Viral marketing of an absurd kind

I generally don’t take any interest in celebrity gossip but the recent story about Kirsten Stewart’s affair with a married film director raised an eyebrow.

Basically she was dating her co-star from the Twilight films but has recently admitted to cheating on him with the director of her new film. So let me get this straight; a couple who play a couple in a film are actually a couple in real life and she had an affair with a guy who was the director in her new film and whose wife played her mother in that film. Who says Hollywood isn’t incestuous?

The whole saga is obviously done for publicity. Actors and pop stars basically rely on the public’s peculiar need for celebrity gossip and have to keep dreaming up new and ingenious ways of keeping themselves in the public eye. Quite how the Twilight saga was so popular is something I’ll never understand but the chances of her new film being anywhere near as popular are highly unlikely. This “affair” is just a way of saying “I’m a stupid, insecure moron. Please watch my new film”.

It’s a kind of perversion of what is done in the business world. We have to do something called “marketing” which involves getting our name and brand seen in such a way that convinces people to phone us up and buy our products and services. This blog is technically marketing. Here I am basically saying “I am a grumpy individual who thinks the Twilight films are a dubious story involving a girl torn between necrophilia and bestiality. Please let us design you a website.”

Admittedly the above probably won’t generate any business at all but I know quite a few people read this drivel. It might even make some people chuckle. Either way it gets our name into the public conscious. It might also be something that people will forward to their friends. As a result, our name and brand spreads. Fair enough, comments about necrophilia might mean we spread more like a disease but viral marketing is very effective. It’s almost as effective as the celebrity virus which has now consumed 95 percent of the globe and will soon wipe out all intelligent life on this planet.

Facebook leaves a smelly floater

So Facebook took the decision to float itself on the stock market. Given it is one of the biggest and most well known brands on the planet now, you would think this was an obvious move. Well, given that it is one of the biggest and most well know brands in the world, I’d argue that it is over-valued and over-hyped.

So how has it got on in its first few days? Well, not very well seems to be the answer. As an over-valued and over-hyped brand, people paid over the odds for shares and the value has plummeted because there is no real value behind it. Of course I can’t really comment because I know nothing about the stock market. When I first read about its IPO, I just assumed it was another Facebook chat acronym like LOL and ROFL. And if anyone asked me about floating stock I’d hand them a coat hanger and tell them to break it up and try flushing the lavatory again.

It surprises me that anyone was daft enough to buy shares. After the massive dot com boom in the early noughties when companies like Lastminute.com were floated for obscene amounts and then crashed, I would have thought people would have learned that lesson. Apparently not. I mean how does one value a company like Facebook? Is it based on the number of users? Is it based on the amount it earns in revenue? Is it based on how many personal details it shares with the FBI? How do you quantify such a thing?

Twitter has apparently been valued at a Sicilian dollars as well. How does Twitter even make any money? It doesn’t offer PPC advertising. It has no obvious revenue stream. It has no real value other than to allow people to stalk their favourite celebrities and update their fake friends on the colour of their turds. Perhaps I’m naive but if a Twit offered to sell me a share of Twitter for more than 1p I’d tell them to chirp off and offer me something cheap…

Making apple sauce out of customer service

My long-running battle with my iPhone might finally be over. Ever since I upgraded I have been plagued by constant crashing, a rubbish internet connection and the even more painful battle to quell my desire to hurl the stupid thing across the room or stick it in the new fire I’ve recently had installed in my living room.

Having taken the thing to o2, they helpfully informed me that it was a problem with Apple and I had to go and take it to my nearest Apple store (which is half an hour’s drive) and see an “Apple Genius”. Yes an Apple Genius is an actual job title; probably the stupidest job title next to “Labour Prime Minister”.

The whole experience is quite surreal. An Apple store is quite literally something out of a sci-fi move. The whole room is spotlessly clean, clinically white and there are banks of Macs stationed in millimetre-precision locations along work stations that look like they are made out of exotic materials.

At the end of the room is the “Genius Bar”. It’s quite a weird experience being informed by a cyborg to take a seat at the Genius Bar. I genuinely went up there and almost ordered a pint.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, the Genius was a typical Mac user. Now, let me explain something: Mac users are like religious extremists. They are convinced that their beloved computer deity is superior to everything else and get really rather angry if you dare to argue against them. They refuse to accept anyone else’s point of view and they preach to you in that naïve but arrogant way and will stop at nothing to try to convert you.

The first thing the guy did was ask me what operating system I used. He gave me that smug, know-it-all expression and sagely nodded his head when I told him I run Windows on a PC. His initial response was to tell me that was the most likely cause of the crashing and informed me that this sort of thing never happens on a Mac. Using the self control garnered over recent weeks that prevented me from smashing my iPhone to pieces, I managed not to punch him to the floor but instead enquired how my computer could possibly cause my iPhone to be so rubbish and, even if that was the case, why it didn’t affect my old phone. He explained it was something to do with iTunes and suggested I reinstalled it.

Naturally I explained that I had already tried that, I had also restored the factory settings, had installed the latest software that was supposed to fix a similar glitch and also sagely pointed out that it is a bit daft to make something that doesn’t work properly on an operating system that is still used more widely than a Mac.

Taking the hint, he then did something unexpected. He offered to replace it. There and then. No questions asked. I was stunned. Normally people try to convince you it’s somehow your fault that their product is rubbish. They try to make excuses just to get you to go away and leave them alone. They insist you try meditating and pray to Allah and tell you to come back another day when there is a full moon and Venus has aligned with Jupiter.

So for all their blustering about how mighty their stuff is, you have to hand it to Apple; their customer service is superior to most.