Wednesday, June 12, 2002

I have some commercial advice for the proprietors of Portobello Van Hire - they're the guys who hired the van to my alleged burgeoning art thieves a month back.

Looking at my stats, I get a significant handful of people in here googling on Portobello Van Hire. Now, my neighbour definitely saw a van with those sacred words on the side. Other people must have seen them, otherwise why would they be googling? They're not listed at Yell, which theoretically means they're not listed in the Yellow Pages. There is a company called Portobello Car and Van Rental , but when you google on them, you get nothing. Nada.

So this is a tale of brand confusion and extremely poor marketing. There are potential van-hirers out there, desperate - desperate, I say - to do business with you, and all they're getting is me. And of course now, they'll get me twice. I will become the number one UK portal for Portobell Van Hire on the web. I will give up my job - or any pretension of getting one - buy a fleet of vans, and have them liveried in appropriately Portobello-ish Van-Hire like colours with the phone number writ large from every angle. It's all about marketing, these days, and your customers are coming straight to me. I will take over the West London van hire market. Watch me.

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