Minutes of a Meeting of The Witch Star Project on Tuesday the 13th of September 2016 at 96b Portland Gardens, Hove (in Brighton, actually).
Attended by Martin Towers, Aaron Sabbattica, Triple A, Colin Dalglish, Asif Iqbal and William Bones.
Apologies for absence from Iqbal’s cousin.
ITEM #32
See photo of a room with a view posted on August 28th. This was something Wendy had asked for, but we’ll now have to discuss it again when she’s feeling better.
ITEM #33
We’re meeting today in the basement flat of a grand Regency townhouse (in one of those posh squares off Hove seafront).
This is the home of The Satellite Club and of its vice-President, Colin Dalglish. At the moment, Aaron isn’t saying how he and Colin have come to know each other or why Colin should want to help us, but Aaron does say Colin (who’s a retired actor) will be happy to provide a voice-over for our TV advert.
ITEM #34
Further to Item #13, we’ve been given a booklet (written by Mr Al-Khwarizmi’s nephew, Sean) called How to Get into Bed with Television Advertising. This book contains the same advice we were given by Otto Kebab about developing a business plan through the employment of a critical path analysis that describes our goal, and then plots backwards to describe what we’ll need before realising each step. So this is now our Witch Star’s critical path:
(12) We win a National Lottery jackpot. That’s our goal.
(11) We found our winning numbers in The Prophecies of Nostradamus.
(10) Nostradamus translated our message into his prophecies.
(9) Nostradamus received our message sent back through time.
(8) Our message (transmitted in a TV ad) travelled back through time.
(7) A production team was appointed and our TV ad was produced.
(6) A broadcaster agreed to broadcast our TV ad.
(5) A commercial sponsor agreed to pay for our TV ad.
(4) We pitched our idea to potential sponsors.
(3) We appointed a team to pitch our idea.
(2) We identified and approached potential project partners.
(1) We have developed an idea and a business plan.
But Aaron’s saying we don’t need to waste any more time describing our idea because it’s all here in The Terms & Conditions of the Witch Star Project .
And (he’s also saying) it would also be a waste of time imagining ourselves working with big broadcasters such as ITV or Channel 4. Fortunately, our ad will only need to be broadcast in the Brighton area. Unfortunately Brighton’s local TV channel – Latest TV – still won’t talk to us directly about broadcasting our ad. Consequently – according to How to Get into Bed with Television Advertising – we need to follow the advice presented by Thinkbox (which is the marketing body for commercial television in the UK).
Incidentally, this is one of Thinkbox’s own adverts advertising the power of ads on TV:
According to Thinkbox, we need to take our clearly defined objectives and seek quotes from three recognised advertising agencies. Ideally those agencies should be IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising) members – although, according to the map on the IPA’s website, there’s only one agency listed for the Brighton area: and that’s Designate – an agency specialising in travel, tourism and leisure. However, a Google search suggests some other local agencies including ADMAN (which is led by a marketing consultant called Nick Vowles who used to work at Designate) and Popellernet (which, we remember, had been advertising on a TV screen in a shop window at the bottom of North Street near to where Triple A had been punched to the ground during this year’s Brighton Festival by a doorman outside the Brighton Palais).
So the idea is to get local businesses to pay us (or an agency) to make adverts for them that will be shown on local TV. What those businesses don’t need to be know is that we’ll have hidden within each ad our string of winning lotto numbers aimed precisely at Nostradamus’s crystal ball.
However – Mr Al-Khwarizmi wanted us to remember, when we’ve watched local TV – we’ve been puzzled by the scarcity of commercials advertising local businesses. In fact, last week, all we saw on local TV was that cheap ad for a local taxi firm and some commercials for a shop selling really expensive vinyl disc players. So why’s that? Surely it’s going to be relatively cheap to advertise on local TV; and much cheaper than on national TV. Isn’t it? And surely local businesses would want to advertise their goods and services on local TV. Wouldn’t they?
According to Thinkbox –
• On average each person sees 45 ads per day on TV.
• Ads on TV are the most talked about kind of advert, with 58% of all the conversations that people have about advertising being about television advertising – compared with just 8% where people might talk about an ad that they’ve seen on a website.
• Each day, commercial television is seen by 71% of the population – and by 98% in a month.
But maybe we’re the only people who watch local television. In fact, apart from us, we can’t find anyone who’ll admit to having watched Latest TV more than once. Iqbal says, “It’s all rubbish. It’s only for the lazy, stay at home student. Every programme is just same music in pubs, or cooking programmes from Newcastle”. And maybe that’s true. Maybe no one in Brighton watches local TV – in which case maybe Latest TV will eventually run out of money and be taken over by the Russians. So, at this point, Aaron’s introducing Mr William Bones to our meeting. William is the General Secretary of the Brighton & Hove Media Watchdog Alliance (TUC affiliated).
William tells us that his research has revealed there are now more than twenty local TV stations in cities around the UK. Initially they were all owned by independent companies. But now, one after another, these companies are being “bought out and sucked up into a newly emerging media empire” called Made TV. So Made TV now owns 25% of the market. And, according to William, Made TV appears -on paper- to be run by an Irishman called James Conway. But its real owners are a couple of mysterious Russian characters called Alexander Volov and Igor Glyanenko – who’ve recently been buying all sorts of stuff around the UK. Consequently, William says he’s worried about the future ownership of local TV in the UK – and he’s showing us this article –
[|] InVision8 REPORTS & REVIEWS Concerns re Ownership of Local Television …
– which he says he wrote in 2014 around the time Latest TV were applying to Ofcom for their licence to broadcast.
And Aaron’s saying this will present the perfect opportunity for us all to get involved in a takeover of local TV. From there on we could advertise whatever we like, whenever we like. So yesterday Aaron phoned Companies House in London and they’ve given us an address for the Russians in Dorset. But William says contacting the Russians would not be a good idea.
Aaron’s asking William if he could orchestrate a campaign of propaganda that would persuade Ofcom to revoke Latest TV’s broadcasting licence in favour of our Russian allies.
William says he’s very annoyed and (at this point) leaves our meeting.
We remind Aaron that we’re currently discussing the production and broadcast of an advert. According to our critical path analysis – with or without the help of an advertising agency – we need to find a local business that’s going to sponsor our production. However, Aaron’s saying this puts our pitch the wrong way around. He says we should first make a great looking advert and then pitch that to potential sponsors. He says this is exactly what Alfie’s friend [Timothy Sackville-West] has been doing: Tim’s been making great looking videos that everyone’s talking about. But then, when we ask what these videos are advertising, Aaron replies, “Nothing. But they do look great.”
At this point, Iqbal tells us he’s also very angry. He says he came to this meeting in good faith because Aaron’s been telling him that we’ll be discussing a very important business deal with a local business man [Colin]. But now he [Iqbal] doesn’t believe this is what’s happening here because we’re “all just a gang of sad losers; mad people; and drug addicts”. And so Iqbal’s leaving our meeting – but not before agreeing to a private meeting with Colin next week; and confirming that he [Iqbal] has a cousin who’s a local taxi driver.
Aaron tells us that – from a marketing point of view, in its initial stages – it won’t matter what our ad’s selling so long as it’s grabbing our audience’s attention. All we have to do is make a great looking video containing a few areas of blank green/blue chromakeys that can be utilised later for product placement. Also, there should be some spare seconds at the end of our ad for the addition of our sponsor’s slogan and logo. Aaron gives us this example of an ad by the American director, Spike Jonze, which obviously could have been an advert for anything.
Obviously, the quality of our own ad’s going to be less important than the cost of having it broadcast. And, so far, we haven’t been able to obtain that information from Latest TV.
Aaron says Made TV offers to broadcast adverts in Bristol for as little as £15!
Obviously, we need to speak to Otto Laing [Otto Kebab]. We imagine Otto could phone Latest TV and pretend to be interested in advertising his Kosher Kebabs place on local TV. They’ll probably take him seriously because he’s a genuine local businessman. Otto can then find out how much our ad on Latest TV will cost.
ITEM #35
Triple A requests our minutes be amended to correct the impression (given in Item #31.4) that Josephine Oateay was his girlfriend when the truth is they’re just good friends. And, subject to this correction being made, Josephine’s agreed that we can record her singing for one of our projects [See Item #3]. Apparently Miss Oateay’s an art therapist working with Alfie at Merrydown Park.
ITEM #36
Rather than end our meeting at this point, Aaron wants us to consider infiltrating the panel of one hundred people regularly surveyed by the BBC for its quiz show, Pointless. Usually the rules of Pointless ensure that it pays for a contestant to find the most obscure answer to each question: For example, if contestants are asked to Name a country beginning with the letter B and contestant X replies Brasil and contestant Y replies Belize then if – when that panel of one hundred people had been asked the same question – 85 panelists had answered Brasil while only 9 had answered Belize then contestant Y would win those 9 points (and, in Pointless, it’s the contestant with the fewest points who’ll be the winner).
So Aaron thinks he knows one of those panels of one hundred is paid by the BBC to meet and answer questions during Tuesday lunchtimes in the basement theatre of the Art Kane Bar on Eastern Road. And Aaron believes we could persuade them that it might be fun if the most obvious answers to questions were never given. So – for example – if they were asked to Name a Disney character whose initials are M.M. then no one should give Mickey Mouse as an answer.
Eventually, when the actual quiz show’s recorded by the BBC, we’d find a contestant we liked and tell them not to answer with the most obscure answers but with the most obvious because they’ll be the ones that’ll be pointless.
So we’ve voted one in favour of this proposal – but no one else could give a f***!
ITEM #37
Alfie’s writing to say he found this headline in a newspaper:
Top US cryogenic firm denies keeping David Bowie’s head in a freezer.
Yesterday, 26 year old Tom Candice, a night worker at Alcor’s cryonics facility in Scottsdale, Arizona was dismissed after admitting to removing clients’ heads from capsules of liquid nitrogen. Caught on CCTV, this employee (whilst strumming a guitar) can clearly be heard singing, “Hi, David. This is something I wrote yesterday on the bus. I hope you like it.”
Although initially reported that Bowie’s body was cremated and his ashes scattered on the Indonesian paradise island of Bali, rumours persist that Bowie’s head wasn’t cremated but removed and transported to Alcor’s cryonics facility in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Alfie’s also enclosing a postcard he’d received from Wendy. She’d apparently mailed this from Scottsdale, Arizona. She’d written, “Hi Bro! I’ve met a guy called Tom. He’s working on an album with David Bowie. How fantastic is that?”
The Witch Star Project 