Are you worth the money ?

Those nice people from Michael Page have just launched their latest Marketers Salary Survey which helps you understand whether you're being paid enough or not enough or maybe you're not paying your staff not enough.

Maybe you would prefer to hide this survey or perhaps leave a copy of your bosses desk, I'll leave it up to you.

Click on this link to be taken to the survey on the Michael Page website Marketing Survey

Virgin moves into Coffee Houses

Virgin Money, the online bank, is to open four customer experience lounges in the UK, its first foray into the high street.

The lounges, in London, Edinburgh, Manchester and Norwich, have been designed to generate good feeling between customers and the bank at a time when consumers lack trust in financial institutions.

Customers will be able to have coffee in the lounge and buy Virgin Money products if they wish, but the company says the lounges are not designed as bank branches with selling in mind.

A spokesperson for the company says the lounges will provide a high street experience of the online brand ahead of a planned move to open 70 transactional branches in the next five years.

"Interesting route onto the high street , many years some of you may remember when National and Provincial Building Society put Costa inplants into their branches to generate the same outcome. The rationale was the same working on the basis that when consumers are in a comfortable environment it's easier to have conversations about their financial plans for the future. It seemed to work initially but the numbers didn't stack up at the end of the project"

Banking for the People........

Banks are being advised by PR professionals to refocus their PR operations in light of losing the judicial review on PPI last month. One has spoken of banks beginning to rebuild credibility by establishing a 'human face', while others have urged them to remove the 'small print culture' from their businesses and stop insisting they are 'right in law'.

It seems pretty obvious to you and I that the Banks have taken us , the general public for one big gravey train ride for the last few years. Yes , it's ok for some if you work for them but for the masses they are seen as the faceless conglomerates who at each turn will try and weedle money out of you.

The fact that PR companies have now decided to tell the banks they need a face lift is about time in my opinion and not too soon. I still believe its not the banks who should be doiing this but the Building Societies who should be using PR and marketing to reconfirm the friendly face of banking - unless you were a customer of N&P with a Keydata account , but then again did get your money backall told. It's the Building Societies who were the community banking houses, they helped you save for your first house and arranged the mortgage for you , the whole family would bank with this one Building Society.

I think Banks have become too distant from their customers and too driven by their commercial drivers and money generation ideas. PR is only part of the answer to this much bigger problem.

Easyjet = Easycostincreases

EasyJet has announced a 45% increase in its booking charges, despite an investigation by the Office of Fair Trading into unreasonable debit and credit card fees. The increase will see its debit card fees rise from £5.50 to £8, whilst credit card fees will rise to £12.95 or £8 plus 2.5% of the flight cost, depending on whichever is higher.