http://www.moninski.com Marc Moninski's musings on brands, PR, planning and interesting things in the world Fri, 18 Jan 2008 00:32:30 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en The Truth about Your Food on Channel 4, 18th January gave us Jane Moore showing how the current obesity crisis wasn't being helped by the high calorie count of food that we eat in restaurants. As part of this 'hard-hitting expose', Jane Moore stopped people in the street outside ... http://www.moninski.com/pr/21-the-truth-about-your-food-and-the-price-of-honesty.html Alisher Usmanov's decision to close down my mate Tim Ireland's bloggerhead site looks as though it's going to backfire big time. Because he's also ended up taking down Boris Johnson's site. So now, a potential Mayor of London hasn't got an online voice through no fault of his own. Usmanov - ... http://www.moninski.com/pr/18-alisher-alisher-usmanov-courting-online-pr-disaster-closing-down-boris-johnson-et-al.html USP (Unique Selling Point or Unique Sales Proposition) is a useful concept, but is a poor description of a brand – and, inappropriately applied, fails to deliver what many brand owners want it to achieve. That’s because it can encourage narrow thinking about what a brand is, and how best ... http://www.moninski.com/pr/16-the-myth-of-usp.html The last post got me thinking about mobile phone contracts. If you think about phone minutes as a commodity (like pork bellies in Trading Places), then what you've done is agreed to buy a set number of minutes for a price that's fixed for a year or eighteen months. ... http://www.moninski.com/pr/15-beware-the-upgrade-mobile-phone-contracts-are-a-rip-off-anyway.html Well, the new iPhone's been getting lots of good PR. But I have just come across this blog on noodle that points out that because you have to take out an 18 month contract with O2, the 'phone costs a lot more than you might think. Apparently, around ... http://www.moninski.com/pr/14-iphone-thatll-be-1259-please.html Imagine my delight when I found the Flymo Compact 4000, described as an electric wheeled lawnmower. "Just the thing" I thought, for I have and ageing mother (77) who, I am ashamed to admit, often has to mow her lawn in the absence of her dearly beloved son. There it is ... http://www.moninski.com/uncategorized/13-flymo-mis-representation-poor-punctuation-or-my-stupidity.html I've just been sent this great viral created by Land Rover. Click here to see it and click on 'watch' once you get onto their site. It's a great example of a what makes a viral - original and compelling content, presumably created specifically for the web, with alternative endings that ... http://www.moninski.com/pr/12-great-land-rover-viral.html I was reading a book by Michael Molloy, the former Editor of the Daily Mirror and then Editor-in-Chief of  Mirror Group Newspapers.  Called 'Century',  it's a work of fiction about a newspaper.   Written in 1990, he ascribes the following dialogue to two characters talking about Edward and Mrs Simpson.  I thought ... http://www.moninski.com/pr/11-the-royals-and-image.html An enterprising YouTube watcher spotted this post up on their site - and managed to make a short clip of it before it got taken down. If this is a genuine glimpse of how YouTube are thinking of monetising the site, there are interesting possibilities... as long as advertisers ... http://www.moninski.com/pr/7-youtube-advertising.html