Eight quirky museums around the world

Park your normal views of what constitutes a good museum.  If you really want to understand human culture, then as well as the Tate and the Louvre and the Museo del Prado there’s also the Spam Museum in Minnesota or the Museum of Broken Relationships in Croatia.  Here are eight of the strangest..

DEUTSCHES CURRYWURST MUSEUM (BERLIN, GERMANY)

At one of the quirkiest museums in Berlin, the currywurst is elevated to an art form. The museum includes a replica of the kitchen where the dish – which is a bratwurst on a bun topped with a mix of ketchup and curry powder – was created, a comprehensive map of all the currywurst shops in the city, and of course a gift shop full of currywurst merchandise.

RAMONES MUSEUM (BERLIN, GERMANY)

Another Berlin museum, this one is dedicated to the Ramones. Created by a fan of the band, the museum traces their history and showcases memorabilia and photos from throughout their career. The museum also hosts live music shows.

LEILA’S HAIR MUSEUM (INDEPENDENCE, MISSOURI)

Not surprisingly proclaiming itself to be the only hair museum in the world, Leila’s Hair Museum in Independence, Missouri displays everything from jewellery made of hair to hair wreaths and photos “painted” with pulverized hair mixed with dyes. Locks of hair from famous people throughout history, including Michael Jackson and Marilyn Monroe, are also exhibited.

PHALLOLOGICAL MUSEUM (REYKJAVIK, ICELAND)

Ok, so you want to know what the penis of a whale looks like?  Now you can find out at the Phallological Museum in Iceland. Formerly housed in the small northern town of Husavik, the museum recently moved to Reykjavik, where it displays more than 200 penis specimens mounted on the walls and encased in glass jars.

And, you can sign up to make your own contribution to the collection after your death.

THE MUSEUM OF BROKEN RELATIONSHIPS (ZAGREB, CROATIA)

In Zagreb’s Museum of Broken Relationships, you can relive breakups that are at times both heart-breaking and hilarious. Here the most mundane of objects are each displayed alongside sad stories of love lost. Many of the stories are quite moving; take a hankie!

SPAM MUSEUM (AUSTIN, MINNESOTA)

My personal favourite.  And as lovers of Spam and Monty Python would say, Spam, Spam, Spam!   At the Austin, Minnesota, store and museum, you can watch a short video on the history of SPAM, learn about the role Spam played in World War II, practice on a mock assembly line, and fill up on samples of the more than dozen varieties currently in production. Bloody Vikings!

BRITISH LAWNMOWER MUSEUM

Many people say my Lawnmower is an antique and should be in a museum. Well here it is,  The British Lawnmower Museum, which is also a shop, displays some of the first lawnmowers ever made, some of the most expensive mowing machines, and some of the fastest lawnmowers used throughout the years. While a visit sounds about as exciting as watching grass grow, there are those that will find this wonderful.

MUSEUM OF TOILETS (INDIA)

India’s Museum of Toilets actually has a greater purpose – to raise awareness of the health issues caused by improper sanitation, but it does displays toilets ranging from some of the earlier loos to the “thrones” used by royalty.

If anyone has any other quirky museums, please me know!

See the original article here

Es ist einer Wunderbar Welt!

So what's going on this Christmas at Thomas Cook?  The Germans are coming..

On the one hand,  Mike Hoban, Thomas Cook UK & Ireland’s new marketing director, says their 'turn-of-the-year campaign will be launching on Christmas Day' and it will be their 'biggest push for some time including TV, radio, online and press advertising'..

But, on the other hand, I also see that Thomas Cook's post-Christmas ad plans have been ditched, without a replacement lined up...??

It seems the ongoing shake-up in senior management has hit their 'biggest marketing push' 

Thomas Cook was expected to roll out the next iteration of its brand campaign using the strapline 'It's a wonderful world, explore it with us', which broke in March.

However, it's understood that those plans were abandoned following the arrival of Mike Hoban in September as director of marketing, brands and customer insight.

Following the appointment of Peter Fankhauser as its UK chief executive last month, TC may now 're-purpose' a TV ad created for the German market to ensure that it does not miss out on crucial bookings in the weeks after Christmas.

A spokesman for Thomas Cook said: 'We're excited about our plans for the important peak booking period, [but] naturally the detail is commercially sensitive. We are considering all options open to us - as you would expect when a new marketing director joins - but Thomas Cook will be on air.'

By the way...arch-rival TUI is expected to launch multimillion-pound campaigns next month for its Thomson and First Choice brands. In September, Thomson rolled out a £5.5m campaign promoting its new Dreamliner aircraft...

India - Powerhouse Economy for Growth

This is one of the World Travel Market breakout sessions on powerhouse economies, in this case, India.

The session was run by the European Tour Operators Association (ETOA) and this panel  discusses outbound tourism, more specifically the huge potential for outbound tourism and the problems facing Europe in trying to attract some of that business.   

And, of course, it's that old nutshell again...visas.

New Exhibitors for WTM 2012

The World Travel Market is welcoming 157 new exhibitors at the event for WTM 2012 with some new interesting names (but sadly not Molvania just yet....)

Europe leads the way in new exhibitors with 41 exhibitors appearing for the first time as Main Stand Holders. They include tourism boards and offices as far apart as San Marino, Lille and Belarus as well as the Republic of Komi, in North Western Russia.

The Technology and Online Travel region has 36 technology companies taking their own stands from a wide range of disciplines including names such as Travel Republic and Online Travel Training. 

Software firms are represented by Hotelogix and Intuitive, while the rise of social media and mobile is reflected in the appearance of specialists in this area such as Revinate and Voiamo Group. Other suppliers exhibiting for the first time include Worldpay and technology services company Wizie.

The Global Village region sees 18 new exhibitors from all parts of the industry including the K+K hotels chain, wholesaler Adonis, Autorent Car Rental and Chic Outlet Shopping in Europe.

Asia has 13 first-time exhibitors (reflecting the growth in China’s travel industry) including China Southern Airlines and newer destinations such as Vietnam, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, represented by Victoria Vietnam Group, Saigontourist, Uzbektourism and the Kyrgyz Association of Tour Operators.

India has its own dedicated stand-alone region with 12 new exhibitors including Brys Hotels, Inbound Tour Operator Council (ITOC), West Bengal, hotel company ITC Limited and Odisha Tourism.

The UK has 12 new exhibitors including English Heritage (for the first time??) and the National Trust, plus London attractions The View From the Shard and Ripley’s Believe It Or Not.

A further ten new exhibitors will attend the show in the Africa region highlighting a continued development  in African tourism, as Africa emerges from last year’s Arab Spring. Notably these include the Libyan Export Promotion Center and Airkenya Express.

The BRICs or should that be the SKOCTs?

Over the past few years, the most talked-about trend in the global economy has been the so-called rise of the BRICs: Brazil, Russia, India, and China. The world was witnessing a paradigm shift  in which the major players in the developing world were catching up to or even surpassing  the developed world.  But is this really the case?

These were ‘straight-line’ projections that took the developing world's high growth rates from the middle of the last decade and extended them straight into the future, setting them against sluggish growth in the US and other advanced industrial countries. These projections showed, for example, that China was on the verge of overtaking the United States as the world's largest economy (even though the U.S. economy is still more than twice as large and with a per capita income seven times as high)

However, with the world economy heading for its worst year since 2009, Chinese growth is slowing sharply, from double digits down to seven percent (even less) and the rest of the BRICs are tumbling, too - Since 2008, Brazil's annual growth has dropped from 4.5 percent to two percent; Russia's, from seven percent to 3.5 percent; and India's, from nine percent to six percent.

None of this is really surprising, because it is hard to sustain rapid growth for more than a decade but the circumstances of the last decade made it look easy - coming out of the  crisis-ridden 1990s and supported by an abundant supply of credit, the emerging markets took off and by 2007, when only three countries in the world suffered negative growth, recessions had all but disappeared from the international scene.  But now, there is a lot less foreign money flowing into emerging markets and the global economy is returning to its normal state.

EMERGING MARKETS

The notion of a convergence between the developing and the developed world is a myth - of the roughly 180 countries in the world tracked by the International Monetary Fund, only 35 are developed. The markets of the rest are emerging-and most of them have been emerging for many decades and will continue to do so for many more. As of 2011, the difference in per capita incomes between the rich and the developing nations is the same as it was in the 1950s.

BRICs (or should that be BICS or VIPs)

Other than being the largest economies in their respective regions, the big four emerging markets have little in common. They generate growth in different and often competing ways-Brazil and Russia, for example, are major energy producers that benefit from high energy prices, whereas India, as a major energy consumer, suffers from them. Except in highly unusual circumstances (such as those of the last decade) they are unlikely to grow in unison. They have limited trade ties with one another, and they have few political or foreign policy interests in common.

Russia remains a member of the BRICs only because the term sounds better with an R. In recent years, Russia's economy and stock market have been among the weakest of the emerging markets, dominated by an oil-rich class of billionaires whose assets equal 20 percent of GDP

In fact, the longest period over which one can find clear patterns in the global economic cycle is around a decade. The typical business cycle lasts about five years, from the bottom of one downturn to the bottom of the next, and most practical investors limit their perspectives to one or two business cycles. Beyond that, forecasts are often rendered obsolete by the unanticipated appearance of new competitors, new political environments, or new technologies.

THE NEW ECONOMIC ORDER

In the next ten years, the United States, Europe, and Japan are likely to grow slowly as will China as the economy matures. As growth slows in China and in the advanced industrial world, these countries will buy less from their export-driven counterparts, such as Brazil, Malaysia, Mexico, Russia, and Taiwan.

The economic role models of recent times will give way to new models as growth occurs elsewhere. In the past, Asian states tended to look to Japan as a model, nations from the Balkans looked to the European Union, and nearly all countries to some extent looked to the United States. But the crisis of 2008 has undermined the credibility of all these role models. Tokyo's recent mistakes have made South Korea, which is still rising as a manufacturing powerhouse, a much more appealing Asian model than Japan. Countries that once were eager to enter the eurozone, such as the Czech Republic, Poland, and Turkey, now wonder if they want to join a club with so many members on the verge of bankruptcy. And the US call for poor countries to restrain their spending and liberalize their economies is difficult to accept when  Washington can't agree to cut its own huge deficit.

Among countries with per capita incomes in the $20,000 to $25,000 range, only two have a good chance of matching or exceeding 3% growth over the next decade: the Czech Republic and South Korea. Among the large group with average incomes in the $10,000 to $15,000 range, only one country -- Turkey -- has a good shot at matching or exceeding four to five percent growth and  in the $5,000 to $10,000 income class, Thailand seems to be the only country with a real shot at outperforming significantly.

To the extent that there will be a new crop of emerging-market stars in the coming years, therefore, it is likely to feature countries whose per capita incomes are under $5,000, such as Indonesia, Nigeria, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and various contenders in East Africa.

Although the world can expect more breakout nations to emerge from the bottom income tier, at the top and the middle, the new global economic order will probably look pretty much like the old one . 

Rowanberry

The new Rowanberry Products website is now live.

Rowanberry Products was created by Susie Rowan and Nicky Newberry and is a small company, based in Surbiton, Surrey, that makes soap and bath products for promotional, corporate and personal use. 

I first got involved with Rowanberry a year or so ago, when they were just getting their products together to help them identify a strategic direction for their business.  In a highly competitive market, they are now focussing on four key areas with some success:

Weddings
Corporate
Parties
Museums and Galleries (or specialist retail as I would call it)

Whilst the wedding and party business seems a natural outlet for them, the most interesting area, I believe, is the specialist retail and already they have distribution arrangements with a number of local galleries, museums and country houses supplying Orleans House Gallery, Twickenham; Kingston Museum, Kingston Upon Thames; Strawberry Hill House, Twickenham; KingstonFirst, Tourist Information Office, Kingston Upon Thames; Painshill Park, Cobham; Sir John Soane's Museum, London and Burgh House & Hampstead Museum, Hampstead.

Their website was designed to showcase their work in each area and there is still a lot of work to be done here but early signs are looking good.

They also have a blog where customers can post comments and make enquiries.

Have a look and give them your support

The Saviour of the British Pub - A Frenchman?

Ever heard of Jacques Borel?  No, neither have I, but this 85 year old Frenchman is on a mission – to breathe life back into British pubs by slashing the rate of VAT levied on food and drink.

He has a good track record so far - In Belgium, the Czech Republic, France and Germany, VAT on restaurant food has been cut to around 5%. Before the French parliament slashed VAT, Borel had four meetings with Nicolas Sarkozy.

Borel claims that his campaign has already created 650,000 new jobs and it is his ambition to have launched one and a half million new jobs in bars and restaurants throughout Britain and Europe before he finally calls it a day and retires

 “Before you meet a minister, you must convince junior ministers and their aides that you have a convincing argument,” he says. “If they agree to set up a meeting, they prepare a two-page briefing for the minister, with the key points highlighted, so he will have a summary of the case before he meets you.”

In Britain he is backed by 32 supporters from the food and drink industries (and me) including the Independent Family Brewers of Britain (IFBB), the British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA), and the Association of Licensed Multiple Retailers (ALMR).  The aim is to create 140,000 new jobs in Britain as a result of cutting VAT from 20% to 5%.

The facts are as follows - In Britain there is a 42% rate of tax on beer and Ireland and the UK are the only EU countries where supermarket food is zero rated for VAT. As a result, the supermarkets can subsidise alcohol by selling it at a loss while people who eat in pubs have to pay 20% VAT. 

“Cheap supermarket booze,” adds Jacques “is the cause of binge drinking. The medical profession says that 95% of people they treat for liver disease bought their alcohol from supermarkets. The best way to tackle binge drinking is to get people back into pubs.”

The brewing industry accounts for 1,300,000 jobs if you include pub and brewery workers, farmers that grow the raw materials needed to make beer, and transport companies that deliver the raw materials and the finished beer. Cutting VAT would not only create new jobs in pubs but there would be a knock-on effect in the supply chain. For every 100 new jobs in the pub trade, a further 70 would be added in brewing, farming and transport.

Jacques Borel has had success in in mainland Europe, where the Belgian, Czech, French and German governments have responded to his campaign by slashing VAT from 19% to 5 or 7%. In Finland, where VAT is an astonishing 23%, the rate has been cut to 13% for the restaurant industry. In France alone 21,700 jobs have been created since tax was reduced. 

Now the European Commission has adopted a unanimous decision by the 27 Ministers of Finance to allow each member state to apply a reduced rate of VAT to the restaurant industry instead of the standard rate.

Jacques Borel stresses the impact of a tax cut on trade by pointing to the effect on one French restaurant group. Flo runs steak houses and brasseries and is listed on the Paris Stock Exchange. The reduction in VAT in France enabled the chain to cut prices by 5.2%. As a result, the number of customers rose by 8.5% in just three weeks and the company’s share price rose from two euros before the cut to 4.16 today.

He fully expects a similar increase in trade for British pubs. The money created by a tax cut and increased trade would be used, Borel says, to not only cut prices but also create employment, raise wages, improve training, refurbish pubs and increase profits.

Of course it would! Listen to Jacques and read  Keynesian Pub Economics

Michael O'Leary's Best Quotes

For those who missed this - here is a selection of the most memorable quotes from Ryanair's Michael O'Leary as reprinted in the Telegraph - what a PR dream (or nightmare) he is. 

These are just my favourites...enjoy

On passengers who forget to print their boarding pass: “We think [they] should pay 60 euros for being so stupid.”

On refunds: "You're not getting a refund so **** off. We don't want to hear your sob stories. What part of 'no refund' don't you understand?"

On customer service: "People say the customer is always right, but you know what - they're not. Sometimes they are wrong and they need to be told so."

On overweight passengers: "Nobody wants to sit beside a really fat ****** on board. We have been frankly astonished at the number of customers who don't only want to tax fat people but torture them."

In beginning a press conference to announce the annual results: “I’m here with Howard Miller and Michael Cawley, our two deputy chief executives. But they’re presently making love in the gentleman’s toilets, such is their excitement at today’s results.”

On apologies: "Are we going to say sorry for our lack of customer service? Absolutely not."

On Ryanair's image: "One of the weaknesses of the company now is it is a bit cheap and cheerful and overly nasty, and that reflects my personality."

On environmentalists: “We want to annoy the ******* whenever we can. The best thing you can do with environmentalists is shoot them. These headbangers want to make air travel the preserve of the rich. They are luddites marching us back to the 18th century. If preserving the environment means stopping poor people flying so the rich can fly, then screw it.”

On turbulence: "If drink sales are falling off we get the pilots to engineer a bit of turbulence. That usually spikes up the drink sales."

On travel agents: "Screw the travel agents. Take the ******* out and shoot them. They are a waste of bloody time. What have they done for passengers over the years?"

On ordering aircraft from Boeing: “The message to Boeing today is: ‘You keep building them, we’ll keep buying them’, and together both of us will kick the crap out of Airbus in Europe. We love Boeing. **** the French.”

On transatlantic flights: "Ryanair will never fly the Atlantic route because one cannot get there in a Boeing 737, unless one has a very strong tail wind or passengers who can swim the last hour of the flight."

On the airline industry: "There's a lot of big egos in this industry. Most chief executives got into this business because they want to travel for a living. Not me, I want to work."

On European expansion: "Germans will crawl *******-naked over broken glass to get low fares."

On charging passengers to use the loo: "One thing we have looked at is maybe putting a coin slot on the toilet door so that people might actually have to spend a pound to spend a penny in the future. If someone wanted to pay £5 to go to the toilet I would carry them myself. I would wipe their bums for a fiver."

On upright seating: "I'd love to operate aircraft where we take out the back ten rows and put in hand rails. We'd say if you want to stand, it's five euros. People say 'Oh but the people standing may get killed if there's a crash'. Well, with respect, the people sitting down might get killed as well"

On the in-flight experience: "Anyone who thinks Ryanair flights are some sort of bastion of sanctity where you can contemplate your navel is wrong. We already bombard you with as many in-flight announcements and trolleys as we can. Anyone who looks like sleeping, we wake them up to sell them things."

On low fares: "I don't see why in 10 years' time you wouldn't fly people for free. Why don't airports pay us for delivering the passengers to their shops?"

If you can't find a low fare on Ryanair: "You're a moron."

On publicity: "I don't mind dressing up in something stupid or pulling gormless faces if it helps. Frankly, I don't give a rat's arse about my personal dignity."

On Ryanair passengers: "Do we carry rich people on our flights? Yes, I flew on one this morning and I'm very rich."

On BAA: "BAA want to spend £4 billion on an airport which should cost £100 million. £3.9 billion is for tree planting, new roadways and Norman Foster's Noddy railway so they can mortgage away the future of low-cost airlines. This plan is for the birds. BAA are a glorified shopping mall."

On breaking up BAA: "A break-up of BAA would be the greatest thing that has happened to British aviation since the founding of Ryanair. Then airline customers would not be forced to endure the black hole of Calcutta that is Heathrow or the unnecessary, overpriced palace being planned at Stansted."

On new routes: "Sometimes there is not even a road to the airports we fly to. It is immaterial."

On expansion: "We would like to base more aircraft here in Belfast and are working with the City Airport to get the runway extended. Let's get the planning permission through and let's ignore the mewling and puking from local residents which is a load of nonsense. If you don't like living beside an airport, sell the house and move."

On flying to Cornwall: "Newquay is the surf and dope capital of Britain. There's next to frig-all way of getting to Cornwall unless you fly. It's a ******* impossible nine-day hike. Closing that airport would be a disaster for surfer dudes, but also to loads of wealthy types who use us to commute up and down. I tell you, we'll have a bloody dogfight with the RAF. Watch out for those 737s on your wing, flyboys!"

On pilot's wages: "People ask how we can have such low fares. I tell them our pilots work for nothing."

On his popularity: "I don't give a ***** if no-one likes me. I am not a cloud bunny, I am not an aerosexual. I don't like aeroplanes. I never wanted to be a pilot like those other platoons of goons who populate the airline industry."

On paternity leave: "We have paternity leave but it's a bloody joke. It is bull**** legislation. You need a couple of days off because you've had a baby, but this nonsensical rubbish that you're entitled to days off for the first six years of a baby's life. Go and get a bloody job - get a life."

On Ireland: "The airline industry is full of bull*******, liars and drunks and we excel at all three in Ireland."

On retirement: "It would be very difficult for me to don a tie and go on to committees. Could you imagine me getting a knighthood? Puke. The weakness of British Airways is that everyone is looking for a knighthood. I plan to go on and on, like Chairman Mao."

On free speech: "I upset a lot of people because I tell them what I think. I'm disrespectful towards what is perceived to be authority. Like, I think the Prime Minister of Ireland is a gob*****."

On politics: "I think the most influential person in Europe in the last 20 to 30 years has been Margaret Thatcher, who has left a lasting legacy that has driven us towards lower taxes and greater efficiency. Without her we'd all be living in some French bloody unemployed republic."

On the European Commission: "They are ******* Kim Il-Jungs (sic) in the Commission. You cannot have civil servants trying to design rules that make everything a level playing field. That's called North ******* Korea, and everybody is starving there. The EU are pursuing some form of communist ******* Valhalla."

On EU Commissioner Neelie Kroes's approval of an Alitalia/Air One merger: "She''ll be rolling over like a poodle having her tummy tickled and rubber-stamping the thing."

On how to keep employees motivated and happy: "Fear."

On British Airways: "BA have got waterfalls in their head office. The first thing I'd do if I were in charge of BA is turn off the waterfalls. The only time we have waterfalls in the Ryanair office is when the toilet leaks."

On the British Airways/Iberia merger: "It reminds me of two drunks leaning on each other."

On Ryanair's pilots: "If this is such a Siberian salt mine and I am such an ogre, then why are they still working for the airline? If any of our fellas aren't happy with the current arrangement then they're free to go elsewhere. Godspeed to them."

On Aer Lingus's pilots: "Overpaid, underworked peacocks"

On employees: "MBA students come out with: "My staff is my most important asset." Bull****. Staff is usually your biggest cost. We all employ some lazy ******* who needs a kick up the backside, but no one can bring themselves to admit it."

On cost-cutting: "We use our own biros and I tell the staff not to buy them, just pick them up from hotels, legal offices, wherever. That's what I do. Recently I did an interview and I was sitting there with a hotel pen I'd nicked from somewhere. I was asked why and I said: 'We at Ryanair have a policy of stealing hotel pens. We won't pay for Bic biros as part of our obsession with low costs."

On Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, founder of easyJet: "Those of us who sell the lowest fares just get on with it, and those who do not, write whingeing letters to newspapers."

On intelligence: "easyJet are not the brightest sandwiches in the picnic basket."

On Southwest Airlines: "We went to look at Southwest Airlines in the US. It was like the road to Damascus. This was the way to make Ryanair work. I met with Herb Kelleher. I passed out about midnight, and when I woke up again at about 3am Kelleher was still there, the *******, pouring himself another bourbon. I thought I'd pick his brains and come away with the Holy Grail. The next day I couldn't remember a thing."

On Alitalia: "I would not want it if it were given to me as a present."

To the boss of regional airline Aer Arann: "**** off back to Connemara where you come from!"

On offering advice to other airlines' bosses: "They can **** off and do their own work"

On air marshals: “Air marshals are a complete waste of time. I can’t think of anything that would reduce security more than having a guy on board with a gun.”

On a bomb scare in Scotland: “The police force were outstanding in their field. But all they did was stand in their field. They kept passengers on board while they played with a suspect package for two and three quarter hours. Extraordinary.”

On closing Ryanair's check-in desks: "This isn't the end of civilization as we know it."

For the full story and lots of silly pictures of Michael O'Leary see the Telegraph post

And the Gold medal goes to..Nike

Ambush marketing. The one thing the official sponsors were trying to avoid, with all the talk of 'brand police' at the turnstiles.  And yet, the Gold Medal of Ambush Marketing goes to Nike for their bright yellow-green running shoes.  They were one of the most prominent non-sponsors of the Olympics - and yet Nike managed to hi-jack the greatest show on earth with their amazing neon 'Volt' shoes.

Over 400 athletes wore Nike Volts in competition at the London Olympics and of those 400, 68 athletes won Olympic medals, including 25 gold medals

The man behind the Volt Shoe is Martin Lotti, Nike's global creative director for the Olympics . An industrial designer by education, he has been at Nike for 15 years. Painting Nike's Flyknit shoe Volt in that vivid way , was, he says, his way of creating a kind of "Team Nike."

Previously, the brand had matched the colour of the shoe to the color of the individual athlete's uniforms. Although the problem with that is that it blended in. This year, hundreds of athletes from different countries wore the same vivid colour

Nike used their own marketing assets (their shoes) - that belonged to them alone, and this gave this gave them a unique opportunity to take advantage of the Olympic rules.

Focus groups of amateur, college and professional athletes had been shown the shoe in different colours and, across the board, everybody loved the Volt, Lotti revealed .

There's a scientific reason for that. "It's the most-visible colour to the human eye." said Lotti.

Read the full background story here 

And for more on the running shoe itself...here

Olympic Winners and Losers

Sport has always played a large part in my life; whether it’s playing football in the park or watching Usain Bolt in the 100m final – the power of sport to engage and inspire is undeniable. (My personal favourite was the Brownlie Bros in the men’s triathalon..)

Following London 2012 there is now  a great debate on who won the marketing Olympics - which brands stood and out and which ones didn’t even make it off the starting blocks. But there is one thing that unites all brands involved - that they recognize the importance and power of sport and the passion it inspires in consumers.

So thanks to the BBC for raising the benchmark of sporting broadcasting. From their Olympic Trailer to their multi-channel coverage, the BBC where simply superb and their montages alone worthy of gold medals in editing and compilation.  And thanks also to the Royal Mail for reminding me to send a proper letter next time rather than an email.

It’s a shame then that it is unlikely Britain’s recession-hit economy will receive any boost from the Games that have been a triumph for the nation’s athletes. While Britain’s construction sector benefited hugely before the Olympics, experts have said the 17-day sporting spectacle had not delivered significant financial rewards and neither was it expected to in the months and years ahead.  Visitor numbers to London were estimated to be down 30%

In the run-up to the Olympics, commuters and tourists were warned to stay away amid fears that London’s transport system could not cope with millions of extra people descending on the capital. 

The London Olympic Games had long been heralded as a key boost to the British economy but in fact tourist numbers fell dramatically in the first few days of the Games. Hotels cut their prices and many shopping areas, restaurants, theatres, attractions and entertainment venues saw a significant reduction in business. Businesses complained of being sidelined as tourists headed only for the Games and avoided the capital’s other attractions and shopping destinations, while non-sports fans opted to stay at home or delay their trips.

Of course, we knew all of this already so why are officials now so surprised? 

http://www.fesmarketing.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/london-2012-therell-be-trouble-ahead.html

Hopefully, the organisers of next Olympics in Rio will from the lessons in London….but why would they when London did not learn from the lessons of previous  Olympic cities and countries that went before them!

A Level Economics Pass or Fail?

As thousands of teenagers receive their A level grades, I am sure many of them would be able to do a better job of sorting out the economy than our present chancellor, who’s qualifications for the job include a degree not in Economics or Maths - but History..

We hear now that half of the economists who strongly supported the George Osbourne’s deficit-reduction-austerity plans are now asking for a rethink and urging the Treasury to take advantage of low borrowing costs to boost spending on infrastructure projects. 

Unlike George Osborne (and David Cameron) economists can see that the evidence now points to the need for a change of course. They know that without growth we can't get the deficit down – George Osborne is already forecast to borrow £150bn more than planned.

Output is now lower than it was when the coalition was formed two years ago while the Bank of England believes it will take until 2014 for gross domestic product to return to the peak reached in early 2008. The economy is expected to contract by 0.2% this year.

Roger Bootle, managing director of Capital Economics, said: "If I were chancellor at this point, I would alter the plan, I would stop the cuts to public investment and I might even seek to increase it. Supply-side reform might be welcome but what we're talking about here is a shortage of demand. The key thing is to try and get the private sector to spend its money and that may require a bit of government spending to prime the pump."

What he is referring to in simple terms is ‘the multiplier effect’

The Multiplier Effect

Every time there is an injection of new demand into the economy there is likely to be a multiplier effect. This is because an injection of extra income leads to more spending, which creates more income, and so on. The multiplier effect refers to the increase in final income arising from any new injection of spending.

The size of the multiplier depends upon household’s marginal decisions to spend, called the marginal propensity to consume (MPC), or to save, called the marginal propensity to save (MPS).  This in turn is largely dependent upon economic confidence.

When income is spent, this spending becomes someone else’s income, and so on. Marginal propensities show the proportion of extra income allocated to particular activities, such as investment spending by UK firms, saving by households, and spending on imports from abroad. For example, if 80% of all new income in a given period of time is spent on UK products, the marginal propensity to consume would be 80/100, which is 0.8.

The following formula to calculate the multiplier uses marginal propensities, as follows:

1/(1-mpc)

So, if consumers spend 0.8 and save 0.2 of every £1 of extra income, the multiplier will be  

1/(1-0.8)

= 1/0.2

= 5

This means the multiplier is 5, which means that every £1 of new income generates £5 of extra income.

The multiplier concept can be used any situation where there is a new injection into an economy for example when the government funds building of a new motorway or invests in a home building programme, as has been suggested.

Of course, there is also the downward or ‘reverse’ multiplier..

A withdrawal of income from the circular flow (austerity cuts, reductions in public spending etc etc) will lead to a downward multiplier effect which will further lead to a reduction of spending and economic activity...

Or in other words, just what George has been doing for the last year.

The Drum fauxlympics

Drum Magazine has been running a twitter and facebook campaign and competition called the #thedrumfauxlympics and the entries are some of the best spoof ads I've seen for a long time.

Have a look at all the entries here and cast your own vote on their facebook page.

Anti-Clockwise - better for right-legged athletes?

A great weekend of Olympic Sport and well done to ‘TeamGB’ on their medal tally so far, although I understand from an Australian friend of mine that actually ‘Silver is the new Gold’!  

Watching Mo Farah on Saturday night, I wondered why do they always run round the track in an anti-clockwise direction?  And, thanks to the BBC, here’s the answer:

According to a certain Paul Cartledge, professor of Greek History at the University of Cambridge, at Olympia and elsewhere in Greece both the running track and the hippodrome were straight, using up-and-back "laps" and even in the early modern Olympics - Athens (1896 and 1906), Paris (1900), St Louis (1904) - athletes ran clockwise.

At the time of the 1896 Games, most track races in England were also run clockwise and at Oxford and Cambridge University, both important athletic institutions, races also ran clockwise  (Oxford until the late 1940s and Cambridge until the 1950s)

But a number of countries began to settle instead on the American custom of running counter-clockwise... 

One theory is that early races were run on horse tracks, which ran in that direction. 

Anti-clockwise became the norm by the early 1900s and the Olympic organisers came under pressure to conform. The change was compete world-wide between between 1950 and 1954 and Roger  Bannister's four-minute mile was run in the anti-clockwise direction.

So we have the Americans to thank it seems – but does running anti-clockwise make a difference to left or right-legged athletes?

Answers on a postcard please.

UK - Closed for Business?

With the Olympics in London, there has been much debate in Travel and Tourism circles about the tourism benefits of  hosting the Olympic games this year.  London can rightly be proudly of the fact that the Olympics will attract more visitors than any other previous Olympic host city. That's 60,000 international visitors coming purely to see the Olympic games (and twice as many that visited Athens for example)


Critics however argue that this increase in visitors to the Olympics is massively offset by the huge fall in international leisure visitors - or in other words, the huge number of visitors who will actively seek to travel elsewhere in order to avoid visiting London when the Olympics are on!


(For more on this see BlogPost - The Ups and Downs of London Tourism )


However, there is also one other major reason why tourists are choosing to travel elsewhere other than the UK - and it has nothing to do with the Olympics.  It's the difficult and obstructive process of obtaining a visa!  A process so difficult and absurd in its application that many people simply give up!


The European Tour Operators Association (ETOA) have been campaigning and lobbying for a revision of the visa application process for many years seeing a simplification of the visa application process as conducive to boosting to incoming tourist business, and (multiplier) spend.


Last week there was a Radio 4 'Face the Facts' programme dedicated to this very subject  - have a listen to the arguments.  Some will say relaxing visa controls will lead to increases in illegal immigration and terrorism -  other, more rational people will argue that a sensible visa application system will boost visitors to the UK and  generate millions of extra consumption into the UK economy.


(Tom Jenkins of the ETOA and visa-reform-evangelist features in the programme)

The Crate Escape

Carlsberg’s latest Ad is a take on the film ‘The Great Escape’, and takes place in a health spa where the men are unwilling participants in a luxury spa weekend. After being tortured by the all-female staff the men join together to hatch a plan to break out of the spa and smuggle in a crate of Carlsberg.  

I particularly like the way they dispose of the mud in the bath..

The Ad was created by Creative Agency Fold 7 who add, “For a global ad, you need an internationally recognised scenario that translates across all markets”

Sven Langeneckert, VP of Carlsberg gives us the marketing angle, “With ‘The Crate Escape’ we demonstrate our continuing commitment to the line ‘That calls for a Carlsberg’ and positioning of the brand as a reward”

Created as a 90, 60 and 30 second ad, ‘The Crate Escape’ will be shown in Ireland, Sweden and Belgium from July 8 and other regions in August before rolling out to global markets.

BBC 2012 Olympic Trail

For those that missed the amazing title sequence and marketing trail for the BBC 2012 Olympics - here it is!

The animation will be used for each Olympic event, as well as being used for marketing purposes. At just over a minute long, the sequence sees athletes running through terraced streets; cyclists tackling the Scottish highlands and gymnasts somersaulting along the London bridge.

The animation was created by design agency RKCR/Y&R, who describe themselves as 'the UK's most creative agency'. 

The production was handled by Passion Pictures and Red Bee Media, with Passion Pictures also taking care of the animation. Director Pete Candeland has also worked with the likes of Coca Cola and the Gorillaz. 

A full two-minute, forty second version will be aired on BBC One on July 3rd. Sixty, Forty, Thirty and Five second versions of the titles will be used throughout the games coverage.

I would love to know how much it cost!   Any ideas?

New Breathalyzer laws in France

Going to France on holiday?  Taking the car?  Don't forget your breathalyzer?

As of yesterday (01 July), motorists and motorcyclists will face an on-the-spot fine unless they travel with two single-use breathalyser kits in their cars  (along with your compulsory warning triangle, high visibility vest and first aid kit!) as part of a government drive to reduce the number of drink-driving-related deaths 

The new law, which exclude mopeds, will also include foreign drivers from 1 November after a four-month period of grace. Anyone failing to produce a breathalyser after that date will receive an €11 fine.

French police have warned they will be carrying out random checks on drivers crossing into France via ferries and through the Channel tunnel.

The French government hopes the laws will encourage drivers who suspect they may be over the limit to test themselves, and will save around 500 lives a year.

The French government is hoping that the requirement will encourage French motorists to test themselves before driving if they have consumed any alcohol - and that using the kit will become as normal as reaching for a condom before sex, they claim.

Alcohol is responsible for almost a third of fatal car accidents on French roads, compared with one in five British and just one in ten German accidents. 

The French drink-driving limit is 50mg of alcohol in 100ml of blood – less than the UK limit of 80mg. 

Only kits bearing the letters 'NF' for 'French Norm' will be recognised by the police - so pack a couple of these into your car