Russell Davies

innocent days

More ads I found in old Look And Learns. They seem so sweet and innocent now. Nothing that would cause huge melt-downs. And you realise that agencies once had to try a lot harder. How do you make an ice-cream delicious in badly reproduced black and white?

And you just know that now you'd have some photoshopping turning milk into snake. And look at all that copy. You wouldn't get that now.

And I love this. It's a Walkman promotion. Featuring Bernard Cribbens. For the British Turkey Federation. That is very, very random.

IT conversations on Thursday 12

Every now and then the memetics meme pops up in advertising. WCRS were banging on about it last year (are they still?) and Richard's dabbled with it. It's very seductive because it feels like a new and possibily effective science for understanding brands and ideas. And it promises to be an all encompassing science too, not the usual kludge of psychology, anthropology, economics etc that makes up planning. But who knows? Anyway, this talk from Susan Blackmore is a representative introduction, in that she explains it very energetically, but she doesn't quite convince you it's useful.

happiness

rain diluted tea on a shropshire canal

scrapbooks = genius

All the best creative people I've ever worked with have kept scrapbooks. They're always snappers-up of ideas and the physicality of a scrapbook ads something to the process. Plus the unexpected conjunctions you get through the randomness of scrapbooks can lead to some of the best ideas.

I think planners should keep scrapbooks too. I do. You should always have a ton of stuff ready to add life and flavour and texture to creative briefs. And it's a good way of complying with Richard's Diktat Number 7.

I was reminded of all this by the arrival of this lovely book. Recommended by Alex. Which features Tony and Kim of w+k fame and some pictures of their vast collection of scrapbooks.

But also in there some pictures of some of the stuff we did to make the old building a bit more stimulating.

We attached bungee chords to some of the internal windows so we could stick stuff up. I'm a big believer in sticking stuff up. I think planners should take a lot of responsibility for the internal environment of an agency (or wherever). It's a fantastic way to get ideas and thoughts into the edges of people's attention field. if you beat them over the head with something they'll ignore it. If you stick it on the wall next to their office, or the kettle, they'll put it in their work. (Must tackle that idea in here.)

Anyway. What have you stuck on your walls today?

urban spam - a new hope

The urban spam backlash begins. Hurrah.

favourite shoes

I'm 40 years old and I've just decided that these are my favourite pair of trainers of all time. It used to be a pair of bright green Hi-Tecs I had when I was 13 but now it's these. And it's kind of chastening  to think I'll probably never get another pair as good. Even if I bought another identical pair they wouldn't really be the same.

Seb from Nike gave them me. (One of the very few free things I got from Nike.) Maybe 6 or 9 months ago and I've worn them almost every day ever since. Which I know is a hygiene no-no but I don't care. And though I don't skate I love the fat paddedness of them. Very comfy. (Probably not the word that Nike Skate will push to the fore in the marketing, comfy, but they are buttery comfortable.)

But the best thing about them is they've been designed to be old. They age gracefully. (OK, that wear on the heel probably isn't planned but I like the effect). The uppers aren't some perfect shiney colour that will be imperfect within a second of hitting the street. They get better with age. And that texture on the swoosh rubs off if you skate a lot, it's like a badge of honour. They're like a craft trainer or something. Anyway. Thanks Seb.

vans are the future of cars

This is our Escort. We bought it off my Dad for £1,500 when we got back from the States. It's a marvelous thing. No fun to drive or look at or anything but it always starts and it must be the one of the most ubiquitous cars in the world. So everyone has parts for it.

We don't use it much. Hardly ever in fact. But we live in Central London and we get a free parking space and we have a tiny flat/apartment so it's actually seizing to be a vehicle and is becoming a storage device. It actually represents a relatively expensive bit of real estate. Much more expensive than the price of the car. At the moment it's got all the camping gear in there and it'll probably stay in there all winter. I'm thinking of chucking a load of summery clothes in there too.

So imagine if it was as big as this. I'm actually giving reasonably serious thought to trading it in for a van. (I've always wanted to own a van.) And if it's only going to be a mobile storage unit we might as well get the most for our money. I could keep my bike in there too and not find it like this when I got  back from holiday.

I've thought for a long time that vans are the future of cars. Car companies are too obsessed with ideas of speed and luxury and aren't giving enough consideration to the practical stuff we want to do with them. When we used to do focus groups on cars and ask people what was important to them about a new car they always used to say boot (trunk) capacity. And we'd pershaw and say they don't really mean than, that's just what they feel they have to say, they're really concerned about image and status and speed. But, actually, maybe they weren't. Maybe they just wanted to know how much stuff they could keep in the damn thing.

The continuing consumption of stuff is leading to a huge boom in the self-storage industry. It wouldn't surprise me if that also led to a huge growth in the demand for vans, or a more van-like cars. Not mini-vans. Not big cars for lots of kids. But car-sized things that you can use to keep stuff in, and move it around.

Like this Toyota thingy. Cute isn't it? I could use something like this.

Which only reminds that one of my many huge errors when I worked on Honda was my complete failure to get them to import all the brilliant little van-like things they have in Japan. Thing like the Spike or even concepts like the Acty.

Well, maybe not the Acty. Toyota did hugely well with the Scion in the US and Honda could have beaten them to it. In Europe at least.

And it's not like vans have an entirely uninteresting pedigree or image. There's the Mystery Machine or there's this. Which got we wondering what ever happened to the new VW bus. Which led me to this rather nice concept:

But apparently that's not it. This is it, and while it's been kicking around since 2001 they've decided that Chrysler are going to build it. That'll be good then. Good to see the car industry really firing on all cylinders.

more holiday

But also...

We're off for the last holiday of the summer. (Though remember, I'm Never Not Working). We're going  canaling for a week and then up to Blackpool for the Illuminations. I'm quite ridiculously excited. But, in order to keep you entertained I've spent the last hour writing some blog entries that will keep popping up while I'm gone. Hopefully. This means that I won't be able to spot any egregios errors I've made or deal with outrageous comments until I get back so I apologise to any customers who are inconvenienced by a slightly reduced level of service and wish you every success with your onward journeys wherever your final destination might be.

I'm going to try and keep up with email via orange/email and my phone but that's a little flakey, so apologies I'm a little curt or don't answer. It's not personal. Unless I don't like you.

patchy service

As some of you might know the plannr.net thing hasn't really been working. Well, the feed was OK but the site itself seemed to be stuck on the planning.ro feed. I couldn't really work out why but I've removed the planning.ro feed and it seems to work. (Unless it's now stuck on a new set. Time will tell). I'll add our Romanian friends back in when I get back from holiday and see if it breaks again. If it remains broken I guess I'll have to try feedburner and a lot more entering addresses.

fizzical

You don't see as many advertising icons on t-shirts these days. There are lots of brands on t-shirts obviously, but they tend to be fashion things, or media things - Superman etc. Are people wearing fizzy drink t-shirts any more? Another sign of the decline in the potency of advertising. Or something.