Deja vue

Is it only me.......but this is just deja vue all over again.

As you may be aware in the past few weeks with the death of Kim Il-Jong the world has lost another gruesome dictator. And good riddance though until we better understand the jib of his podgy son I am not sure we will be able to sleep any better in our beds at night. Though having said that now I had better be careful I don’t walk into any umbrellas over next few days.

It was amusing to see the wailing and crying that went on in the streets of North Korea on news of his death and to watch apparently sensible and rational North Koreans, I assume there are as many of these in that country as there are in this, rend their garments, beat the pavements and bawl hysterically during the official mourning period. It was also interesting to see the western media cover this with wry detachment and ironic puzzlement.

But hold on this was déjà vue all over again.

Let me take you back to 1997. Remember? Were not many of us behaving just like the North Koreans last week on the death of young yummy mummy who died in a car crash? Now sadly many young mums die in traffic accidents but few have Princess in front of their name. It shouldn’t make any difference but it does and in those lachrymose filled days and weeks we made the North Koreans look like amateurs with our public grief, the flower strewn pavements and the hysterical chest beating as just like the North Koreans we tried to outdo each other with our public proclamations of love and grief.

Now no doubt you may argue that the two cases are not the same. At least we didn’t send non grievers to the Gulag. And you would be right. Maybe we are just more subtle with the media joining in this conspiracy and assuming that you weren’t quite right in the head if you were not joining in this lemming like behaviour. There isn’t really much difference. Can you recall much air time being given to those who did not join in? No, neither can I. And those who bore the loss of the People's Princess with stoic fortitude were ostracised and denied a platform for their emotions if I recall.

In truth we in this country are no different from the North Koreans.

Remember that the next time a dictator dies.

Have a great week.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.

The blame game

Is it only me......but wonky weather is not our fault.

Recently I was checking out at the supermarket and the young whippersnapper of a cashier suggested to me I should bring my own bag because plastic bags weren't good for the environment telling me in no uncertain terms:
"That's our problem today. Your generation didn’t care enough to save our environment for future generations".

Clearly a closet enviro-mentalistic eco-warrior.

Shocked and stunned that I and my generation were being blamed for the wonky weather and after some reflection and soul-searching on "Our" day, here's what I remembered about our generation......

Back then, we returned milk, lemonade and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles repeatedly. So they really were recycled.

We walked up stairs, because we didn't have a lift in every store and office building. We walked to the shops and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.

Back then, we washed the baby's nappies because we didn't have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 240 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of Wales. In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap.

Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn petrol just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

Back then before health and safety had been invented, we drank from a water fountain or from the tap when we were thirsty instead of using a throwaway cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.

Back then, people took the bus, and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their mums into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.

It might only be me but isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we older folks were just because I don’t recycle my carrier bags and have the nerve to blame us for the wonky weather? It is not our fault that the polar bears don’t have any ice.

Let he or she who is without sin cast the first stone.

Have a great week.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.

Carry on nurse

Is it only me.........but shouldn't nurses be doing this already?

I see that in their latest flurry of we-have-to-be-seen-to-be-doing-something activity, the Two Caesars have decreed that our nurses must now to stop and chat with us at least once an hour. Seemingly it is all about improving patient care in our hospitals.

I suppose that it will still be ok for nurses to keep food out of reach of elderly patients until it gets cold, fail to move them until they get pressure sores or even make them a cup of tea or even offer thirsty patients water, so long as they are getting their hourly chat.

It staggers me that our micro-managed society needs to set a standard nurses to have a chat with patients. Do you think they had a Summit before coming up with this wheeze?

I hear a noise off. It is sound of Mary Seacole, Florence Nightingale and Hattie Jacques turning on their graves.

Surely it is part of DNA of being a nurse to care for your patients? Should it not come automatically to nurses to chat with those in their care? If not, why are you a nurse?

Now already those who shop steward the nursing profession (and by the by if you are a profession you shouldn’t need shop stewards) are bleating about lack of resources and the Two Caesars need to allocate more of our money and other such poppycock.

It costs nothing to share a smile and a word of kindness, care and empathy with those in our society needing the most care on an hourly basis or even when it is required. Seacole, Nightingale and Jacques knew this and that is why they are still remembered to this day. They didn’t need to be told what to do. It came naturally to them.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.

Show me the way to go home

Is it only me.....but some people just have too much time on their hands.
This morning when driving into work I almost drove off the road.

It seems that many of us when slavishly following the inane commanding voice of our SatNavs (and for the record I still find my way from A to B in the old fashioned way i.e. by using a map) are driving up dead ends, into farms and into rivers. Silly people! Have we as a nation lost all ability to think for ourselves? This is what happens when we let the Health and Safety Gauleiters and other Nanny State Apparatchiks dictate to us what we do.

But I digress.

Clearly this requires action and as the Apparatchiks clearly don’t have anything else to do these days (and is it any wonder that many of us think there are too many of them in the first place?) they have set up a SatNav Summit. I kid ye not. No wonder I almost drove off the road and I did that without the help of a SatNav.

Is this really the most pressing issue facing the Two Caesars and their legions of under-employed Apparatchiks? I would love to hear your views on what else our Apparatchiks should summit about to kill an idle day, week or month.

And I bet too that after months of discussion, debate and deliberation and having devoted more time and money to killing a few trees and penning a report, they recommend that SatNavs advise their owners in terms of mounting panic that there is a river nearby. And in Apparatchik terms brought up at Nanny School, ‘nearby’ means anywhere in same county.

If people are too stupid to drive into a river because it never occurred to them that the SatNav might be wrong then they don’t deserve the combined heavily subsidised brains of our Apparatchiks working out what to do on their behalf.

And if the Apparatchiks have nothing better to do all day might I suggest they get a better job.

Have a great week. And take care if driving near a stretch of water.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.

Cinema Paradiso

Greetings, devotees. And a very Happy New Year.

Cicero is extremely apologetic for his absence over the past few weeks. He has resolved to do much better in 2012. He knows how much he has been missed as many of you have told him.

And in 2012 a new strategy is being followed.

If you are interested in listening to Cicero's thoughts on the vicissitudes of everyday living in the modern age and the many many stupidies of the world, stay here to be entertained.

But if you seek enlightenment, stimulation and education leavened with Cicero's raiper-like wit, you will need to look elsewhere for Cicero's marketing thoughts have moved to www.themarketingcomic.blogspot.com. Hopefully this will bring Cicero's enlightened marketing thinking to a wider audience. So bookmark Cicero's new site now. He looks forward to seeing you there.

In the meantime...........

Is it only me...........but cartoons are not films.

Now I like going to the cinema. I like films. And every Sunday when I hide behind the Sunday papers I eagerly look forward to reading the film reviews and seeing what is good at the cinema. There is in my ever so humble opinion nothing to beat going to the cinema to see a good film and escaping for a while from the reality of the Eurozone crisis, the political machinations of the Two Caesars and the stupidity of our Health and Safety Laws.

I was therefore looking forward to some time out over the past few weeks as the revels raged and sales madness took hold to go and see a good film. And according to my considered perusal of the film reviews there was many a fine film on current release.

Imagine therefore my disgust when I checked what was on at my local multiplex-nothing.

Now that was not quite true there was plenty going on but all the films on show were either cartoons or CGI or involved violent car chases and other special effects. All were designed for people of significantly fewer years than shown on my birth certificate; or for folks lacking my quantity of brain cells; or for very young people requiring maters and paters to accompany them.

There was nothing for people of advanced years with a full complement of brain cells. Where were the films likley to win Golden Globes, Baftas or Oscars?

These multiplexes come by definition with mutiple screens. Surely it is not asking too much for at least one of these screens to show at least one film which might be called art instead of films which are more like scribbled graffitti than art.

I know its Xmas but don't the Honchos than run our cinemas realise that people like me might want to see a film too. Maybe we just don't buy enough popcorn or nachos to justify a proper film. Hopefully Steven Spielberg or Frances Ford Coppola might read this and do something about it for next Xmas.

In meantime have a great week.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.

Doing a Ratner

Hello.

Cicero was asked during the week by a correspondent unversed in the Latin vernacular to explain the meaning of the sign off at the foot of your weekly dose of wit and wisdom.

And so for those of you lacking in a classical education, these words mean ‘Be happy. Be lucky’. Surely a great philosophy to get you through the week ahead.

So now you know.

And before Cicero forgets, you might like to know that this is Movember and so, to draw attention to men’s health issues and to raise money for these, and in particular prostate cancer, Cicero will not be shaving through this month. Watch this space for updates.

Moving on.

Last week Cicero met an old colleague, a renowned Marketing Grand Fromage or MGF, whose name we had better keep hidden to avoid super injunctions and other writs, and to keep a friend.

‘How you doing?’, asked Cicero by way of a greeting, ‘And how’s business in these tough economic climes?’

‘Great to see you. It’s been a while. Business is tough but not too bad-could be a worse. But these punters wind me up. Some of them are so thick and cause us nothing but hassle.’

Cicero was dumbstruck. So dumbstruck that he was unable to respond. ‘Punters’? ‘Thick’? ‘A hassle’? This is no way to talk about the people who pay our wages and keep us in the style to which we have become accustomed. Where’s the respect?

And this set Cicero thinking. A lot can be learnt from this brief conversation.

Paying close attention to customer complaints is a leadership "best practice." But how many of us out there in the real world pay close attention to things people say about their customers. And few things say more about organizational culture and character than how your people complain about the customers and clients they serve.

Put aside hypocritical bullshit bingo slogans like "The Customer is King" and "The Customer is Always Right." When frustrated and on deadline, your people rarely talk about their most challenging and/or most important customers that way. What employees say — and how they say it — when the going gets tough speaks volumes.

Respectful criticism and critique should always be welcome. But all too frequently there's condescension and contempt. The smartest and ablest experts in knowledge-intensive and creative industries, like marketing, sometimes appear quickest to mock their customers' perceived ignorance and incompetence. This behavior isn't cathartic but corrosive.

Tone at the top is crucial. Remember Gerald Ratner when he famously described what his shops sold as ‘total crap’. He was torn apart.

The larger question, however, remains: Why would any Head Honcho or MGF in any organization say or do things that disrespect their customers?

If contempt for customers is part of the "brand experience"— yes, Mr O’Leary this means you — then such dismissiveness makes business sense.
But if these comments authentically represent organizational perspectives, then no one should be surprised when customers and clients choose to return the favour and walk.

When marketers wonder aloud "will the dogs eat the dog food" when they launch a new product or when sales people joke among themselves about how they got the customer to overpay, the organization is allowing a disrespect discourse to harden into a cultural norm. Making fun of customers isn't funny but dysfunctional, self-destructive and ultimately corrosive.

And this is the real leadership challenge-to let people feel free to critique and discuss customer relationships without it becoming disrespectful and rude. For it is possible to learn much from understanding why your people think the way they do and to take actions to improve. Indeed it is possible to learn as much from the complaints your people make about your customers as from the complaints your customers make about your people.

Your customers might be bad but they do pay your wages and we must never ever forget that. Unless of course you too wish do a Ratner.

And now Cicero wishes he had thought of that response to his MGF friend.

Is it only me.......but not everyone in this country is unemployed, some of us actually work.

Last week I had something delivered at home. Or at least someone I had bought something from tried to deliver something to me at home. Not unsurprisingly I was not in. Foolishly I had gone out to earn some bawbees rather than stay at home waiting ceaselessly on the off chance that some courier or parcel service might walk up my path with my parcel. I know. It’s my fault. I should have stayed at home. How else after all was I going to get my purchase delivered?

Now it never ceases me to amaze me how some businesses think everyone in this country is either unemployed or a house husband or wife. And yet many of them don’t appear to realise that an 8% unemployment rate equates to a 92% employment rate therefore there is a 9 to 1 chance that people are going to be out.

I am one of the 92% who has a tendency to be more out than in should anyone try to deliver something to me in during what is still known in many parts as the working week. In other words there is no point in anyone trying to get me at home on a weekday between my core working hours of 9 to 5. Indeed when you factor travel and discretionary hours time, there is very little point in trying to catch me at home unless you do so during the wee sma’ hours when only binge drinkers and ne’er do wells are out.

And of course when you are not at home but at work trying to do your bit to pull the economy out of its stall pattern, your parcel gets taken back to the parcel depot, you are left with a card telling you that should you wish to retrieve your purchase you will have to drive across two counties to collect....and of course they only work working hours too. Kafka would be proud.

Now some of the more technologically advanced Parcel Postman Pats will send you a text to let you know that their van with your goods in it is on its way to you. This is quite a breakthrough but this innovation is only useful should you work in the local smithy and are able to get back home within the hour. It fails to take account that in the post industrial knowledge based economy we now have, people no longer eke out a living in the garden shed or in the local fields. The world has moved on even if Parcel Postman Pat hasn’t.

Now it might only be me but it is time for these people to wake up and realise that we are not all unemployed benefit scrounging no marks. Some of us have a job and as a result we have a tendency to be out during the day. But the solution is simple. Change your business model.

Instead of trying to deliver during the day, deliver in the evenings and at weekends when it should be easier to find people at home. I know some think of me as a genius but that surely isn’t rocket science. In this day and age, with a 24x7 economy, there is no longer any need to pay people extra to work outside ‘working hours’, such arrangements are only made for public sector workers because ‘they’re worth it’.

And there must be financial benefits if Parcel Postman Pat can maximise the number of one touch deliveries he makes without the need to return the parcel to the depot.

It’s simple really. Anyone else got a business problem they want me to solve?

Have a great week.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.

Hellish weekend

Welcome.

And no the road has not yet been fixed. And yes it remains dug up and unsutured. But it is time to move on and so we are going to dwell no longer this week on the state of the roads around the Cicero Villa.

Time this week to consider what it means to be a customer. But first a wee story.

Once upon a time a man (it could have been a woman but let’s keep it simple) died and went to heaven. As is the norm he arrived at the Pearly Gates and was met by St Peter (or the Muslim, Sikh, Hindu equivalent) who made him a special offer.

‘For this weekend only we have a deal going with the Devil. You are expected in here but for the weekend you can sample Hell. For the next 2 days and 2 nights you can experience all that Hell has to offer but when you come back to these Gates, you must give me a decision and you will have to live with that decision for eternity.’

‘Sounds fair enough to me, in for a penny, in for a pound’, replied the former man, and off he went to try out all that Hell had to offer.

And he was pleasantly surprised. It was great. He met many of his old friends and colleagues, the weather was fantastic and every whim and need was catered for. It was a bit like a Club Med exclusive holiday.

After his 2 days were over he dragged himself off and went back to the Pearly Gates to give St Peter his answer.

‘Now you know the deal’, said St Peter, ‘you can either come in here or go back to Hell but whatever you decide, then you will have to live with the consequences forever.’

‘After much consideration’, replied the man, ‘Hell was not what I thought it would be like and all my mates are there and so I choose Hell’.

And with that the gates to Heaven slammed shut and the man was immediately dumped back in Hell. But this time it was so different-it was dark, very hot and totally soulless. In short it was hellish.

After a wee while in the place the man eventually spied the Devil and called him over.

‘Hey, I was here over the weekend for a couple of days and it was very different-it was like a holiday in paradise before. What happened? Where’s the fun? The great weather? The sea, the sun, the Sangria?’

‘Ah’, said the Devil, ‘yesterday you were a prospect, today you’re a customer’.

And for many of us this tale captures what it means to be a customer.

Think about it. Banks, phone companies, utility companies and many others reserve the best deal for new customers while existing customers have to pay the price. Many think this wrong.

But we only have ourselves to blame.

Companies offering their best deals to existing customers would soon go out of business and wouldn’t attract any new customers. We choose to buy insurance, a new mobile phone, our gas company, on the basis of price. And we stick there through thick and thin even though we know new customers are getting a better deal. What do we expect?

So what’s the answer?

Firstly we as consumers must learn that there is more than price to consider when shopping around. And we should shop around and move our business around more. Make it really painful for brands to take our custm for granted. Not enough of us are doing that at the moment.
And brand owners must not take the lazy way of winning business-cutting price. Instead they should try to build a brand and brand loyalty based on more than just price.

Until that happens we are all fated to spend together in Hell.

Is it only me..............but I can’t stay mum on this.

Last week in my capacity as a Head Honcho I was asked to sign off about 3 weeks holidays by one who has the pleasure and privilege of working with me on a daily basis.

Nothing unusual in that, you might think. Signing off and agreeing to holiday leave is a fairly regular and non-controversial occurrence in offices up and down the land. In this instance however the person in question has just returned from a year’s maternity leave and is now endeavouring to squeeze 3 weeks leave before the year end.

I was a wee bit amazed that my esteemed colleague had so much leave available given that she has not be seen in the office for the past 9 months so you can imagine my incredulity when informed that even though someone has been playing Mummy for the past few months they are still entitled to all the benefits and privileges of a worker even though they have not been present in the office.

And yes you have heard me right. Even if you have been away from the office for a year bringing up baby, you are still entitled to your ration of annual leave. Seemingly it’s the law.

Now let me say at the outset that my issue here is not with the person requesting leave but with the dumb Apparatchik and Politico who agreed to such a practice in the first instance. Methinks I detect the hand of Harry Harperson from the Last Lot behind this madness.

I would love to understand the rationale for this for I can see none.

Some people may go on about fairness and equality but what is fair and equal about this. I do believe it right and fair that Mummys, Yummy or otherwise, should be entitled to come back to work but is it fair that Mummys who have been away from their desk for a year should have the same rights and privileges as the Stakhanovites who have toiled long and hard at their desks and workstations to keep the business going through one of the toughest economic periods we have seen? These are the folks who need time away from work to refresh and re-charge batteries and who deserve every pat on the back and going.

And has anyone considered the unintended consequences of policies like this? Do Harry Harperson and her Guardianista equality advisers not see that small businesses in particular will find ways, lawful of course, to avoid giving employment opportunities to women of child bearing age?

Now maybe it’s only me who thinks this way but I really can’t stay mum on this issue. No doubt I will get letters from the Guradianista Sisterhood but someone has to speak up and point out that the Emperor has no clothes.

Have a great week....especially if you are having a baby.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.