I started my retail career as a window dresser (or Visual Merchandising Style Director, as they doubtless call them today), and I‘ve had a good think about this but I can’t remember ever being asked to put something in a window that wasn’t in the shop.  How’s that for attention to detail.

So, why is it that time and again, I go into stores on the basis of what I’ve been attracted to on their websites, only to be given the now standard response, ‘That’s only available online’?  Insane.  And hugely frustrating.

Are retailers totally ignoring, or ignorant of, the simple problem facing millions of people like me who work Monday to Friday, and for whom waiting in for deliveries is simply not an option; and the hassle of tracing my awaited delivery through the parcel office is a particular bureaucratic and logistical ‘treat’ not lightly repeated.

The utopian vision obviously held by the marketers of our favourite retail brands, of a time when their shops really will be just a venue for their preening sales operatives to meet and chat amongst themselves on a daily basis without the unforgiveable interruptions of people like me, is not one I relish.  I enjoy ‘window shopping’; either in the real world or web-world, and I like buying things I see in the window.

I also like to ‘squeeze the loaf’ as they say.  I like to ‘smell the coffee’.  Perhaps the High Street should wake up and do the same.  Just a small detail.

The good stuff though, I believe, can teach us a lesson.
Because there is no or very little money involved, the idea is the be all and end all of it. A great idea simply made can engage and motivate better than a weak idea with hundreds of thousands of pounds chucked at it.

A lot of the ads we see on mainstream TV are beautifully shot, with fantastic sound tracks, the latest post-production technological wizardry, plenty of gloss but often a little lack lustre in the ideas department. We watch these ads as advertising professionals, and if you’re like me, think, that’s a nice touch, wonder how they did that? I bet that cost a fortune.

Very rarely do I say, what a great idea! Which is a shame because I love great ideas. Sadly, I think, fabulous production can act as a crutch for lame ideas.

However recently I have seen two examples of great ideas.
What I call good old-fashioned ideas. That’s not to say that the ideas are old fashioned, far from it, but the method of translating product benefit into arresting engaging television feels like a thing of the past. Which to me seems to have had a golden era in the 70’s. The halcyon days of agencies like Collect Dickenson Pearce.

Now I know both these examples I am about to quote, probably did cost an arm and a leg in production terms. But the ideas would have succeeded without the superb, beautifully crafted execution. Though the results are indeed stunning.

The first is the work for the Audio Quattro.  Four wheel drive, independent grip wonderfully expressed by the visual of hands grasping different objects both living and inanimate and of varying texture and density.
As humans we take for granted our unconscious ability to grasp things with just the right amount of pressure in our grip. We don’t even think about it.
It is a wonderful piece of evolution this level of fine-tuning.
Now Audi have applied it to the Quattro.

If I didn’t already have one, I’d be out there buying one.

I just wanted a four-wheel drive because I live on a steep hill. Which is insurmountable in the snow.
I didn’t know my car was so clever, and so safe… I do now.

Now to something I don’t need, because I’m not a sufferer …touch wood!
And of course, when I touch wood, I do it with precisely the correct amount of force.

The ad, which I absolutely adore, is for Benadryl anti-allergy treatment.
Again this is a fabulous execution. However, even without the obvious skills and talent of those at Rattling Stick, this is simply a great idea.
From the first second to the last it is a powerhouse of meaning forced home by pure and utter drama. How often can you say that about a TV ad?

The juxtaposition of warfare audio over nature’s pollen and seed producing plants creates exquisite moments of film.

The falling Sycamore seeds, we called ‘helicopters’ as kids, set against the sounds of military helicopters, like a scene from the Vietnam War. Brilliant.

The Dandelion seed head, blowing apart in a gust of wind, set against machine gun fire. Awesome.

As sufferers prepare themselves for months of misery, the promise of Benadryl helping you to do battle in your war against allergies is in my view a sure fire winner.

These are my two favourite ads of late. Actually I’ve had no favourite in recent times until these two. Yes, ads have made me laugh, I’ve admired some for their craft, but these I admire for their good old fashioned ideas. Well done all involved.

So why is it so important to be new and different, especially against fearful economic conditions. Surely safe, well-worn territory would be the better, more sensible direction to take.  A logical low risk strategy.

Right? Wrong?

Well this is where the Darwin factor comes in, and I mean Charles not John the prodigal canoeist from Seaton Carew.

It is two hundred years this year since the birth of Charles Darwin, so I thought this might be a timely intervention by the great man.

Charlie boy has something to teach us about ideas and the need to be new and different right now in cash strapped 2009.

Though brand consistency is good, brands cannot be allowed to become stale and anonymous, because this may ultimately lead to extinction.

Darwinian evolutionary principles tell us that the human brain has been tuned
over time to notice change, at both conscious and subconscious levels.

This is because change can be both life threatening or advantageous.
So either way early humans had to take notice, it could literally be a matter of life and death. Thus we are programmed to absorb relevant, new, different information whether we like it or not, we just can’t help ourselves.

You see it’s not merely a case of ideas for ideas sake, an opportunity for creative types to show off how clever they are.
Not one bit. New, different ideas help propositions stick in the brain and are more inclined to influence actions.

So next time playing it safe comes up, why not factor in some Darwinian evolutionary principals, they might just help your client stay fit enough to survive the crunch.

27 years ago I was a Police Officer. A very young Police Officer I might add.  I remember vividly watching a documentary on TV about advertising. A photo shoot was on the go, the photographer was there, his assistant, the art director, the food stylist, the client or maybe two and the agency account man. They are all stood behind the camera staring in a studious kind of way at a plate of food. The food looked pretty ordinary, nothing so special as to warrant this kind of unerring attention. However there appeared to be a pea that just wouldn’t play ball. The stylist was pushing it and blowing it with a straw in different directions with varying degrees of movement and apparently with varying degrees of success. Disgruntled comments and lively debate ensued regarding the aesthetic qualities of the said pea and its part in the overall composition. Eventually the situation was resolved by the direction; lose the pea. Now, although I felt a tad sorry for the pea, because it appeared to me to be a perfectly fine pea, I was glad that the drama had been brought to a conclusion.

Now what is the point of this rather unassuming little anecdote?

Well, in my role of the time as one of Her majesty’s constabulary, more used to scrapping body parts off dual carriageways and being rattled about the head with crowbars, I admit to feeling distinctly peeved that people could make a living this way. Or was I jealous, I can’t remember now.

Anyway fast forward a number of years; I am now not a Police Officer but a junior advertising art director. Police Officer? Art director? I know, sounds odd, but it’s a long story, maybe for another time.

I am stood in a photography studio, in Gateshead ‘Photo Mayo’. Bob Mayo is taking a photograph of…you guessed it ‘Peas’. Not one difficult pea. Hundreds.  Back lit on a sheet of glass laid out into a map of the world.  I was agonising over the shape and longitude of the Cape of Good Hope when the sheet of glass suddenly exploded spectacularly due to excessive heat from the lights.

It had taken hours to circumnavigate the globe and I was now totally stressed, and feeling sick to my stomach. 

A bit like I had felt many times before as a Police Officer.

I realised then, that if you’re committed and passionate about whatever it is you do, you are drawn unconsciously to take it seriously. You can’t help yourself.   It might be peas. It might be lives. It makes little difference.  If you care enough and you want to succeed and do well you give 100%. Always.

For the record, I love peas.

As some parliamentary under-secretary famously once said, “It’s a good time to bury bad news”.  This actually eventually cost them their job at the time – but now they wouldn’t have to wait that long; they’d already have been made redundant!  If you are a retailer and you either wanted to bail-out of the sector you’re currently in, or off-load a lot of ‘dead wood’ and then be applauded for your ‘prudent management of overheads’, surely now is the time to do it.

As we scrambled through the festive period we were consumed by gloom and ‘reliable reports’ told us that banks were ‘queuing up’ to place retailers into administration immediately after Christmas.  Artwork studios everywhere dusted down their Marker Bold typefaces in preparation for the flood of closing-down sale briefs about to hit them. 

Yes, these are undoubtedly scary times for retail and I wouldn’t think many will be contributing much to the sales of laxatives right now.  But is it really so bad?  Does it seem to you that the stores are much quieter?  It doesn’t to me.  What I do see is consumers realising that they drive the High Street, not the retailers.  The shopper is savvier than ever – the BBC, ‘Professor Peston’ in particular (surely a leading contender for the part of ‘Doctor Doom’), has been giving us all double-economics for the last 9 months, so we should all be learning something! – we can spot a fair price when we see one and we appreciate good advice given with honest intention.

Many analysts believe, as do I, that the current hard market will see a ‘good clearout’ of the retail sector (more laxatives!), for too long populated by mediocre, ‘me too’ operators who think that the only magic bullet they need is a ‘half-price’ ticket on some piece of crap still selling at an inflated price.  We can surely only hope that the rise of the ‘grown up’ retailer will begin – doubtless led by John Lewis. 

Oh, I know they’re not doing especially great right now either but believe me, they will.  They will because, a) they don’t treat the consumer as fools, b) they run an efficient, profitable business enabling them to play the long game, c) their sales staff can communicate using whole sentences and have knowledge of their products, and d) when they come out of the other end of 2009 and look over the hill, there’ll be a clearer road ahead of them, with many long-established fascias becoming part of our children’s history projects.

Now this is the part where I turn all this into very relevant analogies for our industry, and RB in particular.  But I think you’ll be ahead of me.