Sometimes, just sometimes, even I miss the big stories of the week, mainly due to the fact that I’m too busy digging deeper and deeper into the murky underworld of direct marketing to prise out those golden nuggets you all love to feast on on a Friday morning.
Sometimes, just sometimes, even I (and for god’s sake don’t tell McKelvey) visit our decidedly inferior rival magazines, just in case (but very rarely) my obsession with all things DM blinds me to the bigger picture.
And so it was this week, when (keep it to yourselves) I happened upon that crusty old organ where my esteemed editor once plied his trade as something called an “associate editor”. (Apparently he didn’t know what the job entailed either but he certainly took to “associating” with some gusto.)
Yep, that’s right Busty fans, I visited the new, all-signing, all-dancing website of Marketing Monthly. As you may recall, it was weekly but, according to its own editor, marketers are too busy to read a weekly magazine these days.
And there it was, “the Big Debate” as they like to describe it, under the world-shattering headline: “Is age discrimination rife in the marketing profession?” And there’s more: “Nearly a third of marketers feel ‘older people’ are under-represented or not represented at all within their business, so is there an issue of age discrimination in the workplace and if so what can marketers do to level the playing field?”
Big debate? Jesus. It bet those “time-poor” marketers can’t wait to get their chops round that article. After all, as the magazine recently said, they “have never been hungrier for analysis of the big strategic and leadership issues”.
Talking of older people, one thing I did notice this week was that the irascible Jonathan Spooner has been casting nasturtiums about my relationship with my boss, implying that we spend most of our time “cavorting on the beaches of Tahiti or in the jungles of Sumatra”. Bloody cheek. Chance would be a fine thing, granddad.
Now, as many of you will know, “our Spooner” – as we call him round these parts – has been a big advocate of this august website, but don’t let that put you off him; he is also #TotesOMG GORG.
He recently launched his very own consultancy, Spoon Creative, however, according to sources close to the situation, this lipsmacking, thirst quenching, ace tasting, motivating, cool buzzing, high talking, fast living, ever giving, cool fizzing, multi-award winning creative genius is now thinking of jacking it all in to go and work again at Felix’s Fine Fruit on Western Road, Brighton (well, if it hadn’t been replaced by Yummies, that is).
It’s not often I beg, in fact I’m more likely to be doing something far more enjoyable when I’m on my knees, but come on you lot, just give the bloke some work will you? Otherwise he might start charging us for his lipsmacking, thirst quenching, ace tasting, motivating, cool buzzing, high talking, fast living, ever giving, cool fizzing, multi-award winning columns. Mind you, on second thoughts, I could always pay him in kind…
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