I’ve just returned from a truly memorable holiday to Barcelona.  Even before I left I had anticipated that I was going to love this city as it’s very much famous for two of my three passions; football and food.  However, I was overwhelmed as not only did Barcelona quell these passions but it also managed to quell another – my love of brilliant marketing.

The landmark I was most excited about seeing was Mercat La Boqueria and it was here that I witnessed some truly outstanding marketing.  For those of you that don’t know La Boqueria is a food market located on Barcelona’s most famous street, La Ramblas.  La Boqueria has experienced several changes since it first opened its doors in 1217 and I’m sure it will continue to evolve, but I’m equally sure it’s marketing principles will not.

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Quite. And life is better with beautiful design.

I rarely get really excited about packaging these days. In fact, apart from Apple, Boden, Innocent and Jane’s Addiction’s Cabinet of Curiosities I can’t really think of much that has grabbed my attention in the last few years.

And that’s why when I received my vinyl wall graphics from Blik through the post I almost jumped for joy. Gorgeous package design fizzing with witty copy and a fab product to boot… pure joy from start to finish. Read more…

At Red C we were chuffed to bits when we were shortlisted for the NatMag 100 award, which is a new initiative that gives agencies and their clients the opportunity to win a multimedia ad campaign across the entire NatMag portfolio of 24 brands, including Harper’s Bazaar, Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan, Esquire and Men’s Health.

As part of the NatMag 100 Award, media and creative agencies were invited to devise the most innovative, creative ad campaign for an individual brand, utilising a combination of the brands in the NatMag portfolio and platforms to target women or men in the UK.

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I wouldn’t say I’m an especially brilliant cook, but I do like to dabble. I’m less of a culinary wizard and more of a competent recipe-follower. And I like my recipes to be simple, tasty and unpretentious too. Think Jamie and Delia, rather than Nigella and Gordon.

I do most of the cooking in my house and over the years I’ve honed a few signature dishes. My lasagne is pretty sweet and my kedgeree always goes down well. I can do a mean chilli and I never have any complaints when I make a roast. I’ve learnt how to cook almost all of these dishes by reading books and following instructions.

But what I’d really like to be able to do is cook on instinct. You know how they do on Masterchef or Ready, Steady Cook, when the contestants get given a bag of random veggies, some meat or fish and a maybe a tin of this and that – then gets told to make something from it? That’s what I want to be able to do.

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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…

I have a love-hate relationship with blogs. There are several I enjoy – travel blog Going Local is an absolute delight, for example, and James and The Blue Cat is consistently chucklesome – but there are many more that incense me. Like spite-filled celeb rumour mill Perez Hilton, an ever-present reminder of humankind’s inexorable retreat into idiocy. Though it’s the ‘personal diaries’ that have traditionally acquired the majority of my goat.

“Come on”, I thought. “Wake up and smell the narcissism. How can you be so arrogant as to expect total strangers to give a flying fig about the mundane happenings of your mundane life? It’s the 21st century equivalent of popping round the neighbours’ to show off snaps from your latest break in Bognor.”

So when an old friend of mine started her own online diary in 2006, I was predictably blasé. I took a courteous glance but quickly dismissed it. Then, at the end of 2007, events conspired to turn her world upside down. Her blog took on another dimension, reporting every twist and turn of a tumultuous life. Before I knew it I was captivated – and I have been ever since. Over the last 24 months, her blog has changed my opinion of personal diaries forever… Read more…

Well hello ducky, how bona to varda your dolly old eek!

Don’t worry, I’ve not been overdoing the sweeties again…

Believe it or not, I’m actually paying you a compliment. The phrase is Polari, a secret language invented by the British gay community in the early 20^th century – back in the dark old days when homosexuality was illegal.

Never heard of it? Poppycock! If you’ve ever described something as ‘naff’ or ‘manky’, put on some ‘slap’ before a night out, or popped to your local for a few ‘bevvies’, then you’re practically fluent darling!

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