Mandela To Head New Digital Dept. For McCann Birmingham

Following a recent series of top-level appointments, McCann Erickson Birmingham today announced Nobel Peace Prize winner Nelson Mandela as its new head of digital.

Chief executive Dean Lovett said: "We're all very excited about Nelson's arrival within the agency. The way he commits himself to projects and sees a brief through to the bitter end is unsurpassed. He's a team player, with his eye set firmly on the future. "

Mandela previously held the position of United Nations Peace Envoy - something Lovett hopes will "really help bolster the agency's client-side offering."

It's What They Would've Wanted

Boo!

Hello. It's Death, here. Sorry - didn't mean to scare you. It's just my way. I'd love to sit and chat (is that scythe ok against that paintwork?) but I'm run ragged at the moment. Things to do, people to see.

Anyway, the Boss just wanted me to chceck-up with you on some memorial arrangements. We're working so quick nowadays, and there's so much Abnormal Grief Reaction around, we've got to be accountable. I just need some memorial ideas to put on the form before God files the paperwork, yeah? It's not set in stone or anything (geddit?), it's just to cover us when the public go mental...

So, this Jade Goody job, right. See, I was thinking maybe we do a Werner Herzog/Grizzly Man treatment - like a sensitive, thoughtful documentary that makes sense of her life. But then someone's just said to me she's the "new Princess Diana." So, now I'm thinking... do we just airbrush Jade's face on to a truck?

Inspiration

Where does your inspiration lie?

In the eyes of a beautiful woman, or in the towering prose of a literary hero? Perhaps your inspiration lies in the work of a master painter or the symphonies of the great composers.

Then again, your inspiration could lie in an obscure Japanese horror film about a killer lampshade.

Mine certainly does.



Reckon this'll make an awesome DM for Argos...

See you at The Roses, hippies!

Promotional Copy Only

Meet Futomomo Satisfaction. They're the world's first Japanese "trombone BIKINI girls band".

Futomomo means "thighs."

And I honestly can't tell you how much I love this... Enjoy.

Using Gags

This is a gag: A means of restraining, and preventing a persons speech.

This -------> [I'm a link!] is also a gag: A kind of very broad joke.

You see words can have lots of different meanings. So the Local Government Association's list of 200 words that councils shouldn't use is both a means of restraining councillors speech, and also a kind of joke.

Why? Because presumably they're still aloud to say "shitcunt", "flapspank," "fuckwit", and "spunkbubble"...

To: LGA
From: T17 Planning and Heritage Dept.

Dear LGA,

Thanks for your list of banned words. A lot of us still call our boss "Turdy" or "That fucking turd" or "Bender" or "Bum Ra" though.

Where do we stand?

Thanks
Team 17

Where Do Adverts Go When They Die?

Not sure? Me either.

The obvious answer is into an ageing Creative's faded portfolio. But the brand -or soul?- of an ad can linger on, like a balloon stuck in a tree. But then, do ads actually die? Because seeing on old ad isn't like seeing a ghost is it... Or is it?

I've been sent into existential meltdown by this website - a collector's index for toy Routemaster bus perverts. Now, as any good designer worth his horn-rimmed glassess will tell you, the Routemaster bus was a classic - so perfect in fact, that it looked exactly the same for decades. So, the only way to tell a Routemaster apart was by it's livery... Or indeed, by the bleedin' adverts they put on 'em!

And this is where it gets spooky: Are the adverts on iconic toy buses, iconic in themselves? Are they the noisey poltergeists of successful campaigns, or merely the misty phantoms of popular culture. Or to put it another way: Is this Advertising Nirvana, or Advertising Limbo?

Cadbury Double Decker I'd say marches triumphantly into Advertising Valhalla- a perfect balance of medium and message.

Hmmm... "Weetabix with hazard-signs" on the other hand is a bit more contrived; very hazy - "The spirits are weakening."

As for this, I'm not even convinced this was a proper one. This is'nt a ghost, it's a Halloween costume.

And finally, this. The briefest, hollowest echo of the brand Schweppes. It could almost be random couldn't it; another blank face at the bar in Advertising Purgatory.

So are these spirits transcendent or are they damned; or is it just fucking around with nostalgia? I still can't figure it out. Maybe I need Derek Acorah to help me - a Spiritualist mystic with supernatural powers...

A bit like a planner.

If it's one thing that makes me angry it's...

People who say "If there's one thing that make me angry it's X", where X is something really abstract and/or inconsequential, and they're just exaggerating or dramatising their own ability to notice things.

So please note: being angry is not the same as being surprised, dismayed, or alarmed by something you've spotted. If Peter Sutcliffe said "If it's one thing that makes me angry, it's prostitutes" he isn't just making conversation, ok. He really means it.

Does that "one thing" really make you genuinely, properly, torture-stab-and-kill-the fuckers angry, then?

(Yes. Yes, it does.)

Advertising Feature

an Flilm Reevoo by mE, aged 5

Mummy let me watch some films this weekend. We had popcorn and sweets and sat next to a fat man.

We went to watch the film called Watchmen which has a sexy lady like this:



When the Watchmen started, all the people in the cinema was deadly quiet. Most times people talk and make noise during the adverts but the people who watched Watchmen were all 18 and very serious and silent. But the Watchmen is a very loud film with lots of noise and fighting, and lots of speaking inbetween. All the Watchmen have silly clothes as well which really made me laugh except the sexy lady which made me feel funny. I nearly had to go to the toilet because of it but luckily the film ended suddenly and in the nick of time.

Even though I am only 5, I really like the cartoon of Watchmen but would only give this film 6/10. All of the things that I liked in the cartoon are not in this film. They didn't do the pirate story or explain the baddie, and the president's nose isn't real.

Mum said that Watchmen is like "Satantango with superheroes". She said "You either make it 7 hours long or you should'nt bother at all."

I agree with my mum.

What to buy the man who has everything?

Birthday cards from friends are lovely aren't they. Especially if there's something inside them like money... or some Argos vouchers. Or -oh, my god, what's this!?- ticket's to see your FAVOURITE band of all time...

The one...

The only...

Simply fucking Red!? On Christmas FUCKING Day!!? In London..? I've gotta go to fucking London... ON MY OWN to watch Simply fucking Red on Christmas Day!!!!? Wha-? And fucking High School fucking Musical 3. ON ICE!!?

And it... It's non-refundable... What the fuck have you done!?

Oh, I knew you'd love it. And look, there's only 5 seats. It's an intimate gig!

Happy birthday, mate.

Motivation

Just read that Manchester agency Photolink are offering free creative consultation sessions in a bid to help fight the recession and get businesses moving.

Well bollocks to that. We've had builders at our house for the last 3 weeks, and I found nothing gets the moaning, tea-drinking fuckers moving like the 1st movement of Shostakovich's Leningrad Symphony played at maximum volume over a large PA system.

Try it yourself and get the bolsheviks moving in your office. It worked for the Revolution!

Worse Than A Cunt

Hey there Wembley, it's Bono here, smearing myself all over the telly like a madman soiling his cell.

Actually, no it's not really Bono. It's just me, putting words into his mouth. It's easy to do you see, because he's completley hollow. You can put any old shit you like in there, and when it froths out... everybody listens. It's amazing! People just sit and watch in awe as he pukes and cacks out all this garbage. Like, I had this shed full of sentimental cliches I couldn't ever bring myself to use, so I took 'em down to Bono and dumped 'em in his gob. 12 months later, they burst out all over his new record along with a load of other people's rubbish too. Unbelievable!

You know, I once went to Rome to watch the Pope having a poo and it was n't half as profound as people thought it might be. In fact, it wasn't profound at all. It was just banal. And quite unpleasant if I'm honest.

And that's what it's like listening to Bono: It's like watching a religious man having a great big smelly shit.