“Orthodoxy, of whatever colour, seems to demand a lifeless imitative style”. George Orwell
There is no such thing as a low interest category
You see it all the time - Client briefs, agency presentations, awards papers - the great cop out.
This is a low interest category.
It's the universal panacea, the ultimate excuse, the dog ate my homework of the marketing world.
No wonder the work is dull, the thinking is lame or the creative...Adliterate aphorisms
"Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative" Oscar Wilde - Aphorist par excellence
In my day we made our own entertainment
My Grandparents were farmers in Somerset. They never really saw the necessity for television and indeed only got one in the early '90s when my grandfather got ill. Consequently childhood visits were rather delightful since in the evenings we were required to make our own entertainment just as they had...Legendary repositionings
None of that Lucozade nonsense here. I am trying to gather together set of utterly legendary repositionings from any part of culture or society. There are bonus points for total originality and deductions for mentioning the Fourth Emergency Service (tell me something I don't know).
The World's first planner?
The World's first planner?
Advertising engagement – lessons from the PVR revolution
Bit of an aquired taste this but for those of you interested in some of the implications of the timeshifting revolution on ad engagement in general and pre-testing in particular here is the paper I gave to Admap's pretesting conference on the 9th Feb 2006. Don't all rush at once.
I cover some perenial favourites of...
Douglas Holt has come to save us all
Some books I read and some I chew on.
Chewy books are those where the thinking is so profound or ideas so counter intuitive that they are tough to digest.
Douglas Holt's How brands become icons is a chewer.
Advice to young planners
I was recently interviewed by a Romanian advertising blog called iqads. Amongst other questions they asked whether I had any advice for young planners and I thought I would share this with a wider audience. They are short, sweet and incomplete.
Strategy safari
Slightly high risk this. But I wanted somewhere to put the strategies that I love but Clients have never bought. Feel free to put to better use or simply to reflect upon my mediocrity as a planner.
In part the idea is to illustrate that good thinking should be simple, radical and well packaged - rather...
PVRs – less talk and more action
It is time we all stopped talking about the future of advertising in a PVR world and started doing something about it. I am working on 20 concrete ideas to get people started. It may end up as a more chuncky ten or as a more Cluetrain like 95. Maybe you can help me on...
Opinionated Advertising
Opinionated Advertising Opinionated advertising is a new idea about the role that advertising should play in the marketing mix and the form it should take. Implicit in this approach is a disdain for well branded entertainment and the language of talkability that pervades many creative debates. You have two options here. Download the full article...
Will your brand have a voice in the fast forward future?
If 92% of all ads are zapped when TV is watched off a PVR hard disk what are the implications for advertising? This presentation offers a number of ideas and scenarios about the implications of PVRs on brand communications. If you download you will get the straight powerpoint charts however, if you then save the...