Advertising
Nothing beats a 1980s brick phone
In the late 1980s, a story entered advertising folklore. A group from an ad agency had boarded an evening train…
Is there such a thing as too much empathy?
Back in the 1970s, a less politically correct age, there was a standby formula for television advertising known as 2Cs…
The myth of the typical Brexit voter
In Jake’s Thing, Kingsley Amis gave it a name: he called it ‘the inverted pyramid of piss’: ‘One of [Geoffrey…
The irresistible lure of classified ads
The seduction of back-page ads
The Mozarts of ad music
Richard Bratby meets the hidden men and women composing melodies to make you buy
The art of the public information ad
The art of the public information ad
Why the left wants a political advertising ban
An easy, crowd-pleasing opinion column would maintain that banning political adverts from social media platforms is wrong because it implies…
Just do it: the advertising industry should embrace its right-wing roots
Am I allowed to mention Nigel Farage? Of course I am, this is The Spectator, and its readers enjoy analysing…
Transforming Goosefish into Monkfish: branding’s slippery secrets
We live in a logic-obsessed world, from computer modelling of the economy to businesses run by spreadsheets. But we also…
Could my slogan have swayed the Brexit vote?
People sometimes ask what slogan could have swayed the Brexit vote: the opposite of the touchstone phrase ‘Take back control’.…
When did advertising become so banal?
Walking down the street on my lunch break, I sometimes pass a delivery man wheeling a large handcart of Japanese…
Why can’t podcasts be more like Radio 4?
Now here’s a series that would make a brilliant podcast but is also classic Radio 4 — they don’t have…
Vital signs
Exhibit A. It is 1958 and you are barrelling down a dual carriageway; the 70 mph limit is still eight…
The most annoying word in advertising
There’s a plague of first-person advertising
The World Goes Pop at Tate Modern - our critic goes zzzzz
The conventional history of modern art was written on the busy Paris-New York axis, as if nowhere else existed. For…
When did the advertising industry get so obsessed with swearing and innuendo?
The advertising industry is obsessed with innuendo and dirty words
Even the people who make political adverts aren’t sure they work
It is a common prejudice about modern politics that it is all focus groups and spin, all public relations and…
How consumer habits are subject to the law of unintended consequences
Some time in the 1960s, a group of people in an advertising agency (among them Llewelyn Thomas, son of Dylan)…
Why does Amazon think my friend is a kidnapper?
About four years ago, an irate father in Minneapolis walked into his local Target shop with a complaint. He wanted…
The fightback against wackiness starts here
Forced, studenty wackiness has taken over our culture. It’s time to take a stand
Very bad poems on the Underground
My husband was surprised by quite a bit when we travelled by Underground in London the other day. Although he…
Why I'm on board for the homophobic bus
London has long since lost its allure for me — altogether too many cars, foreigners, cyclists, middle-class liberals and people…
Steve Punt's diary: Britain is now living in a middle-class parody of itself
One of the most dispiriting experiences currently available is any commercial break during a televised football match. In a Champions…
Dear Justin Welby – here’s how you can really take on Wonga
I’ve been in the pulpit again, this time to salute the centenary of the death of Charles Norris Gray, a…
