Hi Everyone

 

And welcome to the June newsletter. Summer has finally arrived and it’s good to see so many of you making the journey to sunny Mevagissey. We are starting to see lots of familiar faces and old friends coming through the shop door. We hope to see even more of you over the next few months.

 

We would like to extend a warm welcome to all of you who are receiving our newsletter for the first time…… It may seem as mad a sack full of Piskies at first, but you will soon get used to it. Rest assured that you have joined an exclusive band of 800 similar people who share your good taste and liking for The Lavender Pillow.

 

As usual we have tons of new stuff for your perusal and delectation which yet again has spilled over onto 3 pages. http://www.lavenderpillow.co.uk/Whats_new.html

 

We have also added some new pages to the site…… yes we are aiming to have the worlds largest website… we are up to 67 huge pages and counting. Sorry to you guys who are still on dial up connections and need lots of patience to see everything. However, the size doesn’t seem to be deterring people as we are now averaging about 18.000 visitors a month.     

 

The first new page is for all those people who keep saying how much they love our Gothic clothing but say they never go anywhere to wear it. So we have decided to introduce the Where to Wear page http://www.lavenderpillow.co.uk/Where_to_wear.html  packed full of suggestions for things to do in a Goth frock.

 

We have also updated our fashion news page with the latest things not to wear this summer and our usual humorous dig at the fashion industry. Including exclusive new trend directions and a special focus on the men behind the catwalk catastrophes http://www.lavenderpillow.co.uk/Fashion_News.html  

 

There is also a new page called What’s going on http://www.lavenderpillow.co.uk/What's_Going_O.html  where we will be advertising all sorts of events and happenings here in Cornwall which may be of interest to you. Such as Devilution Cornwalls very own Alternative music night starting on Friday 30^th June at the Eclipse nightclub in Truro Rock/Metal/industrial/EBM. It’s being organised by the fun, funky and fabulous Fayley from Dare in Truro. So anyone with a darker taste in music who is going to be around at the end of June, make a note in your diary. Go to http://www.daregothic.co.uk/devilution/forum.htm for more info. If you haven’t got anything suitable to wear… we can sell you something….. If you would like to go but don’t know anyone…. We are going, you know us and we talk to anyone……. You don’t like Goths….. You won’t be reading this newsletter…..You don’t know your EBM from your elbow…… view it as a learning experience……So there are no excuses not to go……… See you there……

 

Those of you who have had the privilege of being served by the gorgeous Gilly in the shop last summer will be saddened to know that she has buggered off to art college and is now living in London. I’m sure you will all join us in wishing her well in her artistic endeavours. But the news isn’t all bad as we now have new staff……. So if you walk into the shop and find that we have been replaced by the delightful duo of Nessa & Clara, you will know what’s going on. They are both very nice and friendly so feel free to pop in chat with them. We will no doubt be swanning about pretending to be tourists somewhere (or more likely catching up with the paperwork and the hoovering and dusting at home). 

 

We have had lots of interesting responses to our gripe about the Met office not having a clue about weather forecasting in a previous newsletter. One person had the inspired idea of checking which direction the wind was coming from and phoning a friend who lives 20 miles in that direction. If you ask them what the weather is like. You will then know what is coming your way. Brilliant! We have given this some thought and have come up with the next logical step from there which is to use your friends to actually improve the weather for you. If everyone was to take a holiday in the Gulf of Mexico, ingratiate yourselves with the locals and make as many friends as possible while you are there. From then on, every time the weather gets a bit chilly, just call all your friends in Mexico and ask them to put the kettle on. Once it has boiled ask them to pour it into the sea and slosh the water in a north easterly direction. If we get enough Mexican buddies doing this it will supercharge the Gulfstream and turn The UK into a tropical paradise. No more worries about an impending ice age.  

 

So here we go with what is becoming a regular feature that some strange people tell us they actually look forward too……… You must be as mad as we are…….. Being a firm believer in giving the people what they want here is Bazz’s rant of the month.

 

Several things have put me in rant mode this month. Firstly surveys……… Just about everything you see on the TV or read in the papers seems to be full of statistics and survey results. Politicians popularity ratings, 8 out of ten cat owners who expressed a preference, 700 million people will watch the world cup final, one in every 5 men in Britain is gay and one in every 6 men in Illinois has had some form of sexual congress with a chicken. Etc. Etc.  It’s not that I have a problem with statistics, it’s just that I have walked this planet for nearly 50 years and never once have I ever taken part in any survey. Now there is a very good reason for this as I have always thrown letters containing surveys in the bin. I’ve never pressed a polling button on a web site. I’ve never phoned or voted for anything on the TV or Radio and usually tell people who phone or approach me in the street with a survey to bugger off. Now this calls the whole science of statistics onto question and makes all surveys intrinsically flawed because they do not include me or any others like me (of which I’m sure there are many). So we can extrapolate from here that in fact one in five men in Britain who can afford to waste their time with stupid surveys is gay. And that Belligerent old gits like me may or may not be more likely to be gay or fancy chickens, but we will never know because they refuse to tell us because it’s none of our bloody business. If you follow my logic here, the only conclusion we can draw is that (as we have all suspected for a long time) Statistics are a complete load of doo doos from a bulls rear end……… So when they tell you in the middle of July that 700 million people watched the world cup final, you will know that they are lying and in fact 700 million and one were actually watching because I certainly will be……… but don’t quote me on this or include this information in any survey because I am not a number I am a free man.  

 

But on a more serious note, the thing that has wound me up the most this month is Buzz Marketing. OK, so we have put up with ever more frequent adverts on the TV, piles of junk mail being stuffed through our letterbox, piles of flyers falling out of every magazine and paper we buy, giant advertising hoardings cluttering up our town centres, Email inboxes full of junkmail, adware and spyware crawling all over our computers, product placement in movies and TV programs and celebrity endorsements. However, the big corporations are now starting to realise that we have all been swamped with advertising and it is becoming less and less effective. They have also realised that word of mouth is the most effective form of advertising and personal recommendations carry more weight than a multi million pound TV advertising campaign. So they are starting to pour more and more of their huge advertising budgets into Buzz marketing. So how does it work……. Well, people who are in positions which involve a lot of contact with the public like taxi drivers and hair dressers, are being paid to recommend particular products to their clients. Teams of actors are employed to strike up conversations with strangers in order to drop a product recommendation into conversation. Actors start up loud conversations in public places extolling the virtues of a particular product. They are even recruiting people who have a large buddy list on MSN or spend a long time using their mobile phones to spread the buzz about certain products. This has proved very successful in the US and we now hear that one of Americas biggest Buzz Marketing agencies have opened up here in the UK. We feel that this is a particularly insidious, offensive and dishonest form of advertising and an unacceptable invasion of our privacy. The other point is that this type of advertising cannot be monitored or regulated and is therefore wide open for companies to make totally bogus claims for their products with no fear of prosecution. And which companies are doing this? You won’t be surprised to hear that the list includes MacDonalds, the mobile phone companies, internet service providers, travel companies, record companies, movie distributors, computer console/game manufacturers clothing companies,  and just about anyone else with a big enough advertising budget. So the next time that your taxi driver starts chatting about the great holiday he had, or your hairdresser tells you how good a certain shampoo is, or a stranger you bump into in the street starts telling you what a good internet service he gets, or your best mate starts telling you how cool Nike trainers are when you always thought he was a Punk….. You know what’s going on. And you know what to say to them “Take your ______ Buzz _____ and shove it up your _______  ___ you ______” please insert your favourite expletives in the spaces. So spread the word (or the Buzz) and help try to stop this stuff in it’s tracks. Make a point of avoiding any product or company that uses this type of advertising and let the big corporations know that you are not prepared to put up with this sort intrusion into your private life.

 

And just so we don’t get lumped in the same category as these corporate monsters, if you do not wish to receive our newsletter in the future, just reply to this email with the words “Buzz Off” in the subject field and we will remove you from our mailing list.

 

So before I run out of breath and fall off my soap box….. that’s all for this month.

 

Bright Blessings from

 

Bazz & Rose

The Lavender Pillow