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.
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 7th 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.
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!
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…
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 20th 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!
What do John Milton, Salman Rusdie and Frank Zappa have in common? They’ve all written adverts.
Yep. It might come as a surprise to the purists amongst you, but there’s a whole raft of notable novelists, poets, scriptwriters and lyricists who cut their literary teeth as copywriters. So what could advertising have offered these talented writers, aside from a steady income?
There is a theory that John Milton, author of the epic poem, Paradise Lost, was also the writer of the first ever trade advertisement to appear in the UK press. In September 1658 in Mercurius Politicus, the progovernment newsbook of which he was editor from 1650, there was an advertisement for a ‘China Drink’ with purported health properties:
You, your wand and an adventure. Sounds deeply suspicious. But actually it’s the basic principle of a new live-action role-playing game called MagiQuest.
MagiQuest is your story, your adventure, your imagination brought to life. So says the blurb. It’s certainly unlike anything you’ve encountered before. Playing the part of a ‘Magi’ – kind of like an apprentice wizard – you have to complete quests, find gold and, here’s the really good bit, challenge your mates to wand-to-wand duels.
Barbara Kruger was the first truly postmodern artist that I discovered as an art student. Being a fan of thought-provoking art and literature and having experimented with text and image collages I was immediately struck by the power of her work. Barbara Kruger is a conceptual artist known for her stark photo-and-text collages that appropriate the language of consumer culture to comment on it. She became an artist in the early 80’s after working as head art director on Conde Nast magazines. Her art continues to speak the language of magazines and advertising, and, in addition to appearing in galleries and museums, it can be found on billboards, T–shirts, and shopping bags. She used the skills she gained as a commercial art director to stunning effect with her provocative ‘found’ black and white photographic images, slashed with red stripes of text bearing now instantly recognisable slogans such as “I shop therefore I am” and “Your body is a battleground” delivered in her trademark Futura Bold Italic typeface. These iconic works masterfully employ the look and feel of propaganda, but directly raise questions with the viewer about values, taste, stereoypes and materialism.
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.
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.
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…
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, 
I have a love-hate relationship with blogs. There are several I enjoy – travel blog 
Well hello ducky, how bona to varda your dolly old eek!
You, your wand and an adventure. Sounds deeply suspicious. But actually it’s the basic principle of a new live-action role-playing game called MagiQuest.
Barbara Kruger was the first truly postmodern artist that I discovered as an art student. Being a fan of thought-provoking art and literature and having experimented with text and image collages I was immediately struck by the power of her work. Barbara Kruger is a conceptual artist known for her stark photo-and-text collages that appropriate the language of consumer culture to comment on it. She became an artist in the early 80’s after working as head art director on Conde Nast magazines. Her art continues to speak the language of magazines and advertising, and, in addition to appearing in galleries and museums, it can be found on billboards, T–shirts, and shopping bags. She used the skills she gained as a commercial art director to stunning effect with her provocative ‘found’ black and white photographic images, slashed with red stripes of text bearing now instantly recognisable slogans such as “I shop therefore I am” and “Your body is a battleground” delivered in her trademark Futura Bold Italic typeface. These iconic works masterfully employ the look and feel of propaganda, but directly raise questions with the viewer about values, taste, stereoypes and materialism.
