Posts Tagged ‘Magnus Shaw’

Dead heat. Why The Exclusives is unfair on us all.

Tuesday, May 15th, 2012

Perhaps we shouldn’t expect anything more from ITV2 – after all, this is the home of Celebrity Juice, Life On Murrs and The Only Way Is Essex.  But while those shows may grate and irritate, they manage to avoid devaluing and trivialising the achievements of others. More than can be said of ‘The Exclusives’, the latest addition to TV’s range of alternative Job Centres.

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Heads up. The best advertising headlines in the world?

Friday, May 11th, 2012

For a jet propulsion lab brochure: “What we do isn’t rocket science. Oh, hang on …”.

For Sainsbury’s: “We say ‘hello’ to good buyers”.

A recruitment ad for security guards: “Who says you can’t have a successful career after the police? Look at Sting.”

These are some of my favourite headlines. But they never ran. It happens. An unappreciative client or account manager, a change of brief – not every great headline makes it to the target audience. Happily, many of them do. So below, allow me to present a few of the very best.

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Sublime / Ridiculous. How advertising is getting better and worse.

Wednesday, May 9th, 2012

When looking for the best and worst in the creative field, at least TV advertising saves time and effort. Simply pick a show, ensure it’s on a commercial channel and wait for the break. In those few, short minutes you’re more or less guaranteed to spot a minimum of one atrocity and hopefully, something quite delightful too.

And so it was last night. At a loss for anything half decent to watch (the channels seem to have abandoned bank holidays to a holding position of sheer mediocrity), I defaulted to ’10 Things I Hate About 1999′ with Robert Webb. It was actually slightly more amusing than it sounds, but what really stood out was the second commercial break. Embedded in the standard mix of forgettable plugs for anti-ageing gloop and heavily discounted couches, were two pieces of work which managed to capture all that is imaginative, crafted and classy as well as everything that is crass, glib and trite in telly advertising.

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99 problems. Should Jay Z really be designing logos?

Thursday, May 3rd, 2012

Hey sports fans, good news: the Brooklyn Nets have introduced their new monochrome color scheme and logos, as the team prepares for its relocation to the Barclays Center for the next NBA season.

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The Devil’s deal. Are agencies really paying to pitch?

Monday, April 30th, 2012

I once worked with an Art Director who had just arrived in the UK from a stint at Leo Burnett in Venezuela. As well as alarming tales of armed guards outside his office, he told me this: when pitching, it was usual practice for  agencies involved to be paid their expenses and for the winning agency to pay the others a gratuity. A parachute payment, in the modern parlance.

In London, he had a rude awakening. It was the nineties recession and I explained to him that the prevailing climate meant competition was so fierce, and agencies were so hungry to pitch, they wouldn’t dream of asking for any payment from the potential client, let alone expect a consolation fee from the winner. But I conceded the Caracas model was appealing and made everyone’s efforts more worthwhile. I even fancifully hoped such a routine could be established once the economy recovered.

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Is marketing dead? Saatchi’s CEO thinks so.

Thursday, April 26th, 2012

Kevin Roberts is the CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide and he thinks marketing is dead. He also thinks big ideas, management and strategy are pushing up the daisies. We know this because he told the Institute of Directors Convention at the 02 yesterday.

This would be an interesting position for any business leader, but coming from the big cheese at one of the world’s best known marketing and advertising agencies, it’s a right old jaw-dropper. Could this master marketeer really believe the whole shebang is over and we should all sleeve our iPads and get off home? Possibly – but probably not.

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Offloading. Does Loaded’s decline mark the end of an era?

Tuesday, April 24th, 2012

Loaded, the title from which all lads mags sprang, is to be sold for the second time in as many years. Its publisher, Vitality, was taken into administration last week, owing creditors £1m and liquidators Cooper Young have been tasked with dispensing with Vitality’s assets. By all accounts there has been some interest in the magazine, but its currency has never been lower.

Loaded’s latest circulation figures show a 30% year-on-year fall to an average of just 34,505 copies. For those unfamiliar with magazine sales, that is not good. Not good at all.

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State of Grace. Beware – careless tweets cost careers.

Monday, April 16th, 2012

Twitter can be a bear pit. As a repository for anything that crosses one’s mind, it tends to attract rebuttals, rejections, replies and refutations like an old sweet attracts pocket fluff. However, with a bit of luck, a judicious following policy and a sensible ‘only when sober’ rule, Twitter interactions should be no more alarming than mild joshing, light sarcasm and clumsy flirting. But cross the ill-defined line and watch your life fall apart.

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RIP COI – the end of an era as the Central Office of Information closes its doors.

Thursday, March 29th, 2012

My late stepfather, Michael Paul, was a floor manager on Coronation Street  and latterly a film producer with Sheffield University. But he began his career at the Central Office of Information (COI).

While Coronation Street continues to thrive, the COI is no more.

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Quietly Redundant – the future for the QR code?

Tuesday, March 27th, 2012

I’m not a classic early adopter. I don’t queue outside Apple stores every time a plastic cover for the iPad is released, but I latch onto technology fairly quickly. I was online in the late nineties, had one of the first phase of free Spotify accounts and even owned a mini-disc player when portable CD machines were the norm.

So why have I never used a QR code?

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