The ex-Factor

So, as I walked past my local arena last week they had put up the big banner advertising the X-Factor arena tour.

People were already queuing outside for tickets which went on sale two days later. The show isn't actually for six months.

But will anyone remember them by then?

A lot of people rant about how X-Factor is evil, how it merely demonstrates the worst of the industry etc.

I don't think it is all that evil, but it isn't the proper environment to find a star. It certainly isn't conducive to fostering talent.

And that's because these people only have one talent: they can sing. There are session singers up and down the country who make a satisfactory living from being able to sing. Actually, that may be a little unfair: this year I'm sure one of them was shown holding a guitar so maybe he can play it.

But generally they do nothing else but sing and maybe dance. The big, sustainable acts write their own songs. Some of the best, biggest acts aren't even that good at singing.

The BBC had the very short-lived Fame Academy. This was different to X-Factor in that it did try to foster talent. The participants went to song-writing and other such classes. They were encouraged to write their own songs, play their own instruments. Yes, the live shows were mostly about singing cover versions, but the main focus was on the other programmes, showing their artistic development. And whilst only one original song was released: Ainsley's Keep Me a Secret, a number of the participants did contribute to the songs they released post-show (Alex Parks for one and winner David Sneddon's Stop Living a Lie issued as the culmination) and others now work behind the scenes in the industry (David Sneddon being quite a prolific song writer these days for people such as Hurts, Lana Del Rey and Nicole Scherzinger).

But the strategy around X-Factor is all wrong too, and that is epitomised by the arena tour. If they were really wanting to capitalise on the hype surrounding the live shows to maximise musical exposure they should have as many of them as possible releasing albums as soon as possible. But they don't. Instead, they cash in with this arena tour.

Is that really such a terrible thing?

For the 'artist', yes. Whilst the company behind the talent show is coining in the ticket receipts, the performers are under contractual obligations; and - moreover - first options and restrictions preventing them from contacting any other record company for the period of a year. This means if Syco records / Sony BMG doesn't want the performer, they can't go anywhere else for a year without a release from contract from Syco.

And this can be hugely damaging for the performer. In order to capitalise on their 'fame' they should be getting their first album out as a matter of urgency. Instead they do this nationwide tour which lasts for months, then they go off and record an album of cover versions with maybe one or two original songs which is ready for release just in time to get ignored because the X-Factor has started up again. Or maybe the timing is actually such as to ride the surf of the X-Factor publicity, that releasing exactly a year after first being propelled to fame actually benefits the sales of the album.

But that, of course, is if Syco decide to take the performer on. If not, then they are set back in this opportunity by a number of months, long enough to get lost in obscurity. As the following final approaches there maybe the occasional kind question from a commentator of “whatever happened to so-and-so who finished fifth in last year's competition?” whilst they are trying to put the finishing touches to an album of covers that they couldn't start until the current competition was well under way.

One of the victims who plummetted off the radar despite winning and being signed to Sony BMG was Steve Brookstein. His first album was covers. He released one single. And then he was dropped. He couldn't capitalise on the “winner” tag - his second album, released independently of Sony BMG, failed to chart. He has been hugely critical of the X-Factor formula.

But then perhaps factors are too complex to blame it all on one thing? After all, there are successful artists who come from X-Factor - One Direction, JLS, Leona Lewis and Olly Murs; with Girls Aloud coming from the predecessor - Pop Stars.

But of the winners of the eight previous series (it's still too early to comment on this year), in my judgement, there has been one proper star created - Leona Lewis - a few low-bubblers (people who remain in the industry performing to some degree) - Matt Cardle (who coincidentally has just released some new work) and Alexandra Burke - and then the 'where are they now also-rans' - Steve, Shane Ward, Leon Jackson and Joe McElderry. It's perhaps not fair to stick Joe in there as he has gone off to pursue more classical interests. But on any assessment it is not a great winners list.

But should it be? Am I comparing like-for-like? Afterall, with the 'grifting' bands that start local, writing their own stuff, working hard to build a fanbase, doing the free gigs in the sticky local pubs - there are many of those who fall by the wayside, and it is a rare thing indeed to have a successful second album let alone reach the epic heights of Muse, U2, the Beatles or any other such bands. Even for the manufactured pop bands, for every Westlife there is a Phixx, a D-Side or any of the other not-even-one-hit-wonders.|And, let's face it, if they didn't achieve what they did through X-Factor, they'd still be stacking the shelves at Asda.

If there wasn't the arena tour, there wouldn't need to be the one-year restriction in the contracts. It would also give the various acts the time to record their album so that there wasn't a need to put so many cover versions on.

That said, by undertaking the arena tour they are still in front of the public, they are giving the various management and production teams time to come up with a decision and a plan, and then they can turn around an album reasonably quickly, perfectly in time to ride the next X-Factor wave. Maybe the reason for the failures isn't the timing, maybe it is a genuine lack - either in the quality of the writing of the songs, of interest from the public, or in the talent of the artist. Perhaps, once the hype is over, people step back and make a proper critical assessment. After all, when you're paying for the music rather than using it to fill your Saturday night, your quality control generally increases.

Though not in every case.

(In/un)valuable insurance

My travel insurance is up for renewal.

Well, it isn't “up for renewal”. I was told that it was automatically being renewed, and that I could contact them to opt out of automatic renewal if I wished.

That annoyed me. There was no box to tick or untick to say whether you wanted automatic renewal - it is a part of the policy and you have to actively opt-out.

Now, I will say one thing for this particular insurer - they did at least email me before it was renewed. There are many complaints to BBC Radio Four's MoneyBox programme about money simply being taken from debit cards with no warning - people haven't been told at the time they took out the policy that it automatically renewed, and they haven't be advised of it afterwards either.

But anyhow, I cancelled and started to shop around. I am going on holiday - ironically the day after the insurance expires - so I thought I would have a look into what was around.

Nothing.

That can't be right, can it?

Oh, there were policies - thousands of policies - but for me the policies being offered were worthless.

Is that really the case?

Well, the problem is that I am a lawyer, so I go through the small-print with a fine-tooth comb. I also start out with a minimum set of specifications that I require.

For example, you have a number of initial options: do you want a single trip policy; or a one-year policy? Is it for Europe; the world excluding America; or the world including America (I'm still not sure why America is a special case).

But then there are the additionals.

Are you taking valuables? If so, how valuable? How much excess? Do you want airline insolvency cover? Volcano cover? (it is there now as an extra).

I made an assessment - I knew the airline and didn't need insolvency cover as it was highly unlikely to go under, so it was really just about the valuables and excess.

And this is where the policy was useless. But that may be because I'm not a woman or a rapper with considerable amounts of bling.

The reason I look at the excess is because I was considering travelling with my netbook and smartphone.

But smartphones - indeed mobile phones at all - are excluded from the list of valuables. I would need a separate smartphone policy for that.

So it's my netbook. The valuables section limits the value of valuables as a whole, but also to limit each individual item. Amongst the policies that I look at, all of them had an individual item limit of between £150 and £200.

My netbook isn't top of the range; but it is worth around £300. So I'm already £100 down.

One of the policies, very bizarrely, had a single item limit of £150. It then had an excess of £100. If my netbook had gone missing I would have gotten back £50. Brilliant. Especially when the policy itself cost £35, so essentially that's £15. So I'm not taking my netbook.

Now that's very simplistic and doesn't take into account multiple claims - where you claim because you got out on holiday and your airline went bust and in doing so they lost your luggage.

Also it doesn't take into account baggage loss - whilst individually my t-shirts may not be worth much, cumulatively there is probably quite a costly baggage whizzing around with me. Obviously if my luggage is lost on the way out, I have to buy clothes simply in the hope that the insurers will cover the loss. And that of itself can be a risk - as a solicitor by day I am more than aware that insurers will often do their utmost to get out of a claim. By - say - not calling in the loss within the first 48 hours, or by not reporting to loss of baggage to the airport policy it is possible to invalidate your claim. And where they do cover a claim it is for the second-hand value of the item, despite having to buy brand new.

But it just goes to show how very very carefully you have to look at the policy wording. Indeed, the comparison website that I used just simply had a tick for whether valuables were included in the policy or not - you then had to click through to the website and drag up the policy schedule to see exactly what the excess was; what the single item value limit was; what the total claim limit was; and what valuables were included or excluded.

Of course, I could obtain additional cover - the next level of cover had a single item limit of £500; and a cumulative valuables limit of £5000. But that policy also cost considerably more. Insurance is, afterall, a business - it makes the insurers a profit. It is not a private savings fund, which I would probably rather. I'm sure if I put as much away in an account as I spend on certain insurance policies I would have more money in return than if I ever needed to make a claim.

But it doesn't stop there.

What they do cover you for is a lot of things for which you are already covered.

So, the front page had big letters and stars around the headline which told you they would cover you if your flight was delayed! They would pay your hotel costs if you had to stay overnight, and give you an allowance.

Fantastic.

But that is useless.

The reason? Most airlines operating in the European Union are bound by EU regulations to offer such assistance anyway - and the insurance schedule makes clear that where the airline covers these costs, the insurance doesn't.

So really all it came down to was health insurance - the cost of repatriating me in the event that something happened to me.

I question the value of this particular element; however as it is, this particular holiday that I am going on is with my parents, so I can rely upon them should something happen to me. And whilst I am not throwing myself off mountains or diving with sharks, I am aware that nothing is without risk.

What I am not going to do, though, is pay through the nose to cover that risk on the basis of a lot of additional “benefits” which actually provide little or no benefit at all.

A bit of S&M abuse

So, last night I was the subject of S&M abuse. Social media, obviously. And no, not trolling or anything like that – that is for a different post.

No, I found my Twitter feed being exploited. One of the people that I follow posted links to his project six times within an hour.

Now, bearing in mind that I have already stopped following the Twitter feed for his project, because of the overuse of Twitter, this was all the more annoying.

The project feed spent hours, days, weeks even, silent; before bombarding my feed with up to two dozen posts within a hour.

So I stopped following.

But even if I hadn’t stopped following, what are the chances that I would have read the posts, let alone followed the links? Probably slim to nil. It’s information overload, bombardment. I may look at the first post, but after that I just scroll past. The news/fun aggregators like BuzzFeed and The Poke can be very similar – infodumping. Trickle-feeding is best, unless the info is specifically related to each other that
necessarily requires the fast-drip, linked postings.

And this is where businesses – well, organisations in general – are struggling to get to grips with social media. I’ve had similar problems on Facebook, where I had to ‘like’ a brand to enter a competition or such like, but they then bombarded me with posts. The worst was my local pub, who would post four or five times a day, telling me their drinks offers that night – the same drinks offers in each post, and the same drinks offers as in their post the previous week. And the one before that. It probably wouldn’t have been too bad if they hadn’t had such poor grammar and spelling.

So, how should a business be using social media? Or should they use it at all? It’s the fad of the moment, but does it actually show a business out of touch with technology, with a lack of understanding or naivety about promotion?

Waitrose may well have inadvertently pulled a double bluff on this recently. They asked their tweeters to complete the sentence “I shop at Waitrose because…” The problem is that they couldn’t moderate the response. Back in the old days of email entries or complaints they could publish what they choose. If you searched for the hashtag #waitrosereasons in the aftermath, there was some comedy gold in amongst
the legitimate reasons. But the fact that the strategy itself has made the comment pages of the business section of the newspapers may have given Waitrose a tickle from the same hand that slapped it – it certainly got a promotion of one form or another. Who knows, maybe the whole thing was designed and instigated by their PR, with a wag within Waitrose creating spoof accounts and witty one-liners? Such cannot be said about the McDonalds #fail where McDstories was simply subject to abuse.

But who follows Waitrose anyway? Or any of the businesses on Twitter? And why? A lot of businesses these days seem to have told their appropriate department “We need a Twitter account and a Facebook. Not sure why, but everyone is doing it”.

Now, if you are using your Facebook page as an alternative – or even an addition – to your website, to provide information about your product or service, then fine. I can see someday that Facebook may be the go-to page where once the Yellow pages was; and may even overstep the Google search on that. And, perhaps with Twitter they are simply trying to open up another line of communication which is slightly less formal than email.

Yesterday, for example, I tweeted @nationalrailenq to find out what the problem was with my train. They responded about a signal failure pretty quickly. Brilliant. The problem occurs when you consider that 90% of the reason people contact a business customer service department is to complain, and Twitter is showing that complaint very publically to the dozen or so people that follow either the complainant or the business.

But doesn’t that happen anyway? I was in the pub last night chatting to my friend and bemoaning the service I had recently had from a lost property department. Yes, I was sharing my gripe with considerably fewer than if I had done it on Twitter (I did that too, on Monday, and then apologised in the same manner and praised said lost property on Tuesday when they went beyond the pail to assist me), but I was still airing off. And when I did it on Monday, they were at least able to respond (not very usefully with a simple “Please contact our customer service department who will try to help” tweet).

Perhaps to that extent it allows them to limit any damage and respond quicker to any complaints. It could even go favourably, or at least balance out and give a more realistic view to the public. The risk, though is that you lose control. Whether simply as an open line of communication or as an active promotional channel, you may find a troll hijacks your hashtag and you end up with PR egg on your face.

But, that said, I don’t follow @nationalrailenq, nor do I follow the lost property department. Maybe they don’t want me to. I can’t imagine that with the latter certainly as they advertise their @address with “keep up to date with our latest developments”. @nationalrailenq do, however, follow me. I’m not too sure why, but
If they are expecting photos of food and cats they are going to be disappointed.

One of my friends regularly berates his train companies over Twitter for their failures. Every now and again he gets a polite response back, but most of the time there is nothing. Whether they use that internally for feedback is another matter; but I have seen other friends chip in to the conversation, collectively assailing the already-catastrophised service.

Basically what I am saying is that organisations need a very clear S&M strategy.

What are they using the account for – promotion, contact, information? Is the account going to be active, passive, one-way or feedback? Who to friend or follow? How, why and when to tweet, post or reply. Once upon a time it was the adage that all publicity is good publicity; but is it when it isn’t even your own publicity?

People are playing with fire because it is new, it is flash, it does something - though they're not entirely sure what it does that is useful to them at that moment in time. The problems only become apparent when that fire is used inappropriately; without a proper fire-handling policy or risk assessment in place; or when other people realise that they can use fire to arson your business.

But maybe that is stretching the metaphor a little too far.

Nearly most recent

I know - I haven't had a Facebook rant for, well, almost a year and even then it wasn't a proper 'rant'.

But Facebook have recently released a new update to their Android app.

Fortunately this solves for me one of my main bug-bears - the widget refresh rate. Previously the widget would be telling me things that happened hours ago... at best. Usually it was "Yesterday a 9:00am" or something daft. This made the widget realistically useless. Now it isn't - now it updates with your most recent.

Which brings me to the question:

When is your most recent not your Most Recent?

When it's Facebook's Most Recent.

Confused? I'm not surprised.

Back in September 2011 Facebook unleashed Top Stories upon us.

No-one really knew what a Top Story was.

You could tell Facebook who or what was likely to be a Top Story, but it took an absolute arse-load of effort at that stage to go through your hundreds of friends and select which of them were top friends. And if - like me - you check your Facebook every few hours anyway, this was the most unhelpful of features in a long while.

Annoyingly, all searches and your newsfeed defaulted to Top Stories, and each time you had to manually select Most Recent. That eventually changed on the website and your own choice became 'reasonably sticky' - that being that Facebook would forget your choice as and when it felt like it so you still had to check the tiny little writing at the top.

But with its app, you had no way of knowing whether you were viewing Most Recent or Top Stories. With the updated release there is a tick indicator. And again, it has - thankfully - become reasonably sticky. You do have to check it every time as it does occasionally forget your preference, which defeats the object of it being sticky in the first place, but at least it half-makes-the-effort.

The only problem is the different meanings of Most Recent.

You see, if you log in via the web platform, Most Recent means the most recently posted status.

On the app that isn't the case. Most Recent is the most recently posted, liked or commented upon status. So, if your friend posted his status (or photo or whatever) four months ago, but someone liked it two minutes ago; on the web it would be nicely buried into their Timeline, but on the app it shows up as more recent than your friend's much more recent status update from just three minutes ago.

Irritating?

Don't even start!

It almost seems to be part of Facebook's policy to disenfranchise its established users. Facebook is starting to become a perfect example of a "Bad Corporation" that establishes a client-base, and then simply exhausts that client-base, milking it for all it is worth until - eventually - they realise better and move on.

It did it with Top Stories - foisting it upon us without actually asking whether or not we wanted it, whether it was actually a benefit to anyone.

They did it with the Facebook.com email addresses - your visible email address on there automatically defaulted away from whatever you had registered and wanted people to see in case they needed to contact you urgently, to a Facebook email address. If you didn't know, you wouldn't know: they didn't email you to tell you, or highlight the change the next time you logged in. It was silent.

I'm not sure I have convinced myself by my own argument that they are doing this to actively exploit the client-base for a number of reasons.

Firstly, we are not the client-base. We are free users. We are the resource. We are the data, we are the audience, it is the advertisers who are the clients. If they institute policies which actually make people less likely to use Facebook, then it affects their ability to sell adverting and therefore their revenue stream.

Secondly, if they are actively going out there to exploit on the basis that their users are too 'stuck' to Facebook to move, don't count on it. Just ask Myspace or Digg what ignoring your users when undertaking fundamental redesigns or functional adjustments can do to your 'sitting' userbase.

Now, I am fully aware that there does need to be forced migration in some circumstances. People don't like change, and often cannot see the benefit of change. I discussed it in the previous post about Timelines. But does anyone see a benefit from these changes?

Let's face it, this is a massive, multi-national company. Decisions as fundamental as these can't be imposed without substantial focus group analysis and testing to see whether it would harm the business. They can't be imposed without there being a proper cost-risk analysis and a business case proposal.

Surely?