The advert in question, is now one of the most talked about adverts from the 2011 Super Bowl – probably for the wrong reasons. It’s a great advert, just that they mistakenly assumed that people would make the connection. That was their only and fatal flaw. I can probably imagine the creative conversations that went around during the conception of these adverts, all highly charged and excited.

The result, in my opinion acts as a good lesson to always ‘never assume’ that your audience will immediately understand what it is that you are trying to say, or what the expected outcome should be.

The Tibet advert from Groupon was there to promote Groupon, obviously and promote the fact that Groupon donate a large amount to charitable causes. It’s just that they assumed people would know that.

“We thought people would go to Groupon.com and put two and two together,” said Julie Mossler, a Groupon spokesperson.

A simple closing line, or a link to the savethemoney.groupon.com website would have done the trick, but it wasn’t there – people took the advert at face value, which seemed to be poking fun at the Tibetan cause. At a business level, the advert seems to have worked – Groupon received over 50,000 new customers (but also lost a few in the process!). However, with a bit more care I believe that it would have been much more effective.

So, as a rule of thumb, “never assume” that people will do what you expect, or think what you want them to think. Cover off all your bases in a campaign; TV, Radio or across different mediums. Failing to do so, can result in complete failure of the campaign. Never lose sight, during the creative process of what the campaign is there to achieve and make sure that it’s clear to the audience what you want them to do.

“Never Assume…”

They cunningly seem to have taken one person (Rob. Maybe a disgruntled Skype employee?) and dumped him by a remote phone box in the south of Spain, with only a ringtone for company.

His website points you to Skype call his phone box and chat, as well as having a live video link from his little home on a hill.

It reminds me of the first series of Big Brother and the fact that my human curiosity seems be pulling me to watch. Why I am watching some bloke, sat on a hill talking to others on a phone 24/7 is beyond me. Maybe something will happen soon!

Today he seems to be plagued by “Drop-Caller-Man”. Who could that be, might there be a storyline emerging? Mind you after 10 days out there (8 of which he has been online) he doing alright!

Considering the fact that he is wearing a radio microphone, and the video stream is better than you would expect I can almost imagine a crew of people sat behind the camera in relative luxury whilst Rob ‘roughs’ it out on the floor.

Check it out for yourself at http://phoneboxexperiment.com/

Recently though they seem to be spending me more catalogues than normal! I’ve had two now through the door in as many weeks. The previous one caught my eye as it carried the heading, “Have we done something wrong?” – which was interesting as it obviously recognised the fact that I had not put any business their way in recent months (or ever!) – but was strange attempt at being personal.

The one that I received one carries the heading, “Am I on the naughty step?” – and half of me thinks, “Yes you are – for sending me this in the first place”.

Why produce, print and send a several hundred page catalogue (even if it is on recycled paper!) when I have not given you ANY business and the previous tactic in sending me a brochure didn’t work either?

Please God, marketers stop doing this. Stop producing mass marketing, with some strange attempt at making it personal. Boden I have a sneaky suspicion that you could’ve saved a load of money by producing a simple direct mail piece carrying the same campaign – but making it actually personal. This way, there would’ve been no need to print the whole brochure – you could’ve given me a personalised website or asked me to contact you if I was actually interested in receiving the brochure. Then once you know that I am interested again – and it’s relevant – you could print and send the brochure.

Nice campaign, poor execution I am afraid!

Even when the product of service is outstanding – if the after-sale care that you receive is below par it can easily destroy all the good work done. Let me give you an example:

Several months ago we purchased a kitchen from Decor1988 – after a long time searching for a kitchen. Decor’s attitude to pre-sales was very friendly, no, outstanding – which was a pleasant change given other high-street names that we had spoken to.

Decor1988 fitters were also outstanding – as a team nothing was too much problem. They were excellent at what they did, and how they fitted the kitchen. They even went the extra mile (on several occasions) to fix areas of the kitchen that were seemingly not under their control – such as replacing unlevel plaster-work so as to ensure that the finish was perfect!

We were so impressed that we immediately recommended them to others – and one of our neighbours even had their kitchen refitted on the back of the work that was done in our house!

However since the kitchen has been completed we are now in that period of post-sales customer service care; that so many companies let fail them. Decor1988 seem to have fallen into this trap as well.

We had to wait weeks for a several parts that had either not turned up, were incorrect or had been originally damaged – and we had to be the ones that chased for this.

Unfortunately this week we also noticed a slow leak that had appeared in the cavity walling in the utility room. The leak has (over a period of time I believe) completely saturated the plasterboard where the ceiling meets the wall from the inside out. The pipe that was causing the leak is the hot-water pipe that was directly worked on when the kitchen was fitted. No other work has been carried out on that area since – and it was decorated the week after the kitchen was fitted, and was all well then.

What has been upsetting and subsequently ruined the reputation that I have with Decor1988 is their attitude to customer service. Some would’ve tried to claim 100% of the repair bill from the fitters – but I would like to believe we are more reasonable than that. Some acceptance of responsibility, a more importantly a hand of help in fixing the problem would have been fantastic. However Decor1988 response was to categorical deny any responsibility or show any willing to help resolve the issue; when clearly the leak is on a pipe that was directly worked on during the fitting and has happened since the fitting. The company’s position is that the leak is the ultimately the result of a bad joint – and they cannot be held responsible for fixing defects in the original build – yet their fitter’s approach was to say, “that wall is uneven and will ultimately make the finish sub-standard – don’t worry, we’ll replace it for you now. no charge!”

At the end of the day, the damage is minimal, contained to a small area and seemingly easy to fix and repair – and our house insurance will probably cover it all. However it just astounds me as to how one company’s approach to after-sales service can undo such outstanding work!

As I said to the Paul, the owner of Decor1988, “your pre-sales is great, your fitter’s workmanship is outstanding, your kitchen is great – but your negative approach to customer service has just ruined a great reputation”.

Maybe it’s better to have an average service, with an average service, followed up with average customer service. That way your expectation is expectedly ‘average’. It might just be but if I receive excellent pre-sales and service from a company – I invariably expect excellent after-sales – and when your expectations are built up to a high-level and then so quick knocked down it comes as a big disappointment.

It’s a shame really!

I have always struggled in getting this to work – but now I have a solution.

Firstly you will need to enter:

sudo apt-get install libstdc++5 sun-java6-plugin

followed by added the following two lines into your ~/.profile file:

export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.66
export PATH=$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH

Then restart your server all just your X-Server and you should be able to join the WebEX meeting successfully!

What is interesting though is the shear amount of information that people display about themselves on their Facebook pages. Names, locations, birthdates, religious beliefs, who your married to or currently dating. We share photos, stories and information with hundreds of people every day – and in many cases we actually know very little about the people that we are sharing this private information with.

It’s like a stranger arriving at your door, and asking you for your name, date of birth, photos of your kids, and a few other personal details! I’m not sure about you but if a stranger knocked on my door, they get approximately 2 seconds to give me good reason to keep the door open before I slam it! So what’s different with Facebook?

In an age of identity theft we have never been so open with our information – that is one of the disadvantages of the Internet!

So if you are a facebook user, then stop, and look at what you are sharing – and more importantly who you are sharing it with!

Here are my top tips to start protecting yourself within Facebook.

1. Hide your year of birth.

Displaying your year of birth to all is pretty dangerous in my opinion – not just because to tells everyone exactly how old you are; but it’s also a good security question that you would normally be asked, and sometimes incorporated into people passwords. Not showing it also helps to protect yourself against identity fraud – and let’s face it Facebook is the identify thieves’ greatest tool if they want to know anything about you!

How: On your facebook profile, click on the ‘Info’ tab and then select ‘Edit Information’ and then under ‘Basic Information’ change the option to either, “Don’t show my birthday in my profile” or “Show only day and month in my Profile”.

2. Maintain a ‘’Private Life’!

Just remember that anything that you or your kids/family put up onto facebook is potentially public – to others. For example if you upload an embarrassing photo and I am not your friend, I wouldn’t normal know about it – however if one of MY friends make a comment on one of your photos (because they are your friends) then I can see that action; and then also see the photo. Be warned!

3. Use your friends list

Friends lists in facebook is not only useful but also important – it essentially allows you to ‘Group’ your friends into different lists. Once you’ve done that you can start to manage them better. To access your Friends  list – hover over the ‘Friends’ menu at the top, and then select ‘All Friends’.

Now you will see all your friends, and to the left side of the screen, you will see you have one list. called ‘Friends’ – which means that everyone is treated the same as your friend.

What you need to do now is start create different lists and places your friends in one or more of those lists. So for example you might have a ‘Friend List’ called, ‘Family’ and another called, ‘Close Friends’ and potentially some like ‘Friends, but never met!’

To create a new list simply click on ‘Create new list’, give it a name and then start selecting which of your friends should be in that list.

For me I have lists such as Family, Close Friends, Friends of Friends, School Friends, and Business Contacts to name a few.

3. Adjust your privacy settings to control who see what

By default in facebook you share all your information, photos, wall posts to all of your friends (and their friends in many cases). This is something that you need to think about carefully. Whilst my family members are indeed my friends (most of the time!) and I am happy to share my embarrassing photos with them – ‘Bob’ who I have never met, nor actually know but is in my friends list – do I really want him to see those photos as well?

So the best way is to change your privacy settings. To do this simply select ‘Privacy Settings’ from under the ‘Settings’ menu on your facebook page.

Then you will want to click on ‘Profile’ to change the privacy settings of who can see various elements of your profile.

Firstly select ‘Profile’ and you will see that you can define who can see your profile. Personally, I would select ‘Friends’ Only’ here.

Now continue down the list selecting different settings for different areas of your profile.

4. Avoid the embarrassing tagged photos

It only takes an embarrassing situation, a camera, Facebook and a ‘tagged image’ and all your friends, family, colleagues and half the world suddenly can laugh at you. Not great at the best at times, but what if the photo that you were tagged in was not actually you? That’s both embarrassing and potentially hurtful.

The best way to protect against this is to restrict which of your ‘friends list’ can see the photos that you have been tagged in. Under ‘Photos Tagged of You’ in your privacy settings, select the option “Only Me” and then “None of My Networks” if you would like to keep all tagged photos private. If you’d like to make tagged photos visible to certain users you can choose to add them in the box under the “Some Friends” option. In the box that displays after you select “Some Friends” you can type either individual friends or friend lists.

I would suggest that you did the same for ‘Video Tagged of You’ to remove the video nastys as well.

5. Protect your photo albums

The previous section only protects photos for which you are tagged in – however what about all the photos that you upload and store in your own albums? Do you really want all those photos shared amongst everyone?

“If anyone called Jason Micheal White, Jason White, James Ryan White, Phil Gibson, Shelly White, Daniel White, Hayley Omalley or Hayley White try to add u, dont accept!! They copy pics of ur kids & sell them to perverts, they’re fake! Please copy paste & inform all ur friends, we need to put a stop to them, police R informed, plz take it seriously .. I’ve been told to pass the message, Please do the same too!” – Taken from a Facebook posting today.

Well, there is a way to protect your photo albums as well. Firstly click on your ‘Profile’ and then  click on ‘See All’. You will then see an option for ‘Album Privacy’;

From here you will be able to select who can and who cannot see each one of your albums.

6. Don’t be afraid to remove friends

Every once in a while take a look at who your friends are – and ask yourself, “Am I still OK with this person seeing what I am doing?”. If not then remove then – or place them in a group that only sees a small amount of your information. It could be an ex-boyfriend or a complete stranger. Nothing feels better than culling a few people off your friends list!

7. Be careful when mixing work and play

If you are like a lot of people you will have both friends, family and work colleagues in your friends list. If you do, then think carefully in what you share. Is your boss, or one of your work colleagues privy to what you are saying? People have been sacked for posting a defamatory comment about their employer on Facebook – or updating their status saying that they are pulling a ‘sicky’!

If you do have work colleagues on your friends list then consider placing them all in a separate friends list (as mentioned above) and restricting what they can and cannot see.

If in any doubt – check it out!

There is a great way to ACTUALLY see what another person can see from your profile on Facebook. Use it to check up on yourself through another’s eye – and use it to check your security settings. To access this gold nugget go back to your Privacy settings page – and at the top there is an option to, “See how a friend sees your profile”.

Enter in one of your friends names and spend a few minutes in their shoes looking at your profile!

It still has some work to do on it – and a few edits to the templates files; but nothing that has stopped me releasing it. The small edits can roll out now over the next week or so.

Drop me a comment and let me know what you think.

Nice one Dominos. And who says that virall marketing does not work! I’m just a tad miffed that I only found out about this after the event and after I paid full price for mine the other night. Oh, Well!

Petrol tax rise comes into force

Motorists are now paying an extra 2.12p per litre of petrol as a government fuel tax increase comes into force…

But alas no – this one is indeed true. Petrol taxes are rising again; from today which means that the cost of fuel will rise by over 2p!

I have to ask to the question, “Was this a timely planned release of bad news by the Government?”. Was it some Government minister that decided that they could do some damage limitation by releasing this on a day in which people will believe that everything is untrue. A day when the average man will say,

“Ha! Petrol going up! How silly is that? During a recession! As if! That must be an April Fools, the Government wouldn’t do that! Would they?”

Only when they pull into the forecourt will the realisation hit them (in the wallet) that this little snippet is indeed true!

 BBC NEWS | UK | Petrol tax rise comes into force.