Nine brilliant campaigns/ideas from 2010 that I wish I’d done Below is a collection of some of my favourite ads and marketing ideas, done by others, from the past 12 months. I’d have liked to include some long copy and a piece of offline DM, but I couldn’t recall any examples that had really wowed […]
Can you imagine what it must have been like working for Joseph Stalin? One foot wrong and you’d be heading off for porridge in Siberia. Or worse. So you can sympathise with Alexei Shchusev, a famous Russian architect who Stalin hired to design the original hotel Moskva. The communist leader wanted the hotel to be […]
A famous DM copywriter – I think it might have been Steve Harrison – once said that direct marketing isn’t sending customers a folded press advertisement. Nor, I would add, is it a press ad with an email address attached. When you communicate directly with an individual, it’s an opportunity to build a one-to-one relationship. […]
Have you ever experienced this: The other day I saw a very funny commercial. It was well shot. The casting was excellent. And the dialogue between the two, very antagonistic characters was worthy of Raymond Chandler. It had a simple, clever idea – usually the basis for an award-winning ad. The trouble […]
Are you an agency person who presents creative work to your clients? Or are you a marketer who buys it? In either case you want to feel confident that what you’re offering or buying is of the highest quality. The following questions will help you decide the merits, or otherwise, of your agency’s creative proposal. […]
What advertiser in their right mind would knock their own product? Volkswagen, that’s who. The ad on the left is over 40 years old, yet it’s far more daring than most of the ads you see today. Customers expect advertisers to boast about their products, not to say something negative, as this ad does. When […]
1. Choose a copywriter with relevant experience. You may think this is obvious, but many marketers and agencies ignore it and end up with a writer who has general, not specific experience. If your brief is for a specialised area – e.g. pharmaceuticals, high level financial services or b2b IT – find a copywriter with […]
A freelance copywriter friend asked me to look at some ad concepts she and her art director had done. The posters were visually arresting. Headlines were short and witty. And the concepts held together as a campaign. But something was wrong. I just didn’t feel like buying the service they were selling, and I couldn’t […]