Displaying 1981 - 2016 of 3604 results
by Magnus Shaw If you've been following the BBC's peerless Olympic comedy "2012" you'll be more than familiar with Siobhan Sharpe and her empty-headed, rapid-fire marketing eyewash, delivered to perfection by the superb Jessica Hynes. Anyone who...
Posted by: Creativepool
by Ashley Morrison I'm very happy to take advice from people. The main caveat is that it has to be from someone who knows what they're talking about. The second caveat is that they have to practise what they preach. Below is a genuine profile from...
Posted by: Creativepool
With the amount of likes and comments we can all do now on the internet, the art of being able to get your point across in a face to face environment seems to be getting lost. So to counter this culture of 140 characters and faceless avatars we are...
Posted by: Creativepool
by Magnus Shaw Last year I wrote a column on a brilliant campaign for Mooncup - an alternative female sanitary device. The brand's wit and frankness were refreshing and the correspondence I received suggested the gadget has many fans. And now a...
Posted by: Creativepool
by Magnus Shaw When a kitchen is infested with cockroaches, the little beasts do their unpalatable work quite happily while the room is dark.But turn on a light and they scatter chaotically in all directions, scared and confused. There are many...
Posted by: Creativepool
by John Fountain Open on a young blond actress laughing and full of fun. She flicks a strand of falling hair away from her face and looks deep into the camera. With a knowing smile she says, "I'm good about washing my face" and then with a pause...
Posted by: Creativepool
by Magnus Shaw Even readers of my advanced years may struggle to remember The Skids. Formed in Dunfermline in 1977, the band bridged the final days of punk rock and the birth of new wave pop. They were pretty successful too. Singles 'Masquerade',...
Posted by: Creativepool
by John Fountain A few weeks back I was asked to do a stint as guest blogger for the writing agency Afia. Seeing as this is a first rate copywriting agency, and seeing as they think a lot about copywriting over there, I took the executive decision...
Posted by: Creativepool
by John Fountain I've just been reading Steve Martin's autobiography - Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life. Although I knew that he was a funny guy, I wasn't aware how alternative his act was back in the 70's, or how creative his writing. When he began...
Posted by: Creativepool
by Ashley Morrison Look, love, just get back in the kitchen where you belong. What on earth are you doing, straying away from the cooker? Leash too long? Oh, mind you, with the leash off, you might as well do the vacuuming when you've finished...
Posted by: Creativepool
by Magnus Shaw So we're all agreed, social media is the brave new world of PR and advertising. A year ago there was some mileage in telling clients, and anyone else prepared to listen, the game was changing and it was time to get hip to the new...
Posted by: Creativepool
by Magnus Shaw Earlier today I had a phone call. When you're a freelance working from home, these are exciting moments. Unfortunately it was a sales call, which took much of the excitement out of this specific moment. But I hadn't spoken to anyone...
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 Kentucky Fried Chicken may well be an assault on the digestion and troubling to the waistband, but it seems its advertising is also offensive to a cross section of the viewing public. The Advertising Standards Authority has announced...
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 Jessica Hazel Online Logo Contests have been popping up all over the internet for quite some time now. They allow businesses and individuals to offer a set fee, or prize, for what they consider to be the best logo design. Hundreds of amazing...
Posted by: Creativepool
by Magnus Shaw When I was a kid, homosexuality bemused and troubled us. I went to a public school and, despite the stereotypes, any boy even hinting at same sex attraction would be inviting ridicule or worse. That's how stupid we were. Now in...
Posted by: Creativepool
by Magnus Shaw Perhaps we shouldn't expect anything more from ITV2 - after all, this is the home of Celebrity Juice, Life On Murrs and The Only Way Is Essex. But while those shows may grate and irritate, they manage to avoid devaluing and...
Posted by: Creativepool
by John Fountain A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I was employed as a junior copywriter. Salary 4.5K. 1-month holiday a year. 1½ hours for lunch. I was not the only junior in the creative dept mind. There were three others and...
Posted by: Creativepool
by Magnus Shaw For a jet propulsion lab brochure: "What we do isn't rocket science. Oh, hang on ...". For Sainsbury's: "We say 'hello' to good buyers". A recruitment ad for security guards: "Who says you can't have a successful career after the...
Posted by: Creativepool
Here's a true story. Back in the late 70's, right smack in the middle of punk rock, I studied graphic design at Hounslow. Unlike some of the more respectable educational establishments, Hounslow was a bit rough and 'edgy'. The area around the college...
Posted by: Creativepool
I had a go at being a creative director once. It didn't quite work out. All sorts of reasons why but the main one being that I was just 30 years old. Looking back that's probably too young to be in the hot seat. Although I knew how to come up with...
Posted by: Creativepool
We've all been there. The flip charts at the front of the room. The post-it-notes around the walls. The plate that once detained a packet of custard creams. The incessant doodling. The standing up and the sitting down. The glazed eyes staring into...
Posted by: Creativepool
Up until a month ago I'd never attended a networking group. In truth I didn't know much about them. I assumed that they were for geeks and braggers, for the totally incompetent and the mildly desperate, for people either short of friends or folk who...
Posted by: Creativepool
Being the product-loving and recession-conscious consumers that we are, we all want to get as much for our cash as we can. And in some ways, that even applies to giving to charity. People will admirably train themselves to death to run the London...
Posted by: Creativepool
HM Government and Tesco must have thought they'd found the Holy Grail. In an era of high unemployment and a conspicuous absence of career opportunities, the idea that the jobless could somehow be coerced into working for the ubiquitous supermarket...
Posted by: Creativepool
As you are no doubt well aware, copywriters are, of course, some of the brightest, kindest and most imaginative people walking this planet. Indeed, when God was busy spooning out the talent, he took a particular shine to the marketing wordsmith -...
Posted by: Creativepool
The Great Depression aside, there has rarely been a worse time to apply for a job. And yet for anyone leaving college or school, or simply attempting to recover from the cruelty of redundancy, it has never been more essential. So with high hopes and...
Posted by: Creativepool
From the moment the brief lands on the table and the creative team cast their eyes over the words 'TV Script' the salivating begins. Will this be the one? The one with the inexhaustible budget. The one that shouts 'GO BIG'. The one that doesn't...
Posted by: Creativepool
Like many other people, the first email to pop into my inbox each morning is from Groupon, offering me a wealth of hot stone massages, teeth whitening, stately home breaks and exotic cuisines for a fraction of their normal prices. I often sleepily...
Posted by: Creativepool
As the Olympics and the Jubilee draw closer there is an ever increasing sense of patriotism and British pride emulating from all around. The V&A are marking the event in their own intriguing way by staging a major exhibition entitled 'British Design...
Posted by: Creativepool
Tony Cullingham is principal of the famous Watford Creative Advertising course at West Herts College. The course at Watford is legendary and considered to be one of the very best in the UK. If you're trying to break into the business it is said that...
Posted by: Creativepool
Now Hollywood is the territory of bean counters rather than creative visionaries, we should be not at all surprised when Space Chimps 4 fails to live up to its, admittedly limited, promise. However, back in the mists of time, truly great movies were...
Posted by: Creativepool
by Richard Bloom, Purple Consultancy. The past 18 months or so have seen the creative industries recover from the recent recession at an astonishingly fast pace, at least from our point of view as recruiters it has. It is still very much a...
Posted by: Creativepool
For decades brand marketeers have worked hard to draw a direct link between a product and the possibility of success with the opposite sex (they’ve rarely been brave enough to suggest a connection with same sex relationships outside specialist...
Posted by: Creativepool
Nick is a writer for branding and design. His work has won two Yellow Pencils in D&AD Writing for Design and appeared in the annual four more times. Personal projects include Corpoetics, a collection of poems made by rearranging corporate copy, and...
Posted by: Creativepool