Marketing Matters Mar/Apr 2016 ISSUE 49

BAD NAME OF SPORT A Dutch International beach volleyball player is starting a four-year jail sentence for raping a 12 year old English girl. Steven Van de Velde, 19 at …

TRUST US? YOU MUST BE JOKING. As fines and scandals continue to hit the banking sector HSBC has warned that it will take “a generation” before the banks are trusted …

SLUR ON BUILDING TRADE Unfair, misleading and aggressive trading practices used to defraud pensioners are an “industry standard” for the building trade…

MORE INTERNET TRICKERY Fake five-star reviews for worthless products can be bought for as little as 85 pence each from a number of fake review companies …

UNLUCKY NUMBERS Management of the Wentworth golf club are handicapped by some marketing incompetence, it seems. Late last year Reignwood, the Surrey …

VOTE FOR ME A Labour MP has been fined £5,000 for sending out automatic telephone calls to Labour supporters urging recipients to back his campaign to become London …

NAFF OR WHAT? Marketeers we know have been receiving emails from a publisher of advertorials Mr Jack Clarke of Acquisition International as below…

BAD NAME OF SPORT

A Dutch International beach volleyball player is starting a four-year jail sentence for raping a 12 year old English girl.

Steven Van de Velde, 19 at the time, flew from Amsterdam in August 2014 to meet up with the schoolgirl from Milton Keynes he had met on Facebook and raped her three times before returning home. He was extradited to the UK and tried and convicted at Aylesbury Crown Court, the judge telling him: “A young, naive and foolish child had formed the view that you loved her. In reality you only knew her on the internet, had never met her before and were fully aware of the age difference. You were the adult, she was the child, and until you recognise this you will remain a danger to young girls”. Continue reading

SLUR ON BUILDING TRADE

Unfair, misleading and aggressive trading practices used to defraud pensioners are an “industry standard” for the building trade.

This is the view of West Midlands building company directors Sarah Beadle (40) and Martin Evans (58) of Summit Roofguard, who have both been jailed for two and a half years for pressurising pensioners into paying grossly inflated amounts for building work. One paid £20,000 for guttering that could have been repaired for £40, and another was charged £9,585 for work that should have cost £2,820. The over-charging was made possible by victims being told that their properties were in urgent need of repair and that they were getting a discount that was only available for a few hours, two clear indications of a scam. Continue reading

MORE INTERNET TRICKERY

Fake five-star reviews for worthless products can be bought for as little as 85 pence each from a number of fake review companies prominently listed on Google’s search engines, an investigation by the Sunday Times has found.

For the investigation the newspaper launched a shoddy and ineffective lie detector phone app called Spot the Faker! for iPhone and Android handsets and then marketed it by buying dozens of fake reviews for £120. Many of the fake review firms stole the identities of celebrities and athletes to post them from, and the investigators identified more than a hundred apps that had used the fake review service.

UNLUCKY NUMBERS

Management of the Wentworth golf club are handicapped by some marketing incompetence, it seems.

Late last year Reignwood, the Surrey club’s Chinese owners, announced it wanted to reduce the number of members from 4,000 to 888 – a number considered lucky in China – and impose a £100,000 re-joining fee on the ones who wanted to come back, this reportedly to finance a large loan the company had taken out and a £20 million bill for urgent improvements to the course and clubhouse. Continue reading

VOTE FOR ME

A Labour MP has been fined £5,000 for sending out automatic telephone calls to Labour supporters urging recipients to back his campaign to become London mayor.

David Lammy sent out 35,000 canvassing calls to people who had not given him permission to contact them, said the Information Commissioner Christopher Graham, likening politicians begging for votes to double glazing salespeople offering discounts.

Lammy finished fourth in the Labour mayoral campaign.

NAFF OR WHAT?

Marketeers we know have been receiving emails from a publisher of advertorials Mr Jack Clarke of Acquisition International as below.

“As the head of (company name) Acquisition International has personally chosen you as a leading MD in the United Kingdom and we welcome you to celebrate this news by joining us with an exclusive interview for our forthcoming issue. The cost for this high-profile spot is just £500 and includes: Continue reading

Event Organisers Update March 2016 ISSUE 138

ALTON TOWERS PROSECUTION Operators of Alton Towers theme park, Merlin Attractions Operation Ltd are to be prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive …

SAFER AIR SHOWS? Following the Shoreham Air Show disaster last year which saw 11 people on the ground die the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has introduced tougher new …

HI-TECH VENUE IN SHOREDITCH The Brew opened last year at 163, City Road. Shoreditch, London, opposite Moorfields Eye Hospital and close to Old Street …

OMMEGANG 2016 Those who enjoy the pomp and pageantry of a historical procession will want to know about the annual Imaging event, staged in Brussels this year July 5-7 …

A LOOK AT FRYSLAN Wrongly called “Friesland” by us Brits this province in the North of the Netherlands has the black and white Holstein-Friesian cows, famous for their …

SMALL AND MEDIUM-SIZED IN AMSTERDAM Organisers looking to run small and medium-sized events in Amsterdam, and who worry that they could rattle around in the …

GRACE & FAVOUR Fans of the 70s and 80s British BBC TV sitcom “Are You Being Served?” will know that five of the troupe went on to play, in 1992/3, in a 12-part spin-off …

ALTON TOWERS PROSECUTION

Operators of Alton Towers theme park, Merlin Attractions Operation Ltd are to be prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) over the serious accident on the Smiler ride last june.

The accident, where a car carrying passengers smashed into a stationary car on the same track left five people with serious injuries, including two young women who suffered leg amputations. After a nine-month investigation HSE say they are satisfied that there is sufficient evidence to bring a prosecution under the Health and Safety at Work Act, and that this will be in the public interest.

The company will appear at court at Newcastle-under-Lyme in April and faces, if convicted, an unlimited fine. Any individuals held responsible could face up to two years in prison.