Moustache - HANDLEBAR, PENCIL, HORSESHOE OR TOOTHBRUSH.

I will be away for the next twelve months, living and traveling in countries that don’t have English as a first language.

Also countries that have very different cultural and commercial values to what I have been used to.

Firstly North Africa, Jordan and Turkey, then the Balkans, Eastern Europe and finally into Western Europe.

Well that’s the plan.

This will be a challenge for my blog as I usually write about communication.

And, as I believe that most good communication involves both visual imagery and the written word, I think that I will be dealing with half a deck of cards.

It will be interesting to see if the contemporary approach to advertising, of more visual than verbal solutions, has really become global.

Will I just gravitate to visual solutions, because language will no longer play a part, or will there be genuinely good work that transcend language?

Toyota have always been more innovative marketers than vehicle designers.

The Prius is a notable exception.

They were amongst the first to develop a web presence and then very quickly followed that up by making it interactive.

Now they are at it again, this time with iPad ads.

This one popped up on The Age the other day.

I flip past most ads on The Age iPad App, as I would have done in their traditional broadsheet newspaper.

However this one stopped me because it was involving.

The reader was asked to tap on the screen to see the effect a smash would have on their internal organs.

The heart, lungs, liver and kidneys would all crack, like glass, when you tapped them.

Tap them harder and they shattered.

This ad involved the consumer in the idea.

Good ads have never been static, even if they were only in print form, they have always had the ability to bring the punter along for the ride.

Oh what a feeling.

I was at a birthday party just before Christmas and one of the guests suffered a massive heart attack.

Four people, including myself, gave him Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation. It was later discovered that none of the four had ever done CPR before.

We managed to crack a couple of ribs but we kept him alive until the MICA unit arrived about 25 minute later.

We were all working on this poor guy by trying to recall what we had read in books, seen on TV or in the movies. All four of us thought that the others knew what they were doing and just followed suit.

While we were pounding his chest another of the guests was in contact with 000 where a paramedic was giving him instructions on what we should be doing.

We were being told to depress his chest 100 times a minute, this was far more that I remember, but we weren’t going to argue.

I only wish that this ad had been running, at some time, before I needed to do CPR for real.

It’s a great example of perfect casting, a very appropriate soundtrack and a simple, well told narrative.

What’s even more important, is that all these separate elements combine to make this spot stick in your memory.

And isn’t that the sort of recall you want when it’s a life and death situation?

Our ‘victim’ is recovering well and can’t wait to get us back for cracking his ribs.

Vinnie Jones Hard and Fast

Advertising that’s only decorative and doesn’t communicate anything is referred to as “Wallpaper”.

I think the creators of this poster have taken the expression literally.

‘It’s all about you’ is the current positioning line for the Mazda CX9.

However it seems that this is a catch cry of a selfish, self-centered generation, rather than a line for a specific product.

It’s an attitude rather than an insight.

This same line is the title of a song from McFly and the Albanian singer Juliana Pasha. The line is also used for a diverse range of other products and causes, like: How To Get (and Keep) A Wonderful Man, The Centre for Complementary Health, Binge Drinking, Melbourne University Credit Union, a Day Spa and even, but not surprisingly, Jesus.

The result is that this line will roll of people’s consciousness like eggs off a Teflon fry pan.

‘Enjoy Christmas. Shop early’ is EBay’s line and like all good ones it’s based on a human truth.

For many people the stress of Christmas shopping can ruin the occasion. If you get it out of the way early, as EBay suggests, you will have more time to enjoy the event.

A good line needs to do more than just hold a mirror up to the consumer; it needs to connect with them.

Many ‘experts’ praise Social Media because it has the ability to create a two-way conversation with the user.

A good positioning line can do that, and more, because it demonstrates that the brand has insight into the needs of the consumer.

And like the EBay line it makes you stop, think and subconsciously nod in agreement.

After all, it’s all about you.

Winston Churchill had lopsided features, which may be a link to why he was such a successful leader of Britain during WW2.

Psychologists have discovered that people with asymmetrical features make the most effective leaders.

I wonder if the same theory might be applied to art in its historical context?

Throughout history the arts have lurched between the Classical and Romantic, or symmetry and asymmetry.

The most well known period was the Renaissance, a time of classical beauty and symmetry. This was then followed by the Baroque, a period of disturbance, mayhem and asymmetry.

This is best seen in Michelangelo’s two great works in the Sistine Chapel, Rome. The ceiling is calm and ordered, in the High Renaissance style, while the Last Judgment, in the Mannerist style, was much more chaotic. This was the pre curser to the Baroque period, where art and sculpture displayed more exuberance and exaggerated motion.

Advertising has also followed the same swings. In the 60s there was the Helmet Krone inspired VW campaign and in the 70s and 80s we had the classic British print campaigns like Sainsburys, Commercial Union and Stella Artois.

Then came the dark days of the mid 90s. This brought the off the wall and totally asymmetrical work out of Holland like the Hans Brinker Hotel work from KesselsKramer, Amsterdam. The advertising was so unusual that they even published a book titled; “The Worst Hotel in the World”

I wonder if, when times are tough, we don’t need the off the wall, asymmetric approach to selling?

After all there has never been a more confusing market place than now.

The stock market lurches between Bear and Bull and the politics waver between The Tea party and the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The WWW has opened up the Pandora’s box, that’s new media, and know one knows where that will lead us.

Or perhaps we just need some talented creative directors with lopsided features?

Wine growers, or maybe it’s the wine marketers, seem to understand the power of a yarn.

The Boobook owl is the story that Forest Hill Vineyards, in the great southwestern region of Western Australia, use to market their Cabernet Merlot variety. Apparently the owl’s very distinctive call can be heard around the vineyard at night.

While the name Annie’s Lane, in the Clare Valley, came from the story of Annie Wayman. This is what’s on the back of their label.

“Annie Wayman was a legend in the Clare Valley. She could always be relied upon to bring along sandwiches and a warm drink to harvesters and pruners in the vineyard at the turn of the 20th century. One evening, Annie’s horse and cart got bogged in a lane adjacent to one of the valley’s best vineyards. Thus, Annie’s Lane was born.”

Most people buy wine just before they consume it and most are heavily influenced by the label, so what better way to get these impulse buyers to choose a product, than to give them something to remember it by, a good story?

Henry Ford famously made the claim about the colour range of the Model T.

“Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black.“

It’s these stories that empower the consumer to talk about a product and that’s the best way to get it remembered.

The copywriter has long used story telling to aid brand association. However with the current trend, of little or no copy in ads, this art has been lost.

I guess I will just have to read more wine labels.

I am a fan of the Tour de France.

So for the last three weeks I haven’t been into bed until way after midnight.

One of the biggest attractions has been the magnificent scenery along the route.

And last night’s time trial was amongst the most gripping TV I have seen in a long time. True, it was only guys racing the clock but there was so much at stake for Australia’s Cadel Evans.

He’s a machine.

I can’t wait to see him ride down the Champs-Élysées tonight as the winner. Only the third non-European to have won the race in its 108 year’s history.

There was another winner in this year’s tour and that was the SBS Tour Tracker App. This was a great example of well designed and well written application code. Even the live TV feeds worked.

Now for the losers.

I am afraid they were the advertisements. It was definitely the cycling and the scenery that kept me awake each night, not the ads.

Apart from the original SBS promo ad, which was excellent, the rest was crap.

If they had only run each ad once a night, then they would have been bearable but they ran them at every break and then night after night. Apart from Skoda, all the major sponsors had only produced one ad and they seemed to run them continually.

There was once a theory in media buying that frequency was the most powerful way to builds a brand message.

I think that frequency, at these levels, is the fastest way to damage a brand.

The phone tapping scandal by Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World has been on the front pages here as well as in the UK.

Well, almost all of the front pages.

There was, however, a noticeable absence of this story in the Herald Sun, a News Limited publication.

I have always been led to believe that reporters are meant to report the big stories.

I guess it all comes down to what is regarded as a good story to report.

The News of the World may have shown no ethics but at least their advertisers have displayed some balls and pulled large hunks of advertising from their pages.

Even a brand that’s as tawdry as this one can be damaged by public opinion.

As the story broke yesterday, I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall in the Herald Sun’s editors office, or maybe I should have just hacked his phone.

Last weekend there was a link on the blog spot, ‘If This Is A Blog Then What’s Christmas’, to a site called ‘Awesome People Hanging Out Together’

There are 13 pages with old and new photos, of famous people, who have been seen and photographed together.

In there you’ll find some great shots, like Chuck Norris with Bruce Lee, Colonel Sanders with Alice Cooper and even Woody Allen with Michael Jackson.

This one caught my eye, as it was so out of place in the context of all the other awesome people.

I won’t reveal who these two guys are, however if you are in advertising you might have an idea.

If you don’t know, then go to page 8 and find out for yourself.

They are actors, like a lot of the other awesome people on the site, but they are awesome for a very different reason.