Although I had the pleasure of meeting Wallace and Gromit at TEDxGranta earlier this year, sadly this is not a post about them.
Nope, it’s another post about my good buddies at Johnson Cleaners. Remember the song? Remember the spam? Well I’ve continued to try and unsubscribe from the Johnson email machine and when that failed I tried to engage with Johnson’s on Twitter, all to no avail.
So today I’ve given up the social ghost and I’ve written an old fashioned paper letter to the MD of Johnson Cleaners.
You can read a copy of the letter here if you would like, and I will keep you posted with any reply, or lack of.
If you’ve got kids then there’s a good chance you’ve heard of and experienced Horrible Histories. Wanna know why kids like Horrible Histories? Two words, blood ‘n’ guts. In truth there’s a whole lot more besides, but a key reason why Horrible Histories is such a success is they bring the yucky, gooey, bloody, deadly bits that kids love, into learning. Take a quick look:
A coat parachute – what a dumb idea! Now, where was I…? Oh yeah, blood ‘n’ guts.
Keira and I were watching TV a few days ago when a Frubes advert came on. ‘I like these ads’, I said, ‘they’re the ones with rip their heads off and suck their guts out aren’t they Keira?’ Keira looked at me somewhat crestfallen. ‘Not any more Dad, they’ve made them rubbish – take a look’. And Keira was right. Where previously Frubes glorified in the deathly delights of ripping off a frubes head before sucking its guts out, we now have to tolerate ‘Rip their tops off and eat them all up’. According to Keira that is ‘totes lame’.
I looked into this and though the manufacturers of Frubes have remained silent on the matter, the Advertising Standards Authority confirmed they had not approached anyone at Frube Towers regarding complaints or a change. I did see a few folk on Mumsnet were having a whinge about it, hmmm?
This blandifying of what was once a fab slogan strikes me as a pretty dumb thing to do to your customers, what do your kids think about it? And in the meantime, here’s a little trip down memory lane for old time’s sake:
So I’m on a Flybe plane back from Belfast t’other day and the woman sitting next to me is dressed in British Airways (BA) uniform. You know when you fly, the crew always rightly say that primarily they are there for your safety – so please listen to the safety briefing. I always do, and I observe that a lot of folk don’t. I guess they don’t want to be reminded of how they just might survive an air crash, weird huh?
Anyhoo – the briefing starts and the BA woman just keeps reading her Heat (ouch!) magazine, the whole way through. Afterwards I asked her whether or not her choosing to ignore the briefing would a) encourage fellow passengers to pay attention or b) encourage fellow passengers to follow suit and keep reading their magazines. She was clearly too busy thinking about which snacks to order and which duty free gift she was gonna buy me and declined to answer.
I’ve long felt that BA has an arrogant swagger about it, and this little tale left me wondering: what goes on inside a company (in this case, BA) that leaves employees feeling so disengaged that they openly display a total lack of care for both their brand, and their industry. Whatever it is – it certainly leaves me feeling less confident about them. How about you?