SEO REALLY works!

It's true. I just typed in "Nazi deathcamp disco" and this is what I found. Honest.


I Will Survive Dancing Auschwitz full version
Uploaded by MsBeatguy. - Watch the latest news videos.

Advertising. Made Easy

Making adverts for your business, club, tennis association or cabal, doesn't have to be expensive, time consuming and fraught with modern, asymmetric hairstyles.

By following a few simple rules you can create your very own crowd-pleasing communications in-house, powerful enough to send even the most extrovert advertising paladin of Madison Boulevard and Whoreditch into a horribly shrieking, smoke-engulfed tailspin. Aaaiiieeeeee!!

Take this classic advertisement for Ford Cars for example.



It's a blinder, isn't it. And in some ways the perfect advertisement. But exactly how the fuck and why?

Well for one, it's got a nice big picture on it. Use a picture on your advert and you won't go far wrong. It can be of anything you like too - a horse, a foot, a beautiful actress, or even a worm. It doesn't matter. Because people will look at anything. As long as it's big and recognisable, stick it up there right in the middle of the ad, even if it looks quite foolish or ugly.

Secondly, get yourself some words. Don't worry too much about these though. As literacy levels in the UK plummet (fall quickly) to an all time low, the fewer words you use in your advert the better. Just be sure that at least one of the words you use is the name of your product, service, or factory outlet etc. By making a direct reference to the image above, and implying their products are desirable to families, the Ford ad tries to be a bit of smartarse in it's choice of words. But you needn't be so earnest. It's the number of words that matters in advertising, not what they say, and six is probably about your limit these days.

SUMMARY:
Making advertising is easy. Just put the name of your product next to a picture and let people make their own conclusions. If they like it, great. If they don't? Well, they're obviously not your target market.

Any questions?

10 imaginary fonts

1. Decorated Nazi

2. Bold All-in-one

3. Ariel Ultra

4. Mandelson's Gothic

5. Omar Serif

6. We'll always have Powys

7. Mega Pen 9

8. Planet of the Shapes

9. Imbecile (Light)

10. Illuminated Mong

Housekeeping

I've been asked to sort my blog out and tag posts properly. People can't find stuff by all accounts.

So scroll down past all the crap on the the right till you get to my long abandoned "Tastes & Textures" sort list. I'm adding the Advertising Features as we speak and I've just found "24 Scripts for a Guinness Ad" which I completely forgot about writing and might have to pick up again. Check back over the next few days and I'll get all the "10..." lists and Drum stuff up there too.

As you were internet.

The worst writing you will ever come across

Alex Kapranos' Soundbites column from The Guardian circa 2006.

I used to read these just to see how far my mouth would gape open. Now you can too.

Things to look out for:

-His arse-clenchingly self conscious style. Like a precocious teenage girl writing a diary she hopes one day will be published.

-Writerly posturing. An over reliance on pretentious, and usually pretty hollow simile, descibing things in jarring, cod-poetic terms in an attempt to at least sound like a writer.

-The absolute failure to impart any kind of enthusiasm for his subject, as he's far too busy trying to sound like a laconic, effortless Beat writer. Which is isn't.

Ads in an ideal world

BERNARD CRIBBINS VOICEOVER: One day Tufty was playing in the garden when his friend Willie Weasel appeared.

WILLIE: Hello Tufty.

TUFTY: Hello Willie. What are you doing here? I thought you’d been in an accident.

WILLIE: I was. But the people at Claims Direct helped me get back on my paws again.

One call was all it took. And because the accident wasn’t my fault, they said I was entitled to 100% of my compensation.

They told me there and then how much I could expect...

[We see Willie with his arm bandaged up. He is on the phone in split-screen, talking to a badger with a barrister's wig on who nods agreeably. Surprised by what he hears on the other end, Willie falls backwards off his chair.]

And started helping me right away. Even with the special care I needed.

[We see Willie in a doctor’s surgery being attended to by a sexy squirrel nurse. Willie wears a neck brace. The nurse removes it, and replaces it with a special elongated neck brace for weasels. As the nurse leaves, Willie tries to look at her arse but hurts his neck trying to turn his head.]

They took care of everything. All I had to do was get on with getting better.

[We see Willie at home, propped up in his bed. Willie’s wife brings him a delicious looking acorn and an Auto Trader. She kisses him on the head]

And best of all, it didn’t cost me a penny.

[Willie takes some money out of his pocket]

Fancy a pint, Tufty?

[We see a pub across the road - The Otter's Pocket]

TUFTY: I thought you'd never ask.

WILLIE: Last one there's a [MASKED OVER SOUND OF CAR HORN]

[Willie dashes across the road and is hit by an ice-cream van. Tufty covers his face with his hands and shakes his head. A wide-shot reveals the back of the ice-cream van has the Claims Direct logo and phone number on it.]

BERNARD CRIBBINS VO: If you’ve had an accident that wasn’t your fault, Call Claims Direct on XXXXXXXXXXX.

I'm experimenting with new business cards

What dya think? Agree/disagree/discuss.

Uncle Dave

I was discussing Dave Trott's blog with another writer today.

We talked about different line break techniques.



Like triple line spacing!!



And.



Single.



Word.



Sentences.



IN.


CAPS.


Or.



Maybe not.



For added impact.

Either way, we both agreed on one thing about Dave's blog, and that was the overall effect of reading it. I described it something like this:

First of all, you need to imagine being on one of those Guardian reader's holidays or days out you might have somewhere in the English countryside. It's bright and it's pleasant, somewhere on a Sunday afternoon and you come across this picturesque little church out of nowhere, and you suddenly think oh how lovely let's take a look inside, so you gently lift the sneck of the door hoping not to disturb anybody, before you both fall completely silent out of a deep, instinctive respect for the place as you proceed to peer and poke around the little altar and the beams and the stained glass windows for oooh a good 10 minutes at least, by which time you notice one of you is already waiting outside in the sunshine for the other one of you to ask "Anyway, fancy a pint?" because actually you're both the kind of modern atheist who couldn't give a shit about churches if you're honest, because you just find them quaint but ultimately quite hollow.

And that's exactly how Dave Trott's blog makes me feel.

Oh to be young again

Call me old fashioned, but I like nothing more than a nice big wank and a Lemsip when I get home these days. But on the other hand (figuratively speaking), if I were a soupcon more progressive, I'd doubtless be grooving on down to the latest internet phenomenon known as "I-dosing".

Oh sod it. Here ya go grandad.

(WTF!?)

Who's The Worst Agency in Manchester Then?

It's a damn good question. And one I suspect even The Drum can't answer. Not even in a 64page Worst of Manchester pull-out section special. So how will we, the creatives, ever know who is or isn't worth working with? Who's the wheat and who's the chaff? Or as they used to say around certain parts of Kirkby in the 80s, who would you "pop" and who would you "slash"?

My highly confidential, but not very discreet, confession box is now open. (Yes, that's me in my robes there, discussing some amends with a client). So sneak into the comments section and whisper your poison. No positives, no nice guys, and, no happy endings. I only want to hear about suffering and abuse. These people and organisations need to be named and shamed. If not to help the future generation, then to give me something to smirk about.

News from The Drum: Trott to sell off blog line-spacing to advertisers

The Drum's burnt fingers from hot-off-the-press stories correspondent: Kylie Dostoevsky

In a shit hot sharp shock-horror announcement, advertising legend David "Dave" Trott of legendary London advertising agency Chernobyl Stockhausen & Trott Creative Worldwide Advertising Plc. Limited, today revealed plans to sell off the trademark line-spacing on his blogposts to advertisers.

Trott, who's blog uses a double-line spacing device to frame every goddamn sentence in an attempt to lend weight to even the most banal remark, is read by literally billions of advertising types every second of the month. However, over recent weeks an intense bidding war has taken place as both CBS Outdoor and Google scrabbled for control of Trott's line breaks.

Whilst the exact terms of any deal have yet to be revealed, Trott did issue the following statement earlier today:

"Blogging's always been a huge part of my life.

Life Classes. Learn to draw. Click here

But now it's time to try something different.

Time Machine by H.G Wells. 50% off

I don't want to give away too much, but you're gonna see some big changes around here.

See the difference! Gain 4inches in just six weeks."

Experts predict that, based on the amount of space available, any sum of money Trott would make from the deal would be. Astro. Fucking. Nomical.

Sarah Beeny: Patron Saint of Advertising Creatives

For doth not a typical episode of the Venerable Beeny's "Property Ladder" program always go something thus:

PROPERTY DEVELOPER: Hello Sarah. Can you help me get a return on my investment? You know all about this sort of thing and whilst I have my own ideas/prejudices/presumptions about how I think it should be done, it really is best to get someone who knows what they're doing.

ST.SARAH: Cool. Well looking at it I'd say you really need to do XYZ to stand even the slightest chance of making a penny on this hair-brained investment of yours.

[SOME TIME LATER]

PROPERTY DEVELOPER: Hi Sarah. Well we've listened to your advice and whilst we appreciate all of your time and your expertise, we've decided to completely ignore you and replace the staircase with a helter-skelter slide because, well, I happen to like them.

ST.SARAH: Oh. Right. Well good luck with that one. Dickhead.

VOICEOVER: Since making the program the helter-skelter 9 bathroom bugalow is still on the market.

My fellow creatives, let us pray.

Who can I offend today?

If it's one thing I've learned from writing this blog, it's that most people only read it for the swearing, rude pictures, and half-arsed digs at that funny oh-ho-old industry we all know as "creative advermarketing design and digital". Erm, and I don't appear to have done much of that recently (swearing that is).

So, if nothing else but to boost the stats, here's a bit swearing, rude pics blah blah blah blah for your Friday.

Swearing

Fucky butty shit cats up your nanna's fucking party frock, cock eyes.

Rude Pictures

Here's a photoshoot from a 1970s French magazine depicting Adolf Hitler living in exile on a tropical paradise. Nice.



Work Bile
Oh, who am I kidding? I ruddy LOVE my job I do.

Especially on Friday!

10 Pet Names for my Blog

1. Bloggy chops

2. Bloggy Pie

3. Blogan's Run

4. Hootie and the Blogfish

5. Choc-o-Blog

6. Old Bloggers

7. Notorious B.L.O.G

8. Bloggernaut

9. Chip off the old blog

10. Blogodan Milosevic