The not so great ignored

I can safely say I am ignored, though. Frequently, in fact. Being ignored is pretty much the staple ingredient of new business. So, sadly, as someone who’s responsible for helping develop that business for the agency, I’m pretty much used to it.

Hello…? Just checking you’re still there. Good. Now, I don’t worry about being ignored. I’m used to it. Phoning anyone these days usually results in being put through to voicemail. Best not to mention call centres. And if they’re not instantly deleted, emails are more or less rapidly forgotten.

Being married and, especially, having teenagers really lets you know how pointless your existence can be sometimes, too. The secondary purpose of using an iPod is to let parents know that their offspring are NOT interested in whatever it is they might have wanted to say to them.

So now that I know I must have been ignored at previous elections, I’m actually a bit miffed. After all, why should it be only David Cameron that’s now suddenly offering to ‘fight for the great ignored‘? I feel short-changed — no one told me at elections past that I was being ignored as part of the great ignored. Just the opposite. I was told by all the parties that they had my welfare uppermost in their thinking.

But what I also remember from David Cameron’s recent soapbox speech by the river, with the image of Big Ben framed neatly in the background, was that I wasn’t alone in my state of being ignored: “young, old, rich, poor, black, white, gay, straight” were all included in this catch-all phrase.

Hands up

So, er…isn’t this everybody, then? I mean he didn’t say ‘male or female’ but I guess being as I am not young nor old, neither rich nor poor, but white-ish and straight means that I don’t quite know whether I am indeed qualified to number myself among ‘the great ignored’  now.

Rich business leaders and captains of industry,  lottery winners…yep, they’re in. And good old bankers, too. So will be the socially disadvantaged, homeless and the unemployed. How about the NEETS, too? But not me right now: I don’t tick all the boxes.

Gosh…it’s all so very confusing. Despite my previous misgivings, I think I must be among only the ’semi-’ rather than the ‘great’ ignored.  That’s why I consider myself to be truly part of the not so great ignored. Those middle-of-the-road fence-sitters, neither fish nor fowl and incapable of being truly one thing or the other. Dammit.

It’s interesting how this very act of demographic profiling — something we do all the time, as an agency, in order to understand different behaviours and values across the social / consumer spectrum — can actually have the opposite effect.

Being definitely part of the not so great ignored, therefore, means I must now resign myself to actually being ignored. Again. I was reasonably happy when I didn’t know I was being ignored. But not now. I bet you’re not listening, either. Thought so.

By Neil Cowan
http://blogs.chemistrygroup.co.uk/newbusiness/