From now on in a fit of mischief I'm going to add some media opportunities you won't find in BRAD. They're difficult to audit. Sometimes they have a tacky image. But the main reason we don't use them is that they don't cost a lot - which is why media buyers avoid them.

April 2007 Medium no 9 Step Posters

Guy goes for a pee - thinks - hey why don't I sell posted about the urinal. And history is made. I'm really not sure about this idea of the steps poster. It certainly hit me between the eyes when running for a train. And it is dead space that no one else is using. But unless the creative idea is somehow linked to steps it feels just like spam - another way to make you look at something for no very good reason unless its' there. But any multiple step process or tiered offering. Well you can walk right up it then and there. Which could be brilliant - a way of getting people involved. Use with discretion.

May 2006 Medium no 8 Nail files

I found these at the Internet show I went to last month. Now were I a girl or had mostly women for clients I'd snap these up. Either nail files which you could overprint or a vanity mirror/nail file combo which you could overprint. The world is full of promotional mousemats, key rings, USB sticks and other paraphernalia. But this is one of those great ideas that I have a hunch would stay on a desktop or in a handbag for months and would be regulalrly used. Longevity: the one every leavebehind is trying to crack.

April 2006 Medium no 7 airport branding

Airports and advertising. Think of the net worth of the travellers passing through and all that dead time. No wonder clients cough up a small fortune to buy exclusivity all the way out to gate number z. Well here are a couple of cheaper ways for clients who want to do some guerilla marketing. Firstly pay someone to hang around outside of international arrivals with a placard. Do that regularly enough at key times of day you can put a small B2B company on the map. And yes you can apparently pay the airport to place suitcases on the carousels so that while travellers are waiting for their luggage they can watch your message going round and round. Now that shouldn't cost you an arm and a leg.

Dec 2005 Medium no 6 Advent Calendars

Look I hate 'em. My daughter - see right said Look Dad I get an extra chocolote on Christmas day. So that's all right then. Of course the beauty of it all is that the parents pay for it and it provides an invaluable support for pester power for about a month of what the little darlings want for Christmas - haven't you got enough Barbies already to go round the world at least once? Sorry. Rhetorical question. Don't you think Christmas too commercial enough already? I think it's a little late for that.By the way in case you think we allow our kids to dress up as Santa at Christmas we don't. This was a Halloween party and it she went as Santa instead of going as a witch. A classic piece of disruption. Jean Marie Dru would have been proud of us.

Nov 2005 Medium no 5 practical packaging

Manufacturers obsess over packaging. With notably few exceptions they confine their obsession to packaging around products. Which is a basic error. Packaging is useful. It reminds you of the product. So any object which you can persuade people to keep around themselves which reminds them of your products is good for business. First up is the infamous Coca Cola promotion where you pay Coca Cola for a glass with their logo on it - you can delude yourselves that they offered it to you for a bargain price. Then it sits on your sideboard forever reminding you to buy Coca Cola. I found the Heinz can in a thrift shop. Hide your keys and petty cash in a Heinz can. Thieves will never find it. And it'll remind you why Heinz beans still taste so much better than the own label variety. Simple, memorable and the customer pays! Presence is still the most undervalued of the 4 marketing Ps.

Oct 2005 Medium no 4 unPC ideas

Ideas are media vehicles - I know creatives have them and like to hang ads off them but ideas also travel. In our culture the less PC the idea the better. Watching the sponsors scatter or rally to Kate Moss in September after her little cocaine snorting episode is a vivid illustration of this. Even more so was the spectacle of a pensioner being dragged out of the Labour party conference and held under the prevention of terrorism act for shouting 'Rubbish'. All the apologies proferred by government ministers didn't answer the fundamental question - how was such a thing possible at a political meeting in a democracy? For two centuries our culture has allowed us to think what we please but to place restraints on how and where we talk about it. The British Government is moving us firmly towards thought crime. Believing that you will go to paradise by killing yourself and as many infidels as you can take with you is an idea which is open to debate - but not if it is pushed out of the debating circle. In such times the less PC the idea the faster it will travel. If you're the president of a superpower tell 'em God told you to invade Iraq. BBC radio last night announced a programme about whether the state had succeeded in subduing the BBC. "We welcome all your emails" he said, but "please try not say anything which will upset the government". Irony lives. So find yourselves a good one and hold on tight - it will carry you farther than you thought possible. The biggest danger is that someone (usually a client) makes you let go before you've been carried very far. At the press briefing for the Bad Hair Day advertising promoting churchgoing at Christmas I was tactless enough to suggest that the peace on earth message had had a good run. Church cancels peace and goodwill screamed the Daily Mail subhead. The client tried to make me retract the statement the following day. I refused - it would only have made us trouble. The story ran for a week - it got everywhere.

Sept 2005 Medium no 3 the teatowel

The humble teatowel. Which I've NEVER seen on a media schedule - a pity since the repro isn't bad, the duration is phenomenal and the cumulative exposures and frequncies are also impressive. Even if you do have a dish washer you still have teatowels and you use them. The also hang around the kitchen for days at a time. The Malts teat towel I hope demonstrates how much you can convey - and that's less than a quarter of the area. The Milk teatowel on the left is a little depressing. It's the first campaign I ever worked on (which dates me). But the line hasn't been seen on advertising for over 20 years and the tea towel is still in use in my household. I rest my case.

Aug 2005 Medium no 2 the WC - Borders

I know it's August so of course I'm being trivial but one of the most irritating things in Britain is the lack of public facilities. Even coffee shops don't provide washrooms. So when a shop does it registers big time on the scale and it drives traffic. This is a tribute to Borders Bookshop on Oxford Street (who also offer a Starbucks much frequented by freelancers. The point is that I rarely go to the cente of London without dropping in and even though I still prefer to buy online it is the one place where I still buy books. It is yet another example of the first law of communications - the biggest single influence on communications is.......physics - thought pedants among you would say isn't this biology?

July 2005 Medium no 1 the golfing umbrella.

There's an image problem with the golfing umbrella - it's far too easy to put acme refrigeration services on them and who wants to carry that around Cheltenham race course? But that's no reason to abandon the entire category to small time promoters. Consider the following -

Visibility - using colours logos and large type messaging can be visible for hundreds of yards unlike most other advertising.

Cheap to produce - £10 each typically.

Utility - as long as there is too much rain and too much sun people will take these with them. Because they fulfil a purpose.

Longevity In my household there are 3 golfing umbrellas - the youngest is 5 years old.

Loyalty - these become pledges of allegiance which owners are proud to carry when brand owners bother to provide them.

Creative space - I've never yet seen a funny or outrageous golfing umbrella. Why not? Why couldn't these spaces become as interesting as T shirts have become. And umbrellas are much more visible.

Consider that if only a third of people are carrying umbrellas when it is raining then this is a media opportunity provided by 30% with 100% reach. And most umbrellas carry no marketing message.