Murderers that plead guilty still need defence lawyers, and it is for similar reasons that many firms employ people trained in the art of stretching the facts, ignoring incredulity, and arguing from a position of absurdity with a straight face. They're called marketing managers, typically. And some are better at it - or more brazen at it - than others. Mark Bond, director of enterprise marketing at Vodafone, deserves some kind of award for making the following observation, and seeming like he meant it, on the growing ubiquity of mobile telephony: "There's a generation of people who have never had a fixed-line phone," he began, plausibly enough. "When they see a desk phone, they say, 'What's that?'"
Er, OK Mark. Kind of. Except that the generation of people who genuinely have never had a fixed-line phone and don't even know what one looks like don't actually say, "What's that?" No. They're much more likely to say, "Goo-goo", "Ma-ma" or, at a stretch, "Poo-poo".

01 Dec 2004