the art of conversation

Boris, bikes and Barclays branding

TfL’s new bicycle hire scheme for London launched today, endorsed by Mayor Boris, proclaiming: 

Londoners have awoken to a new dawn for the bicycle in the capital … racks have been filled with thousands of gleaming machines that will transform our streets … My crusade for the capital to become the greatest cycling city in the world has taken a gigantic pedal-powered push forwards.

No pressure on the scheme, then.

Our local bike rack – sorry, Barclays bike rack – had one bike on it yesterday, 12 bikes this morning and 6 today. More than 12,450 keys have been handed out to Londoners enabling them to unlock bikes left at 315 docking points across the city. The cost of using the cycles varies from £1 for an hour to £50 for 24 hours. The bikes have no locks, which is said by TfL to be to deter people keeping them for long periods. I’d have thought 50 quid was disincentive enough.

Barclays has apparently paid £25m to sponsor the scheme and the Barclays cycle superhighway, a network of 12 cycle lanes, which is much more than some existing cycle lanes painted Barclays blue. Sounds like a good deal for them. And research has shown that (blue) is a good colour which stands out, says a TfL spokeswoman. 

Some people are upset that Barclays is too prominent as a sponsor and has encroached too much on to the civic/public domain. Cyclists as a group are not naturally big corporation lovers and there has of course been some creative ‘re-branding’.

At first sight there does seem to be a 'brand mash' of TfL, Oyster, Barclays, Boris (all blue), so it is hard to see who is doing what.

It will be interesting to follow the uptake and emerging views of the scheme.

I certainly hope it will be a great success and that lots more people will cycle in London as a result - even if comes to riding bikes 60 foot long. Not just on big, Barclays branded bikes. Bravo, Boris. Next up, Boris and the bendy bike?

How to BT the competition

This ad has been on posters and in the press everywhere (pic courtesy of Xtreme Information), part of a £30m campaign by BT to promote BT Vision carrying SS1 and SS2 from this Sunday. Apparently.  

OR, is it a covert ‘ambush’ campaign orchestrated by BSkyB to make BT look cheap and tacky? A much more successful ambush than Robbie Earl & Co’s World Cup Bavaria beer stunt.  

Could BSkyB have chosen four footballers with the least possible charisma, ordered their waxwork figures from Madame Tussauds, then photographed them to make them look like Star Trek extras who had just beamed down? The way they are staring off into space and those dodgy strips just give the game away.  

BSkyB would have been aiming to make BT look like amateurs and make their package seem like a pale imitation of the real thing.  

Even more surprising is how they must have managed to get AMV.BBDO involved. Clearly, a dastardly plan hatched at the highest level. Probably by a Chelsea fan.

Hopefully Wes and Michael will get their comeuppance on August 8.

Beach Reading

 It was David Ogilvy in Confessions of an Advertising Man who (roughly) said when on holiday read; but read something that's unrelated to work. Reading will keep the mind ticking over and give it space to de-clutter. 

Asking round the office, we've pulled together some beach reads we will be taking with us this summer to depressurise to some near and some far-flung climes. 

 If you're looking for American urban grit and a fan of The Wire (as quite a few of us are) then David Simon's Homicide and the Corner have come highly recommended. Although looking out to a sunbright sea may be more therapeutic.

 Wolf Hall, Man Booker Prize for 2009, has received mixed reviews by those who have already read it here.  Although giving us a pretty vivid picture of the early 16th Century England some have found it confusing to follow at times. Compared to Joyce's Ulysees though, it's a doddle.  

innocent agm film

Final edit of innocent agm film. Good people. A good day. Write-up here.

Inconveniently Green

Without wanting to sound too downbeat, being a 'green' consumer at the moment is inconvenient. It just doesn't pay. Our 'default' behaviour is to buy what we are used to, what is easy and affordable and what  benefits us - in spite of our good intentions. As Jane Austen wrote, "I have been selfish all my life, in practice, though not in principle".

And most companies of course are geared to deliver profit first and foremost, sustainability coming a distant second or third or lower down the list. And we are not mandated to behave differently by legislation, apart from a bit of recycling, perhaps. It is still just too convenient for us not to be 'green'. What will it take for our lifestyles to change?

These thoughts hit home having bought the Green Living Guide. Great efforts have been made in making 'green' actions more accessible and the guide itself is certainly praiseworthy if wanting to be 'green' is your thing. 

But there is some way to go for sustainable, low-carbon living to become more widespread in the UK . Perhaps because there are so many variables and imponderables, people just don't know what to do and are not motivated to take the lead. 

I think the key issue with communicating 'green' (without 'greenwashing') is there isn't enough 'in it' for the UK consumer, especially in the short-term. Solar panels, for example, require thousands of pounds and grant applications and just sound cumbersome and off-putting.

A Feast of Conversation

 

Theodore Zeldin, our hero and the author of  'An Intimate History of Humanity' and 'Conversation: how talk can change our lives', was interviewed on the Today programme on Friday to discuss his 'Feast of Conversation', held on July 3 at the Olympics site in a venue made from old shipping containers. 

Attendees chose from a menu of 25 conversation topics, and talked about what they find interesting. "It is for people who want to have two hours to think about what is important to them".

Professor Zeldin claimed that "we live in an age where we don't know what to talk about" hence his idea to "have a new kind of conversation where we are trying to discover what we think and to discover other people ... [which is] the most exciting adventure of our time ... to discover who inhabits the world". 

The professor bridled at the suggestion that his event was like speed dating. He felt it was the opposite of the inane babble of speed dating or something like Twitter (ahem) "...It is about thinking, not jabbering".

We look forward to reading the reviews.

Not on Twitter, though.