This week I was kindly invited to a launch party at the Mayfair Hotel for Hewlett-Packard’s new tablet, the imaginatively named TouchPad. A bit of glamour for Tuesday night, why not? I hadn’t been to a launch party for years.
Back in the day when I was a struggling writer for IT weekly Computing I went to these events all the time; they were thrown at me. Champagne, World Cup football matches, posh hotels, foreign travel, I couldn’t have enough of it. As I was only earning £17,000 a year I took everything I could.
So as I walked into the Crystal Room at the hotel 13 years later it appeared that nothing had changed. Buckets of champagne, SO many thin people and amid all the glamour a thicket of relatively ugly, balding, fat men. My tribe, my people… journalists.
But then, what’s this? A greasepainted man in a butler’s uniform, handing me a key? ‘You’re staying here tonight, sir? Here’s your key’. Ah-ha, I can see what they’re doing here. It’s a theatre troupe, it’s going to be wacky and that key is going to unlock a goody-bag! Hurrah, things haven’t changed a jot.
I stayed for a couple of hours, chomped canapes, quaffed shampoo, spoke crap, marvelled at how quickly people get pissed when everything’s free, endured stupid bloody charades from the theatre group who at one time all had feather dusters and were dusting down the audience, and took out my key.
I walked to the back of the venue, I found a box with the number 44 on it, turned the lock and there was a slip telling me to ‘pick up my luggage’ on the way out. Ooohh, you little teasers, what a clever little game, BUT LET’S GET ON WITH IT!
I walked up the stairs and there were the goody-bags. Excellent, a HP TouchPad to road-test on the train home. I picked up my bag, smiled, walked out the venue, looked around wildly and like a seagull breaking into a plastic bag of food fervently ripped open the goody-bag. At last!
What? A last.fm-branded cloth bag. Huh? A grey last.fm-branded T-shirt? WTF? A miniature bottle of Bells whisky, a small can of Red Bull… and a card offering me £100 off the TouchPad when it’s launched this month? Jesus, BELLS whisky, BELLS. That’s not even whisky.
Unbelievable. How on earth do these things work? It was like 1998 on the outside, but 2011 on the inside. Brash and lurid with a spice of austerity thrown in; insane.
Why did I go to the event? Venally I wanted a free bit of kit, but I was also interested in the product, I wanted to see what it was like, I was going to write about it. People who I respected had told me it was a good product.
But what I get is a bag of tat, a £100 off voucher that is almost bullying me to buy the tablet, a bellyful of champagne, a stupid bloody game with a stupid bloody theatre troupe and stupid bloody feather dusters, but I know nothing more about the TouchPad.
I would say that most journalists would agree when I say that enough already of the champgne and theatre troupes, enough already of the silly goody-bags. Take us to a dirty building of dirty concrete, give us a glass of water, talk to us about the product and give us one to use, and even return later. That would work.
As it was, I was plastered when I got on the train home and at 12.30am I had to endure 40 minutes between trains watching people at Gatwick Airport as I sat at Costa Coffee. Then, of course, the Bells ‘whisky’ miniature!
I ordered a coke and then, surreptiously attempted to pour the whisky in. Jesus Christ, the top wouldn’t come off. I used my keys to try and prise it off, I dropped the bloody thing, I tried again and again, cut my bloody hand when it slipped.
In the end I smashed the bloody thing on the table until it finally opened and poured it down my throat. Aaaaarrrggghhh, stupid bloody launch parties.
Monty Munford has more than 15 years' experience in mobile, digital media, web and journalism. He is the founder of Mob76, a company that helps tech companies raise money and exit. He speaks regularly at global media events with a focus on Africa, writes a weekly column for The Telegraph, is a regular contributor to The Economist, Wired, Mashable and speaks regularly on the BBC World Service.
