lessons in pricing from Marrakech

When Alan Sugar wanted to test his Apprentice's negotiation skills last year he sent them off to Marrakech for the day. The thing about shopping in Marrakech is that there is no fixed price for anything, which means that everything is sold on negotiating. It's a fascinating concept compared to shopping in the UK as it means the price of things is dictated by what you're prepared to pay, not what it's worth.

I had a lot of fun and learnt a lot from my Marrakech negotiations, dealing with the concepts of 'for example price'/ best price/ final price/ your price/ my price/ democratic price and 'both you and me smiling price'. Oh and ASDA price which they seem to have picked up on some how along with the famous pocket tap. 

My favourite price was 'what you like price' though given to me by the driver of my petit taxi back to the airport, a true Radiohead esque approach to negotiations. He did better out of me than any of the others interestingly.

poetics

I went to the cinema last night and witnessed no less than three ads picking up on this new poetry renaissance. The below two and one very good one that was filmed by Rankin about getting out of London for the day, I can't find it online though. Watch out for it if you go to Curzon Soho anytime soon.

Freedom with Skype a..
Watch the ad...

talking shit

(shit talker)

Having read a few of those IBM papers I've come to the conclusion that there's going to be a hell of a lot of shit talking digitally (via RFID and stuff) before long. Cars, plants & cats, trainers, bags, your electricity supply, the lot. All talking, shit. That's a lot of noise that'll need to be filtered.

180 degrees

I overheard our Niels talking about bugaboo push chairs the other day, he's doing some words for them at the minute. Niels was saying how they've found a new bit of research showing it's much better for kids to face their parents when in push chairs (not just prams) and not the direction the push chair is going. Which is good news for bugaboo as they're pretty much the only people who make push chairs that can be switched around. Kind of makes sense that kids would prefer to look at their mums smile rather than the carrots on the bottom shelf of Sainsbury's grocery aisle. And vice versa (the mum not the carrots).

It's surprising what can be achieved when you just turn a problem 180 degrees.

intelligent advertising

This is the best advert I've seen in a very long time. You can't read it here as it's so blurred, you'll have to buy the new copy of UK Wired and turn to page 40 if you want to read it. I like it because it's well placed, intelligent, informed and express's a very definite opinion pushing IBM out as thought leaders. And it's got a barrage of substance behind it which is still to come by the look of it. It made me think and made me change my opinion on IBM. Which I imagine was the objective of it. 

I can imagine a future of even more brands expressing opinions on stuff and leading thought for the better.

Update: I've scanned it now, you can read it here.

re:branded

I discovered a new brand at Maidenhead train station today. It's called Puccino's. They do coffee on train platforms and stuff and used to look like this...

Then they got a bloke called Jim Smith (or waldo pancake) involved and made all their stuff look like that sign hanging below the bad old logo above.

Good eh? If you like that kind of thing.

1: It's good when indivdual artists or illustrators take on a brand not just agencies (like when Marcus did grub). I think it's going to start happening more.

2: It's good to have some fun with things. I hope it's going to start happening some more.

3: It's good.

one, two, three

More often than not technology isn't easy and it's instructions are over complicated. So it was with great joy that I received a new wireless router from talktalk today in simple 1,2,3 packaging and instructions specifically for Mac people. It did include a bit of innocent 'esque 'if you have any little headaches just give our lovely people a call' copy but I'll let them off that.

I'm now wireless. 

Well kind of...