Hugh Salmon

First published on Brand Republic 23 May 2011

Last week, my 26 April post on ‘Super-injunctions’ attracted a surge of interest on a spectacular scale, partly through the national news agenda but also on Twitter from the likes of @JennaAlicia (#ff Jenna-Alicia from @TheSalmonAgency!)

I guess one follows the other but, these days, I am confused as to which is which. Does Twitter set the news agenda or does the news agenda follow Twitter? Continue reading →

First published on Brand Republic 16 May 2011

It had been agreed that the wife needed a new bicycle. As the old one had expired, ceased to be and gone to meet its maker this was indeed a ‘need’ and not a ‘want’.

I had just sat down in my comfy armchair with a lovely Saturday morning cuppa and was about to read the newspaper, a pleasure that some people of my generation still enjoy, and in she walked.

“I’m off to Halfords to buy a new bicycle”.

“What, just like that?” I said. Continue reading →

First published on Brand Republic 10 May 2011

The purpose of this Blog is to connect all our skills in marketing and communications (in all its forms) to a wider world than commercial products.

So I was going to spend the week-end writing a hugely insightful discourse into the brilliance of the ‘Yes to AV’ campaign. Continue reading →

First published on Brand Republic 26 April 2011

It is a weird feeling when someone you know becomes the talk of the moment. This happened to me last week (sorry, I don’t know Prince William or Kate Middleton).

Mr Justice Eady issued a Contra Mundum super-injunction to prevent the publication of ‘intimate photographs’ of a married public figure, who we are to call OPQ, after a woman tried to sell them for a ‘large sum of money’.

A Contra Mundum super-injunction order is enforceable worldwide and in perpetuity. Continue reading →

First published on Brand Republic 11 April 2011

Last week, I revealed what I felt to be a rather a generalised view by an eminent psychologist of how creative people behave in an office environment.

This week, my attention was drawn to an article by neuroscientist David Eagleman –  http://bit.ly/fCEGQd.

My head is mixed up as to where psychology ends and neuroscience begins, or whether they are in some way interlinked, but Eagleman’s piece included this line:

‘The first lesson we learn from studying our own circuitry is shocking: most of what we do and think and feel is not under our conscious control.’ Continue reading →

First published on www.BrandRepublic.com 28 Mar 2011 - http://bit.ly/eHjR4Z

I do feel gloating, common amongst footballers and politicians, to be most unseemly behaviour. The words ‘I told you so’ are rather distasteful too, so sorry about this….

In my blog post dated 1 November 2010 ‘The Conservatives may be doing the right thing, but in the wrong way’ (still my most-read post), I predicted that the proposed spending cuts would lead to ‘social chaos’. This was proved to be true by the student riots on 10 November 2010 and then again with the anti-cut protestors on Saturday (26 March 2011).

Yet, when I posted that prediction in November last year, there had not been riots in the streets of London for several years. For this reason, I had thought very deeply about writing this prediction as the opposite of ‘I told you so’ – being shown to be wrong – can make you a fool.

As to my post on Libya last week, I stand by every word I said.

More bombs have been dropped and more people killed – yet still the ‘protesters’ (whom, to placate the UN and Arab League, we are now to call ‘civilians despite their being somehow armed) have not ‘reoccupied’ Green Square in Tripoli, where they were on 22 February. As of today, they – or, now, we – are still not back at base.

I felt that when the protesters were there on 22 February, this was the time when a deal with Gaddafi should have been cut. As posted last week, I tweeted this view on 27 February – the day before David Cameron hawkishly proposed the no-fly zone.

He also said there would be “further isolation of the regime by expelling it from international organisations and further use of asset freezes and travel bans to encourage those on the fringes of the regime that now is the time to desert it… we do not in any way rule out the use of military assets”. http://bbc.in/eRRjAU

I believe history will show that David Cameron missed his moment.

This week, a new Conservative voice on Libya has been ubiquitous in the media. His name is Rory Stewart. Although touted as an expert on Middle Eastern affairs, he has been an MP for less than a year and shown to be completely out of his depth. When asked repeatedly by Andrew Neil on the BBC ‘what is our strategy in Libya?’ our Rory gave four different answers in four minutes. He was completely flummoxed.

Still, we can forgive him. He went to Eton. And David Cameron has a penchant for Etonians. On 6 March, he made school friend Tim Luke a business policy adviser: ‘David Cameron’s Eton chum to be No 10 adviser’ trumpeted The Sunday Mirror.

Talking of Etonians, I wonder it might be beneficial for the Prime Minister to read these words by another Etonian, George Orwell – however contrary their views on humanity. In fact, in my view, David Cameron – and all political leaders – should have this peerless writing mounted and framed on the wall by the mirror in their bedrooms so they can read them every day.

It is from an essay called ‘The Hanging’:

‘It was about forty yards to the gallows.

I watched the bare brown back of the prisoner marching in front of me. He walked clumsily with his bound arms, but quite steadily, with that bobbing gait of the Indian who never straightens his knees. 

At each step his muscles slid neatly into place, the lock of hair on his scalp danced up and down, his feet printed themselves on the wet gravel. And once, in spite of the men who gripped him by each shoulder, he stepped slightly aside to avoid a puddle on the path. 

It is curious but until that moment I had never realised what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man.

When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide.

This man was not dying. He was alive just as we were alive.

All the organs of his body were working  – bowels digesting food, skin renewing itself, nails growing, tissues forming – all toiling away in solemn foolery. His nails would still be growing when he stood on the drop, when he was falling through the air with a tenth of a second to live. His eyes saw the yellow gravel and the grey walls, and his brain still remembered, foresaw, reasoned – reasoned even about puddles.

He and we were a party of men walking together, seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world; and in two minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone – one mind less, one world less.’

Prime Minister, in God’s name, what have you done?

First published on www.BrandRepublic.com 21 March 2011 - http://bit.ly/egDW5L

Behavioural Insights apply to evil dictators as much as consumers or the electorate.

Why shouldn’t they? We are all human.

So what has been the role of the Government’s new Behavioural Insight Team (BIT) in the Libya/Gaddafi debacle?

David Cameron is lauded for being the earliest ‘statesman’ to propose a no-fly zone.

This was when the brave anti-Gaddafi protesters had come together to call for his downfall on the streets of Tripoli (let alone Benghazi).

As I have Tweeted repeatedly, then was the time to do a deal with Gaddafi:

****************************************************************

From: @TheSalmonAgency
Sent: Feb 27, 2011 11:28p

Is now a good time to block #Gaddafi UK financial assets? Won’t it force him to entrench position against protesters?

sent via Twitter for BlackBerry®
On Twitter: http://twitter.com/TheSalmonAgency/status/42003184050241536
*****************************************************************

We should have sent in the peacemakers to tell Gaddafi:

– where he would and would not be welcome to live

– that he must never return to Libya again

– he can have his Swiss bank accounts

– we will let bygones be bygones (i.e. give him an amnesty)

– and, frankly, tell him to f-off into oblivion (Terms & Conditions apply)

Unsavoury, I know, and certainly not ‘justice’.

But, as we must admit, only a short time ago we were cuddling up to him. Certainly, PM Tony Blair was (doesn’t he owe us a phone call to his old mucker Muammar?).

And has Martin McGuinness faced ‘justice’? Of course not (he’s an MP!). In Ireland, people were killed over a much longer period – making the deal more difficult to negotiate in the end.

Which is why we should have acted more quickly with Gaddafi.

As it is, we have:

– frozen his financial assets

– seized his properties around the world

– let him make a fool of himself on TV

– opened a war crimes investigation at The International Criminal Court in The Hague

– threatened the military action which is now a reality

– bombed his house.

What would anyone with any human behavioural insight expect Gaddafi to do next? Wave a white flag and face a lifetime in prison or feel Saddam Hussain’s rope round his neck?

In the 1992 cricket World Cup, Pakistan’s captain Imran Khan urged his losing team to ‘fight like caged tigers’.

This is what we have forced Gaddafi into doing.

Rather than leave the cage door open, our Governments have forced him into this corner – and, hence, are responsible for the innocent Libyans who are being bombed and killed as you read this. They have blood on their hands.

They hoped Gaddafi would do a Mubarak but they were not dealing with the same animal – as they should have known. We are all human.

Now the Arab League have threatened to pull out – http://bit.ly/eC3gMU. They “did not want military strikes by Western powers that hit civilians”. They are human too.

No doubt, events will overtake this post.

Whatever happens, what a shambles.

First published on www.BrandRepublic.com 14 Mar 2011 - http://bit.ly/iagm2G

Only a year ago I was out there electioneering as an Independent Candidate in the last General Election. The reasons I did this were explained here at the time.

In short, alongside many other Independents, I thought the MPs expenses scandal was an issue that called into account their personal – and collective – integrity.

Surely they could not have each, individually, worked out that they were able to evade Capital Gains Tax by ‘flipping’ their houses? Did not one of them think of raising a hand to say there was something wrong in this behaviour? Unbelievable. Criminal.

Anyway, as I have a proven and demonstrable track record of financial integrity, I decided to stand up and be counted. At least it would be an interesting experience. And we achieved the local issue for which I campaigned, which pleases me.

During the experience, three Insights emerged which are relevant today:

1. In the political world, they really cannot predict what will happen at an Election.

In the event, this is what happened. No one foresaw the Coalition – apart from the exit polls, which were not believed until they were proved right.

2. Within the electorate, many voters are driven by traditional, tribal loyalties.

One Labour diehard told me his father would never forgive him if he didn’t vote Labour. ‘Doesn’t he think the world might have changed?’ I asked. ‘Dunno, he’s been dead for 25 years’ he replied. 

3. The extremes of the Conservative and Labour parties are extremely unsavoury. I attended a Conservative meeting where I met someone who blamed our economic woes on the Jews. I witnessed Labour tribalism that was physically intimidating.

Below, I will reveal an Insight I have on the middle ground of these two parties.

So, why am I reverting to last year’s General Election now, especially – and rightly – when world events are so much at the fore?

Well, the vote on the AV electoral system is less than eight weeks away and, with our interest much directed at Libya and Japan today, I hope you realise what is about to hit you very soon.

Because, whether we vote either ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to AV, the Coalition will disintegrate.

Here’s why.

This referendum is the glue that has been holding the Liberal Democrats, and hence the Coalition, together. The Liberals have been campaigning, praying and begging for proportional representation since founding of the Electoral Reform Society in 1884. They would rather the Single Transferable Vote (STV) but, hey-ho, AV would be a massive step in the right direction.

Behind the scenes, since the Coalition came together last year, Nick Clegg has urged and cajoled his party to hang on through every compromising principle, every Conservative balls-up and all Cameron’s smug arrogance – all for this referendum. It was Clegg’s one big trump card in the Coalition Agreement.

And it is about to happen.

If there is a ‘no’ vote, there is no way the left-leaning, humane and socially-caring of the LibDem MPs will support the Stalinistic cuts that the Tories have been making. They won’t be able to look their constituents in the face, or live with their broken promises, any longer – as the Coalition and their leader have forced them to do.

If there is a ‘yes’ vote, despite their recent by-election embarrassment, the best chance of the LibDems achieving more seats through the AV system will be the sooner the better. The longer they leave it, the more the economy will recover and the more Labour will get their act together (which they haven’t yet, which is why the Labour peers tried to filibuster this Referendum Bill in the Lords).

But, actually, if Labour act quickly and think more strategically, then now may be their best opportunity to regain power (within, I hope, another Coalition).

The problem with politicians is that – unlike in marketing where we set objectives, interrogate human behaviour, agree a strategy and develop creative solutions – politicians wallow around with these things called ‘policies’.

‘Policy’ is a meaningless word lying somewhere within all of the above, subject to the events of the day (or, more likely, the opposite of whatever the other lot are saying).

Labour may or may not have developed what they feel are effective ‘policies’ so soon into the Ed Miliband leadership.

But, if they step back and do some ‘upstream’ thinking, they may have a chance.

Here’s how it goes.

The perceived wisdom is that Iraq will define Tony Blair’s 10 years as Prime Minister.

What if we refuse to accept this analysis?

I am a huge admirer of M&C Saatchi’s positioning ‘brutal simplicity of thought’, so please bear with me through some brutally simple thinking.

First, let us propose that the Thatcher years were not defined by coal miners’ strikes or the Falklands war or the Poll Tax.

Let us assume that history will define Thatcherism as the victory of free market economics over socialism. The wall came down. It’s as brutally simple as that.

Now let us propose that Blair years were not defined by the abolition of Clause 4,  the Iraq War or the shallowness of New Labour.

And let us assume that history will define Blairism as proof that there is a role for Government (the ‘State’, if you like) even in free market economies. That simple.

And taking these two consecutive eras, let us question where that leaves us now?

It leaves us in a massive financial mess that is probably not as much Labour’s fault as the Tories purport it to be (because the rest of the world is suffering too) and worse than Labour will admit to (although ‘there isn’t any money left’ is pretty bad).

And it leaves us not knowing how the financial wealth generated by a service-driven free-market economy (as opposed to a manufacturing-based economy) can spread wealth down to the underclass in our society that is poorly educated, badly behaved, hopelessly deprived and disgracefully ignored by the rest of us.

This is Labour’s opportunity.

I said I would return to an Insight on the ‘middle ground’ of the Conservative and Labour parties.

The irreversible belief among reasonable-thinking Conservatives is that Labour have always been, and will always be, financially irresponsible. They will spend money on ‘the State’ that the State does not have.

The irreversible belief among reasonable-thinking Labour supporters is that Tories always put money before people. They have no humanity. They don’t care.

This position, I am afraid, is one that the Conservatives, with all their Old Etonians, multi-millionaires and family trust funds, have already shown to be the case.

So now is the time for Labour to pounce.

After the AV referendum on 5 May, whatever the result, the Coalition will be creaking – in my view to the point of destruction.

So Labour have just a few weeks to develop a strategy that delivers just two things:

1. They can manage the economy.

2. They care.

The first challenge will be hard to overcome but they do have a case. They can say they have learnt their lessons, admit they did overspend, emphasise they did not foresee the global economic breakdown and, I am afraid, put Gordon Brown out to dry (and probably Ed Balls, although that may be too executional for now).

The second, and I would argue, is a more important yet more achievable strategy.

Today, millions of people, including public sector workers (even the police and armed forces for goodness sake!) are really suffering under these Conservative cuts. These people don’t give a toss about the global economy. They have families to feed, children to educate, relatives to care for and homes and TV licences to pay for.
Labour should disrupt and undermine the Coalition more directly and aggressively.

They should develop innovative solutions that build on their heritage and pull at the heartstrings of their traditional supporters in a way that only Labour can.

In my career, I have learnt that it is unwise to give away upstream thinking and creative ideas for free.

As previously discussed – http://bit.ly/91z1vc – I did this on a professional basis (and as a non-party-member) for the Conservatives in 2007. For free, I submitted a document to Steve Hilton’s office that challenged the Role of Government in modern society. This, I believe, led to the current Big Society initiative (a potentially Big Idea that, sadly, has been poorly, and anti-socially, executed).

However, as I have given the Tories something for free, I will give this to Labour:

1. As we have moved from a manufacturing to service-led economy, your traditional support within the Trade Unions has become less influential.

2. As we have developed into a service economy, more people have more money. The problem that has emerged is, at the same time, more people have less money. These people are likely to be condemned to a lifetime of unemployment, despair and hopelessness. In only a year, the Tories continue to show they don’t care about this. (Iain Duncan Smith had a chance but he has blown it by his ruthless approach).

3. So the Labour Party should take their undeniable heritage and develop a strategy to help these people by launching the equivalent of an ‘Unemployed People’s Union’ and a ‘Disabled Person’s Union’.

Who is fighting these people’s corner? I mean really standing up for them, pulling them together and aggressively, not advisedly (as in the Citizen’s Advice Bureau), arguing their case at the highest level of Government?

Clearly, it would be bad Government for one Government Department to fight against another so, de facto, this will force a simpler, fairer system across society.

Clearly, these Unions will not be funded by the ‘members’, but by the State. Having said that, it could be argued that these people are more vulnerable than any workers’ union. After all, they cannot go on strike. They have no leverage. They just have to accept the ruthless treatment of a ruthless Government.

But they do have a vote. Enter Labour.

If you are unemployed or disabled, Labour and these Unions will be there to help you fill in those forms you don’t understand and, more importantly, defend your rights. There will be high-profile public figures to fight your corner and develop innovative ideas to help dig you out of the hole you are in.

Fixing the state we are in can certainly be done in a more caring and humane way. There are lots of brutally simple thoughts and creative ideas just dying to take on this challenge. Those are for later.  

For now, look out for 5 May.

Personally, I will be voting ‘yes’ to AV because I believe coalition government is less corrupt than one-party government and that more people should have more say.

Either way, I predict the current Coalition will break down forcing a General Election.

As our MPs need their holidays in their second homes and/or with their rich friends with yachts in the Mediterranean or villas in the Caribbean, I reckon we are looking at sometime in June.

Not long to go now.