There's nothing like a good exhibition!!!

WHEN it comes to marketing their products the Greeks certainly need to wise up. On the island we have a national exhibition centre where they stage some really good events, the trouble is they usually wait until the very last minute before they promote them - and that is only half of the problem.
   Like to see a great Marilyn Monroe exhibition, or how about one all about Leonardo da Vinci or thrill the kids with a brilliant Dinosaur show? All these are at the exhibition centre and there are dozens of billboards, advertising signs and posters advertising them - the only problem? They are all finished!
   That's right, the Monroe exhibition was in October 2011. the excellent da Vinci exhibition was even earlier, and the Dinosaurs finished in October last year - despite this all the signs are still up and confuse tourists. How many children will pester their parents during the coming summer months to go to see the Dinosaurs or dad drooling over seeing the Monroe exhibition and being frustrated when they find out it has long gone.
  We cannot understand why they leave the signs up, but perhaps they want their moneys worth as they are very late putting them up in the first place. It's not only the events at the exhibition centre, which is at Gouves, but venture into Heraklion and you would be totally blown away trying to find something advertised that is actually on, they are really lax and then they moan that numbers attending these events are really poor.
   Having worked in marketing for many years in the UK, the value of promotion is imperative, so it's a source of amazement - but this has been happening for years, so you would have thought that somebody would have sorted it out by now!

Monroe exhibition banners success - at last.



IT'S well known by all our friends and family that our son Mark is an avid Marilyn Monroe collector. No matter what, be it a newspaper clipping, painting, video, magazine, television documentary, book, bric-a-brac he will go to great lengths to get it. So you can imagine his frustration when a very special Monroe exhibition  was staged here in Crete a week after he returned home from visiting us back in April.

  Fortunately for him we were able to go along and photograph every item, obtained a special exhibition catalogue, along with press packs and a copy of the exhibition poster. That would normally keep a collector happy for a long time - indeed he was delighted, all the pictures, more than 100 were put on CD to view and made up for the fact he missed the exhibition, which was German organised and would not be going to England.

  Without telling Mark, behind the scenes we made an effort to obtain at least one of the special banners which graced the road leading to the exhibition. There were five designs, with two banners on either side of the road that led to the exhibition centre.  Two of the designs were not really that good, however we managed to get the other three,. When the exhibition ended in October, e-mails had already been sent off to Germany and other organisations here in Greece. So you imagine how pleased we were to hear finally this week that we had permission to take what we wanted.

  Simple, all we had to do was to go to the exhibition centre about five miles away, except the place is empty until the next exhibition in January. The banners are approx 1m x 3m and were hung from the top of telegraph poles. It took four phone calls and two visits to find the officials and request  a ladder. However the ladders at the centre were locked away, eventually we managed to borrow a pair from  an electrician working at a nearby taverna, who thought we were mad.. A lot of climbing, and we have something that nobody else will ever have, three exclusive banners - a result for Mark, however we have not told him we declined one other banner, well it was 3m x 6m in size and halfway up the exhibition centre wall!!