Football Fever

The past couple of weeks have seen the whole country gripped, once again, by football fever. And I can now confirm that the entire thing has been a fantastic success.

Firstly for those industrious makers and retailers of all things flag-like these have indeed been halcyon days, secondly petrol stations must have seen a marked increase in trade due to the number of drivers who have upped their fuel consumption with the additional weight and drag of the aforementioned flags and thirdly we have all had the most fantastic opportunity to enjoy that most British of pastimes – moaning.

When it comes to support of our national team it seems that we are fully aware of what we are supposed to do but somehow lacking in the ability to see it through. Even when we have won a game we are keen to emphasise that we played badly, but surely a win is a win?

Maybe my perspective is a little off kilter (I have to confess that football is not a sport that I enjoy watching) but when a whole nation is telling a select few that they’re rubbish, even when they are winning.

How is that supportive? And how does it encourage them to excel?
In short it doesn’t, but it does give us all an excellent opportunity for a good moan.

Augmented, really?

As seems to be almost constantly the case we are currently riding the wave of the next big thing which in this case is Augmented Reality or AR.

AR is all about making reality a bit more real and as a marketing tool it definitely has possibilities. The technology that exists allows you to ‘augment’ your surroundings using various mobile devices. For example your phone will work out where in the world you are and then tell you about the things around you, current sales offers in the shops, available appointments at the hairdressers, shows at the theatre etc. A bit like an all-terrain, pop-up service.

So what will the AR future bring? It is anticipated that you will be able to point your phone at a person and instantly have access to their on line presence, facebook page, professional website and so on which will potentially make networking a doddle.

All of which leaves us with a couple of pertinent questions:

1) Do we need it?
2) Will it catch on?

The first question has demonstrated its irrelevance throughout the history of technology and can therefore be studiously ignored. As for the second I’m going to stick my neck out and say yes, when information has value you can’t afford to miss any of it.

PR, Politics and Apathy

After my last blog I am pleased to report that we now have a government and while democracy may not have actually triumphed in the true sense of the word, we do now at least know where we are – or do we?

In the business world when one company becomes amalgamated with another larger one, in a not entirely amicable way, the PR machine talks of ‘hostile takeovers’ and ‘monopolies and mergers’. But we seem to be happy to not let such issues ruin the present entente cordiale.

And so we should be, for most of us politics is largely smoke and mirrors and until it has a direct personal effect us (usually our wallets) we are quite happy to let whoever it is get on with whatever it is that it takes to run the country.

So maybe what does triumph in the end are two stalwarts of our society – great PR and good old fashioned apathy.

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