I’ve been a member of my local Xtravision branch since 1993. Recently it has struck me that the company spends a lot on advertising. They have repositioned themselves from being a rental operation to being “Ireland’s leading entertainment company”. This isn’t a new development. It’s been ongoing for a few years now. They are adapting to the changing landscape. The penetration of Sky in Ireland and online movie rental operations has brought this change about.

And yet, through all of this change, they have not engaged with me, a customer of 15 years. I think they are missing out on something. Let me explain.

Up to about a year ago I would have been a regular renter of titles - maybe one or two over the course of week. Since then, my rental pattern has been very sporadic. Rental is probably not their focus right now, but I’m not going through the door as often as I did.

That’s one less set of eyeballs that isn’t seeing what other offers they have going on. All the press and TV advertising hasn’t got me back in to the Xtravision habit.

So why has their computer system not picked up on the fact that my rental pattern has changed? I wouldn’t mind if someone from the local branch gave me a call to say “Hey, we noticed you’ve not been here in a while - there’s a credit applied to your account for any rental in the next 10 days”. Anyone in business should know that your most valuable asset is your customer database. So why is a big company like Xtravision so piss poor at utilising it?

How about encouraging me to get alerts via text of when new titles are available to rent in the local store. Maybe a loyalty card - rent x number of titles in a month and get some sort of discount for a dvd purchase.

I just don’t understand why they spend so much on blanket advertising campaigns when an investment in a better computer system might pay off more in the long run.

So Xtravision, whatcha gonna do to get me back to you?

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I’m not much of a cook but one of my “specialties” is tortilla wraps with quorn mince. I usually make the sauce with onions, peppers, can of tomatoes and a pack of mexican spice mix that I pick randomly off the shelf in the supermarket. Once the ingredients are all cooked, I slap the mixture onto the tortilla, add some salsa, jalapeno peppers and sliced cherry tomatoes. Once the tortillas are wrapped, I top them off with some grated cheese, dash of tabasco and into the over for 10 to 15 minutes.

I’m sure foodies will read that and think to themselves “hope he never invites me for dinner”, but it’s simple to make – and I like that. All of this is by way of introducing a website which just launched today. It’s called Spicendipity and comes from Deborah who was a regular follower of the weekly Apprentice reviews I published on a Wednesday. But for the fact that I joined twitter earlier in the week I might not have known about this until after everyone else, so twitter is proving useful already!

Spicendipity has got a really lovely range of sauces, spice mixes, baking mixes and gift hampers for people like me and foodies too. It’s all natural goodness as well. You won’t find any of the gunky stuff that you get in a lot of supermarket bought product. 

I just ordered some of the chilli seasoning, the tex mex seasoning & dip mix, and the chocolate brownie mix. I can’t wait to give them all a go.

Spicendipity also has a blog called tast.ie where the grand opening of Spicendipity was announced. The Loudervoice Blog has a competition to win a hamper by reviewing The Taste of Cork festival.

Here’s one customer who will look forward to trying out the various recipes on the blog and the product on the website.

Recently stumbled on wordle and was immediately impressed. I used it to create this weeks le craic header. Having read all the Spencer Tunick posts I thought it would be interesting to take the words from the various accounts of the experience and see what the word cloud would look like.

It’s a fascinating tool and my new favourite plaything. There is also a tag text generator for flickr that makes it really easy to create a word cloud of your flickr account.

(note : as I type this, 9.54 pm Mon 23^rd June, wordle is down for maintenance – I think I’ve broken it )

This ad ran in a lot of the newspapers last weekend. Eagle Star are rebranding to Zurich. Haven’t a clue why, and nor do I care. One thing I’m pretty sure of is the fact that it will :

“strategically align the vision and goals of our core competancies to achieve frictionless delivery of service to customers across all channels and marketplaces on a global as well as national level.”

I made that bit up of course, but it’s probably not far off what the company said about their rebranding.

The interesting bit about this campaign is how it is using well known faces to get the message home that the name is changing. So we have Jean Butler in this advertisement. Jean Butler is most famous for Riverdance. If you didn’t know that, go to the back of the class and put the ‘D’ hat on.

Anyway, there’s the lovely Jean staring wistfully into space and thinking of those happy childhood days and the names she used to go by – namely, Jean Bean, Freckles, Red and Super Hoofer.

I think it’s a good campaign and got me thinking about nicknames. Other than being labelled the Anti-Christ by my parents when I was a toddler, I didn’t actually have a nick name in school. My brothers did, but I didn’t.

Are nicknames only given to the popular kids at one end, and the unpopular ones at the other? Or could it be that I was forgettable and had no distinguishing feature or characteristic that set me apart? Not that a nickname is necessarily something that is an essential part of childhool. Oh wait, actually, as I type this a nickname my brother used to call me has come into my head. Wow, I had forgotten about it.  I used to hate that name. It was more of a taunt than a nick name. He called me Biddy or Biddy Baxter (depending on his mood) because I was a big fan of Blue Peter growing up. Biddy Baxter was the editor of Blue Peter for a long time. Hmm, amazing how things like that come up out of nowhere.

Any nicknames you want to share, feel free to divulge in the comments.

With all this rebranding going on, I read somewhere during the week that Brian Cowen’s look is not befitting that of a head of state. Commentators have pointed to Bertie Ahern’s transition from the seedy anorak look to the suave, sophisticated man we see today. So Brian is in need of some rebranding especially in the hair department judging by what I read. What better excuse for a Photoshop job than to do a hair transplant on Brian?

But whose hair to choose. Hmm, let me think for a sec. Got it. There can be only one – it’s Raef from the Apprentice.

Autographs later - form an orderly queue - don’t push at the back!

Just found out that Moviestar.ie are offering a Video on Demand service now. Read all about it here. Not a huge selection yet, but it’s just started so it’s early days but it looks interesting.

This reminds me that I must return the 2 West Wing DVD’s I’ve had out for, oh, must be 2 months now. Really I should make better use of my membership….