RecAddiction

The view from our walks in the morning

Apologies for not keeping this up as much as I had planned.  To be very honest, after 2 weeks, I sort of got into my holiday groove and could not be bothered to write anything.  There’s been some highlights.  Our friends came over which was loads of fun and it changed the vibe from chilled family time, to a bit more towards partying with friends time.  There are some amazing stories, but I’ll leave them on the beach where they belong.  If I tell you we were chased down the road by a monkey and that was only the 3rd most interesting this that happened that day, you start to get the idea.

The local kids could be future CEOs with the business brains they have

As I write this now I’m very much missing home.  Not just the material things I’m longing for, like cider, Sky+, thick matreses, quick wifi, electricity that doesn’t cut out once a day, soft pillows, pork sausages and football on at a godly hour, I’m also missing family, friends and London itself.  No matter how much we moan about it, it’s still the greatest city in the world.

It’s been an amazing break, and I feel fully rested and ready to take on 2012 with a clear head and a passion to make our business fantastic.  But most importantly I’ve realized how much my little family mean to me and how lucky I am to have both of them. Spending so much time with Poppy has changed our relationship from “I love her because she’s my daughter.” to “She’s my little buddy.”  We play constantly, have our own songs we sing, and I’ve learnt so much about her.  She’s incredible.

So goodbye Goa and hello London, you beautiful mess you!  Thanks for reading and have a wonderful 2012.

It seems a McDonalds Twitter campaign went wrong yesterday.  Full details here.  I think it’s funny as hell.   I love it when large corporates try to tame the social media beast, only to have it come back and bite them in the ass, and there’s no larger or more corporate than Ronald himself.  What does worry me is the response from their apparent Director of Social Media, Rick Wion, doesn’t seem to have a firm grasp of Twitter or how it works.

“Within an hour of pulling #McDStories the number of conversations about it fell off from a peak of 1600 to a few dozen. It is also important to keep those numbers in perspective.”

Pull what numb nut?  It’s a hashtag, it’s out there.  It reeks of Ricky boy having an advertising background where disasters can be limited by pulling advertising campaigns from TV or radio, but it doesn’t work like that with social media.  You cant “pull” a message that is already in the hands of the masses.  And the fact that he’s issued a press release about how small the damage was, will only fuel the flames of the people hell bent on ruining this little gem of an idea.

For what it’s worth, with only 1600 people having used the HT for evil, I would have publicly asked them to elaborate on their stories, listened to the issues  and thanked them for their input and then put out a press release on how you plan on tackling these problems.  Turn a negative into a postive story, rather than trying to pubically sweep it under the rug.

I’m loving it!