You are not Nick Parker, pointing at your knob

So why do you think shouting "look at me, look at me!" is enough?

I made a slight faux pas before going on holiday. I went on LinkedIn, and shared a pretty shitty advert I’d seen doing the rounds.

I know. It’s like smearing your nutsack in pedigree chum and dipping it into a pirahna tank. Painful, ridiculous, and entirely counterproductive to enjoying a sunshine break.

You can probably guess the comments I got. The usual mix of bewildered people asking what it’s advertising, smart people calling me clever and agreeing it’s a shitty ad, dull people clicking the first AI prompted response, and angry people telling me I’m a jelly brain for not understanding the youth of today.

But the most depressing comments from dullards are the gotcha ones.

All publicity is good publicity.

The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.

You are talking about this advert, ergo it is a good advert.

That’s what defines a good ad, is it?

So Adidas (target audience, young athletes aged 14 - 35 who are passionate about sports and fitness), Drama Call (target audience, young people aged 18 - 25 who are passionate about fashion) and Manchester United (target audience, people with a ridiculously high tolerance for handing over money to sex offenders who are bad at football) got together in an agency and said “I reckon lads, our fastest route to success is getting a marketing wonk - who’s 40 very soon, has been a season ticket holder at Leeds since he was 17 and whos idea of fashion is a 2Tall.com shacket - to say our ad is shit.”

That’s what happened, is it? That’s the definition of a good ad?

As long as marketing nerds who don’t intersect with any of your target audiences talk about that ad in a place not frequented by the people in your target audience, it’s good.

Bollocks. They only ad that’d be a success if it’s being spoken about on my LinkedIn by ad geeks would be one for Nick Parker’s Tone Knob. Or maybe for a new font or something.

It’s not enough to be spoken about. You have to drive action.

What action’s that ad driving? Is it making Adidas customers interested in Drama Call because they share a bit of youthful lingo? Is it making Manchester United fans (average age of a season ticket holder, 46) rush out to stuff their beer-bellies into skin tight nylon with a teenager’s name on the back? Is it, Martin?

Or is it a smug piece of utter nothing that achieves the sum total of fuck all in an attempt to rip off a 20 year old billboard that had the sole aim of pissing off Man United fans?

You are not Nick Parker, pointing at his Tone Knob. Your measure of success is not critique from dull people like me.

It’s provoking awareness, interest, desire and action. Not mortification, analysis, narkiness, negativity, ennui and horror.

AIDA, not MANNEH.

And for the record, Manchester is, was, and will always be, “town.”

Something mint - actual local flair

That awful Manneh ad did prompt a horrible trip down memory lane too. Because there haven’t half been some bad poorly localised ads in Manchester.

Famously there’s this piece of shit, written by someone who doesn’t know the only person that would lie on the concrete of the “Gardens” is someone out of his head on Spice.

If you wanted to be authentic when talking about Piccadilly Gardens - say to provoke interest in a new Manchester-inspired typeface, you’d need to reflect what a shithole that part of town actually is. Part open square, part public toilet, suitable only for throwing a can down your neck on a sunny day.

Warm cans and piss. That’s the Gardens we know. And a little nod to the motorway too.

That’s not the only one. There’s a whole campaign that’s being talked about for good reasons - which is great because the target audience for a typeface is marketing people.

Take a bow, Ellen Ling, with some spots that are genuinely Mancunian, and do a hell of a lot more to provoke interest and desire than the word Manneh with some shit kerning.

Noticed it rains here? Ellen has.

Seen the oddball with the boombox cycling up and down Oxford Street?

Ellen got him to pose for the picture.

That’s how you do local colour. Authentic message. And not a southerner’s idea of a northern accent in sight.