CardMarketing 2.0

One of the trailers before the film Transformers, which launched over the summer, was different to the rest. It was shot from a camcorder's POV, had no film title, no mention of who's in it, just the words 'In Theaters 1-18-08'.

There's a TV ad in the UK that's been running sporadically for donkey's years. God, the first time I saw it I was a disillusioned undergrad, absorbed in Camus and Sartre, imperious in my despair but generally happy sleeping my way through halls and getting smashed. I'm talking about the famous 'Ronseal' ad, an ad about a can of woodstain that, cue the immortal strap, "does exactly what it says on the tin".

Whichever 'creative' in whichever agency Maestro paid to create the billboard ad that's currently riveted to a filthy pigeon-infested wall above Boots in Victoria Station deserves to be taken out, stripped to the shreddies and publicy flogged. When I see most ads these days I feel contempt, but this one made me erupt with anger — in a quiet, non-violent kind of way. It was just so middle of the road, so predictable, so pathetic.

Now here's a book you absolutely must read. It's called Naked Conversations (how blogs are changing the way businesses talk with customers). It was co-written by Microsoft employee Robert Scoble, author of world-famous tech/business blog, Scobleizer.com, and veteran consultant Shel Israel.

Summer 2007 in the UK has been a washout — it's rained like never before. In Gloucestershire, ironically, a water treatment plant was flooded and hundreds of thousands of people were without any water for nearly two weeks despite being up to their waists in it. As a creature of quite frightening habit, my dad couldn't miss out on his daily shower so would simply trot out into the garden, in flip flops and nothing else, stand in the rain, which he promised me was more powerful than the Mira Advance shower system upstairs, and perform his ablutions. As yet, he has not been arrested.