This week I’ve been pondering going to see “A Scanner Darkly”, as I’m all home alone - cinema isn’t something I normally get the oppo for. When I rang the missus, she asked why I wasn’t more interested in Snakes On A Plane - after all I’d been telling her about it for ages, whereas I only read a review of ‘Scanner’ this week. Strangely though, I just have no interest in the actual movie of Snakes On A Plane.

My misgivings seem born out by a post from New Marketing guru Seth Godin, who has noted that the SOAP box office is down and people don’t seem to be willing to follow the hype on this one. I think in this case though, the hype may actually have been counter-productive for them.

I don’t know if people were actually getting involved with the movie during the months of creativity and japing, more that they were getting involved with an in-joke about a preposterous movie scenario. You don’t actually need to see the movie for the joke to be funny - the joke is just that someone is actually making this film. In fact the fans may well have been far more interested in their own takes and parodies on the movie, rather than the director’s take, and be happy to leave it at that. The real movie becomes just one more meme parody in a long list, and a late one at that - bo-ring!

Contrast maybe with the Blair Witch - a movie spread through internet hype, but centrally-generated rather than user-generated hype. People didn’t feel a stake in their own version of it, and were more just passing on a straight marketing message, rather than creating their own jokes around a meme. Maybe SOAP is more like ‘All Your Base Are Belong To Us‘ - a good in-joke, but certainly not one which sent people scurrying to buy retro arcade games.

Seems like things are getting tricky for McDonalds. Still losing share after a healthy makeover, in the States they seem to be turning for parterships to the few people who’ll still have them. Yes, you guessed it, the only people dodgy enough out there must be monster car makers Hummer.
McD’s are actually handing out Hummer toys with happy meals - uniting two of the grimmest excesses of modern times. A gift to campaigners, who have a nifty new web toy, letting you monkey with the famous arches sign to have your say on the gruesome twosome.
What’s next - a free pack of Marlboro with every happy meal? The Hummer thing could be an astute move though - is it the only car out there capable of hauling your sorry expanded carcass after a lifetime of McDonalds munching?

The case of Mumsnet vs Gina Ford, M’lud. A bit of a spat in the world of Contented Babies this week, after übernanny Ford took umbrage at uncomplimentary postings on a volunteer run community site for mums. Her lawyers have demanded 5 conditions of Mumsnet, two of which seem reasonable, and two slightly over the top (not to mention 2 of the seeming slightly contradictory), but the mums have agreed to four, at no little hassle to them. It’s the fifth one, Mumsnet paying damages, that is causing the problems, what with them having no money and all. Mumsnet have taken the rather unusual step of actively asking members to refrain from discussing Gina Ford or her methods - something which they themselves describe as being like asking a football forum to avoid talking about Man United.

Now Ms Ford’s book has some very good advice (we bought a blackout blind on the strength of her recommendation - which has definitely helped us get a bit more sleep - worth the book price alone!), but as a whole system it doesn’t suit everyone - probably not the vast majority by the discussions I’ve had with other parents. Yet we all bought TCBG on the dust-jacket promise of a catch-all system for baby-management. So her business model is built a bit like Mr Colman’s (of the mustard fame) in that most of her product doesn’t get used. As such she’s probably a bit more vulnerable to a frank internet discussion than other more conventional baby manuals (my Mrs prefers the reassuring “What to Expect” series, which sets out to answer pretty much every conceivable question, such as “My baby has turned green”, with a comforting “Don’t worry” answer, and I favour Miriam Stoppard’s guide, with its bloke-friendly Haynes Manual style diagrams of *exactly* how to fold a nappy). Even so if you choose to live in a glass house, you can’t really sue stones out of existance.

Similar tales recently with diet guru Gillian McKeith - the country’s premier poo-ologist, who even merits her own tag in the Guardian’s excellent ‘Bad Science‘ column. McKeith has been reaching for the writ to censor a (rather funny) web animation by the terrible two of flash photomontage, Doghorse and Eclectech. Objecting to the suggestion that her degree from a correspondence college may not be the most kosher on the block, McKeith’s lawyers were in touch.

Has this set a pattern for militant popular punditry? Woe betide the next person to criticise Esther Rantzen’s ads for a no-win-no-fee claims farm or the patchy dress sense of Trinny and Suzannah. Will Supernanny sue children who don’t go to bed on time? Anything that would shut down an exposé about Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen owning a garden gnome (which I take pains to point out that he doesn’t so far as I know), can’t be good for our national sense of humour.

Good coverage in FT, BBC, Guardian for today’s new TUC company finder tool - it’s a neato search that lets you find out company structures and performance for UK companies - things like profits, shareholders, ultimate holding companies and so on. Unsurprisingly though, the angle that’s been picked up on in the media is the more prurient fact you can see top directors’ salaries in all their ample glory.
My favourite bit though is the CBI reaction in the FT’s article:

“Keeping staff well informed about the company’s performance, pay structure and
staff representation is already high on the agenda for firms. In most cases,
however, union members will be entirely unaware of details such as pay, benefits
and length of contract for union executives.”

Heh Heh… This is a “where do you start?” one, but I’ll restrict myself to 2 observations… Namely a lot of unions do make this public - pegging their bosses’ salaries to an equivalent post for their members. But the rather more obvious one is that only a handful of union bosses earn over £100k, which isn’t a particularly high wage for people running such large organisations (the CBI pay more than a little better for one), and as such rather different to the bona fide multi-millionaire fat cattery that most people are wound up about.

New animation by Eclectech and Doghorse, in which a puppy comes unstuck after taking a job offer without checking out the firm. A Very Personal Assistant.