Radical Common Sense: an evening with Dave Trott

An evening with Dave Trott - Part 1 from MIN on Vimeo. (The sound does get better)

A great discussion with the main man Trott (CST). Great to see Dave bring some examples and analogies alive with some great doodles... and all in the flesh (well - pixel flesh)! He also chats about his blogs (which everyone should read) and the loyal folk like gotnoteef, Kevin Gordon, John W and the gang. He's got a great view on the industry at present and how it could benefit from change. If ever the barrage of marketing speak, building brands and focus groups puts you off advertising a little, watch this. His outlook is like the advertising equivalent of Occam's razor.

Building a Buzz

I just noticed this article somewhere or other.

After reading, it occurred to me that if an art gallery had one of the pieces stolen it would generate a lot of free press... especially if it was replaced with a fake and no-one noticed for a good while. What a story!? Just so long as the story got out eventually. People would hear about the exhibition, and might go see what the controversy was about.

If the theft of this brick art (supposedly worth around £3k) wasn't an advertising stunt for the exhibition, it should have been. And even if it was found out to be a hoax theft - the artist could always say it was part of the art! It raises questions about fakes and originals, the made and the found, or whatever kinda waffle you hear on 'School of Saatchi'.

Dave Trott's recent posts have gotten me all mischievous and thinking about how ads work with no budget at all. Create a bit of outrage and you can't go far wrong!

Straplines and the holy grail

In a recent blog post by Dave Trott over at Brand Republic he discusses including the name of the product or brand in the strapline or ad itself. How, of late, it seems to have become a rather uncool or unsophisticated thing to do. But his point is that linking the message to a brand is something that somehow has to be done - if T-Mobile's flash mobs just sell 'mobile phones' and not T-Mobile mobile phones, then they are doing the competitor's advertising for them!

In the subsequent discussion to the blog post, we hit on some classic straps which contain the name... 'Heinz Meanz Beanz', 'Ooh Ahh Daily Star'. I suggested the following two which have achieved the holy grail of all straplines... to enter common parlance.

Whenever someone overdoes something, hits the golf ball too far, lifts a table exceedingly well or whatever, people often say 'Someone's had their Weetabix'...

That's a strap that will outlive any campaign they happen to run.

It's good that they've gone back to it.

'Shoulda gone to specsavers' is another which if not said out loud, plays in your thoughts whenever you see bad glasses.

Dave is certainly on to something here.