With my marketing hat on, I am delighted that the theory has been debunked. It presumes that hard work, creativity, quality and the like don't matter. Certainly high profile influencers can make a dramatic difference and the likes of David Beckham yet richer, but they are not the Holy Grail. On the other hand, if you pick your target carefully who knows?

The Queen's visit to Lord's for the Ashes test sparked off media coverage for Dubonnet that threatened to eclipse the efforts of Freddie Flintoff. The chaps at Dubonnet don't comment on the value of H.M's enthusiasm for their product, but what a sales pitch! Just check the Queen's forward diary, call all the charities/regiments/hospitals/institutions she's visiting and sell, sell, sell. Personally, I'd imply that the Tower of London has a specially reserved cell for Chief Executives whose cocktail cabinets don't hold Dubonnet and add "Of course, we only sell it by the case".

Speaking of cricket...

I suggest that sledging is a rich business vein to exploit for printwear businesses. Plenty of the remarks in the middle are of the puerile or unprintable variety but there are some gems. My favourite goes thus. Rod Marsh: "How's your wife and my kids?"; Ian Botham: "The wife's great, the kids are retarded." SuperSledge would be a pretty good brand name to work with.

Who do you believe?

I keep seeing evidence of recovery from the recession - the Footsie rising for eleven straight days to pass 4,500, housing sales coming back to life, Chinese growth accelerating - but it's invariably accompanied by warnings from corporate leaders saying there's a lot of hard rowing to do yet. Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Fed, has been one of the most bearish, saying that we're a long way from out of the woods. He's principally interested in America, of course, and their housing market is still deeply mired, but it looks as if this recession might be nasty but short-lived. What would be really nice would be if the Chinese started buying things they don't make instead of stuffing the mattress with yuan.

Tattoo parlours

I promise you it is early in the morning and I haven't been drinking. A while back I met a guy who ran a tattoo parlour whose intelligence and enthusiasm for his trade overcame my initial abhorrence of his freakish appearance. He made the telling point that body painting is one of the oldest art forms. This is undeniable. It is also entirely possible that the printwear industry is a modern reflection of that. My multiply painted and pierced acquaintance certainly thought so. The printwear business merely uses reflex blue instead of woad. Given the popularity of tattoos is there not a natural commercial link between the two businesses? Personally I don't foresee many marketing managers having their corporate logos tattooed on their forearms, but then I would never have predicted the growth in tattooing at all.

Bill Gates, I love you

The man more responsible than any other for bringing us the technologies we take for granted has given up his profile on Facebook. Me too, Bill. OK, I never had one, but it's the same principle. He's also ‘not big' at texting. Totally understand, Bill. Better still he says "all these tools of tech waste our time if we're not careful." Techno-numpties the world over now have the most cast-iron, copper-bottomed excuse possible. If I could just send him a thank you note on Facebook...

What Galaxy are you from?

Mr Beckham, a good friend of the printwear industry over his career, has found himself unloved by the fans in L.A. He's been booed twice. He may not care. We all know that Becks is conscious of his personal image and turning out for a club sponsored by Herbalife might lack the necessary butchness that his personal sponsors want.

Crumblier than thou

The news that Oxo is to be reformulated to enhance the crumble experience has caused a certain amount of derision outside marketing circles. Within them there is something more akin to sympathy. When you're managing a brand that is a must stock for retailers and, own-label copies notwithstanding, an ever-present in the nation's kitchens, what do you actually do to justify your salary?

Serious suggestion

I will predict with confidence that your business is sitting on an idea that would make or save you a pile of money. The idea in question is in a staff member's head. The first difficult bit is getting it to see the light of day, because people are very diffident away from their areas of expertise and the second difficult bit is stopping it from being buried by managerial jealousy. Two examples of how it works. Swan Vestas used to have a strike surface on both sides of the box until someone in the production department told them how much it would save to put it on one side only. The Big Mac was developed not by a team of food scientists and researchers but by a franchisee who cut the bun twice put in two patties and extra relish. You'll notice how blindingly simple both examples are. So, do whatever you can to extract those ideas - and reward them appropriately.

The profits flu in

Apparently, there are lots of people making a nice thing out of swine flu. The manufacturers of Tamiflu, Relenza, thermometers, tissues, anti-bacterial soaps and doubtless any number of dodgy complementary medicines are all making a killing. Has anyone in the industry branded up a consignment of face masks yet?

Caught in a social network

As phenomena go, social networking sites are on the stellar side of things. Facebook apparently has 15 million users in the UK according to Ofcom's Communications Market report and it's only five years old. That is some sort of audience but according to research by McCann Erickson, marketing people are a mile off the pace two thirds of them admit to having only a sketchy understanding of how it fits in the marketing mix. In fact many companies don't allow access to the sites via their IT. OK the reasons are obvious, but it's a missed opportunity. It's not an easy audience to cultivate, however. Usage of Bebo and Second Life has dropped significantly and Friends Reunited has just been sold for a fraction of the figure it fetched four years ago.  The message is choose with care because there's another coming along.

Food civil war

The arguments over a possible ban on BOGOFs (buy one get one free offers) to reduce food waste look distinctly like roundheads versus cavaliers. On the one hand, who could argue that the roundheads are right to make serious efforts to reduce food waste (running at a staggering 50%)? On the other hand, say the cavaliers, this is an attack on legitimate commercial freedoms, undermines responsibility of the individual and is inflationary to the family shop. Do not shrug your shoulders and say that it doesn't affect you. If foodstuffs cannot be sold with BOGOFs, other promotional devices which tend to encourage additional consumption will also be at risk and, in marketing, where food leads other products almost always follow. We have, incidentally, been here before. In 2001 Brussels wanted to restrict promotional techniques, banning a couple popular in Britain. Happily the industry campaigned successfully against it. Alongside the threat to the BOGOF is increasing attention to food miles. Those roundheads would love to stop us buying out of season fruit and vegetables because of their significant carbon footprint - and, again, their argument is environmentally sound. But let us not forget that the staple of printwear - cotton - is every bit as much an imported crop as bananas.

Football is back

The beautiful game is an earner for printwear businesses on a variety of levels but I have never seen anyone really dominate a ground or a stand with it in our leagues. Contrast that with what happens when the Dutch national side plays anyone, anywhere - part of the ground is guaranteed to be an unbroken sea of orange. This prompts two thoughts: how come more brands and indeed football clubs aim for this effect. You would expect Liverpool with their all red strip would achieve it in the Kop, but they don't. I would suggest that if you have the opportunity to recommend, then go for those vivid colours - red is commonplace but orange or yellow are not and remind clients that the primary purpose of printwear is to smack people in the eye with their message.

Tiger or rat?

I'm told by someone who has been in China recently that the social niceties, which accompany the start of a business meeting there, are not families, holidays, football and the weather but Chinese horoscopes. Now, like me, you may regard horoscopes as a lot of harmless tosh, but the Chinese don't, it seems. Anyone seeking a successful business partnership with Chinese suppliers is advised to recognise this and respect the age of their culture: they were inventing paper and gunpowder when we were building Stonehenge.

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