A Lift from Andrew Jolliffe.

Back in September, when the world was somewhat cooler, somewhat kinder and somewhat less be-nighted than it is today, my friend, Andrew Jolliffe, wrote a post for this blog. 

Not long ago, though it's taken me a while to do this, Andrew offered me--and you, dear readers--another post. Andrew is one of the finest writers writing today. In advertising and outside of advertising. I welcomed this post, but had too much else cooking to actually post it. Thus depriving you, my readers, of Andrew's Andrew-ness.

Andrew is a writer of unusual charm, grace and surprise. If you're looking for a fastball straight down the middle, Andrew will fool you with something you're not expecting. That's the hallmark not only of a good writer, but a good creative and a good thinker, and a good human.

Andrew's LinkedIn details and website are here. He lives way over in Italy now and I'm sure would welcome a kind word or two if you have a moment to spare.

BTW, Ad Aged gets a lot of readers. As Carl Ally is reputed to have said about the money he made from advertising, "More than I expected but less than I deserve." In any event, it's a pleasure for me to share with my readers different people and viewpoints. Tomorrow, in fact, we'll be hearing from the great and powerful Lesly Pyle. If you have something to say, drop me a line. I'm not as harsh as people say.

 

THE FIRST RULE OF ROMANCE

 

Tears ago I missed a train from a northern English town. The place was a soft shadow of its industrial heyday. Its air was stale, its streets a slate grey and its morale darker.

 

There was a train in two hours. The station flanked a bar and snack shop. The bar stank of the last night’s joints and the snack shop of yesteryear’s beef and testicle pies. Undecided as to which appealed most, I took a walk. The air was dank and the sun on strike. I headed down a pitted cement ramp, across the roaring highway, past a kebab shop, a nudge-nudge wink-wink massage parlour and a row of cut-price stores undercutting each other like commercial cannibals.

 

I saw distant trees, so soldiered on. Up alleys, down broadways, across an expanse of dead vapes and cat vomit. Gagging for a shortcut I shot down a passageway into a concrete square.

 

And there it was.

 

It was a poster. For a soft drink that wouldn’t surprise. But the poster did. A swirling kaleidoscope of colour, mercifully, joyfully, beautifully puncturing the nicotine-stained square. And under the colour, there was life. Lots of it. A drummer, a rapper and a bass. Mums, kids, their dogs and grins. Applause, cigarettes and catcalls.  

 

All it took was some coloured joy. And this time it was an ad.

Advertising’s relationship with all folk starts with attraction. It’s the catalyst of catalysts. Like a blind date, the start of something mysterious and gorgeous. The first sweet words. The knowing wink. The once-or-never chance. Drop the ball on the first pass and it stays on the ground. Or if you like, bore your date and you’ve blown it. Forever. An encounter  with a prospect starts with a lift. Something funnier, fizzier, more colourful, more intriguing than what the day has been. A signal that there’s a rainbow somewhere in the grey. And you could be it.

 

And for our date, today has been as grey and normal as the three before it. Our ravishing, wide-eyed, dream date has stared at a screen, commuted, browsed TikTok, fought their way through queues of silent phone-browsers with body odour, reconstituted a TV dinner, browsed again, repeat, dreamed of that dreamy, bright, fresh encounter that could take them away from it all.  Something, maybe-maybe, to  add a jewelled spark to a life.

 

And what do we do? We turn up for our one-chance encounter with nothing to say, in unwashed jeans, with our balls hanging out and no apology.

 

In our spirally ever-dulling daily world of economic catch-up, billions of us are staring into space. Having affairs, or wishing we could. Doodling. Not talking. Staring at pap posted by folk they’ll never know. Dogmatically passing time in a vacuum of gaming apps and cheese crispies. Never before have we craved colour in the midst of a deepening grey.

 

And he who offers it can win us all.

 

Advertising has forgotten that attraction leads to romance leads to engagement leads to faith and wedded bliss. Only with beauty, fascination, intrigue and spectacle can we create the perfume, flowers and pheromones of new adventures with targets.

Without real attraction we will go nowhere, and vanish like grains of pale sand in the wind of fake progress. Pump out colourless work and the grey of its environment gets greyer.  Brighten up lives and we brighten prospects, careers, results, reputations and our own consciences. Make someone smile, and they’re yours. But I’m sure we really know that.