Extra Salt & Sauce

The son of a friend of mine bet his father two Canadian dollars and a bicycle tyre that I wouldn't use the word bollocks in The Leith Agency blog.

What are friends for?

Your Armani suited adman would struggle to pitch in an Irish pub.

The lack of technology projecting his favourite powerpoint chart “the brand spider” on which he can muse for a good 40 minutes would leave him in a sweat of Kouros.

In fact, pitching in a pub is an anathema. How often do you sit across from your mates and really sell that pint or those peanuts or-god forbid – the pickled egg:

“It’s a fine organic egg, hardboiled by a Yorskshireman named Stan from a family of famous egg boilers and then left to absorb the pungent juices of a Perugian pickle”

Not often.

So why did we choose a pub called Delaney’s in Tallaght, a suburb of Dublin, to pitch to a couple of fellas from Paddy Power.

Perhaps it was because these guys are different. They’re extremely maverick and to prove the point recently ran a poster campaign in Ireland that featured the famous painting of the last supper but instead of fine dining, Christ and co were playing poker. In Ireland. B’Jaysus.

The pitch brief they gave us was pure gold, brilliantly written. It made it clear that they wanted work which would have blokes in pubs talking about them. All good signposts to a pitch venue, hence, Will and Nick pictured outside the very pink Delaney’s

And studying the form card before the fellas from Paddy Power arrived.

I’ve no idea whether we’ll ever end up working together but the process of pitching in a pub was enjoyable. It was less us v them, polished presentation and brand spiders, it was more banter, laughter and well told stories.

Last night I learnt the secret that Ian White and the rest of our direct team have been occupied with seeking for some good years hence.

I was watching some creative testing research. The moderator moved onto the mock-up direct mail packs and one of the respondents spoke the immortal words:

"Is there a pen in it? I always open stuff with a pen in it."

Sorted.

This ad has been scooting round Edinburgh on the side of various buses for the past month or so - and has been driving me nuts. A classic example of either sloppy media buying or sloppy strategic thinking.

I shall launch a powerful protest by not buying any oust. Ever. I'm sure they'll be devastated.

We are one.

This blog is one year old in the same way that Margaret Thatcher was a grandmother.

This is the 87th post in that period, so we didn't quite score a century in our first annual innings. I expect we will second time round, now that there are prolific bloggers like Claire W on board.

The subtitle for this blog is "Leith is who we are. Leith is where we are." Having flicked through the archives I'm happy that we've done what we said on our tin. There's a good mix of stuff from within our four walls and outside on our doorstep.

87 helpings of Extra Salt & Sauce. Can't be good for the blood pressure.

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..?

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.

How can this possibly be....???

Free handgun promotion sees car sales quadruple
Brand Republic 23-May-08

NEW YORK - A Missouri car dealer has said that sales have quadrupled since it launched a promotional deal giving away a free handgun with every vehicle sold.

The alternative to a handgun is $250 worth of credit to spend on petrol -- but the owner of Max Motors, Mark Muller, told the BBC that most people "except one guy from Canada and one old guy" had gone for the handgun.

A trip down to Middlebrook on Monday to see our friends at A G Barr

The train back as the tail end of the solstice sun set over the (can I pretentiously say arcadian?) Lake District and I am again fascinated by Ed's comment, Lake District bound for a workshop, that the whole area should be razed to the ground. How to answer that?

Comments on the back of a postcard please.