2013-05-20T01:08:20-04:00 Guy Corbet http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=guy-corbet Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Guy Corbet Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3004655 2013-04-03T16:31:44-04:00 2013-04-04T10:40:53-04:00

Guy Corbet http://www.huffingtonpost.com/guy-corbet/
Not per kilo of luggage, but per kilo of the combined weight of the passengers and their luggage. The airline claims that this is the fairest way to fly.

The island has long grappled with one of the highest obesity rates in the world, with 92% of over 15s reported as overweight, so it is easy to see the problem the airline is trying to tackle.

The economics of the decision add up: the running costs of planes are dictated by weight. Samoa Air maintains that the rest of the industry will look closely at what they're doing. That may be true, perhaps no more so than among distinguished Irish-based airlines.

What's intriguing about this though are the implications of the new policy.

Putting fairness for tall people aside (who would pay more than short people here) it sends a very clear signal about expected "normal" behaviour.

If it helps promote healthy eating, then what else could we anticipate?

As we have seen with smoking cessation here, communications have a role in normalising good behaviour (and demonising the "undesirable"), but it is debatable whether hitting people in the pocket really changes how people behave over anything.

The implications of this are pretty clear, not only for the obesity debate, but also for the discussion around minimum pricing of alcohol. While it may be tempting to penalise financially "undesirable" behaviour, the jury is out as to whether it really works.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2899617 2013-03-18T07:42:15-04:00 2013-05-18T05:12:01-04:00

Guy Corbet http://www.huffingtonpost.com/guy-corbet/ retail sales growth has returned.

Perhaps less surprising was last week's news that only seven per cent of an innovation fund set up to help the high street modernise has been taken up.

It has become a common lament to hear the high street lick its wounds and complain of clone towns, the move towards out-of-town shopping centres and the rise of internet shopping. To this you can add the worst economic conditions in living memory. But pointing the finger is missing the point.

As the health of retail remains a key bell-weather of economic optimism, the return to growth is undoubtedly good news. It may signal a return of consumer confidence and perhaps a feeling that the worst could soon be over.

Celebrating last week's good news too soon, though, could miss a few of the more important lessons.

The first, that the world has changed, is obvious. The need to think multi-channel and the need to find a way to coexist with the internet are both well-trodden paths. To thrive again, the high street must become more of an enjoyable experience that customers want to seek out.

In this context, individual businesses need to communicate more clearly with customers. They need to sell their "story" as much as the inventory of what they've got on their shelves. They are not just about products and price any more.

For the high street as a whole, one of the lessons from Mary Portas' government review of the high street has been that united neighbourhoods can stand together more strongly. If a lot of businesses are working together to bring individuals in, they collectively benefit from the combined foot fall.

Perhaps more importantly though, the high street needs to review its competitive set and adjust accordingly. In other words, one of the paths less trodden in understanding the pressures on the high street is that everything really has changed.

Traditionally retail has been about Findus competing with Birds Eye and Tesco for our "fish finger spend", or M&S persuading us to buy our T-shirts from them instead of Selfridges. In other words, retail has always competed with retail.

Now, as "shopping" has increasingly become a leisure activity, or experience, retail has to compete with every other leisure activity. Customers are no longer just deciding which store to buy their T-shirts from. The decision now may be whether to buy a T-shirt at all or to stay in and download a movie to watch on their flat screen telly.

Competition for the high street is coming from more than the supermarkets and the internet. It's coming from everywhere. It's time to step up and start innovating.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2789944 2013-03-03T19:00:00-05:00 2013-05-03T05:12:01-04:00

Guy Corbet http://www.huffingtonpost.com/guy-corbet/ South African meat. It is pretty clear that what we think we are eating is never what it seems, and perhaps it never has been.

In recent weeks as this story has unfolded the media spotlight has turned from one culprit to the next. We've felt let down by our retailers, as Tesco in particular bore the brunt for being the first to put its head above the parapet.

We've felt let down by the regulators, as the Food Standard Agency (FSA) pointed to the retailers. We've also been bemused by a lot of things. On one level, trying to unravel who among Defra, the local authorities and the regulators is responsible is pretty bemusing.

But far more bemusing still has been the gradual realisation of what actually happens to our food between beast and bistro.

Over recent years several elements of the food industry have promoted themselves with romantic images of food provenance, as it has travelled "from farm to fork" or "from bean to cup". There have even been moves to tag fish with details of the catch they came in.

Some may have felt those wholesome pictures were a little too much to hope for. Nobody though could have been braced for the voyage of discovery finding out what does actually happen to our food between the paddock and the plate.

We've also felt let down by our brands. Findus was an early culprit. Many predicted it would not survive the scandal. It was criticised for not getting out in front of the story, for 'letting the story happen to it' (and perhaps rightly so).

For some there may have even been a sense that Findus was learning the lessons for having cut back on its communications team a couple of years ago. That, too, may be the case. Businesses that don't have the importance of their reputation running through their DNA are more likely to lose them.

For all this though, there is a greater truth in play here. One that trumps everything.

Findus, Tesco, Waitrose, the FSA, everyone involved. They will all get away with it now. The scale and extent of this scandal will mean that people will simply want it to be over. Nobody wanted to know how their food was produced in the first place, and nobody will want to be reminded of it.

I'm intrigued to think that I might once have eaten something as exotic as a water buffalo, but I don't want to know what part of it I might have eaten or how it got there.

This is the scandal that will go quietly away.]]>