Posted by Lemon Bella writes:
Indian Skimmer and I went to Twenty20 finals day at Edgbaston. It didn’t go well.
In retrospect, we think we were punished for going against our principles and attending a match at Edgbaston. We have a history with Edgbaston. Edgbaston hates us and we hate Edgbaston.
First there was the rain debacle of 2008. We have previously written a report about this. Reading it back, we think our fondness for sarcasm may have hidden our true feelings: We were Angry.
Secondly there was the horrifically sexist marketing campaign. We didn’t report this at the time, but given how incensed it still makes us feel, this was an error. Here is my complaint to Edgbaston; again it is possible sarcasm masks the true extent of my rage.
You have my address on file because I have purchased tickets from you. To then send me an email suggesting I buy something for my “fella” whilst I pop off to a spa and don’t worry my little head about things like LBW laws, is both patronising and ridiculously illogical. You have my email address on file because I buy cricket tickets, if I wanted to go to a spa instead, I’d be on their mailing list.
Please bear in mind the following things when designing your next marketing campaign:
1) Women have been known to enjoy watching sport.
2) Women can actually use computers to order their own tickets.
3) Women are, generally, not stupid enough to date a man who sends her to a spa so he can get pissed with his mates at the cricket.
But Kent got through to Finals Day. So we bought tickets – £60 tickets. Justin Kemp is just about worth £60, especially when you factor in his fondness for wandering around in shorts.
All we had to do was park the car. However, in order to park the car we had to decipher Edgbaston’s colour-coded parking signs and, stupidly, we’d left our Enigma machine at home. We started by following the purple signs, because we like the colour purple. We had to abandon this strategy nearer to the ground because the purple signs had been blanked out with masking tape.
A man then offered us his driveway for £15. In hindsight, we should have taken up his offer because when we tried Orange car park, we were confronted by a rude man in a tabard who told us we could only park there if we were a player. Men in fluorescent tabards shouldn’t be allowed to use sarcasm. By this point we were mildly frustrated but not Angry. The anger came 20 minutes later when we found our designated car park (Black) and were charged £20 for the privilege of parking in a field. £20. For £20 we’d expect a valet service and a man in a hat.
Nonetheless, despite being Angry, we persevered. This was probably a mistake. We couldn’t afford any food at the ground owing to Edgbaston stealing £20 off us in the car park. We combined our spare change and bought a regular coffee. “Regular” apparently means “tiny” in the Edgbaston world of customer service. We sat in our seats and moaned about having to pay £20 to park the car. There was some cricket going on, but we were blinded by rage.
We did see Justin Kemp and his legs, but they were only worth £10 rather than the £140 we’d paid, because we were sat so far away that we got him briefly confused with Amjad Khan. However, that wasn’t Justin Kemp’s fault, it was Edgbaston’s fault.
Justin Kemp didn’t let us down. Justin Kemp would never send us a sexist email or charge us all our money to park the car.
A match report up there with your usual standard of excellence, LB, but eleven out of ten for your letter of complaint. Fantastic! It patronises back at them in exactly the right places. Did you get a reply?
GENIUS report. And, awesome email! I also want to know if you got a reply! Gosh, looking at that ad now makes me want to spit! I hate that stuff, like when stringfellows sends girls to stand outside matches in tight bodysuits and hand out flyers. (a) it’s a family event and (b) i hate it when people presume it’s a predominantly male event.
Grr. But one good thing about that day at Edgbaston / that dreadful marketing campaign is that they inspired such a great match report / email.
I haven’t seen those Stringfellows girls in their tight bodysuits, Miriam. I wonder if you might have a photo of them, so that I can see for myself just how awful it is. In close-up.
I hate it when people presume Stringfellow’s is only frequented by males….
Well who knows……sum English girl may not know all that…………….and I’m sure many women do enjoy spas more than their BFs
Warwickshire and Edgbaston, thankfully, have already been punished for all eternity by being associated with Ian Bell. I interpret this as God has punished them for their grasping, their sexism, and their stinginess with coffee.
Mims, but cricket audiences are predominantly male…aren’t they? Not that I’m against your point, mind, but I can’t think of a cricket match I’ve attended where it’s been anything like a 50:50 crowd.
I’ve just started going out with a cricket-following lass, as it happens. I would have put “cricket-loving”, but she’s not that involved. Yet. Unfortunately, she supports South Africa.
(P.S. Shouldn’t you be off on honeymoon or something?)
Amazing letter of complaint – top work. And great match report, your miserable time has kept me (and my office) royally entertained. So thanks for enduring it.
But… did you get a reply?!
There was sadly no reply to either lemonbella’s or my own emails (and in my case some actual post). I did however bring this up ona customer service course I was forced to attend and am told they regularly use it as an example of how not to approach a marketing campaign, so that makes me feel better.
Not as much better as if they’d given me my £20 back (they didn’t reply to that email either btw) but better nontheless.
And it’s entirely possible that the reason cricket audiences are predominantly male is precisely because of this kind of campaign, and because of the women in tiny clothes.
If they used Justin Kemp in their marketing there’d be much more of a female audience.
I can’t help Bert in his search for Stringfellow girls – but hope this will do as it has a Stringfellow connection (with a Mongoose to spare Bert’s blushes)
http://tinyurl.com/berts-stringfellow
Yes, Ceci. That’s just the sort of thing I was looking for. Thanks.
No, I didn’t get a reply. This made me more Angry.
i just can’t believe they’d make such an ignorant assumption. as if it’s just women that like spas!
I go to uni just around the corner from the ground, and last year we made a mint enticing cricket spectators from their thieving car park into our empty, reasonably priced student car park.
Despite my onomastic relationship with the late night “entertainment” venue mentioned above, I have never tried to hand out flyers while clad in a body hugging/exposing outfit outside a cricket ground.
Top reportage LB. Maybe it is The Edgbaston Anger that makes Ian Bell produce that awful sneer?
Today I learned that “onomastic” is a real word, and not a misspelled version of “onanistic”. What a match report this has been.