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I’ve just read a sweet little book (says it all really - appreciative but slightly disparaging) called “never mind the sizzle…where’s the sausage?” by a chap called David Taylor. He sets out to write about “branding based on substance not spin”. And that pretty neatly sums up the content of the book.

It isn’t such a radical idea that he puts forth. To do really well in today’s competitive market, you can’t just get away with a super-duper advertising campaign (although clearly that can help!), you need a product that’s a bit out of the ordinary. And he dresses up his point in the diarised tale of some guy who gets plonked into the marketing department for a year on a placement to prove himself, knows nothing at all about marketing at the beginning, but wouldn’t you know it, bumbles his common sense way to revitalising the company’s core product and consequently saving the company.

Having been so disparaging, I should say that while I started out tutting at the early diary entries (”As I drove home the immortal words of the Pet Shop Boys rang in my ears, as they continue to do now: ‘What have I, what have I, what have I done to deserve this?’ “), I did find myself warming to the fellow so that by the end of the year in his life, I was racing through the ‘diary’ to find out what happened to him.

The book is also noteworthy for claiming to be the first of its kind to link references in a book to further info on a blog. Where you can find more of the same slightly self-congratulatory but reasonably sensible commentary on brands that market themselves well. There’s nothing earth-shattering there - he talks of the Stellas, innocents and Prets of this world. But again, nicely presented. I’m sure I’ll find myself using it as a reference some point soon.

In summary, I’d say it would be more valuable to those starting out in this industry than those long in the tooth. But then the chap says that himself. And it’s certainly one of the most entertaining Wiley offerings I’ve read for a while. So not a ringing endorsement but equally, you could do a lot lot worse.

There’s a lovely campaign running at the moment for Leonard Cheshire Disability, a charity that provides care and support for people in any way disabled and also campaigns to change attitudes towards disability.

Launched last week and featuring currently in bus shelters across Edinburgh (and probably everywhere else too), the campaign stars animals created by Aardman Animations observing that their disabilities don’t stop them living a perfectly normal life.

The posters are charming and engaging. And caught my eye because they neatly side-step the problem of featuring photography and thus immediately pigeon-holing people. But I discover now that they have a rather fine website too. In another nice touch, they have the ‘back stories’ of all of the characters here. A great way of bringing the campaign message to life.

So Tuesday saw us pitching up to Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh in our dry-cleaned finery for the 2007 IPA Effectiveness Awards.

A brief chat with Hamish Pringle (during which I mostly babbled nonsense as I’m easily star-struck) revealed that they deliberately chose Scotland as the venue for this year’s awards as the IPA are trying hard to raise the profile of the organisation within this (apparently soon to be independent) land.

Being UK-wide meant that the venue was full of unfamiliar faces, sadly unlike the ad awards a couple of weeks ago which has a feeling closer to a giant and extended family wedding. But the venue was impressive and the tea was tasty.

And far more important than all of this, we won an award. We put together a campaign a couple of years ago for the Scottish Executive / Government, designed to encourage the public in areas particularly affected by the problems associated with drug dealing, to come forward to the police (via Crimestoppers) with any intelligence about dealers local to them.

And for telling this story, we collected a fine silver award at Tuesday’s ceremony. Mr Marsham, our esteemed MD, and master of the planning department, David Amers, were largely responsible for the creation of the case study. I scurried around fact-finding. So seized the excuse to dart up behind them onto the stage when the award was announced.

There’s a terrible photo of us all clutching the award and looking slightly uncomfortable on the IPA website. I shan’t give you the link.

I’m doing a lot of hunting for ads at the moment to demonstrate this or that strategy in action. Which means I have a perfectly legitimate reason to be spending a lot of time on a marvellous website called david reviews.

A chap called Jason Stone appears to make a living - or at least spend an inordinate chunk of his time - sourcing TV ads, posting them on his site and commenting on them. And what is lovely is not just access to all of these ads at remarkably bargainlike prices but his commentary on the ads.

So for example, he has a bit of a bee in his bonnet at the moment about the Dove ‘campaign for real beauty’ which he feels is exploiting the insecurities of those less than unnaturally beautiful to sell…beauty products. Hypocrisy, he would argue.

The supposedly unattractive models used in the ads are just “cunningly cast to ensure they are beautiful in a less obvious way than is customary”. And so forth. You get the picture.

I don’t consistently agree with his opinion. He prefixed the gorilla ad with a strident “we know you’re going to love this…” But by and large, he speaks much sense..

The fact that he tends to love our IRN-BRU ads has absolutely no bearing on my fondness for his craft…