IT'S GOOD TO TALK

The late David Abbott created this wonderful advertising campaign for BT starring Bob Hoskins with his gritty, man of the people voice. At the time I thought it was perfect, capturing as it did the raison d’etre of this big cuddly company.

This month I’ve changed my mind.

Over the several hours that I’ve talked to BT employees over the past month I’ve concluded this lumbering beast needs dismembering and fast. Everyone I’ve talked to from Jordan, Louise, Kate, Mia, Dali to Helen and many others have been articulate, intelligent and well mannered. But the cock-up over which they’ve calmly presided is baffling.

On the 18th of March they accepted my reporting of an imminent change of address and my order for fibre optic broadband with all the bells and whistles at the new address.

A week later having received no confirmation of the order I called and was unable to reach anyone apart from the BT sales team trying to sell me BT Mobile. It was like enquiring  what the next train for London was and being asked if I wanted to buy a banana. Eventually I got someone who said they could help and they told me the first order had not been processed for technical reasons and a new one would be raised.
Hurray. It was and I was e-mailed confirmation and told an engineer would call to sort everything at the new address on April 2nd and that the kit would be sent.

The kit arrived. BT were really bringing it all together. So ‘twas on a Wednesday morning when the BT man came to call….only he didn’t.

And when I complained was told the earliest anyone could call was April 16th.

And then called again to say that was now April 20th. Because the sun was shining, Brighton is laid back and England had just won a cricket match I didn’t shout and was calm and reasonable and the Indian said wistfully “thank you Sir for being so nice in these circumstances”.

And then I got an invoice for the old address for my office which is where the broadband is based which didn’t mention termination so I rang and they denied all knowledge and said the line would remain live till April 20th this being the earliest they could react.

So I have broadband working where I used to live and nothing where I do live.

And about four hours of my life have been spent talking to people who are doing their best but do not grasp that the customer’s always right and needs to be satisfied.

But it’s all clearly my fault and I should be so lucky as to have BT supplying me.

BT is a beast.

I’m going to have to fire them but they’ve been family all my life so it’ll be a real wrench.
I’m going to check out alternatives and move on from bureaucracy….or not.

As Bob Hoskins might have said “it’s good to walk”.

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

Andreas Moelzer, until recently leader of the right wing Austrian Freedom party, said the EU was in danger of becoming a “conglomerate of negroes”. His party did pretty well in the MEP elections as did the French equivalent of the NLP, Marie Le Pen’s Front National Party. In a world that we’d hoped was becoming a little more liberal in attitude and caring, all this is a little sad. But the very PCness of the EU had much of this coming to them. Nigel Farage isn’t my idea of a thinking politician but José Manuel Barosso doesn’t inspire me either. The EU is a mess but electing a squad of lunatics to clear it up is insane.

In case you missed it I enclose an insight from the Huffington Post.

And the point it makes is the values attached to Ukip are brutishly out of date. They belong to a world of smoking, halitosis, turn ups and Butlins; a world of unblinking certainty and a lingering sense that slavery was not all bad. They are egged on by nonsense like this though, the recent decision for the BBC to edit out the word “girl” from a programme called the “Queen’s Baton Relay”. In it a TV presenter thrown to the floor by a teenage judo star says “I’m not sure I can live that down - being beaten by a 19-year-old girl” in case “using the word “girl” caused offence”.

That’s not liberal that’s lunatic.

Beauty was lost somewhere else last week. Anyone who worked in adverising will know that David Abbott, the co-founder of Britain’s largest advertising agency, Abbott Mead Vickers died a week ago.

His work as a writer on campaigns like Volvo, Sainsbury’s and the Economist were examples of clear thinking and intelligence. When David wrote, advertising really mattered as opposed to being sensationalist for its own attention seeking ends. It was that attitude that made him dislike the vulgarity of FCUK so much.

David ‘s writing had a calm and contented but never a complacent tone. He represented the best of the writer’s craft. Here are just three examples of his work which lift advertising to the plane of a serious business and one I was prould to have once been part of not least as a one-time colleague of David’s.

The Economist idea, which was David’s, ran and ran. It had witty headlines and was incredibly noticeable.

After David’s advertising finished, Sainsbury’s never seemed the same. He positioned the brand where consumers want to be, not quite where they are right now.  But my favourite piece of writing was in this ad for Chivas Regal. You’ll need a glass after reading this. It can serve as David’s epitaph too.

(if you can't easily read this, here's a bigger version)

I don’t think he and Nigel would be best friends somehow. And he’d be disappointed by, and even angry at, how bad and clumsy all political writing has recently become.

Finally then, to intelligent thinking, beautiful writing and to David Abbott.