Grombles

I have spent the past 35 years helping corporations, latterly my own, communicate with customers and prospects (people they want to become customers). When I first entered the world of marketing, we were known by other departments as the 'Gin and Tonic Brigade' due to the long lunch hours with suppliers and the frequent conferences and 'inspection' visits we felt we needed to make. Our work was broadly about creating the right message, in the right place, at the right time to attract the attention and persuade the right people, usually but not exclusively, to part with money. More significantly, our skills at the time focussed mainly on the message, rather than the targeting and timing. This was basically because in those days we only had blunt advertising and direct marketing tools at our disposal. Calculation of Return On Investment (ROI) was an obscure art, universally employed to justify retaining client contracts (if we were agencies) and to encourage bean-counters

I'm off to TED Global 2011 in Edinburgh next week. Can't wait. If you've never watched any TED presentations, click on  www.ted.com . Become an addict like me. Amazing people telling amazing and thought provoking stories - each lasting no more than about 20 minutes. 50 of them for 5 days. One of the things Tedsters (that's what delegates are called... tacky?) have to do before arriving is to create the wording for their badges. All the usual stuff: Name, Job Title, Employer, Location, Picture etc, but also a section that starts "Talk to me about"... and then you have to list three things (with limited character length) that you want people to talk to you about. You are advised to be serious, amusing and controversial (or something like that). Pause for thought. There are 1,000 of the world's smartest thinkers at TED. How do I make sure I won't look stupid. But wait. I also want to look smart. But not so smart that I'll look stupid or at least hop