No Swearing Please...We're Russian

One thing that strikes you after a while here is that Russians don't swear. At least not the ones who work in Advertising and Marketing. This is very strange.

There are so many annoying moments during the working day that swearing is a natural release of all the stress of dealing with difficult clients & annoying media owners. It only takes a few weeks in Warsaw for those with a keen ear to pick up all the main Polish expletives. Poles love to swear. Brits also love to swear. Both Poles & Brits love freedom. Perhaps the two are related. See the link in the headline for the ultimate Polish gesture of defiance.

But in Russia people don't swear. They close down all the free press... but they don't swear. They invade their neighbours...but they don't swear. They arrest your parents & put you in the gulag... but they don't swear. They can follow communism & create famines... but they don't swear.

If I am wrong please send your Russian curse words to pgarethbrown@gmail.com

Media Placement of the Year

Near my house is a car wash. It wasn't very popular as nobody knew it was there. So the owners parked a big "fuck off" Hummer on the main road nearby with a big "fuck off" sign saying Car Wash here.

It's not going to win any awards at Cannes but there are now queues for the Car wash.

This proves that people who run small businesses are better media planners than digital gurus who talk about communication paradigms & moment architecture. You put great creative, a Hummer in this case, with a call to action close to where your target audience is. That is all media planning is. Simple really.

McDonalds in McMinsk

I heard a fantastic story about McDonalds in Minsk. Apparently the local McDonalds manager was unhappy about the locals using the toilets without buying anything. So as in many McDonalds he introduced a system where only customers could use the facilities.

The people of Minsk were not happy about this so they kidnapped the plastic Ronald statue from outside the restaurant. They then threatened the manager by cutting off one of the plastic statues fingers and sending it to him. And they said that they would cut off a finger every day until the toilets were re-opened to the public.

Re-mantling the Posters

Years ago we were discussing discussing Outdoor with a big Nesty client. The problem was that our big special poster sites would suffer creative wear-out as they stayed for too long in the same place. They became part of the landscape & consumers would no longer be surprised by their presence.

The grand boss asked why we couldn't dismantle our large posters & re-mantle them somewhere else. The fact that he was a French speaker & said this with such confidence made it rather amusing.

I tried not to look at the marketing director who was a fellow Brit. But when our eyes met we both started giggling like schoolboys. However the big boss was right. If you mangle English with enough confidence you can create a new word. And Re-Mantle is now in the Urban Dictionary - see headline link. If enough people use re-mantle it will graduate to the Oxford English dictionary.

Another popular candidate from marketing meetings includes, one month, two months & therefore three monthes. So celebrate the ability of English to adapt & re-mantle your media plans every 3 monthes to keep your creative fresh.

A New Paradigm I'd Like to Amplify

Click through the headline for the answer

Are they Big Enough...?

How big can should a promotion be to work in a country as large as Russia?

There are around 142 Million people in this country so if you only have one big thing to give away 141,999 people will be disappointed.

So using the concept of 6 degrees of separation you need a few thousand gifts for a promotion to work. That way someone should know someone who has won. But how many thousand? This question came up 10 years ago with a client who wanted to give away "golden hearts of Russia" with their boxes of chocolate. We were faced with the choice of 5000 reasonably large golden hearts to give away or 10,000 hearts which were half the size.

At the meeting was a lady from the promotion agency who was blessed with a generous decolletage; the absence that suggests a presence. The client was concerned that the smaller hearts were not large enough. While he was voiceing his doubts this lady took one of the smaller hearts, put it on her necklace & then placed it between her generous breasts.

She then turned to the Marketing Director, invited him to look at her ample chest, looked him in the eyes & said "I think they are big enough".

The lesson here is that when planning promotions you should always ask yourself, "are they big enough?"

Never Trust a Fat Gay Bulgarian

My dear late Father always told me this