- Page 28 of 35 - Radical thinking for the brand advice business

15/01/2007Uncategorized

Now this I like

Quick mini advocate ladies and gentlemen.

I think the holiday category is tough on the strategist – a commodified marketplace with loads of me too players driven by price.

But Lastminute’s latest campaign is a real gem – they are encouraging hard working Britons to take 5 holidays and breaks a year. I’m sure it is probably just a damn good promotional idea for January (making light of the 5 fruit and veg a day message) but if I were them I’d adopt it as their central brand idea. Its nice to see a travel agent with a point of view and so nice one Farm

12/01/200725/05/2012Uncategorized

The advocate – January

by Richard15 Comments

Those cheeky PG chimps The Advocate is usually dedicated to advocating the merits of an advertising campaign in an attempt to prove that the work…

09/01/2007Uncategorized

The brand catwalk

by Richard15 Comments

Each month I want to try and showcase a brand that has an interesting take on the market they operate in and ideally is built around a clear brand idea or ideal.
The first candidate to send down the catwalk for your edification and scrutiny is Method, the US personal and homecare brand – now available in the UK and Canada.

09/01/200719/11/2013Provocations

As I please No.1

by Richard10 Comments

“Announcing that the board of trade is about to remove the ban on turned-up trouser ends, a tailor’s advertisement hails this as ‘a first installment of the freedom for which we are fighting’. If we are really fighting for turned up trouser-ends, I should be inclined to be pro-Axis. Turn-ups have no function except to gather dust and no virtue except that when you clean them you occasionally find a six-pence there.” Geroge Orwell discussing the war aims in some detail in ‘As I please’ 4th February 1944.

‘As I please’ was the title George Orwell used for many of his articles whilst a contributor to the left-wing publication Tribune during the 1940s.

These articles covered a vast variety of topics from the defeat of fascism to the makings of a really good cup of tea, such was the eclecticism of Orwell’s writing.

At best they demonstrate Orwell’s supremacy in radical thought – by which he would have meant the facing of uncomfortable truths.

One of the best examples of this , if now rather shocking,is his defence of the bombing of German civilians. For Orwell, in meeting one’s war aims, it is better to kill a broad cross section of society – the old and the young, men and women – rather than to desimate the entire population of one group such as fighting age men. His arguement was that a society will recover more quickly form the former course of action than the latter. An unpalatable thought but probably true.

And I have decided to appropriate the title ‘As I please’ for a number of occasional trips off topic I intend to make this year. A kind of homage to Orwell.

The only rule will be that they attempt to offer a radical piece of thinking in an Orwellian tradition.

First up is a thought that the death penalty is the surest form of escape from punishment.

09/01/2007Advertising

We are all doomed

by Richard11 Comments

A while ago I stole a chart from the planning chief at Grey, John Lowery, and posted it. Well John can’t have been too miffed as he has updated it for the 2006 data and sent it over. If you work in advertising (like me) the message is blatantly clear.

I should probably say that this is data from the very wonderful TGI and they will probably ask me to take it down. But maybe if they realise that this is as blatant an attribution as I can create and you are all potentially extremely valuable clients for them they will be nice and give me an opensource break.

07/01/2007Uncategorized

The adliterate address 2007

by Richard4 Comments

Scream if you want to go faster.

Normal service has been resumed here at adliterate towers after an exhilarating yet restorative christmas break.

I for one have been itching to get back to the business of figuring out what to do with this business and throwing it at you bones and all.

What I can promise you this year is a quicker pace, more radical thinking, some big issues brought to heel and crankyness galore.

Along with the Advocate (suggestions for January if you please) there will be two new ‘features’, a monthly brand focus that points up an interesting and newish brand worth mentioning in despatches and an off topic thread called ‘As I please’ in honour of George Orwell. But more of those later.

And of course this year its an APG Creative Thinking Awards year with some big changes we have been working on including a more internationalist approach, a Strategy Agency of the Year award and big prizes. And in true Advocate stylee I’m not going to sit around waiting for you to enter your genius thinking I am going to come and hunt you down with a big stick and wrestle the entries off you.

And to top it all I will turn 40 in June and will have absolute freedom to be as surley and cranky as I like.

Ladies and gentlemen, hold on to your hats and scream if you want to go faster.

Photo coutesy of From Afghanistan With Love

21/12/2006Uncategorized

Bah humbug

by Richard6 Comments

The Author being visited by the ghost of posts past. Illustration by Arthur Rackham.

Have a very Happy Christmas from adliterate.

Here’s a festive film to get you in the mood.

20/12/2006Planning

Russell and Richard

by Richard2 Comments

Russell is a gent and he has done me the considerable honour of posting part of an inteview he did with me here . While the second session is here . To be honest I think the first one is rather better but you be the judge.

In a way I am finding that these interviews help hone my thinking better than posting to the blog – hope you can find something of use in here.

19/12/2006Planning

Building better brand ideas

by Richard9 Comments

Thankyou to everyone that contributed to the post on brand ideas and their seeming rarity value.

I had wanted to create a definitive set of criteria for judging whether you had a proper brand idea or not. But this exercise wasn’t particularly fruitful – or at least I think its tough to try an legislate for strategic genius. And indeed as decent a list as any was included in the post I wrote about Jon Steel’s Perfect Pitch – truth, beauty, excitement, significance and persuasion if you remember.

But I really like this chart – it sort of fell out of the conversations.

19/12/2006Uncategorized

PVRs are so last year

by Richard4 Comments

War of the Worlds.jpg
“With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter”. H.G. Wells

Only a year ago we were all getting hot under the collar about PVRs and the threat they posed to television advertising.

Now one talks about the PVR peril anymore.

15/12/2006Uncategorized

Coffee morning shenanigans

by Richard13 Comments

Hogarth successfully captures the moment when, in Russell’s absence, today’s coffee morning got a little out of hand.

11/12/2006Planning

Why are brand ideas so rare?

by Richard34 Comments

The Black Rhino (Diceros bicornis). With a population decline of 98% between 1970 and 1990 there are few animals more critically endangered than this.

Of all the beasts roaming free in the world of marketing there is none so rare as the brand idea.