Blog of the Week!

Here is my favourite blog for this week. I am surprised I don't see it mentioned more often, considering there are plenty of ads to go in it.

I am referring to "TV's Worst Adverts", a great site where we can truly see the worst of what UK advertising has to offer.

Go now, vote and revel in the awfulness!

TV's Worst Adverts

How Rob Ended up in D+AD 2007

Im getting everywhere at the moment, apart from an actual planning job (*curses under breath*)... recently i've been in Campaign and Creative Review.

Now, thanks to Ben, i'm in the new D+AD annual.

At the Future Marketing Summit in March, we took some photos using the D+AD flag for a competition (winning entries to be used in the annual). One of them featured me getting onto the stage and posing with the flag. Now that has a full page in the D+AD annual 2007.

So well done Ben. Thanks D+AD. Where next for Famous Rob!!

Marcus and NP

Quick note that I have made a post especially for you two on my music blog!

FireFlower Music Blog

Mega Cool. What a Groovy Thing to Do Lads.

Middle aged boardrooms trying to be cool are so bloody annoying. Their constant desire to be hip, to be with it, to get down with the kids.

Its so embarrassing.

Now the respected name of Virgin Megastores is to leave the highstreet after being bought out. You'd think they would find a good solid name to try and help maintain the company after rebranding wouldnt you. But no.

They have picked the most ridiculous example of 50 year old boardroom mid life crisis dictionary burning ever.

The new name for Virgin Megastores is: Zavvi

*bangs head on wall*

Its a name I can see in many places... "Zavvi in financial trouble", "Zavvi sales down", "Zavvi undertake rebranding", "Zavvi undertakes another rebrand", "Zavvi goes bust", "Zavvi is bought out", "Zavvi to return to Virgin name".

Argh. Poor Richard Branson, all that hard work...

Oh Dear said Mr Brown

I love the new marmite ad with Paddington Bear. Such an iconic character reproduced with absolute faithfulness to the style and personality of the original.

And what I love even more is the fans funny reaction, claiming that Paddington would never give up Marmalade... to which the creator responds by saying:

He said he wanted to quell "an ill-founded rumour doing the rounds that I was responsible for the script of a television commercial featuring Paddington Bear testing a Marmite sandwich, adding that one of the reasons may have been that Marmite paid me a truly vast sum of money".

"I should be so lucky – particularly since I didn't write it", he said in a letter to The Times, adding: "I have to report that although Paddington found the sandwich interesting, bears are creatures of habit. It would require a good deal more than the combined current withdrawals from Northern Rock to wean him off marmalade, if then."

Maybe he should write ads with such witty charm as that.

Source: The Independent

Wiki'd. I Can't Believe I Typed That...

I'm making a stand that every planner has to wikichain at least once a week.

You know, that time killing device whereby you go to Wikipedia to look at Virgin Atlantic and somehow 3 hours later find yourself reading about Erasure. [ Something like, you followed a link of "aircraft", then from there you clicked "flying picket", then the band "flying pickets, then "only you", then Yazoo, then "Vince Clarke", then "Erasure".]

The big thing for me is, that not only is a great teacher of how things tie together, but it serves a more fundamental purpose being able to see objects and events as a whole; which makes it easier to see how objects have a meaning for people, how they are relevant in their lives, and sometimes how companies completely miss the point.

Everyone do something for me. Go to Wikipedia. Start on the article "advertising", then click on a link within that article. 10 articles later tell me where you end up. Thanks :)

Northern Rock n Roll

Now then, surely there are infinite lessons to be learnt here about all manner of business dealings. But I'd like to focus on a couple of important lessons for marketing and advertising.

PANIC! - Surely the complete lack of understanding in the public shows a total lack of PR and a failure to get across the real message of Northern Rock's situation. (They arent going to collapse, they were just struggling to get new funding to give out new loans and mortgages..only now after people withdrew 1.2 billion pounds in three days are they at risk of collapse)

You Can't Hide - If Northern Rock had been more open about the problem they might have allowed their customers to understand the situation instead of waking up to hear their family say "Our bank and mortgage provider is in trouble...shit". Ring any bells...Cadbury's?

Its unusual how individual desire to save your own money goes at expense of causing people to lose theirs. If no one took out their money the bank would be fine, but no one wants that. They all want their money, sod everyone else. And they say advertisers are unethical.

Dont Panic! Dont Panic!

I am Married!
Back from our honeymoon and it's work tomorrow... ah well.

Stay tuned this week for all this thrilling content:

• Silly Wedding Photos
• Sillier Wedding Photos
• How Famous Rob got into the D+AD Annual 2007
• And just possibly some ad critique or planning ranting.