Author Archives: Nick Clarke

Nick Clarke

Nick is the Marketing Manager of Profero London. Having only returned to advertising in 2008, after a break pursuing other interests, he’s a relative latecomer to social media but has been swept up in all its glorious potential. He writes for a number of on- and off-line publications, none of which have anything to do with marketing, communications or selling things.

For Crimes Against Language….

Smoke and Mirrors

The chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words – Hippocrates

Pop quiz, readers. Re-calibrate your synapses, set your faces to stunned and prepare for linguistic splashdown. Feast your eyes on this smorgasbord of gibberish and pick out the runt of the litter:

“Building a conversation strategy will allow us to visually see our complete marketing ecosystem and bake in our communication throughout all touch points.”

“First, by socializing all media, the engagement experience is cyclical and ongoing. Second, by identifying conversation groups (social graphs) and tapping directly into them and then connecting them together, the long tail of niche market segments become your mass or ‘mainstream’ media play.”

“Develop a multi-faceted communication program utilizing both traditional media and truly interactive social media channels, where listening and acting upon your human being’s wants is KING”

“A multimedia mix framed to spark conversations requires a compelling message concept that can work across a multimedia platform.”

“…Package the compelling message (internal marketing, external marketing and social network marketing) into an organized dashboard that exponentially expands website real estate, then push the content in real time to all product/service distribution points…”

Which of these abominations were written with a straight face, by real people with working brains? And which is the fraudulent imposter, demanding to be bound in the back of a transit van, driven to a remote woodland clearing and shot at close range through the back of the head? Well, are you sitting down? Because, remarkably, they are all genuine. And to someone somewhere they really do mean something.  To those displaying the characteristics of sentient and evolved human beings, however – upright, opposable thumbs, a rational mistrust of Scientology and men with winter tans – they are nothing more than a dreadful noise. A low, humming dreadful noise. And as someone who sat through much of the Guantanamo Bay-inspired torture purporting to be cutting-edge insight, from the industry’s “leading thinkers” at this year’s Cannes Festival, like a latter day, hairier Martha Gellhorn I can report from the frontline that this sort of smoke-and-mirrors propaganda is not restricted to the written word. People actually say this stuff, too. And other people clap. Loudly. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. Or, to put it less succinctly, the Danish vertical has become unsynergised from the positive engagement factor of the mainstream virtual/emotional experience vector.

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Beware the Angry Mob…

Over the last couple of months the angry mob have been hard to escape. Pitchforks have been sharpened and the gates are rattling. Of course, if you read the Daily Mail then this sort of behaviour is de rigueur, but more recently a new breed of righteous Puritanism has emerged, a more dangerous sort. And it is born entirely from the Internet.

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Shanks’s Pony

Profero London’s copywriting brainiac, Alastair Mills, wanted to get from City Thameslink to Angel tube station in London. By Train. His first port of call? Transport for London, naturally. Their advice? Don’t bother, mate. Walk.

If nothing else, you’ve got to admire their honesty…..

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A People’s History of the Internet

Today’s Guardian Newspaper has this very simple but interesting graphic on The People’s History of the Internet. From the first “digital connection” in 1969 to Twitter and the Trafigura scandal only a last week. Check it out here.

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My Sky Status – new travel tool from Lufthansa

My Sky Status

My Sky Status

Profero New York has just launched a new travel tool for Lufthansa: MySkyStatus™. Free and easy to set up, MySkyStatus sends precise departure, altitude, location and arrival updates automatically to the traveler’s

Facebook and Twitter pages while they’re in the air. MySkyStatus is able to track all flights so travelers of all airlines can keep their global networks updated as they travel the globe. So, not just take off and landing but precisely where you’re flying over and the altitude which you are flying at. Sit back and relax during your long, or short flights knowing that your friends, family, and coworkers are kept in the know. Gone are the times of boring out of office emails!

We hope you enjoy MySkyStatus, and happy travels to you.

Posted in Branded Experience, Utility | Comments closed
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