Russell Davies

a brief commercial interruption

Over on the blog of professional interest for advertising people I've stuck three recent Campaign columns. There's one about the hell of judging websites for a creative awards thing, another about advertising's declining influence, and one about the Innocent blog and the McDonald's thing.

There are also a couple of new job ads. One for BBDO Dusseldorf. And one for the Conservative Party, which I hesitated about putting up, but I guess they're as entitled to find a planner as anyone else.

And there's also the chance to put your questions to David Wheldon of Vodafone in the Big Ideas interview.

And finally, and best, Rob has stuck the next Account Planning School Of The Web assignment up. It's a doozy. Full marks to him. Go and have a look.

a little help

Can someone help me out? I'm trying to find an ad that I thought I saw the other week. It was Virgin having a go at British Airways for flying to Newquay. (Though I may have misremembered.) I've googled and technorati'd and I can't find it. I wanted to talk about it at the D&AD thing on Wednesday. Any help gratefully received. Thanks.

how long?

how long before this brilliant site, intended as an auto-generated critique of advertising (via plasticbag) spawns an idea someone will actually run? I can imagine lots of these running as one of those vapid corporate ads you find in The Economist.

TV advertising is good

Come on. Admit it. You know you like it.

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.

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.

note for mums

Sorry. I've had a bit of a nostalgia attack. Going through old piles of stuff and sorting things out for storage. This is an ad from the back of Look And Learn. Apart from the genius of that t-shirt design. And the illustration of the chubby cheeked girl chewing gum (you wouldn't get away with that these days). I want to draw your attention to the 'special note for mums'.

'Both t-shirts made of high quality polyester'. Excellent. I wonder what cool new materials from today will plummet in desirability like polyester did.

the hardest word

I was just chatting yesterday about the power of mistakes. And how the times when things go wrong are great occasions to see the humanity behind a brand. And then, this morning, Rob from ad-pit pointed out this brilliant recall ad from Asda. As Scamp points out, taking a problem and making it a moment where you can feel warmer towards a brand is a great achievement.

And can't you feel the innocent influence in there too?

nothing changes

It was one of the Queen's 80th birthday's last week so The Times did a reproduction of the paper from the day she was born. Not much has changed. Political coverage is largely identical to today and so are the ads. Or at least the strategies. I thought this was interesting. We puff on about innovative strategic hoo-hah but most of what we do is identical to strategies in use 80 years ago, or probably since the dawn of time/commerce.

Very little's changed here. You see ads like this all the time.

I like the fact that one of the reasons cited for buying a British car is that they're uniquely suited to British driving conditions. (Steering wheel placement is important for a start.)

You probably couldn't get away with saying 'medium-powered car' these days. You'd have to say something like venti-powered. Or high power to weight ratio. Or GTI.

Proper snob appeal. But for salt?

One thing I love is the modesty and reasonableness of the claims. 'Fashionable hats at moderate prices'. Who wouldn't want that. None of the modern hype that enables Chrylser to say something like it's not just a car, it's a Chrysler. (Or something, I saw a poster, I don't really remember it.)

city brands

Transavia seem to have no doubt what Amsterdam's core brand proposition is.