I had fragments of posts written about various ads but they were little more than rants and I like to have something vaguely positive to say in my posts here. What tied it all together in the end was one of those pointless commercial TV countdown shows. The ‘50 Best Racist Sitcoms’ sort of thing. This one billed itself as the 20 greatest ads of the decade. I guessed I could bear to sit through it because of two things.

1. The ability of the ITVplayer to fast forward and

2. The thought of seeing any of the Sony Bravia ads again.

The fact that it’s Christmas also hopefully means that I can get away with not squeezing some sort of business lesson into the post and keep it light. That said I think the whole thing is pretty much a business lesson – all these ads whether you like them or not have increased the awareness of their individual brands beyond any expectation by simply being unique.

20. Budweiser, Wassup.
The oldest one on the list. It was recently updated with a fantastic bitter-sweet
internet-only spot that wasn’t shown on this programme. I have to say I never joined
in with repeating the catchphrase the ad is named after but still to this day overuse the words ‘True, true’.

19. Cadbury’s, Eyebrows.
Equal parts cute and creepy. I think this one is a winner for me mainly because I
like ‘Don’t stop the rock’ by freestyle. Not an obvious choice at all for the soundtrack and all the more impressive for it.

18. Halifax, Howard.
Most adverts that I detest are for products that aren’t aimed for me anyway (4-wheel
drives, Bitter, Sanitary towels…) which slightly lets them off the hook. This one, along with one other on the list, is for a fairly universal product – banking.

Howard looks like something a police frogman would find looking on the bottom of a lake for a missing cBeebies presenter and pops up murdering some song or other with a cast of jolly Halifax staff. This set of adverts just go on and on and are so sickening I don’t think I’ve  ever watched one all the way through.

17. John Smith, No nonsense.
I didn’t realise that this was why people have been going round saying ‘Ave it!’ for the last few years. In fact, I’d never seen any of these ads before this programme.

I think this shows the importance of ad placement around shows your target market will watch. This obviously was, and why I missed them entirely. That’s not to say that I never see ads that are completely irrelevant to me. I watch lots of cookery shows and so get to see a lot of ads for Baileys, Hair Dye and Paolo Nutini.

16. Sure, Stuntmen.
Perfectly positioned. Perfectly executed. A great ad with loads of impact that also
succeeds in placing the product at the front of the mind. It’s the way they all play
it so cool and collected.

15. Calsburg, 2006 world cup.
The one where the footballing legends play the pub team. They filmed them playing
for 6 hours solid, apparently. Lots of brands have tried the ‘bringing football to
the streets’ angle over the years but here, for once, it actually succeeds.

14. Sony Bravia, Balls.
Stunning. The ultimate advert. The act of doing something for real is what gives
this the extra push to perfection. The effort is always worth it. Just compare The
Dark Knight to the two Matrix sequels!

13. Volkswagen, Singing in the rain.
A risky move, updating the song and the dance, but it works. I couldn’t have named
you the product before I wrote it down while watching this, though.

12. Citroen C4, Robot.
Just great. Everybody loves the transformer cars.

11. Barclaycard, Waterslide.
Another great, fun ad. Couldn’t have told you who it was for though, even though the product is not only featured in the ad but used as well!

10. PG tips, Monkey & Al.
I must have seen it at some point but it didn’t really register. Do people remember Morcombe and Wise sketches from 40 years ago well enough for them to be used as references?

09. Sony Bravia, Paint.
More genius. Creating beauty out of the ordinary. The end of this ad with the shot of the playground and the sound of the paint ‘rain’ falling is too lovely for words.

08. John West salmon, Bear fight.
Was amusing at the time but now just reminds me of the horrible cascade of viral ads that came along in its wake.

07. T-mobile, Flashmobbing.
Never seen this before this programme aired. A great example of a large brand taking
hold of a trend and getting it completely and utterly wrong. It couldn’t look any less spontaneous if it tried. I’ve followed the FlashMob thing on the net since it started and, unusually for me, will go out of my way to watch videos of them so I have some reference. This ad just flops for me and more than any of the others that I don’t really like I just don’t understand how this one ended up on this list. The very worst part is the utterly horrific medley of dancing hits that is stuck on it.

Wrongly pitched and just plain wrong.

06. Guiness, Tipping point.
A good title for this ad for me as I think it was probably the tipping point where Guiness stopped making good adverts. What should have been fun and visually interesting just comes out twee and dull.

05. Cadburys, Gorilla.
A real puzzle. Most things that I dislike I can at least see how other people do like, or, as I’ve mentioned, are so obviously angled towards other people that I don’t spend much time thinking about them. This really made me feel a disconnctedness, though. I thought it was terrible. I couldn’t understand how such an average setup with such an bland song could be so popular.

It’s not even as though I don’t like ‘In the air tonight’. In fact, I think I own it. It’s just so average that it doesn’t register. The sort of thing that you’d hear in the background in the cafe in Eastenders. As for the people who gushed over the ‘realistic’ gorilla. Really? Come on…

04. Honda, Cog.
Another example of an ad that started out as a viral. The difference here is that this one worked. Clever, relevant marketing.

03. Compare the Meerkat.
A cute animal and a catchprase is pretty much all you need for a successful ad but Compare the Market had the added presence of mind to tie that into the name of their product. Considering that it’s one of the least memorable names in one of the least memorable marketing sectors that’s a genius move.

02. Skoda, Cake.
I presume the soundtrack couldn’t have come cheap, and neither did the ad itself. The problem is that the soundtrack doesn’t really fit the ad’s content and the ad’s concept is more clever than watching it play out. A puzzle that this ended up at number two. Of course, number one won’t be any suprise. The most parodied, the most admired, the sexiest, the classiest, the most copied ad – it can’t be anything except M&S food. Apart from, erm…. it isn’t. It’s….

01. Hovis, through the years.
Well. I think I’ve seen it. But it never really registered. Even seeing it now it doesn’t seem to have the epic feel that other people obviously think it has. It obviously works well for Hovis but why on earth were M&S left out of the list?

There you have it, the top 20 ads of the decade. A nice list to look back on as, sometimes, it seems that advertising is as devoid of creativity as other mediums. Let’s see what the next decade brings us…

Tweet This Post

The prices charged were presumably so high because no corners were cut in the ethical sourcing of ingredients (that and Bath’s sky-high business rates!) and, as I mentioned, the quality of what was on the plate was fantastic.  But there was an issue with the overall experience. The setting was nice (in the foyer of an old cinema) and the decoration simple and taseful but really basic. On the downside, the chairs were uncomfy, the presentation sloppy,  the portions small, the staff were forgetful and the service chaotic.

The lesson here is branding. If you are trading on a name you need to make sure that the experience you give people is what they would expect from it. And that experience is much more than just the product itself.

Tweet This Post

twitterpunch

Ever wondered why you tweet pictures of your cat, tweet about the cost of organic food, or tweet about your social incompetence? Help is at hand, this app will punch you every time you twitter; not just when you do lame, naval gazing tweets.

boat

Useful if you are stuck on an island based reality tv show with 12 muppets and a conflict-baiting camera crew.

ipillow

Really fricking handy when you are on long flights, or pesky train-replacement buses.

vegitracker

Grr! Rip off farmers markets. Simply take a photo of the offending £7 organic vegetable, and this app simultaneously gives you its real supermarket price and tells you what it is; ‘purple sprouting broccoli’ ah!

shawifezam

Make ill communication between you and your partner an historical footnote, by holding your iphone up to your wife/girlfriend mid rant, even 2 seconds is enough, and it will translate to what they really mean. “babble babble babble babble”, ah shawifezam says: ‘Pay me more attention rather than wanking over that fucking iphone’.

catnav

Ever wondered where Flossy goes in the day? Does she really shit in your neighbours garden, as per their allegations? This app tracks your cat’s position on Google maps and publishes it to other catnav users, so you can see your kitty neighbourhood and perhaps impose a curfew if she is fraternizing with that unsavoury tom from number 57.

iphone pro app

This app increases battery life, gives you a 5mp xenon flash camera, enables MMS messages and gives you the connectivity of Bluetooth all for $4.59.

bushcutter

Ditch dragging that epilator on holiday, this app makes light work of even the most forest-like unsightly bikini line.

twat tagger

Take a photo of any twat, any where in the world, and this app will automatically geotag the photo and adds the person to an online facial recognition database so other app users can be alerted when they’ve enter a neighbourhood with a high propensity of twats.

owl unlimited

Having a problem keep track of all your owl’s? This app brings owl management to a whole new level. With geo-owling, feather tracking, and falconry glove care tips all in one place. Solving life’s little problems one app at a time.

Feel free to add your suggestions for iphone apps that money can’t buy in the comments…  Until next time.

Tweet This Post

People invent new crisp flavours and then 6 are chosen to be put into temporary production. Eventually one is chosen in an online poll to become a new, permanent flavour in the Walkers lineup. The end results are mostly great, but there’s one flavour that needs highlighting for discussion; Chilli and chocolate. This scores top marks on concept (classic combination) and on execution (the flavours are clearly defined and tasty). The reason it falls down is delivery, because it doesn’t work at all when you add potatoes into the equation and makes the whole thing taste, well, wrong

There is a logic to this. Most of the other flavours have potato integral to their makeup. For example the fish & chips (the chips), builders breakfast (hash browns), the Bhaji (an integral starchiness that’s needed) and even for the other two it makes a natural carrier for their flavours.

What chilli and chocolate’s downfall comes down to is logistics. As a delivery mechanism the crisp is just wrong, and when you’re ultimately flogging crisps rather than flavours that’s not a good thing.

Do you have any great ideas that will clash with what your core business is trying to sell? Best to think about it now before you end up at the bottom of the result table.

Tweet This Post

I wanted to make something positive of the day so I put everything I had to do to one side and completed the following exercises:

2. While changing out of my wet clothes I went through the list of things I could have done while I was out and about and made sure I put a system in place to remember things that I had always left to chance in the past.

3. I spent the rest of the day on one of the projects that sits on the sidelines of my work (like this site).

I have a list of these projects and they make up the sort of things that aren’t part of your everyday work but aren’t purely personal projects – they occupy a sort of middle ground of stuff you’d love to achieve but that are also useful professionally. This could be anything from learning PHP to getting yourself a digital camera so you don’t have to farm out work next time a client asks you to take pictures of their office for the website. All useful things on a professional level but also satisfying as achievements in themselves.

Tweet This Post

Where we try and stay away from the nostalgia that swamps an occasion like the closing of Woolworths and think of a few words to say about the brand and how it conducted itself in life, as well as in death, and if there are any lessons we can take from that.

My only dealings with MFI were buying a kitchen from them a few years ago. It was a disaster. You go in and choose a kitchen and then they send one of their ‘recommended fitters’ to come and price putting it in. What happened with us was that our fitter went down with appendicitis a day into fitting our kitchen and none of the replacement fitters who MFI sent would finish the job (or fix the crap job the first guy had done) for the same price. MFI couldn’t care less and spent 3 weeks trying to distance themselves from the fitting process.

The lesson is this: if you are providing a service, or even recommending a service, you have to take responsibility for it. Get suppliers you can trust, empower your employees to answer customers questions and if there is a problem with a link in your chain – fix it.

Tweet This Post