25 lttrs n th alphbt

Advertising with bells on

 

This makes me very happy. A proper Agency film. Round of applause to Fold 7 and Santa, the cun...

X-Factor Voting Trends

I fully appreciate what a twat this makes me, but I couldn't resist. ITV have released the weekly voting percentages for this year's X-Factor. I just stuck them in Excel because I love a good graph.

Turns out that Janet Devlin's annoying Irish warbling was remarkably popular for all the initial weeks until Amelia was thrust back onto the scene to stand legs akimbo and shout at us all. Seems the tactic of "comeback kid" works remarkably well. Whereas we all got bored of the ginger one, the pink haired one seemed fresh winning over a quarter of the vote on her reappearance. Shows how us humans like new shiny things, but then lose interest quick - she was a poor third to the finalists.

Remarkably, Johnny and Habibas even had little blips of popularity. They fall into the passing novelty category though. Misha B was robbed with the bullying scandal, but was never going to win.

Its good to see that ITVs plan to get rid of Cocozza fucked up spectacularly in week 5. They must have clocked that he was consistently in 3rd last place each week, just missing out on elimination. So they upped the ante to get rid of two acts in the fifth week - which should have dragged him in - but he snuck somehow into 4th worst spot with 8.7% of the vote. That put him ahead of Johnny on 8.3%, Kitty on 7.6% and surprise exit, The Risk on a lowly 7.2%.

Marcus was never once the most popular. He just trundled along in mid-table safety, which seems like a grand tactic for us all to follow. Middling obscurity for the win! It was Little Mix who were the inevitable winners from week 7 onwards as the following percentage of total vote shows.

Anyway. It's over now. We can all forget about them and not buy their records. Please.

*I've been pointed in the direction of SofaBet who seem to be doing a much better analysis job than me.*

I could watch this for hours

I will never employ anyone from Giant

I mistakenly took on a freelancer from Giant once, and probably as a result of some innocent clerical error they have put me and the lovely Steph down on their system as the invoice processing type people for the whole of Dare.

Now every week or so, I get a variety of demands from robots of feckless employees demanding I pay up for people I've never met, worked with, or care about giving money to. It has got so repetitive, that I now use it as a means to entertain myself. That's what's stopping me from nipping round to their place and setting fire to it. Here's some of the chain of emails:

[4th October]

FROM: GIANT ADMINISTRATOR

To: Nick.Emmel, Stephanie.Newman

We would like to inform you that Invoice No:

SERV2459030

is now available for viewing and printing on your Agency Portal.

For your convenience we have also attached copies of the invoices to this email.

GIANT Administrator

NOTE: This is an automatically generated email. Please do not reply directly to this email.

For the fourth year, giant has been independently voted Best Umbrella Company by readers of Contractor UK

FROM: Nick Emmel

To: GIANT ADMINISTRATOR, Stephanie.Newman, Dare.Finance

Hello Mr Giant Administrator (are you indeed physically huge with a massive clip board and pen?)

You may have mistaken myself and Stephanie as people who in any way care about these invoices for people we have never heard of or met.

Sadly though, you are incorrect.

Thank you, Mr Giant.

Little Nicholas

 

[7th October]

FROM: GIANT ADMINISTRATOR

To: Nick.Emmel, Stephanie.Newman

We would like to inform you that Invoice No:

SERV2475528

is now available for viewing and printing on your Agency Portal.

For your convenience we have also attached copies of the invoices to this email.

GIANT Administrator

NOTE: This is an automatically generated email. Please do not reply directly to this email.

giant group plc

visit www.giantgroup.com

1 New Oxford Street, London, WC1A 1GG

Voted Best Umbrella Company by readers of Contractor UK - for the fourth year

FROM: Stephanie.Newman

To: Nick.Emmel, GIANT ADMINISTRATOR

please. make it stop.

 

[26th October]

FROM: GIANT ADMINISTRATOR

To: Nick.Emmel, Stephanie.Newman

We would like to inform you that Invoice No:

SERV2488892

is now available for viewing and printing on your Agency Portal.

For your convenience we have also attached copies of the invoices to this email.

GIANT Administrator

NOTE: This is an automatically generated email. Please do not reply directly to this email.

giant group plc

visit www.giantgroup.com

1 New Oxford Street, London, WC1A 1GG

Voted Best Umbrella Company by readers of Contractor UK - for the fourth year

FROM: Stephanie.Newman

To: Nick.Emmel, GIANT ADMINISTRATOR

dear GIANT please stop bothering us PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE

FROM: Nick Emmel

To:  Stephanie.Newman, Dare.Finance, Dare.HR

Hello finance!

It would be lovely if you fire Giant. Let's never use them for freelance ever again. In fact, why not publicly out them as a thoroughly incompetent organisation?

Either that, or can you ask them (again) to stop sending invoices for random temporary employees to myself and Steph?

Super

Nickypoos

 

[27th October]

FROM: Dare.Finance,

To:  Stephanie.Newman, Nick.Emmel

Hi Nick

As funny as your emails are regarding giant. I have managed to remove both your email of their list, with an apology, See below.

Regards

FROM: GIANT.Group,

To:  Dare.Finance

Hi,

Thanks very much for getting back to me.

This has all now been rectified, and the invoices will be sent to the e-mail address provided in future. Please send my apologies to Nick and Stephanie for the delay in getting this processed.

If you need anything else, do let me know.

Many thanks,

Employee Support Officer

giant group plc

 

[17th November]

FROM: GIANT ADMINISTRATOR

To: Nick.Emmel, Stephanie.Newman

Hi, we have several outstanding invoices for work that mark undertook with you.

Can you please advise when these are due to be paid?

Many thanks

Aaron

FROM: Nick.Emmel

To: GIANT ADMINISTRATOR, Stephanie.Newman, Dare.Finance

Hi Aaron,

This is nice - are you are real person or are you another automated robot email system?

Myself and Stephanie in particular have made excellent friends with your robot email system over the last few months. It has been regularly reaching out to us with strange requests for payment for people we have never heard of. But I think the robot has just been trying to use these notes as a ploy to make friends with us.

We did try to engage it in conversation - usually around the topic of "why would you send random invoices to people who don't work in Finance or HR?", but the automated robot email had an automated robot email response, which meant that our attempts at a chit chat normally ended in a damp squib. Which is a shame.

Perhaps you are the master of all the robot email machines? If so, can you please unplug them? Or maybe just do a bit of light rewiring with a sledgehammer? Either way, it would be nice if you chased up invoices with the clever people who deal in invoices, rather than just aggressively spamming any individual who may just happen to work at the same organisation.

Cheerio Aaron, say hello to robot from us!

 

[25th November]

FROM: GIANT ADMINISTRATOR

To: Nick.Emmel, Stephanie.Newman

Good morning,

Please could you advise when we can expect cleared funds for all attached invoices.

I look forward to your response as Mark is keen to chase this up.

Thanks,

Alexandra

Employee Support Officer

giant group plc

FROM: Nick.Emmel

To: GIANT ADMINISTRATOR, Stephanie.Newman, Dare.Finance

Really Alexandra, this is getting a little silly.

It was fun initially responding to these incessant emails from your company with a variety of whimsical requests for you to stop. But now, frankly, I'm bored.

Here instead is a LOLcat to express my feelings:

FROM: GIANT ADMINISTRATOR

To: Nick.Emmel, Stephanie.Newman

Good morning,

Thank you for the LOLcat, please accept my sincerest of apologies in sending the invoices to you – I have chased up the correct email address and will use this accordingly should I need to.

Regards,

 

Hurrah! My first response. Well done Alexandra, you are my favorite Giant employee/robot. Lets see how long it lasts.

Ads through the ages

Not, y'know, advertising through the ages - but ads that depict the changing ages. There are lots of them about aren't there? Where has this current nostalgic obsession come from?

British Airways new aviator ad from BBH:

And then there is the new John Lewis ad (which isn't on YouTube yet) but you can watch it here

Was the Hovis "through the ages" ad the first? Doubt it.

 .

I look forward to the first nostalgic advert looking at a history of nostalgic adverts.

 

*EDIT* Ah yes, thanks Lucinda. There has been an advert taking a nostalgic look at adverts courtesy of Thinkbox. Still need the meta-meta version of a nostalgic advert only featuring nostalgic adverts.

 

Gary Neville's face on a carrot

 

No. I don't get it either. You'll have to ask @floheiss

Magic Potter Participation

 

I'm no fan of Potter. But fucking millions of people are, so sod me and my haughty literary bias. Therefore I heartily welcome this excellent example of *proper* participation. Y'know, the kind that people actually give a toss about on a mass scale.

Harry Potter is coming to e-books, and J.K Rowling has announced a new participative project, Pottermore, where she will work with fan-fiction types to create new Wizard stories. Now here is something that fans in their millions will want to take part in, and more importantly, fans in their tens of millions will actually want to see the output of that collaborative participation.

It's also intriguing that it has a brand association in Sony, no doubt touting their eBooks.

I eagerly await the outcome (although, I won't be reading the childish tosh out of principle).

Magic.

WTF is Tactical Planning?

People do tend to ask us what the hell Tactical Planning at Dare is. Well, showing is better than saying, so here's a natty example from this morning for B&Q.

Fresh Thinking Madrid

I'm very excited about this. Not sure whether I'm more excited about flying out to Madrid and meeting the Spanish planning massive, or having my "Agree with Nick" mugshot so expertly designed into a flyer.

Anti-Over-Participation

Thanks everyone for all of their over-participation examples. I shall add them in when I get a mo. In the meantime, here is the genius that is Stewart Lee's skeptical take on social media and participation.

I rather like his summary of what real participation is:

"In the mid-Seventies, 30 million people watched the Morecambe and Wise Christmas Special on BBC television, and that's what television used to be about: participating in a massive shared experience that helped bind the fragmented country together. Why not watch Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicles alone, on BBC iPlayer, on your own time and be a part on nothing."