So imagine this. You’ve been tasked by a major TV Network to promote an animated series with a guerrilla marketing campaign. Your idea is a winner, and involves you sending some electronic devices (that resemble a character from the Aqua Teen Hunger Force) to several major cities so that some hired help can place them in places that have a high footfall.

Then you wake up on the morning of day one of your campaign to hear that a member of the public has spotted one of your devices and thought it weird enough to report it to the police. The police then call the bomb squad asking for help in identifying a device. They then shut down part of a major highway and the public transportation system while they disable what they think is a bomb with a smaller explosive filled with water.

It gets worse!

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As we all know, in any relationship, it’s the small things that matter. Yet what many people don’t realise is that it’s not only in our personal relationships that small things can have a big effect… they can also have a similar result in the relationships marketers, brands and companies have with their customers or business partners.

And why do small things matter? Well, as anyone who has ever bought a girl flowers knows; something small but effective can have a kind of result that is absolutely out of proportion to the cost.

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We’ve all got a cupboard or a drawer that we fill with random bits of junk or those items that you never throw away, just on the off chance that one day you might need them.  I was sifting through my very own cupboard of this type last weekend when I came across my old A-Level Media Studies ring binder amongst old toaster instructions and dead batteries.  The temptation was too great so I took a gander.  I was quite impressed.  I was quite the academic.

Anyway, whilst sifting through the binder I came across a project entitled “My favourite advertising campaign”.  The campaign I had chosen was the United Colours of Benetton.  Within the report I had showcased some on my favourite ads and to be honest with you, I was blown away all over again.

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Over the past few years we’ve all had to tighten our belts. People want more for less and supermarkets have reacted to this by focussing their marketing on pushing cheap, value products. In contrast to this being a ‘foodie’ has become more fashionable than ever. From our love of TV programs like Come Dine With Me to the adverts made sexy by that highly annoying M&S lady, everyone is wanting a piece of this pie.

Granted, there have always been fads but now food has a cultural significance of its own. We’d love to be known for being an amazing cook and throwing the best dinner parties around. We feel the need to buy organic products rather than bog-standard own brands and if like me when you get to the counter at the supermarket you probably find yourself checking out the neighbours trolley in a keeping up with the Jones’ style.

The brands that have picked up on this trend have done it with gusto. By making a stylish alliance with their brand they are appealing to women like me who love both fashion and food.

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A very talented retoucher by the name of Dan Watkins introduced me to TED last year and ever since I have been a massive fan. Over the weekend I got a chance to catch up on my TEDGlobal 2010 viewing. The highlight so far has to be this talk from British author Matt Ridley entitled ‘When ideas have sex’.

In the talk Matt Ridley shows how, throughout history, the engine of human progress has been the meeting and mating of ideas to make new ideas. It’s not important how clever individuals are, he says; what really matters is how smart the collective brain is.

Click the ‘read more’ button below to watch his talk.

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Ok, I’ll be honest with you. Spending an evening in a bar surrounded by ad-industry types while some bloke dressed as a kitten gives a talk is pretty much not high on my ‘fun things to do on a Tuesday evening list’. But the promise of meeting some advertising-types who have a passion for the web kind peaked my interest when Rubber Republic invited me to attend the first KittenCamp in Manchester.

KittenCamp is a monthly meet-up for web-loving ad industry type people to chat memes and drink beer. Why is it called KittenCamp? Well I made the guess that because meme rhymes with creme that’s how the name came about. Sadly after chatting with Chris Quigley, from KittenCamp organisers Rubber Republic, I found out that actually KittenCamp is just the result of a brainstorm in a pub over a few beers.

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Our client Swinton has over a million customers for which they have an email address and we had been working with them for a few months on some of their product focused emails.  We knew that there was much more they could be doing with email marketing and wanted to push the boundaries for them.  Our triggered email activity was first discussed in January when we received a nice timely email from Pizza Express offering BOGOF on all pizzas to celebrate the fact that the snow was finally melting and people were now able to get out to eat again. This triggered our own thoughts – “Wouldn’t it be great if our Swinton emails could be a bit more timely and relevant and well…. interesting really!”

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Financial Services… sounds dull doesn’t it! Ask the average person on the street what that phrase means to them and the ones that stay awake will struggle for a definition. The trouble with ‘Financial Services’ is that it’s a corporate phrase that has found its way into consumer facing communications.

In the struggle to unite the benefits of credit cards, loans, investments and insurance under one umbrella term, a phrase has been created that means nothing to the consumer. Customers of course, use ‘money’ to buy cars, clothes and holidays, they save and invest ‘money’ and protect the ‘money’ tied up in their belongings with insurance.  So when we were asked to rebrand the ‘Financial Services’ section of our client’s retail website, we knew just how to help it resonate with consumers.

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There’s something quite compelling about the lonely hearts section in newspapers and magazines. It’s like people watching in miniature. The ads are like windows into other people’s lives. And I must confess I’m quite nosy, so for me they make compulsive reading.

It’s mainly because I think they must be really hard to write. For a start, there’s the stigma. Letting the world know you’re (oh God) single and looking for love seems like an admission of failure – as if you’re saying “yes, it really has got this bad.”

Plus, it’s a pretty tough copy brief when you think about it: sum yourself up in 30 words, in a way that makes you irresistible to your target audience. I mean, where do you start?

Well just like writing a commercial ad for a real product, it’s no use resorting to tired old clichés or standard lonely hearts acronyms. For one thing you’ll just sound like everyone else that’s advertising themselves. But for another no one will believe you anyway.

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Over the course of the last two years I have been involved in several conversations regarding what we should do with dormant or unresponsive email subscribers.  These conversations have always been rather enjoyable due to the complex nature of the issue.

One side of the argument has always been that once an email address has been dormant or unresponsive for 6 to 12 months then it is quite right to remove the address from the email file but I tend to sit on the opposite side of the fence.

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