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Features

What do apostrophes make? Prizes! The day John Lewis bagged my loyalty

Contrary to popular urban myth, I am not a member of the Apostrophe Protection Society. Yes, I did write a blog about Waterstone’s and the decision from their powers that be to get rid of the apostrophe in 2012. My blog did, incidentally,...

Posted by: Ashley Morrison
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Features

I’m LMAO. Y? Just cuz it’s gr8 2 C U! Lol!

I remember when all this were fields. And young people had respect for their elders. And dash it all, people spoke English PROPERLY in my day! Yes, I’m sure we’ve all heard the same old rant - if not from grandparents then from the old...

Posted by: Ashley Morrison
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Features

Speak when you're spoken to, dear. Or put the kettle on.

Call me naïve, but I think we in the UK are pretty inclusive; more so than other nations. Granted, discrimination in the workplace does still exist on various levels - and much more in some industries than others. Banking, I hear, is one of...

Posted by: Ashley Morrison
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Features

Content isn’t king – timing is everything

This weekend, I learned a valuable lesson. Content isn’t king. Or at least, to be more accurate, content isn’t always king. Copy does have to be top-notch to have an impact and to inspire people to buy, sell, share, offer, sign up,...

Posted by: Ashley Morrison
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Leaders

Bieber: only slightly more bad-ass than Barbie

So, Justin Bieber’s in the news. Yes, that craaaaazy 19-year-old superstar is at it again. The over-exposed victim of his own success was caught racing down a Miami street in his bright yellow Lamborghini at 4am. Apparently he’d had some...

Posted by: Ashley Morrison
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Features

Home is where the heart is. And the work. And everything else.

If I started a blog by telling you that I was thinking about buying a treadmill, you may well click away in anticipated boredom. But the fact remains, I’m seriously considering buying a treadmill. There, I said it. So what? Well, quite. Of...

Posted by: Ashley Morrison
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Leaders

“It's the [bad] taste.” Farewell to the last of the PG Tips chimps.

Growing up in the '80s, there were only four TV channels. Consequently, when we got to school, it was a pretty safe bet that we had all watched the same telly as everyone else the night before. So in the playground of a morning, we would all run...

Posted by: Ashley Morrison
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Features

'Ello, 'ello, 'ello. What’s all this 'ere, then? #CuriousCop

Happy new year to all you Creativepoolers. Hope you had a blast - and not necessarily of reality. Lord knows we have enough of that for the rest of the year, so I hope you had a day off from the doom. I wonder how many of you went down to the Thames...

Posted by: Ashley Morrison
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Inspiration

Nice artwork? What about the call to action?

Too often at printed.com we see fabulous flyers, leaflets and stickers with killer design and spot-on messaging, but there's something missing no call to action! To give your printed marketing materials a chance to work, it's so important to include...

Posted by: Creativepool
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Features

"That ad campaign cost too much." No **** Sherlock.

When I blogged about the John Lewis Christmas ad a few weeks ago - the one featuring the hare and the bear…and the despair of the rather wet Lily Allen cover of Keane’s ‘Somewhere Only We Know’ - a lot of people balked at the...

Posted by: Ashley Morrison
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Features

Drive Like A Girl: patronising, discriminatory...or clever?

Most people would probably agree that, these days, we are a much more touchy-feely nation than ever before. Or much more “politically correct”, if you want to be more politically correct about the label. But advertising is still one of...

Posted by: Ashley Morrison
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Inspiration

A Fashion Galore! - Welcome to the wonderful world of Isabella Blow.

Somerset House is currently showing an exhibition about the extraordinary life of Isabella Blow, a woman who performed a striptease at Andy Warhol's funeral to the live music of the Velvet Underground, not to draw attention to herself, but because...

Posted by: Jessica Hazel
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Features

Panic stations: leaving London and moving to t’sticks

As I sit down to write my blog today, I’m a bit anxious. You see, we moved on Saturday. But this was no ordinary move. I’ve left the creative centre of the country (and some would argue of the world) and gone to live in a place where...

Posted by: Ashley Morrison
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Features

YouTube and You: are you doing yourself out of a job?

“That’s the power of social media” - that’s what they keep telling us. Yep, social media can indeed be harnessed and used to great effect by an enormous range of businesses - from sole traders to multinationals. For some of...

Posted by: Ashley Morrison
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Leaders

Daley Male: why prejudice won't affect the Olympian boy-brand

Unless you’ve been asleep for the past week, you’ll be all too aware of Olympian Tom Daley’s announcement about his sexuality via a ‘selfie’ YouTube video. The reaction has been incredible - from the media and the public...

Posted by: Ashley Morrison
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Features

Top 10 Worst Christmas Hits

Not that I have anything against festive cheer, but for some reason, this sometimes means that good taste seems to vanish completely, and this could not be more true when it comes to Christmas songs. With videos featuring a load of scouse wigs and...

Posted by: Creativepool
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Leaders

Bat Wings: 60 years of the BBC ident

"All branding is about setting yourself apart and trying to be clear to your audience or customers that you stand for this set of values.” Absolutely spot on…and so it should be, because those words of wisdom come from Martin Lambie-Nairn...

Posted by: Ashley Morrison
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Features

The not-so-beautiful game: the sickly world of beauty pageants

These days, we’re by no means strangers to the phenomenon that is reality TV. It permeates every channel, every genre and every demographic. We laugh at the modern Victorian freak show that is X Factor, with their hopelessly deluded, fragile...

Posted by: Ashley Morrison
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Leaders

Hey, sugar. Is John Lewis' Christmas ad too treacly?

Could they have been the most expensive two minutes in advertising history? Well, if they weren’t, they certainly weren’t far off. Last Saturday during X Factor - and therefore requiring the sign-off from pop mogul Simon Cowell himself -...

Posted by: Ashley Morrison
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Features

Please peruse this article for your edification...and stuff...

The other day, somebody accused me of being “such a copywriter” about something or other. I think I’d used the word “malapropism” and nobody else in the room knew what it meant. My being called “such a...

Posted by: Ashley Morrison
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Features

Writer's "I quit" video goes viral

We’ve all had fantasies about various ways of quitting our jobs. In fact, some of you out there may even have turned freelance because you just couldn’t take the permanent life any more - either because of your boss or the work itself....

Posted by: Ashley Morrison
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Features

Sou Fujimoto's 2013 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion

You have just under two weeks to get down to the Serpentine Gallery in London’s Kensington Gardens to see this year’s Pavilion, designed by multi award-winning Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto. Over the years, the Serpentine Gallery has...

Posted by: Ashley Morrison
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Leaders

It's political correctness gone mental

So, tell me honestly, does that title offend you? It's a serious question - I put it there deliberately. The reason being that, last week, Asda paid £25,000 to mental health charity Mind for advertising what was deemed to be a completely...

Posted by: Ashley Morrison
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Inspiration

Six ways in which 'copywriting' differs from 'writing'.

When people ask what I do for a living, I tend to get in a terrible flap. This is largely because I do a variety of things. I pen pieces about music, I blog about advertising and the creative industry (obviously), I present podcasts and radio...

Posted by: Magnus Shaw
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Features

One small mistake, one giant gaff

You must be used to my moaning by now. All those tortuously bad ads that drive me potty - from Brad Pitt waxing poetical in the agonising Chanel 'inevitable' campaign, to Spotify waffling on about what music does to us (which has nothing to do with...

Posted by: Ashley Morrison
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Leaders

McCann Manchester's new Haunt (the prize that goes bump in the night)

As prizes go, having your own pub built is quite a nice thing to win. But so it was when McCann Manchester was voted global agency of the year across all of McCann Worldgroup. Having won the award this year, the Manchester-based communications...

Posted by: Ashley Morrison
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Features

Working from home: a rod for your own back?

Over the summer, I was working for a client in southeast London. I’ll be honest: the travel was a pain in the butt. We were in that ridiculously hot stretch of the summer where it was hotter in London than in most of Europe. The tube was...

Posted by: Ashley Morrison
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Features

The name's Bont. Jace Bunt.

There can be few things more cringey than a big corporation “trying to be yer mate”. (I'm taking the whole dads-dancing-at-weddings thing as read, obviously.) And yet, time and time again, they try to make out that they value me, you and...

Posted by: Ashley Morrison
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Leaders

HTC: Humongous Tinfoil Catamaran? Hot Tea Catapult?

When the Kevin Bacon EE 4G mobile network commercials first came out at the cinema, the auditoriums (or at least the ones I sat in) were awash with laughter. Tightly scripted, informative and amusing to boot, they were a breath of fresh air and just...

Posted by: Ashley Morrison
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Workshop

Touchy feely: when you're a freelance, it's all about THEM

If you’re a freelancer who’s got a steady stream of work coming your way - either from the same loyal clients who know you and trust you, or from referrals from said loyal clients, or you’re very good at selling yourself and you...

Posted by: Ashley Morrison
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Inspiration

The RA Summer Exhibition: "I could do that - but I've got talent"

You've got a little less than a week to get yourself down to the Royal Academy to marvel at the wonders of the Summer Exhibition. Or do I mean wonder at the marvels? Or neither? Do I mean marvel at the lack of talent - or the extraordinary choices of...

Posted by: Ashley Morrison

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