I consider myself to be pretty lucky. My parents have a home in the South of France that I get to visit at least once every summer. I get to chill in the sun reading a good book, drink lots of local wine and sample the great cuisine. I call it my rehab time.

It takes less than 2 hours for me to get to my parents’ place. Cheap air fares and easy access to flights has made the world feel very small indeed. Yet it always amazes me just how different everything feels when I get there. Not least in terms of the advertising. Read more…

I have a question for you.   What do ‘Um Bongo’, ‘R Whites’ and ‘Shake n Vac’ have in common?  Well, if you’re an 80s child, like me, the answer will be obvious. The answer is each of these brands has had hugely memorable advertising jingles, which I’m sure you could probably hum along to even today.

Let’s try it.  All together now; “R Whites Lemonade, I’m a secret lemonade drinker, R Whites, R Whites”

Over the course of the years, I’m sure there can’t be a single person who can say that they haven’t had a marketing jingle stuck in their head.  I for one have been driven near mental by having Go Compare’s annoying tune implanted in my skull for days on end, but do they care?  Do they heck as like.

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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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Salman Rushdie in 1989

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:

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We’ve cracked open the Champers and fired off some party poppers in celebration of being shortlisted for our Swinton Mystery Tipper campaign for the IPA Effectiveness Awards 2009.

The IPA Effectiveness Awards are recognised by agencies and clients as Adland’s most rigorous awards scheme because entrants have to prove to a jury of experienced clients that their communications strategies have worked in hard business terms.

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