Ian Benet
March 8, 2012
Postcards to Peru
During 2009 I was lucky enough to visit South America, specifically Chile, Boliva and Peru and if you haven’t been I can’t recommend the place enough.
Whilst on the Inca Trek in Peru I met a girl from Arequipa– it wasn’t like that, she wanted to practice her English and I wanted to say something in Spanish a little more meaningful than ‘Donde estan los banos’ (where are the toilets).
Anyway, we struck up a friendship and on my return began exchanging postcards.
Arequipa - Peru
Initially this was fine; I would send a rather pretty – if bland – postcard featuring a North East scene and tell her how Peru’s most famous export, Nobby Solano was getting on (Nobby Solano is the David Beckham of Peru).
Postcards soon progressed to letters and this is where my problems began.
Through these letters I soon realised that her, and possibly her friend’s and family’s, entire perception of the North East was being shaped by what I sent her.
I was effectively the North East ambassador for a small corner of Peru, a one man PR machine, encouraging tourism and promoting the region. This I found slightly daunting.
Things got worse when we started exchanging parcels. Newspapers were always on her wish list but I feared sending a newspaper would ruin the good impression made over so many postcards that here the sky is always blue and the streets clean.
Would sending a newspaper shatter that illusion?
Just like our perception of life in the United States is shaped by a happy cast of perfect teenagers living out their high school dreams, atrocities like Columbine point to a darker reality.
I didn’t want to send her a newspaper full of negative stories on crime, corruption and poverty but by not sending a newspaper was I painting a false impression of what life was like here?
Whose perception of life was most accurate, the one I had carefully cultivated or that of the newspapers each with their own viewpoint? Perception and reality nearly always differ.
I picked up a copy of The Times on Monday to consider, its lead story focused on the growing row erupting with Argentina over the Falkland Islands – a story on Britain flexing its old imperial muscle against Peru’s South American neighbour – I couldn’t send this!
So what could I send, what should I send? In the end a key ring and a copy of Tuesday’s Times with a lead on the Russian election results and not a single murder until page 7.
Someone else’s problems, someone else’s reality.
Had I chickened out? Probably.
Ian Benet
January 18, 2012
How little times change
Cast your mind back to May 2011 and the new word on everyone’s lips was ‘super injunction’, the court-imposed gagging order favoured by celebrities and philandering footballers.
While the national press couldn’t mention the names of those involved, over 40,000 twitter users did. The rights and wrongs of a non-existent privacy law captured the zeitgeist and were debated across the country.
Flushed with our new understanding of the law, we may have felt we knew all about injunctions.
However, it turns out that injunctions to protect the privacy of the rich and famous date back over 160 years.
A story that captured my interest in The Times revealed that Queen Victoria obtained an injunction to prevent the publication of loving family sketches.
The 80 sketches drawn by Queen Victoria in the 1840s feature scenes of domestic family life including bedtime and bathtime. Each sketch is signed by the Queen and accompanied by a handwritten caption.
Queen Victoria entrusted a number of the drawings to a printer but the drawings were then stolen by the printer’s apprentice.
In a demonstration of just how little times change, the apprentice then made copies of the drawings and sold the lot to a royal gossip columnist for £5.
The columnist planned to exhibit the drawings in London, but the Queen obtained an injunction preventing their publication and so the drawings remained unseen.
It’s one of the earliest examples of a high profile figure using an injunction to keep their private life private and in my opinion one of the best examples of just when an injunction should be granted.
To this day the majority of the drawings remain in private at the Royal Collections in Windsor but six prints that were recently discovered in an attic have now been released for auction.
While it’s clear the system is open to abuse by high profile figures with money to spend, I can’t help feeling that on this occasion the private images of the Queen’s children should have remained private, just a she intended.
The auction will take place on January 25 with the prints expected to fetch up to £1,500.
Ian Benet
November 29, 2011
Burnt baker’s experience lesson to all
Promoting your product or service is a tricky business and any action needs to be carefully considered. One person who has found this out the hard way is Rachel Brown, 44, a baker from Reading, who got more than she bargained for after offering cut-price cupcakes through daily deal internet site Groupon.
Rachel, who normally fulfils around 100 cupcake orders a month, had to suspend the deal after 8,500 sweet toothed savers took up her offer of a dozen cupcakes reduced from the usual £26 to £6.25.
Baker Rachel Brown, 44
The owner of the Need a Cake bakery told The Daily Telegraph that the Groupon deal was: “Without doubt, the worst ever business decision I have made. It’s been an absolute nightmare.”
Despite taking a loss on each deal, a total estimated to be around £12,500; Rachel has hired extra staff and worked around the clock in order to fulfil each order.
What interested me most about the story was how much coverage it received; news rooms around the world picked up the story as well as many blogs and Channel 4 News.
Were she to evaluate the coverage received, its advertising value would exceed her initial £12,500 investment many times over and by agreeing to fulfil each order she further endears herself in the hearts and minds of her customers and the reader.
Whilst she may regret her decision now, if it gives her business a boost she may, in time, feel differently.
The story reminded me of a similar incident involving former off-licence chain Threshers, and a 40% off wine voucher that surfaced on the internet in 2006.
Rumours that the voucher was only intended for retail partners and its wider release was in error helped it spread faster via email. Many have since questioned whether the leak of the voucher was truly an error or a clever stunt. The fact that the company has since ceased trading I think answers those questions.
It’s not just small bakeries or defunct wine merchants that fall victim to marketing idea meeting sour reality.
In the run up to the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, fast food giant McDonalds gave customers scratch cards that when scratched would reveal an event. If an American was then successful in that event McDonalds would give away either a free Big Mac, fries or a Coke.
What the people at McDonalds could not have expected was the Russian led boycott of the games involving, what was then, the Soviet Union and 13 other Eastern Bloc countries.
The boycott meant the main American competition for medals would not compete, leaving the path clear for America to top the medal table unchallenged and McDonalds with queues of customers demanding a free Big Mac. The chaos was later parodied in an episode of The Simpsons.
There are many other examples of companies making similar, often costly, errors of judgement.
Whilst Rachel’s experience of using Groupon may yet turn out to be positive, similar promotions are not advised without first carefully considering all outcomes and possibilities. And even then, as McDonalds discovered, there may be political and social factors that you just cannot control.
