talking of "back to" - back to stupid sainsburys

how stupid is their new slogan.
they are clearly desperate these days, and the clear paper, blue sky, out of the box thinking that they have employed has come up with "try something new today" as a concept to build around.

stupid daft idiots.

dont they know anything about retailing? did the problems a few months ago not teach them something vital to shoppers? stock!! and having it in the shop to sell (they had huge distribution problems).

what shoppers want is lots of choice and lots of it to buy. true, if you cant put it on the shelves because your trucks are in the wrong place, then you might want people "to try something new" but that sounds like they know they cant fix their problem and so have spun it.


the other thing shoppers do, is they act like sheep. and this sainsburys know. delia smith, the woman who was behind their store magazine would say "egg" on her tv show and the next day eggs were all people bought. same when sainsburys face jamie "smug bore" oliver says "strawberry" the stores sell out of strawberries. so what are they doing trying to make it impossible to guess what their shoppers are going to buy next? that means you need more stock of everything just in case. which means more waste through more unsold lines.
what retaillers actually want are people buying the same stuff again and again and perhaps a "bolt on" special at a huge mark up. that way they sell easy to predict stuff in bulk and the odd huge profit winner "when its gone its gone" stock.


sainsburys are doing an allders. ie let idiots set the style. (allders came out with a dumb idea... first reorganise the shop like the internet shops can be set to, ie not stocked in type but in style. that works with the net but not in a shop! if you wanted a light. you didnt go to the light area, you had to go over the entire shop and visit all the "styled" areas to see all the different lights. that was extra stupid as it told people how it would be used, if their house didnt look like the styled setting, they wouldnt buy it!
but no, alders didnt stop there. they also changed the logo to dark blue on darker blue so nobody could see the name of the store. bass had the first trademark around here. a red triangle so people could identify their beer, but who knows what todays young design turks are drinking. allders made their logo invisible, while abbey national rebranded, in a different colour on each branch. hello? there goes your identity. purple = either chocolate or ciggies etc... but no abbey went with no "brand" continuity.

and guess what. neither allders or abbey remained as they were. allders died, and abbey was taken over, and immediately given a new bold red logo for everything.

good bye sainsburys. you are doomed with these morons in charge - long live tescos

back to stupid adverts - saab cars

the latest uk adverts shows lots of people hearing a "wooosh" and looking up to the sky.

hardly what i would want people to do if i had a shiney new car. i would want people to see me in the car, not look away.

but the advertisers want us to think saab, think plane. but saab have nothing but a badge in common. the car group is now part of the huge gm group and has been part of it for years. all new cars now are from the minds of gm people not plane people. it shares its basic (and most expensive parts) with other gm cars. in effect allthey are are remodled opels. so much so the next car isnt even being built in sweden, but along side its sister opel in germany.

in america they even rebadge a subaru as a saab! so i guess thats where the plane link is. the gm chiefs flying to japan to ink the oem deal.


lets have honesty in our adverts

nintendos new controller, bold and rightfully desperate

nintendo has made the media headlines big time again.

not with awesome horsepower for the next generation, but actually a new way of looking at the controller that might just work.

the core brick, a sort of baby born by mating the original nes controller and a basic remote control, can be used as a gun, a wand, etc etc. while a plug in joystick like the n64 one allows expansion.

no doubt other controllers such as the gamecube one will be useable to allow fps be played where the lack of a second stick will be a factor. or at least they better have such plans.

the only problem for nintendo, is this innovation has been married to the least powerful and "looks like a thin ps2" next gen player.

it was innovation they needed to carve back a slice of the games machine market. unlike microsoft or sony who have far better in house experts on hardware and software, nintendo cant win a war based on power alone. but bolt ons have to be useful, not just gimmicks.

until we see the games, this has to be seen as a positive step. but if nintendo remains with its totally out of fashion games, however well made, then it may as well give all its cash back to shareholders and stop pissing it down the drain. the software is becoming a huge problem for them. there hasnt been a gt or gta type game from nintendo. instead they have relied on characters that were born because of the limitations of 8bit graphics. the world has moved on, and while the next zelda may well look stunning, the game is flogged to death. worse, nintendo has stayed with "adventure" based gaming for its flagship games such as metroid prime, when what people wanted was a first person shooter. a lot of people bought metroid prime thinking "wow what a shooter" just to play it and find it was nothing of the sort. a quick sequel, insultingly called "echoes" to rub in the quick remake rip off of the original taste in the mouth it left just left buyers cold.

nintendo perhaps should give in, and become the maverick arm of either sony or microsoft. with their hardware and nintendos game and gimmicks, there would be no question who had the better platform.

cold calling

the law should be simple.
if you have staff that sit behind a computer that makes cold calls, then when they get a pick up and that person says "remove me" it should be one button and done.

and all cold calling centres should be independantly audited, with 6 month old recorded tapes, so that requests to "remove" can be traced and audited as done on a random basis.

08700664457 bowater / zenith are extremely annoying. they ring 2 or 3 times a week, and seem to tell their staff to talk as if they are friends, with a starting line a friend would use, not a salesman.

i hope their owners have horrid lives. i really mean it. lets hope they are blighted with something nasty

fuel prices, its easy to solve

seriously, all you need to do is ban all trading in the futures by people either not a supplier of oil or an end user.
the only reason it is as high as it is, is so much speculation funds are piling into the market and pushing up the price like they did the dotcom bubble.

normally the speculators are in low numbers and help liquidity in the market place, but those people have been swamped by pure spec funds looking for the next "japanese warrant" market (where if you bought they always went up)

ban the speculators, and the price will fall tomorrow