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Specsavers has also claimed the slogan used by the supermarket, ‘Be a real spec saver at Asda’ is designed to mislead customers.

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At a court hearing yesterday a judge agreed to treat the case urgently, ruling there was enough evidence that Specsavers’ reputation was threatened by Asda Optician’s marketing campaign, which was launched last month.

Asda yesterday agreed to stop using the slogan after this week but will continue to use the logo, according to reports by The Times and Optician Online.

Richard Holmes, marketing director at Specsavers, said: “We are very pleased that Asda has now agreed in court to remove any reference to being a spec saver from any of its advertising as soon as possible and that the judge has ordered that an expedited trial should take place in April.”

Source



Tim Berners-Lee started the web to help scientists communicat

The forward slashes at the beginning of internet addresses have long annoyed net users and now the man behind them has apologised for using them.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, has confessed that the // in a web address were actually “unnecessary”.

He told the Times newspaper that he could easily have designed URLs not to have the forward slashes.

“There you go, it seemed like a good idea at the time,” he said.

He admitted that when he devised the web, almost 30 years ago, he had no idea that the forward slashes in every web address would cause “so much hassle”.

His light-hearted apology even had a green angle as he accepted that having to add // to every address had wasted time, printing and paper.

Sir Tim is currently director of the World Wide Web Consortium and he is also working with the UK government to help open up access to government data.

Source

The partnership explores the evolution of marketing in the world today,

“Google and The Wharton School have partnered to gather and provide quick perspective on managing the change in the marketing landscape. As we explore what will define success through marketing’s continual evolution, we aim to share ideas and lessons learned to help keep us all better informed and effective as the game – and conversation – rapidly progresses”.

It’s not surprising that Google have gotten invloved in an area they excel in. But the resource is just that, a resource, we would have thought in light of modern internet trends they would have created Fast Forward as a more community orientated space. Speaking to, and with the marketers of the world. Definately worth casting your eye over though!

Pomegranate are proud to announce the recent launch of a new e-commerce website for Ark Skincare.

Ark are a successful health and beauty company with a number of acclaimed salons located throughout London. The launch of their new website coincides with the launch of their new Age Aware Skincare product range developed using the knowledge gained from over 10 years of experience and over 100,000 treatments performed at ARK Skincare Centres.

Read more about our project with Ark on the Pomegranate Media website.

Winston the pigeon was allowed no “performance-enhancing seeds”

Broadband promised to unite the world with super-fast data delivery – but in South Africa it seems the web is still no faster than a humble pigeon.

A Durban IT company pitted an 11-month-old bird armed with a 4GB memory stick against the ADSL service from the country’s biggest web firm, Telkom.

Winston the pigeon took two hours to carry the data 60 miles – in the same time the ADSL had sent 4% of the data.

Telkom said it was not responsible for the firm’s slow internet speeds.

The idea for the race came when a member of staff at Unlimited IT complained about the speed of data transmission on ADSL.

He said it would be faster by carrier pigeon.

“We renown ourselves on being innovative, so we decided to test that statement,” Unlimited’s Kevin Rolfe told the Beeld newspaper.

‘No cats allowed’

Winston took off from Unlimited IT’s call centre in the town of Howick to deliver the memory stick to the firm’s office in Durban.

According to Winston’s website there were strict rules in place to ensure he had no unfair advantage.

Winston is over the moon Kevin Rolfe East Africa gets high-speed web

They included “no cats allowed” and “birdseed must not have any performance-enhancing seeds within”.

The firm said Winston took one hour and eight minutes to fly between the offices, and the data took another hour to upload on to their system.

Mr Rolfe said the ADSL transmission of the same data size was about 4% complete in the same time.

Hundreds of South Africans followed the race on social networking sites Facebook and Twitter.

“Winston is over the moon,” Mr Rolfe said.

“He is happy to be back at the office and is now just chilling with his friends.”

Meanwhile Telkom said it could not be blamed for slow broadband services at the Durban-based company.

“Several recommendations have, in the past, been made to the customer but none of these have, to date, been accepted,” Telkom’s Troy Hector told South Africa’s Sapa news agency in an e-mail.

South Africa is one of the countries hoping to benefit from three new fibre optic cables being laid around the African continent to improve internet connections.

Source BBC

McCruddon’s blog, Six Weeks, details the time he has spent sitting, viewing, queueing and waiting in restaurants, the Post Office, on the Victoria Line, watching TV and in sandwich shops over a six-week period.

According to his calculations, he is owed more than £6,000 for time lost. McCruddon has now written to more than 50 companies, and invoiced them for the amount of time he has spent with them.

Pret A Manger is the first company to have paid McCruddon – the sum of £62 – while the managing director of the fruit and nut stall Cranberry is now demanding McCruddon pay him for time spent reading his letter and blog.

McCruddon claims to have engineered the scheme in order to examine how he spends his life as a consumer as well as to challenge the general assumption that consumers are subservient to brands. (quoted from campaignlive.com)

So while Pret have noticed the power of letting its customers advertise the company through word of blog! And have grabbed the coverage for being the first company to appreciate its customers voice, we wait to see if any other companies jump on the bandwagon and cave in to McCruddons claims.

48% of businesses never follow up with a prospect

25% of businesses make a second contact and stop

12% of businesses only make three contacts and stop

It’s a staggering discovery, but only 10% of businesses make more than three contacts. It means they’re losing a small fortune – and you could be too/

Because…

2% of sales are made on the first contact

3% of sales are made on the second contact

5% of sales are made on the third contact

10% of sales are made on the fourth contact

80% of sales are made on the fifth to twelfth contact

So if you’re like almost half of all businesses and make no more than one follow-up to your prospects… you’re leaving 98% of your income on the table for someone else to come along and pick up.

If that wasn’t bad enough, here’s why it’s even worse than you think. Look at these eye-opening statistics about why people stop buying from businesses:

1% die.

3% move away.

5% follow a friend’s or relative’s recommendation.

9% find an alternative they perceive to be better quality or value.

14% are dissatisfied with the products or services.

And a massive 68% of people leave a business because of…  indifference.

They take their business elsewhere simply because they do not feel valued.

Since you spend a lot of time, money, and effort to get a visitor to your business, if you let them leave because of indifference, you might as well be flushing £10 notes away.