For most of my life I have been an early adopter of new technology, sometimes for no apparent reason other than desire. This hasn’t always made me popular with those who share my life. For instance, in 1986 I paid more for my computer than my car, despite the fact that all it could really do at that time was run a handful of distressingly expensive games (it was an Amiga 1000, retro gamers).
As the decades have clicked by my adopting has got later and later though. The joy of handing over chunks of my bank balance in exchange for a shiny new gadget – that performed a task slightly quicker than the duller gadget I already had – eventually begun to fade. Then there was the irritation of cross brand function inconsistency, whereby the steps required to perform a task needed to be relearned with every purchase, particularly on mobile phones…
I guess the lengthy preamble above is my apologetic justification for only just turning up at the party that is Twitter. I won’t bang on about it because it will mean nothing to those of you not on there, and those who are on there are already well aware of what Twitter’s all about. If you are interested, I can be found at @DaleBradford and other ETO folk on Twitter include Lee Schofield (@Pimpyoo), Paul Smith (@SimplyPaul), Jonathan Kirk (@etoshow) and ETO itself (@ETOMagazine) – expect to hear a lot more from us this year on this platform.
And what a year it is going to be, featuring a number of high profile events which creative retailers can benefit from. In the February issue we’ve put together a brief guide of what’s happening when, so you can plan your Jubilee, Euros, Olympic etc tie-ins. The first big event is of course on the 14th of this month, which I am sure you are well prepared for, but could you also plan a promotion of some kind around February 29th? It’s got to be worth a shot, particularly because you won’t get another opportunity until 2016.
