Potholes and a penny
Ozzy Osborne bit the head off a bat onstage in Des Moines in 1982. We could have done with some of that chutzpah to liven up yesterday’s effort from the other Ozzy. Don’t get me wrong, it was an oratorical display to be proud of, but there was relatively little to be interested in otherwise. […]
Specific gravity, the secret of a good client proposition?
I’ve been taking a little time this morning to read the results of the RBS customer charter. The headlines are that it’s a curate’s egg, good in parts. Incidentally, if you want to know where the phrase ‘curate’s egg’ comes from, it’s from this 1895 Punch cartoon. It’s all part of the service here at […]
Why the ECJ gender ruling means I don’t have to pay my credit card bill
By this time hundreds of thousands of words will have been written on the ECJ ruling about gender discrimination in insurance and pensions. So I won’t rehash what you can find elsewhere, although it is interesting that on twitter, along with #ECJ, the other trending hashtag was #bonkers. Dizzee Rascal would approve. Anyway, I read […]
Johnny shall have a new master
See saw, Marjorie Daw, Johnny shall have a new master, He shall have but a penny a day, Because he can’t work any faster. Speaking recently at an Insurance Society of Edinburgh do at a newly-yellow-pointed-hatty Standard Life House, I had occasion to muse publicly on seesaws and their unique relevance to the UK life […]
Flogging meat to the vegetarians
My good friend Alsy – the finest web manager in the third sector – sent me this story and it seemed pretty relevant as our industry tries to work out how to market itself better. Our hero is a fella by the name of Mac Macintosh. I suspect that is not his real first name. […]
Just a passing Sunday thought
Don’t worry, I’m not going to crowbar this round to something about platforms. Kurt Vonnegut, maybe my favourite author, once wrote: “Which brings us to the arts, whose purpose, in common with astrology, is to use frauds in order to make human beings seem more wonderful than they really are. Dancers show us human beings […]
Direct action
If you’ve been watching TV recently, you’ll have spotted that service is everywhere. In our new and shiny Big Society we do love a campaign, so while Hugh, Jamie et al are saving the fish, Mary Portas and Michel Roux Jr are on a mission to improve customer service in the UK. Most of this […]
Shopping baskets, platform charges and Rolos
Back in the day, when I was learning how to sell endowments and transparency was the stuff of a madman’s dreams, I was coached to describe the charging structure as a ‘shopping basket’ of charges. This masterstroke of metaphor was intended to neatly sweep away the complexity of initial units, allocation rates, policy fees, AMCs, […]
The Telegraph, mineral water and wrap OR why added value doesn’t work
While pausing in one of this nation’s fine railway stations last week, I found myself fancying a bottle of water. No problem. There was a newsagent, I had legal tender in my pocket and we were all set for a nice bit of free enterprise. Being a legendarily tight Scotsman, I rumbled that whereas a […]
Dogbert’s secret wrap consultancy
Couldn’t resist this…I know it’s not about wrap but boy have I been in some strategy sessions where it felt very, very like this…
