Duncan Harley

As subliminal messages go the Halo Effect is a sublimely subtle psychological concept. In essence a marketing concept and a route to unimaginable riches, the Halo Effect seemingly encourages us unsuspecting and blatantly thick consumers to assume that two and two make five. Apparently, the food-retailers have this down to a fine art. Or, at least their PR firms do. Joanna Blythman’s splendid article in today’s Guardian explains the phenomenon quite clearly when she writes that “When it comes to labelling, food retailers run rings around their customers, and mainly get away with it. They weave a lexicon of feelgood terms – ‘fresh’, ‘handmade’, ‘artisan’, ‘local’, ‘farmhouse’, ‘healthy’, ‘natural’ – into their marketing messages.” The halo effect in marketing allows a brand to positively anchor its reputation to a popular item. So, if you want to sell sausages you might just want to avoid descriptives which suggest dead stuff. A negative brand image is a big no no and ...

One of the pieces in my new book concerns the history of the early days of The Beatles. Not that I knew them or anything – although I did once meet an Elgin man who claimed that Paul played at his brother-in-law’s wedding -  but I have been privileged to both listen to the songs and I have of course visited a few of those local venues which – in those heady 1960’s – played host to the Fab Four. Now there’s a mouthful of words! There are of course many historical venues associated with the band and one of my favourites is Fraserburgh’s Dalrymple Hall. Billed nowadays as the Beatles ‘Lost Tour’ the 1960 tour included performances at Elgin, Bridge of Allan and Dingwall before climaxing at Fraserburgh. The stage at Dalrymple is on an upper floor of the building and leans towards the audience at some crazy angle or other. In the big scheme of things its surprising that performers, including bands and theatre groups, can remain completely calm whilst treading those illustrious boar...