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Evaluating the media: September 2008

PR geekiness - the tools & techniques to gain insights from PR exposure

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Singed by the fires of Dell



While I don't want to '....hell' it up I thought I might elaborate on my Dell Tweet from this morning. I wanted to order a set of tonors for my 3010cn  printer so put the terms into Dell.co.uk and got 2 options...one set for £161.84 and another £192.08, (both inc VAT) both with very similar discriptions. 

So I wondered what was the difference. I have been talking with Dell technical support lately about a separate problem with this printer who have been very good, so I think I will just call up the sales people and ask them what is the difference. After a lengthy details collecting phase (we recently moved address), The sales rep was unable to say what the difference was but that I should order the more expensive one from him. He said I would not be able to place an order online for the cheaper one. I said I would try and his parting words were that I was wasting his time. Well, the order did go through and if for any reason they do not fit the printer I will certainly be commenting here.

Keeping the human element on online measurement


One of the themes of this blog has been about preserving the human element in media measurement. Christie Adams makes this point very well in a recent posting.

Online is becoming a colourful playground for measurement products offering a multitude of instant results. If your requirements are purely quantitative then they are useful. If you want to consider qualitative factors then you must accept a element of human input, and the likely increase in cost and time.

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Thursday, September 11, 2008

Munching the credit crunch media


Just over a year ago the term 'credit crunch' was widely outside common use. Though we might wish otherwise, now it dominates. With my (quite tatty) economist hat on I actually prefer the term 'credit reversion', as history will show I think, this period as a ending of loose credit times, and its associated pain.

However, who came up with the term 'credit crunch'. Was it a New York or London banker, who last July saw the wall of investment money vanish overnight? The truth is difficult to pin down, but suffice to say it was in relatively common media use back as long ago as 1969 when the New York Times ran the headline "Fed Reserve study of impact of 66 'credit crunch' on borrowing and spending".

To those who thought that globalisation had bought a new paradigm of ever increasing values, forget the lessons of the past. In my review of media coverage on the term credit crunch (using Factiva) it is clear that during the last year its use has massively increased. Over the previous year its use in the media has increased by 6200% illustrating the markets (and the media's) ignorance to the dangers.

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