Blimey, have you seen the branding on this cross tracks campaign?

It’s so big you can still see it even after the train’s arrived.

Irony is I can still never remember the name of the wine – because it’s new world and crass, I have it in my head as Jacob’s Creek.

Down under one off – or the shape of logos to come?

We are a property obsessed nation – and at the centre of that obsession sits Rightmove.

Every month, over 10 million people visit the site, to buy, sell, rent, let – or just look.

In fact, so dominant is Rightmove’s role that it’s fair to say it’s the place where Britain moves today.

So we’ve said it.

The first execution, which broke on TV this morning, introduces the theme and shows how every minute, up and down the nation, Rightmove helps all types of Britons follow all types of property dreams.

And there’s more to come…

‘Things we’re rubbish at’ by Team Experts was the decisive winner of the Facebook competition to choose which Rowse staff-created ad should run on national TV.

It’s been on air since Monday, but tonight’s the big one – the national slot on Corrie!

The ad shows some of the things that the folks at Rowse Honey are rubbish at – such as taking penalties or performing magical tricks – because they are masters of just one thing, namely making the UK’s favourite honey.

We all think it’s a very worthy winner.

But tonight it’s over to the great British public to decide.

Only around 10 million people watching, so no pressure lads…

We wanted  to help drive Rowse honey sales through the roof this Pancake Day.

We’ve just made this ad for them, and thought we could chip in a bit of free media to their schedule.
Then millions of people like you will be reminded of Pancake Day and run off to the shops to buy some Rowse.
(Can’t wait to see that spike.)

Director Mark Denton reminded me of this particularly fine piece of copywriting,

an ad written by Rick Cook, the last ad he wrote for an agency called Colmans.

Very pleased with an ad Citroen had just bought, he began to worry, would

e be credited on it once he’d left? In an effort to avoid being ‘forgotten’, he

devised a cunning plan to ensure people would know he’d written it.

You’re wondering how do you guarantee credit when you’ve left the agency?

Easy.

Write your name on the ad itself. Or to be more precise, in it.

Rick wrote about the joys of the Citroen Estate using the first letter

of each paragraph to spell out ‘Richard Cook Wrote This’.

That’s clever, but he needed events to happen that were beyond his control,

every element needed to fall neatly into place.

The client needed to accept the copy unchanged, JWT needed to enter it into D&AD.

Harvey Flinder needed to give himself a writing credit.

It then needed over 50% of the D&AD jury to vote for it into the 1984 annual.

Sheer genius! (And yes, I’m aware of the ‘e’, it’s tougher than it looks.)

In last week’s Campaign, Amelia Torode and Tracey Follows wrote an article comparing the decline of Detroit with the fate that could befall adland unless it wakes up. It was an engaging and well-written piece.

But I have one niggle with the analogy and its application.

Which is that Detroit didn’t die because someone came up with a radically different and better way of making cars, or because the world went off cars in general; it died because someone else worked out how to make pretty well the same thing that bit better. And that bit better, over time, went on to make all the difference.

Manifestly, cars didn’t die. Their core ‘DNA’ barely changed.

It’s just that no-one asked Detroit to make them for them anymore.

So Detroit’s issue was, in essence, a quality problem. Better was demanded and Detroit couldn’t, or wouldn’t, deliver.

If ‘adland’ means the traditional (Western?) agency-based centres of advertising production, then the thing I personally most fear will kill it is a similar lack of quality. Someone else, somewhere else – whether that be agencies in other areas of the world, consumers (via crowd-sourcing, etc.) or client companies themselves – will just do it better.

Of course, the ‘it’ in question will evolve to reflect the technological and cultural decrees of the moment, as it always does – but the distinguishing factor, as it always is, will be how well ‘it’ is done, not the evolution itself.

The warning signs of this qualitative decline have been showing up for years in the awards shows, with the former ‘Detroits’ (in particular, London) progressively losing out to emerging global advertising sources such as Brazil, South Africa and beyond. (This probably also showed up in the automotive awards of the 70s and early 80s, but I’d be too young to know…)

So can we learn the real lesson from Detroit’s demise in time, and recommit to quality?

If everyone working in ‘adland’ pledged this day always to make strategic and creative quality their priority in every single element of their output, then its future will be secured – whatever the societal, political and technological twists and turns that will inevitably come our way.

On this day, DHM took delivery of the first enamel badges they had ever produced.

Don’t believe us? See below.

In case you’ve forgotten what today is, one of these cards might just save your bacon.

Choose your favourite and click on the link below to download your card.

Valentine’s Day Tweet

Valentine’s Day Moderate

Valentine’s Day Facebook

Open the pdf and add your personal message of lurve into the box, re-save it and email it to your loved one, or print it off and send it if you prefer to remain anonymous.

Spread the love.

the Rowse facebook site has gone from 200 to 10,000, (at the time of writing).

The only driver has been the TV ad that started running at 8:15 sunday night.

(In the middle of ‘Dancing On Ice’, isn’t that Jason a rascal?)

Can’t wait till the digital stuff kicks in.

This blog used to be called murmurs, because it was primarily about up and coming trends. Even though we no longer call it murmurs, we still like to spot trends early.

The risk with being very early is that your predictions may turn out to be a coincidence, or worse an isolated incident.

But, hell, I feel confident enough with this particular trend to predict that the majority of men in the U.K. (over 22), will be dressed like this by the end of the year.

Here’s an early adopter spotted at the Wallace Collection, Saturday.

The internal ad-making process comprised five teams of five Rowse employees each coming together to work on the brief, share ideas, determine their favourite and then shoot it on the day of the company picnic.

Each team was made up of a cross-section of employees drawn from all aspects of the Rowse operation. And the comment we heard the most throughout the process, from senior manager to line worker alike, was how refreshing and enjoyable it was to be able for once to put aside the usual distinctions of function and rank and all muck in together, on the same terms.

Which has led us to wonder whether this process could be rolled out across more companies as much as a corporate team-building exercise as a way of arriving at unusual advertising?

After all, the problem with the typical ‘company bonding weekend’ is that it is clearly divorced from the actual operations of the company itself, so all the participants know deep down that it is not ‘real’ – after it’s finished, everyone and everything will go back to what and where they were before.

Here, everyone knew it was for real – the output would form the company’s national TV campaign and the most popular staff ad would air on TV. And the process for getting there was genuinely democratic – no opinion could trump anyone else’s based on seniority or title.

So often these days, companies (and governments?) talk about ‘teamwork‘ and ‘being all in it together‘ while supporting systems guaranteed to keep us apart. Here, the Rowse internal ad teams really were all in it together – and seemed to enjoy the feeling.

We wanted to go on TV to increase awareness of Rowse, but without appearing too big and corporate.
After all we’re talking honey, one of the most natural substances on Earth.
(I’m sure most people would choose a local farm over The United Honey Corporation.)

So we came up with an unusual solution. (No it really is, stick with us.)

We discovered that Rowse first revealed their new logo by organising a tea party for the staff on the lawn outside their factory, during which they ran the new logo up a flagpole.
Hurrah! Everybody cheered.

Well, we thought, that’s not normal.

(Not in a condescending way, but a ‘not many companies would ever do that’ way.)

It got us thinking that maybe the best way to represent the spirit of this charming English company would be to get this charming English company to represent itself - to take down the veil rather than create one.

So we asked the staff at Rowse to create their own ads.

To come up with the ideas, use the cameras, boom mikes and clapper boards as well as act in them.

Do everything.

One of Rattling Stick’s top directors, Pete Riski, recorded the events of the day, then edited it all down into an ad.

But it doesn’t really feel like an ad, more like a C4 trailer – which is good when authenticity is crucial.

The ad will run in programmes like Dancing on Ice and Coronation Street, directing people
to facebook.com/rowsehoney.

(Geek fact: 50% of people watching TV are online at the same time).

When people get there they will find the ads that the five Rowse employee teams created.

Six of them.

They are real.

When you see them, you’ll know what I mean.

(We resisted the temptation to ‘Soho-ise’ them.)

The teams have been given budgets to promote their ads, whether it’s setting up facebook campaigns, being carried shoulder high through Wallingford in full ‘Captain Rowse’ outfit or getting sponsors for their egg and spoon races.
Why? Because the ad that ends up with the most ‘likes’ will be aired on primetime national TV.

Now this might look like a cunning way for an agency to get their clients to do all the work whilst still being paid! But the reality was this was much more complicated than producing a regular 30″ ad with a reveal 25″ in.

DHM has always believed in brands being honest and truthful with consumers.
But this is probably our most honest yet…

Back in 2002, I produced a campaign for Adnams beers,

called ‘beer from the coast’.

It worked very well for them, positioning them as the coastal brewer.

Last year we started working with Adnams again…

They now run nearly a hundred pubs, have a collection of hotels and a chain of shops, produce a gin and a rum and, of course, still brew their beers.

But instead of the handful of beers they produced back then, they now produce over twenty.

With such a range they needed a unifying voice.

A voice that would hold together all communications, whether it was thanking someone for staying, suggesting a new beer or telling you about their super ethical policy for waste disposal.

Adnams is a very progressive brand.

They are innovative, community spirited and very green.

(Not in a naive way).

But aside from that, they are just very nice, decent, positive people.

They once asked us to create a poster asking people ‘not to drink too much, it’s dangerous’.

Here is the first work in their new voice.