Posts Tagged ‘writing’
Vauxhall’s Ad With The X Factor
As an adman, I have to say I love the new Vauxhall commercial, the one for the lifetime warranty. I can see how it’s spot on brief, catching the zeitgeist, truly the first of a new generation of advertising with a different type of offer. It’s designed for these just coming out of recession, hovering on the edge of double dip times. It’s great.
It achieves excellence by obeying the good, old fashioned rules of good old fashioned writing. It attracts your attention, inspires your interest, builds desire for the payoff and creates action at the end. Old fashioned principles with leading edge delivery. That’s advertising at its very best.
I’ll give you an example of the opposite. The X Factor is becoming like Fox News, utterly carried away on its own hype and insensitive to its audience. It knows how to pull my heartstrings and invoke my tear ducts almost at will but as it goes into its own advertising and promotion between the commercial breaks, it loses me. I wander. I write or I go into the other room. When I come back it’s telling me what’s coming up “after the break”. This is insane. I feel cheated, used and abused. I feel that I’m being toyed with and exploited.
In another echo of so many over-inflated advertising egos of the past, I laughed out loud when I saw the double page spread in The Times for Christine and Adrian’s new breakfast show “Daybreak”. This is an utter waste of money. Double page spreads are the creative team’s favourites because there are their words and pictures up in lights, like a poster, unsullied by editorial or other content. They’re the account man’s favourite too because they make for an excellent presentation and impress the client easily. Watch how readers behave. The page gets turned in double quick time. And in The Times? What objective is being achieved for ITV’s marketing strategy? Are readers of The Times part of Daybreak’s target audience? If this is aimed at potential advertisers it is an extraordinarily expensive way of reaching them.
Countless millions are wasted based on the petty pretensions of marketing directors or their advertising agencies. Similar egotistical spendthrifts inhabit TV production. Occasionally though, particularly in Britain, you see beautifully crafted and intelligently written masterpieces of communication. The new Vauxhall ad is one of these.
Idiotic Israelis, Insane Islamists
It astonishes me the bigotry, intolerance and crass stupidity demonstrated by so many who write for one side or the other on the terrible conflict in the Middle East.
Many of them are erudite and eloquent, passionate and caring – but only of their own cause.
I thought (maybe I’m wrong) that part of the idea of blogging was to comment on each other’s writing and participate in debate.
No chance!
So many of these obviously intelligent people censor comments that they disagree with and deem anyone who disagrees with them as a fascist, racist or xenophobe. The vitriol I’ve attracted from some is almost unbelievable. They can’t understand that in one article I can condemn the evil behaviour of the Israelis and in the next I condemn the great evil that Islam has become. I can call some Israeli behaviour fascist. I can call some Islamists perverters and defilers of Islam.
Some of these bloggers write (rant) at the most incredible length. They probably don’t have the benefit of my experience from which the most important thing I’ve learned is that even those people who agree with you will get bored if you go on and on and on and on and on…
It’s just a tip which you can ignore if you want but if you can’t get your point across in a couple of hundred words then maybe you should think again!
One individual (who I won’t embarrass by linking to), told me today that offering a link to my post on the subject was “an advert”, referred me to his “comments policy”, suggesting that I am a “xenophobic bigot”.
I explained to him that my comments policy is “please do”!
Censors And Abusers Of The Blogosphere
with 11 comments
By comment on this post I will record all those bloggers and website publishers who have chosen to bar me from their sites.
Book Burners
You might think for a gentle if opinionated Brit like me that’s unlikely to happen but it already has – several times. I am profoundly distressed that most of the censors are from the US. In fact I have learned a lot about America recently that I don’t like very much at all. I’m disillusioned by the sheer nastiness and level of abuse that has been directed at me just for expressing my opinions.
I NEVER descend to abuse when commenting on other people’s words. I NEVER censor comments that other people post about what I have written.
What amazes me is that so many of these people just can’t take the debate. They descend into abuse and then they bar me. If I did as they do I’d be so embarrassed and ashamed of my behaviour I don’t think I could carry on writing. That’s how important integrity is to me and how irrelevant it seems to be to these people.
Some of the craftier censors don’t bar me completely. It’s almost unbelieveable isn’t it (?) but what they do is edit my posts or allow some while deleting others! It’s incredible isn’t it that people can stoop so low?
So I do intend to embarrass these cowards here. At least by posting links to their sites they will learn that they’ve been placed, deservingly, into the same category as book burners and censors the world over and throughout history.
Of course, anyone who wishes to explain, argue or defend their actions has only to post here. All comments will be published in full.
Welcome to my hall of shame.
Written by Peter Reynolds
June 10, 2010 at 7:27 pm
Posted in Politics, The Media, What is this blog about?
Tagged with abuse, America, ashamed, bar, bloggers, book burners, Brit, censors, commenting, comments, cowards, craftier, debate, deleting, disillusioned, distressed, edit, embarassed, embarrass, gentle, hall of shame, history, incredible, integrity, nastiness, opinionated, opinions, publishers, stoop so low, unbelievable, US, website, writing