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Anyone that has ever sat through a brainstorming session with me will know that I have a terrible fixation with treasure hunts. So how happy was I to see this advertised in this morning’s Metro?!

Rather lovely article in today’s Scotsman (courtesy of Jim Wolff, kindda) about IRN-BRU and its continuing success. Thanks to Mr White for his kind words. (Although see how I’m trying to take credit there for the ongoing efforts and tremendous hard work of the Barr’s marketing team.)

Their sales results are pretty stupendous when you consider what the rest of the market is doing. Long may it last.

As ever, Jason Stone is beautifully on the money in his ad reviews.

Check out the lastminute ad currently nestling on his home page, plus his write up.

Kick off your slippers, indeed. It’s lovely stuff.

Today I celebrate my fifth year here at Leith. Happy startday to me…

Groups in Aberdeen last night and my second group in particular was one of those happy accidents that happens now and again when they all wanted to speak, they all had stuff to say, their individual stories were clearly pretty interesting (one guy had run away from Poland to avoid National Service and was now living happily here with his wife and baby working as a baker and obviously slightly mesmerised by the fat content of the products he was turning out - but no time, no time) and the hour and a half breezed past.

We got to the end of the group and, bolder from an hour and a half of chat, one of them said: “so you do this for a living, right?” Yes, yes, I do. They all marvelled at the fact that This was my job. As indeed they might. “You must be good at it, like.” “Well, I like to talk.” You could see the cogs in their heads turning: they like to talk. They could spend their weeks traversing Scotland talking to people and get paid for it. So master, if you get a spate of CVs on Monday from a bunch of boys in Aberdeen, you can blame or thank me as appropriate.

In between focus groups, I’m currently guzzling up teen fiction on the subject of mental health problems. I’m running a handful of co-creation sessions with teenagers over the next couple of weeks for ‘see me’ and am on the hunt for stimulus. I felt that The Young had most likely moved on from my teen lit of choice, Judy Blume. Who wrote oh so much more frankly about bodily things than her British counterparts. But actually a bit of a browse suggests that things are mostly the same though we have a handful of novels about self-harm thrown into the mix. I’ve just finished Second Star to the Right, a sweet little story that turned out to be published in 1981 but was reissued last year with a new funky gettyimages cover and dealt with the story of Leslie and her tussle with anorexia. (I’d recommend it.) Next in line is Red Tears.

And I do this for a living. Great stuff.

There’s a nice post from Blonde here about a recent bit of tactical digital work they did for IRN-BRU. It’s a cute idea and a great example of turning something round really quickly to capitalise on the heat (or not) of the moment.

Customer service, sad to say, is one of my pet obsessions. Perhaps because I spent one hour in my local bank branch on Monday, on the phone to my bank’s national telephone line, intending to jump through some absurd identity proving hoops to enable me to get money out of the account which belongs to, hmmm, me. That’s another (irrelevant) story though clearly one that gets me quite agitated.

But back to the point. Higgidy - excellent customer service. Hence their swift reply to a pointlessly fawning email from me. The Apex Hotel in Dundee is my other favourite example of the moment. I stayed there last night after groups. I love staying there though I can’t quite work out why. A nice enough hotel. Great location, comfy beds, nice enough food. All the basics are right. I hadn’t been there for a while before last night and I’m normally up and down there fairly regularly. So yesterday, on arrival, an envelope in my room:

Dear Miss Wood,

We are always pleased to welcome regular guests back to the hotel and in recognition of your loyalty we would be delighted to offer you a complimentary movie package….

Delightful indeed.

Now as it turned out, the DVDs were Into the Blue (Treasure has its price was the sinister strapline) and An American Haunting. Anyone that knew anything much about me would not have chosen these two films as my evening’s viewing but obviously that isn’t really the point. Some old tired DVDs that no-one really wants to watch anymore did indeed make me feel like they might care a teensy bit about the fact that I hadn’t been there for a while. And I liked that a lot. Hats off to them and their CRM strategy.

Yet again. Delightful.

My love affair with higgidy pies continues. Look at this. Charming.

My favourite newspaper article this weekend. Dear Lucy Mangan. I thank you for brightening my Saturday.