INKWELL Copywriting, Ghostwriting, PR

Crash Blossoms even UK Copywriters and Editors Cannot Avoid

There is a term for a headline that can easily be misunderstood by the reader - a Crash Blossom. It comes from this headline from 2009:

Violinist linked to JAL crash blossoms

The story is actually about a violinist whose career has prospered since her father's death in a Japan Airlines crash. But it could mean that the violinist was linked to crash blossoms - what on earth are crash blossoms?

Here are a few more mentioned by Simon Hoggart in his Saturday column in The Guardian:

Children sent to Australia to get Brown apology

Tories join talks on high speed line

Female binge drinker arrests rocket

Crowds rushing to see pope trample 6 to death

and my favourite, although I suspect the sub editor knew what s/he was doing when writing a story about the former Labour leader leading an organisation concerned with military equipment:

Foot head arms body

Sometimes sub editors can't think of anything for a headline ...

Taking the pith - journalism for PRs

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A couple of years ago I was asked by PR Week, the public relations industry's leading trade publication in the UK, for an assessment of a campaign by another PR company. The project was a £20,000 launch of a new National Geographic magazine for children called National Geographic Kids

It's just shown up in their archives, which I came across today. Go here to read the pithy piece of journalism.

It's nice to know that such a well-respected publication called on me for my opinion, despite (or perhaps because) I straddle the worlds of journalism and media relations so elegantly!

Businesses Just Want to Tell You a Story

There are still many people in business who use the well-worn aphorism ‘Customers don’t buy goods and services, they buy people’. Which is fair enough as far as it goes. If you are looking for someone to provide a service – a solicitor, accountant, financial advisor – you are naturally drawn to the person with whom you have some level of understanding. Many products today are so similar that the choice of purchase is often put down to a perceived notion of ‘service’. Brand experts say that when we make a purchase we buy a little version of ourselves: a little representation that says something about who we are. Big purchases, like cars and homes, can be seen as reflections of the psychology of one’s self. Apparently.

But we can take that idea a little further. If we buy people, what is it that we are really buying? To get to know someone we need to hear their stories – and, I suggest, to understand (and trust and empathise with) a business we need to hear their stories as well.

What I’m suggesting is that businesses are defined by their stories in the same way that individuals are defined by theirs.

This is an idea that has been plaguing me for a while and I’m glad to say two Danish communications experts Klaus Fog and Christian Budtz have written on the subject with Baris Yakaboylu in their book Storytelling: Branding in Practice (Springer). So I can’t take all the credit for these thoughts but the book (which I have not yet read) has spurred me to flesh out my ideas.

Lived experience can be described as being a maelstrom of billions of incomprehensible random events over which we have little control. So we use stories to make sense of our day, our year, our life: little narratives that bring meaning to this seemingly arbitrary world. Storytelling is deeply rooted in human nature because that’s how we understand our world - through the stories that we have lived and those we have been told. So stories are important in our lives – but they’re also important in our businesses where they are becoming subtle tools that build an emotional bond with customers. Once told, a compelling story is not quickly forgotten. And, crucially, that story can be re-told … otherwise known as word-of-mouth referral.

Why are lists so hard to remember? Because they are a random mix of items without a relationship to each other – and they compete with each other in one’s memory (much like advertising messages). Why can we retell a long story without a single prompt? Because stories can recount complex information in the most economical and memorable way. This is what large brands are realising in their efforts to win and keep customers. In film-speak this could be referred to as the ‘back-story’, a device that fleshes out the histories and motivations of the screen characters.

Like product claims, these business stories have to be authentic, and if they are they will cut across sales and advertising-speak like no other marketing method.

Today's traditional brands are under constant pressure from cheaper alternatives and look-alike products. A successful brand is no longer just a matter of top quality or great design - those physical and rational attributes can be easily copied. Companies that want to maintain brand status in the future must show what makes them so special, and to do that they must tell a compelling story about themselves. The customer will warm to the story s/he identifies with and, assuming the basics are taken care of, you will have a new customer, then a repeat customer, if not a customer for life.

Let’s look at a well-known example. Why is it many people still view Richard Branson as a maverick ingénu? He runs many companies under the Virgin brand and by any standard is a very wealthy entrepreneur. Indeed, analysed closely, despite his woolly sweaters, we could call him a fully paid-up member of the establishment. So why do so many people view him as a champion of the underdog; one who fights against big business on behalf of the little man? Because his ‘back-story’ is a compelling one with which many people identify. His story is one of beginning young, and beginning small by importing cheap vinyl records from the continent in the 1970s to sell from a walk-up shop to fellow twenty-something music lovers – in direct competition with HMV and other large music retailers. The marketing of the Virgin brand ever since those times has been clever enough to emphasise these humble origins and posit him, regardless of how successful his brand becomes, as a champion against ‘big business’. He is perceived as ‘one of us’. No matter how big Virgin Atlantic becomes it will always stress its relationship to the bully-boy tactics of BA. Clever stuff.

So rather than spend time (and money) designing the next catchy logo for a tired product, perhaps we should be asking a more fundamental question. Does my company have an original, compelling story to tell? And is it a story that customers are willing to empathise with, enough to become part of it as Virgin has so clearly achieved? The critical task, however, is to identify the story that makes your company different from the competition.

Exposed as we are to a mind-numbing 3,000 new commercial messages every day (I don’t know how that is quantified either but it’s a big number), it should go without saying that your business story needs to be utterly captivating if it is to cut through the clutter and create an understanding of its values and personality. No problem if, like me, you believe that everyone has a story to tell if you ask the right questions. And that goes for businesses too.

On The Road in Kerouac Country

Driving across the Yakima Indian Reservation, hands still sticky from gorging ourselves on the biggest peaches we had ever seen, and with the sun burning our necks through the open sun roof we breathed in deeply the heady scents of fruits and berries, ripe vines and recently cut corn fields. The car temperature gauge showed 93 degrees but it felt hotter. Switching from the hell-fire preachers on the car radio to 97.7 KCFM “Live from Dave’s Diner”, Louie Louie played us into Hood River on the Columbia River Gorge and we took the opportunity for a welcome beer and a steak at the only Mexican restaurant in town.

Our September road trip through the Pacific North West was supposed to be a cooling, refreshing fortnight to appreciate the early fall colours in the dense forests of Washington State and hike up some of America’s highest peaks – the guide book didn’t mention that parts of the state out towards Idaho were semi-desert.

This area is largely untroubled by international tourism, and visitors who fly in to Vancouver or Seattle are missing out on a varied and wondrous landscape of glacial peaks and parched lowlands, of alpine meadows, sparkling lakes and unique wildlife, all of which defines this part of North America.

By the end of two weeks in small-town America we had breezed through life on the road with little traffic, climbed mountain tops which left us breathless, traversed semi-desert which found us squinting into the heat haze, and driven through canyons with only bald eagles and elk for company. Although Washington is trying to reinvent itself from the ‘hometown’ values of the Apple State (for it produces much of the country’s fruit) to chic wine country to attract more visitors, many places welcomed us as the first Brits of the season.

We’d spent the whole day driving over the Lost Horse Plateau, a scene of shorn golden hills recently harvested of their cereal crops and occasional wine estates reclaimed from the dry mountain sides by ingenious irrigation and careful tending. Like a scene from Steven Spielberg’s Duel our only road companions were the fearsome Mack trucks, huge loggers forever threatening us in the rear view mirror; gathering speed from the steaming two-lane blacktop over miles of ruler-straight roads - the only thing to do was to pull over and wave them past because they weren’t braking for an Englishman in a rented Lincoln.

Notwithstanding the inspiring landscape, the Yakima Reservation is a dreary collection of non-descript towns, malls and, incongruously, high-rolling casinos, which were built after special dispensation for legal gambling was given to tribal lands in the late 1970s. With more than their fair share of poverty, crime, alcohol abuse and poor educational facilities, casinos seem to be the last thing these areas need.

We finally made it to the vast Columbia River thundering down from the melting glaciers higher up the valley – responsible for half the nation’s hydro-electric power - to follow the awesome construction that is the Columbia River Highway. The scenery is breathtaking from the vantage point of the river road; straddling the mile-wide river and egged on by countless waterfalls on both the Washington and Oregon sides, the two roads and two railway lines race each other down the river’s course all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

The wind funnelling down between the two states over the water makes the resort town of Hood River a mecca for wind surfers, a sporting invention that saved the town from stasis in the 1980s. But the heat made us wish for the cooling breezes of the Cascades we had visited a week before, a range of mountains unfolding hundreds of miles down through Washington into Oregon and throwing up a string of volcanoes including Mount St Helens which blew her top in 1980 (losing 1300 feet from the peak) and devastated a vast forested area killing 57 people and millions of animals. But only America could turn a natural disaster into a compelling tourist destination. With explanations of the geological implications of the volcano and the process of regeneration the ‘Interpretive Center” was a fascinating glimpse into the destructive power of nature and what science has since learned.

Other mountain tops boast names such as Damnation Peak, Mount Despair and Mount Fury and are every bit as untamed as they sound. This is the high country that Jack Kerouac wrote about in his books The Dharma Bums and Desolation Angels after spending two months holed up in a remote shack on Desolation Peak as a fire spotter. Although Kerouac is best known for his seminal trans-American odyssey On the Road, his time spent on the mountain was a God-send for the environmental movement as it introduced many people to the wonders of the unspoilt American countryside and the need to protect a great natural resource. The one-room shack is still a site of literary pilgrimage.

“I went out in my alpine yard and there it was … hundreds of miles of pure snow-covered rocks and virgin lakes and high timber,” he wrote in The Dharma Bums. “Below, instead of the world, I saw a sea of marshmallow clouds …” Thanks to environmentalists who followed him, the view hasn’t changed since.

Next stop was the Mount Rainier National Park for three days of hiking on Washington’s highest peak. At 14,411 feet (4392 metres) the mountain stands as a snow-capped beacon for the state, although approached more closely, it hides behind a frustrating curtain of cloud. We braved fierce rain at 4500 feet and freezing snow at 5400 feet but were never rewarded with a sight of the icy peak close up. In fact I was more anxious to remember the park warden’s advice on what my response should be if I encountered a bear: “Black bears - fight back, grizzly bears - play dead”. Or was it the other way around?

After all that activity our bodies deserved some pampering but hotels can be an impersonal way to meet people while travelling so, for the most part, we sought out bed and breakfasts. Meeting the innkeepers in their own homes proved to be an entertaining highlight of the trip. We stayed at B&Bs that left us alone with stunning views, and others that seemed loathe to let us leave in the morning. One wouldn’t leave out any food for an early start, while another served a seven course breakfast of fresh fruit, baked apple, apple fritters, oatmeal with brown sugar and cream, eggs and pork chop or grilled trout with hash brown potatoes, biscuits (a kind of heavy scone), rounded off by a stack of buttermilk pancakes covered in maple syrup. ‘Good morning’ cocktails and champagne was extra.

Our favourite was a two-night stay at A Touch of Europe, set in the wine lands of the Yakima Valley, and which promised an evening meal – a welcome relief from cruising a strange town for sustenance. But the twee name of the house turned out to be no idle boast. Jim, of Italian descent, and Erica, who had not yet shaken off her East German accent, have transformed a unique Victorian mansion (now on the National Register of Historic Places) into the B&B of our dreams. Unashamedly luxurious, the house was stuffed with period fittings and furnishings, authentic wall coverings and an ambient calm, the effect on the visitor was one of immediate serenity and separation from the outside world. This clearly wasn’t just another B&B.

A swift visit to a local winery ensured a robust accompaniment to the main event - Erica’s sensational cooking. Jim – quiet, helpful, brimming with old-world charm – was the perfect foil for the ebullient Erica who exuded a love of life, and cooked that way. After eating some of the best food we have ever eaten in the US, Erica joined us and admitted that she is being feted by TV crews and food writers from around the world, although the house is still run exclusively by the couple who see it as their duty to provide an outpost of seriously good nosh among the ubiquitous fast food in this part of the world.

Memorable too was Mountain Meadows Inn on Mount Rainier, a mixture of ultra-laid back service (the once-sophisticated owners had gone decidedly native) and an ecological shrine. The bed (a room filled with curios of Native American culture) and breakfast (vegetable soufflé and French toast with cream anyone?) was more enjoyable than most. Proprietors Harry and Michelle saw themselves as protectors of the ecological faith as told by the man who many think started the movement – John Muir.

Muir, a Scot who moved to the US as a child in the 1840s, was the first person to call for action to protect the world’s wild places. He became a founding father of the conservation movement in his adopted homeland and devoted his life to safeguarding vulnerable landscapes for future generations.

Harry and Michelle became inspired by the conservationist and gave up their careers to move to the remote outpost to be closer to untamed nature, filling their house (or more accurately, museum) with first editions, letters and mementoes of Muir’s life and a library reflecting their sensitive appreciation of the contribution of the Native American – latterly known as First Nation peoples. The stop was a fascinating insight into a little-known side of Americana.

The final leg of the trip brought us over the border to Vancouver. There’s no denying the Pacific Rim city is a delight on the eye, but after the rugged country of the Cascades and the Columbia River Gorge the Canadian city seemed too tame by half. It is as if the city fathers read the text book on how to build a city – and they achieved it. How boring is that? The city had no edge and little excitement for us, unlike the best cities which seem to make it up as they go along. This is probably anathema to the many people who rate Vancouver the most beautiful city in the world. Doyenne of travel writers Jan Morris once said that Vancouver is ‘a city everyone would like to live in’ … but they don’t. She probably preferred the untamed Mount Fury and 97.7 live from Dave’s Diner, as I did.

 

 

Food with Roots

  

A new buzzword in foodie circles these days is ‘traceability’, which means being able to identify the origin of food through all stages of its production and distribution.

We have little knowledge of the source of our meat, poultry and vegetables we buy from large supermarkets these days – nor what happened to the food along the way. It’s a trend that Lancashire-based Booth’s supermarkets are trying to buck by buying regionally wherever they can. But it is among the small producers that regional foods and, by extension, regional cooking survives. The problem with small producers is that ... they’re small. By their very virtue not many people are aware of them outside their immediate neighbourhood and a few in-the-know professionals.

But Lancashire food suppliers now have a new champion with the commendable aim of featuring the suppliers in his pub/restaurant, to the extent of showcasing a series of superb photographs of them on the walls of The Three Fishes in Mitton, and reproducing a map with their contact details on the menu. Chef Nigel Haworth intends to share the limelight with the hardworking growers and suppliers – the farmers, cheesemakers, fishermen and gamekeepers - who provide the raw ingredients for his excellent Lancastrian cooking.

Nigel’s laudable attempts to put the spotlight on small local food producers (often the unsung heroes in the food chain) emphasises his belief that good food begins with choice raw ingredients - what he calls ‘food with roots’. Sure, Tesco has its uses but for the real taste of food you should take time to visit these suppliers.

And that’s just what I did.

After indulging in a splendid 3-course lunch consisting of crumpet with Lancashire curd, roast chicken and summer fruit pudding (another feature of regional cooking is a distinct lack of menu-hype!), I made appointments to meet the people who provided the raw ingredients to this wonderful meal. I wanted to see how the chicken was reared, how the vegetables were harvested, how that remarkable curd was made and how the sour cream soured. This was going to be traceability in action …

My first stop was Swainson House Farm, Goosnargh, to meet Reg Johnson and a few thousand of his chickens and ducks.

You might think that producing 2,000 ducks and 1,200 chickens each week would require a factory environment. But that’s not the case. True, they have mechanised their operation to a certain extent but this is very much a family farm operated on a human scale.

The business has grown, essentially, because of the quality of the product and because Reg has responded to his customers’ encouragement. The farm has also grown with a little help from a few high profile real food fans. But these are not just any old foodies: Paul Heathcote, Nigel Haworth and Gordon Ramsay all regularly make their way to the small holding to check on the progress of their raw materials and share with Reg the praises from their high-spend customers. Other famous restaurateurs who serve Reg’s poultry include Marco Pierre White and Albert Roux; it’s also on the menu at

London’s Ivy and Le Caprice restaurants. These are all superb chefs who have made food their passion and appreciate what Reg has done to help make their cooking amongst the best in Europe and ensure their international reputations continue to grow.

The celebrity endorsements reached a peak this year when Heston Blumenthal, chef of the 3-Michelin-starred Fat Duck restaurant in Berkshire (and recently voted the best restaurant in the world), came for breakfast! The Johnson family sat around their kitchen table with the world’s greatest chef and swapped recipes while mopping up their morning eggs with toast and tea.

When asked what competition he faced, Reg said: “Our chickens are grown without any growth promoters, additives or antibiotics to the age of about nine weeks, which is rare these days. The result is a great tasting bird, for which we don’t have any direct competition.”

Rather than supply wholesale (as many suppliers do) Reg prefers to sell direct to the chefs he speaks to so that he can gauge regular feedback. Although he numbers many Michelin-starred restaurants among his customers his prices are remarkably similar to what you will find on supermarket shelves, which allows local pubs to buy in the quality product as well as top restaurants.

Reg continued: “I have to say that it was Paul Heathcote and Nigel Haworth, both Lancastrians, who put the focus back on the smaller local producer by serving our products in their restaurants – and by telling people about it. Their encouragement has helped immensely through the years.”

From Goosnargh it was a short trip through rolling hills to Chipping where I met up with cheese maker Bob Kitching and his daughter Faye at Leagram’s Organic Dairy.

With 30 years of cheese making behind him you might think that Bob is a bit of an expert – he is, and he’s got the awards to prove it. Bob is another food producer taking a distinctly singular path – the one marked ‘quality’. The small family-run dairy has enjoyed the praises of foodies up and down the country – the many show-winning rosettes covering his wall are testament enough to that – but the most important indication of the success of their cheese making is the customers who return for more.

Faye said: “We can be found in farmer’s markets throughout the county and the most pleasing thing is seeing the same faces return to our stall. We also have a great relationship with restaurateurs such as Nigel Haworth who are always making suggestions for ways to improve or change the taste and presentation of the cheese. That’s how the curd cheese, or soft cheese as we call it, came about. It’s a big hit on the menu at the Three Fishes. We’re keen to keep the quality high and the cheese unique; we don’t want to compromise quality by chasing large orders from big distributors.”

Bob added: “Our cheese is batch pasteurised and takes longer to mature than commercial cheeses. You have to treat it gently to get the best results; it needs time to nurture so it can reach its potential. That’s something you can’t achieve when making in huge quantities.”

The strategy seems to be paying off. Leagram’s creamy Lancashire won gold at the British Cheese Awards and scooped two firsts at the prestigious Nantwich Cheese Show for both their organic and vegetarian Lancashire. All of which makes the dairy, currently one of 12 cheese makers within five miles of the village, the epitome of a high quality, local, small food producer. Even the dairy cattle that provide the milk for the cheese are reared within five miles of the dairy – many within sight of the back door!

The use of local materials extends to their concern for animal welfare. Faye said: “We want the way we treat animals and make cheese to reflect our values. We are organic and have no additives, which also makes us environmentally friendly.”

Making cheese in small weekly batches makes the premium product a sought after treat. But even the Kitchings are aware that they will soon have to increase production to satisfy demand.

Conscious that their operation has the potential to become a tourist destination (Bob holds regular demonstrations in a small museum in the barn next door), Faye said that Chipping needs a focus for the many people who visit the village – a village that was once the centre of cheese making in the county because of the lush fields on which the cows graze.

Due to Bob’s cheese making tours and demonstrations (that has seen him make cheese live on Radio 4’s Today programme, his popularity has extended overseas, having welcomed visitors from Australia and Madagascar.

From Goosnargh I made my way out to the flatlands of Tarleton to see Peter Ascroft at Worthington Farm. I caught up with Peter at his busiest time of the year in the middle of scores of acres of cabbage and cauliflowers stretching to the horizon. He and his crew were cutting cabbages and cauli’s for immediate despatch around the county.

“Cauli’s are fickle vegetables”, Peter told me, “they can grow from the size of your fist to a double handful within three days, so timing is all when harvesting.” It is this care that produces the sweet and flavourful cauli’s that are currently offered deep-fried or in a choice of quiches at the Three Fishes.

During the course of the year Peter grows cauli’s, cabbage, potatoes, purple sprouting broccoli, purple carrots and golden beetroot. He also has some fields under wheat and barley.

Looking out over the land that his father and both grandfathers farmed before him, Peter said: “I always wanted to be a farmer and I’ve loved it, although it’s been tough. But my son won’t farm the land because we’re being squeezed dry by the low prices offered. Booth’s are much fairer than the larger supermarkets and wholesalers, and I enjoy dealing with the smaller outfits like The Three Fishes but vegetables are selling for the same price today as they were 10 or 20 years ago – not many businesses could survive in those circumstances.

“People say that food doesn’t taste the same as it did 20 years ago. They’re right. Food is better now because there are fewer additives than ever before.”

My last stop on the food tour took me back to the Ribble Valley to meet Janet Forshaw of the Little Town Dairy in Thornley, near Longridge.

Perhaps I chose an unusually hectic day but I have never interviewed anyone who was so much in demand – Janet fielded about 15 telephone calls within the 40 minutes we chatted. Business certainly appears buoyant!

Janet married into a dairy farming family that ran up against intransigent farm quotas in the 1980s, which restricted the amount of milk they could sell. But there were no such restrictions on cultured milk products – the legislation pointed the way forward for the small business. The farm now sells sour cream, crème fraiche, natural & flavoured yoghurts and fromage frais.

The manufacturing side to the business began when Janet’s mother-in-law attended a short college course, which introduced her to the basics of yoghurt making. The early days saw her heat-sealing the silver foil lids on to the cartons using a domestic iron!

But things have moved on. The dairy now manufactures three times a week with 18 staff including four members of the Forshaw family. Her husband still runs the farm next door.

Janet said: “Our choice of products is almost wholly customer-led. The bottom line is if the customer doesn’t want it, it won’t sell.

Commenting on the rise of the informed consumer, she said: “A few years ago people would buy the cheapest food on the shelf. Now people who shop at farmer’s markets are asking more questions about where the food has come from and how it was produced – you can’t get that information from a supermarket shelf.

Janet was clear about the benefits of buying local: “The advantage is traceability. The dairy only uses a single source of milk – our own, and we have control over the feed, which affects the protein and buttermilk levels in the milk.

“Another growing concern is the environmental idea of ‘food miles’, a system that calculates how far the food has travelled from its origin to the plate. It doesn’t make sense to send something to a central distribution point hundreds of miles away for it to reappear in a local store.”

As I leave, the ‘phone rings yet again and I scan the office wall that parades the food awards for many of the dairy’s products. Janet quipped: “We won’t be winning any awards this year – we’ve not got the time to enter!”

Returning from the Ribble Valley I realise some common traits in all the food producers I have met. There is a commitment to quality before all else, but there is also a modesty and a certainty of purpose that comes from knowing they produce something unique that gives pleasure to many people. As Nigel Haworth might say, their food has very ‘sturdy roots’.

For most people though, the bottom line is taste. Buy a chicken from Reg Johnson and one from Sainsbury’s, or some Lancashire curd from Leagram’s and the equivalent from Asda and compare. Only then will you realise what your taste buds have been missing. If you have already discovered the joys of buying your food direct from small suppliers then tell a friend and help support small Lancastrian food suppliers – and protect a vital regional resource.

First published in Lancashire County Magazine.

Blackpool blogger's photos prove to be a hit the world over

Appropriately, the first post of my work should be a story I did on the blogging site that inspired me to try it myself, which got a front page splash, a full inside page and an editorial comment in this week's North West Enquirer. I think they liked it.

It's a photographic blog by a guy named David J Nightingale, find it at www.chromasia.com Great layout, superb pics and he has a nice easy style with words, too.

David J Nightingale has made Blackpool famous the world over. People who had previously never heard of the resort, and possibly never heard of Lancashire, are logging on each day to David’s blog, essentially an online photographic diary, to see his images of the resort and an update of his life at www.chromasia.com

What began as a way of documenting in images his growing family has developed into one of the most compelling blogs on the Internet. The site is currently attracting about 7,000 unique visitors a day – every day. That’s more than the Blackpool Tourism site gets in a week. Although many people on the Fylde Coast may not know about the site, the world certainly does – it was recently named one of Time magazine’s 50 Coolest Websites in the World.

For the uninitiated, blogging is the newest phenomenon on the Internet which allows people to connect with other like-minded individuals while expressing their own individuality through personal words or pictures – in effect it’s an online diary shared with, potentially, millions. Novice bloggers do not need a web designer to put their words and images online as there are many services that allow blogging for free, or nearly free. Consequently, the blogging community is currently the fastest growing part of the Internet.

 Not only is David a superbly gifted photographer with a keen eye and great instincts but www.chromasia.com has unwittingly become a one-man advertisement for the faded charms of the much-loved – and much derided - seaside resort. Web surfers from Christmas Island to Canada, from Portland to Porto have commented on how extraordinary and beautiful the town looks in his pictures. They offer advice and encouragement and express delight and amazement in response to his daily-posted image. Their fascination has not stopped there. Some of the visitors to David’s blog have even travelled thousands of miles to see the locations first hand.

What brings back the Internet visitors day after day to Chromasia is his particular viewpoint of what is commonly thought of as overly-familiar subjects. In many images David appears to be attempting to make exotic the banal and the everyday. And if you’re looking for the banal in English working class seaside life, Blackpool is a very rich subject: soiled net curtains; abandoned TVs on the beach; tatty shop doorway signs; newspaper reading pensioners; even the hackneyed bucket-and-spade shot is given a new iconic twist. It is this idiosyncratic view of Lancashire (and of his large family at play and at home) that has won David not only many admirers but also many photographic accolades.

David, originally from Barrow in Cumbria, is re-imagining Blackpool and the Fylde Coast in dazzling colours and striking compositions that the casual visitor to the town would overlook and achieves what good photographers are surely meant to do – force us to see afresh familiar subjects. He imbues his subjects – both human and inanimate - with grace and significance.

Most blogs allow readers to leave their own comments. This feature has proved so successful that when David’s wife Libby had their fifth child last summer they were inundated with expressions of concern and interest from around the world in the health of mother and baby - surely a powerful response to the assertion that the Internet is making people less sociable, a subject that interests psychology lecturer David.

“The comments left on the blog are very pro-social, there is rarely any criticism, so the medium is proving to be very supportive and very encouraging. There is a narrative feel you get with a blog you don’t get in a gallery or at an exhibition.”

But in a way it is an exhibition, a permanent, public exhibition that began in February 2004 when David set himself the challenge of uploading an image every day with a short accompanying contextual description. The result has become a riveting documentary record of his life in his adopted town of Blackpool.

“It’s a photographic diary”, David modestly says. “I initially started the blog for ourselves with many pictures of the children, then it grew. It’s too easy to picture the nasty side of life and be overly critical. I think it’s better to be sympathetic to your subjects. There are always alternative ways of taking photographs. It’s easy to show people in a poor light, and perhaps it’s easy to show Blackpool in a poor light, the way many people expect to see Blackpool.

“The blog is a good expression of what I set out to do when I began taking digital images, so in many ways I’ve succeeded. The feedback from the comments left on the site are very important to its success. When you find people from around the world are following your life it’s very encouraging. For instance when Libby was pregnant we got 211 comments and questions on one day asking how she was. We’d never met these people and they’d never met us but that’s the power of the medium”

Such is the success of Chromasia, that people have come to Blackpool from around the world to see first hand the locations of David’s images. Some contact him after they have been and gone but others have knocked on his door to meet the man who has perhaps inspired them to take up photography, start a blog of their own or just look at the world differently.

Although he recently got a commission from the Arts Council, lecturer David does not plan to become a full-time photographer. One senses that the photography and the lecturing help him keep perspective on both disciplines. On a more commercial level, the blog has generated a small income from orders for prints of his images, commissions, and by licensing his images for a variety of uses such as CD covers, ad campaigns and book illustrations, and this appears to be the medium-term future for Chromasia.

February 5 this year marked the second anniversary of Chromasia; with only 11 days’ postings missed in 12 months he intends to post all 365 in the coming year. I, for one, will be watching to see if he achieves it.