Rebranding. The Secrets.

My fellow marketing professionals, I'm delighted to welcome you to this, my seminar on rebranding. Help yourself to refreshments and biscuits - but not the chocolate ones you clackerpipe because I saw them fucking first. (Jesus, you're a greedy cunt. Anyway, I coughed on them before you came in, so fucking forget it. Unless you want herpes.)

Now. I have covered this subject previously, and basically argued that the only reason for a rebrand is a) someone at the client end is bored of the logo or b) the marketing budget needs to be used up before some fuckhat from accounts takes it away.

(I've never understood this practice, by the way. ALL accountants know that departments use their budget up on useless shit because they'll lose what they don't spend this year off next year's budget. They KNOW this. In fact, I once went into accounts to argue the toss over an expenses claim (a bar bill of a couple of grand at Delilaz which was absolutely essential to the business because...I'll tell you later) and they were all frantically flicking through office supply catalogues, circling expensive chairs and elaborate staplers. Turns out they were trying to use up their own budget by the end of the year. That's right - they even take away budget FROM THEMSELVES if it isn't spent.)

Anyway, I'd like to add a little depth to my previous (undeniably fuckmazing) musings on this subject.

When considering a rebrand, the first decision you have to make is about your company's / product's name.

Do you want a new one?

To help reach that decision, a few questions you could ask yourself are 'Is my company's / product's name a load of old shitwipes?' 'Does it remind me of an ex-girlfriend / overly-familiar uncle / South American town where I got mugged, drugged and had my kidney stolen?' 'Do I...oooh...I dunno...you know...sort of...like...well, it's a bit...you know...hmm...sort of...you know...just...like...bleurgh? Like? You know?' That should help throw some light on things.

If you do decide on a name change, a small word of warning. Prepare to get financially fisted right up your little plinkyshoot. The agency will see it as an excuse to launch any number of trouser-fuckingly lengthy and expensive research projects, all of which will point to the inescapable truth of the name 'Hello', 'Bloop' or 'WeAre(insert old name)'.

Still, it'll involve a lot more meetings, lunches and generally complex-looking stuff to pass on to your gaffers, so it's not all bad. If anyone gets sniffy about the cost, just tell them that the guy who came up with the name 'Orange' is working on it. Even if he isn't. Which he won't be.

Next step is to think about your brand's current 'personality'. A good way to start is to imagine your brand is a person, then think about their characteristics and traits. Perhaps even give them a name!

So, is your brand a feisty young woman with an active social life? Or a dedicated, mature man with a patient and prudent approach to life? Then again, is it a right old cunticular fucklug who says things like 'Fare thee well, until the morrow' every time he leaves the office, and eats his sandwich at exactly the same fucking time every day, sitting there chewing and chewing and chewing every mouthful, and you just fucking know he's counting each bite so each morsel of the same ham and the same cheese and the same bread he's had every other cunting day gets the same perfect masticatory treatment before it slithers down that fucking neck of his, past that fucking adam's apple that bobs about when he talks like a fucking buoy on a riptide?

That exercise should help you decide on your brand's personality. When you think you've got that right, decide on the personality that you'd prefer it to have. Then just call the agency and say something like 'I want my brand to be a married 30-something woman who still likes a drink and getting one up the chutney. BY FUCKING THURSDAY.'

(That's briefing, my friends, but don't expect to be that good at it right away. I've honed my skills for 20 years.)

Finally in this seminar, I'd like to raise the issue of what agency's sometimes call 'brand essence'. This isn't a baking ingredient (as I found out at the expense of an entire weekend's shopping and a large slice of my dignity), but a way of boiling down to a phrase or a handful of single words exactly what a brand means to its consumers. For example, a brand may be 'hopeful', 'honest', 'youthful' and 'lively'. When creative work is shown, they may refer back to these words, demonstrating that each execution is consistent with those values.

Don't be fooled by this load of fucking hogtoss.

You're the client, and you pay the bills, and you fucking decide whether a piece of work is 'hopeful' or whatever or not.

In one presentation, some fucker tried telling me that the colour red, which featured heavily in the work, is 'passionate and vibrant'.

I said, 'No it fucking isn't. It's cold and unpleasant and deceitful'.

He said, 'Er...I think it's generally widely agreed that red is an energetic colour.'

I said, 'Well how come the woman who ran off with my Dad and stole him away from my mother and me wore red a lot? Not that I'm bothered because I never really got on with him and who needs a good hug from your Daddy anyway, when it gets dark and you think there might be spiders and all you can hear is your mum drinking gin downstairs with the radio on full blast, just sobbing, sobbing, sobbing? And who really needs to feel those big protective arms around you, strong and warm and reassuring, and a soft, kind voice telling you that everything's going to be okay, don't worry Davey, I'm here, son, I'm here? I fucking didn't.'

Of course, he had no answer to that.

That's all for now, my friends. That should be enough to blow your fucking minds anyway. Right now I have to go and look at all my competitors' marketing and suggest my agency copies it but makes it different.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

My left ball

Hello, my friends.

I have been maintaining a reasonably low profile this week. This has been because, putting it as simply and clearly as possible, my left conker has been more swollen than a fat man at a free buffet.

Now, the more responsible amongst you might respond with a suggestion that I should have visited the doctor the minute the issue arose.

And that's fine.

But I look at this from a different perspective entirely. I look at this from the perspective of someone who very simply couldn't be bothered to go to the doctor.

So, you see my problem.

I had a massively swollen plum which demanded medical attention. And yet I couldn't be bothered to get that medical attention.

(By the way, the results of my latest poll show you're of a similar mind. Nearly half of you suggested my engorged cobbler was 'Nothing to worry about, tra-la-la-la-la, it'll go away stop looking at it why is it so big? 16%, mind, thought it was a sign of massive virility. Heartfelt thanks to you lot.)

This conflict has lead me to attempt to find my own cure. I've tried popping it with a series of increasingly large needles. I've tried slapping it with a metal spoon. I've tried slamming it in the fridge door.

These attempts not only caused me the kind of pain that makes you think you might puke and shit yourself at the same time (and not in that Saturday night / Sunday morning way that's a tiny bit fun, deep down). They also failed to have anything like the desired effect. On the contrary, they seemed to compound the problem. That's right: if anything, they made the swelling worse!

By Wednesday I had exhausted all the other common sense cures. (That includes sitting on it, shouting at it, smearing it with Deep Heat, smearing it with butter, smearing it with goose fat, putting leeches on it, putting salt on it, putting it in very hot water, putting it in very cold water, spraying it with weed killer, scaring it, mocking it, ignoring it, playing practical jokes on it and getting it exorcised.)

So I went to the pub (actually, pubs) and drank like Paul Gascoigne at...well, anywhere they serve booze. I kept drinking - with nothing more than sheer fucking guts keeping me upright at times - until this morning.

Now, somehow, I'm stone cold sober and my swollen dangleberry has deflated!

Well, actually, whatever was inside it has come out. But, like a 50-stone man after extensive liposuction, the skin hasn't retreated to its original position.

By which I mean, I no longer have a massively swollen pocket billiard, but I do have a hugely stretched and flaccid scrotum. It's hanging down to about an inch above my knee.

But, hey! I'll take that over a bollock that looked like backstreet boob job.

I hope that sets your mind at rest if you'd been concerned about my wellbeing. (And, be honest, you fucking were.)

So, I'm now off to something I will describe to my colleagues as a 'thing' or a 'sort of meeting' but which everyone concerned knows very well is a massive piss-up at the expense of the agency.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

Planning definitively defined. Definitely.

My fellow marketing professionals, we have a winner!

In a poll that has had the entire global marketing and communications industry talking, we have managed to succinctly define exactly what planning is.

(I have been on a long quest myself to define this elusive discipline myself, which you can read about here, here, and here if you can be bothered - though I doubt you can, what with all that Facebooking and X-Factor and Twitter and Bebo and twatshaftingly important stuff you simply must keep on top of or the world and all it holds will crumble into its component molecules and drift into fucking space. God, you make me fucking sick. Just switch it all off for five cunting minutes, can't you? Fucking DO something? Read the paper, have a wank, punch a cat - anything.)

Ahem.

Focus.

And I'm back!

My initial research narrowed a definition of planning to three possibilities.

1) Something cunt-panels do.

2) Somthing fuck-wedges do.

3) Something spunk-jugglers do.

The results are in :

Option 1 got 36% of the vote.

Option 2 got 21% of the vote.

But the winner was option 3 with 41% of the vote.

So, there you have it: planning is something spunk-jugglers do.

I do worry slightly, however, that the narrow victory over 'something cunt-panels do' means we can't be as confident with that definition as perhaps we'd like. Will we always worry that, when explaining planning as 'something spunk-jugglers do' we will always have at the back of our mind the thought that, somehow, we should introduce the idea of it also being 'something cunt-panels do'?

My fear is that, yes, we will. So I propose a solution.

A coalition.

I suggest 'spunk-jugglers' as the Cameron and 'cunt-panels' as the Clegg, with the result that our final definition is thus:

Planning is something spunk-juggling cunt-panels do.

Surely that's something we can all agree on.

Anyway, I'm off to write a meaningless brief for the agency that consists of meaningless jargon I've cut-and-pasted from previous meaningless briefs.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

Why Friday is 'Achieveday'

I don't call Friday 'Friday'. I call it 'Achieveday'.

This is because Friday is the day I achieve goals, goals, goals.

Here's how it pans out. (My fellow marketing professionals may appreciate the insight into the working practices of a man once described as 'marketing's answer to the bubonic plague'. Do you know how fucking effective the bubonic plague was? Exactly.)

I arrive at the office early. And I mean cocking early. 10am at the latest - and I'm at my desk immediately. No pre-breakfast wank on a Friday for Dave. No way. Friday is all about getting the job done and done and done.

Next, I start multi-tasking. I eat my breakfast baguette (bacon, egg, sausage, lamb chops, sausage, egg, bacon, tomato, beans, hot dogs, egg and brown sauce) while phoning a couple of adult chat lines and tackling the inevitable mountain of emails. (Some mornings, I have more than fifteen. I fucking know.)

My general protocol with emails is simple: delegate everything except doctor's appointments or stuff that will make me look good.

Delegation is vital to 'Achieveday'. I am, putting it mildly, a fucking genius of delegation. It wouldn't be excessive to say I'm the Pele of delegation. In fact, I'm the Louis the 16th of delegation. In fact in fact, I'm the Leonardo cunting Da Vinci of delegation.

In fact in fact in fact, I'd put it like this: I delegate, therefore I am.

So, up to the hour of 11am, I am a blur of delegation. Forward! Forward! Forward! That's not a motivational chant, that's me dealing with my emails. Forward! Forward! Forward! Bang, bang, bang!

At 11am, I need some management calm. I need space. I need to focus. So down come the office blinds, off go the lights and I have a well-deserved think on the office sofa. Strictly do-not-disturb time, this. You can't work as hard as I do and not need a chance to recharge.

When noon comes, I'm back in the game. Kerwallop! Generally, I'll spend half an hour checking through ads, correcting headlines so the product name is in there, asking for bigger bristolas in the artwork, researching the ads with my mother (she's nearly target audience) - all the usual stuff a good marketeer will do.

Now that my agency is paying me not to get involved in the advertising, however, I'm free from 12. So I get down to the Dog and Hog to start the Friday management lunch meeting early.

This is a hugely important meeting.

The Friday Management Meeting (I came up with that name, by the way) is absolutely pivotal to the smooth running of the company. Over a few glasses of shandy, we discuss, debate and...er...another 'd' word...the issues that face the company.

Then, over a few glasses of claret 'n' WKD, brandy 'n' brandy, lager 'n' Aftershock and so on, we keep discussing, debating and another-d-wording all afternoon. Then we go to Delilaz, my preferred executive gentleman's club and - as a perfectly justifiable reward for our labours - we use company petty cash to pay attractive young girls to frot us.

After that, we really let our hair down.

As my MD, Big Andy Poleman, says: "Slags and booze. Profit and loss. There's no difference."

Now, I don't strictly understand the detail of what he means. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if it didn't make any sense whatsoever. But as God is my witness, I find the practical demonstration utterly inspiring.

The day usually ends somewhere around Sunday morning, when we all wend our way home and prepare our excuses for phoning in sick on Monday.

It's not easy. But it works.

Soon, I will offer more insight into my working life. But right now, there's an 18-year old Latvian with bristolas the size of my head demanding that I pour Krug up her foof.

I will rise to that challenge.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

Hello? Campaign? HELLLLOOOOO?

It turns out that The Ad Contrarian, American advertising's best blogger, has signed a deal to write for Adweek.

So as British advertising's best blogger, surely Campaign should be knocking a fucking hole in my door to get ME to sign.

Have they?

Have they fucking balls.

What is wrong with these people? WHAT IS WRONG WITH THEM?

Here I am - the golden fucking goose - and they...or am I the golden egg? Or is my blog the egg?

Hang on. Let's fucking think about this for a second. I'm the goose, right? That makes sense. But the eggs I lay are the blog posts. Yes?

Were the eggs golden, or the goose? Was it a normal goose, but the eggs were golden?

Surely a normal goose laying golden eggs would be no use. You might eat the thing before you knew it could lay golden eggs. But, then again, a golden goose would just sit there being...gold.

Jesus. This is hard.

Hmm.

What to do?

Fuck it - I'm a golden goose laying big, shiny golden eggs. Let's just agree on that, can we?

Yes?

Good.

Right. Where was I?

Ah! That's it: fucking Campaign. What a bunch of cuntbuckets.

Anyway, I've got frigging work to do. I'm off to sit in a series of pointless morning meetings with my agency, the sole purpose of which is to provide an excuse for a massive free lunch.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

My advertising gland is going to burst

The above is an image of an advertising gland, an organ situated close to the bullshit node, behind the pretension nodule. You can see from the yellow discharge to the left that this advertising gland has ruptured. Without adequate and regular use, the advertising gland will wither and die. Once dead, it can never be revived.

This is the worrying diagnosis I received today. Now, I received that diagnosis from myself rather than a doctor of any kind, but still - it's not something you want to hear.

Now that my agency are paying me large sums of money to keep my hands well and truly off the advertising - and any other form of communication - I'm struggling to cope with the build-up of genius that oozes from me every minute of every day.

I imagine this is how Ron Jeremy feels after a week off.

Indeed, the urge to advertise is just spilling out of me.

This morning, while ordering my bacon, sausage, bacon, egg, egg, ham, lamb chop, sausage, beans, fried bread, sausage, bacon and toffee sauce baguette, I found myself blurting out 'Breakfast isn't breakfast without a breakfast baguette' to the kid behind the counter at Ali's Kebab Exhibition.

Then, when Derek Balls came in to fix the computer that seemed to give up the ghost the day I was testing a new driver in my office (I will never understand computers), I said, 'Balls IT. When your IT falls, give Balls a calls.'

He just looked at me and said, 'I always knew you were a fucking alcoholic.'

I said, 'Alcohol. For man. For woman. For ever.'

He shook his head and turned away.

I said, 'Turning Away. The silent gesture that speaks a thousand words.'

Then he walked out of the door.

And just as I was saying, 'Doors! Get into them!' it became clear that I need, on a very fundamental level, to advertise stuff.

So I thought I'd start by just advertising the first thing that came into my head.

Here's what I came up with:

It's a campaign for Bristolas UK, a body that I intend to create. We'll devote our professional energies to the furtherment and promotification of bristolas.

Anyway, the first piece, a 6-sheet poster is aimed at people who think that bristolas are just for breastfeeding babies. They aren't! They're for all of us! It uses Comic Sans, which is amazing and the king of all typefaces.

The second demonstrates a new usage of the product, which will open up whole new markets. Here I've used Arial, which is the other great typeface.

Is there anything you'd like me to advertise? You know, just so I don't go out of my cuntbarging fucking mind?

Whatever it is, you know it'll be top notch. Just let me know. I'm officially taking requests.

Anyway, I'm off to do whatever the fuck I like without thinking about it.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

The Dave Knockles Lectures, 1: The Art of Pablo Picasso

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this, the first in a series of lectures I will be giving on subjects outside my field of expertise.

Today, I will be discussing The Art of Pablo Picasso.

*Ahem*

Picasso, perhaps more than any other artist of any period, demands our attention. A celebrity in his own lifetime and creator of some of the most distinctive art in human history, he was a man who constantly reinvented himself and his art. He is regarded as perhaps the greatest and most talented artist that has ever lived, and is conferred the kind of adulation normally reserved for deities, rock stars and movie icons. Part truth, part myth, part legend, his is a reputation that towers higher and higher with each passing year, casting an immovable shadow over the world of art and, it could be argued, over the entire human race's collective unconscious.

He is the artist I am most fiercely passionate about.

Why?

Because I think he's a pile of absolute cunting shitcakes.

As I say, I'm fiercely passionate about him. And I will use this platform to expand on my theory that Picasso was, and is, a total pile of fucking nonsense who couldn't even draw a frigging face without royally fucking it up for Christ's sake.

Take a look at the image above, titled 'The Weeping Woman', painted in 1937. Well, the title is handy, because I can make out a woman, and couple of tears too, but - seriously - this looks very little like a weeping woman. If you came across a weeping woman who actually looked like this, you'd assume she'd been brutally gang-raped by a Pantone chart, a creature from the 12th dimension, a rolling pin and a pack of fucking toddlers.

Take a look at this bag of spanners too.

This absolute fucking eyesore is called Woman In An Armchair, and was crapped into existence in 1913. Woman in an armchair? Are you fucking sure, Pablo? Can you see a woman in an armchair? You can? Then I think you need to get to fucking Specsavers, sharpish, mate - BECAUSE THERE IS NO WOMAN, AND NO FUCKING ARMCHAIR. There may be some bristolas in the middle there, but not fucking nice ones.

That's nothing, though, compared to this crime against reason.

This, apparently, is Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, 'painted' in 1907.

Now, one might assert that this work, unlike those above, actually fucking looks like something. And I would agree with that point. But surely the most disappointing - even insulting - transgression here is the fact that he had FIVE naked women in front of him and he made them look like THAT.

FIVE. NAKED. WOMEN.

And I'm assuming they were lookers because they were models. (I've never seen a bad-looking model, apart from when we did a pan-European campaign out of Romania a while back. Jesus. Harrowing, that was. They all looked so fucking sad. I kept saying, 'Cheer up, for fuck's sake! What do you have to be miserable about? You're models!' I didn't know they'd all been press-ganged into a sex squad to service Ceaucescu's generals. But even so - it's still regular work! Did they see my point? Did they shitballs. Pure ego, some people.)

Where was I? I can't remember. Let's move on to what is considered one of Picasso's finest works: Guernica.

Inspired by the German bombing of the Basque town, Guernica, the painting is a stark depiction of the horror of the Spanish Civil War - and of man's capacity to inflict suffering upon his fellow man.

My take on it? Meh. Bit fucking drab, innit? And, YET AGAIN, nothing looks like anything. But I'm getting used to that now.

The true tragedy of Picasso's life, of course, was that the cunt could actually draw!

Look at this self-portrait from 1901.

See? He can do it! I mean, it's a bit rough and that, but it's a proper painting. But even when he's not really fucking about, he can't resist being a prize shithound. Look at 'L'arlequin assis' from 1923.

Everything's there: it looks like something, it's got colours in it, it looks like he can actually draw and...screech!...slam the brakes on, Pablo! It looks like you're getting dangerously close to something good! Better fuck it up, eh?

What a proper, proper cuntshank.

Now some say that Picasso, in the face of the rise of photography, shunned the need for realism in painting and began to dissassemble his subject in order to find new ways of expressing something fundamentally I wonder if I remembered to Sky Plus X Factor over the weekend because I'm bound to be out and I really don't want to miss it, not now it's getting really interesting and Cheryl's got AIDS or whatever it is.

Where was I? I can't remember again. Fuck it, that's enough, innit?

In summary, then, one can view Picasso in a number of ways. As a talentless chancer. As a pointless piss artist. As a certified fucking screwball.

But I prefer to see him as a tortured genius.

Only without the genius.

That concludes the first Dave Knockles lecture. I hope you found it of use. If you'd like to ask any questions about the points I've made, feel free to use the comment facility supplied herewith.

Good day, and thank you for listening.

The Dave Knockles Lectures

I have for some time been considered a marketing expert, guru, legend, genius - call me what you will.

I am the man, after all, who devised cloudvertising, identified a way to suck the gay market dry, invented the 'bristolas, product name in headline, big price flash' holy trinity of perfect advertising and...well, loads more. Fucking loads. Basically, I've forgotten more than you know. Sometimes, I forget what I know. Some days, I forget everything. It's almost like I know absolutely nothing at all and my head is completely empty. But then I just make something up and it turns out to be total genius.

Anyway, I am not just one of the leading figures in modern marketing.

I am also a man.

Yes - just a man.

But a man who can help the people of the world find a better way to live by imparting the knowledge he has built up over a life that could, without exaggeration, be considered cuntissimally amazing.

Now that my agency have agreed to let me have nothing at all to do with the advertising, I am free to communicate with the world in ways that I hope will benefit every woman, every man, the children are the future, imagine all the people, together as one, teaching the world to sing.

If you see what I mean.

(What do I mean?)

I'll change the fucking world, basically.

I will do this through a series of lectures. I will call these The Dave Knockles Lectures because I am Dave Knockles, and they are lectures. So it makes fucking sense, innit?

The first of these lectures will be on one of the subjects that, outside the world of convention-busting marketing and communications innovation, is something I am most passionate about:

The Art of Pablo Picasso.

I will complete this lecture over the next few days and deliver it here on my blog, in person. Well, in person via the words I write. In other words, it'll be like every other post on my blog. What about it? If you've got a problem with that, I suggest you scrunch it up into a ball and fist it right up your fucking hoop, you shitathon.

Still, it will be a real fucking eye-opener. You know this.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

R.E.S.P.E.C.T. Find out how to give it to me.

There I was, a man in full control of his destiny, walking with a distinct swagger, full of vim and vodka, barging confidently through the doors of his agency, knocking some woman or other over, stopping abruptly to watch her fall backwards and upend her coffee all over her face, stepping over her while she moaned about burns and ambulances and stuff, feeling on top of the world - everything was fucking great.

I even got a smile from the receptionist when I sashayed up to her and whispered, 'Are you feeling okay?' 'Yes,' she replied. 'Great,' I said. 'Then feel this.'

I say a smile, it was very much an attempted smile. It actually looked for all the world like a strangled mask of revulsion, but that's nerves for you. (Poor little thing. She doesn't know how to handle herself when DK turns on the charm!)

Still, I was in ball-twangingly good fettle and bursting with cracking good ideas about how to reach the single mums market (I'd invented another marketing first with 'slagvertising' - small billboards on the pushchairs of teen mothers).

When I walked into my account director's office, though, he wasn't there there. Instead, perched like a shitting owl on the edge of the desk, was the agency chief executive.

'Hello, David,' he murmured. 'I wonder if you'd like to come to my space for a chat?'

Space? Whatever.

So, we took a private lift to the 300th floor to an office that was, indeed, a space. By which I mean it was the fucking size of space. It looked like the inside of Barbarella's rocket ship, only with deeper, lusher carpet on the walls - like the building was growing cunting angorra - and a shining Antarctic of white desk in the centre.

He moved behind it (eventually - it took minutes to walk round the fucking thing) and sat in a chair that I think had been bought in the clearance sale after God moved offices.

'David, I think we should talk,' he said.

'PARDON?' I shouted.

He picked up a phone. A phone next to me buzzed. He gestured at me to pick it up.

'Hello?' I said.

'David, I think we should talk,' came his voice, sonorously, right into my ear.

'What about?' I replied.

'You'.

'Oh.'

'We don't want you in any way to have anything whatsoever at all to do with any element of your advertising.'

'Riiight.'

'Not one single ad, not a full stop, not a pixel.'

'What's a pixel?'

'It's a...it doesn't matter. Are we in agreement?'

'No! I AM THE CLIENT! I want you to do exactly what I tell you to do, all the time! It's how I work!'

Then he said something irresistible involving a sum of money, a list of the agency's most bristola-centrically talented account executives, a bar tab at a particularly swanky Soho club, free access to a number of adult-focused TV channels, a year's supply of Pot Noodle, an account at Booze 'n' Shit (my local vintners), the number of a girl who does a particular, legally-unmentionable thing on a professional basis and an agreed number of ads I can do whatever I like with every year.

Now that, my fellow marketing professionals, is how to show respect for your client. He recognised - transparently - that as a force of creative marketing fuckmazingness, I'm streets ahead of him and his little multi-award-winning agency with a huge reputation for doing brilliant work. He knows it. (You should have seen his face when I mentioned slagvertising! Astonished!) So he worked it, girlfriend. He found a mutually agreeable solution.

Of course, it works better for me than him. I mean, even with three mono 10x2 ads a year, I will revolutionise advertising every fucking time. He's been done - but that's the way it should be!

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

Crowdscraping

I apologise for just using stories from Campaign as the basis of my blog, but...actually. Hang on. I don't apologise. Fuck you.

According to Campaign, BT's agency recently asked its target audience to decide what happened next in their long-running 'Adam and Jane' campaign. And the public spoke, via Facebook, with 1.6 million votes being cast. 70% of this great army decided that Jane should get up the stick.

This is being called 'crowdsourcing'. But I beg to differ.

Personally, I think crowdsourcing is excellent. It cuts out the agency and lets me get directly to a vast army of creatives around the world who are willing to do absolutely frigging anything for the chance to win a paltry sum of money. I get shitloads of ideas to look through, I only pay for the one I like, I save a fortune on agency fees, and the creatives get...well, fuck-all, but tough shitballs on them. They should get a proper job innit?

BT's strategy could better be termed 'asking morons what they want to see in commercials they don't give two fucks about'.

This is not what great advertising is about. Great advertising is about the strategic and creative vision of one person (usually me) with the drive to take an idea (usually mine) and devote the time and effort (usually other peoples') it needs to make it happen.

What BT's agency have perhaps forgotten is the first rule of marketing: your customers are a bunch of ungrateful shithousing cuntspurts who should be avoided at all costs and regarded simply as money with legs.

Everyone knows this. Why in the wide, wide world of women would anyone want to consult this vast hoard of drones on what they want to see in the commercials? They're fucking idiots. Of course they wanted 'Jane' to be pregnant. They're all morons. And probably women.

I wanted 'Jane' to get her bristolas out, force 'Adam' at gunpoint to eat his own foot, then dive into a giant pool full of other women with their bristolas out. That would have made an interesting commercial. As it is, we got 'Jane' telling 'Adam' she'd let one of his undercooked spunks weasel its way up her fassy and come to some simpering agreement with one of her eggs - an egg which was probably as fucking dour and joyless as she is.

Ask the general public anything and the consensus will be 'Oooh, I dunno. Summink nice.' Look at the fucking coalition government! Look at the result of X-Factor EVERY CUNTING YEAR.

The general public - and I apologise if you're a member - are cunts. The only thing they should be allowed to decide on is which punitive finance package we sell them when they buy our consumer durables. End of. Finished. Done. No more. End of. Done. Finished. Finito. DONE.

Period.

Anyway, enough. I'm off to ask my agency to do a free ad for my friend's friend's friend's friend's friend's friend's friend's friend's friend's friend's friend's friend's friend's friend's friend's friend's friend's friend's friend's friend's friend's friend's friend's friend's wife's hairdressing business. And they'll fucking well do it.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

Nuns and knobs

Jesus wept. Possibly literally in this case.

It seems an Italian ice-cream maker has caused a minor fucknado by using randy nuns, gay priests and pregnant ladies of the cloth in its ads.

And I have to say that this disgusts me.

I am not easy to shock, but I feel in this case a sense of outrage and deep-rooted offence that I haven't experienced for some years.

Why?

Because this isn't how you cunting well offend people! This is AMATEUR HOUR! Fuck my back teeth, boys! Is this the frigging BEST you could do? Seriously? Minor titillation with a fucking nun? I've got entire LIBRARIES of nun-based porn. This is not new territory. This is creatively stilted. This is cunting yesteryear! This is the Stephen Gateley of offensive advertising. By which I mean it's dead, but nobody's really that fussed.

(See? Now that was offensive.)

I can't believe anyone would tread this dreary path. It offended me. Actually, it did more - it fucking offended me. Actually, it did more - it put me off my Pot Noodle. And if you put me off my Pot Noodle, you are a cocknozzle and a cuntpot.

If you really want to put people's backs up, this is the way to go.

Not only an erotically-charged image of the People's Dead Princess (well, apart from the human music stand, which is fucking surreal) but the 'Diana' range of undies was released on the anniversary of her fucking death.

That, my fellow marketing professionals, is how you offend people.

Now, I'm off to make a series of ill-considered changes to some headlines that retain some of the words but utterly remove the wit, intelligence or craft in favour of patronisingly crude sales messages.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!