Monday, 12 January 2009

Telemarketing and Porky Pies

You'd think that telemarketing companies would be aware that they have a fairly poor reputation and do eveything to make sure that when they do talk to someone they try and come across as credible and persuasive.


Gecko Direct seems to have missed this trick when they called me this afternoon at 4.24 this afternoon (check your logs Gecko if you're reading this blog).

Within 120 seconds they managed to tell two lies to me
  1. That they had already spoken to me before
  2. That I had contract with 02
Guys - if you were a little more honest, you might even sell a few more phones and have less people write about you on the web

Do your adverts work?

Some sage advice from Seth Godin about purchasing adverts in a digital age...


Do Broken Windows Really Cause More Crime?

SEED magazine reports on an interesting experiment carried out in holland to see whether the broken window theory is correct.


The theory comes from an original article pubished in 1982 by Atlantic magazine. To quote Wikipedia

"Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it's unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside.

Or consider a sidewalk. Some litter accumulates. Soon, more litter accumulates. Eventually, people even start leaving bags of trash from take-out restaurants there or breaking into cars."

There has been much debate on whether this is true, but in the six carefully controlled tests setup by the University of Groningen, it certainly appeared to be a major factor

When an envelope containing a five-euro note was left hanging out of a mailbox on a sidewalk, 13 % of the passersby snatched it up. When the same mailbox was covered in graffiti, however, more than double the number of the pedestrians (about 27 %) took the envelope.

The original article is here

and thanks to Matt Cutts for telling me about this