November 25th, 2004 by Eshin
Oh boy, did I forget that Cathay Pacific indulge you with their theme song “I can fly” as their muzack on their telephone systems. The person that came up with muzack should be shot on principle. If you’re going to be using muzack at all, let’s spare a thought for those poor suckers who are put in the queue for more than the length of one song. Failing that, some variation in the muzack would be nice and not the same company jingle. I’ll be fair. Cathay isn’t the only company to be obsessed with it’s own apparent musical ingenuity. PCCW is also another one of the companies that loves its jingle.
I think the problem is with the big companies. I’ve noticed that as you rise in seniority and status within these big companies, leadership is governed by ego more than anything else. I’m imagining that someone came up with the jingle, fell in love with it as his or her brainchild and decided let’s use it absolutely everywhere. Does anyone stand up to tell them that perhaps that it isn’t such a great idea? Most likely not, since it would be akin to insulting their own child. Not something you want to do if you are upwardly mobile.
But perhaps someone might be interested in pointing out that we’ve moved on from the marketing theories of yester-century where marketing wisdom stated “tell ‘em as many times as you can about your product, service, widget”. Today’s wisdom is more akin to “tell ‘em enough times, and they’ll buy it”. Focus on the “enough”. Not excessive. Sure, coming up with such an ingratiating tune and flogging it for all its worth is sure to make your mark on branding history, but in the business of getting business, the alienability factor should be the primary concern.
And if something was really that good, you could play it once and people would still remember it. If marketers venture into the world of music production, then take a lesson from the effect that one-time performances by talented singers, jazz musicians, violinists, whatever, have on an audience. If it was that good, they’ll remember it for the rest of their lives, and more importantly the positive emotions that come from that.
Especially dangerous for an airline is the idea that you are sitting in their ticketing hotline queue for more than five minutes, with a song that tells you that you “can fly”, when the only flying that’s happening in the immediate future is the phone departing from hand and arriving at wall, same day.
I think muzack should be optional and I’m reasonably sure that with today’s technology, and the investment their clients make into the equipment, telephone systems manufacturer’s can provide the option to callers listen to the muzack or not. Hell, I’d even wager it was possible to provide another layer of interactivity where you could choose a station to listen to while in-phone.
Press [1] for the in-phone News channel
Press [2] for the in-phone Cantopop channel
Press [3] for the in-phone International Hits channel
Press [4] to be indoctrinated into our company’s cult through continuous jingle repetition
For Cathay Pacific, it shouldn’t be too hard to do, since they already have a similar system on-board with StudioCX. How about a PhoneCX? You can have that one for free CX. No charge.
November 22nd, 2004 by Eshin
It’s a little appalling that the Paris Club, the 19 nations that really own the world, has decided to write off some 80% of Iraq’s debt owed to them. The US would have liked that to be closer to 100% for obvious political reasons but thankfully, the French, ever the champion of the underdogs, argued that this would be unfair to the world’s poorer nations and that Iraq wasn’t exactly cash-strapped sitting on top of all that oil. Of course, it was all agreed that amicably that 80% was a suitable and much fairer compromise. How did they figure that one out? Iraq kisses good-bye to US$31bn of debt while the world’s pooorest nations combined owe about US$7bn collectively.
So it’s all about competition really. France and Russia perhaps are owed the largest portion of this debt while the US isn’t owed all that much from Iraq, on account of a ten-year embargo. Now Iraq can happily sit down with a clean slate and start owing more money in the US’ direction. It no longer has to worry about the debt it owes to France and Russia, or that they might try to lock Iraq further into their financial control by sweetening deals with promises of debt relief.
So while the financial gurus are all sitting around patting themselves on the back for the good deed they have done, the general public should be under no illusion that this is simply the continuation of the economic war that is constantly being fought internationally. To the citizens of the Paris Club nations, congratulations, your governments have just written off US$31bn owed to you. So you can feel less guilty about not giving to UNICEF when they bombard your mailbox with their mailings.
November 22nd, 2004 by Eshin
Guaranteed to make you smile in the morning - some woman walking down the street in Central thought that it would be the ultimate fashion statement wearing a velvet black jumpsuit, with gold letters embroided across her ass spelling the world “Juicy”. Unfortunately, no picture since I was whizzing by in a taxi.
Milky, milky.
November 22nd, 2004 by Eshin
By virtue of this pretty insightful post on how to keep men happy, which I’ll be quite happy to point out to my female friends, a new blog quite happily appears here - Platypus (full name is Why is the Platypus? and I’m wondering if there shouldn’t be any sort of control on the naming of blogs).
Anyway, I like the style of writing although I’m a little apprehensive of the Gweilo Diaries style of posting up of pictures (down to the Girl Friday references!). Of course, with the handful of posts I have actually read of this blog, it’s clear that this blogger can actually write an interesting post. A skill I’m quite sure I haven’t got and one that I’m reasonably sure that William… sorry, Conrad… over at GD doesn’t have. Yep, I was suffering from GD-bashing withdrawal symptoms.
So welcome to the Platypus… and perhaps he can answer Why is the Platypus?
November 19th, 2004 by Eshin
Goodbye to Colin Powell and hello to Condoleeza Rice.
Trust me the world should be even more worried than it was before. Rice is actually competent and a card-carrying fascist. Allegedly.
Her parents should have done a better job of encouraging her in the arts. The world might have had a concert player on our hands rather than the bitch-queen of the damned in any position of power. Again, the idea of licenses for parents comes to mind. Oh well, forgoing marriage, at least her bastard offspring won’t come to haunt us again in twenty years time.
