"Golden Balls" Up?

Even Becks can't win them all, as he has been left out of the England squad by Fabio Capello.

3 is the magic number

(Photo from Michele Cat's Flickr page)


3 musketeers

3 blind mice

3 wishes from a genie

3 billy goats gruff

3 little pigs



With the power of 3 behind us, there's alot we can all achieve, whether it's in our personal or business lives.

Start with yourself.

What 3 things do you want to achieve:

• Today?


• This week?


• This year?

Pick one of the 3 things you want to achieve today. What 3 things are you going to do to further the progress towards each achievement?

Do the same for each of the other things you want to achieve.

Next, move on to your business. Reduce your business and its practises to the 3 core functions/principles. Then apply these 3 functions to 3 different areas of your business, e.g. marketing, client relations, project development. Then make 3 steps in each of the 3 areas you have chosen to improve your business.

By breaking down each step into 3 manageable parts, each step becomes less daunting, progress can be measured more effectively, and by reducing your view of your business to its 3 core fetaures, you are reducing your complicated business to its simplest form.

Allowing yourself to remember these 3 basic principles will allow you to be more effective in whichever area needs improvement.

If you want to take it further, look at 3 other people/business around you. What 3 things can you apply or learn from them that will benefit you?

3 more tips about the power of 3 from 3 different sources:

• Keep three lists of three. The first list has three things you will do today. The second is three things you’d like to get done, but aren’t essential. The third is three things that need to be done at some point. That way, when you’ve trogged through your days work, you don’t end up sitting twiddling your thumbs. (From Zen Habits)

• Three Weeks - that's as long as it takes to start reducing risks to your health with a lifestyle change. In a study of 31 overweight or obese men, half overcame their type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure and/or high cholesterol after following a healthy diet and getting 45 to 60 minutes of moderate exercise one day a week for 3 weeks. And if you don't have 45 to 60 minutes to spare in one session, you could always break that time up into three shorter sessions and spread them out across the week. (From That's Fit)

• There are THREE Productivity questions I am interested in asking myself and my clients.
  1) What do you hold yourself accountable to?
  2) What is it you think you need to be doing more (or less) of?
  3) What are you NOT engaged in that is pulling your focus, distracting you, and making it difficult for you to get things done? (From Your Best Just got Better)

3 more links to the power of 3:

• Lazy Productivity: 10 Simple Ways to Do Only Three Things Today


• 3 Ways to Become More Productive by Drawing on Your Inner Artist


• What You Didn’t Know About the World’s Top Three Productivity-Enhancing Drugs

Beck's Appeal

David Beckham seems to has had a stroke of genius (or his management team has anyway...)

After losing the contract to advertise Gillette, Beckham's face is appearing across the UK (and probably the world) advertising Motorola's Razr 2 mobile phone.

The genius of the move is that he is still advertising a 'Razr', but he now appears in the ads sporting a stylish lil' goatee, openly flouting how he doesn't need Gillette razors now.

Not only this but part of the sales of Motorola's new line will be used for AIDS relief in Africa, adding capital to the Beckham brand.

I think Gillette have timed their move away from Beckham slightly wrong. Beckham is due to get his 100th cap for England soon (if Capello picks him for the squad) - what better time to pick up on some undoubtedly large media attention?

As for Gillette, they've enlisted the services of Roger Federer, Thierry Henry and Tiger Woods to advertise their products, billing their new TV advert as the 'Champions Ad':




The problem with the advert is that the captions that accompany the entrance of each champion makes the advert immediately outdated.

"2006 Wimbledon Champion" - Why didn't the advert say that he was 2007 Wimbledon Champion for the 5th consecutive year? The advert would have more of an impact if it fully used his impressive career statistics.

"2003 Footballer of the year" - Why not get Christiano Ronaldo to be the famous footballer? The list of his recent honours is up to date and more impressive than Henry's - why not capitalise on his current fame (especially considering last night's performance by Ronaldo)?

But I guess you can't argue with the choice of Tiger Woods - he just consecutively outperforms the rest in his field and is undoubtedly the most famous golfer around.

At the end of the day, Motorola made the right choice in signing Beckham and Gillette will lose out. If you don't believe me, it is reported that the only gadget currently outselling the iPod is the Motorola Razr.

Beckham and Motorola seem to have come out on top of this one, although Beckham's goatee is a little dodgy...

Just Poll It

It seems my bid to 'Just Say It' is proving a success.

Not long after publishing a post on the current relationship between journalism and PR, Gorkana is running a poll, posing the question "Certain academic literature suggests that journalists are increasingly reliant on PR led information subsidies when writing news - do you agree?"

The comments I received on my original post were very thought provoking, and I hope that this poll produces the same result. I'll be watching with interest.

"Green" British Gas ad is nothing but hot air

As reported in the Guardian today, a TV and press ad campaign for British Gas has been banned by the advertising watchdog for making false green claims about an energy tariff:

"In the ad a voiceover made the claim that "Our new dual fuel package is our greenest. With zero carbon." The Advertising Standards Authority received 14 complaints about the "zero carbon" claim because they believe it implied the energy was carbon free and did not produce carbon dioxide. British Gas said that the tariff was backed by 100% renewable electricity so that the net carbon emission impact was zero for each customer. The company added that small print at the foot of the screen said "Relates to offsetting schemes", which made clear that there were carbon emissions. However, the ASA said that the claim "with zero carbon" and the images in the ad would "likely be interpreted by viewers to mean that the energy was carbon free or produced no carbon emissions". The ad regulator ruled that the TV commercial was misleading and should not be shown again in the same form.

A second ad - a national newspaper advertorial, for the same "green" tariff - was criticised by the ASA for making the claim it was the "greenest domestic energy tariff". One complainant argued that the claim was misleading and could not be substantiated because there was no established independent way to assess the green credentials of energy tariffs."

This is yet another example of companies hopping on the CSR bandwagon, claiming that a product is 'green'. But when critics question the validity of this claim, the greenness is shown as nothing more than a facade. This problem has been documented before, when many products that have claims to being 'green' have no such foundation to claim as much.

This issue of companies taking up a facade of CSR was explored more fully in The Economist's recent Special Report on CSR, which reported that many companies were merely saying that they had implemented a CSR policy, rather than fully demonstrate and report on their efforts.

This hasn't been a good week for British Gas as earlier this week Allan Asher, chief executive of Energywatch, said the energy market was uncompetitive and the price rises were unjustified.

"Sadly the market is not working well and that's leading to consumers paying much, much more than they need to," he said. (Link)

British Gas later admitted to the mistake, but this was obviously due more to damage limitation rather than good corporate communication.

"British Gas said that the ad pointed out the claim was based on the comparison of all current green supply offerings monitored by the Energywatch website. The company admitted that the website did not rank tariffs in order of "greenness" and that there was no industry-wide methodology."

The power of consumers to flag up a company's false 'green' claims is as prevalent as ever. Companies and organisations need to be aware that consumers will no longer be fooled by claims that cannot be backed up by hard evidence, especially in the realm of CSR. Those that realise this and prove transparent in their policies and communications will be the companies that prosper.

(For a summary of The Economist's Special Report on CSR, Steven Davies provides a good review here)

Lego Millenium Falcon Time-Lapse Video

3:38 of time lapse footage as Joel Johnson of Boing Boing assembles the "Ultimate Collectors Millennium Falcon" LEGO set, the largest yet sold, with over five thousand (5,000!) individual elements.

(Link)

Lego's 50th Anniversary

Often cited as one of the greatest toy inventions ever, LEGO bricks celebrate their 50th birthday today.

Here's a little on their history:

"The name 'LEGO' is an abbreviation of the two Danish words "leg godt", meaning "play well". It’s our name and it’s our ideal. The LEGO Group was founded in 1932 by Ole Kirk Christiansen.

The Company has passed from father to son and is now owned by Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, a grandchild of the founder.

It has come a long way over the past 70 years - from a small carpenter’s workshop to a modern, global enterprise that is now, in terms of sales, the world’s sixth-largest manufacturer of toys."

A vast amount of my childhood was spent playing with Lego - we had a 4 huge boxes full of Lego and my 2 brothers and I came up with plenty of ideas of uses for the little coloured bricks, from space stations to whole working towns (Well, in our imaginations anyway...).

We also went on a family holiday to Legoland in Denmark, each of us graduating from the Lego Driving School - probably my only memory of the holiday as I was pretty young.

But the company has moved on so much from then, opening Legoland Windsor and producing some of the most inventive, creative, advanced and, ultimately, fun toys around. Their online community is also second to none, drawing in the big kids as well as the young'ens - a great example of how PR can work for big brands.

The only drawback of Lego?

When you step on a piece, barefoot - ouch!