Week Twenty- Seven Everyone Wants To Take Advantage
What IS it with the bloody sense of entitlement these days? Monster Audio, RAC dash cams’ marketing ‘˜professionals’ and even an audio company that does know better, lately have all to a man and woman thought that I will happily get up in the morning and expend my stock in trade for them as some sort of labour of charity for them. After all, each of the above is so deeply in need of free help, aren’t they? And I WILL pay to help them out in my small way but it’d just be simpler to send a cheque. Video here: Link
Can you believe this? Hell, here’s one e-mail’s content ‘I am pleased you are interested in dash cams. I have recently joined ProofCam, who partner with the RAC and their range, to handle marketing. I am focused on building a group of trusted reviewers who are prepared to right impartial blogs, articles or similar who I can call again when we have new product launches. Naturally if you don’t like the camera then you can simply return it, if you do then its your to keep.’ Surely, if a ‘˜blog’ is impartial, then it doesn’t need to be ‘˜righted’, as there are no wrongs ? This is so depressing; it’s semi-literate.
And as for Monster, well, don’t get me started. Suffice it to say that they had an entire career’s worth of taking the rip outta my time, a couple of CES’s ago, so that’ll be a no, as well. I had been a guest of the organisers. The CEA paid my flights and hotels, as a scholarship journalist in Mobile Electronics. Monster had just worked with Lamborghini on the Veneno. Just ten cars, each with a serious Monster audio sound system in it. Despite getting sent all the PR efforts before the show from the company working for Monster and being invited to go and see the car, when I got to the booth at the show, it was clear they did not know me from Adam! I actually wasted as much as half of one entire day in total, going back repeatedly just to see if they would let me on the other side of the barrier to take a photograph or two. The most polite adjective as to how I got treated, I feel, would be disdain. The invitation to attend in London and the privilege of being given which questions to ask the boss, are a perfect fit with the corporate personality (a concept I have talked about often) that I encountered in Las Vegas. Sorry, I choose NOT to touch the raiment of the exalted one.
You know, I read in the papers at the weekend, that shareholders at Tesco’s meeting with management and shareholders, berated Tesco’s bosses. They get share options and ever yet more and more increases in their seven figure pay, while their staff are not paid a living wage. The angry shareholder said they were a cancer on society. It’s funny, in my dotage I find myself with socialist leanings! This from the papers: ‘Shareholders said Tesco’s failure to pay the Living Wage £7.85 an hour, or £9.15 in London meant the taxpayer had to make up the shortfall through tax credit payments, estimated at £364million last year. Shareholder Michael Mason-Mahon attacked the board to wide applause, saying: ‘˜You’re a cancer on our society because you keep the poor, poor. This is not right.’
The way Talk Audio works gets explained at the beginning of my dash cam video. Being a Talk Audio site associate means that as well as any kind of advertising campaign – big or small, you get editorial coverage. News, videos, event coverage and products. And like I said in the video intro, it doesn’t buy editorial opinion which can be tricky. But no more so than any magazine in the past. This semi literate PR person from the RAC dash cam company clearly had not bothered even to watch the first two minutes of that video I sent her. Sigh
All of which serves as reminder to me, to stick to core values. I shall.
Did you see the last ever Top Gear as we knew it? Did you see the actual elephant in the room? My plan is to make and send in my 30 Second video clip audition, on the fourth of July. Still a little obsessed with that
As I write, (not ‘˜right’) from behind curtains closed against the sun and the heat, the show season is really cooking. In particular, Ultimate Street Car for EMMA Round 4 and the Talk Audio summer meet. Expect more news about them here soon.
One thing, following an experiment, is that I shall be making more videos of sound quality cars. Organising the music rights to something worth listening to is the next challenge.
Adam Rayner On Line Editor