Advent, advent - mein Kalendar brennt!

I don't know if anyone else feels that they have been bombarded with Advent Calendars this year, or whether it's just me.

Each year, there seem to be new and hugely pricey Advent Calendars piled high at Toys R Us, including an absolute "must-have" (from 10-year-old viewpoint) from Lego Star Wars (very seasonal.)

Then there are those sales promotion jobbies that normally sell for 49 cents in Aldi that are thrust at you by the furniture stores and the like.

And this year, more and more online offerings. I have definitely had them from Telekom and from my bank. The things pop out of every website you attempt to look at like manic Yuletide jacks-in-the-box and have to be carefully negotiated around.

The first Advent Calendars date back over 100 years and were originally for children to "sweeten" the time before Christmas. In terms of behavioural economics, they make a complex concept (time) concrete - how many times must a sleep before Father Christmas comes? It's the same principle as taking a ticket at the deli counter or being told how many people are in front at the Post Office counter. The idea is to make you feel a little less helpless.

Although I am not sure that any parent who gives in to buying a Lego Star Wars Advent Calendar feels less, rather than more, helpless.

iCapitulation

Nearly six years after first seeing the Web in mobile, I have capitulated and got myself an iPhone.

What may be of interest to anyone looking at this particular Customer Journey is, firstly - how long it was. I mean, six years of knowing that I could have all the benefits of mobile internet at my fingertips and not doing anything about it!

And then there were the two "nudges" or "moments of truth" that shoved me to the point of no return. The first of these will have all the Customer Journey Academics nodding sagely. Last time I was in England, I couldn't check in over the internet. Which meant that, but for the legendary kind-heartedness of Lufthansa (what?), I would have been separated from my young son on the plane.

But the second one is both silly and frivolous. You see, when I was in London, I bought a rather natty iPhone cover. So I just had to get something to put in it.

Right - off to become a fully-fledged Apps bore.

Journey

Everyone seems to be on a journey of some sort these days. And decisions about what we buy, whether it's a car or a coffee can be mapped out in detail in Customer Journeys or Customer Engagement Cycles.

Customer Engagement appeared in the marketing lingo in the early 2000s, along with the concept of Touchpoints. In some ways, CE has become the Holy Grail, replacing such simple measures as Customer Satisfaction (which only looks at one point in time) or even Customer Loyalty (which doesn't have the emotional component.)

Gallup introduced an 11 question metric for CE back in 2001 which includes 3 measures of loyalty (overall satisfaction, intent to repurchase, intent to recommend) and 4 overall emotional attachment factors:

CONFIDENCE : always trust X, X always delivers what they promise

BELIEF IN BRAND INTEGRITY: X always treats me fairly, X can be counted on to reach a fair and satisfactory resolution of problems

PRIDE: proud to be a customer, X always treats me with respect

PASSION: X is the perfect company for people like me, I can't imagine a world without X

Back to the Journey - this is then the stages that a customer travels through, typically something like awareness - consideration - inquiry - purchase - retention. And there are plenty of visual depictions of this ranging with funnels, arrows, boxes, cycles and all the other delights to be found on Powerpoint.

Just two words of warning here. The idea of "stages" and names that echo old communication models such as AIDA do tend to suggest a linear and rational process. While it may be helpful to try and visualise the Journey, it's always remembering that "the map is not the territory", as Captain Scott and others found out to their cost.

And however much we may try and rationalise this into a process, human decision-making is not rational. Think back to the last time you bought, say, a pair of jeans. Did you draw up a nice "consideration set" with a table of prices and availability? Thought not.

Internet in analogue

You can't turn on the internet these days without hearing something about the internet. If it's not protests about Google Street View, it's the latest fuel for disrupting diplomatic relations from WikiLeaks - or some chat about the Internet of Things, which will soon be upon us.

I ought to remember the first time I saw the internet, but I must admit that I can't. I do remember email addresses with numbers longer than an IBAN or whatever those things are called and we did have it all up and running at home by the end of the last century.

As part of something called Internet Week Europe, the digital arm of RKCR Y&R, Saint, had a clever idea - to get people in the industry and schoolchildren to draw the internet. The results are here. There are plenty of Google logos, worlds, 60s graphics, brains and lolcats.

Although it's a great idea, unfortunately the website suffers from at least two of my frustrations with the internet. Maybe I am being thick, but I can't seem to view the pictures properly in full size without going through a complicated procedure.

And the commentary is littered with apostrophe-related mistakes: "the industry with all of it's wisdom" and "the industries finest." (sic)

Ironic.

Go East

Back in the 1980s, Phileas Fogg escaped from the pages of Jules Verne and travelled the world in search of snack products. He was single-handedly responsible for introducing the tortilla chip to the UK - or at least the brand of the same name would have us believe.

Nearly thirty years later, the products from MeiAsia caught my eye in my local Tegut. This is a range of Asian sauces and ingredients from Thailand, Japan, China, Indonesia, India and Singapore. Behind the brand is Heuschen & Schrouff Oriental trading, a Dutch company who have been distributing Asian food brands for years.

Well, now they have developed their own brand and they seem to have ticked all the right boxes. They have a damn good story - traveling Asia for two years tracking down the favourite recipes of the Asian people. The packaging is gorgeous, National Geographic-style photos of people and their recipes. I don't know how authentic it really is, but it certainly feels that way. The company also runs the Frits Schrouff Foundation, supporting social projects in Asia.

Oh, and if tonight's prawn jalfrezi is anything to go by, the products are pretty yummy, too.

Party on, not fade away

When I was a devil-may-care young thing in advertising, we often used to wonder what happened to people in our business once they hit 40. Such ancient specimens were, to all extents and purposes, invisible.

Last week, at the Charlotte St 1970 - 2000 reunion, there were precious few people to be seen under 40. So, with a whole club filled to bursting with old ;-) people who had been in advertising and who I hadn't seen since we were all in our 20s and early 30s, it was time for an answer to that question.

Well, there were a few who were still in the business and quite possibly still working in Charlotte St. And a CEO or two of some thrusting young start-up. But what was delightful was that I also met mature students, farmers, charity workers, a novelist or two, the happily retired, ladies of leisure - and even a builder!

There were a few wrinkles, a few paunches - mostly mine (!) - but the spirit and joie de vivre and energy were all still there. Not in a mutton-dressed-as-lamb way, but with the realisation that in our "work hard, play hard" ethos we shared a golden age of young adulthood that no-one can take away.

Surprise, Surprise

I always look forward to the IPA Excellence Diploma essays that come in a supplement with Campaign. I commented on the last lot here and I've just read the four that achieved distinction this year.

Tim Jones of BBH has a great new metaphor for a brand - instead of all those onions and keys, he's looked at gaming as a way of moving from brands as message transmission devices to behaviour change systems.

And, maybe influenced by a game or two, Simon Robertson of Dare believes that brands should embrace their Dark Side. I'm not convinced that it must always be the Dark Side, but I'm convinced that brands need an edge, a quirk, a bit that doesn't fit.

What really got me was that two of the essays, both excellent, seem at first sight to contradict each other. Sarah Morning of Agency Republic argued for the counterpart to the spatial-based Big Idea in the temporal-based Long Idea, with the reintroduction of myth and ritual into the digital world. And then James Hamilton of McCann Erikson argues the case for putting surprise and serendipity back into marketing, believing that our lives are increasingly predictable as we're driven more and more by algorithms that tell us what to read, watch, know....?

But both can be part and parcel of one brand and its communications - and maybe this is the trick. IKEA comes to mind, surprise, surprise. There are new ideas, surprising products, inspirational combinations. But the elements of ritual from KNUT to following to arrows to the hot dog at the end are there too. A seeming paradox but the key to success.