I noticed this

Damaged people are dangerous as they know they can survive

2010-12-03T11:51:00.005Z

Assange is a damaged character, not just because of his comparatively recent Wikileaks brainchild, but possibly because of how his entire life has unfolded - partly by design, partly by circumstance.

He is currently on Interpol's most wanted list, has a warrant for arrest in Sweden, and is denounced by his native Australia and has been told he faces criminal charges if he returns. As if that's not enough, he has served a spell in prison for hacking, was in hiding with his mother during his teenage years due to custody battles, and then faced another custody battle over his own child in the late 1990's.

He undoubtedly has a phenomenal mind, and this is paired with what often comes across as an awkward and geeky manner. This interview with him on TED shows both of these qualities in abundance.

None of this is news, but I'd like to posit two theories about why he keeps going, and why this is endearing to so many.

First, why he keeps going. In one of the many films named 'Damaged' (I think it's this one) there's the quotation that forms the title of this post. It's hard for us to empathise with Assange, but there must come a point at which you feel so embattled that it becomes a way of life, and if you're tough enough you can focus the adrenaline energy into doing something positive (he and his mother formed a group called 'Parent Inquiry into Child Protection' that helped people access legal files about child custody issues had hitherto remained beyond their grasp).

That, mated with a potent cocktail of hacking ability and a putative knowledge of philosophy and neuroscience, could easily be seen to make him think that if anyone's going to effect change, they're not going to be much better prepared than he is.

Perhaps it also becomes an addiction, as the neurotransmitter adrenaline courses through his nerves, resisting sleep and causing restive twitches (both of which his colleagues testify to, although I can't remember where I read this).

And it's all of the above that leads me to why he's so endearing: a sleep-deprived, adrenaline junkie hacker, in hiding from international politicians, fighting for his kid, having led a gypsy childhood, and exposing the tawdry-to-downright-dangerous diplomatic goings-on that governments want to hide.

Move over Stieg Larsson (oops, you already did): this has got more film potential than any of your novels.

Post-logic marketing

2010-12-02T16:41:00.003Z

I spend a worrying amount of my time in workshops, guiding a collection of well-meaning people toward a conclusion that is often entirely logical.

Nothing wrong with logic when it comes to many things, but when it comes to creative advertising I think that it can be a brand's enemy.

We're in danger, especially in the healthcare sector, of being slaves to logic at the expense of imagination. Why should we pat ourselves on the back for being able to see how a concept links to a product? Why should the link be that obvious? Why should we always have to show a patient / a situation / a hackneyed metaphor?

Some may argue that it gets the point across quickly. However, I would opine that it's pretty damn irrelevant if the concept is so dull in the first place that no-one bothers looking at it or feeling any sense of connection or emotional response.

I've always hated market researching concepts for two reasons: first, no-one spends hours questioning a concept in real life - this only leads to lowest common denominator creative that offends no-one (and attracts no-one). Second, Jo Public is not paid or trained to be creative, or to imagine. Instead, they're paid £40 to turn up, criticise and offer their 'logical' reasons why they approve of something.

Which, if you're in the medical profession, is likely to make your stated view one that you think will make you sound like a committed and logical physician, when actually you're stifling an emotional response.

Logic is often all we have when we're trying to describe why a concept should go forward and be made into an ad. But consider this: how are some of the best works of art 'logical'? They stay with us, intrigue us and make our hackles rise very often because they can't be categorised. And that, in my book, is brilliant.

Some may think this is at odds with being a planner. I disagree. To be able to take clients to the point at which they favour emotion over logic takes a lot more effort and convincing, despite the fact that you'll have a lot more chance of standing out.

Why it's difficult to start a new book

2010-06-26T02:32:00.002+01:00

The biggest problem I have when it comes to starting a new book is wanting to start it.

Yet that’s utterly illogical. I’ve either finished the last one, or I’m up for a new one. One must logically want to fill the void. It’s a natural sequence.

Everything about me says that starting a new book is wonderful, And the publisher notes just confirm this. But there is a reticence, as if I’ve not long been divorced.

Will I bring the characters of the last book into this one? What if I simply continue the plot line where it was not intended? Or perhaps I really miss the sexy one from the last novel and unintentionally project her onto someone whose authorial fortune was to be so very different?

I think I’ll wait a while.

Toy with a few first paragraphs.

See if we notice each other.

If it’s shit after 100 pages I’ll give up.

No-one will beat my last love.

Tokyo thoughts at 3am

2010-05-24T18:46:00.012+01:00

When you're on the 32nd floor, it's hard to tell when it's raining as there's no pitter-patter above, and no splash beneath.

You're in a city where, from this vantage point, concrete and other seriously unpretty constructs form a 360 degree panorama, and you cling to the hope that, when the clouds lift, you'll see a volcano.

It's too easy to stay awake into the early hours - wishing you had the stamina to do this on a normal Friday night - except that it's a Tuesday, and you're mentally bleached with jetlag.

You marvel at the strange hieroglyphic bill presented to you, but your reasons for framing it are more to do with your need to claim it on expenses.

Your room is decked in late 70's retro off-beige soft things, your iron is portable and your loo blowdries your arse, yet you can't help but warm to its attempt at trying to make you feel at home.

You can walk in any direction into the city for many hundreds of yards and, unless you stumble across the brief peace of a shinto temple, you could still be anywhere under the rising sun in this city of multi-layered steel, skywalks and fly-unders.

PS - that's not a furry bat hanging from the standard lamp, it's a glitch in my camera lens that irks somewhat and must be sorted forthwith.

My point of view

2010-03-25T15:34:00.008Z

One of the benefits of half-listening to something, such as one does when the radio's on while you're getting up, or in any meeting that lasts more than 15 minutes, is that the speaker has to say something really quite good - and in a way that's tonally ear-pricking - in order for one to bother listening properly.

Perhaps it's laziness, or perhaps we're just not built to concentrate for that long, or perhaps it's just that the majority of stuff that's spoken is utterly bland and inconsequential. Whatever it is, I love it when a thought breaks cover and you're drawn back into the moment and forced to listen.

Such was the case on Start the Week this Monday when philosopher Raymond Tallis was talking about why pointing the finger is considered rude.

It's one of those 'why?' questions we pose when kids: 'Mummy, why is it rude? Why do I have to go to bed? Why does grandma smell funny?' - and the usual reply is less than satisfactory, along the lines of 'because I say so'.

And so we grow up just accepting much of this. Until we realise that sleep is necessary and that grandma had regressed in the hygiene stakes.

So it was an ear-pricker indeed when it was suggested that the reason that pointing is rude may well be that 'it reduces you to an object. You're skewered, left pinned and wriggling. You are merely that meaty object at this moment, now, and all your back history and your vision and opinions don't count.'

How luxuriantly metaphysical. What a delicious way of explaining why waggling a bit of bone and flesh in someone's direction is to ignore their fundamental 'themness'. I think I might even agree with this.

And by chance today, while trying to work out how to include this thought in a blog post, I ended up watching a brief film of Richard Feynman explaining how light works.

I should explain that I arrived at said video via various discussions about how so many marketers make life unnecessarily complex by using long and fancy words that get in the way of communicating an idea.

(And in the light of that sentiment, I avoided using the word obfuscate for fear of having the finger pointed at me.)

Feynman is, as most people seem to agree, bloody brilliant: an entertaining and understandable scientist; and one, unlike Adam-Bloody-Hart-Davis, who doesn't tell you that tax is simple. Which is bloody isn't.

In this video he actually helped me understand how light waves work, and even through his simple language and metaphor, made me realise how complex the functions are that help us distinguish our relative positions in the world.

And in the face of this complexity, I was left wondering whether that's not another reason why we don't like having the finger pointed at us: it's not just that we're reduced to an object, but that we're reduced to a single object: one who is marked out. Whilst some of us are happy to stand out from the crowd, the majority like to cling to each other in fear of being picked on as a special example.

Moreover, if you realise you're being pointed at, you the pointee are probably facing the pointer head on, so you're only having one aspect of yourself appreciated - and probably a differentiating one at that.

So the reasons for its rudeness are complex, and I now see why parents don't normally bother with the explanation.

The casualties of improvement

2010-03-12T14:25:00.007Z

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Nothing that contentious about Newton's phrase, you wouldn't have thought, excepting the fact that all too many brands seem to find this impossible to acknowledge. More on this in a moment.

There often seems to be a sense of denial that anything that precedes an improvement - especially if this is an improvement over a brand / corporation / industry's own current offering - is inferior.

Take a look at this article on blood pressure (BP) management. The final paragraph is a masterstroke in undermining the advancement that's just been crowed about: 'Current practice is not wrong'. Yet the article has just talked about how current practice can lead to greater instance of stroke because fluctuations in BP are considered ok.

How can that be desirable? And how can both situations possibly be right? Either the current practice is, in fact, sub-optimal, or the new one is unproven. But to say that it is 'not wrong' fills me with worry.

To bring to bear another current gripe of mine, that of the bastard HMRC wanting to charge me for merely breathing it seems, perhaps I should state that my tax return for the last financial year was 'not wrong'. See whether the binary-minded crones from Maidstone, who have initials rather than real names, can struggle with that kind of language.

And now for that brand example: we do a lot of marketing for medical device manufacturers and they constantly - and understandably - strive to make better products. But the sheer amount of brain-ache caused by thinking of ways in which to say that a new product is better - but not that the old product is in any way worse - is beginning to rile me.

Yet what is so wrong in acknowledging advancement? Surely the inexorable march of technological and scientific progress is to be lauded?

I, for one, would find little solace in taking a drug via a device according to a treatment protocol that were all deemed 'not wrong'.

But: oh no. It would be 'damaging to the brand' to say that the new device in question is, in fact, 'simpler than our last model'. But then the brand (mis)managers in this case are also too chicken-shit to say that they're 'simpler than the competition's'.

So exactly WHOSE product are they simpler than? Or are they just 'simpler' than trying to insert the drug into your vein using a wooden spoon or a kango drill?

Thank [insert god here] for the common sense of Apple. The Mac Pro described on this page unashamedly says that it's 'nearly two times faster than the previous generation'.

Good. I like better. And faster. And I'm happy to dispense with the worse. Otherwise life gets too grey and cluttered with stuff in the not right/not wrong middle ground.

Knee-jerk banning

2010-01-12T12:02:00.006Z

As Peter Griffin from Family Guy might say, 'what really grinds my gears' in this country at the moment is the immediate reaction on the part of Powers That Be to ban things.

Banning is dangerous in two main ways: it says 'you, the individual, are no longer free to do this'. And it also risks driving activities underground.

It's also a pretty blunt instrument as, let's face it, most Powers That Be tend to lack the resources to police their own bans. Plenty of under-16s have sex in the UK, for instance, despite its being illegal.

But aside from the rather fundamental issues of freedom and operability, there's the craw-sticking, gear-grinding feeling of knee-jerk stupidity.

Taking alcohol first, which is fast becoming a 'demerit good' to rival that of tobacco, I read an insightful article today on how alcohol advertising is being used by the Health Select Committee as a scapegoat to cover up the real problems behind increased alcohol consumption.

The subject of the article, Tim Ambler, posits that in a mature market such as alcohol consumption, the effect of advertising Carlsberg, for instance, would be to drive brand preference rather than causing people to drink beer in the first place - as opposed to tea, perhaps.

Analysing the HSC's decisions further, the 9pm watershed also seems a bit bonkers. Do we honestly believe that ten year olds, who are classed as at risk of drinking alcohol - for whatever reason, be it lack of parental control, peer pressure, glamour motivation - are tucked up in bed at 8.59pm?

This is not a useful ban: this is a ban that says: we don't know the real causes, instead we're just going to be seen to be doing something. And banning it has the air of something useful.

Looking now at a totally different example - today's banning of Islam4UK's march in Wooton Bassett - it's clear that Alan Johnson also subscribes to the 'if unsure, ban it' credo.

Whether or not this march is tantamount to spitting in the eyes of the family members who have lost loved ones in the war in Afghanistan, or whether we think this is a justifiable response to foreign policy ... or whether the group really does promote terrorism (which is the most mootable of points itself), the likely truth is that banning the march will do little more (if successful) than make the event go more smoothly on the day.

I'd argue instead that the media attention so far has already served the group's purpose, and the fact that Omar Bakri Muhammed has also indicated that this is a group whose efforts, if banned, will be driven underground, is also suggestive of a failed meta-strategy.

The real, underlying causes of each of the above examples are without doubt hard to ascertain, and they're not going to be attributable to a single convenient insight that might have been lurking undetected at the bottom of some policy wonk's sock drawer.

Referring back to the alcohol topic, an article in yesterday's New Scientist examined the difficulty that scientists have had in locating the underlying cause of its misuse - as well as identifying some of the convenient 'truths' that have been popularly aired along the way. Alcoholism is closer to being understood, the answers are multifarious and complicated, but that doesn't mean they don't deserve being reached.

And it certainly doesn't mean that we should be fobbed off by meaningless bans: they encumber the pursuit of the real truths, penalise many more than deserve it, and above all (for the sake of this article) actively demote the infinitely more valuable culture of rigorous and intelligent thinking.

Placebo morality

2009-12-12T10:16:00.006Z

There was a fascinating article in Wired Magazine in August about the increasing potency of placebo.

On the face of it, that sounds like mad chatter: a pill that is little more than sugar increasing in efficacy? With no pharmacologically provable mode of action or reason why?

Physician: steel thyself. Drugs are not your only tools any more.

We could easily adduce philosopho-quackery commentary along similar lines to the author's conclusion, namely that: 'the brain is really clever' and 'we don't understand it all, Horatio'.

But that only adds fuel to the fire of pseudo-science, and as anyone with a Hotmail account will know, there are all too many opportunities to increase your penis size with a blue diamond pill made out of bits of dandelion and alsatian. Or worse.

At least, that was the reason I fled Hotmail for Gmail.

I digress. Because the thought I wanted to ponder in this post was not precisely about the above phenomenon, but about the moral conundrum of offering someone with a life-threatening condition a sugar pill.

Even in the face of (apparently) more placebo peculiarities like this one, when you're dealing with illnesses as serious as cancer there will still be a statistically significant number of people who will think they're being given a pill that could make them better, only for it (up until recently) to do bugger all.

The moral conundrum is made more difficult still when you compare people's willingness to take part in trials where placebos are given. This article, on a sample of women asked to be recruited to an HRT trial, suggests that - at least in situations that are not immediately life-threatening - willingness does indeed drop.

This is not just because of perceived risk to self, either, but also the sense that the altruistic and research purpose of the trial would somehow be less.

And all this is, to my mind at least, understandable. I just don't comprehend the fact that most trials are against placebo rather than an existing competitor drug - where you would at least have some hope of being treated.

It's not even as if proving yourself against sugar pills is as easy as it once was...

3rd March 2010 ADDITION: a interesting post on other Placebo morality issues - http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2010/03/placebo-effect-ethics-medical-treatment.html

Barometer dogs

2009-11-25T21:07:00.003Z

I'm a big fan of alternative indicators.

About a decade ago, my Scottish economist friend and man of extremes, 'The Highlander', declared his favourite alternative economic indicator to be 'the number of cranes visible on the skyline of any given city'. The more cranes, the better the local economy.

This Monday, I spent the day at Pfizer's swanky Richard Rogers designed UK headquarters in Walton Oaks - which is its own village. Sod any of that being located in a village. Simply create one for yourself and use that fact, together with your sinuous, swirling, glass and steel atrium in main reception as an alternative indicator of your success.

On the way home just before 5pm I was main-lining some Radio 4 comfort listening in the car, and an article on 'dogs' cropped up, heralded by Loudon Wainwright squawking about how they're man's best friend.

Original, Loudon, thanks for that announcement.

But, despite an unusually poor turn from the sire of such a talented musical family, I've started liking dogs more in the past few months as I've been introduced to some really rather splendid critters who've proved beyond reasonable doubt that they're not all slobber, bark and fart...

...so I continued listening.

I was told that, since Tony Blair came to power in 1997, sales of cat food have overtaken those of dog food, with the inevitable conclusion that cats have overtaken dogs as the UK's most popular pet.

The reporter went on to discuss the hackneyed attributes of feline vs. canine; about how one will spurn you while the other will always be waiting for your return; how with one you never know where you stand whereas the other is yours for life.

He expanded out from there to observe (quite correctly, in my parents' view) that Labour, under Blair in particular, have been friends of the Town but not of the Country. Fans of fast and transient living rather spouses of long-baked traditions.

Take-away vs. casserole.

And from the above points he rapidly drew the inference that the decline in popularity of dogs is a direct indication of how we, under this Labour government, have abdicated our sense of long-term responsibility to faithful friends and chosen instead the independent, sleeker and more changeling ways of pretty young felines.

Dogs, he felt, were alternative indicators of a society that has lost its values. Slobber and all.

Polar bears and poor fundraising

2009-11-20T11:44:00.007Z

This is a disturbing ad. And one that's garnering a lot of publicity today as the residents of Tunbridge Wells reach for their green ink and fashion numerous letters of complaint (365 to the ASA at last count) about animal cruelty and unnecessary violence.

Plane Stupid is a loose affiliation of climactically concerned individuals who want to stop excessive plane travel. They don't think the government is doing enough and so they're taking 'direct action' to stop it. 'Shocking' ads like these are a pretty good way of getting their point across.

You get the picture.

But what annoys me most is the utter lack of thought that's been given to the 'what happens next' bit. The fundraising bit. The pay-off. The proposition. The call to action.

Call it what you will.

So here I am, potentially sharing their concerns about plane travel, and so I find out who they are and go to their website. All very logical stuff. So TV ad has, if you like, worked. I'm happy to be one of those people for whom this works; someone who's not so turned off by the violence that I jam my fingers in my ears, cover my eyes, sing la la la and do nothing (and there'll be plenty of those).

Once I get there I naturally want to find out what they do. The 'about us' bit shows them waving a big banner of protest. Fine, I get that. They do protests. They do 'direct action' as well, which is a bit murkier and smacks of 'Fathers for Justice'.

But what should I, as a concerned individual, be expected to do - and why?

This is where the stupidity resides. Because they ask me to take a leap of faith. In their words:

'So we're asking for your money, which we'll spend on an action next spring, to remind them that we won't take their airport expansion plans lying down'

Now, hang on, you're not even going to tell me what this action is?! I've come this far and all you can be bothered to do in return for asking for my cash is promise 'an action' sometime next year?

What will it be? Another banner? A protest? More polar bear ads? How much do they cost? I've no idea.

Sorry, not good enough. Marketing - and fundraising - 'fail'.

If you're going to create a stir, at least make sure you've got a reasonable opportunity for people to side with you and do something meaningful.

Otherwise you might as well be a bunch of con artists, trying to extort cash from us on the flimsiest of premises. (Now there's an idea.)

Or is the mere fact that it's been 'on telly' enough to legitimise you? Hmm. Maybe that's what you're relying on.

I wish I could have written this in green ink...

Lipstick on pigs

2009-11-13T09:52:00.003Z

I like this ad, but then it's hard not to: friendly music, beautiful people, dramatic landscape, emotive subject, touch of humour yada yada yada. Oh, and it's made in Argentina, so there's that Latin sense of flair we can allude to should we want to wallow in the backstory.

I found out about it from this site. They send me an email each week and occasionally I deign to take a peek at their proffering. And the reason I don't usually bother is the reason for this blog entry.

See, I reckon it's piss easy to make ads about chewing gum. You've got thousands of metaphors in the bank to draw on; you've got the obvious 'mouth' imagery to resort to; buying a stick of it isn't going to bankrupt you, and to the best of my knowledge, there are very few chewie manufacturers involved in sub-Saharan oil deals, military coups, drug denial, or who test their products on fluffy white bunnies.

Oh, hang on, maybe I'm being a bit unfair. Because someone in the last couple of years did make a chewing gum ad that courted controversy - remember the one about the Afro chap with a loud-haler? Apparently there were complaints to the ASA because he was being a bit racially stereotypical or somesuch nonsense. (I would link to the ad here but I can't remember the brand name, and YouTube don't seem to think that the search terms 'chewing gum ad afro loud-haler' are specific enough to conjure it up.)

Anyway, back to the point in question. The job of advertising can be described in as many ways as there are marketers alive, but the definition I'm going to use today is along the lines of: dramatising a brand's particular feature in a way that increases its audience's propensity to, at some stage, buy it.

So, well done, Topline, you've suggested that if you chew this gum it will make you so kissable that heaven and earth won't be able to pry you from your lover. And we've kind of enjoyed seeing this happen because it appeals to lots of emotions and senses - and that's why you've been awarded an average of 4.73 out of 5 by the voting public.

That, by the way, is a very high score.

Try achieving that with an ad about flu. Or cheap insurance (with the notable Meerkat exception). Or, in my case, ads about weird and wonderful diseases and drugs (usually ridden with side-effects, and costing a billion times more than a stick of chewing gum).

My point is that when you ask the public whether they like an ad, or reckon it's any 'good', they'll almost always go with the ads that involve humour, sex, big images, romance, aspirational and beautiful couple and so on. So if the product feature that you're dramatising is a 'nice taste' or 'fresher breath' then you've got a lot of potential stories and metaphors at your creative fingertips.

I doubt very much whether Top 5 Ad Forum will ever include a press ad about cures for pig diahorrea, growth hormone injections or replacement hips.

All subject matters are not created equal.

A challenge for us in the pharma marketing industry, maybe, but also an indictment on the easy job that 'Top 5' has.

And that's why I don't bother visiting the site that much: it's all pretty predictable.

The pursuit of happyness

2009-10-30T15:31:00.003Z

I originally thought I’d use the above image only really for the film's name, and the fact that it suits this post’s thought, namely defining happiness.

But the more I remembered about the film, the more I felt it was appropriate. See if you agree...

I was listening to Evan Davis interview Warren Buffett on the Today programme a few days ago, and peppered within the discussion of his immense wealth were several aphorisms regarding happiness. Not a massively new tack to take, that of money vs. happiness, but never mind just this once.

The quotation I remembered was from Buffett, citing Bertrand Russell: ‘Success is getting what you want; happiness is wanting what you get’.

Not a new thought either, but, I felt, succinctly captured.

So much of what we (or, at least I) do is for the thrill of the chase. The end in itself may be totally benign or understandable, but do we really want what lies post-challenge?

This could apply to the chasing of ladies (a splendidly noble pastime) or, equally, the chasing and nailing of a business deal (less noble, but kind of necessary from time to time).

This is probably a more personal reflection on the way I’ve lived my life to date, but it’s been occupying my mind a little too much for comfort this week.

Discussing the concept with local sage-esse Alison, she said that Buddhists would make the distinction between pleasure and happiness. Sometimes the latter doesn’t always involve the former as regularly as we’d perhaps like, but there’s something intrinsically more worthwhile in pursuing it anyway.

We wondered whether these could be plausibly split short-term / long term; tactical / strategic.

Maybe.

So all of this led me to the conclusion that I’m a bit too motivated by success and pleasure right now. Do I really know what I want that will ultimately make be happy? Does it exist, or should we just try to achieve as un-broken a series of pleasures as possible?

Does it always resolve itself in having kids and a settled life? To what extent should one compromise on the partner one chooses / chooses you? Dammit, should one even compromise, or is it necessary to achieve the kids / settled-ness bit?

Metaphorically buggered if I know, but the fact that the thought won’t leave is probably a hint in itself.

The art of travel

2009-10-21T11:40:00.003+01:00

I was reminded of the tagline of this Eurostar ad while journeying arounf Switzerland over the last couple of days: You carry your journey with you.

The campaign ran about three years ago, from memory, and although TBWA's execution of the ad is up for debate (as, frankly, are all ads; sod it, as is anything), the tagline stayed in my mind.

At the time I thought it sounded a terribly whimsical idea; I mean, you don't do that literally, and, although I'd travelled quite a bit, I'd never really thought about how the 'moving' bit affected the rest of my day.

And maybe it's a sign of getting older, or having to get on a plane every other week, but the insight behind it has finally struck me as totally accurate. Journeys are tiring - not the moving, but certainly the queueing - and it does affect your frame of mind for the meeting you're about to have or the extent to which you can be scintillating company over dinner.

But I think that I finally cracked it on this trip: I managed not to let the travelling encumber me too much. And here's why:

1. Leave a few minutes earlier for each connection or meeting; for someone who considers himself relatively skilled in the Art of Brinkmanship, this was a real change of strategy, but it made me a lot less sweaty on arrival.

2. Collect pretty notes: I now have a collection of about 5 different currencies in my wallet, so don't have to worry about finding a cash point or someone not accepting cards.

3. Go native - even if only for a sentence: I've mastered a few throwaway lines in French and German (and they didn't have these in Baudelaire crit essays at university) so I can actually make a cabbie or hotel porter crack a smile in some local argot.

4. I keep laptop, novel and Economist with me at all times - so can flick between them according to mood. It's important to indulge yourself a bit, and just because it's work time doesn't mean you're always in the right mood for worky-work. You did get up extra early, after all...

5. Spotify: I salute you: new tunes, on the iPhone, no download needed, reflecting mood changes instantly.

6. Wheeled cases: zero backache, but make sure you're listening to music to avoid hearing the swearing as people trip over your extended rear footprint.

7. Near universal WiFi at airports. Perfect for updating blogs, as I'm doing in Geneva International right now, and slightly less Byzantine in the log-on process than was the case in days of yore.

8. Perfecting the belt / liquid / laptop / shoe / coin removal at security. It's about as enjoyable as a jab in your inner ear, but try to take some Schadenfreude in watching those who get all flustered / a good groping from the men in gloves. Whatever it takes to find some inner Zen.

9. Don't get up from your plane seat until most people have left the craft: you'll be standing with your neck crooked longer than you think as some inept staff member tries to line up the step mechanism with the door. This does not, however, apply to JFK airport where you need to forget all politeness and dash out as fast as possible to avoid losing vital years of your life at immigration.

10. Play Matt Hindley's Escalator Game: you've got until you reach the top of your escalator to decide which girl you'd most like to sleep with on the escalator going down. Leave it too late and you'll be saddled with the last one you see. Serious game, that.

Right, am off to the boarding gate...

Temporary utility

2009-10-14T13:45:00.008+01:00

Above you'll see two iPhone apps:

- one from Carling, the famous 'iPint' that used the motion sensor and hi-res graphics of the iPhone to make a simple game that most people seemed to download as a way of showcasing the phone's capabilities

- and one from Spotify, the internet music service that allows you to listen to whatever you want for free (with ads) or for a tenner month with no ads at all. Now available as an iPhone app, it recognises your username and picks up where you left off listening to music on any other computer you were signed into.

Both very clever, both capturing the 'technische Zeitgeist', and both offering a degree of 'utility', as economists might say.

It's this U-word that I'd like to think about, albeit briefly. Thing is, Spotify is changing the way I listen to music. I don't have to clog up my laptop memory with songs any more, I don't have to pay a penny more than £9.99 a month for all the music I could ever want to listen to.

And the fact that it's an app on my iPhone means I'll probably use it way into the future. It's got massive utility - in every sense.

I also had the iPint as an app for a while. I don't any longer. it wasn't bad - in fact, I got a lot of laughs out of it and felt slightly more impressed with Carling as a result (although I didn't rush out and buy their lager, weak piss that it is). It's just had its day, that's all.

Its utility was short lived, and as brands experimenting with apps, maybe that's all we should aim for right now.

Do it well, but accept that very few brands have a right - or even the ability - to achieve long term utility as an application.

OR ... do we do as the Nikes of this world have done and invest in a long term utility platform?

Whatever the weather, to approach branded apps either takes commitment or the acceptance that, at best, your app will probably generate a short-term buzz and then be forgotten about as the choice widens and deepens.

The rougher the better

2009-10-06T09:46:00.010+01:00

Unless you've been living in a cave without wifi for the last few months, you've probably seen and maybe even smirked at the proliferation of rough sketches, mostly rude, that succinctly send up aspects of our increasingly technological and politically correct society.

I suspect that these will, in the style of Family Guy, become more risque as time goes by and the appetites of their fans become whetted for ever more dangerous or obscure humour.

But it does strike me that this cartoon strip sketch genre, having featured in daily newspapers for so many years, has upped its game with the likes of Modern Toss and Cyanide and Happiness. They're, to my mind, a whole load funnier and more pointed than some of the strips you see in Metro or The Mirror, which seem drab even without comparison.

And the joy of the obscure, chillingly and scratchily explored by David Shrigley, is the perfect antidote to the annoyingly perfect corporate images we're used to seeing.

And websites such as www.b3ta.com continue to be brilliant in sending them all up.

And maybe that's just it: we like these quick, rough, insightful images precisely because it's not what we're used to seeing.

They hit on a truth, and with the minimum of effort succeed in conveying a thought.

In which case, we're really missing a trick in advertising. If the fundamental tactic we use is disruption, then we're not half as good as disrupting as we might like to think. We spend more time perfecting things so that they blend in with every other perfect image and feel far removed from stuff that really matters.

Why not be a bit rough? Why do they want to look all mendaciously sleek? Let's face it, most of them don't answer the phone or give good customer service, so in truth they're pretty damn flawed in any case.

When Joel Veitch was commissioned by Mastercard to produce the Switch/Maestro ads a few years back, I really hoped that they would usher in an era of less perfect ads. They were memorable precisely because they were a bit weird and unexpected.

Oh well.

The consumer is STILL not a moron

2009-07-22T09:42:00.006+01:00

Brand Republic today features an article on David Ogilvy by the ever-articulate George Parker. The former's famous saying is 'The consumer is not a moron, she's your wife', and never has this been more pertinent.

Three things made me realise this in a moment of happy coincidence yesterday...

First, the ever-sharing Craig O'Brien forwarded me a link to this presentation - a whopping 237-slider on something called Post Digital Marketing - and, whilst I've only made it through the first 100 or so slides, there's a wealth of quotability going on there.

Most notable was this one:

'As the air around our citizens thickens with unwanted messages and interruptions, the goal should not be to add to this unwantedness, but to create deliberate and appreciated value'.

Too right! Why on earth should anyone give a shit about more 'me too' nonsense? And yet, that's what the vast majority of clutz-headed advertisers do, mistakenly opting to keep their heads below the parapet, tick some corporate boxes (of which 'innovation' rarely seems to be one) and rattle the bucket of swill just a little more loudly.

Second thing: a conversation with the ever-ranting Brian Dargan, whose view of the parapet is of sub-molecular proportions as he spits in the eye of convention at every turn. At a recent interview he had with a leading London ad agency, the Strategy Head there bemoaned a lack of real ideas - instead just a flow of identikit pedestrian ideas that fail to ignite even the most cursory of conversations.

Have we run out of ideas? Have they all been had? Or have all the ones in the 'traditional canon of shouty shouty advertising' been had and we're a bit nervous of omitting the big logos and headlines at every turn in favour of subtlety, warmth, art and value?

Why, oh why, do people think that 'doing more of what we've pretty much always done' is good advertising?

And the third was a David Ogilvy example pictured above: A Guinness ad that explains the difference between types of oyster.

Does it patronise me? No, it's actually rather interesting. Does it beat me about the head, shouting at me to buy Guinness? No, instead it walks the walk of a brand I'd like to identify with because it is genuinely edifying; an intelligent brand.

Above all, I actually get something out of it. Oh, and I happen to associate Guinness with this value - and therefore like it all the more (especially with oysters).

And that was over 40 years ago - before the advent of interactive media that should, godammit, make it that much easier for brands to be useful.

And yet all I hear in evidence of brands being useful now is Nike-fucking-Plus.

Come on. To those of who work in this fated / feted industry, I implore you: try to create one piece of advertising in your life that advances something of human value.

It might just save the industry. And I may even be prepared to go client-side some day if that's what it takes.

Decisions based on favours

2009-05-15T13:39:00.002+01:00

'Sure I'll sponsor you.'

'Yeah, your party sounds as though it could be a laugh. I'll swing by.'

'Reckon I should buy that one, really? The green velour one? Oh well, if you say so.'

It's just occurred to me, as my slothful mind ambles into action, that so many of the decisions we make are based on a cypher of the facts: people we know. We defer responsibility and take things as read.

We simply don't have the time to assess every situation according to what is, isn't, and could possibly be. So we make a decision based on someone else.

Sometimes it's their advice. Sometimes it's just because it's them. We assume they've done the legwork already, or that they're worthy of our time and attention.

This occurred to me as I listen to an album by If Wen, who's a mate of mine. It's come onto my office speakers and I've actually managed to divorce the singer from the song. A few weekends ago I agreed to post the video on my blog and seed it in a few music forums. I did this as a friend, somewhat unquestioningly, as it seemed the 'right' thing to do.

But now, as I have a bit of time and space to exercise my critical faculties, I find myself wanting to evangelise a bit.

I enjoyed having the time to make a decision myself that wasn't coloured by favour.

It's HR, stupid, not just IT

2009-05-07T18:12:00.002+01:00

One day computers will rule the world and, should we want to, we'll all be allowed to go to that lovely looking island off Australia and put our feet up for 6 months - not just that lucky charity worker - safe in the knowledge that business is ticking along nicely at home.

Indeed, even our Facebook profiles will be run by robots - the future is already written here.

But until such a day, my digital friends, if you want your digital marketing to be any good then please, for the love of whichever flavour of god you care for, don't think that it will run itself.

If you really want your social media programme - that comprises the very best of blog-commenting, forum-influencing, content-distributing, tweet-chirping, video-mashing and app-seeding - to work, then it will take real people to roll up their sleeves and get busy with their ears and their keyboards.

Because computers really can't tell which places in the digisphere are truly worthy of our attention, and certainly can't respond suitably, and with tonal subtleties, to the conversations that are influencing opinions.

It's great that you've realised that banners and a monolithic website maketh not a digital marketing campaign (although they may tick the digital box in the eyes of your line manager if (s)he's really that stupid) ...

...so for the time being, given we're all human, please try to invest in HR when you invest in IT.

Nobody knows anything

2009-05-07T14:09:00.004+01:00

So said William Goldman of the entertainment industry, as he tried to sum up his experiences of Broadway and Hollywood.

It's one of those phrases that is used time and weary time again (oh, and once more now), possibly because it can be read a number of ways - but possibly because it's usefully provocative.

According to my mate Brian Dargan (who's usually correct in these matters, I find) he meant that if the film industry knew which films were going to succeed, it wouldn't produce so many flops.

I'd like to use this phrase today to sum up where we're at with the plethora of digital stuff we're all trying to evaluate at the moment.

Here are some of the questions that nobody seems to know the answers to:

- Is Twitter worth the alleged $700m price Apple wants to pay? Will it ever be able to be monetised?

- What is good web design protocol? At a recent EFP conference in Munich, one of the senior guys at healthcare social network www.doctors.net.uk said of his site, and of Facebook, that the design mattered far less than the sheer volume of content contained within. Is he right? I know plenty of UX / IA guys who'd say no. They'd probably also counter the fact that he reckoned that Google's success wasn't down to the design of its homepage (I, for one, would argue that the simplicity propelled it into popularity far faster than if it had been as cluttered as Yahoo!, for instance).

- Speaking of Facebook, hundreds of thousands of people publicly grumble about the design refreshes it gets from time to time ... but most of us go on using it. And I, for one, tend to forget the last one quite quickly. Was it any better, or are we just pretty adaptable?

- What are the best ways for Pharma marketers (or 'communicators', to use the suggestion in my last post) to approach digital marketing? What should we do first? Blog? Tweet? Film?Listen? Respond? Build yet another sodding great website with reams of dull tiny print that no-one even visits?

Are we sure? Are we hell. (Perhaps excepting the last one, it would seem.)

So instead we could use common sense, adduce some lessons from the past, pull in the few bits of data we may have, try to find some parallels with consumer examples, and away we go.

Nobody knows much here and, as a result, most are too scared to try.

They just build another sodding great website instead. Or don't do anything.

My point to all of this?

We'll never know everything (for a variety of philosophical reasons - see future post on Occam's Razor vs. Goedel's Incompleteness Theorems).

But knowing something is about as good as we're going to get, and I'd implore the pharma industry (and the ABPI) to start with / sanction something rather than watch every other industry sector zoom past us in terms of modern communications effectiveness.

Many films may flop, but at least the entertainment industry keeps moving with the times.

When is a marketing agency not a marketing agency?

2009-05-07T10:40:00.002+01:00

Perhaps when it's a communications agency.

What I mean is that as soon as one mentions the word 'marketing', people's defences go up. They feel (or at least I do) that there's a sub-text to everything marketers do.

Communications, in contrast, is far less threatening. I'd wager that more people accept the need for businesses and brands to communicate - after all, it might be about more innocuous activities than trying to take money and time from you.

Not only that, but a 'communications agency' immediately has more permission to talk to other functions of a client's business than just their marketing function.

Would people believe us if we were to say we could do this? I reckon so. After all, communications is a tricky business what with all the confusion that can get in the way of a perfect transferral of meaning from one person to another, and so anyone who can make things simpler and more easily digestible may well have a role.

And that's exactly what marketers do. But it's just rather too loaded and pigeon-holed a word.

Super 8 mystery

2009-04-25T12:31:00.002+01:00

This is the new video from If Wen - a 'miserablist folk' singer who is a personal friend of mine, and whose music is, in my humble opinion, refreshingly good.

In some ways this is a shameless plug, but there are some genuine reasons why you might like to give this a few minutes of your time:

- My garden stars in it. The same garden that starred in the 1983 film The Jigsaw Man, with Michael Caine. So there's real pedigree there already.

- It's shot in Super 8, which gives it a stunning grainy quality, and even, I'm led to believe, a bit of Panavision. Pure 70's joy. Reminiscent of things with Felicity Kendal in them, and that's A Good Thing.

- There are bits of Chiswick House in there, with the rather elusive If Wen popping up in among its hedgerows.

- If Wen is also a bit of a star in his day job, but I've been told not to make that link too obvious - work it out yourself.

- And, speaking of working stuff out yourself, this is the first music video I've ever heard of that has a cryptic word game in it. No-one's worked it out to date - or even worked out why some of the letters are orange - but that's part of the interest value.

So there. Do yourself a favour, brighten up your day with a bit of 'Love Letters'.

Mmm. Freshly brewed music. There's lovely for you.

Dead bodies

2009-04-19T14:34:00.001+01:00

I'm 'penning' this from my seat outside the Bell and Crown in Strand on the Green. I have a sunny riverscape in front of me and a screaming child in my right ear. When I ran past here earlier the police had cordoned off the bit of the river by Kew Bridge as they were fishing out a corpse from the Thames.

Lovely river though it is, it serves as a watery grave for a surprisingly large number of people. We'll frequently hear the revving of boat engines late at night near Kew Railway Bridge next to our flats: bodies get tangled up around the bottom of the bridge pillars and it's the job of the RNLI and river police to extract the bloated mess.

Just a few years back, several dozen skulls were discovered in the 'Strand' bit of the river here. No-one really has a convincing reason why they were buried.

A bit of sunshine and a few ciders and it's easy to overlook the quotidien tragedies that flow past us.

There's cheery for you.

-- Post From My iPhone

21st Century Newswire

2009-04-09T11:25:00.002+01:00

That's what Twitter is, I declare.

A Damascene moment a few days ago pointed me to Tweetdeck and the ability to pull together all the themes I'm interested in.

That plus the observation (thanks Robbie, Aimee, Craig) that this, by dint of the sheer volume of tweets, is primarily a listening medium. A listening medium with filters.

You can even conduct free polls on it: http://twtpoll.com/

We should contribute to make it a richer place, but that means removing all references to what we had for breakfast.

Now I can mix branded jounalism with citizen journalism and they can spar it out as to who gets the best stories first.

All I care about is being informed and entertained - and whoever does it best gets my vote.

If the technology of today gives an equal voice to all, then Twitter is the best platform we have to mix them up and cream off the best.

Churchill and iPhones

2009-04-06T19:06:00.001+01:00

Finally got around to installing an iPhone app. From the comfort of the Churchill Arms in Notting Hill.

You're never alone with a iPhone, and it's really good to have a spare half hour - waiting for some friends and with nothing to read - to have a play around with App Store and find out what other techie wizardry there is that can make my life easier.

And not have Her Next Door upbraiding me for excessive device fiddling activity :-)

Attached: this pub has signs inside it. Surprisingly useful, especially as it's full of half-blind ex-military types today. Shame it's not in Braille.

-- Post From My iPhone

Bleeding eyes and industry-specific social marketing

2009-04-06T11:45:00.003+01:00

Sorry folks, got to get some worky-worky things off my chest today.

Because it strikes me that there's no decent forum for pharma marketers to talk about digital media - or, more precisely, appropriate media given the market, the drug/device type, target audience etc. (after all, it's not just about digital however much my livelihood may depend on it).

Certainly nothing as useful as this one for Independent Financial Advisers: http://www.ifalife.com/

Woo hoo.

But I like the fact that it's crammed full of interesting articles that are well ordered, pertinent to the industry, and helps raise the collective bar of digital marketing.

Compare this site structure and content to the Pharma industry's highest Google-ranked forum: http://www.forums.pharma-mkting.com/showthread.php?t=1322

Frankly, it makes my eyes bleed.

There are plenty of learnings we can take from this comparison: structural, content, strategic approach, linking with social media … and these are all industry-based - not just personal / social!

Here endeth, etc etc.

Is Twitter rude?

2009-04-03T13:11:00.003+01:00

I am frequently upbraided by Next Door Kate for using my iPhone too much in social situations.

Yup, it's so good that very often it's too tempting to dive into the various virtual yet social universes that this device offers to me by virtue of its being the #1 way of accessing the web.

But she does have a point: increasingly we're becoming permanently semi-connected. We don't all devote our attention to the task in hand, preferring instead to twiddle with our phones to check email, twitter, texts and so on.

It is, in many ways, plain rude.

But at a recent conference they asked for questions and contributions to the panel via Twitter. These were then posted on a 'Twitter Fall' app on the data projector and the best questions creamed off (so to speak).

Everyone in the room was head down, tapping away. But we got some good questions and some good banter going. Twitter made it easier for people to ask questions - it took away the embarrassment factor.

And that's got to be a good thing.

Oh - and no-one thought it was rude. Although it did feel like a totally different way of hosting a conference.

Back again - and here's a thought

2009-04-02T11:35:00.004+01:00

'I kind of see what you mean' ... 'hmm, not sure I get you' ... 'nope, you've lost me'.

All phrases we're used to hearing in our British culture (whatever that is, and I actually wish people would stop bleating on about what it could possibly mean. Just shut up and be it for a while).

But - I digress - we only say those things because we're a bunch of people here in the western world who feel that the burden of making sure communication is achieved falls on the communicator rather than the receiver.

We accept that it's up to the person making a point to make it clearly otherwise we feel quite happy to ask them to repeat it, or switch off, or blame them if we don't 'get it'.

Japan, in contrast, is a country where the reverse is the case. The responsibility for achieving successful communication falls on the receiver, the hearer. If something's not clear, it's been your fault for not grasping the sense or the context.

Imagine how much easier the job of the advertiser would be if this were the case in our world...

Just because it looks right...

2009-02-26T09:03:00.004Z

On the Today programme this morning Alistair Darling confidently said that the Lehman Brothers bank collapse in the States last year caused the financial crisis over there.

Well 'no', Darling. If I heard you correctly as my bathwater gurgled down the drain then this was not the cause of it. It was partly a result of it - and it happened it around the same time as things started to get really bad globally.

Similarly, most of my pharmaceutical clients keep on pouring money into various corporate websites and expensive sales rep materials - insiting that you need these if you're to have a successful drug.

Well, and I think there are a few people beginning to wake up to this now: NO. You just keep commissioning these marketing materials - and your drug sometimes does well. But one is not the cause of the other.

It's correlation at best.

You speak of ROI, Mr Client, but pretty much none of you has an idea of how to measure this. You really mean: 'does that sound a lot based on what we reckon we'll make from the drug'.

It's not even worthy of the term 'cost effective' because you don't have any end-to-end metrics in place to work out whether it was that cost that brought about the desired effect.

However, if my clients change their tune tomorrow I'd love to think that this blog post caused it.

How are you?

2009-02-25T12:49:00.006Z

£1m per hour, or 10% of annual spend, is what the NHS is paying to treat diabetes and its complications, according to a BBC News article out yesterday.

Yikes that's a lot of cash. That's £24m per day. Or £8.8bn per year.

And that's just 10% of it.

So multiply it by 10 and the NHS budget is actually £88bn per year on this basis.

Although HM Treasury says that this figure is closer to £111bn.

UK GDP - a pretty good measure of how much money our economy generates each year - is estimated at just £1.4 trillion. Drilling down a bit further, total Government revenue in 2007/08 was 39.2% of this - or £548bn.

So the Government is currently paying out over 20% of ALL the money it receives from companies and individuals - many times over if you look at the combinations of direct and indirect taxes that we all end up paying on the goods and services we ultimately receive.

That's got to be more than defence. Oh yes, so it is. Over 3 times as much. Only 'Social Protection' is higher at £169bn. That's for old age pensions, unemployment and so on.

So illness, old age and unemployment make up nearly half of our taxes.

Or to put it another way, nearly half of what I pay to the government goes on looking after my health and making sure I'm able to work for as long as possible. And I'll only really be able to work as long as possible if I'm healthy - which I'll do my best to do, especially given how low the pension payments to individuals are.

So: looking after our health really is the single most important thing we can do.

No wonder most conversations start with 'how are you?'.

All change

2009-02-22T10:37:00.003Z

OK. Got fed up with trying to fit ideas into a medical context, so generic observations are back.

Same rules, but more pictures.

Anyway, some recent thoughts...

I met a lovely Jewish chap in the Bell and Crown the other day who brightened up my day no end.

I refer to his religious status up front because he wears a kippa and so this, visually at least, defines him.

In the twenty or so minutes during which we spoke we covered the following topics: the buildings in Strand on the Green, and why there are so many 1950s houses in the middle of Victorian terraces; Fleming and the fortuitous discovery of penicillin; life on Welsh peninsulas, and German wire-haired pointers.

Everything he noticed sparked another story, and everything became richer and more nuanced for its discussion.

He was perhaps the most intelligent and gentle fellow I've chanced upon in years. And I'll be honest with you: with all the recent hoo-ha in Israel I've not had a lot of time for Jewish sentiment of late. Extreme, I know, but there's been rather too much self-assertion of a bad type going on there.

But this chap was how I'd imagine Rabbi Lionel Blue to be if he were to be plucked out of the radio and stuck in a pub. To my mind, the best of Jewishness (or probably anyone-ness): kind, intelligent, funny and interesting.

Which made me sad that their Israeli brethren are giving them such a bad rap at the moment.

Praise v. complaints

2009-02-18T13:08:00.003Z

This ad prompted 458 complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority. Because of that, together with the legal technicality that the promotion of a prescription drug via the 'backdoor' of an application device is illegal, meant that the ads had to come down.

But I don't mind the ad. I don't find it offensive. And neither does Tony from Creative Services.

So we wondered if it would be possible to set up a rival to the ASA, or suggest to the ASA themselves that if more people wrote in in praise of an ad than wrote in to complain, then maybe the ad could stand.

Why should a few prudes from Tunbridge Wells dictate whether or not the rest of us can see something potentially useful?

Your thoughts, please...

Beyond compare

2009-02-11T13:35:00.004Z

You just can't compare some things. Apples with oranges with example - well not in a meaningful way anyway. But we seem obsessed with putting everything in some kind of relative order.

Perhaps because it helps us navigate this ever more complex world - the world in which Sainsbury's now puts traffic lights on food to alert the thickies to the previously unknown dangers of doughnuts.

The wireless (seems suitable to use these sort of words when having a green-ink tinged rant) was blasting out news this morning that the Government is considering reclassifying Ecstasy as a 'safer' drug than cocaine and heroine.

Class B rather than A, and therefore one league 'above' cannabis, which used to enjoy class B privileges before it was downgraded to C. Although it might pop up again soon.

I can see why drugs need to be classified for legal purposes (assuming they should remain illegal, that is), but what this over-simplification of drugs does is actually rather dangerous.

ALL drugs have side-effects, legal or otherwise. Some are mild, some severe; some mental, some physical; some temporary (we bravely say, without that long a study having been done on longer term effects), and some permanent.

Ecstasy heats your body up as it encourages increased electrical activity in the brain; coke does likewise as it causes your heart to beat faster - but the way it does this is subtley different. Cannabis acts in a totally different way, but its longer term mental effects may be even 'worse'.

What do I mean by worse? I'm not sure. Perhaps I'd rather have a fucked heart than a fucked head. I really don't know. But I do know that it's not as simple as A v. B v. C.

It's too simple, and sometimes we need to avoid making things simple that shoudn't be.

Google's ill

2009-01-31T15:26:00.003Z

I just googled something and every single search result told me that if I proceeded to the site then my computer would be at risk. In fact it didn't even LET me progress to a search result - I had to cut and paste the result into the URL bar.

It was a bizarre sense: Google broken? No, surely not. They're infallible. They rule the world. They're pioneers.

And it was bloody ANNOYING that I couldn't get my information fix in the nanoseconds I'm used to.

Is it a virus? Has Google been infected and, if so, how safe are all the things I trust it to keep on my behalf? My emails, addresses, search history, my blog ... the list goes on.

The effect this has just had on me is disproportionate to the minor inconvenience that actually occurred. Perhaps we should try to wean ourselves off Google.

This much we don't know

2009-01-27T13:47:00.002Z

Yesterday while writing a brief for a new anti-epilepsy drug I posted a few status updates on Facebook stating that I was finding it rather difficult to come up with a proposition. I was astounded at how many people commented on the update and how many - admittedly in a humorous way - felt that the answer should be quite simple.

Along the lines of 'this drug stops epilepsy and all the shit that goes with it'.

That would indeed have been an ideal proposition if it weren't for the facts that:

- epilepsy is the tendency of the brain to produce sudden bursts of electrical energy - but this can be caused by many different things including tumours, accidents, birth defects and infections;

- there are dozens of enti-epilepsy drugs out on the market, yet around 30% of people with epilepsy are yet to find a treatment that stops their seizures;

- some of the drugs on the market seem to work, but no-one's quite sure why or how;

- even the 'best' drugs on the market can't really claim to be efficacious in more than about 50% of patients.

I was amazed at how little we still don't know, and how that in turn makes it very difficult to come up with something useful and interesting to say that actually holds up to scrutiny.

United by devices

2009-01-26T11:56:00.005Z

A few years back, when working at Whitewater in the In Memoriam fundraising department, we used to receive copies of journals as bizarrely titled as Funeral Directors Monthly and The Embalmer.

So I'm quite used to seeing niche publications and enjoy discovering those that somehow embrace a new (to me) and unknown corner of interest, industry or, quite possibly, obsession.

At my new job in healthcare marketing I'm exposed to all kinds of dark recesses of the pharmaceutical world, but I really didn't expect an old school friend - one Guy Furness - to be owner/publisher of a journal called On Drug Delivery. Yup, there's a title devoted to needles, syringes and the like - all the myriad ways in which you can stick drugs into yourself.

I like to think the Pete Doherty has a regular column.

In all seriousness, Guy and his team (comprising himself and a girl called Nicki Macadam, with whom we were also at school) write about the science of delivering pharmaceutically active ingredients to the required site in the body, in the right quantities, at the correct time and in the most effective and convenient manner.

And the coincidence is that this Wednesday I'm going to Zurich to present creative concepts to a client whose sole raison d'etre is to promote insulin and growth hormone delivery devices.

I'm looking forward to seeing Guy again. There should be loads to talk about...

Up the brand ladder and into the clouds

2009-01-23T13:22:00.003Z

It's possible to do this in any field of marketing, but it's a particular danger in healthcare: taking the facts about a product, identifying their key features, deriving patient or physician benefits from these, finding a universal truth ... and ending up, before you know it, with a pivotal thought that reads something like:

'Product X gives you a better quality of life' ... or 'Product X is both effective and safe' ... or ... 'Therapy X is the simplest yet'.

And how very uninspiring these thoughts or 'propositions' are. Reductio absurdum at its very best.

This morning I had to reject a proposition that read 'simply the best'. And another one that read 'freedom to get on with life'.

Frankly, instead of being on the topic of anti-retroviral treatment, it could have been a piece of chewing gum or a tampon. And you don't want to confuse those.

So the trick when you're messing around with a 'brand ladder' or whatever species of wanky marketing tool you happen to be using, I reckon, is to stop short of the clouds and give people real sight of what the damn thing is that you're talking about.

Medicine time

2009-01-23T12:31:00.002Z

Dear all

With effect from some time quite soon, the theme of this blog will change.

With any luck, this change will be A Good Thing.

Thing is, now that I'm working in the fascinating world of all things medical, the stuff I notice is necessarily to do with drugs, bodily functions, weird and wonderful apparatus and some really rather clever science.

But my job as a planner remains unchanged: to simplify things.

So my hobby as a blogger will be to put various medical observations in the glass flask of the blogosphere, place it above the hot blue flame of conciseness (and occasionally the flappy yellow flame of digression) - and boil it down to its witty (or otherwise) essence.

Watch this space...

M

America Bless God

2009-01-20T13:50:00.004Z

Yewande Odusote's comment on the wall of the Facebook Group dedicated to watching the inauguration live on CNN and Facebook was one of over 121,000 comments.

She is one of over 1.2m people who have joined this group - and this group is just dedicated to this particular means of watching the event.

Whilst this is astounding, leading on from my following post - together with the slew of articles dedicated to analysing the world problems Obama will have to tackle when he gets into the White House - I'm interested in the role that theistic obedience will play.

Yewande invites 'God' to bless the new President and to direct him down the right road.

Abraham Lincoln said: 'I know that the Lord is always on the side of the right, but it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and his nation may be on the Lord's side'.

Both of these are in stark contrast to Bush's egotistical insistence that what he is doing is happily what God would have wanted.

And Obama, in his inaugural speech just now, pledged to 'restore science to its rightful place' - a thinly-veiled attacked on the rise of Creationism I feel sure - takes a more rational take still. He spoke of 'interest and mutual respect' for the Muslim world.

He showed that America does not have a right to be right, that the Christian God is not always on its side, and is suggestive of the fact that science should not be subserviant to science.

From a religious point of view - let alone all the other points of view that can and will be taken on this address - this marks a step back down the road of humility, lined with green shoots of humanism.

No god bus

2009-01-16T12:57:00.003Z

I'm a bit behind the times on this one as apparently this bus-side advertising campaign kicked off last October, but I love it.

And so does evangelical atheist Richard Dawkins.

The beginning of the antidote to centuries of mind control by the abusive clerics of Abrahamic religions.

You can read more about it here, but can you imagine driving a bus with this message through Israel or Gaza (or indeed Gazza if you're a Sun reader) right now?

Storytellers, designers and technologists

2009-01-15T13:51:00.002Z

In the late '90s this book created a stir by suggesting that the Internet was more like an old-fashioned Middle East bazaar than it was the subserviant tool of big business - where people would swap stories, buy bizarre items and behave in ways that took their fancy rather than adhere to any convenient and logical norms.

How damn right they were. A quick squizz at Google's Insights for Search in 2007 shows that the most popular search terms in the UK were 'BBC', 'games' and 'eBay'. In France it's 'games', 'video' and 'yellow pages'. In Sweden it's 'lyrics', 'download' and 'youtube'.

Who could have predicted this type of randomness (unless you're predicting 'randomness' to begin with)?

Regardless of what the reasons for the national differences might be, it does suggest the need for a less conventional, straight-laced and Victorian way in which brands should conduct themsleves online.

And digital agencies, as the frequent producers of brands' digital presences, might want to order themselves in a way that reflects what people want from digital media. One suggestion I stumbled across today (which I quite like) was that there should be three main functions within such agencies: storytellers, designers and technologists.

What would this change? Well, planning and copy tasks could be conflated. Designers are sort of there already, but in the absence of data and IA functions they'd need to get to grips with visitor pathways and heatmaps. Technologists: well, if they could share their views of the future in non-binary forms of communication that would be splendid.

Just a thought...

Primary shapes, journalism, and a bloke called Wilf

2009-01-14T13:45:00.008Z

I love primary shapes when it comes to expressing a thought. They make everything simple - and even complex ideas about the role of traditional journalism vs. blogging can be summed up succinctly.

I was debating what the rise of 'consumer journalism' is doing to the profession - and, in turn, how it impacts the trust we place in comment from different sources - last night. Not the sort of chat you'd normally entertain on a second date, but to my mind this augers well.

Anyway, we were discussing whether bloggers would ever displace professional journalists. If you follow the line of thinking that goes: 'people trust each other more than brands' then it would hold that, with news channels and papers being brands themselves, they would have to make way for the new blood.

But this doesn't feel right. People DO trust their news brands - for differing reasons - but, as the diagram above shows, these brands currently only play in the 'sphere of legitimate controversy.

Understandably there's little merit in playing in the core, but what bloggers are doing - unfettered by the need to toe the party line - is expanding the sphere of legitimacy by exploring the sphere of deviance (stuff the Daily Mail et al would never dare discuss e.g. the merits of immigration) in their droves.

So I don't reckon the old school model of journalism is about to be scuppered, but - thanks to the theory expressed in primary shapes - I reckon they're going to have to adopt the role of 'guide'.

Why? Well, I stumbled across this diagram by linking from Craig the Creative Director's blog to a Guardian article; from that I went to the 'feedback' section and read various comments, and from one of those I linked back to a blog (OK, a Guardian journalist blog) and serendipitously found this article - which was a link within that blog.

French Michel calls it the act of WWILFing - 'What Was I Looking For?' - when you start with one article and are led onto a raft of different topics and thoughts such that you forget what you went online to find out in the first place.

So I WILFed my way far beyond the confines of the Guardian brand - and the stuff I'm talking about now, the stuff that caught my eye was on a complete unknown's blog site.

The Guardian has probably got the most digitally savvy website of any newspaper brand, but even they're only just starting to realise the roles that their profession and their brand will have to play if they're to remain relevant as we opt to explore more and more spheres of deviance...

Bacon numbers

2009-01-12T12:17:00.011Z

I'm liking the professional networking site 'Linked-In' more and more. For some I'm sure it's a useful way of tapping people for jobs, but I just like the nosiness that it affords. Unlike Facebook, you don't have to be friends with people to see what they're up to, and there are more and more people on it - and so I'm becoming nosier and nosier.

Way back when I was at university I heard about the phenomenon of 'Bacon numbers' and found it bizarre that anyone should have spent the time working out how different celebs are connected to people - least of all Kevin Bacon. Beyond the idle curiosity that underpins the 'Six Degrees of Separation', it seemed a piece of trivia that would be looked back on fondly - but have no real use.

But today as I was looking at various profiles on Linked-In, I saw that even Kevin Bacon now has his own profile. And I'm only removed from him by 3 degrees. He's even posted his Hotmail address on the site should I wish to drop him a line.

Suddenly, thanks to the power of the network, I can contact Kevin - or Kev as I now feel I can call him. He's using the same tools that we do to promote ourselves professionally. Social networking is absolutely perfect for him.

Not sure what I'll say to him yet, but it's nice to know he's not far away.

Media v. channels

2009-01-07T15:56:00.007Z

Geeky subject alert!

I used to be a media planner when I was fresh out of university. I worked out whether people would be more likely to buy the shit we were peddling if we annoyed them on TV, in a magazine, or on the radio - or littering the roadside with big pictures of our stuff.

When I was at DraftFCB I found that they employed channel planners.

Oh, thought I, wonder how that differs?

I was told that channels were things like email, the internet, 'digital channels' that you could make your own rather than advertise on.

But people do advertise on the internet. So does that make it a medium?

And if direct mail is a medium, how come you don't advertise on it - thus making it a channel?

I was also told that digital was 'just another channel', which is now clearly bullshit as it encompasses so many things (digital outdoor media, iPhones, email, SMS, etc.).

And Channel 4 is also, in many ways, a medium - especially if you're an advertiser.

So many people I know now call them 'media channels'. Which I hate. It's imprecise and lazy.

AND now even the 'Media Channel' (see above) just about exists as an industry ranting forum.

I don't have a definitive answer yet, so any thoughts would be welcome.

A better mobile life

2009-01-04T16:58:00.007Z

A quick look down the list of status updates on Facebook a few moments ago and I noticed that 1 in 3 people had updated themselves via a mobile device.

Sure, if you're a Facebooker then you're probably fairly digi-literate anyway, plus the added skew that many of my chums are slaves to various marketing agencies and so you'd hope they'd be dicking around in their iPhones in any case, but it made me think: 2009 will be the year we go truly mobile.

Every marketing strategy I come up with will, I resolve here and now, factor in to it the fact that more people are looking at stuff while out and about. Static-thinking just won't cut it any more.

What will they want to know? How concise will it need to be? How can we actually be of use to them? How can we build in location-based opportunities? How can we tie it into the multifarious ways that people want to broadcast to the world what they're up to on a minute-by-minute basis?

How can we think more mobile?

Life out of London

2008-12-28T08:14:00.004Z

This morning I'm waking up in Evershot - specifically at the Acorn Inn, or 'The Sow and Acorn' as Hardy referred to it in Tess of the D'Urbervilles. It has a skittle alley out the back, and all manner and means of obscure pub games at which, after sufficient ale and port, I found it all too easy to lose last night.

I can hear wood pigeons, I can see nothing but trees, frost and the occasional Land Rover, and I can smell wood-smoke and the beginnings of a full English breakfast.

It's amazingly beautiful, and despite the fact that it's sub-zero outside, I'm enjoying having the window open - thus allowing the fresh smells of a country winter morning to permeate the smell of morning bed.

Nice.

I've spent the last few days in the Llyn Peninsular where Next Door Kate, Next Door Graeme and Creative Director Craig (CDC) and I rented an old Welsh long house for Christmas. We climbed Snowdon on Boxing Day, cooked every meal from scratch (apart from yesterday's Little Chef breakfast en route, which, I can assure you, remains a vile and fetid place), and tried to learn phrases in Welsh - necessary in a place where over 3/4 of the locals have Welsh as a first language.

The complete obverse of my life in London. Not really that far away, but really very different.

Demand for Planning

2008-12-18T10:25:00.007Z

In my career as a planner to date, a large chunk of time has been spent explaining to the rest of the agency what it is we actually do. This tends to fall on a mixture of deaf ears (the majority), those who reckon their clients could be persuaded to buy what we do (minority #1), and those who really don't want to have what they've always done questioned in any way (minority #2).

Put simply, as a department we've had to stimulate demand in the face of apathy - after all, why would anyone want to change (the other rude 'C' word) the way they work, even if it's for the better?

So on moving to my new agency, my over-riding pleasure so far has been in witnessing the sheer demand for planning on the part of both clients and agency staff.

Why?

Because they actively want to do new stuff but don't know what new stuff they should be doing.

And that's exactly what the planning function is (or at least one of the many definitions that I like). Namely: giving people confidence and inspiration to do something different.

This might be about using new media, talking to new audiences, talking about a different part of your product or brand. But in each case, the discipline of Planning should be there to make the strategic case - a bit like a barrister - drawing on available evidence and logical extrapolation - for making this change.

This isn't to say that Planning is required in every campaign for every client. Far from it. Many teams working on many clients know what needs to be done and it's frankly rude to suggest they don't. But if you trust the people you work with - and you've done a good job in showing them what Planning can do when they need it - they'll actively want to ask for it when necessary.

Here endeth, etc. etc.

But bloody well done to Michel, whose large shoes I'm now stepping into, for getting things to this point.

Bringing it all together

2008-12-15T11:08:00.002Z

Creative Director Craig came round for tea yesterday, and in between comparing hangovers and deciding which meats we'd roast in Wales during our Christmas holiday, we discussed how we've got to the stage where our disparate bits of digital activity need to be brought together.

I've now managed to update my Facebook status via Twitter via text via my mobile phone. My next step is to bring excerpts from this blog onto my Facebook wall so as to surprise and delight anyone who stumbles upon me with the sheer brilliance of the machinations of my mind.

This afternoon I plan to see if I can synch Flickr and Facebook, possibly add in my del.icio.us tags and see what else I can achieve.

I've already put Facebook on Netvibes, and I'm trying to work out whether there's any merit or indeed possibility of linking Netvibes with iGoogle - or whether you have to choose one or another.

Why?

Well, following on from my last post, it's become clear to me that I have far too many forms of communication - and they need to be tidied up. And the splendid thing about this open source nonsense is that most net brands can now speak to each other.

My devices are converging, my communications brands are converging, and it's a face off between Facebook and a couple of other amalgamation tools to decide which one will win.

Or maybe I'll just get it down to two. Even that would be acceptable.

Or maybe I should bin it all and pick up a quill pen and some parchment from Woolies or a Post Office branch before they shut down completely.

Your digital home

2008-12-12T12:05:00.005Z

William Morris, of wallpaper fame, once advised: 'have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful' ... and it strikes me, having set the strategy for several websites, many microsites and countless other bits of digital furniture, that this could be a pretty useful maxim to bear in mind when embarking on any piece of digital marketing.

Increasingly the digital savvy among us are personalising our digital experiences - the very word 'homepage' suggests a place from which you usually start or to which you often return. iGoogle allows us to determine what we place on this page; our toolbars, Digg pages, Evernote accounts, suites of iPhone applications and so on leave it entirely up to us to populate them with what we find useful or amusing.

The sites that I regularly go to are either useful (BBC News, Gmail, eBay, Streetmap, Wikipedia etc.) or enrich my experience in a beauteous or fun way (Flickr, b3ta, Holy Moly).

I would not bother going to - or at least frequenting - a site that didn't do either of these things. Yet my clients frequently give me briefs that, on the face of it, require me to communicate such boringly self-serving factoids, thoughts and opinions - digital junk mail - that the question 'why would anyone care?' invariably pops up.

We can all opt in or opt out of digital environments in split seconds, and unless digital marketing gives us something to put in our homes that is either useful of beautiful, it won't really be asked in.

Look up

2008-12-11T10:49:00.004Z

Looking out of the train by Vauxhall station this morning I could just about make out the BT Tower, which looms large next to the building in which I work (for today and tomorrow, anyway). It reminded me of this picture I took a week or so ago while wandering about Fitzrovia with my esteemed (now former) colleague Brian.

Amazing what you can see when you look up.

I blogged a while back about the fact you rarely appreciate the full height of buildings when walking about town - or what's going on above eye level. Naturally, we tend to focus on where we're going rather than bump into things.

But I wonder ... more and more people are checking their mobile phones as they walk around, and more and more people are getting smartphones. One of the coolest features on the iPhone seems to be the geo-location application that can tell you where you are and where you want to go.

Maybe someone could invent a similar application that advised you when it would be ocularly rewarding to look up.

City lifespans

2008-12-10T12:07:00.004Z

Damn. It's been an entire week sans blogpost. Longer than I'd hoped to go without comment, but in the heady whirl that is disentanglement from one workplace and the gentle process of 'ramping up' (as wanky execs might say) with the next, I've neglected these words and pictures.

Yesterday I was in Paris for a day - 3am get up and a 9pm return, but just about do-able at a push. Bloody freezing it was too, but lovely nonetheless to visit the scene of many youthful crimes committed by me and the other university friends I was there with.

Every time I go there I forget that bit more: I had to catch a cab from the Gare du Nord to Opera, for instance, whereas I'd have enjoyed the familiar walk a few years back. Even from the cab the streets looked different, and emerged from each other at angles I wasn't expecting. So much for the logic of Hausmann's town planning, thought I, despite the resultant elegance.

But what a vision that guy must have had. Having spent the last year working on my Dubai client, whose passions for creating radical new islands and cities are world-(in)famous (see above pictures of the building of Palm Jebel Ali and the rebuildng of Paris), I've witnessed at first hand the effort that goes into restructuring communities.

Admittedly, my client has famously had GPS guided assistance in their endeavours, but the aim of both Hausmann and HH Sheikh Mohammed was similar: to re-create a city so that it's fit for the time that it has to serve - with all the attendant infra-structural challenges.

Is it time for London to be radically restructured?

Death of creative

2008-12-03T20:56:00.005Z

True creative is no longer an option for branded advertising.

Stuff that makes you go 'wow, that's really arresting. I want some'.

There are too many restrictions. Too much lily-livered law.

We either go unbranded or we leave it to others.

Or we make more drumming Gorillas - and that takes a huge leap of faith.

So most brands just join the dull bandwagon and continue to carp on about stuff that's safe but ultimately goes unnoticed. No-one ever got sacked, but no-one got promoted either.

Information is everywhere - it's the brand's job to pull reassuringly disparate voices together.

Content is cheap, but the trick is to find the right content that works on your behalf.

Creativity is now about editing, sourcing this content (viz. the incipient rise of media agencies), and facilitating ... inspiring those beyond the rule of law be creative for you.

Or just being plain silly (see last post).

Just some very initial thoughts.

I have no conclusion yet.

Stuff that really doesn't matter

2008-12-02T13:33:00.003Z

So I read today on BBC news that Britney Spears gets more web searches than Obama. And, normally, if you look down the 'most emailed' and 'most read' lists on the same site, there is a rather large number of these articles about stuff that really doesn't matter or doesn't matter that much - snow in Yorkshire, and some utter toss related to X-Factor.

My mother has long enjoyed the phrase: nothing matters much, and in the end, nothing matters at all.

Jonathan Spooner, a former colleague and creative mind of some note, spoke frequently of his need for 'a holiday from the self'. Or a good excuse to enjoy an alternate reality, which he did frequently with great success.

It has long been noted that FT-reading city boys, however many are now left, take to reading a copy of The Sun within the shelter of the former's pink pages.

And so, it would seem, that we have a desire for silliness - and that the web is a great breeding ground for silliness.

My question, or point of current pondering, is how a planner - the supposed doyen of logic within a creative agency - should write strategies and creative briefs that allow for silliness to flourish.

Because if we don't, we're missing a trick.

Strength of feeling

2008-11-28T15:40:00.003Z

I confess to reading the Metro paper on a worryingly regular basis. There's no real journalism going on there - it's a 'straight from the wires' approach at best - but just occasionally it imparts something of use.

And that thing of use, today, was a reminder that it's the time of year when The World's Strongest Man competition returns to our televisions.

Brilliant, thought I, another opportunity (along with Eastenders, to which I'm peculiarly addicted) to stare blankly at the screen and turn my brain to standby. But, this being a more digital world than it was last year, I wondered what the website would look like. Lots of opportunity here, thought I again, to do something quite fun and creative.

I didn't get past the search results.

Quite simply because I was intrigued that the 'world's strongest man' was eclipsed in terms of number of search results (as you'll see above) by 'world's strongest dog'. Even 'world's strongest redneck' wasn't far behind.

Can anyone tell me why there are so many results for 'world's strongest dog'?

Shibboleths

2008-11-26T13:29:00.002Z

Malcolm Gladwell's lecture on Monday night about culture - and how it can define our behaviours to the point of irrationality - has made me think about shibboleths.

Shibboleths are the practices that identify us as being of a particular background, and the word itself is a kind of discriminator between those who know what it means, and those who don't.

Walking past the golden arches on Tottenham Court Road a few moments ago, it occurred to me that I've never seen anyone in our agency eat a McDonalds for lunch. This is something that people in our profession, location and mindset just don't do.

A shibboleth in absentia, as it were.

Just to prove a point

2008-11-23T22:26:00.002Z

So this is If Wen

Digital done beautifully

2008-11-22T10:07:00.004Z

Trawling through Facebook this Saturday morning (ok, not the way I expected my life to pan out) I came across a band called Revere. The keyboard player is one Nick Hirst, with whom I briefly used to work.

Their music is stunning - and the above video truly original and beautiful.

They have massive following on MySpace, YouTube, Facebook and all the usual social networking sites. You can become fans, friends, comment on their work, link to iTunes and buy their singles, see photos, videos and reviews of their gigs ... in short, their digital presence is incredibly well thought out.

What makes it great? Well, I've spent the last hour discovering things about them in lots of different places, from lots of different points of view. I know now that they're pretty well respected by professional and amateur musos alike. I've got to know their backstory in a short space of time, I've noted the date of their next gig - and it's so far resulted in my buying their EPs and thoroughly enjoying them.

From zero to sales conversion in 60 minutes, to put it clinically.

And now I'm blogging about them - so technically I'm now an advocate, to use yet more nasty marketing terms.

Nothing - apart from the cost of producing the music itself - would have cost them any money, I'm guessing. What they've done is reach out to people they know, make it easy for people to discover and link back to them, and - hey presto - with a good product, the network grows and facilitates its further growth.

And I have an enjoyable Saturday morning's exploration as a result.

I know this is the sort of stuff we recommend to our clients on a regular basis, but most of them never bloody do it so it's a pleasure to see it working so well.

It's not only cream that floats to the top

2008-11-21T16:06:00.008Z

If you look at the above screengrab, you'll see that there's a little green arrow next to 'Bullshit'. This is because it used to be below 'Horse Shit' when I initially searched for 'horse shit', but thanks to the good burghers of Googleville I can now promote certain items in my search engine results so that they'll always rise to the top should I wish to search for them again using that search term.

A number of people at the agency today reckon this is pretty cool, with comparisons being made to Digg and other customisable search/sort/save tools. The commentators at the BBC, on the other hand, reckon it's only going to appeal to seasoned surfers who have got more than a touch of binary OCD.

Personally, I reckon I'll use it very occasionally if something I looked for wasn't on the first page - and assuming I have sufficient forward-thoughtfulness to realise I may wish to find it again. Especially if my browser toolbar is o'erflowing with bookmarks or I can't be arsed to tag something to del.icio.us. And assuming I'm likely to remember the same search terms.

Thing is, despite working for a digital agency, I just can't get that excited about it. Sure, it's a nice extra and possibly based on a valid insight into how a very few people currently use search, but the vast majority of people really won't give a stuff.

I doubt my sister will. I know my mother won't. Most of my old schoolfriends who gave London life the bodyswerve to have kids at an early age a few metres from where they themselves grew up - well they probably won't either.

And there's quite a few of them. Loads, in fact.

So although it may well get a small coterie of tech-obsessed weirdy-beardies foaming at the whatnot, we'd do well to put it in perspective.

By demagoguery I mean ... Ochlocracy

2008-11-20T10:19:00.006Z

The Ever-Splendid-Silvia brought this sketch to my attention a few years back and it continues to be a favourite of mine. Fry is at his very best, wielding language to devastatingly hilarious effect.

There's one bit where Laurie questions Fry, saying: 'By demagoguery you mean...?' to which Fry replies: 'By demagoguery I mean ... demagoguery'.

You have to see it to appreciate it.

But what a terribly splendid word it is, and it's also closely related to another Greek word 'ochlocracy' - meaning a form of ruling by the masses, the power of passion over reason, a form of mob rule.

And it just struck me that, on reading the BBC news front page today, this is what John Sergeant was trying to avoid by quitting Strictly. And these are the flames that The Sun is fanning by erecting a headstone for 'Baby P' in the crematorium. And the same reason that mothers in Portsmouth threw bricks through the windows of paediatricians thinking they were paedophiles a few years back.

Not to mention that Diana woman.

But I suppose that because both these words come from Greek, and a long time ago at that, we're not exactly looking at a new phenomenon.

You don't write, you don't call...

2008-11-19T16:26:00.003Z

See the last date of this 'Tweet'? It's the 5th of November.

That's a fortnight ago.

If you go to Obama's Twitter page you'll read that the President-Elect has decided to use Twitter to update you on news and stuff from the White House.

Only ... he's kind of forgotten to do that now he's won.

Hmm. Should we feel used? Has he stopped caring? He certainly used social media in a phenomenal way to get elected, but in my opinion, this is when things get interesting.

Which probably explains why he's stopped posting any thoughts.

Nothing to get in a flap about

2008-11-19T16:01:00.004Z

According to Wired Magazine this month, blogging is dead and long live Twitter. Apparently, bloggers can no longer penetrate the armies of professional writers clogging up blogosphere to make their points heard.

Of course, this presupposes that the sole intent of bloggers is to be heard by the many rather than the select few, but - in order to work out how these two communications tools - I did a little desktop research...

What I found - using the approach I'm assuming that Wired used of seeing what floats to the top of Google - was that Twitter results have been dominated by the Obama campaign (second result - and a feat in itself). Then, aside from the regulation Wiki entry and branded Twitter site, there was a new article about a group of mums who were ranting about a new painkiller ad on TV.

I followed the links through to the 'tweets' and found that the majority of them posted a URL in the tweet itself. So Twitter was being used the tip of the iceberg - a way of flagging up a brief thought that links to a longer piece.

I wondered whether people did likewise for things more mundane and found that, sure enough, people were using Twitter to link to blogs and news articles about Vauxhall Astras too.

Yikes.

Could it be that blogging is, in fact, not dead but in fact has a new form of publicity?

Opting for the backwaters

2008-11-13T16:40:00.002Z

I hate these sunglasses.

They're bling, they're brash, and they scream the brand at you. In Essex, Estonia and beyond, they are beloved of people trying to prove that they're hip or wealthy (or both), and in some onlookers' eyes I suppose they must succeed. They're a shortcut to a desired success signal - I've made it, and just in case you don't believe me I'm going to shout about it.

Many of my clients are keen on getting their logo and brand livery up front in everything they do, say or create - just in case anyone misses them and their efforts 'go to waste'.

But this is, in my opinion, wrong-headed.

There's far more merit in being in the subtle backwaters. There's nothing more flattering than when someone compliments you on an item of clothing and asks where it's from. The quality shines through, and allows you and the brand to bask in the reflected glory of a good choice.

Put your brand paraphernalia to one side, focus on doing genuinely useful stuff, and your rewards will be that much greater.

Punch in the face

2008-11-12T13:26:00.003Z

I can't remember how the quotation goes exactly, but it's something like: if people spoke to each other the way that advertising speaks to them, they'd punch each other in the face.

Well, I nearly punched this VW digital offering in the virtual face: www.vwinnovatie.nl/en

The concept is simple enough - helping people to get to grips with the VW's new features by inviting them to guide a hapless video character through his various driving predicaments and apply the relevant feature.

Initially, I quite liked it. But they ran out of juice very quickly ...

I don't really need to be congratulated for selecting 'parking assist' when he's having trouble parking, or 'satnav' when he can't find where he's going. They're pretty bloody obvious.

And then ... AND THEN ... to be told at the end that I 'truly am as clever as a Volkswagen' made me want to poke whichever bastard copywriter who wrote this right in the middle of the eye.

I own a Volkswagen - admittedly an aged one that's growing mould on the passenger footwell and has developed a mysterious dent in the tailgate - but it put me right off the brand.

For a moment.

And then I remembered that it's only advertising and so felt immediately well again.

In praise of a photo blog

2008-11-11T13:30:00.004Z

Maybe it's because I like photography, maybe it's because I like talking tripe about marketing, or maybe it's because I'm a Londoner ... that I really like this piece of marketing from Samsung, thanks to it being discussed in the pub last night by Next-Door-Kate.

This site - www.thephotographicadventuresofnickturpin.com - is a collection of (ultimately) 28 photos, one per day, that street photographer Nick Turpin is taking with the Samsung Pixon camera phone. The twist is that, each day, visitors to the site can click on the bit of the photo that they'd like to be the subject of the following day's photo - and then Nick has to travel to the place in the world he reckons he'll be able to find that subject matter.

There are many reasons why I like this site, but here are my top 5:

- It stars the product itself, which is a pretty good demo;

- It's a neat idea that has a set time span and so should remain fresh;

- Nick seems genuinely interested in this project (it doesn't feel too staged);

- It taps into an emotional interest in an art form that will, in turn, genuinely appeal to the right kind of audience;

- It got Kate talking about it in the pub last night, and me blogging about it now.

To take this further, I know from my clever statistical machine that my blog gets around 20 hits a day. Sometimes even reaching the dizzy heights of 40. So there's a pretty good example of 'word of mouth' / 'word of mouse' / digital brand advocacy at work. In addition to the traffic on the site itself. And for free.

OK, so you'd need to extrapolate these numbers to make any real difference, but it's not beyond the realms of imagination that this could be a talking point among other people.

Nice one Samsung, and whichever agency did it.

On puns...

2008-11-10T15:33:00.003Z

As a planner, I'm well aware that 50% of my time is spent genuinely planning for the future. Coming up with a strategy that will, in some form, and with various colours and strings of words, then be implemented and hit the desired spot.

Then there's the other 50% of the time that is spent coming up with a retrospective set of reasons that justifies an idea that's come out of the blue, but kind of feels right.

But occasionally, as the avian marketing example above shows, it's unlikely that my humble strategic endeavours - in either chronological direction - could ever help a piece of marketing 'snap to' a strategy.

But I love it nonetheless. A duck bearing a pun in a clothes shop in Chiswick, pointing you in its own inimitably beaky way towards a website.

Words from the real world

2008-11-06T10:50:00.003Z

One of the words of the moment in marketing is 'engagement'. Specifically, 'consumer engagement'. What companies mean is that they want to get people to like them, to talk to them, to do things for them - oh, and to keep buying their products.

But it's a word that annoys me. For all our talk of understanding people, of one-to-one communication, too much chat is still around 'how do we engage people'.

Sure, at a very high level, before we've worked out what people might possibly be interested in if we were to approach them in some way, I reckon you can just about get away with using it. But when you see the word in consumer-facing sites like the new Cadbury's Corporate Social Responsibility (SCR) website, pictured above, it smacks of copy that's been written by a bloke in a suit in a lofty office with no real idea of how people talk to each other.

'We've always been a company people engage with, and that engages with people.'

What the fuck?

I don't engage my friends: I talk to them, call them, listen to them, buy them drinks, laugh with them, at them, or smile grudgingly while they laugh at me.

Please, Cadbury, I can see what you're trying to do, but - for me at least - what promises so much in its name ('Dear Cadbury') and uses a host of pretty colours (despite questionable site architecture), lets itself down in how it actually conducts itself.

The world is just a great big, er, archive

2008-11-04T14:43:00.004Z

Now I don't want to sound like a designer from IKEA, but storing things in an effective manner is surely important. Google may tell us that the world is now about searching rather than sorting, but things have to sit somewhere.

Where they end up sitting can tell us something notable about who's doing the storing.

For instance, I wasn't going to write today's blog entry about this ostensibly rather tawdry subject, but I was struck when looking on Google Images for a piece of advertising by BP that at least half of the results showed images that came from people's blogs. See today's picture for a little bit of evidence.

My hypothesis is that the individuals who are now documenting the goings on around the world - verbally and visually - are collectively providing us with one of the richest archives. And doing so possibly better than any one single professional archivist.

Our blogging and search tools have turned us into a giant library. And it just might be a rather useful one.

Ideas worth naming pubs after

2008-11-03T16:40:00.003Z

Back from the Sandy Country, and going to work at our new office premises today. Now we're in the same building as Saatchi and Saatchi, and there's a pub in the central quadrangle called 'The Pregnant Man' in memory of one of Saatchi's most memorable ads.

A brilliantly simple idea based on a powerful insight - and quite frankly a benchmark that so few pieces of advertising, marketing, communication - call it what you will - actually hit these days*. We're getting too obsessed with the medium, the technology and the speed of turnaround to come up with ideas that continue to resonate years down the line.

I'm hoping that the new location, the heritage, the shiny new desks and White Company liquid soap in the wash basins will spur us into coming up with ideas that, in years to come, will be worth naming pubs after.

*Thereby rendering me an old git.

Piece of cake

2008-10-30T05:28:00.002Z

One of my favourite jokes is: 'How do you get a fat girl into bed? Piece of cake...'.

Cake turned out to be a funny thing once again during our dining escapades in Dubai. We discovered that if you book a table and say that it's somebody's birthday, then you get a free cake for pudding.

I've now celebrated 3 birthdays in just under 2 weeks. I should now be 35 years old. Aside from the embarrassment of having the staff sing to you, it's a very cheap way of getting a dessert.

Gods at odds

2008-10-28T10:58:00.008Z

Re-reading some of Richard Dawkins' tomes on the subject of the rank outside chance of there being a higher being, and stumbled across a clever little logic rhyme that shows the Big Beardy Man to be rather at odds with himself:

Can omniscient God, who

Knows the future, find

The omnipotence to

Change His future mind?

(Karen Owens)

So if you're big, clever (and beardy) enough to know what's going to happen in the future, that's one thing. But if you're powerful enough to change anything you want, then how about changing the future? But if you're able to change it, can you really claim that you know it as you would know a fixed thing - or is omniscience only about the here and now?

Anyway, possibly a dodgy choice of literature out here, where the phrase 'insha'Allah' (if God wills it) seems a rather too convenient excuse to try and alter your own destiny - or at least a rather too frequently used excuse for the omnipresent traffic problems and one's own associated and projected tardiness to meetings.

And speaking about knowing the future and not being able to affect it, I'm going to try and squeeze in my first ever skiing lesson at the above indoor slope on Thursday. Once I'm in motion, my biggest fear is not being able to stop. So on seeing a tree, a slalom post, or in this case probably a shop selling bling stuff, I'd simply cruise towards an inevitable and painful interface.

A day on the Palm Jumeirah

2008-10-25T15:36:00.006+01:00

This is a 30 ft waterslide from the top of a ziggurat, off which I threw myself today following nearly an hour's queuing.

An hour of nervous anticipation, followed by 2 seconds of weightlessness, 3 seconds of fear that my contact lenses would be washed out, followed by sweet relief and joining another queue for the 'Shark Attack' flume.

This second flume takes you through a shark tank and you get to 'swim with the fishes'. Sounds pretty cool ... only problem being that the sharks are tiny, there's loads of reflections, and it doesn't last very long.

Aquaventure, the collective brand name for all these micro-experiences, probably only gets 4/10 in my book - a real shame, as the potential's all there.

Inside Atlantis is a massive fish tank, home to 'Sammy the Whale Shark'. There's a Facebook petition to have him released back into the wild, and you can sympathise with that, but I tell you - this fish tank is quite a spectacle.

And this is the Atlantis hotel itself. Thousands of bedrooms, including two underwater suites.

Wow.

Atlantis is situated at the end of the Palm Jumeirah, the first manmade Palm island in the world - and the first of three in Dubai. This is the little one, and will only be home to around 400,000 people. This is the view towards Atlantis as you drive up the central trunk of the Palm, next to the monorail which is just being finished off. Pretty futuristic stuff...

The Divide

2008-10-25T08:27:00.002+01:00

Yesterday - Friday - is the Dubai equivalent of Saturday, and the expat community here has stumbled on the phenomenon of 'brunch' as an afternoon-long activity which involves limitless champagne. We went to Yalumba, which was where the infamous 'Sex on the beach' case kicked off.

I kid you not, for the three or four hours we were there, if our glasses were even down to an inch from the top, an army of Asian waiters would descend on us and top up the Tattinger.

It's an all-you-can-eat, all-you-can-drink example of gluttony writ large. I lost count of how many glasses of fizz I had, ditto the number of oysters, prawns, lobsters, slices of rare roast beef and sashimi that were presented to me.

As the above picture shows, the result is not exactly pretty: the room is drunk by about 2pm, and it's at around this point that it struck me that there was a massive divide between the fat affluent expats and the incredibly dutiful - mostly Indian - waiting staff.

Thankfully I didn't witness any flagrant displays of rudeness directed towards them on this occasion, but they are so good at looking after you that you can see how forms of racism can be almost institutionalised. Just the expectation that someone will pick up your napkin, pour your drink, do this, do that - it's not good. Too many hints of a nascent apartheid.

But it's what Dubai is built on - a massive underclass of underpaid Asian workers who work 24/7 building the hotels for expats to get pissed in.

It's not something I like about this place.

The things we actually remember

2008-10-23T09:08:00.003+01:00

Steven, Nick (pictured left) and I went to a rather swanky steak restaurant last night. A far cry from the green velour banquettes of Aberdeen Angus fame, this place was opulently designed and the steaks themselves were drool-inducing. Even now.

But I'll remember it most for the HUGE PEPPER GRINDERS.

You couldn't nick one of these if you tried. And believe me we came up with some rather unsavoury liberation strategies.

It made me wonder if some marketing genius deliberately came up with the idea that, in a city that's increasingly resplendent with high-end looky-likey restaurants, this one needs an easy way of remembering it.

A single object. A single thought. A single trigger. A 'shall we go to that steak restaurant that has the fucking great pepper grinders again tonight, dear?' type idea.

Or maybe it was just chance. In which case I'm going to nick the thought (in the absence of the grinder itself) and use it as my own.

Bring me something that's not obvious

2008-10-21T16:45:00.004+01:00

So I'm out in Dubai on a fact-finding mission. Learning about man-made islands the size of Paris that have been built on the coast of the country in the searing heat. The largest ones ever built. Together they'll practically treble the population of this tiny Gulf Emirate in the next seven years.

Jeeeeeesus. Or, indeed, Allah.

I have to drive past the world's tallest tower to get to my client's offices.

Then past the world's only 7-star hotel (ok, it's self-awarded).

Then past a socking great indoor ski-slope, boasting some species of dangerous run. Probably also a world first.

But today's most noticeable thing was the crowning glory of the Palm Jebel Ali island: a 'mini' island at the top of it in the shape of a big whale (see above picture).

It's like something out of Vic and Bob, or the Mighty Boosh.

An island in the shape of a whale. Yikes.

I'm not sure whether or not this eclipsed a series of mini pontoon islands around the edge of the same Palm island which, when viewed from the cruising height of a Boeing 747, together form stanzas from one of the Sheikh's own poems.

But what I do know is that I'm craving something subtle and worth pointing out. It's all so damn bling and obvious here that there's nothing really worth pointing out.

Out with the old

2008-10-17T16:38:00.003+01:00

No picture today, as I need to be a bit circumspect.

This morning I went to meet one of the directors of a well established UK brand. It's been a bastion of the maritime transport industry for centuries, and the oil paintings, which you cannot fail to miss when you emerge from the office lift, scream history and heritage at you.

The reason we met with this gentleman was that his company has been bought by a massive Middle East construction operation, for whom we do a sizeable amount of digital work, and by whom his company and brand is about to be subsumed.

We're tasked with managing the digital subsumption (is that a word?) project.

There was one very touching moment when I asked, gently, if I'd be right in thinking that his colleagues would be sad at this history being erased from their plot of cyberspace. His expression and the timbre of his voice immediately told me three things:

1. Yes, this was a sore point, and a genuinely emotional moment in their history;

2. We had established a connection - I was no longer solely on the side of the bastard subsumer (again, no idea of this word exists);

3. I knew now exactly how to approach the brief.

By contrast to the perfunctory introductory handshake, I received a warm and heartfelt farewell.

Not worth shouting about?

2008-10-16T14:43:00.004+01:00

Eversholt Street NW1, where our agency's based in the old ticket office behind Euston Station, doesn't exude much life. As this photo shows, it's grey, grubby and full of shut-down shops, concrete walls and bits of barbed wire.

Reminiscent of East Berlin.

As I wandered around today - perhaps for the last time before our agency moves to the glitzy Charlotte Street and as I head off to Dubai for a while - it struck me that while this area looks devoid of life or interest, this isn't really the case. There's plenty going on.

It's just that it's not deemed something to shout about.

At least two brothels, a gender-change clinic, porn shops, betting shops, a strip club, funeral directors ... none of these particularly big on window-dressing, but nonetheless managing to stay afloat while other shops close down and graveyard pubs change hands.

I wonder what the street would look like if it were given the same visual treatment as Charlotte Street.

The importance of your Praise-giver

2008-10-15T10:13:00.000+01:00

Yesterday my mother said she enjoyed this blog. It's always heartwarming to receive compliments (there's a fine art to accepting them, although that's another story), especially from someone important in your life.

Talking later with Next Door Kate, she said that she remembers very well the first time her mother said she was proud of her, and how happy it made her feel. It was many years ago, but the sensation remains with her.

My former sailing partner and current mentor, Tony the Italian, noticed the importance of this while he was completing his course in counselling. And now, many of the people who seek his counselling services - he believes - have been denied praise from the most important person in their life. They're in a bit of a mess because this particular parent or hero has failed to acknowledge their achievement - no matter how many other people may give praise.

Tony is using his current degree to explore this hypothesis, and I'm looking forward to hearing his conclusions.

Hardy, on the art of noticing things

2008-10-14T15:57:00.000+01:00

When the Present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay,
And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings,
Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the neighbours say,
'He was a man who used to notice such things'?

- Thomas Hardy

(Thanks Mum).

Making the most of the real world

2008-10-14T12:19:00.001+01:00

These are just a few of the cameras that I saw swirling round above Euston station as I went to M&S for a terribly healthy bean-based salad. I watched them, they watched me, and we were for a fleeting few seconds blissfully aware of each other.

I'd never noticed them before. Indeed, since succumbing to the blogging bug I've noticed a lot more things. I feel far more aware - partly, no doubt, because I've made a little pact with myself that I'm going to create and broadcast something on a regular basis. I now make time to 'look around me' and capture moments.

So a relationship I ostensibly have with my screen and keyboard has made me appreciate real-life stuff more acutely.

My most splendid friend Silvia, a writer and observer of some considerable merit, told me of a similar experience when she kept a journal. She awoke one morning to hear a cracking sound and, after a while trying to fathom what it was, discovered it was the daffodil on her windowsill casting aside its papery husk to reveal a new yellow flower.

Whimsical, but kinda beautiful. And amazing what you notice when you're on sensory alert.

The view from another infrastructure

2008-10-13T12:40:00.000+01:00

I usually drive to work and am used to seeing London from the road. I look through my windscreen at the roofs of London from the elevated Westway, the ground floor exterior of roadside buildings through my passenger window, and* scores of kamikaze motorcyclists in my rear view mirror.

Pretty much the same view, everyday.

But yesterday, Next Door Kate and I cycled a mammoth 50km (sounds better than 31 miles) around the canal network of West London.

And we saw London from a totally different perspective.

We witnessed dozens of Eastern European workers relaxing with their friends and their fishing rods; we saw people living an almost bucolic existence next to water in the middle of the city; we admired Goldfinger's Trellick Tower from beneath it (as opposed to in the distance from the aforementioned elevated section of the Westway), we smelt the food aromas from Hoo Hing Chinese wholesaler from an aquaduct over the North Circular, and we even chanced upon a girl sitting doing her knitting between a gigantic gas storage structure and a quaint looking canal boat.

We saw stuff from the perspective of a totally different transport infrastructure, and it's very different from roadside existence.

(* Please note the usage of the Oxford Comma.)

Waxing lyrical

2008-10-10T10:56:00.000+01:00

Last night played host to a DraftFCB reunion at the Lamb and Flag in Covent Garden (beautiful olde worlde pub, although the Harvey's Best was off and the Adnams ... er ... questionable).

Spoke with Dom, copywriter and now doyen of the car waxing industry, having discovered the balls to set up 'Dodo Juice' - a funky independent enthusiasts' car care brand.

In his role as CEO, MD, FD, bottle-washer and chief marketer, he has to answer to no-one but his staff, and so pushing through marketing decisions is - by contrast to the job of most agencies - a piece of proverbial piss.

So it was with great ease that he called one of his new buffing mitts 'Mint Merkin'. No research needed because he's so familiar with his Max Power loving audiences that his work is also his hobby. Result? The name is an instant hit: well differentiated, buckets of attitude, and has garnered the eagle-eye interest of some larger, more established brands in the hot-rod polishing market.

Research is so often a waste of time. If it feels right, we should have the balls to JFDI more often. I've been in enough focus groups where my role demanded nothing more than the 'moderating of consensus'*.

Which is utterly bloody pointless.

* OK Dargan, I'll credit you with that one...

The Tramp Ladder

2008-10-09T18:13:00.000+01:00

I'm afraid I didn't capture the moment photographically in this case, but yesterday lunchtime I saw an exemplary instance of street-dweller fraternity: taking a well-earned few moments out from shouting at shadows and swigging Buckfast, one half of a trampish pair reached over to the other and blew his nose for him.

I've never done this for anyone.

Dargan's Tramp Displacement Theorem has for some time held as its postulate, in a Pythonesque way, that a hobo from Plaistow would be looked down upon by a Highgate vagrant. Each has his distinct manor, and each knows his place.

One may, therefore, only indulge in an upwardly social scramble when a can of Tennants bearing an RIP sign is in evidence.

I am led to assume that this extraordinary act of nasal-seepage removal is actually the indication of a passing tramp king.

Restricted Joy

2008-10-09T09:34:00.001+01:00

I discussed with my mother last weekend the topic of licensed opening hours. She opined that it was madness for drink to be available on trains first thing in the morning. I opined that if people wished to drink at that time then it was their choice, and why should anyone restrict them?

Drink-fuelled train-rage continues, after all, to be rare.

But this website - Hotel626 - reminded me of the joy of being told: 'no, you can't have what you want right now. You'll have to wait'.

I still don't really know what's on the inside of this site, as Gabby-From-Creative only told me about it this morning, but I enjoyed what is probably an advertiser telling me that I can't do something.

I therefore wanted to do it.

A refreshing change from the irksome 'why not do X Y or Z?' approach to marketing.

I've got a thousand reasons why not, that's why.

So maybe mother does know best: restriction can be good for us.

Mail goggles!

2008-10-08T12:58:00.001+01:00

At last! A service for inappropriate drunken messages. Gmail users can opt to take a simple maths test before sending a late night email to their boss / lover / ex-lover / etc.

Expect to see this sent to an inbox near you soon. Probably many times.

The Power of Relevance

2008-10-08T12:28:00.000+01:00

I have no idea who Dagens Industri are, and I don't speak whichever weird-assed language this is, but I love the timeliness of this ad.

Sadly, according to one of today's BBC postings, many 'fat cat' bankers may well keep their jobs, undeservedly, as the government moves to stop the financial infrastructure on which we all depend from going under.

The gin meme

2008-10-07T12:40:00.000+01:00

This poster is doing the rounds at the agency at the moment. In both physical, tangible form as well as on the web. One of our designers made it. The mere mention of the juniper spirit and the notion of 'gin eye' (i.e. looking splendidly, paralytically bog-eyed) are enough to have a good half-dozen people collapse in laughter in the room next to mine.

It's a constant topic of conversation. Bottles adorn the creative department.

It makes me laugh as well.

It's one of those things (what is it: a catchphrase? a state? a 'meme'?) that captures the imagination, is rooted in good observation, sparks hilarity and is probably what social commentators would call 'social currency'.

More please.

The 'Law of Thirds'

2008-10-07T10:34:00.001+01:00

I uploaded my Morocco holiday photos to Facebook last night, and my neighbour Kate reckoned this was the best of the bunch.

As a creative-type, she regularly admonishes me for too many snaps that put things in the centre and instead taught me the law 'doing things in thirds' in photos.

All part of my training in become more visual and less word-based - which I reckon is increasingly important for planners in the digital marketing industry.

Kick off

2008-10-07T10:23:00.000+01:00

I've finally succumbed to the temptations of blogdom. After months of working out what would ever motivate me to keep it up - and why anyone would bother reading it - I reached an epiphany.

Possibly too grand a word to use in this case, but it arose from a question I asked myself in preparation for a meeting later today: what have I noticed today that's remained with me for a while - and for whatever reason?

So 'I noticed this' is born.

It'd be rewarding to think that something grabs me occasionally - and if it grabs me then maybe it'll grab you. Doesn't matter why, and I'm not (always) going to pontificate on how.

But I need some rules. Keep it minimal. Keep it visual. Don't be a slave to it every day, but twice a day is also ok. Only post stuff that genuinely grabs my attention. Don't be another 'me too' commentator on advertising wank. Don't nick other ideas just to look cool.

So I'm just going to post stuff that I notice.

Hope you like.