NORTHERN PLANNER

It shows you how the British are looking for any excuse to indulge these days, in a world where sobriety is cool.

It shows how parents are under pressure to perform like never before. Have a prefect party, the kids dressed just so, the perfect image on Faceook.

This picture though was on our own trick or treat run. A pumpkin the size of a car. to out do the other decorations on the street. It's a bit like advertising these days.

There's a truth that folks are getting wise to the act, especially young folks. They're becoming adept at filtering out the annoying dross. Like the 'impression' some media agency will count as a hit, which in reality is an annoying display ad that may as well not be there.

Or the massive grandstanding campaigns that still happen.

Walking down a street at Halloween with the increasingly , competitively, decorated houses is like the desperation of brands with ever bigger grandstanding efforts to get the attention, with this picture the apotheosis.

All the more ignored because of its blunt desperation. Like women avoiding those overdressed guys in nightclubs furtively dancing with the white man's overbite, people can smell the desperation.

Once upon a time, even when you could buy interruption, as opposed to the JWT fear model (Domestos ads let you know about the nasty germs in your toilet, scaring you into buying), some opted for charm and intelligence as opposed to calculation or brute force. Maybe we need to think about going back to that a bit.