NORTHERN PLANNER

Considering this blog is at least a little bit about advertising I've just realised how odd it is that I've never posted about favourite ads. I avoid talking about other people's work if I can help it, without knowing the background, who really made the decisions and what the objectives were I don't think it's fair.

Can't resist posting my Top 10. This is as a human being by the way, not a planner, this is just stuff that affected me, that I remembered or I just liked.

1. This Nike tennis ad from the 1980's captured everything a teenager who hated being told to wear white, leave the court when the senior joined up….felt about the whole stuffy air of tennis – I just wanted to play. This ad made me a fan of Nike for life.

2. There's a pattern here, but Levi's Drugstore commercial captured a natural feeling of teenage rebellion, not to mention that fear a teenage boy has of a girl's father who knows perfectly well what you want to do to her. At the time I thought this was so clever. Don't ever try and tell me you cannot do product attribute in an interesting way.

3. Nike Hurt (sorry it's Nike again). This actually made me miss being  a proper athlete, training so hard I threw up, rage at losing races I should have lost, daily agony getting up at dawn. There's an intense joy in pain and failure that is very much a part of real sport and life too to be honest.

4. This Irn Bru ad was so funny at the time -poking fun at virtually every soft drinks ad of the time, imported from America with fake, unnatainable images of a teenage world where dating was easy and you always got the prom Queen. It even managed to keep the long running advertising conceit that Irn Bru made you hard/was for tough people.

5. I hate Tesco's now. I hate their size and their relentless march towards a UK with no wrinkles or bumps. But I loved them back in the 1980's when the Dudley Moore commercials ran. Really funny, witty and every commercial told you something about what they sold you didn't know before all on a premise that he was searching for some free range chickens. I didn't care then though, Mum did the shopping. I just liked them.

6. The Old 'Papa' Nicole Renault Clio commercials were great, but I remember the surprise and delight of Vic and Bob in the final one, I loved them, I loved the Graduate so I loved this.

7. Smash speaks for itself. Genius.

8. More recently, I love everything that Lurpak does. I'm a pretentious foodie who bought Flora now and again, Lurpak made me totally loyal. I knew what they were doing and I still couldn't help it. This Lurpak lighter ad says everthing I believe about healthy eating and fad dieting.

9. This is the best Cinzano ad. Followed a series of Leonard Rossiter constantly spilling his drink over Joan Collin's breasts. This couldn't have been made without casting these two, shows how well celebrities work if you use them right.

10. As an overly ironic, seventies/eighties nostalgic loving grown -up (ish) I'm going to cheat and pick two for number 10. The first is Orange's Darth Vader commercial, simply because it's ironically funny and it has Star Wars in. The second is this Old Spice re-launch – I'm at that grumpy age when I agree you can't do without experience and it's so funny (and I'm old enough to admit that Duran Duran were quite good at times).

This list would be very different if it was based on craft or a great strategy, but since I've loved and remember all of these beyond all reason, I would argue they must have both been pretty good.