Canuckflack

I may be weird, but I like to read about retail development and promotion. And I’ve always wondered about the economics behind mall kiosks – how can one sell high-end jewellry, and the next cheap imported toys?

Well, Retail Traffic discusses the latest development trends in kiosks this month. But wait! there’s more! A few years ago, Entrepreneur examined the stories behind several successful kiosk concepts.

Have I mentioned how much I enjoy the Guardian’s minute-by-minute accounts of European football? A regular group of Guardian staffers sitting in the news room, watching BBC or Sky coverage of the match on a 14 inch TV – then relaying their acerbic and/or witty comments to dozens of readers around the globe through a continually updated page on the Guardian website.

Key to the accounts, however, are the constant interruptions from readers with their own opinion of the match, the staffer, or the weather in Milan. It’s football coverage like you would find in a pub.

And many of the observations are knee-bucklingly funny, like these two from Georgina Turner’s coverage of last week’s Man U – Italy match:

24 mins: “How does the crowd sound,” Eleanor Giles wants to know. Intoxicated, in a word: there’s a pretty good atmosphere. Things are just starting to settle down for United, but their forward play bears a vague resemblance to pigeons flying into glass buildings, at times.

54 mins: Has there been some kind of mass release-into-the-community today? It seems the entire sex offenders register is logged onto this game tonight. Huge Bridget Jones pants, no picture, now bugger off.

Or how about these from Barry Glendenning’s report on the Barcelona – Chelsea game:

6 mins: Jose Mourinho is looking very agitated on the bench and is scribbling away in his little blue notebook. Perhaps he’s writing a song, or has just thought of another superlative with which to describe himself in his post-match press conference.

15 mins: … It’s worth bearing in mind that perma-tanned bottle-blond Anders Frisk is reffing, so he likes to flash the cards around in order to get himself on the television.

18 mins: … I think the only thing Jose could do that would surprise anyone in England at this stage is to loudly declare that he’s not quite as competent a manager as Peter Reid or Gerard Houllier while walking around dressed in sackcloth and ashes and ringing a big bell.

And here’s Barry commenting on the quality of feedback flooding his in-box:

Most of what I’ve seen of Liverpool this season has been as unsightly as what’s left of Hunter S Thompson’s head, but any time I suggest that they’re anything less than wonderful I get hordes of angry Scousers sending in emails accusing me of being a Manchester United fan or a “cockney loving football newbie prick” (thanks for that Stephen Horner).

Now – just imagine if you could entertain a conversation like that with your local paper? Immediate praise, logical reinforcement or criticism as they publish – that’s what frightens the old guard hacks.

The Canadian Museum of Civilization has just launched a retrospective of Canadian Design in the 1960′s. Featured are such Canuck icons as Northern Telecom’s Contempra phone, the Thermos jug, and the Ball B-Q.

I have some quibble with the presentation of the new exhibition on the museum’s website: it takes three clicks to actually get to a picture of 60′s design from the museum’s splash page, and five to get to more than one picture.

Compare that to the National Gallery’s exhibition on 60′s art, which is featured on the first page of content.

The CBC’s website has plenty of clips dealing with 60′s cluture, including this one on a revolutonary new product for increasingly busy housewives: ready-to-eat turkey roll.

Pharmaceutical Executive recounts how a packaging decision by a marketing team had unexpected side-effects on a pill under development:

Decisions made in one functional area, such as marketing, can significantly affect others. So open decision making is critical, particularly during late stage development. In one instance, the marketing team for one drug manufacturer’s COX-2 inhibitor decided to change the tablet’s size close to launch. The team made the decision from a branding perspective.

The idea was to make the name printed on the tablet more visible for target customers. To modify the size, excipients were added. These additional components affected the medication’s absorption rate and altered its pharmacokinetic properties. Although the impact was realized before registration, the decision put timelines at risk.

Open communication between the marketing and clinical teams could have prevented unnecessary delays in the drug’s registration or launch.

WHEW! Thank god the two teams finally got their act together and mitigated the impact. Lord knows we wouldn’t want to delay registration or launch! It’s not like there are other problems with COX-2 inhibitors to deal with.

Of course, marketing executives would have a far easier time if pharma companies slowed their merger mania: their unwieldy amalgamated names could score 688 points in Scrabble.

Recently, Dame Ellen MacArthur finished a quick circumnavigation of the globe, sponsored by the home improvement giant B&Q. A friend assures me the following letter ran in the Times of London recently:

“Dear B&Q, congratulations on getting your boat round the world in 71 days, 13 hours and 19 minutes.

Can you please explain why the kitchen set that I ordered from my local B&Q 96 days ago still hasn’t managed the 13 mile trip from the store to my house?”

MacArthur’s return to old blighty is well-timed: B&Q has been getting grief after a recent downturn in sales, and there’s nothing better to distract questioning analysts than a look at an expensive boat.

And don’t think B&Q hasn’t been trumpeting their association with the sailor at every opportunity – to nearly absurd levels. Here’s some marketing hyperbole, as cited by The Friday Project:

‘B&Q’s own brand power tools from the Performance Power range were used to build the B&Q trimaran. This has proven that the tools have been challenged to extreme limits and demonstrates to our customers that if they can help protect the B&Q trimaran against the dramas of the high seas, they can be trusted to improve the comfort of their homes!’

Oh, I see you there. Putting the finishing touches on that fact sheet – the one shining up the benefits of the latest semi-automated industrial drum welding machine. It might be boring, but those 3.75 billable hours will cover the gas bill. And we’ve all heard from Jack, the new outside sales guy, how well that stuff plays with the procurement folks on the road.

“This may suck,” you say, “but my future is sitting right there in that courier bag – 900,000 delicious little bytes of twisting plot and dramatic flourish.”

There’s an ibook hiding in there, the keys worn bare by hours of concentrated writing in company lunch rooms, airport waiting lounges and Starbucks. In the side pocket, a 512 meg usb stick on a keychain.

That little stick is your last shred of hope for a truly intellectual career – the draft script you’ve been working on since you finished that Learning Annex creative writing course in 1998.

Sure, picking up the 512 meg stick might have been an unbridled act of optimism – but every great work needs to be protected. Some may rely on the waterproof binding of a Moleskine notebook, but you prefer the semi-hard aluminum and tinted lucite of an American-branded, Chinese-sourced memory stick. On an oxidized carabiner.

You’re in luck. Rick Paulas has your number, and is now offering advice on “how to write an Academy Award-winning screenplay“:

“There was a period when the Academy voter pool was believed to be comprised exclusicely of octogenarian cyborgs running on a castor oil/liquefied granola bar fuel blend. This was the 1980s, when Chariots of Fire, Gandhi and Driving Miss Daisy received top honors. More recent intelligence suggests that this is wrong � they’re predominately septuagenarian.”