Those of you in the know, will not need me to tell you that this week is National Elevator and Escalator Safety Awareness Week. Last week? No need to scratch your head and wonder – it was, of course, Psoriasis Awareness Week. November 2007 is also home to National Roasting Month and Prematurity Awareness Month (though actually that wasn’t scheduled until January 2008!).

However, here on How-Do, it's obviously, once again…

National Stating the Bleedin’ Obvious Week.

Murray: more Chinese whispers

Nathalie Bagnall, proprietor of Vertigo, chose to praise the subsequent insights as showing that “the majority of PRs instinctively know how to handle a tricky situation.” Yes, the consistency with which those questioned chose lying, self-aggrandizement or passing the buck was remarkable, but hardly a great testimony to either the imagination or integrity of the profession.

I gave the same questionnaire to a bunch of seven-year old Chinese students whose grasp of English is strictly limited to simple nouns, mis-use of prepositions and an inability to pronounce their “v”s. Their answers were largely in line with the original respondents to Vertigo’s questionnaire, although significantly less of them would have used their appointment to help find Madeline McCann primarily as CV fodder.

Soapy Wit Tank…

However, Vertigo hasn’t had it all their own way this week. TBWA Manchester made its own sparkling contribution to this year’s “Stating the Bleeding Obvious Week” with its latest work for Imperial Leather.

Gushingly announcing their contribution to this new How-Do initiative, TBWA’s newly crowned ‘disruption director’ Lorna Hawtin said:“Disruption thinking helped the team realise that the real social context behind washing and grooming had been forgotten in this category.  By embracing this insight we've really helped Imperial Leather get in touch with its raison d'etre in a fresh and energising way.”

By “insight”, I think Ms Hawtin means the concept that “washing makes you less smelly and more likely to get a snog”. Well done, TBWA that certainly is “stating the bleedin’ obvious” and big style.

I would love to have a video recording of the brainstorming session where Ms Hawtin issued forth this thunderbolt of hygienic mega-insightdom. Picture it now…hushed tones in the agency’s boardroom as the gathered creatives (I believe a “snort” is actually now the accepted collective noun, but I digress). What are they going to do? The client is getting impatient. The account manager is drumming his fingers on his PA’s thigh. But inspiration is running dry in the soapy wit tank..

“Imperial Leather….only the crumbliest, flakiest…it’s finger lickin’…no…no…not quite there…”

Then Ms Hawtin bursts in: “Imperial Leather – it gets your bum clean. Tidy it up a little, re-package it so it’s more AB friendly and the job’s a good’un!”

As one the room rises and turns to Ms Hawtin : “Well done, Lorna. That truly is bleedin’ obvious. Call forth our foremost turd polisher and make it so…”

Not everyone has been so supportive of National Stating the Bleedin’ Obvious Week however. Fie on the MEN’s Mark Dodson for his lackluster contribution to the cause whilst speaking at last week’s Society of Editor’s meeting in Manchester.

MEN want to hand your hold

Mind you the notion of handing over viewers from Channel M to more “narrow cast” websites is a slightly bewildering one. How much more “narrow cast” can you get than Channel M this side of “Twiggy’s All Anorexic Heroin Chic All Stars Do Biafra”?

Sadly, Channel M’s daytime audience looks set to dwindle still further with the announcement, last week, that still more young people are to be lured away from filling much needed spaces on their parents’ sofas and into “advanced apprenticeships in media production.”

Vision Off?

Lynne McCadden, MD of Vision and Media, one of the prime movers behind the initiative, told How-Do at the time: “This is the first opportunity for young people who don’t have GCSE maths or English to be able to apply for an apprenticeship which offers so much more potential for their future career.”

Far from me to cast aspersions on Vison and Media’s altruism, but I would think that maybe somebody serious about a career in the media might have taken the trouble to learn read and write before they turned 16. Still no doubt they won’t ultimately be any more unemployable than the vast legion of never-will-be’s already being churned out by the ever-burgeoning number media-studies faculties that are rapidly replacing our seats of learning.

In truth, though, lack of literacy skills has never been a bar to entry to the world of employment in the media – if it was, then think just how short of art directors and classified sales people we’d all be!

Maybe North West Vision and Media is merely filling a need. These cerebrally-challenged media production apprentices may one day graduate to being ambassadors for the Chartered Institute of Marketing in the North West.

The main incentive to sign up as a NW CIM ambassador seems to be the provision of a badge that presumably says “NW CIM Ambassador” beneath a nice bit of lamination. Now, from milk monitors to holiday reps, I’ve never been that impressed with the caliber of person lured to a certain position largely by virtue of a piece of plastic with their name on. Still, it would give the media apprentices something to copy from when they have to go and sign on.

Hughes

I am one of the few to know that the bottom 100 ranking for the least influential non-movers and shakers on the North West media scene was also assessed and then promptly hidden forever beneath a pile of press releases detailing the latest wave of badly-funded North West regional re-branding initatives.

Until now.

And it’s bad news for Nige as he came bottom of the world, narrowly pipping the People’s Choice, Giles Bastow, non-publisher of Pimp magazine, to the far from coveted lowest slot.

Tony Murray is urging regular readers to support his call for the Alternative Wrap to have its own link at the top of the How-Do home page, preferably just between the one that says “Other Media” and the one that says “The Wrap.”

Robert Harwood-Matthews, chief executive of TBWA Manchester, who is not supporting Murray’s call, didn’t add: “Sometimes, when I am considering a major bit of disruption-related strategy for my Manchester-based multi-national agency, I often wonder just what would a TEFL teacher based in the West of Beijing think of my proposed course of action? It would be so much easier if there was just one button for me to press and then I could instantly find out.”

If you want to support the call for a dedicated Alt Wrap button, you can email tonymurray37@hotmail.com

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