Advertising folk who take their jobs a little too seriously, and I’d argue even those that don’t, want to be part of a campaign that becomes a cultural reference point. I’m no different. I’m endlessly fascinated by the campaigns that manage to penetrate folk’s heads.

During lockdown, I’ve become mildly obsessed by a campaign that achieved exactly this. The ads have developed a kind of cult status and — rather uniquely — have done so through a choice of media.

When ads achieve mass consciousness, it’s often because of a feature of the creative; the sadly-missed jingles of old, the…

As Byron Sharp made clear in How Brands Grow, the goal of marketing activity is to improve physical or mental availability, or both. Being at the forefront of people’s minds makes it more likely you’ll shift units, or ideas, and so familiarity is really, really valuable

One way to take root inside the heads of audiences is through increased penetration and frequency, making sure you’re seen more than your competitors. The other is more difficult, the fame effect, making a disproportionate impact on consumers through what you have to say.

Given that brands are — if we’re honest — fairly…

On Saturday 26th September, thousands of people pitched up in Trafalgar Square to listen to a talk by David Icke and to protest about a combination of; vaccines, track and trace, lockdown restrictions and 5G mobile networks. Whilst this event represents a position on the extreme end of those taken by Brits, its existence is emblematic of how fragmented our views are on a broad range of topics.

From Brexit (yawn) to climate change and the BBC, it feels like we’ve never been more divided and entrenched in our disparate opinions.

One approach used to try and find agreement in…

I was nudged to write something, after reading the below paragraph on WARC suggesting that for the next while, thanks to the shift of priorities created by COVID, we would become less environmentally responsible as consumers.

I find this terrifying. We cannot allow ourselves to de-prioritise climate change as other, very important, very pressing things like job security and health become much bigger concerns. If we lose focus now, we’ll look back once the dust has settled and the economy has started to recover to find we’re in a far, far worse situation.

If anything, now is the time to…

There’s a lot going on at the moment; the world is burning, antibiotics are being rendered useless, millions are dying of hunger whilst tens of people bathe in £50 notes. All of these issues need solutions. The solutions are hard and unpopular.

How do we know they are unpopular?

Whenever solutions are raised, a similar refrain is heard from every person of influence, “Consumers aren’t interested. They won’t buy it”.

And so a handbrake is firmly placed on progress and we return to the inevitable route we were already headed on.

The problem is, it’s not real. The argument that…