When it all goes horribly wrong!

I was looking for inspiration today.

And so I went for a walk in my little town of Tewkesbury here in Gloucestershire. It didn't take long to get inspired. It never does here. You see, Tewkesbury marketeers have a very elastic attitude to all things marketing. For example, this was plastered all over a pub in the middle of town.

WOULD JUBILEE'VE IT?

ALL GIN-BASED DRINKS HALF-PRICE (HER TOP SNIFTER)!

TO CELEBRATE THE QUEEN'S PLATINUM!!

Now, I have to say I smiled at this. Not bad at all. And love the jubilee've bit. Not so sure about the gin-based stuff, but probably true and definitely worth a smirk.

I continued my walk to the edge of town. And then I saw it!

The best, funniest, sloppiest, craziest, most ridiculous and yet most memorable piece of poster advertising I've seen for a while. Yes, it's the poster above, which seems to imply that Tewkesbury women are amazingly healthy cyclists who look... well, different. I hesitate to continue down this path given the 21st century attitude to gender-stereotyping. So, I'll just say that I was stopped in my tracks took several photos. Whatever you may think, the poster definitely worked. I now know that June 8th is the day when the town will be filled with women with moustaches on bikes. I'll be in a front row seat cheering them on!

I retired to a coffee shop to recover. It set me thinking of posters that must have begun as a sensible idea in a marketing office where serious young people with neat haircuts say words like pro-active, synergy, benefits-selling and SWOT all the time.

Anyway, have a look at this beauty from my days in China. Another great example of how logic and sense somehow becomes twisted and comical. It's a poster for a fashion company with too many intermediate English speakers in positions of power. The words all look great but... look closer. Would you want want to wear clothes from a company with initials which loosely read: I FAT! Anyway, what's tenacious and assuredness got to do with a cardie or a pair of socks?

Also in China, look at this one. A shop in the city of Suzhou near Shanghai. I like to believe that this is a deliberate attempt to master the difficult art of postmodernist anti-marketing, but fear that it was just a spelling mistake. Whatever! It doesn't really matter - I was there every week for my non-trend undies and shirts. I have to say that the place was packed too... with young things, who saw NON-TREND as the new trend! Aaaaaaagh!

Advertising can be a tricky thing at the best of times. What looks great on a wall in a glossy sales team office will always look different when on the streets or online. And people will never all react the way you want them to. I'm sure that the Tewkesbury cycling people just thought any old picture of guys on bikes would do for their women's race this week, just as the Chinese marketeers imagined that assuredness and tenacity were great and clever words for describing their new line of clothes.

I'll leave you with a contentious one. when this came out, it must have seemed a really clever play on words and a slick way of describing a traditional product. Again, on paper or on a screen in a marketing office, it must have seemed pretty neat.

So where's the problem?

Looks great to me.

But then I asked a few students and the odd agent (Turkish, I think) what they thought.

Some (not all) scanned the words above and asked:

"Is it really a lonely place?"