It’s only half way through 2019 but an early contender for agency of the year is surely ‘Led By Donkeys’. And I mean that only slightly in jest for, finally unmasked, the four founders look every bit like a small start-up agency, complete with requisite beards, a predilection for craft beer and significant diversity issues....
Most see the act of saying something that has absolutely no chance of ever coming to fruition or doing something that has absolutely no chance of success, as utterly pointless. But to my mind there is a certain nobility in the futile. Futility is hugely underrated. The decision of Lord Cardigan to send the British...
Recently I have got really interested in the concept of creative vehicles. Indeed I wrote about them for Campaign magazine in a piece about how much I hate the word ‘branding’. By creative vehicle I think I mean a repeatable approach to communications that builds fame for a brand. The thing that your brand is...
This post has an intent, something that I advise that you do immediately you have read it. And that is to join a choir. And to join a choir particularly if you can’t sing or rather tell yourself that you can’t sing. Now you may be thinking, what the fuck has that got to do...
In August 2003 Alistair Campbell, Tony Blair’s Director of Communications, resigned. For some months he had been at the centre of allegations that the intelligence dossier that created much of the case for the invasion of Iraq in March that year had been doctored. Whether or not this was the case, the reality was that...
Getrude Bell, 1868 – 1926. In the main, the posts I write for adliterate are not at all personal. They contain my opinions by the score but not much of me. I have always liked that, I guess it’s been part of the mystique of the online persona I built nearly 15 years ago. For...
I’m no great fan of monotheism The idea that there is one true god, one answer to the entirety of life, the universe and everything has always struck me as rather arrogant. Indeed, I am deeply suspicious of certainty in any guise, religious or otherwise. Certainty seems at odds with a genuine search for truth,...
All of a sudden, the world of marketing has got very polite indeed. For years we have taken absolutely no notice of whether people actually want us to communicate with them and instead have deluged their letterboxes and inboxes with communications, willy-nilly. And then overnight, four letters that sound like the acronym for a former...
My favourite episode of South Park is ‘Gnomes’. Not only is it properly funny, if you like your humour puerile and immature, but it also holds a small cautionary tale for marketers. ‘Gnomes’ tells the story of a gang of animated garden ornaments that live beneath South Park and steal underpants while its residents are...
One of my favourite ads of all time is Honda Grrr. A Wieden & Kennedy classic, it’s still fresh and powerful a decade on, albeit the subject matter is a little out of time, as we tend to frown upon diesel these days. As much as the work is lovely, it’s the planning that I...
There are many phrases to which I take exception. I hate dead metaphors such as “Achilles’ heel”. I hate euphemisms that are designed to disguise their true meaning, such as “collateral damage”. And I hate out-and-out lies such as “we will give the £350m we save from the European Union to the NHS”. But one...
To celebrate the 55th series of Have I Got News For You, the show’s team captains, Ian Hislop and Paul Merton gave a now infamous interview to the Radio Times, a publication not normally used to setting the news agenda. Amid a conversation with ITN anchor-man Tom Bradby, the duo offered a highly criticised answer...
