Displaying 37 - 72 of 3405 results
Spar There's no doubt about it, Spar stores are very handy. In fact, where I live, they're the only shop open on Christmas Day. And here they come pitching their Easter offering, which interestingly seems to largely consist of booze. Not a chocolate...
Posted by: Magnus Shaw
THINK! - Drug Drive Paranoia No-one should underestimate the challenge of creating a decent public information film. Selling your audience tasty ice-cream is a walk in the park when compared with the task of changing people's lifestyle choices....
Posted by: Magnus Shaw
M and M Direct - Start Saving Quite how a catalogue clothes company manages to use that name, without falling foul of the chocolate people (whose ad we reviewed last week), I'm not sure. Perhaps it's because their ad is so anodyne and dull, the...
Posted by: Magnus Shaw
Capital FM - Biggest Hits I'm not overly fond of Capital Radio. Over the last decade they've set about eradicating truly local music radio, and ensuring its replacement is nothing more than banal yammering. But what of their advertising? Well, not...
Posted by: Magnus Shaw
There is most certainly much business going on at Advertising Week Europe. When one sees the great work from Karmarama for the week itself, you’ll see that this not your “typical” gathering of advertising folk. Yes, there will most...
Posted by: Advertising Week
Mars - Winning Yes, we all know they're much smaller than they used to be (Mars have admitted as much). But they're still one of the leading chocolate brands, and need the power of advertising to maintain that position. Fortunately, the Mars people...
Posted by: Magnus Shaw
McVities - Sweet Friends The image of two tough-nut window cleaners going all soppy over some soft toys is undeniably amusing, and that's what we find in the latest execution of McVities 'Sweet' campaign. Clearly a lot of time and money have been...
Posted by: Magnus Shaw
Barclays - Code Playground There can be few things more important to a kid's education right now, than teaching them code. Whilst nothing is guaranteed, it's surely their best bet for a productive career in later life. So Barclays have launched an...
Posted by: Magnus Shaw
Jackpot Joy - Bus Stop There's so much to baffle me here (which leads me to suspect these people are not really addressing me). Does Barbara Windsor really need money so badly that she's forced to appear in online bingo ads? Can't Eastenders give...
Posted by: Magnus Shaw
Jamie Casino - Casino's Law It's hard to overstate the importance of the Superbowl to Americans. Ostensibly a sports final, it's actually a televisual event which unites the country annually - and the commercial breaks are just as important as the...
Posted by: Magnus Shaw
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
Warner Brothers - 'American Sniper' All too often, ads for movies contain too much information and far too much of the movie itself. In short, they're a bit desperate. But this is much more like it. Lean, intriguing but giving little of the story...
Posted by: Magnus Shaw
Ah! There you are. I trust the festivities were kind to you? But now, here's 2015 in all its fresh-faced glory. Swollen with potential and pitfalls, what will this new year bring? Frankly, I have no idea - but I do know there are a few troublesome...
Posted by: Magnus Shaw
Iceland, Peter Andre: When this low-market frozen food retailer had the strapline 'That's why Mums go to Iceland', they attracted enormous condemnation from those who pointed out, quite rightly, it was very sexist. They need worry no longer, for now...
Posted by: Magnus Shaw
Compare The Market: Meerkats On Safari Try as I might, I still can't bring myself to dislike the meerkats. The campaign has been running so long, it should have run out of steam, but when Alexander tells Oleg (you see, I even know their names) he's...
Posted by: Magnus Shaw
When Creativepool went looking for a fine fellow to write a column called ‘The Week In Advertising’, it made very good sense to search for a writer with a calm perspective and a measured, balanced approach. Well, they were all busy, so...
Posted by: Magnus Shaw
This is how it happened - or at least how I became involved. Scrolling through Twitter yesterday, I noticed a message which expressed alarm at real zombies being at large in real Scotland. It was followed by this link:...
Posted by: Magnus Shaw
You're probably familiar with the magazine Private Eye. If not, you just need to know it's the longest running satirical publication in the UK (maybe the world), is edited by Ian Hislop from 'Have I Got News For You', and is still remarkably fresh,...
Posted by: Magnus Shaw
Buzz advertising, or the ability for your advertisement to create conversation, is an art, slowly being perfected through past decades of advertising history. Many advertisements achieve good buzz marketing naturally, through internet and televised...
Posted by: Creativepool
Haven't you heard? Online advertising doesn't work. All those banners, buttons and MPUs? Waste of time. Those pre-play spots on YouTube, and those Facebook campaigns? Completely useless. Google Adwords and sponsored tweets? Utterly worthless. Sorry,...
Posted by: Magnus Shaw
One in three Britons is now overweight. One in five is obese. As far as one can trust statistics, that's the picture giving rise to some hefty soul searching this week. How did this happen? What is to be done about it? And who's to blame? That's the...
Posted by: Magnus Shaw
By way of distraction from the work I was supposed to be doing today, I clicked on a link to a piece of writing on a reputable music website. About a paragraph into the article an unexpected thing happened. The webpage was suddenly obscured by a...
Posted by: Magnus Shaw
Since an art director colleague introduced me to Banksy many years ago, I’ve enjoyed his stuff enormously. In that time he has painted throughout the world, from Sydney to Camden, LA to Palestine. The art critics bemoan him - too obvious, too...
Posted by: Magnus Shaw
“If you look at the UK, we are suffering because we are not putting the time into the idea and there’s empirical evidence to say that the quality of our output has gone down. It’s not my opinion. Empirical evidence from the audience...
Posted by: Magnus Shaw
US retail giants Walmart has been winning significant plaudits of late for the bold new direction undertaken by their advertising campaign, which has been crafted by global advertising kingpins Saatchi & Saatchi. The campaign takes a decisively...
Posted by: Benjamin Hiorns
Back in the eighties, I worked for a radio station which ran a campaign for a double glazing firm. This campaign never actually ended. Like those sofa sales, it just continued year in, year out. The ads were very straightforward, consisting of little...
Posted by: Magnus Shaw
Years ago, I wrote a piece for Creativepool suggesting the confused.com logo was a prime example of branding designed by a client. Looking for all the world like the worst clip-art available from the briefest Google image search, it featured a stick...
Posted by: Magnus Shaw
Saturday afternoon was spent lazing about underneath a tree on Hampstead Heath, me and my friends slowly working our way through a gigantic picnic. Whilst doing a bit of cloud watching, we spotted a helicopter pulling a gigantic PKR Poker banner...
Posted by: Creativepool
I'm always impressed by people who plan their career. Or rather people who plan their career and realise those plans. Planning stuff is easy, making it happen is something else - particularly in this business. Let's say, on your first day in the ad...
Posted by: Magnus Shaw
Whether you consider it a good idea or not, thanks to the coalition government, it seems the increased involvement of private companies in the NHS is a racing certainty. And what could possibly go wrong? Just look how affordable and reliable the...
Posted by: Magnus Shaw
If you read my column earlier this week, you'll know I'm in America. If you didn't, I'm in America. In fact, I'm now in America's oldest town, St. Augustine - on Florida's Atlantic coast. And despite the temperature being in the low eighties (which...
Posted by: Magnus Shaw
I'm in the USA - in a beautiful city called Charlestown on the Atlantic coast of South Carolina. But I'm travelling, so last night I was in Cherokee which, although it sounds romantic, is actually a rather tacky casino town 300 miles north. The...
Posted by: Magnus Shaw
You know 'Mozilla', don't you? The people who make the Firefox web browser? Well, it turns out they also make a thing called 'AdBlock Plus'. And, if you're using it, you're getting right up the noses of some advertising big-wigs. For the...
Posted by: Magnus Shaw
Disruption has always been key to the advertising model. Very few people opt to be exposed to marketing messages, therefore effective advertising has traditionally intruded into the content the audience has chosen to consume - a TV show, a magazine...
Posted by: Magnus Shaw
When it comes to voicing an opinion, I don't tend towards coyness (regular readers may not be surprised to learn this). For instance, I more than happy to reveal that my political views broadly fall into the left-of-centre, liberal camp . Although,...
Posted by: Magnus Shaw
The Huffington Post reports that Khloe Kardashian (who?) is now being paid as much as $13,000 per tweet. The fee doesn't cover profound wisdom like "Remember sweat is fat crying" - it's for equally useful posts wherein she names brands and includes...
Posted by: Magnus Shaw