Campaign

Blotters at the ready? Let's play Adland Bingo

We've both worked in advertising for about 7 years, and as much as we love it, we're also often struck by how certain phrases and ways of thinking that - although they sound like a comic parody of themselves and/or script fodder for Nathan Barley - still get used day in day out. It's funny how even though some agencies are so different, the vernacular is exactly the same.


The more we became aware of this, the more Adland Bingo began to form. Without realising, we've been playing it in our heads for some time. We often find ourselves swallowing a smile or sharing a look of amusement across the table when one of these cliches raises its ugly head.


What's more shocking is when you actually catch yourself saying one of these horrendous phrases or ideas. You become someone you don't recognise. For example the other day Lol actually said '.....so we're on the same page...' I almost vomited.

So it's with tongues in our cheek that we give you 'Adland Bingo' - compiled with love after working in lots of agencies. (It goes without saying that 'Adland' in itself is yet another cliche.)

See how your agency fares, and let us know which - if any - other cliche you would like to see in place of the question mark.

Illiteracy can be beautiful

The bookish among you, look away now.

I (lol) always feel a little sad when I see books being torn up or trashed in any way. Is this yet another copywriter's occupational hazard? However, although these sculptures could be dismissed as 'book abuse', there's also something rather beautiful about them. There are loads more amazing ones at the link.

I guess if the Kimble and all the other e-books really do take off, this could be what libraries of the future will look like?

This got us thinking about e-books and the inevitable digitisation of writing. Obviously there are benefits to e-books (the environment, obviously). But I still hope real, tangible, tactile books that you can write margin notes in, admire the cover design, and smell the print of... will be around forever. Having tried out a Sony Reader the other day, I was struck by how difficult it must be to hold down your concentration with one of them, when you know there are however many other stories only a click away. Like when you're listening to music on an i-pod, there's a massive temptation to skip tracks when you get bored a few seconds in.

I can't help wondering whether devices like this just feed indecision and impatience in a way, creating a kind of Attention Deficit in the way we consume things. It's the same when we use the internet - constantly flitting between pages, channels, documents. At least with a record, you couldn't skip to the end, you had to wait, to pay attention to every detail. I think there is something nice in that - more respect for the artist maybe? The trouble with digitising books is that some of the most rewarding of novels take a lot of effort to get in to. So I think there's a real risk of readers missing out if you can so easily just click onto something else. On the other hand, perhaps by putting books into these new formats, publishers can actually reach out to a different type of audience who would never normally have picked up an old style book. Is this likely? I'm not sure. Saying that, I'm probably just a luddite stuck in the wrong generation...Oh well, back to these dynamic MPUs.

What did you have on your toast this morning?

Whilst researching butter for a brief we came across this bizarre invention.

We wonder where it would be stocked - in Smiths, or in Tesco? And is the thing in the bottom right a close up of it or is it a shaven boiled egg do you think?

This got lol and I thinking. We (sadly) love stationery and we love food. So what could be better than food stationery?

How about a stapler that dispenses sunflower seeds, or a cheese rubber that leaves shavings of Parmesan cheese when you use it, or a pencil sharpener that acts as a potato peeler, or a yoghurt trail tip-Ex or a jammy red biro. The list is endless. Any other suggestions welcome.

The margerita with the hole

Pizza Express, in an effort to attract the calorie conscious, are now serving pizzas with the centre surgically removed. In order to keep the meal under 500 calories, they cut out this middle section and replace it with salad leaves. They also deprive you of lard too, as the actual pizza bit is basically tomato bread peppered with dots of cheese.

Yesterday we gave it a try. It wasn't long before we realised this was just not going to fill us up. We were still utterly starving by the end, and ironically, felt like asking for the missing piece back...? I'd have paid the difference in price, only there wasn't any. If anything they charge you more for this absence of pizza. It seems less is quite literally more!


Nat ordered some extra salad dressing (laden with calories) to try and fill the calorie hole. I just drank coffee and tried to pretend I was full (as is the norm when attempting to eat healthily). Eventually I gave in and ordered garlic butter dough balls, which are basically the missing piece, cut into even tinier pieces, and a further £4.  Calorie deficit replenished; bank balance well and truly ravenous.

Today's Pizza blog is the first in a series of reviews on places to brainstorm for creatives. We'll be grading them on two levels; one being overall tastiness and value for money. Two, how conducive to actually doing work they are - hereafter pretentiously known as 'creative ambiance'.

Pizza express was good in terms of creative ambiance yesterday, because we got to watch a whole shoreditch graffiti installation take place before our eyes (more on that later) while we thought of ideas. So for that we give it an A star. But for tastiness and combating hunger it gets a disappointing D.
 

Nice copy line for Nicotinel

"What if you don't get hit by a bus tomorrow?"

We both saw this ad for Nicotinel on the way to work and loved it. So nice to see a self-referential bus ad that's not cliched, but stems from a real truth about the excuses people give about why it's ok to smoke.

Other ideas for this strategy could be ads on the back of aeroplane seats... or pavement art just before you're crossing the road. All a bit sinister but gets the message across... Although saying that, we just had a really dark thought. What if someone, by accident, got hit by that very bus? Maybe even because they were staring at the ad? Doesn't bear thinking about.

Ballons are the new black

At the same exhbition where I (Nat) saw Sarah Lucas's cakes, there was this dress. It is made entirely out of pink balloons. (Apparently the artist, who's name I have completely forgotten, had also done a version with rubber gloves. You can just imagine this being ripped off for a cleaning brand can't you?)

I really like the texture of it, especially the sleeves. It's so rubbery and artificial.

It looks very otherworldly to me, perhaps the kind of outfit a sea creature might wear to an underwater gala. The balloons look like pink clams clinging to a rock at the beach.

If I had designed this dress, I might have added an inflation device, set on a timer, so you could beautifully inflate and deflate all night long.

The only downside being that you wouldn't be able to sit down!

A sweet treat for Friday

These 'delightful' cakes were done by Sarah Lucas for an exhibition at Palent House

I love the way they transform something that is normally so prim and old fashioned into something so wonderfully ugly.  The contrast between the immaculate iced piping and the seedy images is just brilliant.

Who wants a slice of chicken pants?