Posts Tagged ‘promotion’
The Public Sector Pay Scandal
There are very few things in politics that are simple. This is an exception. The principle, implied by Panorama, that no one in the public sector should be paid more than the prime minister seems very sensible to me.
I already knew that BBC senior executives enjoy vastly overinflated pay but the fact that Mark Thompson, director-general of the BBC, gets £838,000 per annum is shocking. It is particularly hard to take after the absurd spectacle of the Pope’s visit. The leader of a very minor church, presently mired in appalling scandal, has enjoyed a bonanza of free, round the clock, TV, radio and internet promotion. I didn’t know but it turns out that Mark Thompson is a rabid Catholic. He has a nerve to run his own private campaigns at our expense! This is too much!
He is at the top and is the very worst of a deeply depressing list of excess and vanity. I am sure that many of these people are very able and skilled in their profession. If and when they choose to go into the private sector they may well make millions. While in the public sector, every single one of them should be very grateful for the privilege to serve.
The argument about market forces, put forward by the leader of Liverpool City Council, is just a weak excuse. If he really believes it then he needs to think again. Believe me, real market forces will sort this out, no problem. We will still get the very best in senior positions if we recruit properly. Successful people will seek to make their name in the public sector first, in prestige positions, then move on to make their fortune.
I say increase the prime minister’s salary to £250,000. These gestures of senior politicians cutting their own pay are meaningless and impress no one. Make that the maximum that anyone in the public sector can earn. Enforce it immediately. All salaries to be trimmed to that level from 1st October. I see everything in favour of this and nothing against.
Vauxhall’s Ad With The X Factor
As an adman, I have to say I love the new Vauxhall commercial, the one for the lifetime warranty. I can see how it’s spot on brief, catching the zeitgeist, truly the first of a new generation of advertising with a different type of offer. It’s designed for these just coming out of recession, hovering on the edge of double dip times. It’s great.
It achieves excellence by obeying the good, old fashioned rules of good old fashioned writing. It attracts your attention, inspires your interest, builds desire for the payoff and creates action at the end. Old fashioned principles with leading edge delivery. That’s advertising at its very best.
I’ll give you an example of the opposite. The X Factor is becoming like Fox News, utterly carried away on its own hype and insensitive to its audience. It knows how to pull my heartstrings and invoke my tear ducts almost at will but as it goes into its own advertising and promotion between the commercial breaks, it loses me. I wander. I write or I go into the other room. When I come back it’s telling me what’s coming up “after the break”. This is insane. I feel cheated, used and abused. I feel that I’m being toyed with and exploited.
In another echo of so many over-inflated advertising egos of the past, I laughed out loud when I saw the double page spread in The Times for Christine and Adrian’s new breakfast show “Daybreak”. This is an utter waste of money. Double page spreads are the creative team’s favourites because there are their words and pictures up in lights, like a poster, unsullied by editorial or other content. They’re the account man’s favourite too because they make for an excellent presentation and impress the client easily. Watch how readers behave. The page gets turned in double quick time. And in The Times? What objective is being achieved for ITV’s marketing strategy? Are readers of The Times part of Daybreak’s target audience? If this is aimed at potential advertisers it is an extraordinarily expensive way of reaching them.
Countless millions are wasted based on the petty pretensions of marketing directors or their advertising agencies. Similar egotistical spendthrifts inhabit TV production. Occasionally though, particularly in Britain, you see beautifully crafted and intelligently written masterpieces of communication. The new Vauxhall ad is one of these.
