Wednesday 31 January 2007

The bug spreads: more great posts on sad-vertising...


First of all, Nigel Hollis, the Chief Global Analyst of Millward Brown has opened a dicussion on his blog (I'm really chuffed that Millward Brown are showing such appetite for this debate... and such openness!). In response to the posts of the last week, Nigel begins by asking...

"Has Erik now become the savior of Millward Brown, or has he simply articulated our belief about how emotion works better than the rest of us?"

He goes on to indicate his broad agreement with the principles of sad-vertising, but also underlines an important distinction that certainly warrants further debate...

"An ad that touches deeper emotions which resonate with the target audience will always be more effective than a “happy-talk” ad. There is, however, a very important distinction to be made between how we feel when we watch an ad and how we feel about the brand as a result of watching the ad."

Citing my example of the Fly Fishing / J.R. Hartley ad, he says...

"The key point is that the narrative flow of the ad resolved my sadness and empathy into affirmation, just as David suggests it should. That’s what great ads do; they engage your emotions in a way that leaves you feeling better disposed toward the brand. The problem is, not every ad is a great ad. Not every ad resolves itself to leave you feeling affirmed, revived, or exhilarated. All too often ads which seek to utilize “negative” emotions end up turning people off the brand because they fail to close the loop."

Now I still maintain that we cannot yet be 100% sure that "failing to close the loop" means people will be turned off by a brand. Yes, it is intuitively appealing to believe that negative emotion is ok as long as the resolution within the consumer is positive. People get this.

But I worry that implicit within this is the belief that the ad itself must have a positive resolution. And in my paper I speed over a number of reasons to believe that negative emotion without positive reconciliation may be just as effective (mood congruity, the experiential similarity between postive and negative emotion, the example of tragedy, and motivational attractiveness to negative emotions in others). We can't know for sure, but it may be that purely negative ads can be effective for brands.

And with a complex media strategy perhaps a brand could communicate negatively for weeks or months before finally offering a positive resolution... a true emotional journey, far greater than that possible in 30 seconds? Consider the Smirnoff Triple Distilled ad (pictured above) a sad tale covering a break up, adultery and a "positive" resolution which at first only came about if you pressed the "red button".

So, to the more complex point about positive resolution having to occur within the consumer (if not in the ad). Well again this seems very sensible - I argued the point in my paper - but we cannot yet rule out the possibility that an unresolved negative emotion associated with a brand could be good for the brand. It's hard to fathom... I know... but let's remember the important distinction between complex social emotions (guilt, embarrassment, empathy) and base reptilian motivational emotions (e.g. fear).
Take the Bisto ad made by McCann Erickson, London... it was beautiful, effective... but didn't it also leave a lot of parents feeling guilty?

Secondly (a long way down for a second point I know) Faris posted some lovely stuff on sad-vertising and the Dark Side of brands yesterday. Check it out, he echoes the above with his discussion of brands functioning to reconcile complex opposites and talks about the thinking of his Australian chum. All quite fittingly adding to the complexity of this matter.
And given Faris's prominence in the blogosphere it has led to some nice coverage here... http://if.psfk.com/if/index.php ... thanks for being so popular mate!
Phew... I think all this warrants a PhD.

Monday 29 January 2007

Erik Du Plessis, Millward Brown, joins me on the Dark Side


Who says blogging isn't good for planning?

Last week, what started as a blog-posting about sad-vertising, led me to having a full and frank email discussion with Erik Du Plessis of Millward Brown about the merits of negative emotion in advertising.

And guess what… where originally I had considered Erik and Millward Brown to be firmly against negative emotion, it seems we are now in agreement that negative emotion can lead to powerful and effective advertising.

This is Erik’s last note to me; including an important warning on the dangers of using negative emotion gratuitously, and a hypothetical illustration with a brand I work on...


“Hi David, I can only agree with your last comment that we need to simplify, and not over-simplify, the issues about emotion.

Up to 1995 the general view has been the D’escartian view that emotion is the antithesis of rationality. (E.g. “Be rational, not emotional, about this). Everything has changed with Damasio’s book “Descartes’ Error”. Along with LeDoux a new paradigm has come about. Mostly being discussed only from 2000 onwards.

This leaves us with a situation where much of the pre-1995 work on emotion should be questioned against the new paradigm. Remember that this work was undertaken by only a few psychologists without the benefit of the new paradigm.

I think all of us at Millward Brown will agree that we still have a lot to learn about measuring emotions, and we are investing a lot of time in this. From what I have seen our approach is probably the best, at this stage. I believe we can learn a lot from debates like you have initiated with your paper, and your Blogg. At a minimum you are raising questions, hopefully you might even come up with solutions.

This is one reason I prefer to talk at conferences where there are creatives, planners and clients; rather than researchers.

Onto another point: I am impressed by the depth you have read my book to be quoting it at me, and yes, I might have been unclear, or simply wrong.

Negative emotions are as (if not more) important for survival as positive emotions. Thus, as far as the attention role of emotions you will give attention to things that cause strong negative or positive emotions. This makes for powerful advertising.

As far as the second role of emotions is concerned – setting up a pre-disposition – you might find that negative emotions sets up a negative predisposition, and this is the danger of gratuitous sadvertising.

I can see that showing people dying as a result of eating Marmite will get attention, but I really doubt that it will do the brand any good. The same ad execution showing people dying but this time because they did not eat Marmite brand might be more effective. Both would probably classify as sadvertising.

Thanks for giving me space on your Blogg. Erik.”


So with Erik on side, we can now be optimistic (if that is the right word?) about the future of sad-vertising. Let’s hope his authority will help breed optimistic clients too.

Wednesday 24 January 2007

Other sad-vertising proponents



Some other great writings on sad ads came to light after Scamp's post this week.

http://www.pinkair.com/2006/07/mad_sad_glad.html


http://media.guardian.co.uk/advertising/story/0,,1724184,00.html

Millward Brown: A New Hope?


Scamp posted a lovely piece this week on sad ads and followed it up with some flattering coverage of my sad-vertising article. Yet again, why is it that creatives are first to engage the power of sad-vertising?

And then yesterday,
Scamp was contacted by Erik Du Plessis of Millward Brown (the arch villain of the piece if Scamp's "hssss"-ing and Darth Vader pictures are to be heeded). Why a villain? Well apart from Millward Brown having no doubt commited many atrocities on Scamp's ideas over the years, I kind of made Erik out to be the bad guy in my ADMAP article. Well Erik isn't really sad-vertising's nemesis, and if he's Darth Vader, then that makes me Luke Skywalker... and why would Luke be defending the Dark side?

Have a look at what Erik had to say about sad-vertising and then I'll respond below...


"Hi Scamp, I was not sure how to use your comments block (no send button) so I thought I will mail direct. I also do not find David Boneys address – you might be able to forward this.

I am Erik du Plessis, from Millward Brown (hssss). I don’t think I mentioned that I am against advertising that raises a negative emotion. In fact I am a great one for advertising that raises an emotion, any emotion.

The Maxwell tape ad on David’s blogsite is a very good example of using emotion in advertising (or sadvertising). Emotion has two functions: getting attention and setting a framework inside which the message is interpreted. Sadvertising can do both, and often more effectively than Gladvertising.

I would warn against Gratuitous negative emotions in an advertisement, but then I think gratuitous positive emotion has a similar problem. My view is that there must be emotion in an advertisement, and hopefully compatible with the product.

Congrats to David on his paper in ADMAP."


Well I just posted this response on Scamp's blog...

"Well if Erik Du Plessis is Darth Vader then he must have sympathy with the Dark Side.
I'm really heartened we seem to be on the same side now. For the record, my take on Erik's and Millward Brown's attitudes towards negative emotion are based on his book "The Advertised Mind" which anyone would be forgiven for interpreting as being firmly against negative emotion.


Here's a quote...


"We are all programmed to seek out the positive and shun the negative. So it goes without saying that the emotions an ad generates in us needs to be positive ones".
Granted Erik acknowledges in the book that emotion is a "difficult" concept, but it does seem his views have moved on in the last couple of years.


Millward Brown should be congratulated for trying to get to grips with measurement of emotional responses to ads. And if Millward Brown's methods for testing sad-vertising are a not as honed as they could be (I think I recall a list of 16 emotional states that do not include a fair representation of complex social emotions) then I'm sure under Erik's influence things will improve.


The biggest challenge is drawing clients away from a "positive or nothing" approach to creative. And if Erik and MB can help us push clients out of their comfort zone, then the main barrier against truly moving ads will have been lifted."


Emotion is really a complex issue and will never be addressed if we get hung up on creating opposing sides for the sake of it. The biggest danger to good thinking in advertising is over-simplificiation. People love simplicity... but as Einstein said (I think it was Einstein) ... "An idea should only be as simple as possible, and no simpler"... and if we simplify emotion too quickly, we'll make mistakes.




Tuesday 23 January 2007

Neuroscience says "make ads sad"

Yoshiro Okubo of Nippon Medical School is a brilliant Japanese neuroscientist whose research confirms that there are indeed sophisticated social emotions which are qualitatively different from the basic emotions found in animals. He was featured in The Economist recently, but you can read one original journal article here.



For example, guilt and embarrassment show heightened activation in the medial prefrontal cortex (and if memory serves, that's pretty close to where the Coca-cola brand is supposed to live). The characteristically human cortex is quite a different part of the brain from the amygdala and hindstem where the base emotion of fear operates, an emotion that Millward Brown use to validate their simplistic motivated-to-positive and motivated-away-from-negative model of human emotion.

And what of this beautiful study by Adam Anderson et al? Not only does he show that emotion enhances memory for neutral stimulus (emotional arousal being induced alongside first exposure to neutral stimulus), but his findings suggest that negative emotional arousal leaves a more powerful memory trace than positive. Perhaps taken in tandem with my finding that negative ads evoke greater emotion, perhaps the effect on memory is simply to do with degree of evoked arousal rather than valence?

Lovely stuff - the potential of sad-vertising is beginning to look irrefutable.


Can't wait for my next client meeting!

Monday 22 January 2007

Do a Brand Onion on yourself or a friend





It struck me that every planner should be forced to construct their own brand onion, a parrallel to psychtherapists having to undergo years of self-analysis before qualified to dole out advice.

When I left McCann Erickson last month, I found myself in the pub sharing a final fond drink with Rob and Laura (fellow McCann planners) and, almost as a symbol of knowing each other so intimately, we assigned each other brand essences (Rob suggested mine was "emotionally bald", hardly as flattering as mine for him... "forgivably superior", whilst Laura was "Entwining" to my "Beguilingly Cunning"). All great fun... and reasons to believe, emotional benefits, etc. followed suit. Never got onto NPD.


(Rob looking unforgivably superior)


I highly recommend every planner try this, or perhaps every Planning Department should do this at their Christmas outing instead of Secret Santa... a kind of "guess who did my brand onion". All very revealing and almost as good as "Shag, Marry or Shoot".


The Admap article in full

Hmmm, I tried uploading this blasted article and it comes out looking short and fat. Anyone know how to upload a pdf? In the mean time, I've pasted the full text of the article (unedited by Admap) below.





“Sad-vertising” – the downbeat path to true emotional resonance (unedited version)





A middle-aged man plays a tape cassette:

“Son, I know it’s many years since we talked. But, as you may know, I am dying and I won’t get a chance to see you.

I wanted to tell you I’m sorry… and I love you”.

The tape ends. The man cries.

You can rely on Maxell Tapes .



A dying man chooses Maxell tapes for their reliability, because he won’t get a second chance to say goodbye to his son. Brilliant. Moving. Possibly the most emotional part of your day so far. Possibly causing you to reflect on your own relationships with your parents or children. And it’s only a script… the finished ad might have floored you. And what is more, all that meaningful experience brought to you by Maxell Tapes!

Unfortunately, however, this is the script for an ad that was never made. And one can imagine why. The client was nervous – who wants to associate their brand with death? The agency wasn’t too sure – why risk losing the client’s favour defending a script that seemed a gamble? And in creative-testing the punters had never seen anything like this – how could they say they “liked” such an ad? How could this be an ad at all - where was the uplifting music, the protagonist’s pay-off, the hilarious and unlikely series of events that demonstrate the product’s quality?

Yet, of all the scripts written by Naresh Ramchandani that never got produced, this is the one that no one forgets. I’ve never encountered so many people eager to tell me about an ad that was never made – every time I’m told about it the script is slightly different and after 16 years of Chinese Whispers I’ve no doubt the above script is a distant ancestor of the original. But whilst the words may have changed, the sentiment has remained constant, and Naresh provides a very simple reason as to why that sentiment was so important.


“I learned my trade at HHCL, where we set out to be different…. and in a world where most ads were young, bubbly, irreverent… it was clear something poignant would cut through”.



It just so happens Naresh went on to win a Cannes Gold for Maxell Tapes with “Israelites”. But, interestingly, the script I opened with was HHCL’s first choice when they went to the client… which surely makes it the greatest “sad-vertisement” never to be made.

“Sad-vertising” is my term for those rare and beautiful brand communications that reach a little deeper. Communications with the confidence to make consumers feel something more sophisticated and meaningful than momentarily cheerful or excited. Sad-vertising spurns the convention of using upbeat positivity to stimulate trivial, fluffy emotions in the consumer. Rather it embraces a downbeat tone which flies in the face of superficiality, acknowledging that people, emotions and real life are a confusing mess of ups and downs, all blended into one and nonetheless enjoyable, meaningful and powerful for it.

Now the term “sad-vertising” risks being misleading – for the downbeat communications I allude to do not necessarily leave you feeling sad. On the contrary, because these communications hit deeper, because they may say something more meaningful and truthful, they can leave one feeling affirmed, revived, even exhilarated.

I’d like to see more sad-vertising out there (certainly beyond the charity and public information categories where you’d expect to find it). It says a lot that I had to choose a script which never got made as my archetypal sad-vertisement. Nearly all advertising is upbeat, dealing in happiness, offering shortcuts to gratification through the portrayal of humour, elation, dreams-come-true.

But who wants a world where everything is always upbeat? I think most would say that ‘all upbeat, all the time’ is precisely why most advertising is so perpetually irrelevant and irritating to most consumers. Life contains sadness, empathy, boredom, frustration, anger, jealousy and fear. And advertising all too rarely captures these emotions from which real life is born – the themes of hope, regret, gratification, resilience, ambition, love, hate and competition resonate deeply and are founded upon a confusion of positive and negative emotions. Surely advertising’s reluctance to embrace this full, rich spectrum of emotional life distances us from the consumer, reducing the effectiveness of communications? I’d like to think my job as a creative planner is to ensure our communications touch people – how can I truly do this if prohibited from plumbing the depths of my target’s true emotions?

Many great brands have successfully flirted with sad-vertising, producing memorable and effective ads in the process: “J.R. Hartley” for the Yellow Pages, “Dad” for Mastercard, and others for Orange, Hamlet, Volkswagen, Tennants, Nescafe, Bisto and Smirnoff. Be it an old man who’s life has clearly not made much impact on the world, a girl freshly dumped by her boyfriend, or a child appealing to spend just one night a week eating with her parents and doing “what families do”…these things really get to us, and it’s not purely positive emotions they make us feel.

But, for some reason most brand communications continue to be superficial, inanely upbeat and unrealistic – these are missed opportunities and nothing frustrates me more than having to watch surfing cars, chocolate-induced giggles or blokey slapstick. Despite great brands having had the confidence to produce touching, tonally authentic ads, the consensus is still against sad-vertising.



Seeking the positive, shunning the negative – the argument against sad-vertising


The Cognitive Neuroscientific revolution of the 1990s has led to a renaissance in our understanding of the brain, and as a former research psychologist it pleases me to see advertising benefit by keeping abreast of recent psychological advancements.

Most significantly, advertising has learnt that man is at the mercy of his emotions. We now know that emotional responses precede conscious thought, determine allocation of attention and can even occur without our being aware of them. Some behaviours may even be driven by emotional responses without the mediation of conscious thought. So as much as we may stress about the rational, persuasive merits of an ad - if the ad doesn’t evoke emotion, it is still-born.

But if we have begun to review the importance of emotion in advertising, we have yet to question the assumption that these emotions must be positive. In 1991 Haley and Baldinger published the findings from their “ARF Copy Research Validity Project”. This showed “ad liking” to be the most effective of several measures in pre-testing and, in the wake of this article, Erik Du Plessis of Millward Brown has advocated, and claims to have validated, the metric extensively. Du Plessis has not been shy in backing “likeability” as a measure of emotion and has rationalised that it’s advertising’s job to build or reinforce a brand’s positive emotional associations. Why positive? Du Plessis bases his argument on an understanding of the brain’s most primitive structures (with learnings derived from LeDoux’s experiments on “fear” in rat brains) and the inference that humans are drawn towards positive stimuli and repelled by negative stimuli. Accordingly, he argues that brand communications must aim to elicit positive emotions, with the powerful implication that emotions portrayed in ads should also be positive.



“We are all programmed to seek out the positive and shun the negative”,
Du Plessis, “The Advertised Mind”, (2005).



But I believe human emotion, and the manner in which we experience brand communications, to be so much more sophisticated than a simple motivated-to-positive / motivated-away-from-negative model. Our evolution took place over millions of years and whilst we retain many of the simple adaptations from reptilian and early mammalian stages (e.g. basic fear response) the emotional adaptations that define us as humans evolved much later, to serve the social needs of hominid group-living (e.g. jealousy, love, hope, empathy). These latter emotions are more complex and surely cannot be reduced to the simple positive and negative motivational terms that Du Plessis employs?

I hypothesise a hierarchy of human emotion, with social emotions being qualitatively different from their non-social precursors. Unfortunately, however, Neuroscience remains far from having a firm grip on our most complex, social emotions… possibly because rats do not often experience empathy or love.






Sad-vertising is more emotive and just as likeable!


In a recent study carried out by Pulse, McCann Erickson’s insight generation unit, and Prism Strategy, an online sample of over 1,000 consumers were exposed to 18 television advertisements, 9 of which were purely positive or “happy” in tone and 9 of which were “sad” or emotionally undulating.


Two findings are really important:

1) The “sad” or emotionally undulating ads evoked significantly more self-reported emotion than the “happy” ads. This is a clear endorsement of the power of sad-vertising.

2) There was no significant difference between “happy” and “sad” ads on the measure of “likeability”. This is clear evidence that negative scenarios or emotions do not necessarily “repel” us.



Why does “sad-vertising” work?


Here are some further reasons to be open-minded about the quality of emotions we use in communications, and to believe that sad-vertising can be employed to the profitable gain of brand owners:

- "Advertising is an art, not a science”. I’ve heard this said so many times by lazy advertisers who’ll gladly disparage science if it makes less work for themselves. But maybe advertising can learn something from art. Art, which has engaged humanity for millennia, would be undone were it not able to portray the full gamut of human experience. Imagine if our greatest artists had been permitted only to portray positive emotions; there would be no King Lear, no Rachmaninov’s 2nd, no Catcher In The Rye. Great art confidently portrays and elicits the depths of human experience and through doing so rewards the consumer with intellectual and experiential growth. At a time when everyone talks about engagement, about providing incentive for consumers to spend time with our brands, it’s worthwhile to more closely observe the mechanics of art (pathos, catharsis…. and the way in which tragedy almost necessarily sits alongside comedy).


- The mood of both message and message-recipient have a bearing on the effectiveness of a communication. The cognitive psychologist Bower shows with his “Mood Congruity” principle that a person will better attend to and learn information which tonally matches their mood – so if someone is feeling sad, they will better attend to and remember a message with a sad tone. This has strong implications for television advertising – Csikszentmihalyi has evidenced that people, when watching television, are less happy than normal, experiencing depressed mood, mild guilt and anxiety. And beyond television, 1 in 10 people rate themselves as prevailingly unhappy, whilst certain parts of everyone’s day involve lower mood. So we are wrong to hit people in a blanket fashion with upbeat messaging – instead we should make informed decisions on tonality, taking mood of the target, medium and time of day into account.

Bower also talks about “Mood-state Dependent Recall” - a memory more readily comes to mind when our mood-state matches the mood of the memory – so, unless the consumer is in an upbeat, blissful state whilst shopping, we are wrong to talk about our brand in an upbeat, blissful tone.

All this seems intuitive – when communicating wth another, we are most effective when we mirror that person’s feelings. Unfortunately most advertising acts like the psychotherapist who advises his patient to “cheer up and look on the bright side” – his ignorance of patient feelings and dearth of empathy make for an ineffective intervention.


- Is your brand someone I’d like to hang out with? Or is it the irritatingly and inauthentically happy person one meets at a party who, through saying only positive, predictable things, is quickly identified as being of zero interest? Likeability is so very important in a world where we feed our identity with brand choices and evaluate brands as we would people. If we like people who are “real”, authentic, similar to us, honest and interesting, then surely brands with more complicated moods will stimulate greater likeability?

We bond with others through adversity, shared experience, the exchange of uncomfortable truths about ourselves. And we indicate we are open to sharing a more intimate relationship by displaying our vulnerabilities. So why do brands not behave like this?

Interestingly, Du Plessis in “The Advertised Mind” reports that “empathy” and “meaningfulness” are important facets of “likeability” for an ad.



- Humans can be drawn to negative affect. Not only can depression be functional, designed by evolution to motivate reappraisal and change in behaviour, but our evolved capacity for empathy makes us responsive to sadness in other humans – we want to help, to console, to cheer-up. If your brand behaves like a person who is vulnerable, humble, occasionally in need of support, might the consumer suspend his cynicism, increase his empathy and spend more time listening to what you have to say?


- The experience of positive and negative emotion may not be all that different – in fact all emotion may have the same initial impact on the body (the autonomic responses of increased heart-rate, adrenaline, etc.). Emotion may only be labelled as good or bad as a result of subsequent, higher-brain-processing, when the cortex uses context to decide why an emotion has been aroused.

In fact so similar is the experience of positive and negative emotion that they are readily confused. Consider the principle of “Excitation Transfer” or “Love at First Fright” as researched in the1970s and 80s. One study showed that the emotional arousal you experience on a rollercoaster can easily be misattributed to the person you’re sitting beside – that is, what we would normally describe as a fear response could wrongly be interpreted as the early stages of sexual attraction – exactly the same physiological experience, but subject to different labelling because of context.

So, the means by which we arouse consumers shouldn’t matter - “positive” stimuli (a gurgling baby, a smile) and “negative” stimuli (a crying girl, a death) may have the same initial attention-grabbing impact. After that, it’s up to the brand to provide a context in which it becomes associated with the heightened emotion or supplies a positive resolution to the emotional journey.


- Finally, I believe positive emotions are experienced more intensely when preceded by negative emotions. Sad-vertising probably works best when the brand offers a positive, cathartic finale after arousing a glut of sadder emotions. Consider the iconic “Hamlet” advertising – the meaning of “happiness” is entirely dependent on the misfortune that precedes it. And for J.R. Hartley, finding his book is all the sweeter after repeated failures to do so.




Conclusion


As a consumer, I want to be moved by advertising, to experience something true, meaningful and life-enhancing. As an advertiser, I want to feel proud of my work - and sad-vertising gives me scope to bring texture to consumers’ emotional and mental lives, to adopt moral and meaningful stand-points, just as art does. But most importantly, for those brand-owners wise enough not to put the entirety of their investment behind positive emotion, sad-vertising is extremely emotive, has the capacity to connect with an increasingly sophisticated consumer, and must ultimately be a more effective return-on-investment.

So here’s to a time when advertising reflects the true complexity of human emotion. I leave you with a taste of this complexity and the undoubted wisdom of “South Park”.

I love life...Yeah, I'm sad, but at the same time, I'm really happy that something could make me feel that sad. It's like...It makes me feel alive, you know. It makes me feel human. The only way I could feel this sad now is if I felt something really good before. So I have to take the bad with the good. So I guess what I'm feeling is like a beautiful sadness.

Trey Parker & Matt Stone, South Park “Raisins” 2003.

Sunday 21 January 2007

Sad-vertising in Pakistan


Sad-vertising has it's first postgraduate research programme and it's happening in Pakistan.

Faizan Ahmed, a Masters Student, is bemused as to why in Pakistan "majority of the themes revolve around family, young generation, happiness etc." and why "people just want fun and do not accept any hard and creative ideas". He's aching to do something new in Pakistan and has decided to conduct research to see if there is scope there for emotionally sophisticated ads, the kind he feels could run in the UK.


But Faizan's description of a backward Pakistani advertising industry feels strangely familiar to me and I can't help but feel he'd be disappointed with the output of our own industry (with some powerful, wonderful exceptions of course).

Good luck to Faizan. I'll keep you posted with his findings.




Friday 19 January 2007

A Beautiful Sadness

I think I feel revolution in the air (is "I think I feel" an oxymoron?).

Not only has my "sad-vertising" article provoked a fantastic response from readers in all areas of communications who intuitively agree that a little sadness, melancholy or emotional complexity can go a long way (thank you to all for your comments, hopefully this blog will now make it easier for everyone to talk).

But discussion on sad ads is sprouting up all over the place. Of course it isn't all down to what I wrote.... this all makes too much sense for that... but it does seem serendipitous and I think we have a movement on our hands! See Scamp's comments from last week for a taster...

As more and more sad-vertising sympathisers feel courage and come out of the shadows (or more fittingly walk into them) they will need somewhere to collect their thoughts, to feel connected to other lovers of all things down-beat, to learn and teach how best to implement "sads" in a too-joyous-by-far industry.

I would like this blog to be blog-central for that movement. If you come across arguments for or against sad-vertising, if you find killer ways to sell it to clients... drop me a note and I'll eagerly blog it.

Viva la RevoluciĆ³n.