After many recent multi-million pound apologies for logo designs by high-flying marketing studios, this one’s a real breath of fresh air. It was designed for a competition by 10-year-old Katherine Dewar, from Chester. Brilliant – and well chosen, whoever the judges were.

Next, the gubmint should commission this young lady to give the 2012 Olympic logo a swift makeover before the rest of the world start tuning in to our broadcast coverage and falling off their chairs with laughter.

A while back, I read an article on The Register describing how a derogatory spoof ’2012 logo’ was used in error by a South African news outlet to illustrate a story about ticket availability.

You can see why they got mixed up – the right and wrong versions are below

Part of the new ‘central hub’ website I’m creating for Fakenham has a page selling promotional merchandise (well, I’ve got to maximise my ROI as they say in Dragons’ Den – the site’s taking ages to create!).

If you fancy a quick preview, click on the picture on the right. It should take you to the new Fakenham shop at Spreadshirt, where you can browse through the selection of tees, hoodies and other Fakenham-branded stuff.

It’s all very tongue-in-cheek and I think it’ll strike a chord with Fakenham folk. Let me know what you think so far.

The Advertising Standards Agency have upheld complaints about the BT ad that says it’s, “rolling out up to 20 meg speeds” to give “consistently faster broadband“. The ASA stated that “it had not seen sufficient evidence to support the claim and concluded that the advert was likely to mislead“.

The problem I had with that advert – the one where Adam and Jane are talking over the phone about viewing houses and the estate agent’s connection is slower than Jane’s –  is slightly more obvious…

The estate agent showing Adam the houses online is using his laptop inside a property being viewed. Surely it wouldn’t be using the property owner’s broadband connection, would it? So it’s not comparing like-for-like, is it?

Schoolboy error!

..

Have you seen one of these in the wild yet?

How cool is this? It’s a funky purple eco-friendly jute bag bearing the message…

“Fakenham. Bloomin’ Lovely.”

It was designed by year 10 pupils at Fakenham High School for the Fakenham Area Partnership, who obtained some funding for the project via a bid to  ‘Awards For All’.

The bag is 100% recyclable and will be sold through local markets and retailers, plus schools, community groups and the Tourist Information Point. A Farmers’ Market postcard/calendar will be placed into each bag to underline the “shop locally, eat healthier, live sustainably” message.

Want one?  They’re £3.50 each. Find them at…

Corders Budgens
Lawnwise & Leisure
Fakenham Heelbar
Fuglis
Get Smart
Sweets-n-things
Secrets
NewsKlip
Fakenham Garden Centre

And they’ll also be available at…

Chemstop
Whichcraft/Witchcraft?
Amie’s – Hairstylist
Fakenham Racecourse
Tourist Information Point/Library
Connect Office

Ofcom enlists 4-year-olds to boost dodgy DAB stats • The Register

Do you listen to the radio? Do you use a DAB digital radio? Are you concerned about a digital switchover for radio which will mean that FM radio will be phased out?

Ofcom have produced the latest in a series of reports on which the future of radio broadcasting in the UK will be based. It seems to skew the data it uses on purpose to indicate that the use of analog radio is waning and that DAB uptake is a success.

For example, Ofcom claims five digital-only stations are reaching over one million listeners a week. However, the ‘listeners’ it cites are aged 4+ instead of the industry-standard benchmark of 15+.  Other ‘statistical shenanigans’ are also pointed out in this article at The Register.

It’s designed to convince us that DAB is a good idea and a complete success which we should all rush out to support by buying DAB radios and junking our perfectly-serviceable (and superior quality) FM sets.

There’s also a more in-depth blog about it by a chap called Grant Goddard, an independent media analyst, here – http://grantgoddardradioblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/lies-damned-lies-and-ofcoms-first.html

We’re being fed false information again. Somebody have a word before we’re sold a digital pup.

Here’s a photo, taken in my kitchen, of a bottle of juice drink from Aldi….

Notice anything?

The creeping menace of phantom apostrophes. They’re becoming deeper and deeper entrenched into our collective psyche. Soon this ignorant Philistine of a grammatical error will become part of the English language.

You mark my word’s!

If you’re the slightest bit interested in how I while away my workdays here in the plush corporate world of Wensum Towers (down that little alleyway in Norwich Street) you can now find out.

I’m experimenting with a new service for my clients where I ‘Tweet’ each job I undertake on their websites. Where appropriate I mention their business and add a link to their site. Twitter is a good way to network for business and hopefully it should be of benefit to Wensum.net and my clients too.

Take a look at Wensum.net to get a flavour of my working day (the latest Tweets are displayed in the right hand column). If you have a Twitter account, please feel free to follow – look for the account name ‘Wensumdotnet‘.

You know how big TV celebrities like Jonathan Ross and Stephen Fry get followed on Twitter by hundreds of fans. Well the reverse kind of situation just happened to me!

I run the IT side of a new company called House Advertiser, as you may have seen before on this blog. Part of our marketing strategy is to promote our services on our company blog, which is linked to Facebook and Twitter.

Just now, I recieved notification that our company Tweets are being followed by none other then Sarah Beeny, of Channel 4′s Property Ladder.

Hehe. Funny old world, innit?

If, like me, you use the BBC news website to catch up on what’s happening in the world, you may have seen evidence of the presentation of news items being skewed by external influences. I just saw something on the site today which leads me to believe it’s still happening, despite them being aware of the problem.

There’s a screenshot below of a section of their site which displays the most popular and most shared text news items and the most viewed video stories. There’s one story shown in the most read section, “Beer with 32% strength launched” about a Scottish craft  Brewery called Brewdog who have created a beer which has a very high alcohol content. Trouble is, the story was from November – why is it suddenly appearing as a ‘most-read’ story in the middle of February?

I have a suspicion that this story could be an example of one being bumped up the list artificially. It may be no coincidence that the brewery concerned are skillful in the art of viral marketing (as well as making excellent beer) and they have a share-ownership scheme which is coming to a close and has been widely promoted over the past few days.

OK, so if you like Brewdog (and you think their viral marketing methods are doing this), you may think they’re clever in the way that they’re getting national news coverage for free. However, if nothing else it should make everybody think twice about the way our news is presented and the fact that we’re constantly manipulated by all kinds of marketing and political / religious / commercial  lobbying ploys.

We went to a wine sampling last week. My wife and I were asked over by a friend in Fakenham who said that he’d answered an online ad to get a free gift in return for an hour’s tasting session. The idea was to try half a dozen different wines before being invited to order a case of them.

When we arrived the rep was already there, armed with two small suitcase-type boxes full of reds and whites. After being asked about the types of wine we normally preferred, we were offered shot-sized plastic glasses, a third filled with three whites and three reds from various countries.

The rep, who was very pleasant and not at all pushy, described each of them in turn before we sampled them. He seemed reasonably knowledgeable, although came out with some marketing-talk which was a bit dodgy. He said that as the wine contained no additives it would keep fresh after opening for several weeks. Also, he insisted that you wouldn’t get a hangover by drinking them (again a refence to their lack of impurities). I took both those statements with a large pinch of salt, but still promised myself to judge the wine purely on merit. 

How did they taste? They were nice enough (except for one red which I couldn’t bring myself to finish). Trouble was, they cost from around £9 to £15 a bottle plus VAT and to me, they seemed to be no better than a bottle you can pick up in Tesco for a fiver! This was emphasised by the fact that when the rep had left (heading for an appointment in North Park – sadly, without selling us any wine) we shared a bottle of supermarket red which was every bit as good as any of the samples we’d just tasted!

For your info, the winery is called Pieroth, a German company with their UK arm based in Luton. The rep covers a wide area across North Norfolk, so if you’re interested look them up (their free gift – a desktop ‘weather station’ looked useful). Thanks to Graham for the interesting invite -and the very tasty supermarket plonk!