Minimalislaughter

“How do you carve an elephant. You chip away anything that doesn’t look like an elephant and what’s left is an elephant”. Theodore W. Khell   We’ve heard the simplest route is often the best when it comes to advertising. A little like Occum’s razor, the best communication is founded in the ...

Short ass post

There’s a fine line between scared and concerned. Since I don’t like to say I’m scared, I say I’m concerned instead. Advertising reviews I fear abide by the same set of rules. When others say they are concerned over the creative work, what they actually mean is they are scared ...

10 years on

I’ve never been one for pomp and circumstance but I’ve just hit the big 10 year anniversary in advertising as a creative. The ol’ one zero. The ol’ The ol’ one… …zero. I was on the verge of celebrating with a ‘I’m turning 10 party’. Then ...

The crotch

This morning I saw an ad at the underground station for an erectile dysfunction product. It was some sort of Viagra substitute.  It was one of those moopi / adshel type things In the ad was a football lineout. One man in the line out was broadly smiling with his hands ...

What’s in a name?

I was thinking this morning about how the hardest part of writing the script of Ghostbusters would have been what exactly do you call them? What would an alternative name be? I can’t see Bill Murray kicking open a door to reveal ...

Different names. Same dog.

Will a dog react to commands in languages outside of its native one? Will a Puli (a long haired Polish dog) respond to fetch? Or will it only respond to pobrać? This was the conversation that was being animatedly discussed beside me one day in a pub by a couple who perhaps ...

Sadism and its causal link with creativity inside advertising agencies

Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote “To see others suffer does one good, to make others suffer even more: this is a hard saying but an ancient, mighty, human, all-too-human principle... Without cruelty there is no festival.” Why does this statement feel like it should be embedded in the motto of every ad agency. TBWA: ...

Let’s not get contaminated with the results, okay people?

I was asked the other day a curveball by someone outside of the industry. It wasn’t the usual eyeball rolling fodder of “have you done any ads I would have seen?” or “what do you work on? TV or print or…” ...

Before they were famous they were in advertising

Not too many children say they want to grow up to work in advertising. So it’s always refreshing when some people manage to flee the traps of the 9 to 9 grind and follow their passion outside of the industry. Here are the best of them: Joseph Heller - The author of ‘Catch ...

The story at the bottom of the sea

The reason why I’m telling the following story in detail, is I'm seeing more and more collaborations between disparate industries.  It's exciting, and it's memorable. Read on for what I mean. The Troll A platform is an offshore gas platform off the West Coast of Norway. Construction on the platform started on ...

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