Zeusblog

I see EUFA are banning Vuvuzelas from their matches as they feel it might spoil people’s enjoyment of the games. I totally agree with them, but why stop at annoying plastic trumpets? There are plenty of other things that spoil my enjoyment of the beautiful game that should all be banned forthwith. Like the annoying really loud music (usually some kind of power ballad) they play at the end of cup finals which drown out the fans just as effectively as vuvuzelas - it’s almost like they think we don’t know how to celebrate (as a Villa fan I am forgetting what it’s like to celebrate a big win, but that’s another matter). ITV commentators and pundits. The ridiculous hype surrounding the England team. The England team itself - surely club comes before country? Fans who don’t like you criticising your own overpaid stars. Overpaid stars. Overpaid journeymen footballers. Footballers with no sense of loyalty or pride in their shirt. Footballers who aren’t honest about why they are moving club - they never say it’s for the money. Football agents. Orange WAGs. Greedy clubs pricing proper fans out of the game. Greedy clubs ripping off their supporters by constantly changing their overpriced kit. The terrible food they serve these days inside grounds (what happened to good old fashioned terrible food like pies and bovril?). The price of terrible food inside grounds. People who leave before the game is finished. The word ’soccer’. The idea that we should have to give £750 million to football projects around the world in order to host the world cup - if it’s not coming here because this is the home of football and we already have great infrastructure, the best league and the best fans, then we don’t want it. The inevitable spurious estimate of how much the World Cup would be worth to the country. Oh yes, and David Cameron being a Villa fan.

Back in May we highlighted National Doughnut Week. I love all these strange National Days or Weeks that PR people dream up to publicise some cause or another. So who could fail to be intrigued by National Love Your Gut Week? Sadly, it’s not a week aimed at making fat people feel better about themselves, nor is it intended to make women up and down the country feel better about their partner’s beer belly, it’s about promoting better digestive health.

Checking their website, I see that Gut Week is from 23rd - 29th August and that there’s a specific section that explains “How can you play your part in the major digestive event of the year” (there are others??) - I reckon the best thing I can do to play my part this week is to avoid baked beans, Jerusalem Artichokes and Vindaloos.

My wife just bought a new phone, and I found the endline on the packaging as surprising as her reason for needing a new phone (she dropped her old one in a bucket of water in case you were wondering!). She bought a nice little Sony Ericsson and as you can see in the picture, on the box it has the words “make. believe.”

As a copywriter, I find this puzzling. Of course, I can see what they were trying to do: make - Sony make things; believe - you can believe in Sony; and, giving them the benefit of the doubt, their products are so amazing that you’d almost think they were make believe.

However, all I see is make believe i.e. it’s not true, made up, load of old boll###s. Why didn’t anyone hold their hand up and say “that doesn’t quite work, let’s think of something else”?

Perhaps they thought “nobody will think that about Sony”. Well having read all their blurb about how green the phone is (with a magnifying glass - they’ve made the manual tiny to save paper), I do.

During the election, the Tories kept saying they were going to make massive cuts but it wouldn’t deepen the recession because they would be cutting out lots of waste. I thought then, and still do now, that it was just a smokescreen for deep cuts that were ideologically rather than economically motivated.

But then a greedy outsourcing company called SERCO and (giving them the benefit of the doubt) incompetent civil servants conspire to give the Tories an example of staggering waste and the excuse they need to continue to cut away like mad axemen.

The waste in question is £105 million spent over three years on a website. Yes, I really did write £105 million. And yes, on a website. And no, not a website like google or facebook or twitter - the website in question is the one for Business Link. Yes, Business Link.

I already thought Business Link was a box ticking waste of time and money having had to endure a three hour meeting with one of their “consultants” (the word consultant should have raised a red flag but we live and learn…) discussing how the way ahead for our business was to write out environmental policies and the like, but the revelation about their website is the icing on the cake.

Read about it on the BBC blog I read about it on by clicking > here  <

I could go on and on in an outraged of Mortimer Street style, but the comments on the original blog have got that covered ( with some interesting cost analysis from web professionals ). Suffice to say, we’d be happy to do the job for half the price… very happy indeed

I read, in Runners World of all places, that this week is National Doughnut Week. Apparently bakeries that are taking part are giving money from the sales of doughnuts to the Children’s Trust charity. I don’t know much about the Children’s Trust, but I’m sure they’re doing good work, so as it’s in a good cause, why not fill your face with doughnuts? I know I’m going to

As a copywriter I’m always terrified of missing a typo myself, but always very amused when I see other people’s public spelling mistakes - I believe it’s called schadenfreude. So following on from Rick Stein’s effort, I’m pleased to share with you some banners I saw in Birmingham at the weekend. These had the added amusement factor of being very large spelling mistakes and having one mistake repeated on the larger banners and a different one on the smaller one. The lesson for us all, clients and agency, is always check your proofs - because the printer won’t!

As a special bonus, while it’s not strictly a spelling mistake, I saw this sign in Bude recently. It made me laugh because whichever way you read it, it gives entirely the wrong idea about visitors to Bude.

I saw this ad on the tube and thought it was a very neat way of telling the public that people like me will be running the marathon on the 25th April and causing lots of disruption. Well done whoever did it.

Yesterday on the way home from Cornwall, my family made our usual detour to Padstow to grab lunch at Rick Stein’s fish & chip shop.

Now if I was the most famous fish chef in the country, I’d make sure that the specials board in my chip shop didn’t contain any spelling mistakes - but then I’m a copywriter
More importantly, if I were the most famous fish chef in the country, I wouldn’t serve cod in greasy batter.

On our previous visit, the fish was absolutely sublime, so come on Rick - sort it out!

First Batman in Hampstead Garden Suburb, now the Penguin (well two actually) at Wembley. 

I went to the Carling Cup Final at Wembley last Sunday and found myself sitting next to these two guys. What you can’t see in the picture was the rest of their outfits under their Villa shirts - they had big penguin bums and orange flipper feet - very funny. When I asked “Why the Pingu outfits?”, they just replied “Why not?” and laughed.

Apart from the score it was a great day out (particularly those beautiful, glorious 8 minutes when we were 1-0 up), and the new Wembley stadium (my first visit) is so much better than the old one, which other than the twin towers was really awful.

Now I’m not generally very well disposed towards Man Utd, but I have to take my Villa hat off to the Man Utd fans. Most (and I mean 95%) of them were not wearing the red colours that they are famous for, but were wearing green and yellow as a protest against the Glazers, their American owners who strapped the club in debt to buy it. Yellow and green were the club colours of Newton Heath, the original club formed in 1878 that became Man Utd. It’s the fans way of saying that you may have bought Man Utd Plc, but it’s still is and always has been our club. When they celebrated winning the cup (by the skin of their teeth) their end was a sea of swirling green and yellow scarves. Their line is “Love United. Hate Glazers.” My response would be “Hate United. Love the Protest.” Football clubs really are so much more than just a business and a balance sheet, so I hope it works for them.

There was an article in the Guardian last Saturday, reviewing the Gillette TV ad where a mechanic looks at a razor. You can read it here. All very amusing - why we don’t need a blue strip to turn white to tell us when we need to change our razor, because a blunt and clogged blade will lacerate your skin to ribbons waaay before the strip changes colour - but then the writer went too far, suggesting that the reason there are so many beards about these days is because razor blades are too expensive.

So I’d just like to make it clear that the reason I’ve joined the beardies is not because I can’t afford the blades (although my wife does describe my beard as “looking a bit homeless” when it gets too long), but is because I am too lazy to shave. I just wanted to make that very clear.

Chalky