Take out a loan... and shop 'til you drop

It’s not often I take to my soapbox. Oh, alright then. It’s not often I admit to taking to my soapbox.

Anyway, last week I received an advertisement posted through the letterbox. The format – not especially classy – was of two leaflets stapled together. The front sheet gave details of Provident Personal Credit and its local agent, while the second sheet promoted ‘Love2shop’ vouchers in association with… you’ve guessed it… Provident Personal Credit.

The first was largely inoffensive. “I could help you with a loan of £50 to £500!”

The second offended me rather more.

“Love to shop till you drop?” it asked. “Ready to start shopping?”

Apparently I could take out a loan “from as little as £3.50 per week!”

You may be thinking this promotes irresponsible spending. I can assure you it doesn’t. Provident’s small print insists the company is a responsible lender.

You may think “Your vouchers could be delivered today!” might encourage customers to make an inappropriately quick decision about entering into a credit agreement. Once again, I refer you to the small print.

And that’s before you wonder whether customer satisfaction statistics from 18 months ago are still valid, or whether having different representative APRs on each leaflet is confusing.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your time. I shall now step down from my soapbox.

Multi-talented

It's easy to make assumptions about people. For example, some folk have expressed surprise when the rhetorical skills of footballers don't match up to their footballing talent - despite there being no reason to expect this.

And now I'm starting 2012 with a shocking revelation: award-winning Financial Times journalist Lucy Kellaway has only recently discovered how to make porridge in the microwave.

I'm reminded of what I was taught in telesales training many years ago. Don't assume. It makes... well, I'm sure you know the rest. Don't you?

Have cat, will travel

Every so often I have some kind of creative idea. Sometimes they're good. Sometimes they may even have commercial possibilities. Rarely, however, are they ever put into practice.

But this time I think I've hit on a real gem.

I don't want to give away too much at the moment... but let's just say the online market for feline food critics is largely untapped. And there are a lot of fish fingers out there.

All I need to do is persuade a cat to join my campaign.

Oh, to be a mobile developer

I’m no developer. I’ve not written any programming code since the family VIC 20 passed away. These days I tinker with the occasional HTML tag but that’s about it. Instead I write in a rather more conventional language, favouring Roget’s Thesaurus and the Oxford English Dictionary as my SDK.

But that didn’t stop me thoroughly enjoying Over The Air 2011, an event aimed squarely at mobile developers.

Here's the blog post I wrote about OTA11 for TheFonecast.com:

The text message just said "Yellow Citroën hatchback". At least the diaeresis on the ë was in the right place. It meant the stranger who was giving me a lift from the station was probably an urbane French speaker. Either that, or they had surprisingly good predictive text on their phone. The third possibility - a serial killer with an old Sagem - hadn't crossed my mind yet.

It was at this point I realised I'd already fallen for Over The Air, a unique event aimed at mobile developers. Throwing caution to the wind, I'd arranged a lift there via Twitter with a mysterious developer I'd never met. Or spoken to.

I needn't have worried. The mystery developer turned out to have an iPhone mounted on the dashboard of their yellow Citroën. I breathed a silent sigh of relief.

Two and a half hours later, having talked about everything from religious homophobes to battery life (via Doctor Who and greenhouse gases) with no obvious disagreements, we arrived at Bletchley Park. This definitely had the makings of a Very Good Day.

I'll admit the sight of the mansion, the huts and the grounds didn't really impress me. It's not that I'm soulless, just that I'd previously been there in the 1980s when BT used some of the buildings to host training courses for their telephone engineers. Yes, Alan Turing and I worked on the same site, albeit decades apart. However, I doubt that Mr Turing played table tennis and drank lager in the evening after a day of soldering practice and safety films. To be honest, I'm not even sure if I'd pass the test that bears his name.

Delegates who'd arrived for the 10am start had been welcomed by an introductory talk from Dr Sue Black, Bletchley Park campaigner and Senior Research Associate in software engineering at UCL. Slow traffic and GPS failure on the iPhone had delayed us, so Sue generously revisited her keynote speech and explained to me why Bletchley was so important to the nation... and to developers in particular. The answers are in Saturday's podcast; listen out for the phrases "geek Mecca", "shortened the war" and "world's first digital programmable computer".

Next on my interview list was co-founder Daniel Appelquist, who took time out from keeping the entire event on track to discuss the aims and ambitions of OTA.

Also happy to chat was Paul Johnston, a man who was in the fortunate position of living nearby. Not for him the pitching of tents on the lawn or the secret Coca-cola hoarding in preparation for all-night coding. I could have talked to him for much longer but it was time to hear some of the presentations.

Hang on moment. I'm getting ahead of myself. You'll find my conversations with Sue, Dan and Paul online at TheFonecast.com: listen online, subscribe via RSS, get it on iTunes or download the MP3. And on Friday you'll be able to hear part 2 of my report, which includes some of those presentation speakers.

As for my love affair with Over The Air, I'm already counting the days until we meet again.

Working with words

Time for a brief mention about work for those who wonder what I do when I'm not writing. As well as being a copywriter, I’m also a podcaster for The Fonecast. We produce weekly broadcasts of UK mobile industry news for everyone from dealers to developers, covering all the top stories from within the mobile phone business. You’ll find our podcasts on iTunes, from our RSS feed and on the home page of our website.

From advertising to looting

I’m not going to offer any kind of in-depth analysis of the recent riots in the UK. I’m neither qualified to do this nor have I any personal experience to add.

However, having just read and agreed with much of Kate Bevan’s blog post, I’ve decided to offer a few slightly-connected thoughts.

This morning I spotted a message on the front of my wife’s body wash. (A free gift. But I digress). “Lovingly created in the UK”, it says.

Looking at the back of the package you’ll find the comment “Made in the Czech Republic”.

Yes, it’s been ‘created’ in the UK… but it’s not made in the UK. Oh, dear me, no. As if. I mean, you couldn’t possibly think one meant the other, could you?

A new advertisement on the back of our local buses encourages us to ‘relax’, showing a woman with her hands behind her head and her elbows where her fellow-passengers’ heads should be.

That’s okay, isn’t it? It’s hyperbole… or a serving suggestion… or something like that. It's not dishonest, surely?

The path from a few weasel words to breaking into the Carphone Warehouse isn’t a short journey. But I reckon both are on the same road. A little less spin, a little more respect, and the world would be a better place.

Business bookshelf

I thought the bookshelf in my office was worthy of a photo. As you'd expect, some books are used much more than others. ('Words that sell' is a guilty pleasure, while Fowler offers more pleasure and less guilt).