Advertising agency self-promotion is a wily old beast. Being given carte blanche for a piece of new business dm may seem like a creatives’ dream, but anyone who’s ever had a crack at the perennial Christmas card brief knows that in order to give your agency standout, whatever you come up, no matter how pretty, needs to have some really solid thinking behind it.

And in our case, an injection of something a little bit weirder.

Of course, when I said ‘carte blanche’ I actually was referring to the new double-dip recession version which can be defined roughly as thus: ‘Do what you like, but don’t take the mick’. Fair enough. Blowing the cash for our Christmas party six months before the event wasn’t going to make us popular anyway, so the wooing of potential clients with a personalised Tom-Jones-a-gram was (sadly) out of the question.

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At the moment we seem to be getting more and more Olympic related advertisements as the country gears up to the London 2012. With so much money thrown behind sponsorship deals and having athletes as brand spokespeople, you’d think there would be one campaign that would impress. Yet, the campaign that has most impressed me this year has to be the marketing activity being conducted on behalf of Sir Ridley Scott’s forthcoming movie ‘Prometheus’.

Now I’ll be honest with you. I don’t have that much interest in the Olympics, and I am a big movie fan… so my views are probably biased. Yet as an ‘Ad Man’, I am genuinely in awe with what I am seeing created to raise awareness of Prometheus. Now forget about the flashy website and the teaser trailers and international trailers that come attached to any movie release… what I want to highlight are some of the cute and clever things that have been done to raise awareness of what will probably be one of the year’s biggest films.

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It’s less than a week to go until our new TV advert campaign for cottages4you and VisitEngland is launched, so we thought it would be a good opportunity to look back on everything we’ve achieved – boy has it been a whirlwind few months!

This project started over 6 months ago, when we were asked to pitch for a joint campaign with cottages4you and VisitEngland. That in itself presented quite a challenge: 2 separate clients each with a different objective. It meant we really had to put our heads to together to come up with a cracking ad that essentially met 2 briefs! We knew it would be tricky but we couldn’t wait to start.

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Back in November I attended the NatMag 100 conference at the Saatchi Gallery in London. One of the many interesting talks on the day was by the Future Foundation, who highlighted a few emerging audiences such as Media Madonnas and Digital Divas… audiences who are becoming increasingly hard to sell to thanks to the way they consume their media… essentially these people are disengaged.

It can’t have failed to escape you that over the last few years more and more consumers are becoming disengaged. Many of them sit at home watching the TV with their Smartphone by their side or their laptop or iPad on their knee surfing the web as they catch up on their favourite soaps! In fact it is common knowledge that as a result of this, these consumers are no longer saying, “persuade me and I’ll buy from you” they are saying, “entertain me and I’ll engage with you”.

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The classic advert for cigarette brand Silk Cut

About six and a half years ago I gave up smoking, having smoked for well over ten years. Giving up was one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life, and I take great pride in the fact that I did it without the help of plastic cigarettes, patches or funny-tasting gum.

To a certain extent I quite miss smoking. I used to love the chats that I had with Jim, Neil and Nick in the dingy smoking room. I used to love lighting up after a really good meal and savouring the tobacco with a coffee or Cognac. More than anything, though, I loved the advertising… that was until the Labour Party introduced the legislative bill known as the ‘Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Act 2002’.

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Fire up the Quattro

My name is Steve White.  I’ve had an accident and I’ve woken up in 1982.  Am I mad, in a coma or have I gone back in time…. or has the advertising world gone nostalgia mad!?! Well, although my wife will certainly vouch for madness.  I can confirm that the latest trend in advertising is leading me to have my very own ‘Ashes to Ashes’ moment.

It simply can’t have escaped your attention as to just how many big British retailers have gone ‘nostalgic’ with their campaigns over the last year or two.  M&S, Persil, Virgin, Hovis, Milky Way and John Lewis have all used campaigns that hark back to their past.  But why are so many brands going down this creative route?  Why are so many brands looking back and not looking forward?

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I don’t think many copywriters enter the ad industry believing they’re going to be paid millions, never mind millions every year, but in 1907 one copywriter came along demanding just that… and he got it too!

That man was Claude C. Hopkins, a legendary copywriter who worked in the early 1900s on behalf of many companies, including: Bissell Carpet Sweeper Company, Swift and Company and Dr Shoop’s Patent Medicine company.

It was only after making some very successful ads for Schlitz beer that his fortunes grew astronomically. He was 41, and was approached by the advertising agency, Lord and Thomas. He agreed to work there full-time after being offered a wage of $185,000 ­– the year was 1907 – by today’s standards that comes in at a whopping $2 million. Nice if you can get it eh?

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Saturday morning, whilst tucking into my crunchy nut cornflakes, I watched a rather interesting news piece on the BBC about how newspapers are essentially suffering from a failing business model; and are looking at new ways to raise income due to the falling numbers of people buying papers… mainly because of the Internet.

Their immediate solution is to start charging readers a subscription fee for looking at content online, an initiative that is being championed by Rupert Murdoch, and admit that one day, newspapers will no longer be around.

As an ‘Ad Man’, I find something incredibly sad about the migration of newspapers away from traditional print and on to online. Especially as it seems very real that one day newspapers will no longer exist… especially with the rise of e-readers… meaning we could one day say farewell to the beautiful art-form that is the ‘long-copy advert’, which these days is a rare beast, but when it appears it’s a compelling and persuasive one.

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How do you change the behaviour of an audience that is quite literally stuck in their ways? An audience that has got to the age where telling them what they can and cannot do, will only result in the failure of the marketing message.

That’s the task we at Red C faced when Manchester’s NHS Primary Care Trust came to us with regards promoting responsible drinking to the ‘Over 50s’. At the time of briefing there were wide reports of what were known as ‘Saga Louts’, with Alcohol Concern reporting that more than one million over 65 year olds exceed recommended alcohol limits – a 75 per cent rise in women and a 31 per cent rise in men since the early 1990s.

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