If I had a pound for every time a client asked “Are we emailing our customers too much?” I would be a very rich man.  However, if I had a pound for every time a client asked if we were sending too much direct mail or are we broadcasting our TV or radio adverts too much then my bank balance would be no different.

Did the marketing team behind the infuriatingly more-ish Go Compare campaign debate whether their adverts were being shown too much during peak times?  I very much doubt it.  On New Years’ Eve 2008 did Pepsi worry that they were going a little over the top when they launched their new logo with a week-long ‘promotional extravaganza’ in Times Square.  Of course they didn’t.  So why do email marketers continually question their strategy when it comes to frequency and volume?

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Sometimes the best ideas are done down the pub scribbled on the back of a fag packet. Or at least that’s what I was told when I started in this business. Who would have thought that someone would take that idea and turn it into a lucrative business… well that’s just what Hugh MacLeod did back in 1997.

When he first arrived in Manhattan to undertake a 2 week freelance Copywriting gig he had no friends and spending an evening back at the YMCA where he was staying did not appeal. So he basically sat in bars doodling on the backs of business cards just to give himself something to do.

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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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Monday at the Red C began like any other. Employees were pulling themselves into the office for yet another busy week, priority for most of course being a beverage before the start of their working day.

This particular morning was different though. The kitchen was brimming with a variety of delicious cakes that staff at Red C had spent their weekend baking. This change in morning ritual came about in support of ‘Time for a Cuppa’, an event that raises awareness for those affected by dementia which was organised by ‘for dementia’.

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Shirley - Bottle blonde and proud of it

Shirley Polykoff is a legendary advertising personality whose copy revolutionised both the fortunes of Clairol and the lives of women in 1950s America.

A ballsy girl from Brooklyn, Shirley battled her way up the ranks at Foote, Cone & Belding agency from the position of junior copywriter to vice president and creative director, to finally, inductee of the Advertising Hall of Fame. On her way up, this flamboyant and brilliant woman gained a reputation as ‘a dynamo in selling and advertising’, with her copy for Clairol hair dye famous not only for its explosive cultural and commercial impact but also for persuading David Hockney to go blonde.

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As marketers we are used to marketing products or services to create sales (i.e. profit-making) Public Sector Marketing is about Social Marketing and public engagement (i.e.non-profit), bringing about specific behavioural goals relevant to the public good and, as such, needs a different and more longer term approach and way of measuring. The Department of Health’s Change for Life campaign is a good example of this.

Public Sector marketing started life during the Second World War and helped get important messages out to the masses. While that objective hasn’t changed essentially; we probably all remember the flyers that went out to every single household in the country after the July 7^th bombings telling us all to be vigilant and how to spot a terrorist; or the recent national swine flu campaign; the type of messages and the ways they are delivered have changed substantially as channels have proliferated and audiences fragmented over the years, to a lot of campaigns now being delivered via digital and social media methods.

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When I looked at this We Like section of our website, I was surprised to see that no one in the agency had written an article about what is, in my opinion, one of the greatest films ever made. Therefore, I’ve decided to give Avatar the Red C recognition it deserves…

Avatar has completely dominated the box office over the last couple of months and has now officially become the highest-grossing film of all time, making more than £1.15bn in ticket sales around the world. The only film to even come close to this figure is Titanic – also directed by James Cameron. For the minority who haven’t seen this sci-fi epic, Avatar is about humanity’s quest to export a valuable mineral from the distant moon Pandora – and threatening the existence of the Na’vi race in the process. The humans have to create a relationship with the natives and learn about their environment in order to persuade them to move habitat, and leave their valuable resources to them, so they grow Na’vi-human hybrids called avatars, controlled by genetically matched, mentally-linked humans. A soldier who controls an avatar then falls in love with the Na’vi princess – and it’s your typical Hollywood love story!

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Marketing is not a nostalgic business. With the constant emergence of new technologies, advertisers need to keep bang up to date to avoid being left behind. Just think back a year. At the beginning of 2009, Twitter was still a relatively niche social network, Spotify wasn’t yet available to the general public and search engine Bing didn’t even exist. One year on and all these technologies may be fundamental to creating a successful advertising campaign.

So what’s next? What will the ‘big thing’ of 2010 be? Well, I’m not going to try and predict that, but I will tell you what will make the next ‘big thing’ happen – and that’s the Ubiquitous Network. In fact, I’m confident it’ll change the future of advertising and marketing forever…

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A couple of months ago, I booked a weekend break with cottages4you – one of the UK’s leading holiday property companies and, incidentally, one of my favourite Red C clients (because they let me write copy like this). Just before I was due to go away, it was suggested  that I write an account of my holiday cottage experience and post it here on this website. Naturally, I started to panic. What if it was a holiday from hell? What if I turned up to find a glorified tool shed decorated throughout with kitten vomit? Luckily for me, I needn’t have worried. Everything about the place was just about perfect… Read more…