The story of Mr. Orlov, crystallising from the days of little beginnings on the TV screens as the aristocrat with the immensely popular ‘simples’ catchphrase, is set to balloon into a global literary icon with the release of the ‘autobiography’.

Already, the book is being tipped to top the Chrismas book charts ahead of authors including Tony Blair and Nelson Mandela.

Amazon, the retailers announced that it led it’s category of Movers and Shakers list after the book – titled ‘A Simples Life, My Life & Times’ -was published.

Aleksandr is something of an enigma. Despite hitting it off and building a very strong affinity with the viewers – a phenomenon the actual brand, comparethemarket website should be wary of – yet there has persisted, a fascinating symbiotic relationship between the two.

It remains to be seen if this latest venture, of continuing a very interesting story, from the TV screens to paperbacks will not make Aleksandr the brand at the detriment of the motherbrand.

I suppose the story in the book will exploit the ‘human angle’ execution of the TV Spots and relate to the ups and downs of life and the need to find the best insurance….

Anyway, this has been all good for as long as it went and particularly enjoyed the metamorphosis of a fictional character across different media and channels. I am on the lookout for what happens next after the book release!

I think mimicking the successful TV episodes will be a tough act to follow if they decide to stretch the book bit for the same reason why East Enders episodes aren’t literary cliff-hangers.

I guess the base for the popularity of this ‘autobiography’, already into Amazon’s TOP 100 list on the strength of pre-orders alone, finds a comfortable fulcrum on the axis of 763,000 fans on Facebook, 41,000 followers on Twitter and a whopping 700,000 iPhone app downloads.

Getting into the court of this Consumer-King became competitive, innovative and most brands are forced to wade in uncharted territories before they get audience.

First, traditional advertising was conquered as the consumer won’t be dictated to. Brand marketing and communications had to stop talking down at him/her and stop reaching dodgy conclusions in the ‘boardrooms’. He/she could now create own content and google for services/product and could also create such when unavailable – some dissatisfied students turning their research work at Stanford into Google, outwit Yahoo and get their company name to become a verb, noun and adjective all at once!

That was aided by the democratization of technology, effectively reducing the barriers for entry and forcing wide scale competitiveness globally.

With the new found ‘voice’ of their own, and new confidence and power to influence, the consumer quickly expanded into the world of social networking. Myspace, Facebook, Twitter and other ‘congregational’ sites then became platforms for peer-to-peer and gregarious interaction.

Since the consumers cannot be contained in their quest for ever more freedom, fast thinking brands had to become gatekeepers of any new trend the consumer might introduce and then leverage existing technologies and platforms as an aide, a playfield to their whims and caprice.

Iphone was quick to seize the initiative of allowing its phone to become the platform where developers of applications met the royal expectations of consumers. {Palms started it but floundered} Apps developers are in effect, consumers themselves and take inspirational insights from the streets and friends.

Same could be said of Google and Facebook.

But one thing is giving a new meaning to ‘integrated marketing’ more than anything else today is apps.

What are apps?

According to techtarget.com, ‘The term application is a shorter form of application program. An application program is a program designed to perform a specific function directly for the user or, in some cases, for another application program. Examples of applications include word processors, database programs, Web browsers, development tools, drawing, paint, image editing programs, and communication programs. Applications use the services of the computer’s operating system and other supporting applications. The formal requests and means of communicating with other programs that an application program uses is called the application program interface (API).’

Social Networking platforms

What that means, in my own definition is – remember when you signed up on Facebook and wanted to play Scrabble? You clicked on the Scrabble sign and some interface came up and asked you to ‘allow Scrabble application’. You were then able to play the whole game again and again. In fact, you might have spent more time on the Scrabble app than on FB itself, made contact and struck up friendship.

Now map your experience on social networking site personally. You’d find that it’s being defined and shaped more than ever by the countless apps you can choose and match your own personal affinity and interests to.

Now, an integrated marketing campaign isn’t complete without an app and the application program interface for social sites like Facebook, Twitter, Myspace and Bebo. {Advertising on the sites alone won’t just do}. Most websites now encourage you to ‘follow’ them on these sites. They use backward integration techniques to drive traffic to their sites and keep up with you on the social media sites.

IPhone
Earlier this year, the 1 billionth app was downloaded from the Apple apps store. Billions of currency notes have changed bank accounts, new millionaires made at triple the rate of the dot.com era while simple life problems are being solved.

If you’ve got an iPhone now, you could order your grocery from Ocado.com or plan you journey around the London Underground labyrinth or you could be spying on your ex via Google Earth!

It also means that businesses could decide to shift their office to your phone! Yesterday, City Index launched the first Spread Betting and CFD trading App for IPhone. That means you can participate in the world of stock market trading from just about anywhere!
See www.cityindex.co.uk

The next level that signifies is; when you have a successful conventional business model, you can push it up by making cross boundaries with an app. The import of that is you’re able to reach your target in a non-intrusive, personal and a much cosseted environment THEY choose. Certainly, you’d get far more thumbs up and chances are your cash register would ring more.

With a whole line-up of other smart phones copying this successful approach, the battle for the mind of the consumer is leaping from offices, newspaper/magazine pages, TV and radio into the palms of consumers via platforms of phones!

Games
It now looked so long ago that all games were played on some kind of paper board and later, creepy 2-D images on PC and the very first Sony PSP models.

Now you have full FX, HD productions like Grand Theft Auto, War of the Worlds, Resident Evil, Mortal Kombat e.t.c on equally technological marvel consoles – Xbox, Wii, PSP and countless others. You now have close to a billion people playing some form of games online and on devices. Market for recognized brands and the black market brands is inching towards a Billion dollars too.

Much more importantly, as technology improves and more people are hooked to games, games have now assumed a crucial importance in the marketing communications arena.

Now, the passion of live football is now translated into game versions both for online and device entertainment replete the sport stars, theme music and astounding graphics.

Films get their game version. Remember E.T, Chronicles of Riddick, Ghostbusters, Lord Of The Rings, Lion King, Aladdin e.t.c

Games are morph into films – Max Payne, Hitman, Doom, Tomb Raider e.t.c

Cartoons do all.

Even advertising campaigns are mucking in with fervor. Guinness, after a decade of ‘good things come to those who wait’ campaign launched the ‘Bring it to Life’ campaign done by Abbot Mead Vickers BBDO London.

The campaign, with footage shot on location in Canada, Fiji and New Zealand after a 3 month, intercontinental trek to find the perfect spots was anchored by Director Johnny Green joined by Lord Of The Rings set-designer, Grant Major.

With such an epic scale campaign, Guinness, through www.bringittolife.tv is currently reserving ‘plots’ of Google Earth land for gamers to shape and build after the November 29th. That is an attempt to copy the success of simple Facebook game – FarmVille.

So, there will be an app to bring the Guinness association with Google Earth collabo, inspired by FarmVille game.

More apps to help brands and businesses leverage on the social network, mobile and games consoles will continue unabated for a long time to come as long as humans have needs and wishes, and iPhones 90,000 current apps offering might have been upstaged by some smarter brand just like Google shot out of the blues back in the day.

And technology will gladly oblige.

In the world of booze and beer, where the entry barrier had been lowered from the Alpha male, meat eating, middle aged men to young things, barely legal teens pushing the boundaries of edgy, competition was always going to be rife, edge-of-the-sit and absolutely sophisticated.

Product label and packaging were sacred grounds not to be messed with then. Tennent Lager, Scotland’s leading brand saw an opportunity early on that proved to be very proactive.

Tennent exploited the Freudian male mindset by using photographic images of female pin-up girls on the packaging of their brand.

It did work. Sort of what Viagra did to the rather starry-eyed Old-Age-Pensioners. Iain Tait on his blog, crackunit.com remembers; “I’ve got vivid memories of my grandpa drinking these in Scotland wearing a cracking Rab C. Nesbit style vest…”

Fast-forward to 2009, the year the Polaroid was officially extinct, the rise of post-modern art has captivated out thoughts. From the roots of the likes of Andy Warhol, Josh Rosenthal, William Armstrong have come the elevation of the art democracy – with idols like Banksy and Damien Hurst managing to bring street art or non-conventional art to the fore.

Beck’s beer has caught unto that bug. Since the brilliant discovery of ‘limited edition’ line expansion as a great marketing tool, brands have pushed the limits.

Beck’s beer teamed up with London’s Royal College of Arts to project the work of 4 up and coming British artistes as part of a campaign tagged ‘Beck’s Canvas’ and imprinted on limited edition 27 million bottles of Becks.

The success of the Beck’s Canvas campaign was so much enamoring that Beck’s branched out into other forms of art. This time music took the front burner. Musicians LadyHawke and Hard-Fi joined the list of other celebrity artistes like Damien Hurst, Tracey Emin and Gilbert & George. Their works was put on more than 16 million Beck’s bottles last summer.

Like many other good ideas, takes aren’t always scarce. Brahma, another beer brand, decided to lean on the shoulders of street art and the popularity modern art has gained.

Reports made us believe; ‘In order to capture the spirit of the Brahma brand, Inbev UK held a competition for artists to submit designs based on Brazilian street art featuring the vibrant colours and joy of life of this exotic country. The top three designs were then made into sleeve artwork for the 330ml glass bottle.
In addition, the non-symmetric shape of the distinctive waisted bottle required precise pre-distortion of the sleeve design to ensure in particular that the information on the neck of the bottle was clearly readable and exactly replicated the standard neck label.”
Whatever it is, there’s some undeniable dynamism at work when a brand taps into the deep wells of established cultures/sub cultures to identify with the targets. It’s also a demonstration that consumers have seized the marketing initiative with clear definitions of how to lead their lives and tastes. Brands can only be smart to support, provide platforms for expression and motivate.

I and my friend were looking to get a fast bite at the KFC at the other side of the road when we came across the empty lot just before the flagship Primark store. The first thing that hits you is the rather gargantuan effigy of the new Fiat 500C.

Of course, we forgot about KFC for the time being and took a detour. I brought out my camera to capture the moment as security staff nudged us towards the astro-turf where those shiny pastel-colour Fiat 500c sat coyly.

I was offered the chance to sit and take picture in the red, sporty one. The slim, pretty lady staff mumbled something about it being a competition and I could win if my smile was the best!

The dashboard of the Fiat looked post-modern. More like a space ship actually. I loved the neon lighting and the in-built mp3 /CD player. It’s got a 16” alloy wheels to boot and you can squeeze yourself into the tightest of parking places.

Next to the belly of the gigantic effigy. Perfect experience. It’s a reconfiguration of the actual car, only 30 times bigger. Then came on the overhead cinema showing different areas of the lunar bodies. And it was fun to see Fiat 500 being driven on Mars! Did I mention the surround sound and lighting?

I got my free picture plus a giant poster and I still could not get that small car out of my big imagination up till now!

I think it’s a good experiential marketing idea. Little did I know they started the whole shebang at the Notting Hill carnival. Now, they’ve also succeeded in getting my family and friends exposed to the Fiat 500 because I have been asking them to vote online for me.

Not a small way to launch a mini car.

I belong to the school of thought that expects wittiness from communication, in addition to informing and entertaining.

Now in the UK, it’s become very fashionable to end your summations with the word ‘simples’. That has been made popular by this insanely humorous ads featuring Aleksandr, the Russian meerkat.

This ad uses the cultural idiosyncracies as creative tool to get it’s message across wittily in a monotonously cluttered product category. It masterly brought together the knowledge of a host of variables which includes – wildlife {meerkats}, Language {Russian-accented English} culture {regional names} to make a fine creative mix.

The adverts focus on the meerkat’s president’s annoyance at people confusing comparethemeerkat.com and comparethemarket.com. as it’s creative leeway.

This ad was very successful it had almost half a million people watching it on youtube in the first 3 months of its launch.

And way before the creative awards season, the floodgates of other acknowledgement have opened. It recently won the Marketing Initiative of the Year Award hosted by Post Magazine and comedian Dara O’Briain. 1,800 of the industry’s leading professionals were at the Royal Albert Hall to honour the initiative.

comparethemarket.com’s managing director, Kal Samra, stated she was absolutely thrilled to have won the award, and went on to say that it was a reward for a new and innovative approach.

This is the kind of ad i see an ‘wished i was behind it’. Now it has spurned thousands of twitter followers and it’s jingles are being used as ringtones more ads have been spurned from the same character.

If you take the Jekyll and Hyde kind of relationship between Great Britain and Russia into consideration, you’s understand the brilliance of the ‘tongue-in-cheekiness’ of this ad. It’d be nice to have a scenario where the always glum-faced Gordon Brown plays this to Medyedev.

And out of the over 180 different world nationalities residing in the UK, to bring out the beauty in the Babushka Russian interpretation is good for a change from the ubiquitous Jamaican Patois.

watch the Blooper, the comic version of the ad released for viral effect online below to enjoy the language play. You do hear that from on the tube or in the bus from the large Eastern European community in London!

These guys did there homework well. They didn’t allow the comparethemeerkat.com variable fallow. It was the fulcrum of the creative idea and i love what they did to it in real life. They actually set up a website for it and made it work nicely as a sidekick for the main brand website.

check it out on http://www.comparethemeerkat.com/home. And the monopoly of the meerkat idea universe was completed by the spoof site www.comparethemeercat.com in case you type in the wrong stuff into te search engine!

I remember how this kind of language/cultural idiosyncractic idea was rejected after production by one of the biggest banks in Nigeria. The excuse was it wouldn’t cut across the cultural divide! Duh!

So we keep ignoring a whole mine of creative possibilities due to the myopic views of some brand managers. Nothing personal. ‘Simples!’.

Watch out for this ad in the DA&D, and Cannes!

Ecotricity started the green energy movement in 1995

A defaced EDF Outdoor board

Olympic Cyclist Victoria Pendleton endorsing the EDF Union Jack

The Ecotricity Union Jack logo

It’s a supposedly simple case. Yet it befuddles the mind to a great extent as you’re forced to ponder on a flurry of questions and struggle for answers:

Is this a brand war designed to gain some increasingly important market share?

Is it the classic cultural battle that’d raged on for eons between the French and the English bobbing under the surface?

Is the claim by the smaller of the two on ethical issues just or is it that the bigger entity is just being hypocritical and sneaking unto current public emotions about climate change?

The Protagonist
Dale Vince to most people was a hippie living out in worn ex-military vehicles on hills and using windmills to power the lights and stuff. After 10 years on the road ‘searching for an alternative way to live’, he figured the answer wasn’t exactly being a perpetual ‘new age traveler’. According to him, on his website zerocarbonista.com, “That’s when I was inspired to ‘drop in’ and promote the use of large-scale wind energy – to bring change to the electricity industry. That was the start of this long journey”.

Pronto! All of that post-oil world philosophy and ‘green living’ was condensed into an energy company called ‘Ecotricity’.

Vince sure knows how and when to pick his strategic battles. When Tony Blair gave way to Gordon Brown, he took out a full page ad in The Guardian.

The page was filled up with the UNION JACK with the message: “an icon for change.The New Green Union Jack symbolises that change; a change in attitude, a positive new green energy ambition, and a new unity. Britain can come together if we focus on our common cause, it’s called climate change.”

He said of the ad later, “We’ve needed a change in power for a very long time. A change in power from Carbon to Renewable. Today I’d like to take Gordon at his word, I’d like to engage in an open debate on energy, environment and community – bring people together with a shared sense of national purpose so that we, Britain, have a say in the future of our country and can make sure we have one.”
Since then, that green Union Jack image had come to symbolise Ecotricity. And it would become the crux of battle in the unfolding marketing war.

The Antagonist

Enters Electricite de France, the state-owned energy company better known as EDF. This French concern supplies electricity to about 25% of British homes. It employs several thousands of British citizens and is planning on major extensions.

EDF is pumping money into the 2012 Olympics and is encouraging people to adopt a lower carbon footprint lifestyle.

It’s just that there are a few sticky points on its CV. EDF is the world’s biggest corporate producer of nuclear waste. They’re also one of the biggest traders and burners of coal – with a tiny fleet of windmills (0.7% of their generation).

So when off the back of it’s sponsorship of the Olympics it began a ferocious ‘Green Britain’ campaign with the slogan ‘Do something green for he team’ complete with the same green Union Jack symbol Ecotricity launched some 3 odd years earlier, you know the fireworks would fly.

The Fallout

Ecotricity have launched a legal action against the French giant for ‘stealing’ its planet-friendly Union Jack logo.. And they’re not alone. British Gas and Npower have drawn up adverts ridiculing EDF July 10th 2009 day of celebrations, saying ‘everyday’ is green Britain inside their companies.

Vincent de Rivaz, chief executive of EDF Energy contends that: “We want to harness the power of the Games to bring people together across communities to take collective action against climate change.”

Dale Vince insists that the initiative should be dubbed Greenwash Day “to celebrate that relatively modern phenomenon of companies trying to sell themselves as being rather greener and more ethical than they are”.

Meanwhile, British Gas began a campaign with the slogan “is thinking about new ways to be green every single day” while Npower is rolling out its own educational programme, Climate Cops, starring the strapline: “Everyday’s a green day for Climate Cops.”

What do you think?

It’s a fine line for me. While admitting that the use of the Union Jack icon is a blatant nicking of an idea, I believe the issue of climate change is far bigger than any single brand and if I’d invested millions in sponsoring the Great Games, would it not be foolhardy not to milk the opportunity?
Yet we have to ask, before public opinion swayed heavily towards green living and before the Olympic Games, what was EDF’s strategic intent and positioning other than churning out large swathes of nuclear waste and burning more coal than everyone else?

One of the custodians of the language, the revered Merriam Webster publishing house recently released a sample of more than 100 new words that have been granted entry into its Collegiate dictionary. A fifth of that relate to the technological revolution.

‘Vlog’ is a new word defined as a blog having video content.
“Webisode” is referred to as a TV show that can be viewed through a website.

A slew of old expressions have found their way into the Webster’s dictionary too, years after they were coined, as a result of renewed use on the internet.

“Flash Mobs” first used in 1987, meaning crowds that descend on a designated location to perform an event, is in the list.
You’d remember the Liverpool street dance where a group of people met on Facebook and decided they were going to recreate the hugely popular T-mobile ad showing on TV then – thanks to social network sites, e-mail and text messages all playing the facilitator roles.

There are also a few words i have come to know and like and also use. Words like ‘Frenemy’ – defined as someone who pretends to be a friend but is in fact an enemy. You already might have gotten used to words like ‘Carbon Footprint’ – referring to the amount of CO2 gases you generate, and “Green Collar”, meaning jobs designed to help the environment.

Even music is not left out. ‘Reggaeton’ has been invented to describe a fusion of rap, carribean rhythms blended with a Puerto Rican flavour.

All of these means that language is dynamic and would keep taking the shape and hues of time and seasons. It also presents us within the communication industry new lines to break the ice and get under the skins of our targets.

If we speak their language, chances are, we’d be able to chat up new people and be deeper friends with the older friends.

180 million users and growing

I had some free 48 hours on my hands because Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London couldn’t persuade the RMT Union from grounding the London Underground tube network.

I was getting tired of being a ‘worker’ all my life, so I grabbed the Autobiography of Duncan Bannatyne to learn about how he got himself from selling ice cream to being one of the dragons in the popular TV show – Dragon’s Den.

Curiously, I came across the book ‘Global Brand Strategy’ by Sicco Van Gelder. It’s a new book and the shopkeeper at the Russell Square bookshop was enthusiastic about how many people have been squirreling it off the shelves.

I got one and from the Content Table, I could almost smell this guy’s cooking some delicious stuff. Just as I began reading through the preface, another incident broke out on the international scene – The Iran Election and protests.
I had been, for the last 6 months, concerned about the role of culture, nationalistic inclinations, demographics and cross-cultural influences on global branding.

It was therefore, a good thing the preface of the book by Sicco Van Gelder started with tracing the background of globalization from the colonial era. I was beginning to agree with him until a certain Mir Hussein Mousavi accused the hitherto ‘unquestionable’ supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei of ‘electoral misconduct’ by endorsing the re-election of hardliner Ahmedinejad.

Suddenly, all hell broke loose and the kind of social unrest never witnessed since 1979 in that great country unravelled. Iran is an ancient country. Culturally rich and politically well-grounded. She can boast of leaders with globalization intent way back 3000 years. Names like King Achaemenid, Cyrus the Great, Darius.

These kings pursued the concept of globalization through political and military routes. They imported their brand of leadership, customs and cultures.

Van Gelder, I haven’t started the book indepth but I think globalization has always been a human concept. The colonialists only picked up the usual tools from history. Only that industrialization and educational advancement brought a new perspective to it.

Back to modern day Iran, the conservative authorities tried their best to suppress the uprising that the discontent over the results of the election was now becoming. Thousands of people literarily stomped the streets in defiance of the government.

While the authorities tried their best to suppress information filtering out to the world by censoring information on TV, Radio, Press and satellite TV with success, they found one domain practically impossible – The power of social network.

While the bulk of those who stood up to the perceived American dominance in the 70’s are now parents, their kids were growing up on new phenomenon called the internet. They were able to monitor and ‘experience’ what was going on in other economies and relate it to their own situations.

Suddenly, files can be copied and lies disproved via googling. News filtering out of Iran lends credit to YouTube and Facebook plus a determined crew of fearless bloggers who kept reeling out news on a scale that CNN would envy.

That brings a question to my mind. What is the true value of the internet and the big gate-keepers of social information platforms like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and the likes in building global brands, especially in an age the geographical lines means nothing?

YouTube launched a spectacular career for Susan Boyle of the ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ fame. But traffic to that cite was fuelled by a celebrity post. It was fawned on by millions of Facebook adherents. Perfect example of how information could be accessed multi-culturally and socially without geographical limitation.

My head is still going round in a circle. Which of the books should I progress first? Is it to become a millionaire like Duncan Bannatyne or keep challenging my grey matter with Van Gelder?

Just a few years ago, Palm was the innovative name in the Smartphone segment of the mobile market. Their Treo series were arguably the secret envy of the Apple Inc.

Naturally it’s not only the bees always interested in honeycombs. Entered BlackBerry and iPhone

The new Palm Pre

The new iPhone 32gig

And they had quite a few. The Treos were bulky, had lower picture resolution when compared to the competition, the design of the range were similar and aren’t quite avant garde, got no Wi-Fi, they still had storage in megabytes as against gigabytes and somewhat outdated browser OS.

Perhaps the greatest undoing of the Palm management was the ignorance of the fact that the marketing era had moved from a brand dominated environment to a socially participatory sphere.

In order words, we had moved on from user generated content to actually controlling our experience as consumers in social clusters. As such control has shifted in terms of determining user experience from the manufacturer to the users.

That’s the philosophy underpinning iPhone’s decision to have developers add applications that solves the problems of day-to-day living encountered by the consumers.

Phew, the market warmed up to it. President Obama couldn’t be separated from his BlackBerry.

And Palm lost ground. The stock price valued at $14.00 in 2005-2006 plummeted to $1.15.

Adversity is in full time.

January 2009, after a series of product launch faux pas, Palm announced it was going to get back in the game. Not a few people sniggered at the announcement. That wasn’t helped by the waves the 16 gig iPhone was making in the market. There were lines of eager people from New York to Newark, London to Loughton struggling to get their hands on the all powerful iPhone.

But 5 months down the line, the new Palm Pre is about hitting the market. The rave reviews have been effusive. It’s been described as the iPhone killer!

I wouldn’t know if that’s true, but what’s undeniable is, iPhone is reacting! It’s also announced a new built iPhone 32 gig with more apps. Could the Palm Pre be the trigger?

At least I can sit back and watch another marketing epic in the mould of the Cola wars between CocaCola and Pepsi. Maybe in the process, swap my tired Treo 650 for the Palm Pre.

Won’t be a bad idea.

So, with more dapper-suited executives finding the unending funds drying up {unless of course you are a MP in the UK with some stunning allowances to scoop} and spotaenous nights on the city being swapped for the humble meals of the Missus, hotels are finding the credit crunch flighty rather bumpy.

A lot of those glitzy and ritzy hospitality concerns are closing down or having to reposition for their very lives. This trend is as a result of a new consciousness from the price and value interpretations in today’s consumers minds.

In the words of Kevin Roberts, the world wide CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi, “The economic storm that has swept the world has made one point strikingly obvious: we are entering a new reality. We are already seeing people, who only a few months ago were still keen on making major purchases, putting all, or some, of that cash aside just in case. A few months ago you could walk through a supermarket and see the occasional shopper working out comparative prices with calculator in hand. This behavior is now commonplace.”

So what do you do, especially when your business falls into that ‘luxury’ bracket where yo know the axe will definitely fall?

The probabilities are; Close down and reinvest in a new venture, cut back on staff and expenses and be content with reduced profits or simply re-imagine and as a result, re-invent the business!

The option of re-imagining and re-inventing sure make a lot of sense to the Sanctum Soho hotel owners. After all, who’s going to help them get a bail-out like the banks? {Seems only the guys who got us into the mess are the ones qualified to also get bailed out as trends have shown!}.

So they must have taken a long, hard look at their future and seen that common misery would make people binge more, leave their shrinks and find solace in music. It then means Music celebrities, especially the most showy of the category, the rock stars would make loads of cash as millions are laid off work and spend their remaining cash on drugs, sex, booze………all wrapped up in the atmosphere of alfresco hero worship.

Enters the Sanctum Soho. Not that these kinds of celeberities are easy to handle. They come with supersize egos and unlimited penchant and ability to make the lives of their managers miserable with their often puerile demands. But heck, they’ve got stashes of cash to spend.

I reckon the successful folks with the bucks, empathizing with their sorry colleagues or the world by not spending as much as they could, would be drawn by the wow factor of coming to the hotel their heroes hibernate. Brilliant pull factor, especially when you calculate all the buzz and media coverage that will constantly stream in!

So, how do you make that hotel? Take Milton Maynard Keynes advice to the world during the first great depression – spend, spend, spend. But sensibly!

Avant garde designers got to work, visualizing the very best money can buy.

The world will beat this nasty credit crunch. It will only take imagination and openess to great ideas.