The Rye

Heres not how to do it!

Great story on BBC News.  A classic opportunity for Samuel Smiths to generate some good PR for themselves presents itself and they decide to go on record saying, in not so many words, that they couldn't give a stuff about their customers views. 

So, not only naive about the media but also with a slightly bizarre sense about how business works.  Anyway, I decided to have a look at what they say about themselves online.  The result...nothing, no website (or not one that Google or I could find).  Which rather appears to back up the impression from the BBC article. I'm sure that anyone at the Brewery would argue that pubs are at the heart of communities, so why the failure to adopt one of the easiest ways of communicating with them?

Death of a Brand

Last night our boiler would not shut up.  Despite not having the heating on nor any demand from the hot water, the fan whirred and whirred, keeping me and, most importantly, our house guest awake.  Anyway, having finally given up on it switching itself off , I dragged myself from my pit and turned it off at the wall and resolved to get it serviced ASAP.

 

It wasn't that long ago that if I was thinking about getting the boiler serviced I would simply call British Gas.  After all I knew people who worked for British Gas, they went to school with me, they lived just around the corner and British Gas seemed to spell out trust, reliability and service.  So this morning Rachel called me and told me that there was a great '£50 to service your boiler' offer from British Gas, I would have expected myself to think "great, that's fine, I know I can trust the 'Gas Man' (as they used to be called) to be honest with me and get the old one working properly if humanly possible."

 

The thing is, I didn't.  In fact I suggested that we potentially paid more to use someone local - or even a larger outfit such as Pimlico Plumbers (who ain't cheap), rather than the trusty 'Gas Man'.  I don't really know when my perception changed, its not so much the high prices (and their profits), I think its more the fact that they seem to lack knowledgeable people - their call centre is awful and every interaction seems to be a sales opportunity.  So I guess that by calling British Gas, I feel they are less likely to give me good old fashioned advice and more likely to tell me that I should buy a new boiler - simply because it helps the engineer meets their sales targets.

 

The greatest problem for British Gas is that I have no proof on which to base this perception but it has coloured my judgement to such an extent that I simply don't trust the brand.  Shame really, British Gas' strongest card was the fact that you would be happy to trust their advice - "The boiler is playing up, I'd better see what the Gas man has to say." - yet in its desire to create a modern, sales focused company, it has managed to lose its best opportunity for qualified sales leads.

Et Tu, Brute?

Well what a fantastic story for slap bang in the middle of silly season.  Usually at this time of year the political columnists are reduced to speculating on what shorts the PM is wearing on the beach and the proposed agenda for the coming conference season.  So a strong piece of editorial from the foreign secretary on 'the case for labour' taking a broader view of the government's role rather than being utterly fixated by the PM was finally something of substance that they could get their teeth stuck into.

But...the thought that Milliband is about to run a full scale leadership bid is frankly laughable.  He knows that he has a strong chance of being labour leader at some point, he also knows Michael Heseltine's famous quote "He who wields the knife, never wears the crown" (although to be fair this didn't apply in Brown's case). 

Millliband is being sensible, the debate around the Labour government's performance has got to be taken in a wider context than a straightforward judgement on GB's character.  The public have got tired of hearing drippy ministers rolling out some loyalist claptrap dreamt up by a press officer in number 10.  What we need is true cabinet leadership, with ministers putting forward strong ideas about how the government collectively has the vision to take the country forward.  We got rid of the feudal court  centuries ago and for very good reason.... perhaps some of our esteemed members of the press need to be reminded.