Inspired by Funny Feet and gripped by brand revival fever, Karoline (with a K) is convinced she can spot an asset “ripe for reinvention using our unique blend of PR skills and branding excellence”. This sort of guff may work on clients, but wears a bit thin with us. Anyhow, next morning she announces that she has acquired the rights to Phyllosan. We nod, blankly. “It fortifies the over-40s,” she barks mysteriously, quoting what she claims is “one of the most memorable advertising slogans of all time”. Still a blank. Miranda hits the nail on the head with the kind of insight deployed by all junior brand managers and marketeers: “Why would anyone deliberately make a product for people over 40?”
And just to show how out of touch they are, it’s really only old people that care about the future of the high street. The rest of us couldn’t give a Woolworths. The world is online and empty shops are just pawnbrokers waiting to open. Fittingly, Grimsey & Portas sounds like a firm of argumentative undertakers, trying to pump life back into the corpse with increasingly desperate and silly ideas.
Speaking of which, you may be surprised to hear that Titania is not a fan of the nation’s favourite purveyor of trite advice, Pippa Middleton. Basically, we’re too competitively similar from the rear. And Nico Jackson once ignored me in a bar. So the news that she is singlehandedly responsible for a 17.4% circulation rise at Waitrose Kitchen has us all seething at P&F. However, as one of my new year’s ressos was not to be bitchy I’ll just say that it was probably the free Kenco sachet in the January issue that actually delivered all the growth.
No comments yet