Zeusblog

As a copywriter I’m always terrified of missing a typo myself, but always very amused when I see other people’s public spelling mistakes - I believe it’s called schadenfreude. So following on from Rick Stein’s effort, I’m pleased to share with you some banners I saw in Birmingham at the weekend. These had the added amusement factor of being very large spelling mistakes and having one mistake repeated on the larger banners and a different one on the smaller one. The lesson for us all, clients and agency, is always check your proofs - because the printer won’t!

As a special bonus, while it’s not strictly a spelling mistake, I saw this sign in Bude recently. It made me laugh because whichever way you read it, it gives entirely the wrong idea about visitors to Bude.

First Batman in Hampstead Garden Suburb, now the Penguin (well two actually) at Wembley. 

I went to the Carling Cup Final at Wembley last Sunday and found myself sitting next to these two guys. What you can’t see in the picture was the rest of their outfits under their Villa shirts - they had big penguin bums and orange flipper feet - very funny. When I asked “Why the Pingu outfits?”, they just replied “Why not?” and laughed.

Apart from the score it was a great day out (particularly those beautiful, glorious 8 minutes when we were 1-0 up), and the new Wembley stadium (my first visit) is so much better than the old one, which other than the twin towers was really awful.

Now I’m not generally very well disposed towards Man Utd, but I have to take my Villa hat off to the Man Utd fans. Most (and I mean 95%) of them were not wearing the red colours that they are famous for, but were wearing green and yellow as a protest against the Glazers, their American owners who strapped the club in debt to buy it. Yellow and green were the club colours of Newton Heath, the original club formed in 1878 that became Man Utd. It’s the fans way of saying that you may have bought Man Utd Plc, but it’s still is and always has been our club. When they celebrated winning the cup (by the skin of their teeth) their end was a sea of swirling green and yellow scarves. Their line is “Love United. Hate Glazers.” My response would be “Hate United. Love the Protest.” Football clubs really are so much more than just a business and a balance sheet, so I hope it works for them.

I was in Hampstead Garden Suburb this weekend, and couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw this… (click the picture to see it bigger)

Batman! On the balcony!

I saw him on Saturday morning and Sunday afternoon and he didn’t move a muscle either time. Either he’s keeping guard over the Hampstead Heath Extension, or the Joker lives there, has captured Batman and is displaying his frozen form as some kind of evil trophy. I prefer the first option and now feel much safer when walking my dog or running there.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens on the AndyMurrayOMeter this weekend. It will certainly be more interesting than the tennis, that’s for sure. As I write this, it stands at him being 88% British. You’d assume that if he wins the Australian Open in Melbourne, his Britishness score will rise, but I’m not sure. We do like a plucky loser, so it would be more British for him to fail (remember Tiger Tim?). But then again, if he loses, we can all disown him as a sulky Scot…

I’ve just got back from surfing in Cornwall over the bank holiday weekend. So apologies if I annoy anyone by referring to gnarly headlines, rad layouts, sick ideas, epic campaigns or being amped about a brief. Normal marketing speak will be resumed as soon as possible dudes.

Best dressed man in advertising?

Last weekend, I took part in a folding bike race at the Smithfield Nocturne. The rules stated that competitors had to wear ‘business attire’. So this is what 10,000 spectators think that I wear to work.

In case you were wondering, I didn’t win any prizes for fashion or cycling. I qualified for the final, but could only manage to finish thirty-somethingth. Great fun though!

Today’s subject is Twitter, which I have to admit I just don’t get. Here are two twitter-related sites for your Friday link-clicky fun:

First up, a site which seems to confirm everything I thought about people who tweet…

http://tweetingtoohard.com/

And secondly, via B3ta, a site that tells you how to use Twitter for marketing and PR - the Web 2.0 adman’s holy grail explained…

http://www.howtousetwitterformarketingandpr.com/

Have a great bank holiday!

Had an interesting email from a nice gentleman called Alfred Atkins this morning. He’s asking for help in transferring some money. I’d love to help him out, but I’m just too busy working to be able to earn huge amounts of money for doing nothing. Perhaps someone out there can help him out… Here’s his email… 

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Dear Sir/Madam,

My name is Alfred Atkins, an executive staff of a bank in Scotland, UK. I wish to make a transfer involving a huge amount to a designated bank account of  your choice. For your support (morally, financially etc.), you will have 45% share of the total amount after concluding the transfer. Kindly reply me at alatkinz@megamail.pt, and call at +447045738816 stating your interest, and I shall send you the details and necessary procedure with which to make the transfer. I anxiously await your response.

Regards,

Mr. Atkins

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Please let us know if you become rich overnight as a result

If you’re worried about Swine flu, click one of these links to see if you’ve got it:

http://doihavepigflu.com/
http://doihaveswineflu.org/

On a similar theme, Private Eye’s current cover is brilliant:

http://www.private-eye.co.uk/covers.php?showme=1235&

And finally, a very clever idea that points up the stupidity of Jacqui Smith’s plans to create a superdatabase of everyone’s phone calls, texts, internet use, and emails:

http://www.ccjacquismith.co.uk/

Have a great Bank Holiday

According to the BBC news site, the Local Government Association has published a list of words which should not be used. As we are not avid buzzword-bingo players, we wholeheartedly agree with most of them.

There are one or two such as ‘agencies’ or ‘priority’ which can be proper words as well as buzzwords, but by and large, the quality of all of our lives would go up a notch or two if we never have to read or hear about ‘engaging users in top-down bottom-up overarching multidisciplinary blue-sky thinking in a joined up meaningful dialogue’ or ‘benchmarking their transactional toolkits’ again.

Thank goodness it seems like it’s still alright to swear though.