New Order

No doubt everyone has an opinion on Donald Trump, and whether or not Brexit is a good idea, and this post is both about neither of them and both of them.

It's about Germany's most hated football team, and really what it's saying is how much some people hate the established order to be shaken up.

Phraseology

Two phrases that I can't stand are "hate on" (as in to "hate on" someone), and "my bad".

Hate on? What the hell does that even mean? "Hate" is a verb; why can't you simply hate someone these days, without having to "hate on" them?

And as for "my bad"... My bad what? My bad decision? (well, poor decision) My bad idea? What's wrong with "my mistake"?

Don't people realise how dim they sound using phrases like these? 

What's in a name?

There's an article on the BBC News site: Why don't black Americans swim?

Quite a sad article which mentions an incident where six kids drowned because they didn't know how to swim.

I know this will sound insensitive, but one thing that really struck me was the names of some of these kids: DeKendrix, JaTavious, Takeitha, JaMarcus, Litrelle, LaDarius.

Where do parents come up with these names? Talk about disadvantaging your kids from birth.

Was Oscar legless?

With the speculation doing the rounds as to whether Oscar Pistorius might have had a few brews before his boating accident, do you think any editors have been itching to use a headline such as the above?

Tintin outed

This is pretty damn funny - Of course Tintin's gay. Ask Snowy

I've never thought much of Tintin. The stories are completely unrealistic.

You can say what you like about Asterix and Obelix, but if you accept the premise of magic potion pretty much everything that they get up to is feasible.

SA Roadlink

Not to seem to make light of the ridiculously unnecessary loss of life due to the recent bus accidents, but SA Roadlink being in the news recently brought to mind those ads they used to flight on TV going on about how advanced their busses are.

But did anyone else notice the language all the controls were in? It looked like Portuguese!

No wonder these drivers seem to "lose control" of the bus, although that's always seemed to me to be an excuse for driving too fast for the conditions. Or my other favourite "the brakes failed" - of course they did when you were driving to fast to go round a bend and the brakes overheated.

And now I see TV ads for Greyhound- smart advertising or taking advantage of others' misfortune? (And not a word of Portuguese in sight.)

Que?

Groundhog day

Ah, the irony of my last post. After extolling the virtues of working from home, it's now become one of the reasons I'm changing jobs again (although not the main one).

Although I enjoyed the experience for the first 4/5 months, the sense of isolation from the rest of the team started getting to me. I thought I'd eventually adjust to it but in fact it got worse.

It's been a good personal learning experience though, I've tried it and know that working from home for extended periods is not for me. Looking forward to working in an office again (although if I have the option to work from home on the occasional day that would be good - we'll see).

I'm not looking forward to traffic again though.

You really do have to have a particular type of mentality to work on your own, with limited interaction with other people. I thought I was that kind of person, but obviously not.

So here I am, one year on and doing the same thing I was at this time last year, working out my last couple of weeks and starting a new job at the beginning of February. Groundhog Day indeed!

Out of the frying pan

It's good to be back after my extended hiatus - it was a case of time flying when you're not having fun.

Well a couple of months ago I changed jobs - thankfully. I was working for one of our large financial institutions, and it became an increasingly unpleasant experience. Hopefully it's not out of the frying pan into the fire.

Most of the second half of last year was spent trying to find something new, and quite frankly it' s not that easy finding a new job that interests you, and you think you're going to be challenged by.

So now I'm doing something similar but in a much bigger, multi-national company, and funnily enough it's been a lot less stressful so far. I'm working on a virtual team, and the great thing about it is no office = no office politics, at least not much that I have to deal with. I also get to work at home a lot, but I'll write more about that in another post.

The great SMS rip off

A couple of weeks ago I was at a conference, and one of the presentations was about SMS campaigns, competitions etc.

The speaker in question (can’t remember his name offhand), talked about Highveld Stereo’s loyalty scheme. I don’t listen to the radio, but from what the presenter was saying, throughout the day DJs mention certain words and when listeners who are registered for the scheme hear the words they SMS them to a specific number.

Each SMS costs the listener R1.50 to send. Now let’s say the cellphone network takes 50c of that cost, it still leaves Highveld with an income of R1 per SMS.

What makes this scheme even better (for the station that is), is that the “rewards” that can be redeemed with the loyalty points that are accumulated include content that has previously been broadcast on the radio (such as jokes from the Rude Awakening) that can now be downloaded as podcasts.

How’s that for smart? Get a loyalty scheme to not only pay for itself, but potentially turn a profit!

Surely loyalty schemes are about giving back to your customers (or listeners in this case) at no cost to them? How do you think Clicks customers would feel if they were charged a fee every time they swiped their Club cards?

This also started me thinking about competitions that you can only enter via SMS. One example that comes to mind is the trivia competition on eTV’s breakfast programme. It costs R2 to SMS the answer to e, with some sort of prize to be won.

Now no doubt the prize has been sponsored, so has cost eTV nothing, and let’s be really conservative and assume the cellphone network is taking half of the SMS cost, that still leaves e with R1 per SMS at no cost to themselves.

Again, aren’t competitions supposed to be value adds for customers, viewers etc? What do you think would happen if we were charged R2 for entering a store-based competition? We’d tell the store exactly what to do with their competition.

Now I don’t see anything wrong with companies covering the cost of the SMS entry, otherwise the cost of the competition would spiral out of control, but that can only be a maximum of 50c.

What justification can these companies have for charging up to four times this cost, but the bigger question is why we are so willing to let ourselves be ripped off in this way?

Samuel L Jackson

Talking of Oscars (and I know it’s going back a few years now), one person who didn’t win an Oscar but more than deserved to was Samuel L Jackson for his performance in Pulp Fiction.

Everyone focused on John Travolta and his “comeback” performance, but as good as it might have been he was overshadowed by Samuel Jackson. Who will ever forget Jules spouting biblical quotes seconds before “putting a cap in someone’s ass”, or his final major scene in the coffee shop where he decrees to “walk the earth” (or as Vincent puts it “become a bum”)?

Pulp Fiction was one of only a couple of movies I’ve seen that lived up to their hype (Fargo was another), and unfortunately neither Samuel Jackson nor Quentin Tarantino have managed to reach those heights again.