Tony Attwood's Blog

A piece in the Guardian today suggesting that the part privatisation of Royal Mail could lead to a rise in the price of the PAF File that is used for data checking of addresses is unlikely to be true according to other reports.

A lot of parts of Royal Mail are regulated by Postcomm – the regulator – and at the moment the PAF File is part of that regulation – meaning in fact that the price is controlled.

Other areas might be changed however if RM is part privatised – and one that must come under consideration is the question of VAT on postage. The current situation is very confused – whether you pay VAT on postage is dependent on which carrier you choose to use, and exactly how the mailing house handles the mail.

Tony

Lake Superior State University produces a list each year of words that annoy people. For an advertiser it is interesting, since it gives a strong hint about which words are being overused, and are likely to do more harm than good if used in an advert.

The ubiquitous ‘Green’ and all of its variables, such as ‘going green,’ ‘building green,’ ‘greening,’ ‘green technology,’ ‘green solutions’ etc, was top of the list of annoying words and phrases.

Maverick was another word that was much overused and disliked, at least in the United States, most particularly in relation to the presidential campaign.

Bailout was also thought to have been overused in relation to every aspect of the economy, as suffered from being incredibly vague as to its meaning (“Is it a loan? Is it a purchase of assets by the government? Is it a gift made by the taxpayers?”)

“Wall Street / Main Street” was another economic phrase that annoyed – and indeed it becomes even more meaningless when repeated (as it has been) on UK radio stations.

And there is the use of the word “Monkey”. Anything on the internet now seems to have the word “Monkey” put at the end of it, for not apparent reason. Although I must say I do like the use of the word to signify a person who writes one line rebuttals to complex arguments posted on a blog. This use comes, I believe, from the tale that a bunch of the animals working on typewriters will eventually produce the work of Shakespeare. The link isn’t accurate or even correct, but still makes me smile.

Icon and iconic were reported for being horribly overused with the complaint that “every actor, actress and entertainment magazine show overuses this.” And that’s the point. Not everyone and everything can be iconic. As one person writing to the university said, “It’s becoming the new ‘awesome’ – overused to the point where everything from a fast-food restaurant chain to celebrities is ‘iconic.’”

Staycation is a much hated new word (meaning having a holiday at home).

Desperate search is something the media reports when anything goes missing, and on the day when another set of people won another set of awards, there was annoyance at the reporting of “the winner of five nominations.” Such a person has won nothing – he/she has just been nominated.

It’s that time of year again, was also much disliked, and I agree totally with that – every other email advert I see seems to start with it.

Maybe we should start a list in this country, rather than just leave it to the Americans. Do let me know if you have any suggestions, and I will create a list.

Opposition from backbench Labour MPs is likely to stop the part-privatisation of Royal Mail, according to The Sunday Telegraph.

Labour could still push this through with the support of the Conservatives, but the newspaper claims that the prime minister does not want to rely on the opposition.

The newspaper quotes a “leading government source” as saying: “There needs to be a major rethink. The sell-off as it currently stands is dead in the water and what we are trying to do now is spare [business secretary Peter] Mandelson’s blushes.”

Dutch postal operator TNT and private equity firm CVC have been mentioned as to investors in Royal Mail if the government is able to make the plans a reality.

The Communications Workers Union has threatened to cut its ties to the Labour Party if the government goes ahead with its privatisation plans.

According to The Guardian on Saturday, ministers are suggesting that concessions could be made if the MPs and the union abandon their campaign.

The newspaper reported that post office minister Pat McFadden told the rebels that Royal Mail’s business was in severe decline and it needed private investment.
McFadden said: “I do not think there is a full appreciation of the problems being faced by Royal Mail. Its pension deficit is 75 times its profits. Mail volumes are falling by 7 or 8% a year, and it has not automated or modernised as much as other companies. We cannot just hope it all goes away.”

Separately, TNT Post has said it may be viable for it to establish its own force of postmen in London by 2011 because of the volume of mail it is currently handling in the capital.

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Very interesting piece in Marketing Week about selling to a certain age group, bringing the clear message, “sell on interest not on age”.

Just because you are at a certain age, does not mean that you behave in a stereotypical way. Indeed as a person of a certain age, I know that I have some friends who have adopted retirement complete with gardening and garden slippers, while I have others who go out jiving four nights a week. I have some acquaintances who quite like a saunter through Readers Digest and others who are perfecting their collection of Bob Dylan posters.

Treating to treat people by age is fraught with dangers.

Here’s the piece http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=64233&d=254&h=5&f=3&nl=BN&ln=11020901

Age, and the perception of illustrations in advertising.
It is a central part of the research from the psychology of perception that the placement of images on an advertising page needs to be handled with great care. While text is generally perceived by the left hemisphere of the brain, the image is generally seen on the right, and given the limited amount of interaction that there is between the two halves of the brain, putting text and pictures next to each other can put off all but the most committed reader.
Now there is new evidence that the unwillingness to give time to adverts where images and text knock up against each other is related to age.
Let me add another caveat first, however. We are talking here about the readership of advertising material by people who are not immediately drawn to the subject matter. Consider the advert you receive which maybe relates to you in general – but is not of instant specific interest. (For example, you are interested in gardening, but you are not thinking of buying a new lawn mower. You receive an ad for a lawn mower. It is not wholly inappropriate, but it is not top of your list of interests at this time.) This is the sort of situation we are talking about.
It seems that people of more mature years find the close juxtaposition of image and text even more off putting than those of younger years – and they find it hard enough to focus with ads of this type.
Older consumers prefer single-image advertisements over ads with multi-image collages by a margin of 66% to 34%, according to a recent image-preference survey by Creating Results (http://www.creatingresults.com/) .

Their Photo Finish study set out to look at which type of photography is most effective when advertising to Baby Boomers and older generations. What they discovered was not just the expected difference in preference of photographs, but in the responsiveness to pictures overall – a finding that fits totally with the earlier findings from the psychology perception.
Interestingly older people preferred
• Vibrant pictures featuring brighter colours and expressive models rather than cooler colours and contemplative models, 65% to 35%.
• 65% of respondents preferred images in which the model’s face was clearly identifiable vs. cropped photographs.
• The older a consumer, the stronger his or her positive feelings for identifiable photos. 76% of those over age 75 preferred recognizable photos, as well as 75% of 65-74-year-olds and 62% of those ages 55-64.
• Lifestyle photography was preferred to product photos by all respondents (59%) and was most effective with those designated by Creating Results as Caregivers (71%), Gardeners (78%) and Volunteers (75%).

This is one of a series of articles on the ways in which we see adverts affects response rates. The full series is avialable on www.theory.bz

Postcomm have agreed to most of the basic points raised by Royal Mail’s request to offer discounts to mail that meets certain environmental criteria.

The discount level should be between 0.3p and 0.7p per envelope posted which meets the right standards – not much in itself – £3 to £7 per thousand against a total mailing bill of around £400 to £450 per thousand.

But it is a start. Whether it is enough of a discount to make companies become more environmentally positive is unlikely however. Those who are already using the right sort of paper will just pick up their discount, while I suspect the rest will simply ignore what they will see as a trivial discount.