My short but successful PR career has already taught me a number of things.
Don't get the bus because taxis are rechargeable (to clients, silly, not electrically). Timesheets are a miracle of physics - "see time expand!" And don't sleep with the clients (unless you're the MD when, oddly, it becomes compulsory).
However, the key 'learning' (as they say at Procter & Gamble instead of using English) is that we are a perverse nation. (Not perverted - I'll deal with that another week.) Get an expert to tell us that something is bad for us and down we'll plunge like necklines at the Gramias. Miranda calls it anti-marketing.
Hence this week's news that the wine glass which can hold a full bottle is now a runaway best seller. This is all thanks to po-faced doom-monger Ian Gilmore, president of the Royal College of Physicians, who encouraged sales by saying that the mega-goblet would promote irresponsible drinking. He added "It must be very difficult to judge how much you are drinking in a glass that size." Doh! It's a bottle-full, dummy.
Meanwhile, our supreme leader Karoline (with a K), for whom a bottle is just a notional point halfway through a magnum, has embraced Diageo's 'not below production cost' announcement with some enthusiasm. She's partial to their Dom Pérignon, currently knocked out at Soho House at £190, and is keen to know how far that is above the cost of production. After doing some adding up, we reckon it costs about £2.50 to make, most of which goes on the bottle.
We tried the anti-marketing approach when we pitched for the Hershey's business. In retrospect, building a UK marketing campaign on the platform "It tastes slightly of sick" may not have been the best launch. But at least it has the virtue of being true.
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Don't get the bus because taxis are rechargeable (to clients, silly, not electrically). Timesheets are a miracle of physics - "see time expand!" And don't sleep with the clients (unless you're the MD when, oddly, it becomes compulsory).
However, the key 'learning' (as they say at Procter & Gamble instead of using English) is that we are a perverse nation. (Not perverted - I'll deal with that another week.) Get an expert to tell us that something is bad for us and down we'll plunge like necklines at the Gramias. Miranda calls it anti-marketing.
Hence this week's news that the wine glass which can hold a full bottle is now a runaway best seller. This is all thanks to po-faced doom-monger Ian Gilmore, president of the Royal College of Physicians, who encouraged sales by saying that the mega-goblet would promote irresponsible drinking. He added "It must be very difficult to judge how much you are drinking in a glass that size." Doh! It's a bottle-full, dummy.
Meanwhile, our supreme leader Karoline (with a K), for whom a bottle is just a notional point halfway through a magnum, has embraced Diageo's 'not below production cost' announcement with some enthusiasm. She's partial to their Dom Pérignon, currently knocked out at Soho House at £190, and is keen to know how far that is above the cost of production. After doing some adding up, we reckon it costs about £2.50 to make, most of which goes on the bottle.
We tried the anti-marketing approach when we pitched for the Hershey's business. In retrospect, building a UK marketing campaign on the platform "It tastes slightly of sick" may not have been the best launch. But at least it has the virtue of being true.
More from this column
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