Thursday, May 22, 2008, 07:00 PM
I was left shocked and dismayed by the outcome of The Apprentice last night. I felt almost as winded as a Chelsea fan who had just seen John Terry's penalty skid the wrong side of the upright. I knew that Alan Sugar lacked elegance, but that he could also be so lacking in commercial judgement was quite beyond me.
If you missed the programme, he compared two ads made by his teams for tissues, assisted also by Ogilvy, which presumably in their wisdom they plucked as a right-minded ad agency. I was dumbfounded when he opted for a nasty, misleading, amateurishly-scripted ad that basically suggested an antibacterial tissue could cure a poorly child. When I first saw the ad, I chuckled to myself, looking forward to the deserved bollocking that its creators would receive. The British public would see through this as quickly as they would an ad for a ketchup that cures cancer.
But no... he not only picked the stinker of an ad (aided and abetted by the cutting edge advertising minds of Ogilvy), but also fired the wrong man - Raef Bjayou. Never before had it been so clear that the mighty Sugar has a very slight problem with those of a more privileged class.
Still, this from the man who despises the ad industry, and managed to better undermine it in one programme than in years of moaning about how few Amstrads it has shifted him...
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Saturday, April 19, 2008, 10:50 PM
Who was it who decided that all jeans should be blue?[ add comment ] | permalink
Friday, April 18, 2008, 12:45 AM
Entering two YouTube vids in quick succession on my blog smacks of laziness, however this one is a milestone. It is the first time our daughter Ruby and I have sat together and both enjoyed a movie together. We both laughed, and she ended up doing a good mimic of the high hooting noise.
Enjoy.
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Tuesday, April 15, 2008, 11:33 PM
I'd like to just unleash a couple of vat-fuls of scorn on advertising agencies that respond to a brief for a car advert with what is quickly becoming the most tired of advertising clichés: "Hey! Let's take it to pieces!"
I can barely bring myself to continue hammering my disdain into the keyboard, so let's just get on and show the guilty parties:
The one that started it all - people should have recognised that there would only ever be one:
Then one that tries to be a bit more wispy:
Now let's have one with a bit of a twist "the car parts are a bit second rate, but let's bang them about and make some noise!":
Just like the spice girls, there needs to be a sporty one:
The latest one that frankly deprives me of the will to live. This ad agency should file for creative bankruptcy:
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Sunday, March 16, 2008, 10:39 PM
I have to say that I am shocked and stunned by this. I don't have anything against pasties, and I don't really object to the consumption of Quorn (even though I must confess I do not know what it is). Hell, I don't even have a problem when people mess around with traditional recipes.
What I despise are missed opportunities, and whoever introduced this product is guilty of having failed to name it a "Quornish Pasty". I mean, the name "Quorn" lends itself to so many great adaptations*, yet either this name was missed, or some litigation-shy marketing department decided against it. What's the good in an unusual name if you can't expand on it now and again?
*Another favourite is the term Quornography, which refers to lightweight erotic material characterised by an absence of meat.
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