advertising
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Looking the other way: Paul Fusco and the power of implication in marketing
Paul Fusco is quoted in The Guardian this morning. In 1968, I was assigned by Look magazine to get on the train bearing Robert F Kennedy’s remains from New York to Washington DC. Barred from photographing the Kennedy family in their private car, I took note of the people lined up along the track to…
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Zen and the art of flogging stuff
In the frenzy of creating concepts to an agency deadline, invariably someone will propose a ‘Zen’ execution. Usually this can be attributed to a free-floating miasma of stress, or too much coffee. It is a knee-jerk idea that you see all too often. This Zen territory (as I call it) has little to do with the school…
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Weight Watchers – ‘My Butt’
I caught this US ad for Weight Watchers on the Best ads site. What I like about it is that it refers to ‘my butt’. I worked on a campaign for an appetite suppressant drug, where a larger woman was pictured was saying, ‘I decided to stop being fat’. The word fat proved controversial, with…
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Somersby Cider wobbling on the shoulders of a giant?
The Somersby Cider advert is funny, and quietly remarkable. For it relies on a knowledge of Apple stores, and the Apple brand. It is no coincidence that Apple’s fanboys and fangirls are stuck to the flypaper of creative departments everywhere. It subverts the seriousness of Apple stores, replacing customers with drinkers examining pints of cider…
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Advertising is not Art
Once in a blue moon you will get a client who just wants to look fantastic, which gives creatives the opportunity they usually can only dream about. But however arty we get in advertising, what we produce is not art. For in advertising there is always that pesky overriding driver: to sell things. Often what it appears we are…
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Creative gulfs: UK, France and US
I have been working with two agencies lately. One is a French-owned agency, and I am writing English copy for French companies hoping to infiltrate the UK market. The other is a US-owned healthcare agency, where your creative ideas must be run past creative directors in the New York office. This has given me a…
Peter Kenny: a writer's notebook 