Wisdom must be caught not taught

I’m in love with the aphoristic form as you well know. And I think they are extremely handy in our business. Certainly in persuading people of a point of view or course of action – such as David Ogilvy’s why keep a dog and bark yourself, or Bill Bernbach’s we must stop believing in what we sell and start selling what we believe in.

The are also great in framing strategies, approaches and ideas – no one is interested in your positioning, they only want to know your position or Coherence is more important than consistency for example. And on occasions great brand thoughts can take an aphoristic form, I’d argue they are the ones that get remembered best.

So imagine my delight when Russell gave me “The World in a phrase – A brief history of the aphorism” by James Geary.

A short story about provenance

I recently enjoyed an evening at Leith’s cookery school in well heeled Kensington.

All in all a very good evening matching wine to food even if I stood out like an ad man at a posh cookery school wine tasting night.

Anyway, there was rather a fascinating story about accessibility, commodification and provenance that I thought I would share with you, my brand loving friends.

Image courtesy of Rune T