Surely the greatest compliment ever.
One of our (lovely) Scottish Government clients described (lovely) Brian as the horse whisperer of advertising for his solid and calming skills, manner and disposition.
I can only aspire.
Having just spent the last couple of hours clearing out nearly 30,000 spam comments, we’ve decided to implement a change in our comment policy here at Extra Salt & Sauce.
Now each and every comment will be held for approval before it is posted to the site. This means two things:
1) Legitimate comments will take a few hours before they show up.
2) I will never have to go through that mind numbing horror again.
Groups in Leeds last night so another welcome this morning to the weird underworld that is the hotel breakfast bar. And another hard-to-rival people-watching opportunity.
Most breakfasters sit solo with their heads buried in their newspapers, glancing up only to furtively receive their weird thin cafetiere for one and their slightly burnt toast. But there are a few delightful exceptions.
This morning, we had the sharp-suited surely-trader, gobbling up the FT, shiny-shoed and darting glances around and around the bar, apparently fearful of missing something.
A shoulder-padded and matching scarved woman with a man in a weird soft blouson-style leather jacket, straight out of the 80s, speaking noisily about his recent wedding anniversary trip to Edinburgh and his sorrow over their miscarriage.
A noisy man holding court to a posse of nervously laughing much younger women. Their father? Their boss? Their ringmaster??
A contented looking fellow who shrank into the corner when his two besuited colleagues turned up, all pinstriped and briefcased and full of jolly cameraderie.
I wonder if you could make money from some kind of hotel based business breakfast facilitating the chance encounters of all these people who surely would compliment each others’ businesses in some way? As long as I could watch.
Louis Vuitton are throwing money at cinema advertising now, to no great effect as far as I can tell. They have a very long, very luxuriant ad running in cinemas at the moment, describing in self-indulgent long shots and artful abstract close ups, the journey that is life (when you’re a Louis Vuitton bag carrier at any rate).
The ad asks the viewer a series of empty questions, concluding I think that travelling the world (accompanied by your leathery companion) is the best way to broaden your mind. Although it’s hard to tell if this is really what they are saying as the end product is more or less as empty headed as a bad perfume ad.
Perhaps I’m being overly harsh. I did rather over-indulge in cinema-going at the weekend (go see The Orphanage - scary but beautiful so you can almost forgive the scariness) so seeing this poor advert four times in almost as many days probably didn’t help it stand up to scrutiny. And maybe I’m just full of subliminal bitterness as I will never own a leathery Vuitton case. But really. What an extravagent waste of money.
My ongoing personal crusade against the gorilla ad took another battering this morning.
I see that weekly sales of Dairy Milk increased by 9% when the ad was on air.
Can’t really argue with a drum-beating gorilla in which case.
A poster has gone up at my gym. It outlines the type of music that will be played in the gym in each segment of the day. So:
Morning: easy listening
Afternoon: classical music
Evening: dance music
It finishes with a brilliant little sign-off:
“This music will be enjoyed by the majority of gym goers.”
Advertising or propaganda..?
Today saw the official launch of the sales and information centre for parclife in Edinburgh. We trotted along at the appointed hour to find the place that 3 weeks ago, looked something more like a building site, now swarming with people.
Andrew Skakel, of Skakel and Skakel fame, should be highly commended for his imaginative building design.The place looks great. Not at all what you’d expect from essentially a marketing suite.
Various local dignitaries spoke in honour of the occasion. And to my secret delight (though I hid it well), John-Mark, director of the EDI Group, thanked us as the insightful “imagineers” who had created and then brought to life the parclife brand. I’ve never been called an imagineer before.
But the icing on the cake came when what appears to be the site dog - mascot, someone suggested - darted past the window. He’s a little terrier type thing (can you tell I know nothing about dogs??) who’s put in an appearance at various meetings before now. An interesting and unusual accessory for a bunch of new houses.
If you’re looking to buy exceptional value for money 2 or 3 bed apartments in Edinburgh, go see (the apartments and the dog). The centre opens to all at the end of the month.
Our parclife homes have been doing exceptionally well. (I say ours and you know, technically they were built by the EDI Group but having worked with them for 3 years now, I feel some small degree of ownership.)
The weekend appointments saw all but two of the properties being reserved. The remaining two were snapped up in the two days following. All down to superb branding, I say.