Which is worse? The wildly inappropriate or the totally incomprehensible? One of these ads is bad. The other is abysmal. If you wish your ads to work they must fit the context and the subject. The ad for SIPPs is bad …
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Advertising schizophrenia at Fiat
How can one firm run an ad as good as this – but another so bad it made me groan? Do you ever look at an ad and mutter to yourself, “Wanker”? I do. It’s a sad condition, I know. …
Read MoreHere’s a bizarre bit of marketing. Are they mad? No, just experiential
Advertising is by no means the only way to market. In October my partner Ian may well rearrange your thinking I took the picture in Bristol on my way to the train. There are table tennis tables dotted all College …
Read MoreBullshit bingo: how to make absolutely,100% sure nobody knows why they should hire you
Obscurity, jargon and polysyllabic waffle do not impress. They just irritate, confuse and mystify As you may know somebody discovered a while ago that the thing people find most irritating in business is jargon. Some sufferers, they say, play Bullshit …
Read MoreWTF? What d’you suppose they were smoking when they came up with this lulu?
This Acer ad manages to tick all the boxes. Unreadable. Irrelevant. Incompetent. And frankly just a teeny bit bananas Imagine you’re given the task of launching a new product. The market is bitterly competitive. Computers. Dog eat dog. Squillions of …
Read MoreHas the social media bubble burst? Not quite – and not entirely
Yet another testament to marketers’ ignorance, folly and unwillingness to do their homework I often quote that wittiest of politicians, Disraeli. He was a great favourite of Queen Victoria – as you can see, this picture was taken by her command. I …
Read MoreA tale of two posters
One a lost opportunity; the other perfect for purpose Stephen Leacock called advertising the science of arresting human intelligence just long enough to get money from it. Most people who write or design posters seem unaware how fleeting that time …
Read MoreHow not to write copy – in one interminable paragraph, with a little one tacked on
This indigestible lump of verbal sludge is about par for many “corporates”. You probably have more important things to do than wonder at the sheer ineptitude of much of the stuff put out by big firms. I, however, derive a …
Read MoreThe 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing? Baloney
“The Golden Rule is, there is no Golden Rule” – George Bernard Shaw We all like to impose order on the chaos around us. What’s more, few are keener on things that will solve everything for us without the pain of having to …
Read MoreSorry, this really is a load of propagandising old bollocks
Was what I danced to most nights part of a fight for gay rights? I really doubt it Don’t read this unless you like disco and you’ve nothing else to do. If so, you’ve got some great stuff coming your …
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