Hugh Salmon

First published on www.BrandRepublic.com 4 Mar 2011 - http://bit.ly/g1SrPj

 If you don’t know anything about rugby, it is a team game with 15 players a side. Two are ‘centres’ (unless you are in New Zealand, which we are not).

In the 1980s, aeons before today’s digital media age, my brother played centre for England against Scotland. The other centre was Simon Halliday. I was there.

Neither of them was passed the ball all game, so neither had the chance to drop it.
Neither of them missed a tackle or made any other mistake.
England were thrashed.

The following week, Simon telephoned Jamie and said:

‘Have you seen Teletext today?’

‘No. Why?’ Jamie replied.

‘We’ve both been dropped’, said Simon.

‘Why?’ asked Jamie.

‘No idea’.

A few weeks later, Simon called Jamie again:

‘Have you see Teletext today?’

‘No. Why?’

‘We’re both back in the team’.

‘Why?’

‘No idea’.

In those days, as you may gather from the above, rugby was an amateur sport. Rugby players had ‘proper’ jobs. Even so, as young men playing in front of large crowds and with mass media attention upon them, this treatment must have hurt. Could not someone have picked up the phone and spoken to them man-to-man?

More recently, Sir Clive Woodward was on Desert Island Discs. He said when he was centre for England, he could not believe the shambolic management he experienced. It was a complete contrast to his day job in the aggressive sales force at Rank Xerox.

Years later, as England manager in a newly professional game, Woodward resolved to develop a more professional management approach. His team won the World Cup. Arise, Sir Clive.

Anyway, last week, Jamie and I are having dinner and he has a very black and white view of how people communicate by email, text, Facebook and Twitter these days.

Indeed, as the only rugby player to have been capped for New Zealand and England (another story), some might think he is entitled to a black and white view of life.

Having been a television presenter, written a weekly national newspaper column and now working with a successful sports PR agency, Jamie knows the game.

And, perhaps because of his own heartless, hurtful experience as a young man, he feels very strongly that people should either meet face-to-face or at least pick up the phone and talk to each other more – especially when the business equivalent of being ‘dropped’ is the issue.

And I agree with him wholeheartedly.

In my view …

… if you are a client who fires an agency by email, text or other Faceless manner

… or

… an agency manager who fires an employee by email, text or other Faceless manner

… you are a gutless coward.

First published on www.BrandRepublic.com 25 Feb 2011 - http://bit.ly/heDGYB

There are times when the news of the day is just so compelling that you want to keep up with developments hourly or even in real time.

This week, this has been the case for two very different stories. The bravery of the people of Libya and the tragedy of the earthquake in Christchurch.

For me, the time of the week I normally allocate to writing this post, was spent at the funeral of a 31 year old cousin who worked in PR and died of cancer last week.

I am proud and grateful to say that her agency’s treatment of her went way beyond the call and was wonderfully caring and humane

Hers was a moving, thought-provoking funeral. What had she done to deserve the cards she was dealt? Why her?

So, I am sorry. All I can do is re-print this poem that one of her best friend’s read at the service.

If you are gainfully employed in rewarding work surrounded by others who are fit and healthy, you may just like to stop for a moment and realise how lucky you are.

You may also like to admire a piece of writing where the analogy of death to a ship disappearing over the horizon is wonderfully crafted and brilliantly expressed:

I am standing by the seashore. 

A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean.

She is an object of beauty and strength,and I stand and watch until at last she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sun and sky come down to mingle with each other. 

Then someone at my side says, ‘There she goes! 

Gone where?

Gone from my sight – that is all. 

She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side and just as able to bear her load of living freight to the places of destination.

Her diminished size is in me, not in her. 

And just at the moment when someone at my side says, ‘There she goes! ‘ , there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout :

‘Here she comes!’

Why is life so unfair?

 First published on www.BrandRepublic.com 18 Feb 2011 - http://bit.ly/fC19z6

I wonder if the people of our country know what a seminal week this has been?

The Government have been forced into an embarrassing climbdown (sic) from the sale of forests and woodland.

The Right Honourable Caroline Spelman, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, told the House of Commons: “I am sorry. We got this one wrong, but we have listened to people’s concerns.” http://bbc.in/gyRu6t

Now they might have listened to people’s concerns. But why didn’t they ask first?

Regular readers of this post will be all-too-familiar with my thesis that a better use of the professional marketing and communications skills on the tabs across the Brand Republic Home Page would make for better Government of our country.

I have railed against the haste and confusion of NHS reforms: http://bit.ly/fUxKYd

Last week I showed how David Cameron would have benefitted from professional market research before rushing out with his multiculturalism speech in Munich: http://bit.ly/eGwtDB

And now, in ‘the mother of all Parliaments’ of which we are so proud (even though, historically, Iceland beat us to it), we have a Conservative Cabinet Minister – a Cabinet Minister – standing at the despatch box in our House of Commons and apologising for rushing into a policy without ‘listening to the people’.

No quantitative research. No qualitative research. No engagement with community experts or opinion formers. No thought. No strategic thinking. No judgement.

All of us – yes, all of us – should all be ashamed of the state we are in.

What is the reason for all these rushed-through policies and bad government?

Ah well, let’s calm down for a moment.

The answer to this question also emerged this week – and it is much more quietly tucked away than in our disgraced corridors of power than the humble Ms Spelman.

The House of Lords ‘caved in’ on voting reform: http://ind.pn/fYduhm

Why has this caused all these rushed-through policies and bad government?

Well, I can tell you.

The Conservatives know that a no vote to AV will be the end of the Coalition.

This is because the anti-Coalition (or, more accurately, anti-Tory) Liberal Democrats will feel their one main sticking point has not been achieved. Nick Clegg will find it impossible to hold his party together and there is likely to be a General Election.

Labour have been most desperate of all to postpone this referendum, requiring tired old peers to camp down for all-night sittings in Westminster. They know that, under Ed Miliband, they are nowhere near ready for another General Election.

If there is a yes vote in the referendum, a General Election is even more likely. Disaffected Liberal Democrat MPs will withdraw from the Coalition and go to the country in the hope that, under the new voting system, they are likely to win significantly more seats.

The Conservatives are unlikely to enjoy an overall majority ever again.

Ditto Labour.

The Liberals will have achieved a massive breakthrough.

Even though the Alternative Vote (AV) is not their preferred system, it will be a step up the ladder to the Single Transferable Vote (STV) for which the Liberal-inspired Electoral Reform Society have been campaigning since 1884: http://bit.ly/fxYUgu

As I know from personal experience, politicians never know what is going to happen in an election – the latest being a case in point where the exit polls were not believed early in the evening but, by morning, were found to be almost spot on.

So now, with this AV referendum looming, our politicians are all engaged this party political game playing, scheming and wheeling and dealing and what do they care about the rest of us?

What about the people who need the NHS – both as patients and employees, hundreds of whom are losing their jobs as I write this post?

What about the Muslims who feel estranged and unwelcome – and who have to listen to ignorant and uncaring claptrap from our allegedly intelligent Prime Minister?

Or people who love their trees and their forests – and anywhere else they can find to escape from all this nonsense?

Well, these politicians don’t care.

None of them will stand up to their party machines. If this were likely, they would not have been selected by Head Office to stand for Parliament in the first place. To do this you have to show ‘commitment to the cause’ i.e. do what you are told. Churchill would have had no chance.

As we all know, most of the people holding senior posts in any of the main three parties are career politicians. They have gone from Oxbridge into the party machine. They haven’t lived in the real world. They haven’t a clue what is going on out there. Their careers are at stake.

So they are all trying to make a mark, rushing through as much legislation as they can in the hope that something worthwhile ‘sticks’ and their skins will be saved.

And the result is a chronically split society where the politicians who have failed us so badly get on with their yah-boo game playing and their own petty agendas.

There are those of us who get on with our lives and our professional careers in the commercial world, carrying with us the skills, expertise, creativity and energy that the politicians ignore.

And we have the rest – the poor, the sick, the elderly, the needy. People who cannot afford their TV licence fee let alone a computer and who wouldn’t know about ‘social networking’ if it hit them in the face.

What about them?

Who cares?

First published on www.BrandRepublic.com 11 Feb 2011 - http://bit.ly/fC19z6

This is a telephone conversation I did not have with David Cameron last week. I don’t know how he found my number. Is there no privacy these days?

DC: ‘I’ve decided to have a go at multiculturalism. What do you reckon?’

Me: ‘What with all that’s going on in Cairo right now?’

DC: ‘Don’t worry about Cairo. I’ll be in Munich. It’s the right time and place’

Me: ‘What are you going to say?’

DC: ‘I’m going to say: “We have failed to provide a vision of society [to young Muslims] to which they feel they want to belong. We have even tolerated segregated communities behaving in ways that run counter to our values. All this leaves some young Muslims feeling rootless. And the search for something to belong to and believe in can lead them to extremist ideology”.’ http://ind.pn/gxgVNy

Me: ‘Don’t you think this will upset some people?’

http://bit.ly/i5uXDB http://bit.ly/dWZbYu http://bit.ly/i23k0o http://bit.ly/gw21Zj

DC: ‘Well, bad luck if it does. It is what I believe and it is what I am going to say.’

Me: ‘Have you done any research?’

DC: ‘No. Why?’

Me: ‘Because if you research the issue, particularly among the ethnic minorities you are referring to, you will have more chance of fulfilling your objective.’

DC: ‘How’s that?’

Me: ‘Because you will be able to reflect back to these people the views that the majority of them have expressed to you. This will show them you are on their side and that you care.’

DC: ‘What if the majority don’t agree with me?’

Me: ‘Keep your mouth shut!’

DC: ‘What are you proposing?’

Me: ‘Three things. You appoint an independent research company to conduct the biggest quantitative survey among ethnic minorities ever seen in this country. Then you get another independent research company to conduct a significant qualitative study of at least 24 focus groups, with at least four groups in each of six regions……’

DC: ‘Blimey, what’s that going to cost?

Me: ‘A lot less than this thing rebounding on you.’

DC: ‘What am I going to ask them?’

Me: ‘You explore their views on all the values you want to espouse: human rights, including for women and people of other faiths; equality of all before the law; democracy and the right of people to elect their own government; integration.’

DC: ‘What’s the third thing?’

Me: ‘You get well-known and respected opinion formers from various racial and religious groups to support the values you want to reinforce. Their voices will be more influential than yours.’ http://bit.ly/f6m5Tv   

DC: ‘But I’m the Prime Minister’.

Me: ‘Exactly. That means you can do all these things. No problem’.

DC: ‘But why should I bother?’

Me: ‘I have told you. Your message will be more effective.’

DC: ‘But politics doesn’t work like this. I’m the Prime Minister. I decide these things.’

Me: ‘Yes, but you have to SELL your thinking and your ideas to the people and this is how you do it.’

DC: ‘It all seems a bit of a fuss to me. I’ll make a speech and see what happens.’

Me: ‘Yes, Prime Minister.’

First published on www.BrandRepublic.com 04 Feb 2011 - http://bit.ly/fC19z6

What a difference a word makes.

This week, ‘according to American regulatory filings’, Michael Sherwood, joint head of Goldman Sachs London, was awarded a bonus of £9million.

In the late 1960s, in Hong Kong, my late father was appointed a non-executive director of the Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank. I remember him telling me that, despite numerous other appointments and directorships, he was particularly nervous before his first Board Meeting at ‘The Bank’.

This was because the responsibilities and decisions taken, including lending enormous sums of money to the Governments of other Asian countries, were so daunting. At this first meeting, he determined to do his homework but say nothing.

However, at the last item of the agenda discussing the CEO’s remuneration and the issue as to his receiving a clothing allowance, my father piped up and said wasn’t said CEO paid enough already and weren’t the board too busy to discuss such trivial matters for their most highly paid executive?

I know my father would have thought that it was the CEO’s job to make as much money for his employers as possible. That was why he was CEO and why he was the Bank’s highest-paid employee. An enormous bonus for doing the job he was paid to do would be unthinkable.

In today’s environment, it seems to me that there is a difference between banks that are wholly or part-owned by their employees and those that are publicly owned or even part-nationalised.

I would advise those bank executives who are shareholders of the business to re-brand their bonuses as ‘dividends’.

Those bankers who are merely employees should be awarded ‘bonuses’ in shares, which they would not be allowed to sell for, say, three years. This would provide them with an incentive to stay loyal to their employers as well as encourage them to contribute towards the longer-term success of the business.

It is a fallacy to claim that not paying employees bonuses would encourage them to leave for other companies because very few banks, and we know who they are, are part-owned by their employees and earn ‘dividends’ accordingly.

Not all bankers could work for these exclusive few. If they want to try, let them.

The word ‘bonus’ has become stigmatic and malicious. It needs to be re-defined.

By the way, my father returned all his non-executive directorship fees to his full-time employers because that is what he thought he should do – even when the total sum of his non-executive fees added up to more than his full-time salary.

What a different world it was.

First published on www.BrandRepublic.com 28 Jan 2011 - http://bit.ly/fC19z6

So, in an exciting week of news, Andy Coulson – David Cameron’s token piece of rough – moved on to pastures new.

Does this provide the Prime Minister with the opportunity to develop a new, more professional approach to developing his policies and bringing more of the common people, rather than tabloid newspapers, along with him?

I do hope so. It seems to me that, in politics, unlike in commerce, politicians think up what they are going to do, release a press release accordingly and then manipulate the media to support them.

Most people in business cannot do this. Marketers and their products and brands do not get covered in the media like politicians do. So they have to think. And they have to make sure they bring their customers along with them or they go bust.

It is not like this in politics.

Once you have been elected, you can do what you like. Admittedly, this is less the case in Coalition than with the massive single-party majority of the Blair Government in 1997 but the LibDems do not seem to putting up much of a fight (as they can’t until after the AV vote, possibly in May).

In politics, there is much less strategy involved. PR is the key.

Hence the importance of people like Andy Coulson and Alastair Campbell, tabloid journalists who would not know a marketing strategy if it hit them in the face – reactive and media-manipulative journalists rather than strategic thinkers.

In politics, it seems, there is a bit of strategy involved in the election process with Thatcher and Saatchi remaining the seminal case history as long ago as 1979.

Once you are in power, strategy goes out of the window and PR takes over. For example, how deeply thought-through have been the recently (and hastily?) announced NHS reforms? See my post: http://bit.ly/ecgV25

Steve Hilton is David Cameron’s Director of Strategy. After studying PPE at Oxford (what a surprise), Steve joined Conservative Central Office, where he came to know David Cameron and Rachel Whetstone, his future wife, who happened to be political secretary to Michael Howard, and then fellow godparent of the Cameron’s late eldest son, Ivan.

Our Steve came up with the infamous “New Labour, New Danger” demon eyes poster campaign as well as the re-touched Cameron ‘Face’ poster. Great job, Steve.

Apparently he now spends a lot of his time in the States making him, in the immortal words of the Late Sir Robin Day a ‘here today-gone tomorrow’ figure.

Let’s hope Cameron takes this opportunity- alongside his team of all the talents currently advising on the role of the COI (see last post) – to completely re-structure the way modern politics is defined and managed.

Define the objective. Test the proposition. Develop a brief. Engage the people. Bring them along with you. Then draft the press release.

Don’t just go straight to the media and sound-bite the media reaction.

Please be more professional than this. Get yourself some ‘upstream’ strategic thinkers on board, work out the human implications of your political agenda and then launch the PR campaign.

There are people on the Brand Republic website who know what they are doing. We know how people behave and what is going on in the real world out there (outside the Westminster village).

Why not give some of us a go, even if we were not at Eton or Oxford or Eton?

Wishful thinking? I am afraid so. I bet he gives Coulson’s gig to some other political hack and carries on busking it on a day-to-day basis. That’s the only thing the other hacks will understand, and that’s what matters most, so that’s why he will do it.

First published on www.BrandRepublic.com 21 Jan 2011 - http://bit.ly/fC19z6

My first ever blog as ‘A Different Hat’ on www.BrandRepublic.com was posted on 13 November 2009. It was called ‘Convergence and Divergence’ – http://bit.ly/fO6Z8C

After setting up my core thesis, I said:

“….the technology designed to bring us together is driving us apart. Surely this new technology, which all of us are using as communications tools, will have freed up more ‘spare media space’ than ever?

So in this divergent world, can’t we, as a business sector, including clients and agencies, be more creative about using our talents and resources to define and create messaging which might help overcome the divisions in the society we live in?

From time to time in the trade press, I have seen hypothetical lists of ‘teams of all the talents’.

Why can’t we do this for real and bring our resources and our skills together to communicate the importance of the values that UNITE us?

Wouldn’t this be a great brief?”

So, on www.BrandRepublic.com last week, I was delighted to read an article headed ‘Sorrell and Wight to inform COI review’ – http://bit.ly/gh3B4m – which said:

‘The Government has formed a roundtable of experts including WPP chief executive Sir Martin Sorrell, Engine Group chairman Robin Wight and Channel 4 chief executive David Abraham to advise on its review of the future of COI.

Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, said: “The Government needs to be far more innovative in thinking about how it can best deliver incredibly important public information messages.

“We need to incorporate the latest ideas from initiatives such as the Ad-Council in the US and the latest thinking from experts such as our Behavioural Insight “nudge” Team.’

As discussed in last week’s post (‘Coalition? They’re all over the place!’) they call this Nudge Team the BIT – http://bit.ly/i6dqLG

I admit that the brief to this ‘roundtable of experts’ does not seem one which will change the world, but – at last – the UK Government seems ready to engage with the marketing and communications industry in a more ‘upstream’ way.

Many times, particularly in Campaign, have I read about the virtues of the COI (Advertiser of the Year 2009, no less) and I absolutely 100% accept that they are all very professional people who do an excellent job.

My issue has been not with the COI itself but the briefs they are given and the role they have played in society. My feeling is that the COI – which, of course, is not their fault – have been asked to produce campaigns that are tactical rather than strategic. Wear a seatbelt. Don’t drink and drive. Catch it. Bin it. Kill it.

Of course, politicians don’t use the word strategy. They use the word policy.

And the Government are not allowed to use the COI to communicate policies. ‘Policies’ are, by nature and definition, party political.

So, as soon as public money is used to present any Government initiative including, for example, the reasons we have gone to war, the Opposition are up in arms and start shouting and waving paper around in the House of Commons. They say that, because they hold the opposite view (which they have to because that is why they are called the Opposition), the Government should not use public money in this way.

I think this is mad.

Take this week as an example.

Do any of us have a clue what the new structural reforms of the NHS are all about?

What does abolishing Primary Care Trusts and empowering GPs really mean?

Is this change for change’s sake?

Or is it just to save money?

What about people who depend on the NHS, not only for their jobs (1.3million of them, no less) but as patients?

How will they be affected?

Are they worried?

What has been done to overcome their concerns?

To what extent have their concerns been considered?

If the NHS was a commercial business with the whole population as its customers, would it have communicated these fundamental changes in this way? 

My answer – and I know a bit about the NHS – is a resounding NO.

It is my hypothesis that many of those who need the NHS most are the least likely to know the answers to these questions. This is unkind, uncaring and inhumane.

All we have heard has been yah-boo politics and posturing and people taking sides and, frankly, as a patient – a customer – I don’t care about all this.

I just want to get better. I want the NHS to care for me. How will these changes achieve that?

I think this is a major problem for us as a society. For better or for worse, the UK Government are not allowed to use ‘public funds’ to explain what and why they are doing – even at the expense of the concerns, and day-to-day livelihood, of the British people.

They reason they are not allowed to do this is because the opposition would want to have their say too.

Well, I am sorry, but this just cannot be right.

The Government is the Government. Whether it is this political party or that political party, or a combination of two political parties, and whether you like them or not, in the modern world, the people whose lives the decisions of the Government will affect deserve to have the ‘policies’ that affect them explained simply and clearly and in a manner they understand.

Furthermore, the affect of these policies on the people they effect needs to be considered earlier in the process. Further upstream. To use Francis Maude’s own language, what human behavioural insights have informed these policies?

Frankly, for as long as they are in power, subject to passing laws through Parliament in due process and in the proper way, the Government are going to do these things whatever the Opposition might say.

The Opposition can shout and scream in the House of Commons, they can bleat in the media and write books and articles and oppose as much as they like. This applies to any Opposition. It is a constitutional, not party political, point.

So please, let’s be grown up about this, and empower the Government of the day to engage with the experts as, at last, they have now started to do and, subject to proper financial scrutiny (possibly by an all-party Parliamentary committee), allocate the funds required to the use of the best possible strategic, media, communications and creative skills available.

In this way, they will be able to transmit these ‘policies’ to the people whose lives they will affect rationally, emotionally, creatively, effectively – and professionally.

Let’s face it, the Government are going to do what they are going to do anyway. It doesn’t help for the people whose lives they affect to be left divided, unsure and confused.

I hope this newly appointed group from the top of our industry can put their own political allegiances to one side (if they have any) and start this ball rolling – leading, hopefully, one day, to a more united, more convergent, more caring and more humane society.

The politicians might not like it but we, the people of this country, are their constituency – and we are more important than they are.

Last September, we learned about ‘a secretive department set up in Downing Street’ call the Behavioural Insight Team (BIT) – aka David Cameron’s ‘Nudge Unit’. Here is the news in a contemporaneous article from The Guardian: http://bit.ly/dNG7K6

This week, The Sunday Times picked up on the story:

‘The BIT has been disseminating its ideas to government departments which are now implementing nudgy policies. Francis Maude, the minister for the Cabinet Office, says that “evidence from across the world suggests that behavioural insights can deliver considerable benefits and save money”. In the past 10 days a number of new policies have been announced that owe their genesis to these theories …..

Critics complain that “behavioural insights” are little more than snake oil gimmicks dressed up as policy wonkery. Advertising agencies have been hooking our sensibilities with clever words, they say’.

I’m not sure what that last paragraph means but let’s read on because the exciting bit is about to come. Yes, Rory Sutherland gets his say. I think Rory has been one of the best Presidents of the IPA we have ever had, but here he is described as ‘the vice-chairman of Ogilvy, a marketing agency’.

I am delighted that Rory’s proposition (if not the vital role he has performed for our business) has, at last, been recognised at Government level. Indeed:

‘Cameron is such a fan of behavioural insights that he has appointed his cabinet secretary, Gus O’Donnell, chairman of the BIT. It is part of his drive for a big society in which people are given more freedom and responsibility over their lives, with government providing nudges for guidance’.

I wonder how many creative people are in this BIT?

Surely Rory Sutherland must get the credit for nudging the government into nudging – arise, Sir Rory! – so there must be creative people in there. But who are they?

In these posts, I try to avoid discussing creative work or issues. But surely it follows there is a creative role here? Behavioural Insight – Nudge – Innovation – Creativity.

Before the creative input, how much disciplined and objective strategic planning is going on? Where is the ‘upstream’ consumer insight?

This is where I can contribute.

And my view is that before the Government starts nudging the common people, it needs to look at itself.

There are nudges and insights that could be applied to the Role of Government, and the way it is structured, that precede what the Conservatives can do to nudge the plebs into Big Society behaviour.

For example, what are the roles that are important to good government and that the common people in the Big Society cannot manage?

1. Defence

In Prime Minister’s Questions this week, David Cameron said:

“We have an enormous terrorist threat”.

What a surprise.

But, as I wrote in March 2010:

“Why is it that the responsibility of countering terrorism within Britain is the responsibility of The Home Office (i.e. the Police), but outside Britain is the responsibility of the Ministry of Defence (i.e. the Military)? …. Surely terrorism is an international problem that, like the internet, transcends national borders? …. In my experience, expecting two units within one Government Department to communicate with each other is a recipe for disaster, let alone two completely different Departments with different hierarchies and different Ministers…. I reckon this muddled management structure makes us sitting ducks.”

I also urged a more sophisticated use of new media in the war against terrorism.

Perhaps the 07/07 inquest that is currently taking place will nudge the Secretary of State for Defence, The Right Honourable Liam Fox MP, towards a more united and innovative resistance to this ‘enormous threat’.

Mind you, he isn’t responsible for Police. That’s the Home Office.

2. Home Office

As well as counter-acting terrorism and stopping drivers from speeding, on Thursday 9 December last year, one arm of the Police were on duty not controlling the student rioters when the other arm was not protecting Prince Charles and Camilla on their night out to The Royal Variety Performance at the London Palladium.

As the Daily Telegraph reported on 11 December 2010:

“Officers guarding the royal couple were using radios on a different channel from those patrolling Thursday’s student riots, meaning they received no warning that protesters were blocking their route.”

Of course, whereas the police were all over the place, the students were connected to Twitter and knew exactly what was happening in real time.

If the police don’t know what is going on in one side of Central London from another, it doesn’t give you much confidence in their sniffing out the terrorists in our midst does it?

Perhaps a nudge in the direction of the Right Honourable Theresa May MP, our Home Secretary, might result in a more intelligent use of new media by the police in future.

Ah, Media. Sorry, we’ve got another department for that.

3. Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS)

The Right Honourable Jeremy Hunt MP is the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. He was formerly Shadow Culture Secretary (2007-2010) and Shadow Minister for Disabled People (2005 – 2007).

Perhaps someone could nudge the DCMS towards a more innovative, joined-up use of new media to deliver the vital Government responsibilities of defence and security more effectively.

Did I say ‘innovative’? Sorry, that’s another Department.

4. Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) 

According to its own website the BIS (as opposed to BIT) “has an important role at the heart of government as the ‘department for growth’.”

The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills and President of the Board of Trade is the Right Honourable Dr Vince Cable MP.

Oh dear, ‘Growth’ and Vince Cable. We’re getting quite a long way from defence, protection and anti-terrorism aren’t we?

Do you think someone could nudge Fox to May and May to Hunt (I wish it was Fox to Hunt!) and then Hunt to Cable? Is this happening? After all, as a Liberal Democrat, Cable isn’t even in the same Party as the other three, who are all Conservatives.

But Nick Clegg’s got the answer!

5. Alarm Clock Britain

This is from the Independent this week (12 January): 

‘David Laws, who was forced to quit the Cabinet in May over his expenses claims, has been put in charge of a drive by Nick Clegg to support the citizens of “Alarm Clock Britain”….. Liberal Democrat strategists have alighted on the phrase to describe the low and middle-income families that the Deputy Prime Minister views as the backbone of the country….. It was devised at a recent brain-storming session with senior Liberal Democrats, including Mr Laws, at the Deputy Prime Minister’s grace-and-favour mansion at Chevening.’

No mention of BIT or Nudge or Behavioural Economics here. Do the LibDems know about them?

Do the Conservatives know about Alarm Clock Britain?

Do any of them know what the other is doing?

Or are they, like our Police, all on a different wavelength?

I promised an upstream consumer insight and a disciplined and objective strategic recommendation:

My Insight is that people in the Big Society, especially terrorists, do not live their lives by Government Department.

Strategically, the UK Coalition Government should get its own act together before it nudges the electorate towards looking after itself in what is called the ‘Big Society’ (although a re-branding and clearer communication of this concept should also be considered).

Sometimes you read something that just hits you in the face and you have to pass it on. Yesterday, this article by Alison Pearson in The Daily Telegraph was brought to my attention – http://bit.ly/iibrBr

To anyone that works in marketing or the communications industries, I believe the moral of this story is so important, and that it is so brilliantly and concisely written, that I make no apologies for bypassing the link and posting the text below:

“Sarah Palin has lashed out at those seeking to blame her for the assassination attempt on Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, which ended in the death of six bystanders. Palin avoided details of her notorious graphic which placed Giffords’s Arizona district in the crosshairs of a gun with the caption: “Don’t retreat: RELOAD!”

Palin insists that political debate has always been heated. True enough. The difference today is the internet, which has irreparably poisoned public discourse. On Palin’s Facebook page, one commenter on the Arizona shootings said: “It’s OK. Christina Taylor Green was probably going to end up a Left-wing bleeding heart liberal anyway… what would you do if you had the chance to kill Hitler as a kid? Exactly.”

Christina Green was the nine-year-old girl shot dead by Jared Loughner. Where is it considered acceptable to suggest that the murder of a child has an upside? Online, that’s where. Anonymous internet commentary has given people a shield which allows them to vent the worst in themselves with no consequences. I’m sure Sarah Palin would never echo the views of her more deranged supporters; all the more reason not to trigger their madness with her bang-bang rhetoric in the first place.”

Beware of what people might say about your business or brand online.

And be very careful about what you claim online or offline.

That’s all I can say.

Two weeks ago, I argued that 2010 has been a world-changing year.

Now, by ‘crowning’ Mark Zuckerberg Person of the Year, I am pleased to report that Time magazine appears to agree with me. How opinion forming is that? “This honour is awarded to the figure deemed to have had the most influence on world events that year – not necessarily in a positive way. Both Hitler and Stalin have won in the past”.

Bizarrely, if you read my last post (http://bit.ly/gsezbS), Mark Zuckerberg was born in 1984. In this post, I brought your attention to the George Orwell novel and this quote by Mark Read, WPP Digital’s chief executive quoted on Brand Republic
(http://bit.ly/ef9wPk):

“As Facebook has surpassed the half-billion-users milestone, and is effectively the third largest country in the world, it is no longer a matter of if brands should have a presence on Facebook, but how they can be successful.”

Now, on 15 December, Time magazine has said(http://bit.ly/ey7UY0):

“This year, Facebook ….. added its 550 millionth member. One out of every dozen people on the planet has a Facebook account. They speak 75 languages and collectively lavish more than 700 billion minutes on Facebook every month. Last month the site accounted for 1 out of 4 American page views. Its membership is currently growing at a rate of about 700,000 people a day.”  

Only a year ago, if you had forecast that Facebook would grow at 700,000 members a DAY, people would have that you were mad. 

What does all this activity mean?

I have discussed some aspects of this in my previous two posts.

This week, as my last post (sic) of 2010, I will discuss one aspect of modern life that online connectivity, including Facebook, has challenged and this is the muddy water that we used to call Work and Play.

In the old days, in true Mad Men style, advertising people like me put on our smart clothes and went to work. Life was clear. When we were in the office, certainly in office hours, we were working.

Some knew the trick of leaving their jackets draped haphazardly behind their chairs, implying they were in the office somewhere – in another department, talking to a senior person behind closed doors or in the lav. They were ‘in’. They were working.

If they weren’t ‘in’, unless they were at a meeting outside the office (which would be clearly noted in the diary on their desk), they were not working. They were ‘out’. The difference between being in and out of the office was clearly delineated.

In reality, a lot of the time we were getting pissed in the pub.

Forgive me for being chippy but, without Facebook et al, did this mean we spent more time meeting people face-to-face, talking to them and getting to know them?

These days, all this has changed. Are Facebook friends really friends? Do they all really know each other? Is Facebook a serious social connection – or is it a game? The old definitions of work and play no longer exist.

At work, companies can play Big Brother and monitor your ‘working’ day on Facebook or not – but they cannot do this to all of us all of the time. And they don’t really know if you are there anymore (and if in working hours, unless you actually are in the office, you leave your ‘location finder’ on, you must be mad). No one knows where they are. Of course, we know where we ourselves are – but not where anyone else is. They are not ‘in’ anymore.

Anyway, with the emergence of tablets and WiFi et al, you don’t have to be using company equipment anymore. Who is to know if you are sending a work-related or social message – or researching an important topic online?

By the same token, at the week-end, how are you to get away from your boss? What possible excuse could you have for not being connected to the office? “Great news, we’ve got a meeting in Seoul on Monday. We’re flying out this evening. Be there”.

Of course, not everybody has a job. In fact, during 2011, fewer and fewer of us will have jobs. In this case, the opposite dynamic applies. You don’t work, which means you don’t have any money.

You don’t have any money, so you can’t play either.

You might as well get pissed in the pub. At least you will meet people face-to-face.

I believe 2010, in some part because of the ubiquity of Facebook, the delineations of work and play have disappeared.

So, if you are working and are given some nice toys this Christmas, enjoy them while you can. You won’t have many days off in 2011.

If you are not working, please make the most of life, with or without nice toys.

Either way, I hope you have a mad 2011 when the world will change even more.

Merry New Year!