For a long time, no doubt under pressure from industry, they chose to ignore what was obvious to everyone. In other words they papered over the cracks until the paper couldn’t cope any more.

The common thread now the bubble has burst seems to be one of image or lack of it. I assume all and sundry are not blaming those within the industry for deliberately sabotaging their own image. I’m not really bothered as the skills shortage has driven prices up and that can’t be bad.

Presumably therefore the correct next step is to examine popular perceptions of our image: Who better to do that than an advertising agency which claims to be in the top fifty with Saatchi and Saatchi ?

We were contacted by such a company late last week. They were recruiting a number of Installers to participate in a focus group connected with boilers. An assurance was given that a leading company was involved, which it was. Trying to be clever I tracked down the advertising agency’s client portfolio (they love to boast about such things) and the single boiler manufacturer on their list was not the subject of the focus group. It was a major rival. Curious indeed.

Anyone who has done product training will know that hospitality is never less than good, often superb and the stunning opulence of the last Grundfos workshop at the renowned Reebok stadium resembled an up-market wedding reception. The evening was actually co-hosted by Fernox so maybe the analogy was not an analogy.

We dutifully arrived for the focus group at 18.30 which came with the promise of a £30 fee, car park expenses and ‘refreshments’. As an associate put it, we were just a bunch of Installers or so their approach suggested. The complete list of six Installers turned up plus my associate who was booked in later.

Refreshments comprised a few bags of crisps and biscuits. Bottles of lager were in the majority. An open topped jug of warm orange was the only soft drink aside from two open topped jugs of warm water. There was a flask of coffee but that we discovered was left over from an earlier time. They managed to change that. Tea was also luke warm and presumably left over from an early meeting.

The boiler type under focus currently has a 3% market share of the whole boiler market and within that population the model concerned was said to be dominant. Currently in production as a Band D boiler and well known, it was difficult to understand why so much effort was being poured into a product that is already well established but threatened by the looming energy white paper.

Why pour so much money and effort into a campaign designed to reinforce the marketing foundation and personality of an established market leader which is apparently doomed to extinction ?

There can only be one logical explanation. We predict a new range of free-standing condensing boilers to bolster the relatively few listed at boilers.org.uk (aka sedbuk). Remember, the first (High Efficiency) condensing boiler was a free standing oil fired boiler that is still in production.

Meanwhile we strongly recommend that product manufacturers undertake some perception training on their various advertising agencies. Until people like that start to get it right, recruitment in the construction industry will continue to falter and I’ll continue to do very nicely, thank you very much.

NB: The agency were instructed to donate the fee to Childline and let us have a receipt. We’ll check in a few days that the donation has been made.

Editor's note – Receipt received from Childline North West 10.09.2003