Posts Tagged: consumers

Worky — No Comments
26
Nov 09

Johnston Press and the plucky pay-wall pilot

Accord­ing to holdthefrontpage.co.uk, John­ston Press — owner of the Scots­man and York­shire Post in the UK — intends to pilot a pay-wall for a small number of its local titles as early as next week.

If that’s the case, then this is one exper­i­ment whose out­come will be eagerly anti­cip­ated by many media industry watchers.

Media plan­ners, ad agen­cies and advert­isers — in par­tic­u­lar — will no doubt watch with baited breath to see if con­sumers will cough up for con­tent that, until now, had been freely avail­able online or — even more tra­di­tion­ally — from the news-stand,  local news­agent or delivered through the door.

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Worky — 2 Comments
9
Sep 09

Moneysavingexpert(ish)

Just ima­gine if one of the many fin­an­cial ser­vices brands or inde­pend­ent fin­an­cial advisers — reg­u­larly berated by self-proclaimed Money­Saving­Ex­pert Martin Lewis — broad­cast email con­tent that was so ambigu­ous that it required the addi­tion of an (ish) in the copy?

They’d be hung out to dry wouldn’t they? (In fact, they are hung out to dry and then fined by a regulator.)

So take a look at this week’s email from Mr Lewis and see if you can spot the ‘ish’-es pep­per­ing the copy.

In the interests of clar­ity and fair treat­ment of con­sumers, are the flights from Ryanair £5 pounds or not? Are ‘free’ Star Wars models worth £4 or not and — for that matter — are they ‘free’? And can you print 100s of photos for free or not?

Martin Lewis is sup­posed to be a cham­pion for the fair treat­ment of con­sumers and their rights, and good for him too.

But that is a priv­ileged plat­form and, if you use it as a means of deliv­er­ing aggreg­ated money-saving links, then you should adhere to the same prin­ciples that you insist others should apply to their own pro­mo­tional activity.

For instance, Mr Lewis could declare his inten­tion to vol­un­tar­ily adhere to the prin­ciples and rules applied to fin­an­cial pro­mo­tions in the UK that thou­sands of pro­fes­sion­ally qual­i­fied fin­an­cial advisers are expec­ted to abide by.

At the very least, con­tent pub­lished in Mr Lewis’s name should be crys­tal clear about the details of avail­able offers — and espe­cially the poten­tial costs.

Not to do so is misleading(ish).

No. Scratch that. It is misleading.

Worky — No Comments
15
Jul 09

The reality that shocked the City: There are teenagers.

ST/BORF

Surely I am not the only one who barely batted an eyelid with the news that teen­agers con­sume dif­fer­ent kinds of media, in dif­fer­ent ways and tend to be inclined towards pat­terns of con­sump­tion that dif­fers from adults?

In fact, I’m still trying to work out why the research note by 15-year-old Mat­thew Robson caused such a furore. Per­haps it was because it was pub­lished by Morgan Stanley?

And, if that’s the case, then the real story is that Morgan Stan­ley employ­ees are so chained to their desks that those with kids clearly don’t spend as much time with them as they might like.

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Worky — 1 Comment
28
Jun 09

Consumers 0 — 1 Financial Services Industry (FT)

If you had the faintest hope that the bank­ing crisis might be a cata­lyst for a new style of respect­ful con­ver­sa­tion between the fin­an­cial ser­vices industry and the con­sumers of its products and ser­vices, then it’s likely they’ve been dashed.

Because, last Thursday, the UK’s City watch­dog — the Fin­an­cial Ser­vices Author­ity (FSA) — published a pro­posed set of new rules that will determ­ine how you are able to pur­chase invest­ment products from 1 Janu­ary 2013. (So if you have an ISA or a per­sonal pen­sion or invest­ment bonds etc., this affects you.)

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