Encouraging to hear that marketeers at Air New Zealand have finally listened to some good sense from their passengers and belatedly scrapped the safety video featuring bikini-clad models demonstrating seat belts, life jackets and oxygen masks.

The move follows more than 11,000 complaints since its launch in February that it was made using serious safety matters as an excuse for some naff and inappropriate sexualisation, which was giving wrong messages to children on flights, and offending those with religious beliefs and body issues.

Meaning that the all-important safety messages were being undermined by the distraction of the content, a useful caveat for all us clever marketeers who can sometimes lose sight of the objectives…

If you really want to find out which wine you like the best, and how much you are being influenced, perhaps unknowingly, by aspects other than taste, you should arrange to try a selection blind.

The author recently invited a dozen friends and neighbours who all liked and drank the soft Merlot red wines to blind-taste a range of a dozen Merlots, including two blended with Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz grapes, priced from £3.49 to £7 a bottle and all bought from very local supermarkets and shops. The reveal was only done after they had scored the wines on a scale of 10 for personal preference so no well-known influences such as the country of origin, the label, the alcohol content, the price paid, the name of the wine or the retailer supplying were in play.

There were two joint winners, an Echo Falls 2012 with an ABV of 13% from California available at Iceland and other retailers at £5 a bottle, and a Yellowtail 2013 with an ABV of 13.5% from Australia and costing £6 a bottle from Asda and others. Ranking second was a Sainsbury’s Winemaker’s Selection 2013 with an ABV of 13% from France and costing £5. And well worth considering at the price was a Budavar Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon blend with an ABV of 12.5% from Spain and costing £3.49 a bottle from Aldi, which was ranked third.

Curiously, or perhaps not for the cynical, none of the three wines carrying the marketing ploy “Reserve” on the label did well, an Asda “Reserva” from Chile at £7 ranking seventh, a Sainsbury’s “Heritage Reserve” from South Africa at £5.90 (down from £7.40) ranking tenth and an Asda “Grand Reserve” from France at £7 ranking eleventh.

We read that Studio City, a new $2 billion gambling, entertainment and retail resort in Macau, has hired director Martin Scorcese to make a short film to promote it, which will include the likes of Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro in its cast list, and which will premiere at next year’s opening.

De Niro, fans of the 1995 Scorcese film Casino will know, convincingly played the unsavoury character of Las Vegas casino boss Sam “Ace” Rothstein, this largely based on that of the real-life Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal, a professional sports better, Las Vegas casino boss and associate of organised crime. Rosenthal was also an associate of psychopathic Chicago hit-man, boyhood friend and Las Vegas enforcer for the mob Anthony “The Ant” Spilotro, convincingly played in the film as Nicky Santoro by Joe Pesci, and meeting the same violent and deeply unpleasant end.

Question is, and without seeing Scorcese’s promotional film, will this potential association with the nasty face of gambling be a safe bet for the image of a new casino? Watch this space.

Fascinating to read, in Max Clifford’s book READ ALL ABOUT IT, (Virgin Books 2005) how the celeb’s publicist was so proud of his part in exposing paedophile rock star Gary Glitter, real name Paul Gadd. Apparently Clifford “punched the air in triumph” when Gadd went down for four months in 1999 for possession of child abuse images, though on a charge of actual child abuse after ingratiating himself with the child’s parents he was acquitted when it came out that the victim of the alleged abuse had sold her story, through Clifford, to the now-defunct News of the World, thus tainting her testimony.

As readers will know Clifford is now serving eight years for, er, a series of sex assaults on girls and young women, in one case reportedly going to a young girl’s house and ingratiating himself with her parents, before taking her out in a car and molesting her, so his published view on Gadd’s downfall in 1999, as he punched the air in triumph, make most interesting reading.

“It meant he was known for the vile sick person he is and that wherever he went parents would watch out for him”.

Readers will doubtless have heard that usurers Wonga have been sending out fake legal letters to victims of their greedily high interest rates of up to 5,853% per annum, to scare them into paying up, and charging some for the deceit.

The letters were revealed by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and were claimed to be from “Chainey, D’Amato and Shannon” or “Barker and Lowe Legal Recoveries”, neither of which exist. As a result the FCA has ordered them to pay a paltry £2.6 million in compensation to those deliberately misled by the firm.

The treatment of its vulnerable customers by Wonga, who claim in their advertising, marketing and PR to be a responsible, fair and compassionate lender of “straight-talking money”, has attracted the attention of the police, who are considering a criminal investigation.

One beneficiary of Wonga’s activities, and its dirty money, is Blackpool Football Club, which it sponsors.

“Cash for Access” seems to be the rule for lobbyists who want to buy influence with our Prime Minister and others ahead of the next election.

David Burnside of lobbyists New Century Media has boasted about his firm buying interviews with Cameron to secure the ministerial ear for whisperings about his high-profile Russian clients, including a Ukrainian billionaire, Dmitry Firtash, who has been indicted on bribery and corruption charges (denied) in the USA.

Burnside’s firm gave £85,000 to the Conservatives ahead of the 2010 election, according to Electoral Commission records. Don’t we have a right for our Davy to tell us what they got for it? And why his choice of friends is so flawed?

An EU court has agreed that companies benefitting by taking advantage of the artificially high prices caused by the illegal actions of a cartel – even if they were not involved in the running of it – may be legally sued by businesses that can prove they incurred loss as a result.

The ruling by the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) is expected to increase the likelihood of compensation payments to victims of cartels in member states and to improve competition.

Clever marketers who label foods stuffed with sugar and salt as “low fat” – implying that they are a healthy option – are being targeted by local councils concerned about the obesity crisis.

The Local Government Association (LGA) is calling for the EU to strengthen the rules on labelling so that shoppers are not misled into buying something they believe is healthy when in fact it is not.

Another firm that hasn’t done so well in the customer trust stakes is Coca-Cola GB, which is throwing £3 million into next month’s UK launch of its successful American Glaceau Smartwater brand of eau into the £1.4 billion bottled water market here.

For those recalling Coke’s humiliating 2004 marketing disaster with Dasani – it turned out to be 95 pence a bottle Sidcup tap water with a dash of carcinogenic bromate – the firm has promised that its new eau will really be The Real Thing and based on its Abbey Well spring water from Northumberland with an added dash of non-carcinogenic electrolytes, to give it a “clean and crisp” taste.

Coke suffered a gleeful kicking in the British press over Dasani with many pointing out that the episode bore comparison with an episode of the Only Fools and Horses TV sit-com where Peckham chancers Del Boy and Rodney bottled tap water and tried to sell it as “Peckham Spring”.