Displaying 181 - 216 of 1515 results
Taking a primetime advertising spot last Saturday night during Britain’s Got Talent, the new television commercial celebrating John Lewis’ 150th anniversary was revealed. Created by Adam & Eve/DDB, the ad is called Never Standing Still,...
Posted by: Ashley Morrison
In my own naïve way, when wandering around art galleries, I've often stood with hands clasped behind my back, looking up at some impressive bronze statue or other and thought... “What if the sculptor made a mistake?” That's more or...
Posted by: Ashley Morrison
Finally, after many years of procrastination, I'm writing a novel. A lot of people apparently feel that they “have a novel in them”, but I've taken the plunge and I'm actually doing it. Yay, me. Mind you, as I say, it took me a long...
Posted by: Ashley Morrison
I may be preaching to the converted here, but you’ve gotta love London. A lot of people - and certainly the majority of Creativepoolers - would say it’s the centre of the creative industry, and not just in the UK. But even leaving the...
Posted by: Ashley Morrison
Yet another reality show came to an end last week, with Jermain Jackman being crowned king on The Voice. But these public competitions - from singing to cooking to interior designing to baking to skating - are nothing new. Did you know, for instance,...
Posted by: Ashley Morrison
Naming their children Apple and Moses would be reason enough for a lot of people to mock Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin: a slightly bizarre melange of Hollywood new age tree hugger and artiste-who-takes-himself-a-bit-too-seriously. As if those same...
Posted by: Ashley Morrison
If you’re anything like me, you’ll belong to quite a lot of LinkedIn groups that are relevant to your area of work. For me, a lot of these are copywriting-specific groups, but I also belong to others to do with subjects like SEO, social...
Posted by: Ashley Morrison
I don’t want to jinx it or anything, but hasn’t the weather been glorious over the past few days? Warm enough to potter around the garden in a t-shirt, I even slapped on some factor 10 sun cream, being the pasty ginge that I am. And...
Posted by: Ashley Morrison
‘Have you ever noticed how, in Hollywood movies, all the villains are played by Brits?’ asks a dinner-jacketed Sir Ben Kingsley in the commercial for the new Jaguar F-Type Coupe. Entitled ‘Rendezvous’ and aired at the Super...
Posted by: Ashley Morrison
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
So yeah, the Brits happened. David Bowie cleaned up, blah blah blah. Oooh, yes, there was that controversial bit at the end of his speech about Scottish independence. But the fact that that was the most newsworthy aspect of the night doesn’t...
Posted by: Ashley Morrison
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
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
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
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
I'm in Egypt, as I write this. I've returned to Dahab on the Sinai Peninsula to see how two revolutions have changed things since I was last here. As it turns out, the Egyptians are still as warm, hospitable and helpful as ever. The Red Sea remains...
Posted by: Magnus Shaw
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
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
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
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
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
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
“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
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
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
Look around any aircraft cabin during the in-flight safety demonstration and I’d guestimate that about 20% of passengers at most are actually watching as the crew show us how a seatbelt works (“because all aircraft are...
Posted by: Ashley Morrison
Yes, it seems that, whatever transport-based analogy one cares to make, blunder-prone Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary can turn anything into a bad joke. While other businesses are harnessing the power of social media to promote their brand and...
Posted by: Ashley Morrison
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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