books at my bedside

These are the books sat on my bedside table. I'm sharing because I've just added them to Mike's Bedbooks group on Flickr. The Stuff on Walls is a graffiti thing (obvious, probably). I'm rereading Frankenstein and Watchmen. And, although I've seen Shirky lectures on TED and Youtube, I'd never actually read the man. So I figured it's about time. And the Moomin notebook on the left is there for any inspiring thoughts I might get in the middle of the night. Looking at other images in the group, it stands out that lots of people have so much to read. I'm sure it says something interesting...just not quite sure what that is.

"the bengal tiger of advertising"

As the second in a loose series of posts about the power of good writing, here's something I picked up on via Mike and Rish. There have been plenty of occasions when a designer has said to me, "I'd love you to drop some really powerful copy in here," as they pointed to their latest product. And there have been plenty of clients who rewrite things as they want to say them, rather than thinking the feeling they want to leave the reader with. Bah. And Shoreditch-based Sell Sell perfectly capture the inevitable sense of frustration that creates. It's a craft, and it's under threat. Over to David Ogilvy to sign off. He said, "Most good copywriters fall into two categories. Poets. And killers. Poets see an ad as an end. Killers as a means to an end. If you are both killer and poet, you get rich." So respect your copywriter. He/she may write you a love poem. Or kill you. Or, if they are great, both. Later this week I'll attempt to blog about something a bit more nebulous: writing to be interesting and writing to persuade.

shaking it up again

I've been thinking about changing the name of this blog. The hardcore few will know that this is something I do from time to time. Some of it has been prompted by all the talk about Gorilla after Scamp picked up on the fact that Galaxy is doing rather better than Cadbury. Mike is right that it's what you might call a category ad, in that it's not necessarily ownable by Dairy Milk. But I'm also with Dave, who, according to this logic, would argue that the idea is to be seized as your territory. But it's also to do with things like being interested in things that don't feel like advertising or other established communications disciplines. Stuff like what Faris has called transmedia narrative. "Draw the line" doesn't feel apt for what I'm writing about any more. It feels like I need to have a name which says more about my philosophy on these sorts of issues. So from now on, this blog will be known as Pushes emotional buttons. (Pic courtesy of this person.)

and another thing

It's been ages since I've found any DM that really moves me, so I was delighted to discover this by Mike, showing how it's perfectly acceptable to start a sentence with the word "And". Bee-yoo-ti-ful.