, having put you on the road to true understanding, I must be about my business.

And with that Cicero resumed his perambulation and was off.

So as we sign off for yet another week, who inspires you? Who motivates you? Please do let us know. And if it is not the person you see in the mirror each and every day then you might want to re-read these find words.

Is it only me…….but this is enough to drive you to drink.

It seems that although we might have new Caesars running the country, we did not send the Nannys packing with the old Caesar.

Have you read the news that some State-sponsored Nanny has decided in its wisdom that we must set a minimum price for alcohol to save us from ourselves.

This is so wrong. And on so many levels.

Why should responsible drinkers like your good self have to pay more for their small tipple just because some people, and a minority probably, have a tendency to over indulge from time to time? Who gave this Nanny, probably unelected, the power to interfere with the market and to set prices for alcohol or any other goods for that matter? And once the Nannys get their hands on the price mechanism, what comes next-a minimum price for Mars bars and other sweeties on grounds it leads to obesity; no more discounts on electrical goods because it creates wonky weather? The list is endless.

And did it never occur to these people that the only people who will benefit from such a policy will be the people who make and the people who sell said refreshments. A minimum price means a minimum margin. Lovely jubblie. No wonder Tesco are in favour. Every little helps, indeed.

It might only be me but on the evidence of this proposal, it is time that our new Caesars, both of them, identified all the Nannys lurking in the long grass in Whitehall and told them to find a proper job and preferably one that is not taxpayer funded.

Once again, let us know who you think is right on this-Cicero or the Nanny.

Have a great week.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.