by Denis Campbell
United Airlines flight 921 was the outbound on 21 May. The crew was London-based, cheerful, helpful and the flight comfortably uneventful. UA 922 on 29 May was the return leg led by a US-based crew: surly, arrogant, griping, worrying aloud about job losses, lacking in decorum, full of silly and rigid rules, ridiculously [...]
Tag | Tesco
UA Transatlantic, Pass then Fail!
Posted on 31 May 2009 by Denis Campbell | Comments (5) | Tags: 1st class, BA, BMI, BOAC, bring your A game, BT, buh bye, business class, dead head crew, disdain and contempt, Facebook, Heathrow, KLM, London-based crew, Pass then Fail, PC World, poor service, Tesco, Twitter, united, United Airlines, US-based crew, Washington
Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Go Back in the Water…
Posted on 05 August 2008 by Denis Campbell | Comments (0) | Tags: ABBA, Alice Cooper, American Idol, big movie musical, Bill Anderson, Boston, Broadway, Christine Baransky, Colin Firth, cougar, could not stop laughing, Damn you Agneta, divorces played out in public, Donald O’Connor, Donna, Eastern bloc voting, Eurovision winning, Gene Kelly, global chart-topping hit song Waterloo, gold album, Greek island resort, James Bond, James Bond V, Jane Austin, Jaws theme, Journey, Julie Waters, Mama Mia, Meryl Streep, Miranda Priestly, Mr. Darcy, number 1 UK Pop chart, Peter Frampton, Pierce Brosnan, playing air piano or guitar, Rendition, Rosie, Simon Cowell, singing beyond awful, singing through it, stage musical, Stellan Skarsgård, taboos, Tanya, tapping feet, terrible movie, Tesco, The Devil Wears Prada, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Van Morrison, Waterloo, West End, zero artistic or historical value, £8.97
…ABBA is back! (Waterloo plays instead of Jaws ominous duh-dum theme…)
After a 16-year absence, they hold this week’s number 1 spot on the UK Pop chart thanks to the sleeper hit movie of the summer – Mama Mia!
Created from the West End and Broadway stage musical where a young woman invites three men one of [...]
Alfred E. Newman Strikes Again
Posted on 04 August 2008 by Denis Campbell | Comments (0) | Tags: $20.00 Circuit City Gift Card, 3-step system for fixing corporate gaffes, Admitted they were wrong, Bovis Homes, BT, Circuit City, Circuit City corporate communications, classic satiric style, classy message we just got from corporate, company action plans, corporate red, creating a cross-departmental task force to study the i, Dark Night Batman, DC Comics, deep respect for MAD Magazine, Editors of MAD Magazine, embarrassed corporate PR Guy, expect the resulting Powerpoint presentation to top out, extra points for speed, gesture of our apology, good fun, Harry Potter, have a friend who works there hide it for you in the ba, HD televisions at ridiculous prices, ingenious, Jim Babb, Mad Magazine, Made a material gesture of apology, occasional temporary lapses, poke a fun at themselves, pull and return all copies, put the magazines back on sale, rich sense of humor and irony, Stopped doing the wrong thing, storewide message, Sucker City, Tesco, The Consumerist, they don’t care what you think, thin-skinned Circuit City exec, tongue in cheek humour, Usual Bunch of Idiots, very clever, we apologize for the knee-jerk reaction, we might be on to a winning overall strategy that could, Wii gaming system
Most consider it an honour to be pilloried by Mad Magazine’s “Usual Bunch of Idiots.” Everyone from the current Dark Night Batman movie to Harry Potter has been skewered by their classic satiric style. It’s good fun. That is until Al and friends messed with the gang at Circuit City.
One could not, until noon today, [...]
Buy a Car Get a Free Handgun
Posted on 02 August 2008 by Denis Campbell | Comments (1) | Tags: $250 in petrol vouchers, 2010, BBC, Ben Verwaayen, bitter, British Telecom, Broadband, BSkyB, BT, business boost, Butler, car dealership, consultants, David Cameron, Ford, free handgun, General Motors, Gordon Brown, home communications platform, interactive, Keltec .380, Labour Party, live, Mark Muller, marketing opportunity, Max Motors, Midwest, Missouri, movies, obama, photon cannons, pollsters, pop-up video game array, PR, programmes, Radio 5, real-time, Rupert Murdoch, similar promotion, Sky+, telephony, Tesco, Tesco Supermarkets, UK, USA
The BBC reported a Missouri, USA car dealership offered a promotion where if one buys a car or truck, they can get either $250 in petrol vouchers or a free handgun. UK laws forbidding gun ownership aside for the moment, if they were to change, could this be a marketing opportunity for businesses in the [...]
How Green is Your Grocer? Ask Al Gore.
Posted on 26 July 2008 by Denis Campbell | Comments (0) | Tags: Al Gore, ASDA, Business Issues, carbon footprint, carbon neutral, carbon replacement, Earth Day, SAinsbury, TED.com, Tesco
(Reprise Article)
The Tesco, Sainsbury and ASDA chains have all recently attempted to jump on the green bandwagon. Turning out lights at night, offering replacement re-useable bags for plastic and other small but visible steps to help become more carbon neutral. The question on this Earth Day is
UK “Eco Towns” Attract Strange Bedfellows
Posted on 14 July 2008 by Denis Campbell | Comments (2) | Tags: ASDA, build/promote Eco-towns, David Cameron, disruption, Eco Towns, eco-town, ecologically smart homes, environmental policy, Green projects, Guardian, investor interest, lightning rods of controversy, Ministry of Defense, Nottingham RAF base, opposition leader, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Prince Charles, retail establishments, Royal family, schools, speculation, Strange Bedfellows, Telegraph, Tesco, Tories, Tory, UK, worry, zero carbon footprint
A centrepiece of Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s environmental policy is the active building and promotion of so-called Eco-towns, specially designated areas of land upon which specially designed zero carbon footprint ecologically smart homes, schools and retail establishments will rest. Green projects have attracted enormous investor interest but the six-month long collapse of the home mortgage [...]
Marks and Sparks Lit by Recession Woes
Posted on 03 July 2008 by Denis Campbell | Comments (0) | Tags: 1970’s, ASDA, Beetle, Berlin, brand recognition, Broadway’s Pajama Game, Camper, Carol Hane, Executive Chairman Sir Stuart Rose, head of food, head of M&S Direct, High Street, Hitler, hypermarkets, John Dixon, line extension, M&S, Marks & Spencer, Moto Services, poached Steve Esom from Waitrose, revenues fall by 20%, SAinsbury, sales down 5.3%, Shirley MacLaine, shopping mall, superstores, Tesco, Tesco.com, Volkswagen, Waitrose, ‘The Thing’
British shopping institution Marks & Spencer lost 25% of its share value yesterday when its Executive Chairman Sir Stuart Rose announced that due to a lack of consumer confidence, same period store sales were down 5.3% and revenues for the full calendar year would fall by 20%. It must be really bad if people have [...]
Service’s Sorry State
Posted on 21 June 2008 by Denis Campbell | Comments (0) | Tags: ASDA, BSkyB, BT (British Telecomm), Comcast Cable, CQE (Customer Quality Experience) programme, India, Sky+, telephone call centre, Tesco, The Consumerist
The Consumerist website showed this graphic recently about poor service received by Comcast Cable and telephone subscribers across the USA. It was part of an internally circulated Powerpoint presentation by a call centre manager on their CQE (Customer Quality Experience) programme and the lack of seriousness with which it is taken inside the company culture.
You [...]
Easter Morning - Made in China
Posted on 22 April 2008 by Denis Campbell | Comments (0) | Tags: Business Issues, carbon neutral, carbon replacement, lorry, marketing, rail, shipping, Tesco
Easter morning the kids scurried around the house in search of sweets. They excitedly rushed around the house to find chocolate eggs and bunnies, jellied eggs, frosted cookies and a false-bottomed plastic form in their Peter Rabbit Collection bucket showing only 50% of the product one thought was there.
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