I was spying through the garden fence this morning when Ian Hislop caught me.‘Just admiring your new lawnmower,’ I said, though I confess, I was blushing just a touch between nose and ears for reasons other than guilt at the thought that he might suspect I was trying to get writing tips from his wife, Victoria. I had a far more likely reason to feel embarrassed .Since the Hislops bought the big property that backs onto our garden, I’ve been trying to avoid letting him know we were neighbours of his. I feared that viperish wit he's known to dole out on those mentally inferior to him. One withering remark from him and I might begin to feel bad about my life and my part-time office job in Manchester.‘And why, pray tell, were you examining my lawn mower?’ he eventually asked in that...

EUgh Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas will soon propose that all car advertising in newspapers and magazines and possibly TV and radio, carries a health warning similar to that on cigarette packets. Dimas (who I can’t for the life of me remember anyone electing) has yet to announce the new rules which are still under consideration, but it is thought that they might go as far as those proposed by UK Liberal MEP Chris Davies that at least 20% of every advert should be given over to the warnings. Consider, for a brief moment, the short space of time in which it took governments to move from forcing health warnings on cigarette packets to banning smoking in public places.  Far fetched to imagine a similar trajectory for automobiles?  I don’t think so....

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One of my life experiences is having GMTV on in the mornings. They run quite a lot of ads for Activia. I have blogged before about how I explode and turn into a flying saucer every time I hear someone on the telly saying they "feel a bit bloated". But I have noticed a sublter little ploy in the Activia ads recently. It happens very quickly. They say the words "Bifidius Regularis" very quickly,...

Rob Lowe stars in the latest of the great series of Orange Film ads. Not as good as the Steven Seagal one, but great nonetheless....

We would like to start this new informational blog with facts we have found from intense research into the promotional market. YesGifts, as a team, spend a dedicated amount of time looking into what's new and whats not when it comes to marketing a business. We like to make sure that we are at the top and know all there is to know about the market we specialise in.We have researched into the use of promotional pens and how it compares to other products with regards to successful marketing. The promotional pen has been used as a promotional tool since the emergence of the promotional items concept and has succeeded to be the most popular ever since. It makes perfect sense! This is the one item that is most gifted and most used, making the pen the most effective gift for advertising. Where...

Leo Burnett - who came up with this bit of merchandising for a Yoga Centre should be very proud of himself. Even if you aren't interested in merchandising then go to his site just to scribble on his home page (see bottom image) - it's great fun....

Love this HBO ad for The Sopranos. Maybe I have a sick sense of humour....

Imagine a scene in the not-too distant future… after a frenzied period of leaks, rumours, claims and counter-claims, interspersed with no-comments, denials, and increasingly reliable and suggestive evidence emerging from component and sub-assembly manufacturers, Apple Inc announce the imminent release of The Perfect Gadget. The mainstream press attend press conferences and briefings where Apple proclaim that [...]...

It's been a while since I saw an ad that made me go all Gordon Ramsay - swearing and cursing at the screen, howling with derision at the idiots who produced it and the even bigger idiots who will doubtless be influenced by it. But this one left me temporarily speechless.It's for a new 'Super Premium' sexed-up range of fabric conditioner, by Procter and Gamble, marketed under their familiar Lenor brand. The product steps right away from the usual Spring Meadow Summer Fresh type of fragrance that we're all used to, and brings out the dark sensuousness of wash day with delights such as Black Diamond & Lotus Flower, Ruby Jasmine, Amethyst Rose and Sapphire Violet. Leaving aside the fact that three of those names sound like something that a Spice Girl might name their baby daughter - if...

The credit crunch inthe states might have marketers tightening budgets, but online advertising is forecast to continue to grow. Online classified advertising and vertical platform distribution is set to grow by 24% in the next 4 years. A report published by the Kelsey Group forecasts that US classified advertising will increase from $3.9 billion to $14.7 billion. Vertical advertising, for the same period is forecast to grow from $100 million to $456 billion… can those figures be correct? It’s a movement from Web2.0; anyone can publish and connect, to Web3.0; the resurgence of the expert and the niche in response to the shoutyness and noise in the ether. As internet users get more sophisticated and more demanding, it makes sense that goal oriented activity will increasingly...

Did you ever try to see shapes in clouds but lacked the imagination? Well the days of peering into the skies and seeing nothing but an amorphous mass of droplets (or ice crystals) are over A US company aims to has invented a way of making "clouds" in more or less any shape you chose. However, the “clouds” that people will actually see are more likely to be advertising logos. Called flogos the clouds are a mixture of soap-based foams and lighter-than-air gases. The company uses re-purposed artificial snow machines to generate floating adverts at a rate of four two foot by one foot flogos per minute. They will last anywhere from a few minutes to an hour, depending on conditions in the atmosphere, and generally bob to heights of 300 to 500 feet (90 to 150 meters) though they can...

You may have noticed that I have been using Entrecard on Zath in the past few months, located to the right of my website. What is Entrecard? In case you aren’t familiar with Entrecard, it basically takes the idea of real-life business card exchanging and implements it in such a way that it encourages fellow bloggers/webmasters to visit your site. This is achieved by clicking on an Entrecard widget that is located on someone’s website. However, in addition to just potentially getting a visit from the blogger you exchanged with, there is also an economy that has been set up whereby Entrecard Credits are awarded each time you click on someone’s widget and also every time someone clicks on your widget. These credits can be used for various things, the main use however is...

I have just been passed this email from Niki George, our candidate for Bowthorpe, who recieved it from a constituent. This is not the first person to mention this - in fact I had a resident wave his card at me whilst out canvassing yesterday.This moring I received my free bus pass in the post from the Cuty Council, a bit late maybe but no real issues with that. What is concerning me is the apperent free blantant advertising of the Labour party within the design.Not only the red ribbon but also the red rose in the top left corner, it might be argued that this is just a design, but in my view it is too close the the labour colours and motiff to be anything else but advertising the labour party.Is the delay in bring these cards out so close to the local elections anything to do with the so...

I’ve been talking to the nice people at Wrapid on the corner of D’Arbaly & Brewer Street about doing some social media stuff - they’re not quite ready for the full-on Lloyd treatment, but they just shared this promo with me and I thought I’d pass it on to you. So if you’re in Soho before April 15th and up for something to munch on, take this voucher along to the store and you can get a lovely fresh wrap with a choice of exotic fillings for £2.99 - which is, I’m helpfully told, up to £1.26 (just less than a third) off. It has something to do with I Love Soho - though what that is - beyond a big bundle of Flash, I’m not entirely sure myself yet. Oh, and they seem to be infinitely replicable, so do pass them on… Let me know, if you go...

MRI is being used as an additional research armoury for marketers. Jack Daniels commissioned research on brain stimulation on images as part of their ad creation. So while digital marketers get fired up about the possibilities of behaviour and psychographic search across loose networks of sites (Openx, Google Admanager), marketing is already paving the way for plugged in neuromarketing. Yikes! Guardian Technology Article by Nick Carr Granted triggering firing synapses while the subject is encased in an MRI machine might be a large step from the measurement of purchase intent, but it does put into a different context the controversy being kicked up about BT, TalkTalk, Virgin chats with Phorm and it’s ISP based user behavioural tracking. Guardian Technology Article by Charles......

A nice man called David tweeted me yesterday with a link to a video of Russell Davies talking about interestingness, size and creativity. In the video, Russell refers to a project I did a couple of years ago for Birdseye. I just wanted to thank David as it’s always nice to know there are people out there who share the passions I get out of bed for:-) I’ve been thinking about advertising agencies big and small, partly because of the LGFE reunion this thursday and partly because I’m pretty much always stuck in the thick of one or other user-centred design process debate. I sent the following question to a recruiter this morning as we’re talking about maybe working together. I don’t know the answer, but I’m pretty sure it’s tough for a passionate...

Chatting on another website about the clunky brand name given to the “International Day Against Homophobia”, which does not trip off the tongue that easily - and its hideous abbreviation, IDAHO. Anyhow, I was reminded of the George Orwell novel (if it was a novel) 1984 and the principles explained at the end about how choosing short abbreviations for political names enables people to say them quickly and without lingering over the meaning. While Idaho is indeed a word that slips off the tongue almost unnoticed when compared to the International Day Against Homophobia, it lacks any instantly obvious meaning to the bystander. It is therefore a poor brand identity. In the novel, much is made of the conversion from the Ministry of Truth - a term which you will...

As you know I have adverts on this site which are powered by Google Adsense, and over the years I have made quite a bit from them (a 4 figure sum, in actual fact). I also occasionally blog about World of Warcraft, and because Adsense tries to provide contextual advertising, invariably a few sites selling in-game money crop up. Blizzard Entertainment is very, very clear on this subject: it is forbidden, full stop. Buying gold gives players an unfair advantage on those who cannot, or are reluctant, to pay extra money on top of their monthly subscription, and the methods used by the gold sellers are increasingly exploitive of the game. At best, they warp the in-game economies by ‘farming’ resources, which puts them further out of reach of players and means many have to resort to...

After upgrading the site yesterday, I installed a special thingy to show me statistics about who visits the weblog, what they read while they’re here and what links they click on. I haven’t had a system like this in place for years, and was quite surprised this morning by the stats. Many more people visit the site than I thought, and certain posts — the one about casuals, the one about collapsed lungs, and anything about how to do stuff on a computer — actually get a decent number of hits each day, from real live humans, as best as I can tell. So, I thought I’d try a little experiment and… add some advertisements to the site. You know, so I can profit from football hooligans arranging fights and unwell Americans without health insurance. Might as well...

The director's birthday cake flickr View my photo journal "If vee look at dee graph ve can see der eez several picks", continued my colleague in her monotone drone as she readjusted her headscarf with the beginning of each projected PowerPoint slide. I looked on in horror as a graph indicated PICK, PICK, PICK, PICK and a fifth PICK, all of which marking high points with some audience of some form of media; the subject of which was lost on me as the lines reached up only to be capped with an excitingly coloured misspelling. I shriveled back in my chair to hide from the other native English speaking in the room for whom we were presenting to. "PEAK, PEAK, PEAK, PEAK and frinkin' PEAK!", I muttered into my hand, conscious of how this only reflects badly on me."Using world of mouth",...

Burger King’s slogan “HAVE IT YOUR WAY™” really is a Registered Trade Mark. Luckily for those looking for a similar marketing gem to promote their products or services, “IT’S YOUR FUNERAL” and “SUIT YOURSELF” are still available....

Art into Advertising A young man stands in a brightly lit room, turns, and runs straight through the wall... it explodes at his touch. He keeps running, flying through more and more walls, unstoppable. A woman appears running next to him, exploding into the scene in a shower of rock and plaster. They pause, panting, and look at each other... then run straight through the side of the building. Suddenly they are running vertically up the trunks of two giant trees. They jump... upwards, outwards, away from the earth, into the sky, and space. Not only bent on escape from the confines of their prison, they have escaped even from the confines of the planet. Its beautiful, ultra-modern, hi tech melodrama set to an arrangement of Hendel. Every time I see this piece of film, the final moments make...

Dear Dr Eric Holzle-Egg-Head,I have read about your new DNA-based dating agency Scientific Match with interest, amusement, and no small degree of frustration.A dating agency that uses swabs of cheek spit to analyse a customer's DNA, working to a theory that we are inclined to sniff out mates whose immune system's genes are different from our own? An easy target, surely?A whole week later, I am forced to admit defeat.I am almost entirely unable to write a reasoned piece showing exactly why your methods are insidious pseudo-scientific bollocks, designed to create maximum profits from minimal evidence. And believe me, I have tried.Even my learned scientist friend, MadCow Ph.D. - who, I swear, knows everything - couldn't take it apart. She informed me that 'It is true that there may be...

Matter Box Contents Originally uploaded by Lloyd Davis Others have covered this more quickly than me, but I thought I’d say something beyond what I said on Seesmic last week - http://seesmic.com/v/6XRvg23fSW Charlie said he didn’t want samples. I do. I’m much happier with my shower gel and play-doh than with a plastic monster a calendar and a badge in the shape of a vodka bottle. If something that comes in this isn’t useful, it had better be completely, mindblowingly, gobsmackingly beautiful - cereal box shaped like a book? Nah. While the crayons made of soap are potentially also useful, the thing that made my brain scream more than anything was the lametrocious rubbish written about it: “A set of crayons that are really soap tell a story...

Over at BAE’s favourite leftwing magazine, Richard Herring writes a blog post I’ve been meaning to do only puts it far more eloquently and humourously. One thing he doesn’t mention is that Chris’ “giant smile” on the advert doesn’t really look like a smile at all. Smug is one way of putting it. Another is to point out it looks rather similar to the expression one has when one has a mouthful of someone one does not know whether to spit out or swallow. Nothing wrong with that of course, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t get that from his wife or girlfriend. Clearly there is another dimension to this sad squit’s life that has yet to be told. Share......

I have had a number of emails, both from doctors and members of the public, asking about the ethical position of doctors who publicly promote the services they offer. Twenty five years ago any form of advertising would have resulted in a doctor being hauled up in front of the GMC. Nowadays, in the age of information technology it is accepted, and rightly so, that doctors may advertise the services they offer and draw attention to their particular areas of expertise as well as all the mundane information about location and opening times. But are doctors allowed to promote themselves, canvass for business and, indeed, offer inducements to patient to sign on with their practice? I am not so sure about that. The Department of Health "Code of practice for promotion of NHS services" is...

It would seem that the vagaries of the fashion and beauty industries that inspired last week's rant are finally about to answer a question that's been bugging me for years.Do men tend to require fewer and simpler cosmetic products because they really are less vain and more secure, or have the evil arch-bastards simply not found the right way to get to them yet?Yesterday however, I discovered that increasing numbers of men, inspired by that David Beckham ad, are heading to beauty salons up and down the country to get themselves a Boyzilian.Now, whilst both David and Victoria Beckham have kept UK hairdressers churning out replicas of their trend-setting barnets for over 10 years now, I hadn't predicted that this particular look would be driving British menfolk into the grasping clutches of...

Dr Crippen cannot comment from personal experience on the effects that drug reps have on doctors. We stopped seeing them in our practice over ten years ago. We found them boring, embarrassing and at times insulting. They functioned at the level of adverts that sell soap poweder to housewives.But of one thing I am certain. Advertising to doctors is hugely effective, and there is not the slightest doubt that it alters our prescribing behaviour. Big Pharma spends approaching a billion pounds a year on advertising. They are canny businessmen. If it did not work, they would not do it. What is more, if they were allowed to, they would advertise directly to the UK general public as they do in the USA.The crocodile tears pouring out from the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry as...

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