Orthodoxy is toxic
All my heroes are equal but George Orwell is more equal than others. I’m not taken to affection for old Etonian propagandists, after all there are enough of them stuffing the country up at the moment. But I make an exception for George. You may love him for his life-long opposition to totalitarianism but my...
The real genuis of ‘and’
There is one word the advertising industry really hates. In this word lies the root of all perceived evil. It’s only a little word but its sends shivers down our collective spines. The advertising industry hates the word ‘and’. Instead, if we are really honest, we much prefer the word ‘or’. We tend to be...
We need to think more about advertising
Adam Lury, one of the founders of the late, great and greatly missed HHCL, is perhaps one of our least recognised planning legends. The exponent of a radical approach to strategy that helped make the agency’s work so distinctive in the 1990s, like many great planners, he was also immensely thoughtful about this business. Adam...
No more ‘millennial’ twaddle please
Peter Mead, the co-founder of Abbott Mead Vickers, had a profound dislike for one particular word. An old school ad man from a modest background, Peter had huge respect for the ordinary people that bought his clients’ products. And as such, he absolutely hated those that worked for him calling people ‘punters’. It wasn’t quite...
Why hire an advertising agency?
David Ogilvy famously asked clients of his agency wanting to write their own work, “why keep a dog and bark yourself?” Half a century later it appears that for some clients the answer is “who needs a bloody dog?” Which brings us to the thorny question of why use an advertising agency at all. One...
The year ahead in planning
Ok so its March and this is rather late off the rank. But better late than never. It just means we have 9 months not a year to sort this stuff out. If 2016 taught us anything, it is that prediction is pointless. It may be desperately tempting, it may feel like a commercial imperative,...
2016
One of my all time favourite ads is Asshole for Holstein Pils. It was written by Robert Saville and Jay Pond Jones at GGT and I think it’s by far the best drink driving ad in history. God knows why it’s not on every year. If you are familiar with the ad perhaps you might...
Anxiety maketh the planner
“Let’s face facts, Perce”, as Edmund Blackadder was constantly saying to his hapless companion, the division of labour in advertising agencies borders on the bizarre. In no other industry is the thinking, creating and doing delivered by different people, with different titles, often in different departments. You don’t see the farmers, the architects or solicitors...
Stand up for strategy
The work, the work, the work. That’s the mantra by which we live and die in advertising. Good agencies are measured by the work they win and the way that they work. But great agencies are always measured by the quality of the work they make. CDP, BMP, BBH and Mother all brought innovation to...
Remain was advertising’s lowest moment
This is an article I wrote for the second edition of the New European. The New European is a fascinating publication, it was set up from idea to first publication in 9 days. It’s kept its costs very low and exists to serve the 48% of people that voted to Remain. It will disappear once...
Stop faking it – Creating more meaningful connections with mums
Mumstock is the only marketing conference in the UK devoted to improving the woeful standard of marketing to mums. We have been at it for three years now along with our partners Mumsnet. And each year we have tried to deliver a new take on the subject through an unorthodox piece of research. So now...
The media matters
The closure of the Independent’s print edition at the end of March and the decision of its publishers to make it an online only news brand feels like yet another step in the inexorable decline of print journalism. And yet this Monday sees the launch of The New Day, the first new standalone newspaper in...