Socialism & Tourism #1: Republic of Cuba

Posted on June 17, 2011 by Joseph Reaney

Prior to the July release of my new travel article about socialist tourism, I’ll be previewing a few of the commie states featured. First up, it’s Cuba.

Let’s begin with the most visited communist state in the world. In many ways, Cuba is your classic Caribbean paradise isle: home to pristine beaches, poncy hotels, sweaty nightclubs and overpriced trinkets. Yet with socialist giveaways on every corner, from omnipresent Che murals to dilapidated American Buicks, it doesn’t take Tony Robinson levels of surface-scratching to see that Cuba is an island unlike any other.

Socialist since 1959, the country now boasts over two-and-a-half million tourists – including law-dodging Yanks – each year. While most stick to the bespoke capitalist bubbles along the coast, sipping mojitos, smoking Montechristos and swaying to samba music, an intrepid few venture inland to see Castro’s Cuba for what it really is: a steaming great mass of socialist contradictions. Continue reading →

Billygean’s Blog: Hooray for the Humdrum

Posted on April 29, 2011 by Joseph Reaney

[ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON 17TH DECEMBER 2009 BY RED C MAGAZINE]

I have a love-hate relationship with blogs. There are several I enjoy – travel blog Going Local is an absolute delight, for example, and James and The Blue Cat is consistently chucklesome – but there are many more that incense me. Like spite-filled celeb rumour mill Perez Hilton, an ever-present reminder of humankind’s inexorable retreat into idiocy. Though it’s the ‘personal diaries’ that have traditionally acquired the majority of my goat.

“Come on”, I thought. “Wake up and smell the narcissism. How can you be so arrogant as to expect total strangers to give a flying fig about the mundane happenings of your mundane life? It’s the 21st century equivalent of popping round the neighbours’ to show off snaps from your latest break in Bognor.” Continue reading →

The Great Potential of Petition Marketing

Posted on April 20, 2011 by Joseph Reaney

[ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON 8TH JUNE 2009 BY RED C MAGAZINE]

Here’s a question: how do you feel about Paris Hilton? Personally I have nothing against the pointless, insipid, spoilt, undernourished, narcissistic, empty-headed, fame-raping little brat… but I know others feel differently.

When Ms. Hilton was found guilty of drink driving in 2006, her PR team decided to harness the power of public outcry in a campaign to request her pardon. The Free Paris Hilton petition – which includes the incredible declaration “Paris provides beauty and excitement to our otherwise mundane lives” – received a fairly impressive 33,000 signatures. Unfortunately, a counter petition requesting that the socialite serve her full sentence was signed by over 91,000 people and featured on several major news channels in the US. Proof, if it were needed, that not everybody shares my innate capacity for forgiveness. Continue reading →

Bohemian Oddity #3: Mezi Ploty Festival

Posted on April 14, 2011 by Joseph Reaney

Prior to the late April release of my new travel article in stalkingElk, I’ll be previewing a few of the Bohemian oddities that will be featured. This final post is about Prague’s maddest – in every sense – music festival.

There are some amazing music festivals in Europe. If you were so inclined, you could start the party season at the multimedia, Renaissance subculture festival Netmage in Bologna, take a break at the arty, classical ponce-fest that is St. Magnus on Orkney and then end your summer with the intimately Arctic mish-mash rave of Iceland Airwaves in Reykjavik. But for all Europe’s unusual, eclectic music festivals, none come close to the bizarre two-day summer music and theatre bonanza that is Prague’s Mezi Ploty. Continue reading →

Alrite R’kid? Why I Love the Manc Accent

Posted on April 8, 2011 by Joseph Reaney

[ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON 28TH JANUARY 2010 BY RED C MAGAZINE]

When I was growing up in a quiet little town in the south of England, I was always jealous of people with accents. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, I thought, to be able to ask for jellied eels, or a sausage barm, without sounding like a ponce. Wouldn’t it be bloody brilliant if the sound of my voice alone communicated a deep-rooted link to the precise location of my upbringing.

I do, of course, have vocal indicators that identify me as southern English. Many can even place my accent in the south east. But am I from Basildon or from Basingstoke; from Berkshire or from Kent? My part-BBC, part-Estuary English style of speech gives few pointers to a precise location. The fact is, millions of people across a large part of the country speak in much the same boring way as I do. My voice is a poor compass. It’s hardly surprising, then, that I dreamt of having a real accent. Continue reading →

Keeping the Trolls at Bay

Posted on March 25, 2011 by Joseph Reaney

[ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON 17TH MAY 2009 BY RED C MAGAZINE]

If you have ever commented on a blog post, web news article or Facebook group, you will probably have come into contact with trolls. They are the thoroughly irksome, pedantic and occasionally downright unsavoury individuals who post irrelevant, inflammatory and/or abusive remarks in message boards, often with the sole intent of disrupting on-topic conversation or undermining other forum users.

For the most part, trolls are accepted as just one of those irritations that happen online – like receiving those persistent emails about enlarging your penis, or unwittingly helping to prolong Rick Astley’s career – but for us marketing types trolls are more than just an annoyance. The truth is that these cyber-tosspots cost advertising agencies in the UK alone millions of pounds every year. Continue reading →

A Quick Word About Wordle

Posted on March 19, 2011 by Joseph Reaney

[ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON 18TH NOVEMBER 2009 BY RED C MAGAZINE]

I like words. They happify me. In fact, they make me tripudiate with joy. I’m one of those people who take far more pleasure in hearing about a crepuscular splodge than actually seeing one; and would much rather read about a spelunking scrimshanker than go and cheer him on. I get a kick out of the English language and, at the risk of being philodoxical, I think everybody should. Language may be fundamentally a means of communication, in the way that food is fundamentally a means of nutrition, but both offer pleasure far beyond their function. Words should be savoured like a sumptuous steak.

Of course, when I try to convince my chums about the myriad delights of mellifluous language, they call me a ponce. Well, until a few weeks back. All of a sudden, they’re casually dropping obscure words into every conversation. It’s frippet this and proprioception that. And while I love to think it’s down to my strategic nagging, I’m afraid it isn’t. They still think I’m a ponce. But they’ve become huge fans of this website called Wordle. Continue reading →

The Peaks and Troughs of Celebrity Endorsement

Posted on March 11, 2011 by Joseph Reaney

[ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON 19TH APRIL 2009 BY RED C MAGAZINE]

Really, what’s the point of celebrity endorsement? Does anyone actually care what kind of natural yoghurt tickles the tastebuds of a vacuous reality star, or which department store has flip-flops to fit a has-been pop singer? Perhaps, or perhaps not… it really depends who the celebrity is, and whether they appeal to the product’s target market. I, for one, am happy to believe that Peter Kay really does enjoy a cheeky pint of John Smith’s, and that Stephen Fry genuinely relishes “the soothing taste of Twinings”. And I’m also thoroughly convinced that Kerry Katona does – or did – her big shop at Iceland.

Good celebrity endorsements rely on a careful marriage between product and ‘star’. If the collaboration works then both brand and celebrity could reap the rewards, but if the two are utterly mismatched then the association could have a severely damaging effect on product sales, profits and worse – reputations. Continue reading →

The Two Sides of Dark Marketing

Posted on February 27, 2011 by Joseph Reaney

[ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON 7TH APRIL 2009 BY RED C MAGAZINE]

Dark marketing may not be a popular topic of conversation down the pub, or a subject of family debate over a sunday roast, but last year the increasingly popular advertising technique got some important exposure through its use by that most cuddly behemoth of unquenchable consumerism… McDonald’s. The fast food giant, more normally associated with in-your-face mass-media advertising and sport sponsorship, was found to be the quiet and unassuming creator of a popular online computer game. Continue reading →

Ischia’s Wild Winter Warmers

Posted on February 6, 2011 by Joseph Reaney

I have had a new travel article published in February issue of Shoestring Travel Magazine. It’s about the hot springs of Ischia in Italy, and here’s how it starts:

“It was one of those bitterly cold December days in southern Italy, when the chill wraps itself around your bones and draws you towards winter, and I was freezing to the seat of my newly-rented scooter. The frosted palms and agave plants blurred at my sides as I tore down the mountain, enduring the icy gales for the tropical target that lay ahead: one of Italy’s wildest and most unique thermal spas…”

If you’d like to read more, simply click here for the whole article. Or you can visit the Shoestring website to read the entire (excellent) edition of the mag absolutely free.