Everyone loves a story

"Everyone hates ads, everyone loves a story."

This quote is from someone we interviewed for Hamish's book.

This opinion is also popular outside marketing and in advertsing.

Perhaps agencies need to be hiring journalists and storytellers, copywriters should go on creative writing courses and planners should find the story, rather than (or as well as) the insight?

I'm back!

After a fabulous holiday, I am back!

I like to try something new each time I go away, to stop myself being accused of being boring. This year it was exploring caves. Given my claustrophobia and hatred of all small spaces (particularly lifts), this was no small thing.

However, once walking the 1.7km underground, I needn't have worried. These caves were more like caverns the size of the Albert Hall. We walked along, guided only by torches and an excitable Frenchman (stupidly, we thought our 'we can get buy relatively well' French would cope with cave lingo - it was interesting) until we were ordered to turn our torches off. Apprehensively I did so, grabbing onto some poor man's arm. The electric spot lights then flickered and, suddenly, I was staring at the most wonderful prehistoric doodles. The excitable Frenchman explained that the horses and bison were believed to have religious or sexual symbolism.

I maintain that some poor caveman/woman, 1.7km into the Earth, had looked out at the miserable Pyrenean weather that morning and decided to stay in. When bored of staring at the fire, s/he decided to decorate his/her cave with pretty pictures. Or maybe it was advertising the menu for dinner? Or maybe I'm being flippant?!

Advertising quotes

I have spent far too much time this afternoon looking for positive quotes about advertising. You wouldn't think it would be that difficult.. and it isn't, if you want something negative!

The only remotely interesting ones I have found are:

"Advertising is the foot on the accelerator, the hands on the throttle, the spur on the flank that keeps our economy surging forward."

And my personal favourite:

"Advertising is the most fun you can have with your clothes on."

I wish someone important would say something nice about advertising. Go on, surprise me.

Ken Livingstone

Ken Livingstone (...actually someone in his office) wants a copy of the report I am writing about 'London as a Global Advertising Centre'. Gulp.

MFI advert

The new MFI adverts have been causing furore, and quite rightly in my opinion. In general, that kind of aggression is just not acceptable in families, and nor should it be portrayed as normal. The first time I saw it, I was left feeling very uncomfortable.

That said, I am consistently amazed on the bus how aggressive children seem to be in London. Where do they get it from, this anger? The most trivial things escalate to 'I am going to kill you' fury in seconds. This is new and worrying. However, the MFI advert should not be portraying this as normal and even acceptable.

The offending advert:

An advertising factoid...

The advertising industry is bigger than the UK film industry by £800m.

Oxbridge

Photograph © Andrew Dunn, 20 October 2005.

I went to Oxbridge. Not the kind of statement I usually bring into conversations.

What kind of image or reaction does that arose in most people? A shrug of the shoulders, a sneer, a smile? With a select few, that makes me a member of an exclusive club; with the rest of the world it usually evokes a sneer...and that makes me embarrassed and therefore annoyed at myself for being embarrassed.

Take today, when someone looked rather piercingly at me and said, "you don't have any of the usual arrogance of Oxbridge types". I didn't know what to say. In the end I settled for:

"No, I don't. I was fortunate to go there and having done so doesn't make me any better than anyone else, just luckier."

I then realised I might have come across as having confidence issues (I don't, for the record!) so I qualified it with: "There is a fine line between confidence and arrogance, and I have always wanted to be on the right side". The gentleman nodded, but continued to look at me in a puzzled way.

Unfortunately, the stereotypes are occasionally true, but much less so than you would think. Perhaps I should start a word of mouth campaign with my blog "Oxbridge graduates are not all arrogant". But really there is no business problem for marketing to solve, Oxbridge has no problem attracting applicants.

My real feelings about the whole Oxbridge thing is that I had some of the most amazing experiences of my life there. It is something to be proud of and it is an institution which shaped me in more ways than I care to count, but I hope in a good way.