Some New Work For KGB

No, not the shadowy former Soviet national security agency, but the nice text-message question answering people. We created posters and beer mats as part of a tactical campaign running across the UK.

You can see the rest here if you're interested.

Bill Bernbach Said #21

The twenty first in our Bernbach series...

"It's that creative spark that I'm so jealous of for our agency and that I'm so desperately fearful of losing. I don't want academicians. I don't want scientists. I don't want people who do the right things. I want people who do inspiring things."

You can see all the Bill Bernbach quotes we've listed so far here.

Why Do We Save? And Do 'They' Understand Normal People?

I happened upon this article in The Guardian this morning. The gist of the piece is the admittance by the Bank Of England that it is deliberately holding down interest rates at historically low levels in the hope that this will discourage people from building up cash savings. "Charlie Bean, who sits on the Bank's monetary policy committee that set the base interest rate, admitted it was being held down in the hope families would use their cash and thereby help reflate the economy."

One of the key things in the business of advertising is the continuous quest to genuinely understand peoples' real motivations for their behavior. How they buy, how they choose, or why they choose not to buy. You'd suspect that to be a successful monetary policy-maker, for who the spending pattern of the nation is more than just a passing interest, that would also be true.

But this article got me to thinking,  do these people really understand normal people at all?

Saving money isn't something that is either easy or particularly exciting to most people. There have been efforts to encourage people to save over the last few years that recognise this. Add to this that the rising costs of living have left an ever decreasing amount of disposable income makes saving a painful experience for most.

Most people I know save through necessity, to create a buffer against the unexpected (rainy day money), to prepare for their childrens' education, to build towards a big, painful purchase (mortgage deposits for example). Most regular people are not carefully putting away money each month because of the measly 4.2 per cent interest or whatever they were getting on their savings account. While this might not be the case for the highest earners, where the larger amounts they are saving plus the higher interest rates available return decent amounts, the interest garnered on the saving accounts of normal people are barely noticeable. It's hardly the motivation for putting away money.

And here we are, at a time when it seems almost everyone is feeling some effect of a pretty hard recession. Redundancies and business closures abound, belts are being tightened, budgets are being scrutinised. All spending is questioned, holidays are reigned in, big purchases are put off.

It seems incredible that these senior policy-makers imagine that a couple of percentage point of interest will be the thing that encourages normal people to take the money they were carefully, and often painfully, saving for their kids' education or in case they get made redundant, and dash out into the retail villages of Britain and blow it on a big-screen TV or a new lounge carpet.

Brian's Letter On The Radio

Good old Brian has made it onto the radio. We had a note from CBC in Canada last week, just checking the origin of the Brian Letter. They've used it in a radio show/blog/podcast they broadcast last week about co-creation, including a funny bit of narration of the letter. If you're interested, you can listen to it here (scroll down the page to the title Co-creation Use & Abuse and click the podcast player).

Incidentally, Brian also made it into Campaign Magazine, obviously before its origin was common knowledge...

Documerica Project

Back in the 70's, the US Environmental Protection Agency hired freelance photographers to document Americas environmental problems, EPA activities and everyday life. The US National Archives have recently digitized this large collection, and uploaded them to flickr. They provide a great visual commentary of that period in America and have a lovely feel to them.

Bill Bernbach Said #20

The big 2 0 in our Bernbach series...

"Properly practised creativity can make one ad do the work of ten."

You can see all the Bill Bernbach quotes we've listed so far here.

MyBuilder Beauty Parade Commercial

Our new TV ad for the lovely people at MyBuilder.com goes on air this week. The commercial, directed by the smashing Mark Denton, is MyBuilder's first TV spot, and kicks off a larger campaign launching across TV, VOD, online and print. A big thanks goes to Mark, Sara, Sean and Natalie at Coy! for all of their hard work and pulling of production rabbits out of (yellow, hard) hats.