Always think before hitting Send

….but the send button on your email programme. Pitching for a film project with a local public sector client, I was quite surprised when the following email dropped into my Inbox: “Paul, have you gone with this man? – I just tried to have a look at what he recommended on his site – they are OK but I am not blown away and his videos are not as good as the work of xxxxx. With regards to the music – please bear in mind that my son is currently doing his Btec in sound engineering and has written some fantastic music. He might be persuaded to help – either for a very small fee or nothing”. I don’t mind people not liking my work, it is the nepotism that I object to. There are plenty of local professional musicians, living on shoe string budgets, for whom a composing or performing rights fee is a vital part of their income.

Big tobacco – taking you for a fool! from Kick Butt on Vimeo.

Launch of the three films for the Kick-Butt project at the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith. Sitting at the back of the cinema, crowded with students and school children, watching our production and editing work appear on the 70 foot screen was nerve-wracking. But the big Christie projector, all 20,000 lumens of it, took our DVD and illuminated every single pixel. At times you could have heard a pin drop. Alex and I sat there grinning like Cheshire cats. The response was great – some very generous applause and a happy client. Digital video has taken huge strides forward and technology can now transform it into a theatrical experience. A big thank you to the team at The Riverside.

Picture credit: UK Life Sciences

My dentist is well into his 70s.  He loves his work so much he just keeps going (his business partner retired years ago).  The other day I went for a routine check-up and he wasn’t in the surgery.  He arrived a few minutes later, slightly breathless.  ‘So sorry to keep you waiting, but I was running a tango dance workshop’.   He counted off my molars one by one.  ‘Ah yes, there is something I can do for you – a little decay on one of your pre-molars.  I could book you in for Wednesday, but it will depend on the level of cross-wind’. For a moment I thought I’d stepped across the threshold into a parallel universe of arcane dental rules – never offer a patient a filling if there is the risk of a cross-wind.  ”You see, I’m doing advanced training on my private pilot’s licence and don’t really enjoy taking off on the main runway at Bristol if there is the risk of a strong cross-wind.  I hire the plane and I think they would be a little upset if I pranged it’.  Did he ever take holidays?  ‘Yes, every year I go out to India for three weeks and offer my services for free to villagers who have never had any dental treatment before’. A man who has found his true calling in life.

Not Sergey or Larry, but someone from Google Local.  ‘Not a bad website’ Mr Google  said.  ‘Hey, thanks, I’ll tell my website designers’. How would I like to get more leads and enquiries? They could place my business in the top three listings of their Local Pages listings for video production for just £90 per month. Mmm,  sounded tempting. Then I realised that the clients I build productive relationships with are ones that I meet at seminars or ring up and make appointments to go and see.  It takes an effort to maintain relationships in business, but a phone-call (don’t forget to smile) or an email can work wonders.  I’d rather be proactive and use my marketing resources to maintain and build fruitful relationships with my clients than set up a direct debit to that great cash machine in cyberspace.

Watchdog, BBC 1. A teenager has made a complaint to the programme about a mobile phone company’s use of the words ‘unlimited texts’ in their terms and conditions. It seems that the word ‘unlimited’ hits the buffers when 3,000 texts have been sent in one calendar month. The complainant had sent 3,500 and was now faced with a surcharge of £460. Or rather, his pale-faced father was. The mobile phone company weaselled away claiming ‘this exceeded their fair use’ policy, without defining what that policy was.  So, how many texts do you need to send in one month? At around ten to fifteen words per text that is a total of 35,000 – 50,000 words per month. A PhD thesis averages 80,000 words.  Hope he doesn’t get diagnosed with the RSI ‘Blackberry Thumb’.

Zettabytes are here. The world is generating so much digital matter that a new unit of measure had to be invented. A Zettabyte is a billion terrabytes, which in turn is a thousand…. OK, put it this way, you’d need 75 billion iPads to store 1.2 zettabytes. To help us navigate through cyberspace, Google are now introducing Instant Search, which produces results before you have finished typing and offers suggestions for what you wanted to look for. You need to registered with Google to use this facility. As it says on their site ‘Feelings of euphoria and weightlessness are normal. Do not be alarmed’. Unless, of course, your business is Search Engine Optimisation.

The telephone box at Westbury-sub-Mendip continues to connect people, but this time to books.  As the last strands of BT wiring were stripped out, the villagers brought the iconic phone-box for £1 and transformed it into a book exchange. You read a book and return it, or better still return it with another you have enjoyed. The shelves were full on the day I visited and I had the whole place to myself. There were some very fine novels, a few books on military campaigns, geography, animal husbandry, cooking, mechanical repairs and one on bee-keeping. The great thing was being able to browse knowing that the phone would never ring.

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Great Ideas

Waterstones, York, twenty minutes before closing time. I’d gone in to find a copy of George Orwell’s political essays. The woman at the counter referred to her computer and said ‘I think you’ll find there’s a copy in the Drama department on the second floor’. I searched the shelves to no avail and asked another member of staff if she knew where I could find a copy. ‘I think it’s in the creative writing section. Wait here and I’ll go down to the basement’. On the way down she asked another member of staff who went over and consulted his computer. Soon three members of staff were searching three floors to find me one £4.99 book. Minutes later it was triumphantly plucked out of a shelf in the political biography section and handed to me with a smile.  Isn’t it great when customer service exceeds your wildest expectations? On my way out I passed a glittering mound of Tony Blair’s ‘A Journey’ at half price.  If I was working for Waterstones’ promotions department, I’d have plonked down a large pile of ‘Why I write’ next to the Blair’s biography……

'Whatever happened to your cardigan, Arnold?'

I met a friend who loves reading and we exchanged notes.  ‘I buy all my books from Amazon these days.  I flick through them all and if there are any I don’t like I just return them and get my card refunded. Easy peasy’. ‘Don’t you ever think about using libraries?’ I replied.  ‘God no, they’re just full of wheezing old men in dufflecoats and the great unwashed checking their emails’ I felt it was a pretty unfair description and shared my enthusiasm for borrowing books rather than always having to buy them. He stared at me vacantly as if  I’d just declared my support for Belisha Beacons, Trilby Hats and Listen with Mother. And then it dawned on me.  He wasn’t just using Amazon as an on-line shop, he was using it as a library.

I think libraries are great, but they must crank up their on-line appeal if they are going to attract the internet generation.  My own portal into their parallel universe of  literature and knowledge is through Libraries West.  It is not, it has to be said, the most attractive website. It seriously undersells its benefits and doesn’t highlight the fact that you can, for the paltry sum of 65p, borrow any book in the country via their Inter Library loan service.   You have free access to the on-line version of Encyclopaedia Britannia too and they will text you when your book is ready to collect.   I wanted to read ‘Walks and Talks of an American farmer in England’ published in 1852.  They tracked down a single copy from the Town Planning library at Sheffield University and it was mine to read for three glorious weeks. And all for the princely sum of 65p!

On the subject of good writing, here is the winning tweet from the Hay Festival as selected by Stephen Fry: “I believe we can build a better world! Of course, it’ll take a whole lot of rock, water & dirt. Also, not sure where to put it.” Brilliant.

Driving home in the sweltering heat of last week I found myself behind a white van.  White van man had his elbow leaning out of the driver’s window in a rather languid pose.  On the back of the van was a small  panel advert – ‘Air-conditioning service from £35′ and a mobile number. Not only had the air conditioning unit in my car packed up, but my garage normally charged £80 for the service. I rang the number and a few seconds later the elbow shot in ”Hello – hang on a minute, I can’t hear you. Let me just  pull over into this lay-by‘.  His van pulled over and I followed him ‘Where are you calling from?’ ‘I’m right behind you’ ‘Oh my god that is spooky – are you the blue car?’ ‘Yes’ I replied ‘And anyway why is it spooky? I simply called the number you advertised on the back of your van’. He roared with laughter – and I was able to book a service on the spot. And an excellent service it was to – the car feels like a fridge now.  If you want to attract an impulse purchase put your mobile phone number on the back of your van and not just your email address.