How advertising works: part one...

Short answer: nobody knows. Slightly longer answer: if I knew, I wouldn't be here - I'd be enjoying my soon-to-be-submerged island in the Maldives.

What I hope H&G are here to do is to explain why certain things work and certain things don't.

And hopefully to have some fun at the same time.

Take, as a perfect example, the Cadbury's Gorilla. (Can you feel it, coming in the air tonight?).

Clearly, this was a critical success: winning all sorts of awards...and of course, increasing sales by a giant 9% year-on-year. Our favourite award was for our old agency which stood on stage and describe the TV strategy was about buying 'big spots'. Sorry, 'talkabout TV', whatever that hackney phrase might suggest !

Against a year where Cadbury's didn't advertise. Erm. Ah, well.... nope. No excuse. It didn't really work. Didn't. Work. At All. But industry people liked it.

So of course, it must reproduced with a further Magnum Opus. Which you are currently seeing as a bunch of airport trucks racing. To a theme tune of - currently - Bon Jovi.

Gentlemen: one cannot polish a turd. A sow's ear - or dog's puckering rectum - and this is just that.

Admit it: you don't know why anyone liked the Gorilla - and it didn't work then either - but you wish to recreate it, because the client wants "another one: just like that".

If you would like to know why it "worked" you know where we are.

JR