Displaying 181 - 208 of 208 results
OK, this is going to be an interesting one. I promise I'll attempt to steer clear of lazy innuendo, but I can't promise I'll be 100% successful, and there will be more than a few bad jokes. So be warned. The Wankband aims to turn masturbation (male...
Posted by: Benjamin Hiorns
eHarmony - Popcorn There's some furious competition between TV dating sites right now, and that means a plethora of TV ads. One campaign simply shows happy daters on happy dates, but eHarmony have gone more leftfield, using a bizarre scenario to...
Posted by: Magnus Shaw
We can't really go on like this. The alarming evolution of 'trolling' from pestering people online to the loss of life, has been eye-watering in its speed. The last week has seen a situation develop whereby a family whose daughter is missing, was...
Posted by: Magnus Shaw
It would be a strange person who would argue we are not all entitled to privacy. When taking a bath, most of us would be alarmed were we to find a ladder at the window, allowing anyone and everyone to have a peek at us as we shampooed and scrubbed....
Posted by: Magnus Shaw
Thursday is definitely the new Friday, and last Thursday we hung out at the new House of Vans for the opening of London’s only indoor skatepark. Because its hidden around five of the Old Vic tunnels beneath Waterloo Station, its a bit hard to...
Posted by: Creativepool
I think I've only ever met two people who never swore. One for moral and religious reasons, the other had taught herself not to, because she thought she was doing it too much. I admired them both for their self-control and adhering to something they...
Posted by: Magnus Shaw
Yesterday the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Grey Group ad agencies '41?29! Media Internet' and 'Uncle Grey' (based in Turkey and Denmark respectively) launched a brand new campaign, which aims to raise public awareness regarding endangered...
Posted by: Benjamin Hiorns
Had it not been for an internship, I wouldn't be a copywriter. Once I'd completed my training, my tutor arranged for a series of placements at various agencies. It was called 'work experience' then, and each placement lasted a few days. It was a...
Posted by: Magnus Shaw
The most successful film in UK cinemas this week is 'Insidious 2'. Having seen the first 'Insidious' instalment just a couple of weeks ago, I don't think I'll bother with chapter two. The best horror movies are akin to long road trips through foreign...
Posted by: Magnus Shaw
They do things differently in Russia. Almost like it's another country or something. If their government isn't enthusiastically installing homophobic laws they've borrowed from some particularly intolerant 19th century fruitcakes, their president is...
Posted by: Magnus Shaw
First, a bit of background. The Huffington Post is an online newspaper and it's rather successful. Actually it calls itself a 'news aggregator and blog' - but considering that is less clear than 'online newspaper', we'll stick with the latter. It was...
Posted by: Magnus Shaw
Facebook claims to have cracked its rather awkward 'ads on offensive pages' problem. This week the social network's Director of Policy announced the site has completed the task of 'narrowing down the number of pages where ads will be shown'. Which...
Posted by: Magnus Shaw
At some point, perhaps four years ago, doorstep lending ('The Tallyman', as my grandmother would have termed it) suddenly became terribly old fashioned and parochial. Recession and financial misery inflated the market for non-bank lending at a...
Posted by: Magnus Shaw
The most surprising aspect of the Edward Snowden case and the revelations about GCHQ is that anyone is surprised. Did we really imagine our 'lords and masters' had such respect for our privacy and dignity that they would resist the temptation to...
Posted by: Magnus Shaw
For the jobbing freelance there can only be one priority. Ahead of the bookkeeping, email answering, blog updating and business card ordering - there's nothing more important than bringing in the work. And, when the industry is buoyant, it's not too...
Posted by: Magnus Shaw
If advertising is about anything, it's about influence and persuasion. So allow me to tell you a tale which perfectly illustrates the strange and mysterious ways in which the human psyche is influenced and persuaded. This is the story of a man who...
Posted by: Magnus Shaw
Heather Dewey-Hagborg is not only an artist, she is also a DNA biologist and computer programmer extraordinaire who does shocking things with science in the name of art, such as finding a blob of chewing gum on the street and then printing out the...
Posted by: Creativepool
You may have noticed Marissa Mayer, the CEO of Yahoo!, kicking up some dust last month, when she announced a complete ban on working from home. This, she claimed, was to encourage collaborative working and collective thinking. However, there was a...
Posted by: Creativepool
We like Galaxy chocolate bars, I think we're all agreed on that. Lovely, creamy, sugary sledges of tooth rotting gorgeousness, all bundled in delightfully gold foil - wonderful stuff. Mind you, we shouldn't be surprised we think this way, because for...
Posted by: Creativepool
by Magnus Shaw. Earlier this year I wrote a piece for Creativepool, arguing the Red Cross had undermined their advertising by using a woman and her dog to represent the concept of 'crisis'. I agreed the ad was attractively directed, but was...
Posted by: Creativepool
by Magnus Shaw As I write this Andy Coulson, Neville Thurlbeck, Stuart Kuttner and Glenn Mulcaire are appearing in court facing charges relating to the phone hacking scandal. And quite right too. There is little doubt the interception of voice...
Posted by: Creativepool
by Magnus Shaw Last week I wrote a piece for Creativepool (which you can read here) explaining how the rubbish customer service offered by Orange ensured I would never purchase from them again, and simultaneously wasted their advertising budget. So...
Posted by: Creativepool
by Magnus Shaw Throughout this increasingly insane financial crisis I have worked as a freelance. Disadvantage: I have to find my own work and therefore income. Advantage: I can't be made redundant. However, I have faced the redundancy...
Posted by: Creativepool
by Magnus Shaw I'm in America. Staying in Kissimmee, Florida and genuinely delighted to see things looking a lot better. Last year I was alarmed at the number of boarded up stores and saddened by the prevalence of regular Americans soliciting money...
Posted by: Creativepool
by Jinx Jeffery, Dynamic New Alliances. I know a great deal of you reading this will probably have read something similar before, so please forgive me if some of this comes across in a wave of deja vu. But the information is clearly not sinking in -...
Posted by: Creativepool
I once worked with an Art Director who had just arrived in the UK from a stint at Leo Burnett in Venezuela. As well as alarming tales of armed guards outside his office, he told me this: when pitching, it was usual practice for the agencies involved...
Posted by: Creativepool
Twitter can be a bear pit. As a repository for anything that crosses one's mind, it tends to attract rebuttals, rejections, replies and refutations like an old sweet attracts pocket fluff. However, with a bit of luck, a judicious following policy and...
Posted by: Creativepool
Last week a couple of friends and I went to Berlin for a short break on the cheap. Unfortunately for us our tight budgets and last minute booking meant we had to fly with Ryanair, in the past this hasn't been much of a problem but we were unprepared...
Posted by: Creativepool
