A few months ago I was given a Lifetime Achievement Award in Florida. This gave me childish pleasure. I cannot say doing well in marketing is an astounding achievement, but managing to keep at it for so many years is, …
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Could I interest you in one of my “Ready, fire, aim” rejects?
My partner often accuses me of writing the copy then looking at the brief. She is right. It’s amazing that I ever produce anything that works. A good example has come up in the last week. A lady asked me …
Read MoreHow Sainsbury’s made us take a walk through the rain
Today we went to our local Sainsbury’s supermarket in Clifton Down to shop for dinner. They had some squid, lying there whole with their little eyes gazing up at us. “Can you clean them?” we asked. “Oh, they’re already cleaned,” …
Read MoreWisdom from beyond the grave, and a book I must get
You may have noticed that pretty regularly I comment on the crass language used by people who email me in the wasted hope of selling things I don’t need or are attempts to rip me off. Yesterday in facebook I …
Read MoreHow should a bank advertise? And a little corporate nonsense to end the week on a low note
If you follow these romps through the social underground, you may recall my piece a few days ago about a crass ad run by Barclays Bank. Ann Lewis Scarff, a realtor in Las Vegas described my suggestion that banks are …
Read MoreA line I felt like stealing, an ad that calls for the death sentence – and a mystery
Recently I started working for a client who has found an ingenious way for businesses to raise money. Since the banks have abdicated their responsibilities in that area to focus on paying their top people obscene amounts of money – …
Read MoreWhat Winston Churchill and I have in common …
The short follow-on to that is, not much. He was courageous to a point far beyond the foolhardy. I am a craven coward. He made history; I make a pretty good Coq au Vin. But in one respect we have …
Read MoreUsed tampons, gay kisses for the kiddies … Rembrandt and Dickens, how sadly limited your imaginations were!
With what joy in the future I shall never see will our descendants rediscover the great art of the 21st century! Can you even begin to picture how many incoherent academic essays will try to unearth the roots of the …
Read MoreFinally, finally, the advertising mooncalves catch up with reality
The New York Times has a slogan, “All the news that’s fit to print”, and they aren’t kidding. The paper is a literary expression of the world’s most overweight society. You need a forklift truck to pick it up. (We’re …
Read MoreThings in today’s news that made me laugh
1. Proof that the best Irish jokes always come from the Irish: A Paddy Power TV spot with a blind footballer kicking a cat across a pitch got more complaints than any other ad in the last year. Well fancy …
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