As you know, advertising is a rather different discipline to PR.
While we are mostly meek and mild, service-oriented types, our UK advertising brothers (and occasionally sisters) tend to be loud-mouthed egomaniacs convinced to the point of lunacy of their own infallibility. (A bit like the cast of Mad Men but with bad skin.)
Some clients seem to like this, in the face of all reason, and are apparently happy to endure the sort of spoilt brat behaviour that would prompt a slap on the legs if it was outside an agency meeting.
I may be prejudiced. I went out once (and once only) with an advertising suit who spent the whole evening staring at my chest and talking about USPs and low-hanging fruit.
It was The Grocer front cover ad last week that prompted me to think about brilliant creative minds.
It seemed to be suggesting that Bisto could unite the Big Bad Wolf and the Three Little Pigs around a delicious meal of roast pork. "Bisto - the gravy of choice for cannibals!" was the message that I took out of it, but this may not have been the intention.
From cannibalism to food necrophilia. There's a nice potential battle ahead between the meat and veggie brands of death. In the green corner, the late Linda McCartney, back on TV to frighten viewers in a couple of weeks ("You could be just like me!"), and in the red corner Fred Elliott, Coronation Street's favourite dead butcher, whose new product range is on its way to a food morgue (aka Londis) near you.
Good to know that there will be a choice of menus in the afterlife. Personally, I side with Fred. As Karoline (with a K) barked on her way to lunch (at 11.30am): "Better a dead man's sausage than no sausage at all, darling."
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While we are mostly meek and mild, service-oriented types, our UK advertising brothers (and occasionally sisters) tend to be loud-mouthed egomaniacs convinced to the point of lunacy of their own infallibility. (A bit like the cast of Mad Men but with bad skin.)
Some clients seem to like this, in the face of all reason, and are apparently happy to endure the sort of spoilt brat behaviour that would prompt a slap on the legs if it was outside an agency meeting.
I may be prejudiced. I went out once (and once only) with an advertising suit who spent the whole evening staring at my chest and talking about USPs and low-hanging fruit.
It was The Grocer front cover ad last week that prompted me to think about brilliant creative minds.
It seemed to be suggesting that Bisto could unite the Big Bad Wolf and the Three Little Pigs around a delicious meal of roast pork. "Bisto - the gravy of choice for cannibals!" was the message that I took out of it, but this may not have been the intention.
From cannibalism to food necrophilia. There's a nice potential battle ahead between the meat and veggie brands of death. In the green corner, the late Linda McCartney, back on TV to frighten viewers in a couple of weeks ("You could be just like me!"), and in the red corner Fred Elliott, Coronation Street's favourite dead butcher, whose new product range is on its way to a food morgue (aka Londis) near you.
Good to know that there will be a choice of menus in the afterlife. Personally, I side with Fred. As Karoline (with a K) barked on her way to lunch (at 11.30am): "Better a dead man's sausage than no sausage at all, darling."
More from this column
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