Ça, on le savait déjà…

Mais, sur son passeport, il a le droit de sourire… et, en plus on lui offre un café

A l’Agence on aime bien s’envoyer des fleurs.

C’est pourquoi je vous renvoie à la dernière ligne (prémonitoire) de mon dernier post:

Encore un coup à faire passer le duo Malkovich/Clooney de Nespresso pour la campagne de l’année (EFFIE J-3).

En plein dans le mille!

Faute d’Oscar le beau George devra en effet se contenter d’un EFFIE (Bravo à McCann Paris).

Le palmarès complet à découvrir ici.

What Are You Doing the Rest Of Your Life?

-Music by Michel Legrand lyrics by Alan Bergman and Marilyn Bergman

I want to see your face in every kind of light
In fields of dawn and forests of the night
And when you stand before the candles on a cake
Oh, let me be the one to hear the silent wish you make

What are you doing the rest of your life?
North and South and East and West of your life
I have only one request of your life
That you spend it all with me

All the seasons and the times of your days
All the nickels and the dimes of your days
Let the reasons and the rhymes of your days
All begin and end with me

I want to see your face in every kind of light
In the fields of dawn and the forests of the night
And when you stand before the candles on a cake
Oh, let me be the one to hear the silent wish you make

Those tomorrows waiting deep in your eyes
In the world of love that you keep in your eyes
I’ll awaken what’s asleep in your eyes
It may take a kiss or two

Through all of my life
Summer, Winter, Spring, and Fall of my life
All I ever will recall of my life
Is all of my life with you

Its an interesting thought…me being such a sucker for the romantic music of love…I started listening to a Chris Botti CD recently…. has this song sung by Sting….beautiful…

Makes me think of those lucky few who may sit back in a quiet moment and wonder just how they feel the way they do about someone… this thought leads to all those happy memories, the talks, the voice, the looks, the touch, the smells… all those things that make the other , the little things the passerby will never know, everything that has been shared just with you…

Isn’t it a wonderful thing to know someone, somewhere, imagined or experienced this in life…experienced the glow, the Cloud 9 high that just won’t go away…   It’s out there people… maybe where you never dreamed to hope… but it is…

Yeah it may be crazy, but it’s such a beautiful thing…

It was a rainy day in November. A day not unfamiliar to many business travelers. But, this day was different, the destination was not the goal. It was the journey that was to hold center stage, bathed in a moving bicoastal spotlight, through an immersive marketing engagement with both social, as well as other, media.

"to know me is to fly with me" (Ryan Bingham, Up in the Air)

Recently, I had the unique opportunity to look at various cross-promoted products by way of film and social media and speak with many of the people behind them when I, as a VIP Guest, was…

• invited to an exclusive cross-country private screening of Paramount Pictures’ film "Up in the Air," staring George Clooney, (a great, funny, emotional, must-see movie <– for those who know me know this is VERY high praise)
• while enjoying free GoGo InFlight Wi-Fi,
• on American Airlines,
• with an overnight stay at the Hilton Los Angeles Airport.

And, out of this very awesome bicoastal adventure, I found many lessons that can benefit all in the marketing and promotion of their own products, in both online and offline worlds.

It started like this…

Saturday, November 14
3:50 PM, The Terminal
This airline terminal, of American Airlines, has now filled with many different types of people, from such industries as movie, journalism, technology, business, etc., all contributing to the pervasive spirit of reserved elation and excitement – as networking and introductions ensued, in wait for a nice, bubbly party.

4:10 PM, Taxiing Begins
… for our scheduled 4 PM flight as I scour underneath rows of seats looking for the elusively scattered, power plug. Being sure to, like in the "Up in the Air" movie premiere we are about to be party to, not overlook these quirks that many the frequent traveler grows to not loath, but rather welcome as numbering among those endearing qualities that cement one’s affections for another, or makes that quirky place, even one as transient as air travel, the experience, altogether, your home.

It is this sentiment that the movie seeks to capture, and does so superbly. It is this experience, and many more, the traveler’s experience, that resulted in American Airlines’ substantial involvement in this project.

 

4:21 PM, Lift-off
It starts off a rainy day as the journey begins, flying into the thick of clouds. The darkness brought about soon, rapidly disappears as the plane emerges into the dusty blue sky, with hints of setting sun. The sounds, the dull roar of peace settling over the cabin as the festivities, the reason for this journey, are about to begin.

 

Here, everyone is a stranger, much like typical business travel with which we are all most familiar. Although, in this case, invited by either American Airlines or Paramount.

And, it ended like this…

7:29 PM, Touch-down
… 11 minutes ahead of schedule!

    

Sunday, November 15
4:45 AM (next day), Breakfast @ Hilton
… consisting of a turkey sandwich and a venti white mocha.

6:03 AM, Return
I began my journey back to NYC, the final leg of this adventure, by heading back to the airport in preparation for my un-delayed, non-VIP, Economy class flight.

First Class Experience

… from my vantage point in Economy class on this AA Charter flight. American Airlines’ social media program is still somewhat new, making for a great study subject. I started out by sitting down with American Airlines’ Billy Sanez, Director of Corporate Communications and Advertising & Promotions, and Chris Vary, Social Media Director, to begin my look into the inner workings and sharable lessons of this event.

On Social Media Strategy

American Airlines (AA) identifies two basic social media types that they seek to reach out to…

• the very engaged / engaging individual, and
• the reader / listener.

In the process of attracting these individuals, they ‘follow a lot of people,’ …

• targeting following customers, as well as what they follow,
• cultivating friendships with communities that are friends with their passengers.

Billy refers to all this as "family building." By doing so, they see themselves as creating a community of engaged people. Their social media goal is in building a community consisting of people "with real voices and opinions" who "talk about it (AA), enjoy it (AA), tell us (AA) how to fix it (AA)."

On the "Up in the Air" Movie and Premiere

Among American Airlines’ considerations for getting involved in this project were they…

• felt the story was "real," and the people of AA, and in-turn, their customers, could easily relate to the story, travel quirks and all, and
• saw the overall project as a great way to show off their product, what they do — that they can take "him" (Ryan Bingham, the main character in the movie and on the broader stage, the generic traveler) there.

On Pitfalls to Avoid & Advice

Some great advice Billy Sanez had for others seeking to launch a social media initiative boiled down to commitment.

Launching a social media initiative should be done because it is good for business, meets the needs of the business and product, not because it is cool, not because everyone else is doing it, not because you feel like you have to do it.

For American Airlines, the social media initiative is a great way for them to reach out to target audiences across a diverse array of channels that the various social media participants represented, everything from business and entrepreneurial, to fashion and consumer electronics.

When launching a social media initiative the company "must commit to it." You are setting yourself up for failure if you do not approach the social media initiative as a long-term strategy — much more than a brief initiative for a single event.

Being committed to a social media initiative is more than planning for the long-term, but also making sure to have the proper and sufficient resources behind it. For example, having enough resources to monitor all the content out there that pertains to your product, can be seen as a good start.

Lessons from 20,000 Ft

This successful move premiere was driven by a very effective social media campaign and all-encompassing event. Some takeaways that everyone with a product can learn from this strategy are:

Smart

• Create an immersive product experience.

Most effective about this first ever movie premiere in the air was the totally immersive experience that they, American Airlines and Paramount Pictures, sought to envelope everyone in, simultaneously reaching out to and leveraging diverse social media communities. I became the main character in the movie, I was Ryan Bingham (George Clooney)!

Immersing the user, or event participants, in the product experience makes more relevant the product’s characteristics, its benefits, its purpose for existing, while founding a strong and lasting emotional connection.

• Leverage diverse social media communities.

The organizations behind this event did not limit themselves to movie and celebrity outlets. They reached out to key community participants and buzz makers across a variety of industries, a variety of market influences. In addition to myself, some of the other opinion makers at the event were…

Sherri Smith
Specializing in Consumer Electronics, Video Games
From Black Web 2.0

Samantha Ewers
Specializing in Fashion, Beauty, Entertainment
From I’m Not Obsessed!

Tom Limongello
Specializing in Mobile, Advertising, Business
From The Upper Westside Journal

Alex Billington
Specializing in Movies, Hollywood
From First Showing

By not limiting themselves to only the generic movie channels, American Airlines and Paramount were able to reach out to a much broader audience, generate more buzz across more spheres of influence. Anywhere there were individuals primed for either or all products being promoted, American Airlines and Paramount Pictures, increased their chances of reaching them.

Should Do

The products of American Airlines and Paramount Pictures where excellently showcased and thoroughly enjoyed by all at this premiere in the air. Some steps that can be taken to further build upon these successes are…

…as to the event…

• Have a pre-flight get together to introduce key players, American Airlines and Paramount responsible for assembling this trip, and those who will be available throughout the course of the event, as well as their VIP guests, and consider even allowing for a brief group Q&A to get the reporting and social media juices flowing.
• One of the parts of this trip that everyone was talking about, and I was particularly looking forward to, was the live in-flight concert by Sad Brad. Disappointingly, while I could clearly see Brad, hearing the concert on the plane proved impossible for all but those sitting right next to him. But, this quirk of air travel, and of trying something new, and something that should definitely be attempted again, provided a good learning experience — such as testing out the more technically challenging components of the trip beforehand. It would have been great to have been able to listen to the concert by plugging our goodie bagged Bose QC 15 headphones into the entertainment system.
• An often overlooked aspect of scheduling social media events is the "down time" for the participants to engage their social media audiences, work on their article writing, etc. For this event it would have been very helpful to have had built-in down time at the hotel, the night of the event, as well as the day after for writing and posting, before sending everyone on their way home — exhausted from the travel, thereby delaying the desired product buzz building.

…as to the target audiences…

• While I had access to Wi-Fi on my flight back from LAX to JFK, I did not have access to power. And, without access to power I would not be able to avail myself of the Wi-Fi or get much work done on my bicoastal flight, like working on this article. For both the event and the audiences being targeted by the event’s products, the biggest ‘Should Do’ relates to access to power. Prior to takeoff on the first leg of the trip, I was able to secure power, but only after crawling around on my hands and knees looking for the seemingly, randomly placed power outlet (my assigned seat, as well as its row, did not have an outlet). If you are targeting business travelers, social media types (the creators as well as the readers) your perks need to consist of more than Wi-Fi, but must include power at EVERY seat, not scattered throughout.
• Providing free Wi-Fi is essential, and was successfully accomplished. Beyond the necessity of easy access to power for such devices as laptops and cell phones, essential on a non-stop bicoastal adventure, it is worth considering, to encourage people to engage their audiences better by…
  • advising people to spread out their coverage over days / weeks, leveraging various familiar mediums (e.g. text and pictures) and their respective services (Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc.) to further support the buzz building, and
  • depending on budget and other capabilities, provide devices that encourage posting, twitter devices, Internet enabled digital cameras already connected to the plane’s Wi-Fi, etc.; because the more effort your remove from the process, the broader and more sustained will be the coverage received.

Supporting

Of all the perks and quirks surrounding this adventure, of all the planning and preparation done on all sides, at the end of the day, it came down to the core, the support, the backbone that made everything run smoothly, with which I was most impressed. I do a great deal of traveling for my consulting and have had many an unpleasant and apathetic encounter with customer support. On both this trip, as well as my standard Economy class flight back to NYC, as well as when I had to call the 800# to make last minute travel changes, the customer support, the flight attendants, were entirely and consistently helpful and attentive from one coast to the other, and back again.

No matter what your product is, no matter how cool the immediate event is, always remember that it is the support infrastructure that your clients, your product’s users, often most frequently interact with, that sets the tone for the overall product experience, leaves a lasting, influential impression, that will have a direct impact on current and future opinions is the customer support.

Your social media endeavors and product events pale in relation to having a sound support infrastructure, cheerful, accessible, helpful individuals, like American Airlines’ Jenny Harrington, there to help your product’s consumers throughout their product experience. Every product needs at least one Jenny Harrington.

"warm reminders that I am home" (Ryan Bingham, Up in the Air)

Fly, Fly Again

I turn down requested product reviews on this blog all of the time, but this one, universally unique, had me at ‘movie premiere on an airplane’. My advice to other companies looking to replicate much of what was done here …

be immersive,
encourage social media engagement, and
foster emotional ties between the product and those participating

… in your product campaigns and announcements and you will be able to have similar, repeatable successes as was done at the "Up in the Air" movie premiere with American Airlines and Paramount Pictures as we flew from JFK to LAX.

Also, I’d love to know how the lessons from this experience have benefited you and your product, or changed the way you are thinking about your next marketing / promotional endeavors. Leave a comment, email me, tweet me.

Enjoy & Share!

Jeremy Horn
The Product Guy

Add to Social Bookmarks:

(In honor, of Johnny Depp winning Sexiest Man Alive, I’ve decided to repost my responce from SMA version 2006 from my old site. Enjoy.)

It’s been over a week now and I’ve buried my discontent long enough. I would go as far as to say I am damn near cantankerous. It just sits there, everywhere, mocking me. In newsstands, book stores, websites, on Entertainment Tonight AND the Insider (that’s a straight hour). I could no longer hold back the flood gates of frustration. I had to know. How is it possible that, for the eleventh straight year of eligibility (although I was confirmed as a man by the Catholic Church at 15), have I been overlooked again for Sexiest Man Alive. Sure George Clooney won, I get it, I would be his man whore, but he’s already won before. Did you know for some God forsaken reason Richard Gere’s won twice (or in his case Buddha forsaken)? There is obviously very little thinking outside of the box going on in the editorial offices. Where’s the creativity? Are they just thumbing through Esquire and pointing when they see a splash page? Why tell people what they already perceive when they can be a voice of true authority?

I mean I could understand for the first few years of my youth. I was young and needed to be batted around a bit. In college, I was frequently covered in very un sexy paint stained clothing and rarely showered as much as I should, but I always cleaned up very sexily. So I needed to spend some time learning the ropes of sexy and paying my sexy dues. I was fine with that then, but now, even after all of my toil and preparation, it’s like they’re not even considering me. I have the hair, the eyes and my body isn’t gonna get any less fat. My time is now, I may never be sexier.

I need a real answer. After searching around a bit, using my sexy charm and calling in some favors, I finally got a number to an editor at People. Her assistant’s name was Barbara. Barbara had the cute and cordial accent of a girl from coal mining town, but I wasn’t disarmed. I was on a fact finding mission and immediately asked to speak to her boss. She said that my request, “was impossible,” and I knew it was crap. I should have held out but I just started in on her.

“Why haven’t I been considered for Sexiest Man Alive?” She then asked who I was and I told her. She said she’d never heard of me. I said why does that matter? She explained that you had to be famous to be Sexiest Man Alive. So I asked since when does being Alive have anything to do with being famous. Was she saying that my life was in balance with my Q rating? Or is anonymity like a malignant cancer? Would I live longer if I had starred in a movie with Susan Sarandon or Shaquille O’Neal? That’s when it became obvious that I was taking dead aim at Nick Nolte Mr. 1992, who is neither sexy nor alive. There’s been a distinct Weekend at Bernie’s vibe with him since Streisand denutted him in Prince of Tides. Did you also notice George Carlin started to suck right about that time? Also in POT. Then I listed past winners I was definitely more sexy then: the other being Ben Affleck.

I was too worked up to make sense. After taking a few breathes in the nearest black bodega bag, I laid back and thought of all the things I do have: like a very comfortable couch to lay back on. Then I apologized to Barbara. It wasn’t her fault, it was the editors, but next year I would prefer a phone call and left my number. I snapped my phone back into its folded rested position and took up my Play Station 2 controller. I felt, although no one could see me that I was very sexy at that very moment. Definitely sexier then Affleck and the world was just a phone call from finding out.

Et voilà…Face à l’action judiciaire de la filiale de Nestlé, évoqué dans mon précédent billet, chacunsoncafe.fr profite de l’absence de son adversaire sur le Web conversationnel pour engager le combat sur ce terrain

Pour mémoire, le site de e-commerce a été créé en 2005 par Denis Fages. Un premier billet mentionnait le positionnement du site.

Et comme prévu, chacunsoncafe.fr joue la carte du petit Poucet face à l’ogre, avec en toile de fond la liberté d’informer. Exactement ce que j’écrivais dans mon billet.

La balle est dans le camp des helvètes.

Sometimes I wish I had been born British.  I have a feeling my sense of humor is more British than anything else.  As I wander through some of the most hilarious movies moments that reel through my brain, they all tend to be British, not American.  I do not find many American (note: many, I did not say all…) comedies funny.  I don’t know why.  It might be an attitude issue.  It might be a preference.  It might be something else.

Regardless, the reason why I bemoan my preference for comedic style is because I went to the movie theater the other night (a rare gift of a mid-week Federal/school holiday) to see the movie “The Men Who Stare at Goats.”  I was excited for the movie.  It has an all-star cast, and a preview that promised a hilarious premise with some very good potential.

The movie begins with Ewan McGregor, a young newspaperman who interviews a supposed werido, and shortly thereafter (no connection in events) is dumped by his girlfriend for a one-armed man.  The fact that the man she is attracted to has only one arm seems to have been a significant focus of the filmmakers.  They obviously though it quite funny.  I didn’t really find it that funny.  Yes, she caressed it, fondled it, held it.  But it just wasn’t funny.  Even by the end of the movie, the camera found its way back to the fake arm, and I kept finding my way back to the idea that this just wasn’t funny.

Back to the plot.  In an attempt to not end up just another nameless, uneventful, laughable death, our newspaperman decides to travel to Iraq, to become a war correspondent, in hopes of leading a better life, and in hopes of wooing his lover back with his tales of daring-do.    This is where he meets Lyn Cassady (George Clooney, pictured above, staring at a goat) who was a part of a secret government cover-up.  Also, a dance instructor.  Currently on a secret mission–which remains a mystery for most of the movie.  While our newspaperman and our suspicious Secret Agent traverse the Iraqi terrain, Cassady recounts his adventures in the army as part of a secret brain trust, those men with special abilities.  He is particularly clairvoyant.

Along the way, Kevin Spacey’s character is introduced.  He is the force of evil in the film–as much as there can be.  He is also somewhat clairvoyant, but not nearly as good as Clooney.  So, he enacts his revenge against the group, in more ways than one.  That is all I’ll give for plot.

And, in my ongoing rant with movies, it’s as though the funniest moments in the movie are because of who is saying something, and not what they are saying.  Like in Anchorman, whenever you hear people quote it, you never hear people just say it.  They say it with the character inflections.  Probably because it wouldn’t be that funny without the particular character actors saying it that way they do.  A friend of mine doesn’t impersonate Will Ferrell, he does a great Ron Burgundy.

But what’s funny about saying un-funny sentences strangely?  If it isn’t funny in its own right, if it’s only funny because of how someone is saying it, why bother with it at all?

The lack of clever lines in this movie is about the only strike I would give it.  The acting is hilarious.  Clooney is a very competent actor.  Jeff Bridges, playing the role he was made for, plays it well.  Kevin Spacey is hilarious.  Ewan MacGregor engages in a very funny conversation about Jedi warriors.  And I’m sure the conversation would not have been as funny if he has not already played a Jedi warrior in the Star Wars films.  Again, funny in the context of who is saying it, but not funny beyond that.  Not funny at all.  Particularly weak as a script, although strong as a concept.

Judge for yourself though.  I am admittedly biased in a negative way.

I would rank it 2.5 out of four stars.

3 out of 5.

6 out of 10. (One of the lower grades I normally give.)

Good.  By no means great.  Somewhat memorable.  Maybe a good Christmas gift for a few.  A decent movie night movie.  Not too much beyond that.

Although the trailer was so good, they probably should have started with that and moved on from there to make the movie.  Alas, if only most movies would take that advice.

Verdict: A very funny film with a big heart about the unemployed. 4/5

Story

The film is about a corporate downsizer who becomes obsessed collecting a million frequent flier miles.  

Review

You are probably thinking now, how can a film about a person who fires people for living be an entertaining film? Well firstly it is made by the same director from “Thank You For Smoking”, which is another corporate satire about the smoking industry and the Oscar-Nominated film “Juno”. So you already know that you are in good hands. Secondly, it has the fabulous George Clooney, who has some sort of a career re emergence in the past couple of years with films like “Michael Claydon” and “Syriana”. Of course, given our current economic climate, this is quite possibly one of the most important films to see this year.

Over the past decade, there have a few directors who have emerged from the independent film scene to the Hollywood in search a short time, directors like Paul Greengrass, Christopher Nolan and of course Jason Reitman. In which these guys have emerged on the Hollywood A-list of directors over a course of 1 or maybe 2 films, and since then they have never disappointed. To be honest, it has to be a tough ask from the director to make one great film after another, but with “Up In The Air”, Jason Reitman has grown into a one of the best directors that Hollywood has ever produced. He takes, in a way, a clichéd story but makes it feel fresh and relevant, in which a corporate downsizer realises that there is much more to life than just travelling. Heard this story before, well I am sure that all of us have, but Reitman refuses to give us the happy ending that we all want and staying true to the characters themselves, which doesn’t make us, as an audience, feel short changed in any way. The style, pace and editing of the film is marvellous, it make you feel as if you are gliding through airports, so we get a piece of what it is like to be or to be with Ryan Bingham,  and equally showing the madness of airports, that I am sure, we have all experienced. The opening credits deserve a mention, the opening aerial shots marvellous, credit Director of Photography, Eric Steelberg for this.   

It is crucial for a film like this to have good performances, to help us believe in these characters, and I have to say, they give some stellar performances. George Clooney is just brilliant as Ryan Bingham, who is essentially a loner, which is the life style that he has chosen, to help him cope with the challenges of his job. But Clooney oozes the screen with his used charismatic presence, which is particularly useful when he is firing people on screen and his no-nonsense approach to life in general is quite infectious; you buy into him from the very first scene. But equal to task are the two female characters played brilliantly by Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick. Vera Farmiga plays Alex, who is similar to Ryan, whom she spends, most of her in the air, and there is a funny scene in which they compare their own frequent flyer mile cards. Anna Kendrick plays Natalie, who is a perky, ambitious corporate downsizer who is paired with Ryan. I was surprised to hear that these two female characters where in the book, because they didn’t feel forced in any way. So it is a testament to the writing of Jason Reitman and his writing partner Sheldon Turner for creating these charcters. It is a rarity in the Hollywood to have 2 strong female characters that are reduced to their own stereotypes, and so it is nice to see that a film defines that expectation. It is also nice to see actors like the ever reliable J.K. Simmons and Sam Elliot in small but pivotal roles in the film. 

But the best thing about the film is that, it never forgets its subject matter. Dealing with the unemployed during this time is a very risky thing to do, but the way the film deals with this theme means that our sympathies are with the characters straight away including Clooney’s, Farmiga’s and Kendrick’s characters. Even though, the issue of unemployment are used for the purpose of comedy, which is shown in a quick montage with Zack Galifianakis which is very funny indeed. But the film pulls itself back, with the use of documentary footage of real people of have lost their jobs, and they talk about their experiences is harrowing and is used effectively in the film. We are there first hand to feel what is like to get fired and the film doesn’t forget that people will destroy themselves if they do lose their jobs, which is haunting in itself. But, I guess the what sums up the whole film is during the credits, because there is a song being which is so moving and relevant to the film, that it has to be listened to. 

I do have a few minor problems with the film, which relates to an earlier point, and that is the story is clichéd in a way. This is based on the realization of Clooney’s character of what he has missed out on in his life. It felt that the film had to go down this route to it to continue but thankfully the film doesn’t give into the usual Hollywood ending. The other factor is that the film is pretty much and American Airlines advert. I realize that they had to finance the film, and this was one of the concessions they had to make, but after awhile it was quite annoying.

But don’t let these minor problems put you off a fantastic film like “Up In The Air”. It’s very funny, witty, and intelligent about its subject matter, and never forgets what it is truly about. Expect this to be a major player on the 7^th March 2010 for the Academy Awards.

Le procès qu’elle vient d’engager pourrait saper sa réputation. Nespresso, la filiale de Nestlé, qui fabrique des machines à café en dosettes, a assigné en justice ChacunSonCafé.fr pour “dénigrement et publicité comparative illicite“. Le comparateur a critiqué les machines à café à dosette unique car elles feraient du consommateur un “client captif“.

Au-delà de la controverse, qui trouvera son dénouement devant les tribunaux,  je me suis livré à une petite étude quantitative de l’image Nespresso sur Internet.

Voilà un premier constat qui tord le cou à une idée reçue : toute recherche devrait se faire sur Google puisque Google est le moteur de recherche le plus utilisé sur toute la planète. Le volume de contenu le plus important pour le mot-clé « Nespresso » se trouve donc sur Yahoo ! qui servira de base à notre étude quantitative. Cependant, cela ne remet nullement en cause la pertinence des autres moteurs sur un plan qualitatif.

La seconde étape consiste à définir la nature de la présence de Nespresso sur le Web. Pour cela, j’ai examiné les 50 premiers sites sur Yahoo ! à partir du simple mot-clé « Nespresso ». Voilà le résultat :

Le premier constat est que la filiale de Nestlé n’occupe que 20% de l’espace conversationnel : blog, fora, newsletters, etc. Elle ne bénéficiera donc que d’un soutien limité des internautes en cas de buzz négatif. En outre, toute action de communication sera difficile à mettre en place, puisque Nespresso ne bénéficie pas sur Internet de relais pour assurer la diffusion de ses messages, que ce soit sur le plan marketing ou Ressources Humaines. Le principal enjeu de sa politique de communication va donc être de mettre en place des opérations séduction en direction des internautes. Mais allons plus loin, en détaillant les supports institutionnels.

La présence écrasante de la communication consacrée à la marque et ses produits laisse sceptique. Elle explique néanmoins la réaction de Nespressso à ce qu’elle a considéré de la part d’un comparateur de prix qui ne figure pas dans les 50 premiers résultats de la recherche comme une attaque. La proportion de la communication consacrée aux produits de la marque pourrait être réduite si l’entreprise développait ses supports conversationnels. Elle bénéficierait ainsi d’un système de défense plus souple et, surtout, beaucoup moins médiatique que l’action judiciaire. D’ailleurs, chacunsoncafe.fr pourrait exploiter cette action pour se présenter au public, et notamment aux internautes, comme la pauvre victime de la toute-puissante multinationale. C’est ce qu’en rhétorique, on appelle argumentum ad lazarum.

L’entreprise, on le voit, est peu présente dans les conversations des internautes. Cette représentation graphique montre les faiblesses de ce qui pourrait être la force de l’entreprise : des vidéos qui permettent la diffusion de la culture d’entreprise, des réseaux sociaux qui fédéreraient une communauté autour de ses produits, des blogs qui serviraient de relais d’influence…Mais cela révèle aussi ce qui peut porter atteinte à la réputation de l’entreprise : des propos malveillants sur les blogs et les fora, des groupes hostiles sur les réseaux sociaux, des vidéos qui dévalorisent l’image de l’entreprise…Si de telles actions venaient à se multiplier, l’entreprise se trouverait alors en situation de crise.

Une simple étude quantitative est déjà riche d’enseignements, pour qui sait l’analyser. Voilà une nouvelle occasion de rappeler que la collecte d’information ne constitue, dans la mission globale du chargé de veille, que la surface émergée de l’iceberg. C’est l’analyse qui donne du sens à l’information recueillie.

Another addition to a year of great comedy...

What can only be described as a mix of Monty Python meets The Manchurian Candidate is one of the funniest movies of the year in a year that has been filled with comedy classics of all walks.  The Hangover offered a bachelor party comedy with a bit of mystery.  Zombieland provided a horror comedy in the spirit of past titles like Return of the Living Dead, Evil Dead 2, and Shaun of the Dead.  Goats provides a dark comedy that doubles as a satire in the spirit of the Kubrick classic, Dr. Strangelove.

The movie surrounds the journey of Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) as he investigates an secret new age military branch.  His only contact with the group is through Lyn Cassady (George Clooney).  The journey is laced with flashback narrated by Cassady on the history of the New Earth Army (nicknamed “Jedi Knights”), its founding by Bill Django (Jeff Bridges in a return to his Dude glory) and its downfall at the hands of a sinister opportunist (played with Lithgowian flare by Kevin Spacey).  The movie is riddled with laugh-out-loud moments, some might be a little tough if you’re an animal lover.  Some say there’s a slowdown, but I fail to recall such while in the theater.

You couldn’t have asked for a better cast of actors.  While the four marquee-liners get the attention, there are a few who deserve similar recognition.  Stephen Root (Milton from Office Space) plays a humorous interviewee.  Robert Patrick is great as an R. Lee Ermey-inspired head of a contractor squad.  The unsung hero of the film has to be Stephen Lang as Hopgood.  You’ve seen him in other films.  He was in Tombstone, Manhunter, Death of a Salesman and the upcoming Avatar.  This may be one of his best performances, despite the brevity of it.

Grant Heslov does an excellent job in the director’s chair.  His past work with Clooney in Good Night & Good Luck show these two know how to work together and make excellent movies.  You may recognize Heslov from movies like True Lies and The Scorpion King.

While this may not be a remembered as Strangelove in a few months, it will be good as a viewing material for people wanting a comedy that has meat on its bones and a lot of content within its skull.

10/10

If there can be said to be anything approaching a cult journalist in the UK – and we’re not exactly talking Hunter S. Thompson here – then I guess Jon Ronson would have to be it. His recent exploration of the murky world of conspiracy theories and more importantly conspiracy theorists was a underground hit and boasted a well constructed documentary that aired on UK TV in 2001 and 2004 . Ronson was also the first and (to the best of my knowledge) only journalist granted access to the Kubrick estate in the early noughties to delve amongst the scintillating paraphernalia of Kubrick’s career up at Childwick Bury, obligatory Guardian article here – Like my good self I think Ronson finds the characters and motivations, deluded or otherwise, fascinating in a sort of sociological and psychological fashion, how these lunatics can justify the most outrageous claims (David Icke’s lectures for example are comedy gold) and crucially how sometimes their research and conclusions sometimes, however hesitantlybut sometimes actually docross over into the timidrealms of truth. As such any film burrowing into the tales of MKULTRA experiments (which have been certified as true, yes the CIA did experiment with LSD on unsuspecting US citizens) psy-ops research and the more fantastically exotic realms of cold war intelligence research was always going to be on my radar, unfortunately The Men Who Stare At Goats like the mainstreaming of The Road takes a fascinating premise and smoothes out all the interesting delineations, boiling down the story into a unpalatably conventional and insipid mush. But then I would say that wouldn’t I, the world can’t handle the truth….

Formed around a buddy / road movie template The Men Who Stare At Goats concerns the bizarre adventures of journalist Bob Wilton (a horribly accented Ewan McGregor) who seeks a new direction in his life after his fiancée breaks off their engagement to reveal an affair with his newsroom superior. Ensconced in a Kuwaiti hotel on the eve of the invasion of Iraq of 2003 Wilton eavesdrops the name Lyn Cassidy being uttered and recalling an interview he performed earlier in the year with a former intelligence officer who now claimed supernatural powers amongst a elite cadre of retired agents Wilton hesitantly makes contact with the suspicious Cassidy (an enthusiastic George Clooney) who eventually takes him under his wing and into Iraqon a secret, perilousmission. As the sortieprogresses Cassidy recants the tale of his military career within the experimental First Earth Battalionto Wilton, his remarkable story of a secret elite unit formed by the messianic Bill Django (Jeff Bridges in Lebowski mode) to combat communist aggression with the promotion of secret powers, telepathy, ESP and various other impossible paranormal techniques. As the mission becomes more hostile and dangerous Wilton begins to wonder if Cassidy is a super soldier or super deluded, fearing for his life and sanity in the hostile Iraq desert…

The problems with this film revolve around itstone and structure. One can understand the decision to frame the film around aroad movie template with Wilton serving as our screen avatar, the centralcharacter who like the audience is absorbing the tale from Cassidy’s enigmatic lips, their current assignment twinned with Cassidy’s recollections of his unusual career. When the purpose of the desertmission is revealed the logical conclusions of the narrative are squandered, the film doesn’t have the conviction to expose how these outlandishresearch programmes came to be twisted to suchhorrifying consequences during the War On Terror at the likes of Guantanamo, torture techniques culled from a corruption of First Earth’s fifty year empirical pedigree being inflicted on suspected insurgents and Al-Queda combatants. I can’t help feeling that the film would have been far more effective if the whole journalistic approach was dropped and instead they concentrated on the biography of Cassidy, a significant portion of the film is his story anyway and all the films best moments are culled from his recollections and tales.

The late introduction of Kevin Spacey as Django’s nemesis in the form of spiritualist turned solder Larry Hooper feels clumsily manufactured to provide a traditional villainous conflict, he is barely introduced until at least half way though the movie in an effort to up the ante on the awkward culmination of the plot, a denouement which with its broadly comedic flavour feels uncertain in both pitch and flavour.  Still,  the ever reliable Jeff Bridges playing Dude-lite was fun, in this case a counter culture shaman and there are some genuinely amusing interludes with the juxtapositions of his sixties ethosof the First Earth battalion versus the expected cold war military belligerence. The final scene is lazily predictable, echoing the opening routine of a general ‘willing’ himself to pass through a wall with the power of his mind that proves that screenwriter Peter Straughan must have graduated with first class honors from cliche school. The Men Who Stare At Goats wants to be Dr. Strangelove but ends up more Sgt. Bilko, Clooney’s buffonish performance and Bridges piquancy aside there are no secrets to unearth here.

• …e nelle aziende si blocca l’accesso a facebook. Compliments!
• Ditelo, ditelo che anche voi non riuscivate a dormire, che continuavate ad essere assillati dalla vera causa della morte di Cartesio! Cold case gli fa una pippa, a ’sti ricercatori!
• Bertolaso va in pensione. Seh, e Paperoga diventa AD dell’Universo! Dai, diteci subito che mega-consulenza si prenderà (non voglio sapere a quanto, se no la gastrite mi peggiora)
• George Clooney dice no matrimonio e no figli. Mah, chissà perché, ma me lo sentivo che la storia del matrimonio con la Canalis era, come dire, un po’ “così”… Beh, ovviamente la mia è solo invidia
• Pensavo di amare solo i gatti, ma, ecco, uno di questi “cosi”, ma solo affettuoso nello stesso modo, sì, me lo porterei ovunque come un tamagochi
• Una serie incredibile di murales d’amore a Philadelphia. Da sogno
• Matite Bignami. Spettacolari
• Codici a barre per niente banali

Contar con George Clooney para la publicidad de Nespresso es un lujo. Pero si le añades a John Malkovich en el papel de San Pedro se puede rozar la divinidad. Aquí os dejo 2 versiones del spot, que son una auéntica delicia.

Shamelessly stealing the idea from Colin Marshall, I’ve  decided to select nine people whose thoughts and actions have in some way influenced my outlook on life. I’ve come to realize the importance of having heroes in one’s life: never underestimate how they can help you to shape your values and achievements.

***

“The best advice I got from my aunt, the great singer Rosemary Clooney, and from my dad, who was a game show host and news anchor, was: don’t wake up at seventy years old sighing over what you should have tried. Just do it, be willing to fail, and at least you gave it a shot. That’s echoed for me all through the last few years.”

-George Clooney

***

“Choose someone whose way of life as well as words, and whose face very mirroring the character that lies behind it, have won your approval. Be always pointing him out to yourself either as your guardian, or as your model. There is a need, in my view, for someone as a standard against which our characters can measure themselves. Without a ruler to do it against, you won’t make the crooked straight.”

-Lucius Annaeus Seneca

***

“Too many people are afraid to look deep down and look at where you made mistakes. That’s not always easy to do, to be honest with yourself. That’s something my father always instilled in me and even to this day, sometimes it’s difficult, but you have to take an honest look and have an honest evaluation of your performance.”

-Tiger Woods

***

“For me the goal is the same: try to improve my tennis and try to continuing have the good results. In the end, is only one number. No. 1 and No. 2 is only one number of difference. You know, I say it 100 times, no? I didn’t go to sleep thinking if I am No. 1 or No. 2, and I didn’t wake up thinking about if I am the No. 1 or No. 2. I think about I have to play well today or I have to practice well today. I have to improve. “

-Rafael Nadal

***

“A lot of people are in business to try to make money. If that’s the primary driver, I think it’s pretty hard to do well in the long term. But if instead you’re doing something that you’re so passionate about doing that you’d be happy doing it for 10 years without making any money, I think that you’re much more likely to be successful, and the optimism will come naturally on its own.”

-Tony Hsieh

***

“It’s hard to find work you love; it must be, if so few do. So don’t underestimate this task. And don’t feel bad if you haven’t succeeded yet. In fact, if you admit to yourself that you’re discontented, you’re a step ahead of most people, who are still in denial. If you’re surrounded by colleagues who claim to enjoy work that you find contemptible, odds are they’re lying to themselves. Not necessarily, but probably.”

-Paul Graham

***

“I’ve always tried not to fall for the lies that say things like ‘you can do anything if you have the will’ or that ‘you’re the only one who can carve out your own life.’ According to the audience member’s beliefs, you could call it the will of God or social systems, or fate; but in the end, what I’m trying to say is the same. And that is, ‘Life doesn’t go your own way.”

-Park Chan Wook

***

“Never say ‘no’ to adventures. Always say ‘yes,’ otherwise you’ll lead a very dull life.”

- Ian Fleming

***

How do I guess at the future? Based on the omens of the present. The secret is here in the present. If you pay attention to the present, you can improve upon it. And, if you improve on the present, what comes later will also be better. Forget about the future, and live each day according to the teachings, confident that God loves his children. Each day, in itself, brings with it an eternity.”

-Paulo Coelho – “The Alchemist“

So I have to admit, I was slightly nervous to spend the money on this movie after the vicious reviews top critics have given it. But as it turns out, the money was well spent. “Goats” is a feel good, talent filled, purpose-misguided, genre-illuding, run-of-the-mill classic. But, It really doesn’t have a genre which maybe even makes it hard to like. It does have lots of humor, but the main focus is the emotion it’s trying to envoke.

This movie will not change your life. It’s not trying to. It does however have a metaphorical meaning to it. And even though it may be obscure, it’s much better than thoughtless bullshit. Going into the theatre, sitting down with your popcorn, and seeing something completely opposite of what you had expected can really ruin a movie. And with this one lacking a lot of definite, I’d recommend keeping an open mind. The details don’t really matter here. It could have been set somewhere other than a war, but it’s not. They could have had them all be mime’s but that would have probably been less interesting. It’s about that feeling that it’s searching for and only barely skimming upon. The idea here is to be who you are, no matter how sociably unacceptable that may be. What could be more-so that psychic soldiers? But rather than reject them, the audience is drawn to them, because they have found their meaning of life.

Goats appeals to younger audiences because it’s a shout-out to go get what you want…and forget what people say. It also appeals to older audiences because it throughs in a twist of redemption. When your enemies have beaten you and you’re ready to give up, the most simple of souls, who has only heard of your ideals for a second, can reincarnate your long-lost spirit, and together you can achieve more than anyone could have ever imagined.

I do like this movie. It’s not revolutionary, but it’s witty and fun. For those who knock it, take a second and think about what’s going on. The metaphors may not be directly apparent but it challenges you to find them. The audience members that stop spending so much time trying to figure out what is real and what isn’t are treated to a film that inspires. And if you don’t believe that, just look at the acting power that signed up for this. This is not a crowd pleaser, it reminds us to be who we want to be, old or young, new or washed up.

George Obama Clooney staring at Baphomet with Pyramid

The Men Who Stare At Goats is quite a funny romp, about poor, beleaguered Freemasons (never so named) fighting the forces of evil who control the government and media. (Judeo-Masonic split?) The poor Masons do their best to promote dope, Hinduism, a world army, world government, ZOGUSA hegemony, war is peace, liberté, egalité, fraternité… The media control, and torture and brainwashing schemes such as MK-ULTRA, are portrayed as the work of those who have betrayed the “true, noble” Masonic plan. Interesting also to see the spin on Lucas’ Ziomasonic Jedi cult.

Plenty of pyramids, pentagrams.

Masons of Texas rates it as “awesome”, and “a huge nugget of gold.”

The movie is based on the book of the same name by Jon Ronson, a British Judeo-Mason.

Ronson also wrote, Them: Adventures with Extremists, is a great disinfo effeort, in which Ronson lampoons Randy Weaver, David Icke, Omar Bakri Muhammad, Ian Paisley, and Thom Robb as deluded, paranoid “extremists”. Ronson pretends to infiltrate (in vain) “shadowy cabals” like the Bilderbergers, and concludes that these Satanic cabals are no big deal. Them: Adventures with Extremists is alo now getting the Hollyjewed treatment, under producer and Christ-satirist Jack Black (who led the audience at the last MTV awards in an open prayer to Satan), screenwriter Mike White (School of Rock, The Good Girl), and director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead).

Much of The Men Who Stare At Goats is based on Lt. Col. Jim Channon’s 1979 First Earth Battalion Operations Manual.

Ronson makes a career out of mocking Christianity and “conspiracy nuts”.

Ronson’s Documentaries:

• The Ronson Mission [BBC 2, 1994]
• New York To California: A Great British Odyssey [Channel 4, 1996]
• Hotel Auschwitz [Channel 4, 1996]
• Tottenham Ayatollah [Channel 4, 1997]
• Critical Condition [Channel 4, 1997]
• Dr Paisley, I Presume [Channel 4, 1998]
• New Klan [Channel 4, 1999]
• Secret Rulers of the World [Channel 4, 2001]
• The Double Life of Jonathan King [Channel 4, 2002]
• Kidneys for Jesus [Channel 4, 2003]
• I Am, Unfortunately, Randy Newman [Channel 4, 2004]
• Crazy Rulers of the World [Channel 4, 2004]
• Death in Santaland [More 4, 2007]
• Reverend Death [Channel 4, 2008]
• Stanley Kubrick’s Boxes [2008]
• Revelations [2009]

A chapter from “Dem”:

Who pulls the strings?

Jon Ronson

At the National Press Club on Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC, Big Jim Tucker left a coded message on the answer-machine of a friend. “Mother. Your dutiful son is playing kick the can on Pennsylvania Avenue, Tuesday morning, 10.30am, thank you.”

Big Jim replaced the telephone receiver. He lit a cigarette and glanced around the lobby with a routine vigilance. Even here at his club, his gentleman’s club, he considered himself not entirely safe. Anyone could discover that this was where he had breakfast every day: three strong black coffees and some pastries on the side.

“If they ever got me,” he said, “they’d make it look like a typical Washington mugging. A mugging on the sidewalk. Killed for a couple of dollars. Another three paragraphs in the newspaper.”

Jim paused. He pulled on his cigarette. His heart is not strong due to his habit of smoking unfiltered Camels at all times, pack after pack. He is quite huge, an elderly southern gentleman in a crumpled suit and a newshound trilby. He has a voice like gravel (a result of cigarette-induced emphysema, which, by a happy accident, gives his speech an enigmatic rhythm, like a charismatic Sam Spade down on his luck) and an office downtown with Venetian blinds.

He said, “The thing is, we don’t know how much time we’ve got left. And suppose I just so happen to ‘drop dead’ in my office on Tuesday afternoon. It could be the following Monday before someone says, ‘Where is that boy?’ I don’t want to be burnt bacon when they find me. I guess I’m just too vain to be found that way.”

Big Jim laughed in a hollow manner. “So I phone my friend every day just to announce I’m still kicking the can and still hunting the macaroon. Still breathing, see? The day she doesn’t get that call is the day she makes enquiries.”

Here at his private members’ club, Big Jim could pass for a venerable commentator for a heavyweight daily newspaper, but he isn’t. He works for an underground journal called the Spotlight. Mainstream journalists keep away from him. This is, Jim said, because certain high-ranking members of the overground media, even some members of his own club, are in league with the secret rulers of the world. And it is they who would make his death look like a typical Washington mugging.

When I began hearing about the Bilderberg Group – about the notion that a tiny band of insidious and clandestine powermongers meet in a secret room from which they rule the world – I was sceptical. But I kept hearing about them, and I finally decided to try to settle the matter once and for all. Which is why I visited Big Jim Tucker. Within anti-Bilderberg circles, Big Jim is considered a pioneer, a trailblazer, risking his life to attempt to locate the geographical whereabouts of the secret room.

“They exist all right,” said Big Jim, “and they’re not playing pinochle in there.” Big Jim Tucker has spent 30 years documenting the facts. He’s been after them since the 70s when he first got the hunch that they existed. He abandoned a good career in sports journalism on a big city paper. It has been cat and mouse ever since, he said. Good against evil.

“Those sick luminaries are always on the move,” said Jim. “They never come together in the same place twice, so as to evade detection. They only meet once a year, for a long weekend in May or June.”

They have been ruling the world in secret since 1954, Jim said, when a man called Joseph Retinger, whose name rarely appears in the history books, decided to create them. One of many mysteries is how Retinger – a Polish immigrant employed as secretary to the novelist Joseph Conrad – had the wherewithal and the contacts to organise such a mighty endeavour. Their first meeting took place in the Bilderberg Hotel, Holland, which is why the secret rulers of the world go by the name of the Bilderberg Group. Big Jim said that I happened to have caught him at a very good time. He was ready to take things further, to turn up the heat and cause some trouble.

“So you’ve actually managed to obtain the address of the next Bilderberg meeting?” I asked Jim.

“Yes, sir,” he said.

“You know exactly where it is?” I asked.

“Yes, I do,” he said.

Big Jim said he fully intended to thwart their security and barge in unannounced to catch them red-handed going about their covert wickedness. I was welcome to tag along, he said, “Just so long as you don’t step on twigs or fall off walls while we’re on the prowl.

“The plan is this,” said Jim. “We’ll leave Washington on the last day of May, and we’ll arrive at the target destination on the Sunday morning. We’ll start patrolling that same afternoon. Patrol Sunday and Monday. Develop sources. Waiters, chambermaids . . .”

“So they still meet in hotels?” I said.

“Yes, sir,” said Jim. “The chambermaids will be gun-shy at first. They’ll know something big and spooky is going on, but they won’t know what. But then they’ll begin to realise that whatever’s happening at their hotel is evil. And that’s when they’ll open up.”

“So what else will we do on the Sunday and Monday?”

“Scout around the resort. Figure out ways to penetrate.”

“Scout around looking for what?”

“Where the short wall is,” said Jim. “Where the big drainpipe is.”

“So we’ll actually be climbing up drainpipes?” I asked.

“Climbing up drainpipes,” said Jim, “trying not to sneeze or cough or step on twigs. Trying to avoid the guard dogs.”

“What’s the name of the hotel?”

“I’ve – uh – got it written down here somewhere,” said Jim. He riffled through his pockets. “Here it is. The Caesar Park golfing resort, Sintra, Portugal.”

I looked quizzically at Jim. “Are you sure about all of this?”

“They are evil and their evil occurs in the dark shadows,” replied Jim, emphatically. “Behind closed doors. Ruling the world from a room. Imagine that. Let’s get a drink.”

Jim took me to the Men’s Bar upstairs. We drank beers and watched sport on the TV above the bar. Framed front pages of big news stories of days gone by lined the walls. “War in the Persian Gulf!” “Thatcher Resigns!” Jim said that both acts were orchestrated by Bilderberg. “Margaret Thatcher is one of the good guys,” said Jim. “Bilderberg ordered her to dismantle British sovereignty, but she said no way, so they had her sacked.”

Big Jim said he once found himself at a drinks party with Thatcher and he took the opportunity to sidle up to her. “How does it feel to have been denounced by those Bilderberg boys, ma’am?” he growled. She whispered back that she considered it a “great tribute to be denounced by Bilderberg”.

I considered the significance of the endeavour we were about to undertake. For the other people I had met, Bilderberg was an inviolable almighty. Big Jim was the first man to have the tenacity to discover the address, and to plan on going in, and damn the consequences. This might change everything. Jim wouldn’t tell me how he discovered the room’s whereabouts, but a few moments later, as we sat at the bar, a tall man with a moustache bounded over and cheerfully introduced himself to me as Jim’s mole from inside Bilderberg.

“I’m an accountant,” he explained. “Some very big clients use our firm. One guy happened to mention to me that he was on his way to somewhere near Lisbon in June for a very private meeting.”

Jim appeared a little annoyed by his mole’s instantaneous candour, but then he shrugged and joined in with the story. “We know,” said Jim, “that the Bilderberg Group always meet in May or June.”

“So Jim,” said the mole, “started telephoning every five-star hotel near Lisbon.”

“They always meet at a five-star hotel with golfing facilities,” explained Jim.

“Always golfing facilities?” I asked.

Jim picked up on my subtext at once. “Believe me,” he said, “they’re not there to play golf. They’re too busy starting wars.”

“They may play golf when they’re there,” clarified the mole, “but they’re not there to play golf.”

“Okay,” I said.

“So,” said Jim, “I finally got around to calling a hotel up in the hills, and I said to the receptionist, ‘I’ve been invited to the Bilderberg conference in June, but I’m afraid I’ve been very silly and lost my invitation. Could you confirm that this is the correct venue?’ And she said, ‘Why, of course, sir. Oh yes, sir. This is exactly where you’re supposed to be, and we’re very much looking forward to serving you.’ “

Jim and his mole laughed. A nearby barfly heard their laughter and came over to join us. Jim and his mole stopped laughing. They turned their backs on the new guy and myself. There was a moment’s awkwardness.

“So what’s all this about?” asked the new guy.

“Well,” I whispered, “that big old man in the trilby has tracked down the tiny group of people who rule the world in secret. Anyway, the two of us are going to Portugal next week to confront them.”

“Oh, right,” he said, unimpressed. “What do they do, these secret rulers of the world?”

I shrugged. “Everything, I guess,” I said. “They’re called the Bilderberg Group.”

“Can’t say I’ve heard of them,” he said.

“Jim’s dedicated his life to exposing them,” I said.

“It’s not so surprising that I’ve never heard of them,” said the new guy. He scanned the room. Every bar stool was occupied. Retired newsmen in suits stared into their beer glasses. The Men’s Bar seemed to be where the Washington press corps went when there were no more deadlines, no stories left to file. “It’s not so surprising,” he said. “Pretty much everyone here has dedicated his life to something or other that nobody’s ever heard of.”

The next morning, Jim took me to the office of the Spotlight, just around the corner from Capitol Hill. It is pristine from the outside, gleaming white, on a lovely tree-lined street. But it is dark and dusty inside, and there are boxes everywhere. He introduced me to Andy, his editor. We sat in the courtyard and drank iced tea. “Jon,” said Jim to Andy, “thinks those Bilderberg boys are just playing pinochle in there.”

“Well, first off,” said Andy, impatiently, “you get a lot of people, including newspaper editors, who say there is no Bilderberg Group, that it doesn’t even exist.”

“They’ve kept the vow of silence like they’re going to nun school,” said Jim.

“This is after you’ve had Prince Charles attend,” said Andy. “This is after you’ve had Bill Clinton attend. And still people say it doesn’t exist. Not that it’s just a social meeting, but that it doesn’t exist.”

“If they’re just going to play golf and swap lies and chase girls,” said Jim, “why the armed guards? Know what I’m saying?”

“They exist all right,” said Andy.

“Prince Charles and Bill Clinton,” explained Jim, “are small-fry. The rulers of the world are the ones who do the inviting. The steering committee. Clinton was just a small-fry from somewhere called Arkansas when he got his invitation back in ‘91. Yeah, they had big plans for that boy.”

“You be careful,” said Andy. “You’re dealing with dangerous forces.”

***

“Mother,” said Big Jim Tucker, “your dutiful son is playing hunt the macaroon at the Paris Hotel, Portugal, Monday morning, 10.30am, thank you.”

It was a week later, and our first working day in Portugal. Our plan was to scout the target five-star golfing resort situated six miles north, develop sources and look for the short wall and the big drainpipe in preparation for the midnight penetration later in the week. Jim lay back on his bed. Our hotel was built on a busy roundabout. The ocean glistened in the distance, beyond a railway track and a couple of main roads. Even up here on the sixth floor you could hear the never-ending roar of the traffic.

“Unlike the Bilderberg luminaries,” said Jim, ruefully, scanning the dirty walls of this bad hotel, “some of us are working on a tight budget.” Jim lit a Camel. He is a large, elderly man, and I am not athletic. Our agility levels were impeded by our smoking habits, and we wheezed in the Portuguese heat. I was unsure as to how successful the two of us would be in climbing up drainpipes. I pictured slapstick scenarios that would be hilarious to onlookers but not to us.

Jim was acting breezily, but I could sense his nervousness. “I’m a quarterback,” he said, “gearing up for the Superbowl.”

By Jim’s reckoning, the Bilderberg Group was not scheduled to arrive in Portugal until Wednesday night. He said he had heard reports that their private security guards had already set up camp at the Caesar Park and were planning to operate a shoot-to-kill policy for all penetrators. This somewhat diminished the potential for slapstick hilarity. I was not feeling cocksure.

We had that morning fruitlessly scanned the news-stands for references to the meeting. “Surprise, surprise,” growled Jim. “Media black-out.”

There was, however, one notable exception. The Weekly News, a tiny English-language parish newspaper, circulation 8,000, for Algarve tourist workers and regular English visitors such as Sir Cliff Richard, had gone big on the story. Very big: “As speculation on the internet runs rife, the News checks it out and it does seem that . . . secret world government group is meeting here!”

The Weekly News made me feel less vulnerable down here on the ground. Jim said he wanted to touch base with its editorial team later in the week. “If the Weekly News boys can help us expose those Bilderberg jackasses,” he said, “I’m all for pooling information.”

I had rented a car from Budget. We drove into the mountains, away from the boisterous, good-time package-tour Estoril, towards the more serene and ancient pastures of Sintra, seven miles up the road. On the way, we discussed cover stories in case we incurred suspicion. We elected to be holidaymakers, getting a drink at the poolside bar because we’d heard so many good things about the resort, which was undoubtedly the finest around.

The Caesar Park is situated three miles from the main Estoril-Sintra road – two and a half miles down a narrow country lane, through the wilderness of a national park, followed by another half-mile private driveway. It became evident, as we approached the big peach gates that led into the resort, that the midnight penetration would be an even more formidable task than we had anticipated. The hotel is surrounded on all sides by dense undergrowth and sheer mountains. Jim silently pondered these obstacles from the passenger seat. He photographed the mountains. We drove through the gates (the gatekeeper let us in with a wave) and down the half-mile-long driveway. And then the hotel appeared – a peach-coloured resort of purpose-built luxury.

“The civilians haven’t been shifted out yet,” muttered Jim, as we left the car and wandered towards the colossal marble reception area. Jim whipped out his camera and photographed the tourists. These photographs would later appear in the Spotlight as “unaware civilians”.

We were not inconspicuous, Jim and I, strolling around the Caesar Park in our open-necked shirts. We were, in fact, an unlikely holidaymaking duo. At a very big push, Jim could resemble a benevolent, wealthy, southern sugar daddy and I his gawky, early-30s toy-boy. But I doubted the persuasiveness of the scenario. “I don’t think,” I murmured, as we wandered out to the swimming pool, “that the holidaymaking cover is a convincing one. I think we should think of something else.”

“We’re salesmen,” said Jim. “We’re just salesmen getting lunch.”

“What do we sell?” I asked.

“We don’t like to talk business when we’re having lunch,” said Jim.

We sat on stools at the poolside bar. Unaware young women sunbathed in bikinis.

“Ma’am,” said Jim to a young passing waitress, bowing slightly, his newshound trilby now replaced by a tourist’s straw sunhat, “I’m a little confused. I tried to book a room here for Thursday, and they told me that the whole hotel had been closed down for some big meeting. Must be a pretty damned big important meeting if you ask me . . .”

The waitress shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. She smiled slightly and left us.

Jim got out his notepad. He wrote notes and then he read them out to me:

Dateline Portugal

Tension filled the air inside the posh Caesar Park resort on Monday. At the poolside bar, the pretty barmaid’s face filled with tension when asked to speculate on the big important meeting taking place from Thursday. She shrugged her shoulders and feigned ignorance, but the tension on her face spoke volumes.

Jim put down his notepad. “Is that accurate?” he said.

“I don’t know,” I said.”We may be imbuing her with our own feelings of tension.”

“Still,” said Jim, finishing his iced tea, “now we know what the drinks of the rich taste like.”

We paid and patrolled the resort some more. I was disappointed with the Caesar Park, its Eurotrashy aircraft-hangar spaces, its cold approximation of luxury. The lobby shops have names such as “Fashionable”. I would have assumed that Bilderberg would meet somewhere classier. Jim explained that I still hadn’t quite got it. They are not there for classy holidaying. They are there to start wars. Also, Jim added, there is a finite number of international hotels that can transform themselves into walled fortresses, that have their own helicopter pads and nearby military air bases.

Jim and I split up. I looked at the prints on the wall outside the upstairs bar. A half-hour passed. I wandered aimlessly through the lobbies and the bars. There were other aimless wanderers, too: a woman in a red dress and a man in his 30s wearing a tweed jacket. It struck me that we all seemed to be wandering aimlessly in some kind of unison, but it didn’t cross my mind – right up until the moment that the man in the tweed jacket marched across the room and began questioning me in an angry whisper – that I was being tailed.

“We’ve watched you for an hour. I’m the hotel manager. You take pictures. You ask questions about some big important meeting. Who are you?”

“I . . .” I paused. Then I clumsily announced, “I’m from England.” It was the only thing I could think of. This works, of course, in other circumstances abroad. But it didn’t work here.

“What do you want?”

I stared blankly at him.

“What is your business here?”

I continued to stare blankly. And then another man appeared. This new man was older, with a tan, and he spoke with a smooth European accent. “It’s okay!” he laughed. “Everything’s fine! There’s no problem!” He gave the hotel manager’s shoulder a little squeeze. “I am your servant,” he said to me. “If there’s anything you’d like, please be my guest. Think of this hotel as your home. If I can be of any service to you, any service whatsoever, don’t hesitate to ask.”

I glanced over with anxiety at the hotel manager, who was now standing a little way off; overruled, slighted and silent. “I mean,” he smiled, “what could you possibly be doing here that could cause any harm to anybody?”

“Are you . . .” I paused. There was something indistinctly alarming about the things he was saying to me. I could not imagine that he really did want me to think of this hotel as my home. So why did he say that? I presume, in retrospect, that the message he was sending to me was: “We have noticed you, you are not welcome, but we are allowing you to leave without incident, just so long as you don’t come back.” At the time, however, the message I picked up was: “I am extremely sinister and powerful. This is so evident that I can afford to feign generous subservience.”

“Are you with the Caesar Park?” I asked the charming man.

“Oh, no,” he laughed. “No, I am not with the hotel. So, as I say, think of this hotel as your home. Really, everything’s fine and there’s no problem. What problems could there be?”

What problems could there be? I wanted the young hotel manager to intervene. I suddenly felt that he could be my ally in this situation. But he remained impassive.

“Don’t feel as if you have to go,” said the charming man, his arms outstretched. “Stay as long as you like. Enjoy the facilities. Have a swim!”

“So if you’re not with the hotel,” I said, “who are you with?”

“I am with . . .” he paused “. . . another organisation.”

“Which is called . . .?”

He laughed and looked at the ground. “Enjoy your afternoon,” he said.

I waited for Jim down in the lobby, right by the revolving doors that led outside to the car park. The hotel manager stood nearby, watching me with a constant, even gaze. After five minutes, Jim ambled towards us. When he noticed the hotel manager, he slowed his gait to the laziest of strolls – a little gesture of southern gentlemanly defiance.

There was something new in the car park now, a dozen police motorcycles lined up by the revolving doors. “The big shut-down is beginning,” whispered Jim. He pulled out his camera and photographed the police. “We’re lucky,” he said. “An hour later, we wouldn’t have gotten near the place.”

“What did that man say to you?” I asked.

“Oh,” said Jim, “he would just love to be of service and provide any help I needed, blah blah blah.”

“How can you say blah blah blah?” I said. “That wasn’t blah blah blah. That was actually fucking sinister.”

“Those Bilderberg boys can be pretty sinister,” said Jim. We climbed into our car. I started the engine.

“So I told him that I didn’t need any help wandering around the hotel, thank you all the same,” said Jim. “Then he asked where we were staying . . .”

“Did he?”

“And I said, ‘Oh, just some flea-pit down the road.’”

***

That evening, when I went for dinner, I put a sliver of paper in the crack between my hotel room door and the frame, as I had seen James Coburn do in Our Man Flint. Actually, Coburn put a single hair in his door. But my door crack was too large for single hairs, and they kept falling on to the floor and disappearing into the carpet. I was standing there in the corridor tugging my hair out. So I switched to a sliver of paper. When I returned from dinner, the sliver was still there. There was always a possibility, of course, that they’d taken a look around and put the sliver back where they’d found it. I slept fitfully that night, but nothing happened.

“Mother.” It was Tuesday morning. Jim was leaving his regular answerphone message with his friend back in Washington DC to confirm he had not been murdered during the previous 24 hours. “Your dutiful son is playing kick the can in Portugal. Thank you very much.” This was supposed to be an easy day. Jim simply wanted to verify that the complete shut-down of the Caesar Park had been accomplished. We would drive up there and be turned away at the gate. Jim would ask why, for the record, and document the response in his notepad. Then we would turn around and drive back to our hotel for a leisurely afternoon by the pool and in the bar.

But this was not to be. We arrived at the Caesar Park to discover no police, no cordon, no shut-down. The gatekeeper lifted the barrier and waved us on with a cheerful smile. For the first time, Jim appeared sidestepped. “That’s surprising,” he admitted. “That’s surprising already.”

“Do we drive in?”

“I’m confounded,” murmured Jim. “We saw the shut-down begin yesterday. We saw it with our own eyes. And now no shut-down. This is not what’s supposed to happen.”

The gatekeeper approached the car. “Just drive in,” said Jim urgently. Impulsively, I took my foot off the brake and we cruised up the drive. This was a disconcerting new twist. We were venturing into a place where it had been made perfectly clear that we were not welcome, and we didn’t even want to be there. We were accidental agents provocateurs, simply because we had been waved on at the gate.

“The hotel is deserted,” I said, as we pulled into the car park. “We’re the only people here.”

“Let’s get lunch,” said Jim. “Just two guys getting lunch.”

We wandered through the now-deserted marble lobby. There were no more civilians. We walked out into the silent grounds and sat at the poolside bar, the only two customers in a hotel designed for thousands. A young waitress appeared.

“Ma’am,” said Jim, raising his trilby.

“Sir?” she said.

“What time do you get off work?”

The question seemed to startle her.

“Nine o’clock,” she said, cautiously.

“And what bars do you like drinking in?” said Jim.

“There are some nice bars in the village near the cathedral.”

“Any bars in particular?” Jim laughed. “Don’t worry. I’m buying.”

“Just lots of nice bars in the village,” she said, evenly.

“That’s good information,” said Jim. “Thank you, ma’am,” he called after her.

He turned to me. “Now we know where the waiting staff drink. Could be good contacts.”

“So,” I said, “shall we try the bars near the cathedral?”

“Sure,” he said.

“Will we go, then?”

“Okay,” said Jim.

We walked back to the car and began driving the half-mile towards the exit. I glanced into my rear-view mirror. A dark green Lancia had pulled out behind us.

“Jim,” I said.

“Mmm?”

“I think we’re being followed.”

Jim turned around. “No shit,” he grinned. “Don’t worry. Once we’re on the public highway, they’d be pretty foolish to try anything.”

“Okay,” I said.

“They’re not going to want to have a fat old dead reporter on the side of the road,” said Jim. “That’s too big a news story.”

“Okay,” I said.

“But here they could say, ‘Oh, we thought they were armed. They looked threatening. We told them to stop but they didn’t stop.’ Bango!”

“I get the picture,” I said.

A flock of geese wandered idly up the drive in front of me. I honked my horn. We finally reached the peach gates.

“You watch,” said Jim. “He’ll turn around now. He’s done his job. Poor fool.”

But the Lancia didn’t turn around. It began to follow us down the deserted lane.

“Uh oh,” said Jim.

***

“British Embassy.”

“Okay,” I said, “I’m a journalist from London. I’m calling you on the road from Sintra to Estoril . . .”

“Hold on.”

“Press office.”

“I’m a journalist from London,” I said. “I’m calling you on the road from Sintra to Estoril. I’m being tailed, right now, by a dark green Lancia belonging to the Bilderberg Group.”

There was a sharp intake of breath. “Go on,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “but I just heard you take a sharp breath.”

“Bilderberg?” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “They watched us scouting around the Caesar Park Hotel and they’ve been following us ever since. We have now been followed for three hours. I wasn’t sure at first, so I stopped my car on the side of a deserted lane and he stopped his car right in front of us. Can you imagine just how chilling that moment was? This is especially disconcerting because I’m from England and I’m not used to being spied on.”

“Do you have Bilderberg’s permission to be in Portugal?” she said. “Do they know you are here?”

“No,” I said.

“Bilderberg are very secretive,” she said. “They don’t want people looking into their business. What are you doing here?”

“I am essentially a humorous journalist,” I explained. “I am a humorous journalist out of my depth. Do you think it might help if we tell them that?”

From the corner of my eye, I saw Jim wind down his window. He leant his head out and blew an antagonising lady-like kiss at the Lancia.

“Hold on a second,” I said. “Jim!” I said, sternly. “Please stop that.” I lowered my voice. “I’m here with an American,” I said, “called Big Jim Tucker. He’s an agent provocateur. That might be the problem. Perhaps you can phone Bilderberg and explain that I may be in the car with Jim Tucker, but I’m not actually with him.”

“Listen”‘ she said, urgently, “Bilderberg is much bigger than we are. We’re very small. We’re just a little embassy. Do you understand? They’re way out of our league. All I can say is go back to your hotel and sit tight.”

“I’m actually just pulling into our hotel car park right now. The Paris Hotel in Estoril. He’s right behind me. He’s pulling up on the street right next to the hotel. He’s getting out of his car . . .” “Sit tight,” she said. “I’ll make some phone calls. Whatever happens, don’t incite them in any way. Don’t fan the flames.”

Before the chase had begun, Jim was lumbering and supine. Now he jumped out of the car with the agility of a young deer. The man from the Lancia climbed out of his car and took up a position behind a tree. He was young, in his 30s, with short black hair. He wore sunglasses and a dark green suit.

“I can see you!” sang Jim. “You’re behind the tree. Peek-a-boo! Smile pretty for my idiot-proof camera.”

“Jim,” I said, “will you stop that.”

But everything was beyond my control. It was as if the invigoration of the chase had transformed Jim into a sprightly teenager.

A one-sided game of peek-a-boo ensued, during which the chaser maintained a steely expression behind his sunglasses, Jim performed a little ballet dance, and I sidled towards the swimming-pool area, attempting to distance myself from the unfolding crisis. Jim wandered over to me.

“Am I being paranoid,” he said, “or did Bilderberg set a trap for us? No, listen. Yesterday, we saw the shut-down begin. We saw it with our own eyes. Today, surprise surprise, no shut-down. They let us in with a smile . . .” Jim trailed off.

Jim said he needed a lie down. He may have twisted something when he leapt out of the car. He retired to his bedroom. I sat by the pool. The man behind the tree shrugged and paced around and adjusted his tie and busied himself there behind the tree. Holidaymakers splashed all around us. From time to time I made eye contact with the chaser, which meant, “Can I come over and tell you who we are and what is going on?” But he waved me away with a flick of his hand.

Sandra from the British Embassy called me back to say that she had spoken to the Bilderberg office at the Caesar Park and they said that nobody was following us and how could they call off someone who didn’t exist?

“He is,” I said, in a staccato whisper, “behind the tree.”

“The good news,” said Sandra, “is if you know you’re being followed, they’re probably just trying to intimidate you. The dangerous ones would be those you don’t know are following you.”

But this was scant comfort. What if these men were the dangerous ones, and I just happened to be naturally good at spotting them? What if I was adept at this?

“But that isn’t logical,” I said. “Big Jim Tucker is obviously not intimidated. I don’t think they’d waste their time trying to intimidate us when it is quite obviously failing.”

“You sound a little intimidated, if you don’t mind me saying,” said Sandra.

Two hours passed. Jim and I reconvened at a hotel bar down the road. As I wandered through the lobby, two men in dark suits immediately grabbed brochures and began scrutinising them. I found Jim some yards away, staring into his beer glass. “There are two men by the door,” I said, “reading brochures.”

“I see them,” said Jim.

“They’re only pretending to read brochures.”

“How do you know?” said Jim.

“You can tell by their demeanour,” I said.

“Here’s the plan,” said Jim. “We leave the bar together. When we get within earshot of the chasers, I say, ‘I’m gonna meet my Bilderberg contact at the Tiny Bar.’ You say, ‘Shhh.’ Say it urgently, as if you don’t want them to overhear. Feed them disinformation.”

“I’m not going to do that,” I said. Jim and I left the bar together.

“Jon,” said Jim loudly, “I’m gonna meet my secret Bilderberg contact at the Tiny Bar.”

I scowled, said nothing and marched ahead.

“Very good,” murmured Jim outside.

We split up. I walked down to the beach and found a seafood restaurant. I do not think I was followed there. When I returned some hours later to the bar of the Paris Hotel, Jim was drunker than any man I’ve ever seen.

He was surrounded by four Danish ladies and they were all singing Yes, We Have No Bananas.

“Jim,” I said, urgently, “are you still being followed?” I coughed. “Sorry, ladies,” I said.

“Excuse me, ladies,” said Jim, bowing graciously. He turned to me.

“So what happened?” I said.

“I went to the Tiny Bar,” he said. “They call it the Tiny Bar because it is a tiny bar.”

“And did they follow you there?”

“. . . We have string beans and onions/Cabbages and scallions . . .”

“I’m a superstitious old boy,” said Jim.

He paused. “Abe Lincoln was a good man. Shame he was an abolitionist. Well, I guess nobody’s perfect. I’ve lost my train of thought.”

“You went to the Tiny Bar,” I prompted.

“So, I’m a superstitious boy and I never sit with my back to the door. Don’t want to end up like old Abe Lincoln. But I didn’t want them to know, see, that I knew they were there.”

“And were they there?”

“I don’t know,” said Jim. “I had my back to the door. Ha ha ha ha ha!”

Jim nearly fell off his chair laughing.

“Jim,” I said, sternly, “when you left, were you followed?”

“Who’d want to follow an old boy like me?” said Jim. “The amount of pills they make me take for my plumbing, anyone would think I was FAG positive.”

“Jim!” I said, startled. “That’s a terrible thing to say.”

“I’m a Neanderthal,” said Jim. “Grrrrr.”

Early the next morning, a Do Not Disturb sign hung on Jim’s door, and sounds of typing echoed down the corridor.

A frosty atmosphere had developed between Jim and myself this past day or so. The tension was driving us apart. I was ready to sell Jim out to save my own skin, and I felt that Jim, invigorated by the chase, was grabbing my hand and jumping blindly into dangerous waters. We had an appointment with Paul Luckman, the editor of the tiny English-language Weekly News, the Algarve parish newspaper that had stuck its neck out and gone big on the Bilderberg story. Paul’s was the only newspaper in Portugal – indeed, the only newspaper in the world, as far as I could tell – that was reporting the Bilderberg story.

Paul is an ex-pat from England, 15 years an Algarve resident. He is not a journalist by trade. He runs a small telephone company. The Weekly News is a hobby for him, his wife, Madeline, and their two friends from church, Fred and Brendan. Paul told me he was perplexed that their parish journal had stumbled on to a world exclusive on this explosive, baffling story. “I do not consider myself one of the world’s greatest thinkers,” he said over the phone, “but it doesn’t take much to work out that this is something genuine. And no other newspaper will touch it. Nobody. The conversation dies as soon as you say the word Bilderberg. I mentioned it to an editor on the Daily Express yesterday, and he immediately changed the subject. I said, ‘Did you hear what I said?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Do you know about Bilderberg?’ ‘I’ve, uh, heard of them.’ And that was it. The conversation died.”

“How did you hear about Bilderberg?” I asked him.

“From a little newspaper on the internet called the Spotlight,” he said. “Have you heard of them?”

“I’m actually here in Portugal with Big Jim Tucker,” I said.

“Oh!” he said. “He’s a hero. Bring him along.”

***

Paul has a little office in a modern glass building in central Lisbon where he conducts his telephone business. He’s a committed born-again Christian. Church posters decorate the walls. “I find myself out of my depth,” he said, twisting an elastic band around his fingers. “If what they’re up to is perfectly innocent, why don’t they say what’s going on? But they don’t. Not even a little bit. Not even a hint. Nothing.” Paul paused. “Maybe my head’s gone,” he said, “but the Book of Revelation speaks of a one-world order, one financial order, a one-world religion. There’ll be a sense of disorder, of children not respecting their parents, and then a very powerful group will form. So it does all fit together.”

“I know they’re bad guys,” said Jim, “and I hate them, but I don’t believe they’re satanist.”

“I believe that Paul’s not saying they’re satanist,” I said. “He’s saying they’re actually Satan.”

The next morning, Paul sent Fred and Brendan, his fellow Weekly News editors, to meet Jim and me outside the gates of the Caesar Park. This was the day Jim said the limousines and the helicopters would arrive. If any of us still had doubts, Jim said, if any of us still didn’t believe, today was the day we would realise that the world was nothing like we had been told it was, that it turned on a sinister axis. The four of us waited out in the heat. A Gypsy caravan trotted past, then a few hikers. An hour trundled slowly by, and we filled in the time with small talk. “So, Paul thinks Bilderberg represents the fulfilment of the Book of Revelation,” I said to Fred. He chuckled. “Well, that’s where Paul and I part company.” We both laughed.

“You see,” said Fred, “I believe that all the prophecies have already been fulfilled.” There was a small silence.

“Oh,” I said.

Another hour passed. We ran out of mineral water. We kicked the gravel.

“They’ll be here,” said Jim, but now even he seemed unsure. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with a silk handkerchief. Our shirts were soaked. We stopped talking to each other and just stood there. Portugal is not an eventful country. There is tourism and there is football and there are golfing tournaments. It was, then, all the more extraordinary that, at around four o’clock, many of the world’s most powerful people really did begin to roll past us in taxis and anonymous town cars. There was David Rockefeller, net worth $2.5 billion, chairman of the Chase Manhattan bank, huddled into the back of a local cab.

“Good afternoon, Mr Rockefeller,” murmured Jim. The gatekeeper bowed and lifted the gate. Rockefeller waved, and the taxi disappeared up the drive.

Then came Umberto Agnelli of Fiat, Italy’s de facto royal family, net worth $3.3bn, barely noticeable in the back seat of some old sedan. “Big Bilderberg family,” said Jim. He was trying to remain matter-of-fact, but pretty soon he was grinning broadly.

“Jim!” I said.

“Damn right, soldier,” he beamed. “Pretty overwhelming, huh?”

There was Vernon Jordan, Bill Clinton’s close friend, his unelected unofficial adviser and golfing partner – Vernon Jordan, who plucked the president from Arkansas obscurity and nurtured him to the White House, and who is widely credited with pulling strings to get James Wolfensohn his job as president of the World Bank.

There was James Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank. “Incredible,” murmured Fred. “Unbelievable.”

And there was Henry Kissinger, possibly the most powerful individual the postwar world has known: Dr Kissinger, who sanctioned the secret bombing of Cambodia and later won the Nobel Peace Prize, who revealed to the press his heart attack with the words, “Well, at least that proves I have a heart” – and here he was trundling up the drive of the Caesar Park in the back of an old Mercedes.

“I’ll tell you one thing, I bet you didn’t know about Henry Kissinger,” said Jim. “His accent is as American as mine. Creep up on him at a bar, as I once did, and whisper that you know exactly what he’s up to, and he’ll splutter and shout at you in an accent as American as Mom’s apple pie.”

I attempted, for a moment, to judge rationally whether there was any truth to this startling claim – whether Kissinger really had throughout his life adopted a fake European accent to camouflage his American one. But I couldn’t. My rationality had suffered a tremendous blow, and I now no longer knew what was possible and what was not.

The taxis kept coming. There were CEOs of pharmaceutical giants and tobacco companies and car manufacturers, the heads of banks from Europe and North America. Some, like Richard Holbrooke, America’s United Nations representative, gave us friendly smiles, which Jim returned with a glare of undisguised loathing.

“Who are these people?” said Fred. “Why does nobody want to know?”

“They’re the masters of the universe,” said Jim. “The rulers of the world. You know their names now.”

There was Conrad Black, the world’s third biggest media magnate, the owner of the Daily Telegraph and the Jerusalem Post and the Chicago Sun-Times and 40 Canadian dailies and 447 other newspapers around the world. Conrad Black, who, when asked what epitaph he would like, replied, “Just my name and dates. The more exalted a person, the less is written on their tombstone. Charles de Gaulle just has his name and dates, Winston Churchill has the same, Otto von Bismarck has only his last name, and Napoleon Bonaparte has only the letter ‘N’ with no dates at all. This was a man sure of his place in history, and now I felt that perhaps I understood why.”

An old bus cruised up the drive. I paid it little attention, assuming it was full of hotel workers. Only Brendan scrutinised the occupants. I glanced over. Brendan seemed frozen to the spot.

“Brendan?” I said.

“Brendan!” said Fred, sharply. “What is it?”

“I looked through the window,” he explained, finally, “and I focused on one person, and he was staring back at me. I was standing with my camera in hand, and this person . . . just stared.”

“What kind of stare was it?” I asked.

“It was a strange stare,” he said. “It was a different type of stare. Yes. He looked down at me. As if he was staring right through me.” There was a pause. “I couldn’t even lift my camera.”

“And who was it?” I asked.

Then Brendan said, softly, “It was Peter Mandelson.”

There was a long silence.

“Peter Mandelson?” I said.

“I’ve never seen a stare quite like it,” said Brendan.

“Who’s Peter Mandelson?” said Jim.

There was nothing left for us to do, so we got lunch. We lavished praise upon Big Jim, who grinned with satisfaction. He had, indeed, uncovered something extraordinary. Fred half-joked that Jim should win a Pulitzer, except Pulitzer was probably in Bilderberg’s hands. We went back to our hotels to freshen up, and after a while Jim called to ask, if I had a moment, would I mind meeting him in his room? There seemed to be something on Jim’s mind.

“We can only wonder what evil things they’re doing in there right now,” he said, lighting a cigarette.

“They’ve only just arrived,” I said, lighting one. too. “They’re probably showering.” There was a pause. “So what is it, Jim?” I said.

And then Jim dropped his bombshell – he was calling off the midnight penetration. “When I was at the Tiny Bar last night,” he explained, “I met this taxi driver. Local guy. Knew the terrain. I said I’d give him a hundred dollars to escort me through the undergrowth and up the drainpipes. ‘One hundred crisp American dollars,’ I said to him. ‘Buy the wife that red dress she’s always wanted.’ “

Jim paused to cough. He had a coughing fit. He lit a cigarette. I lit one, too.

“Anyway,” resumed Jim after he had drunk a glass of water, “the taxi driver called just now. He said his wife wasn’t going to let him go. Too dangerous, she said. She didn’t want him killed. Poor fool.”

Jim looked out of the window. “I’m sorry,” he said.

Jim gazed out at the traffic and the ocean beyond. He pulled on his cigarette. As I watched him, I considered the cancellation of the midnight penetration. Jim was never without a cigarette. He didn’t like to admit it, but his lungs were shot. His health was no longer a match for drainpipes and guard dogs and armed security. Bill Clinton’s best friend Vernon Jordan was there, 13 years a director of America’s second-largest cigarette manufacturer, RJR Nabisco. I was sure that it was Jim’s rattling, cigarette-induced emphysema that had put paid to his midnight penetration. I went back to my own room and lay on my bed. I drifted off for a while, and then I was woken by the telephone. It was Fred from the Weekly News. He said he had something of great importance to tell me. Could I meet him at once at his hotel?

“Just come as fast as you can,” said Fred. “I’ll meet you by the pool. And don’t bring your friend Jim Tucker.”

At the poolside of the Hotel California, Fred held a document. The document was screwed up in his hand and damp with sweat. Fred said that he had discovered something terrible in the hours that had passed since our lunch.

“Okay,” said Fred, “I returned to my hotel and I had a swim and then I went to my room and began surfing on the internet. And after a while I found this . . .”

Fred passed me the document. I uncreased it and laid it on the table.

Bilderberg material is fascist hoax!

Dear friends,

I am writing to you urgently to warn you about material being circulated about a ‘Bilderberg Conference’ due to take place in June in Portugal. The Washington-based journal Spotlight is quoted as a source of information on the Bilderberg Conference. Spotlight is published by the fascist Liberty Lobby. The purpose of the material appears to be to make people imagine there is a sinister Jewish conspiracy that is trying to dominate the world. You may find much information on Spotlight by contacting any major anti-fascist organization.

Against fascism and against capitalism, Lisa Taylor (International Solidarity with Workers in Russia).

“What do you think about that?” said Fred.

There was a long silence.

“Well,” I said. “I should tell you that the other night Jim told me it was a shame that Abraham Lincoln was an abolitionist.”

“Did he?” said Fred, clearly startled.

“But I can’t really think of anything else Jim said that might be construed as . . . oh, he did say that with the amount of pills they make him take for his plumbing, anyone would think he was . . .”

“We’re getting all our information from neo-Nazis?” interrupted Fred. “We’re publishing a newspaper all over Portugal and our sources are neo-Nazis?”

“You might be,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean . . .” I paused.

Fred looked out at the pool. Children were splashing around. It was a lovely day. He put his head in his hands.

“What,” he said, “have we got ourselves into?”

In my attempts to find out whether the world really was being secretly ruled from inside the Caesar Park golfing resort that June weekend, I later contacted dozens of Bilderberg members. And, of course, nobody returned my calls. Nobody even wrote back to decline my request and thank me for my letter, and these are people whose people always write back and decline requests – Peter Mandelson’s office, for instance – which is why I began to envisage these silences as startled ones.

I did manage to speak to David Rockefeller’s press secretary, who told me that Mr Rockefeller was thoroughly fed up with being called a 12ft lizard, a secret ruler of the world, a keeper of black helicopters that spy on anti-Bilderberg dissenters, and so on.

The Rockefeller office seemed to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the conspiracy theories. They troubled Mr Rockefeller (his press man said). They made him wonder why some people are so scared and suspicious of him, in particular, and global think-tanks such as Bilderberg in general. Mr Rockefeller’s conclusion was that this was a battle between rational and irrational thought. Rational people favoured globalisation. Irrational people preferred nationalism. I asked him why he thought no Bilderberg member had returned my calls or answered my letters. “Well,” he shrugged, “I suppose it’s because they might want to be invited back.”

I persevered. I wanted the information.

I felt I deserved to have the information, and I simply couldn’t believe that there was certain information that I couldn’t get my hands on. It was driving me crazy. I learnt that being followed around by a man in dark glasses was tame in comparison with the indignities suffered by some of the few prying journalists who had travelled this road before me. In June 1998, a Scottish reporter tracked Bilderberg to the Turnberry Hotel in Ayrshire, and when he started asking questions he was promptly handcuffed by Strathclyde police and thrown into jail.

Bilderberg members continued to ignore my enquiries through the end of 1999 and into 2000. I continued dutifully to write to Bilderbergers, although I held out no hope of a breakthrough. And then, one Tuesday morning, the phone rang. It was the instantly recognisable voice of a Bilderberg founder member, for 30 years one of their inner circle, their steering committee, a Bilderberg agenda setter, a head-hunter – a secret ruler of the world himself, should you choose to believe the assorted militants I had spent the past five years with. It was Denis Healey.

“How can I help you?” he said.

“Well,” I said, “would you tell me what happens inside Bilderberg meetings?”

“Okay,” he said, cheerfully.

There was a silence.

“Why?” I said. “Nobody else will.”

“Because you asked me,” he said. Then he added, “I’m an old fart. Come on over.”

Once Lord Healey had agreed to talk to me – and I had circulated this information far and wide – other Bilderberg members became amenable, too (albeit on the condition of anonymity). These interviews enabled me to piece together the backstage mechanics of this most secret society.

So this is how it works. A tiny, shoe-string central office in Holland decides each year which country will host the next meeting. Each country has two steering committee members. (The British ones have included Lord Carrington, Denis Healey, Andrew Knight, the one-time editor of The Economist magazine, and Martin Taylor, the ex-CEO of Barclays Bank.)

They say that each country dreads their turn coming around, for they have to raise enough money to book an entire five-star hotel for four days (plus meals and transport and vast security – every packet of peas is opened and scrutinised, and so on). They call up Bilderberg-friendly global corporations, such as Xerox or Heinz or Fiat or Barclays or Nokia, which donate the hundreds of thousands of pounds needed. They do not accept unsolicited donations from non-Bilderberg corporations.

Nobody can buy their way into a Bilderberg meeting, although many corporations have tried. Then they decide who to invite – who seems to be a “Bilderberg person”. The notion of a Bilderberg person hasn’t changed since the earliest days, back in 1954, when the group was created by Denis Healey, Joseph Retinger, David Rockefeller and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands (a former SS officer while he was a student – ironic that a former Nazi, albeit a low-ranking and half-hearted one, would help give birth to an organisation that so many would consider to be evidence of a Jewish conspiracy).

“First off,” said a steering committee member to me, “the invited guests must sing for their supper. They can’t just sit there like church mice. They are there to speak. I remember when I invited Margaret Thatcher back in ‘75. She wasn’t worldly. Well, she sat there for the first two days and didn’t say a thing. People started grumbling. A senator came up to me on the Friday night, Senator Mathias of Maryland. He said, ‘This lady you invited, she hasn’t said a word. You really ought to say something to her.’ So I had a quiet word with her at dinner. She was embarrassed. Well, she obviously thought about it overnight, because the next day she suddenly stood up and launched into a three-minute Thatcher special. I can’t remember the topic, but you can imagine. The room was stunned. Here’s something for your conspiracy theorists. As a result of that speech, David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger and the other Americans fell in love with her. They brought her over to America, took her around in limousines, and introduced her to everyone.

“I remember when Clinton came in ‘91,” he added. “Vernon Jordan invited him along. He used it as a one-stop-shop. He went around glad-handing everyone. Nobody thought they were meeting the next president.” (Of course, Jim Tucker would contend that they all knew they were meeting the next president – for they huddled together that weekend and decided he would be the next president.) At times, I become nostalgic for when I knew nothing. There are so few mysteries left, and here I am, I presume, relegating Bilderberg to the dingy world of the known. The invited guests are not allowed to bring their wives, girlfriends or – on rarer occasions – their husbands or boyfriends. Their security officers cannot attend the conference and must have dinner in a separate hall. The guests are expressly asked not to give interviews to journalists. Rooms, refreshments, wine and cocktails before dinner are paid for by Bilderberg. Telephone, room service and laundry bills are paid for by the participants. There are two morning sessions and two afternoon sessions, except on the Saturday, when the sessions take place only in the evening so that the Bilderbergers can play golf. The seating plan is in alphabetical order. It is reversed each year. One year Umberto Agnelli, the chairman of Fiat, will sit at the front. The next year, Norbert Zimmermann, chairman of Berndorf, the Austrian cutlery and metalware manufacturer, will take his place. While furiously denying that they secretly ruled the world, my Bilderberg interviewees did admit to me that international affairs had, from time to time, been influenced by these sessions.

I asked for examples, and I was given one: “During the Falklands war, the British government’s request for international sanctions against Argentina fell on stony ground. But at a Bilderberg meeting in, I think, Denmark, David Owen stood up and gave the most fiery speech in favour of imposing them. Well, the speech changed a lot of minds. I’m sure that various foreign ministers went back to their respective countries and told their leaders what David Owen had said. And you know what? Sanctions were imposed.”

The man who told me this story added,

“I hope that gives you a flavour of what really does go on in Bilderberg meetings.”

This is how Denis Healey described a Bilderberg person to me: “To say we were striving for a one-world government is exaggerated, but not wholly unfair. Those of us in Bilderberg felt we couldn’t go on forever fighting one another for nothing and killing people and rendering millions homeless. So we felt that a single community throughout the world would be a good thing.”

He said, “Bilderberg is a way of bringing together politicians, industrialists, financiers and journalists. Politics should involve people who aren’t politicians. We make a point of getting along younger politicians who are obviously rising, to bring them together with financiers and industrialists who offer them wise words. It increases the chance of having a sensible global policy.”

“Does going help your career?” I asked.

“Oh yes,” he said. Then he added, “Your new understanding of the world will certainly help your career.”

“Which sounds like a conspiracy,” I said.

“Crap!” said Denis Healey. “Idiocy! Crap! I’ve never heard such crap! That isn’t a conspiracy! That is the world. It is the way things are done. And quite rightly so.”

He added, “But I will tell you this. If extremists and leaders of militant groups believe that Bilderberg is out to do them down, then they’re right. We are. We are against Islamic fundamentalism, for instance, because it’s against democracy.”

“Isn’t Bilderberg’s secrecy against democracy, too?” I asked.

“We aren’t secret,” he snapped. “We’re private. Nobody is going to speak freely if they’re going to be quoted by ambitious and prurient journalists like you who think it’ll help your career to attack something that you have no knowledge of.” I noticed a collection of photo albums on his mantelpiece. Denis Healey has always been a keen amateur photographer, so I asked him if he’d ever taken any pictures inside Bilderberg. “Oh yes,” he said. “Lots and lots of photographs.” I eyed the albums. Actually seeing the pictures, seeing the set-up, the faces, the mood – that would be something.

“Could I have a look at them?” I asked him. Lord Healey looked down at his lap. He thought about my request. He looked up again. “No,” he said. “Fuck off.”

© Jon Ronson, 2001. This is an edited extract from Them: Adventures With Extremists, by Jon Ronson, which will be published on April 6 by Picador, priced £16. Jon Ronson’s four-part television series, The Secret Rulers Of The World, begins on Channel 4 in May. Next week in Weekend: In the second extract from Jon Ronson’s new book, our reporter goes on the trail of David Icke, the former goalkeeper who became obsessed with lizards.

THE PET GOAT, read by George Bush, 2001.09.11

A girl got a pet goat. She liked to go running with her pet goat. She played with her pet goat in her house. She played with her pet goat in her yard.

But the goat did some things that made the girl’s dad mad. The goat ate things. He ate cans and he ate canes. He ate pans and he ate panes. He even ate capes and caps.

One day her dad said, “That goat must go. He eats too many things.”

The girl said, “Dad, if you let the goat stay with us, I will see that he stops eating all those things.”

The dad said, “We will try it.”

So the goat stayed and the girl made him stop eating cans and canes and caps and capes.

But one day a car robber came to the girl’s house. He saw a big red car near the house and said, “I will steal that car.”

He ran to the car and started to open the door.

The girl and the goat were playing in the backyard. They did not see the car robber.

The first November weekend is full of new releases for all sorts of movie-goers.  Don’t believe me?  Come see for yourself.

First off, Robert Zemeckis is back again with his third straight animation film.  This time it’s Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol with Jim Carrey.  You can find this movie in 2D or 3D, in IMAX or digital screens.  Needless to say, this movie is going to be everywhere.  Expect this classic story retold to make a big splash in this weekend’s box office.

Next, the R-rated semi-war film The Men Who Stare At Goats starring a powerful collection of actors in George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Jeff Bridges, and Kevin Spacey.  With mixed reviews, the movie will be relying on the acting power alone to sell to the public because let’s face it, we’re all tired of war films by now.

Hoping to capitalize (or confuse) on the success of Paranormal Activity comes The Fourth Kind starring Milla Jovovich.  This PG-13 horror film has a feel of Paranormal Activity with its use of seemingly real footage of people who have been abducted by aliens.  Poor reviews have been pouring in for this film, but that never stops the crowd from seeing a horror movie.

And finally, the thriller based on a Twilight Zone episode, The Box, stars Cameron Diaz with James Marsden and Frank Langella.  Again, this is another movie that has been receiving mixed reviews, which might hamper its box office success.  Let’s see if Diaz can pull her star power to reach the Top 5.

Here are our predictions…

My Predictions:

1.  A Christmas Carol – $40 million
2.  The Fourth Kind – $15 million
3.  This Is It – $12 million
4.  The Men Who Stares At Goats – $10 million
5.  Paranormal Activity – $9 million

Dan’s Predictions:

1.  The Fourth Kind – $18 million
2.  The Men Who Stares At Goats – $13 million
3.  A Christmas Carol – $12 million
4.  This Is It – $11 million
5.  Paranormal Activity – $8 million

Phil’s Predictions:

1.  A Christmas Carol – $30 million
2.  The Fourth Kind – $23 million
3.  This Is It – $15 million
4.  The Men Who Stares At Goats – $10 million
5.  The Box – $8 million

Sheehan’s Predictions:

1.  This Is It – $20 million
2.  A Christmas Carol – $19 million
3.  The Box – $18 million
4.  The Fourth Kind – $15 million
5.  Paranormal Activity – $13 million

Presumo proprio che andrò a vederlo.

TF1 a diffusé vendredi le tout dernier spot de pub TV Nespresso, dernier né de la saga Clooney.

Un spot de 30 secondes signé de l’agence McCann Paris, réalisé par Robert Rodriguez et qui tranche sur les précédents. S’il met en effet à nouveau en scène l’acteur Américain, ce film voit pour la première fois l’apparition d’une «guest star», en la personne de John Malkovich. L’agence s’est amusée à imaginer plusieurs scénarios pour ce spot, en proposant aux fans de la série, comme aux internautes, trois chutes possibles, toutes consultables sur la page Facebook de Nespresso. Quant au spot, lui-même, il est diffusé depuis ce week-end dans 33 pays: une campagne d’envergure qui sera complétée par de la presse et de l’affichage, à compter du 23 novembre. Renaud Revel/Immédias