It wasn’t all failure tonight: before heading to the Royal Festival Hall, my friend Katie joined my wife and me in Trafalgar Square for a bit of promotion.
We handed out between 30 and 40 small (A7) PlinthiPaul.co.uk flyers to people passing the plinth. It was quite fun actually, trying to spot who was looking up at the plinth in an interested fashion and therefore might be interested in my web site.
By and large we got it right, with very few outright rejections of the flyer and a majority who actually seemed at least a bit interested in what it said. There were also one or two who were excited about the whole thing and wanted to go on it themselves – they were happy to chat for ages!
Mind you, it’s only when you start an exercise like this that you begin truly to appreciate just how many foreign tourists there are in the Square – sadly the leaflet was not generally a big hit with them, their responses varying from bemused inability to understand what I was saying (fair enough, I’d be the same in their countries!) to pointing out that they’d be back home by next week so assuming the leaflet was of no use to them.
One highlight of the flyering was the security woman at the side of the plinth, who took a leaflet and told me she would be on duty protecting me on that day:
I’ll be at the base of the plinth and if anyone says a bad word about you I’ll tell ’em you’re a good’un!
I suggested she should visit my site and submit an experiment which involves me throwing sweets down to the security guard, in that case – hello security woman, if you’re here! She seemed very keen on getting some Haribo, so you never know.
Finally, time was getting on and we were running late for the meet-up, so I wondered whether I could put some of the leftover flyers somewhere in the One & Other welcome centre, for staff and plinthers to see in the next few days. I approached tentatively but was – as befits its name – welcomed in by the staff and sure enough, they were happy to let me leave them on the coffee table in the room.
Not only that, but they also invited me to use their 1700-follower Twitter account to tweet a little plug for my site – thanks One & Other staff for your hospitality… and see you in just over a week’s time!
Finally for tonight, here’s a photo of the meet-up, featuring all three of its attendees: L-R me, Abby (on Skype) and my wife Edith. Fun!
