- Page 23 of 35 - Radical thinking for the brand advice business

05/10/2007Uncategorized

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.

02/10/2007Planning

A short story about provenance

by Richard7 Comments

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

29/09/2007Advertising

Reporting from the digital front line

by Richard7 Comments

I still maintain that very few people in advertising agencies really understand what clever digital agencies can do for their clients.

And I had this further drummed into me last week as one of the judges of the NMA and Marketing Week’s Interactive Marketing and Advertising Awards.

So I thought I’d jot down some observations on the work from the perspective of a planner from an above the line tradition trying to understand what is going on.

27/09/2007Planning

Many a slip twixt pre-prod and playout

by Richard16 Comments

I have long believed that a planner’s job must continue right up to the playout of an ad – not just working on the client’s business but working on the ad itself.

For me a planner needs to be hold onto the project whilst it is in production and post production right up until the clock number is allocated.

I call this continuity planning for some inelegant reason.

26/09/2007Planning

Genius doesn’t have a sell by date

by Richard4 Comments

There are a number of things happening this autumn to commerate the life and work of Stephen King the co (and coincidental) founder of the planning discipline (along with Stanley Pollitt).

My efforts have been focused on the inagural Stephen King Strategy Agency of the Year Award in November but the APG is also launching a collection of Stephen’s writings on the 1st of October.

So it is time to get acquinted or re-acquainted with the great man’s work – whether from this post, by buying the book from the APG or rocking up to the book launch. If you want to go to the latter (£50 including a copy of the book – loads of lumanaires are going to speak so get your planning director to cough up) email the APG pronto here .

24/09/2007Advertising

Gorilla – those remixes in full

by Richard8 Comments

I am a big fan of the Cadbury’s gorilla ad and fully expect to see some stonking sales results coming in thick and fast.

In the final instance I just think somethimes you need a bit of this – good old fashioned salience delivered by a fame seeking commercial.

For all the analysis, particularly online, I had overlooked they way it was perfectly built to be remixed – or simply have a new track laid over it.

So here are a few of the best remixes I could find on you tube. My personal favourite is of course Total Eclispe of the Heart.

13/09/2007Planning

Delicious insight ahoy

by Richard16 Comments

Led Zeppelin are reforming for a one off gig at the O2 in London on November 26th, so far 20 million people have tried to get a ticket.

And here is another thing I never thought I’d see it in my lifetime.

An insight in a razor campaign. I’ll leave it to you to discover but it’s one for the dad’s (like me) out there.

27/08/2007Articles and columns

No more Mr Nice Guy

by Richard42 Comments

A mentor of mine once told me that there are only two types of planners in the world – nice planners and nasty planners.

He maintained that by far the best kind were the nasty planners.

Image courtesy of thepres6

16/08/2007Articles and columns

Russell Davies is on holiday

by Richard8 Comments

As ‘Russell Davies lite’ I often get to fill in when the great man is otherwise engaged – weddings, after dinner speeches, visits of foreign dignatories, that kind of thing.

And so I did some holiday cover on his Campaign Magazine column recently. The first was a tongue in cheek look at the way social media is helping to build bridges within the marketing community – between disciplines and between practitioners in different countries.

13/08/2007Articles and columns

An end to self delusion

by Richard37 Comments

I have started writing a regular column on advertising for New Media Age in the UK.

In this first article (which appeared on 26th July 2007) I comment on the way immediate and free access to the world’s creative product has destroyed the cockyness and self confidence of UK adland by showing us we no longer lead the world in this arena. In part I lay the blame on the sterility of the London agency landscape.

07/08/200716/05/2012Brands

Every brand needs an ecosystem

by Richard10 Comments

I had the great pleasure, along with the entirety of the North London Croc wearing classes, of spending Sunday at the Innocent Village Fete in The Regent’s Park.

All the usual stuff applies about how lovely Innocent are (too lovely perhaps?) but what interested me was the brand ecosystem that Innocent is nurturing around themselves. Not least, because I have talked about many of the companies in this ecosystem in the posts on Dynamic Micro Brands.

01/08/200721/05/2012Brands

Dynamic micro brands – Reggae Reggae Sauce

by Richard3 Comments

Time for some good old fashioned brand fawning.

Anyone from our business worth their salt knew that when Levi Roots wrapped up his presentation to the Dragons on the BBC’s Dragon’s Den in March that his Reggae Reggae Sauce was a sure fire bet.

The sauce, so far made only in Levi Root’s own kitchen for sale at Nottinghill Carnival, already had all the ingredients of a Dynamic Micro Brand. All it needed was someone to get his distribution sorted and help find a manufacturer to meet the new levels of demand.