And the award for the best anti-marketing campaign goes to...

Well, I loved it!

As readers of this blog will know, I love what I call anti-marketing, the most. If it's thought provoking, controversial and cutting-edge, then I'm like a pig in straw.

The conference season is upon us all again (well, in the English language industry, anyway) and I've been treading the corridors and halls of the Park Plaza Hotel and the Queen Elizabeth Conference halls over the past week, at the ALPHE and then the StudyWorld workshop/language fairs.

I won't dwell on the usual stuff, but will have a sideways look at the one thing that caught my eye. What I'm talking about is the massive, fantastic 'triptych' which dominated the main hall at the ALPHE conference. Floor to ceiling stuff. Bold, brave, incredible, breath-taking! Never in the history of language school workshops has there been such an amazing display of postmodernist anti-marketing. Even I was struck dumb for a few moments. These three amazing posters even eclipsed the London School of English's chimpanzee a few years ago (but that's another story!).

As one delegate remarked to me: "I'm appalled! Three drugged out students staring down on my table! They're putting me off. I can't sell to agents with them there!"

I looked up in wonder. This was my area. My patch. My bag!

And I loved it!

The sepia images with zonked-out eyes and greasy hair were simply the best! And, as any marketing person will tell you, if a poster provokes discussion, argument, debate and... controversy, then you've succeeded. And they most certainly did. All three. Not just one! The added bonus was that they were 'putting off' a vast swathe of EC's competitors. I have never seen so many horrified delegates taking pictures of the posters and muttering dark things. Whoever the EC marketing person was who devised this campaign... I wanted to shake him or her by the hand and buy him or her a drink of his or her choosing! Really. This is genuine admiration. No sarcasm. Total sincerity!

But... that's not all. What made the whole 'concept' total genius and pushed it into the anti-marketing stratosphere, was the bonus bit of 'accidental' marketing. The strapline read in bold white capitals: 'FIND YOUR VOICE' - another stroke of perfection, so apt in a conference hall, which was like a vast, subterranean, echo-chamber, filled with a thousand shouting delegates for 8 hours. A tower of Babel... speaking in tongues. You get the picture.

I was one of many who had lost his voice by lunchtime on the first day and was genuinely trying to 'find my voice' all afternoon. Croaking like a bullfrog by 5 o'clock. Or was it accidental? If it wasn't... then wow! I am in awe! Anti-marketing of the highest calibre.

Forget Marmite, Yorkie, OASIS drinks, Go Compare......

EC - I doff my hat to you (if I had one) - the new kids on the anti-marketing block!

I loved it!