Paul Burke is an award-winning advertising copywriter
A few years ago, James Delingpole and I were two-fifths of ‘The Manalysts’ a clique of agony uncles employed by a women’s magazine. The idea was to provide five answers to each problem from five disparate standpoints. James was the trenchant intellectual, I was (supposedly) the metrosexual adman and the other three were a practising
There was once a belief that for TV and radio commercials, a Scottish voice was more ‘trustworthy’. This was particularly the case for financial services ads. It was, however, a belief entirely without foundation. ‘We made it up,’ a banking executive once told me. ‘We’d moved our call centres up to Scotland, so we decided
If you were born after 1970 and don’t remember punk, you’ve almost certainly been misled by people who do. You’ve probably been told – through countless paean-to-punk retrospectives, documentaries and newspaper culture pages – that it was a glorious, anarchic revolution that swept all before it. I can tell you first-hand that it wasn’t. Punk
Let’s play a game of word association. I’ll start: ‘skinhead’. Hmm. I think I can guess which words instantly occurred to you: ‘thug’ perhaps, ‘hooligan’ probably and possibly even ‘racist’? Yet for anyone who remembers the original incarnation of skinheads, another word will always spring to mind: ‘reggae’. If you believe that Britain’s love affair with
Am I allowed to mention Nigel Farage? Of course I am, this is The Spectator, and its readers enjoy analysing all kinds of people and ideas, even those they find unpalatable. Readers of Campaign, however, aren’t quite as broad-minded. Campaign is the trade magazine of the advertising industry, and when it published an interview with
40 min listen
On the podcast this week: In his cover piece for The Spectator, Adrian Wooldridge argues that meritocracy is under attack. He says that the traditional societal pyramid – with the upper class at the top and the lower class at the base – has been inverted by a new culture which prizes virtue over meritocracy. He
When I was writing ads for Labour’s 1997 election campaign, I’d never have presented an idea as factually, creatively and strategically wrong as Labour’s recent ‘attack ad’ on Rishi Sunak. If I had, I’d have been the one under attack for failing to understand the simple principles of advertising. What you need when writing any
45 min listen
In this week’s episode: Is the Prime Minister a dead man walking? Spectator Political Editor James Forsyth and MP Jesse Norman who expressed no confidence in Monday’s vote discuss the future of Boris Johnson and the Conservative Party. (00:45) Also this week:Why is there so much virtue signalling in modern advertising? Spectator Columnist Lionel Shriver and
Brand Boris is in trouble. It wasn’t long ago that Boris Johnson could do no wrong, having won his party a thumping majority at the last election. Even when some mishap played out in public – like being stranded on a zip wire or falling in a stream – the public still seemed to love
Three cheers for Jeremy Vine. At last someone has pointed out that cycling in cities is inherently right-wing. Full disclosure: I’m a cyclist. I may not own a square inch of fluorescent or Lycra apparel; I may not terrorise motorists with violently bright and flashing lights but I’ve been riding a bike around London since
Has the advertising industry been nationalised? It certainly looks that way. The run-up to Christmas is usually the time for UK advertisers to spend big. But not this year. While the John Lewis Christmas ad has been greeted with some fanfare, this is the exception, rather than the rule in 2020. Companies whose businesses have been
‘Hello, is that Paul?’ ‘Yes’ ‘This is Alan Parker. I’ve just read your new book. I thought it was terrific and I want to talk to you about it. Are you free for lunch next week?” ‘Yes!’, I practically yelled. The following week, I found myself sitting opposite one of my advertising and film-making heroes,
We’ve all been very impressed, haven’t we, by Sir Keir Starmer’s performances at Prime Minister’s Questions? His calm, precise and forensic dismantling of Boris Johnson has drawn praise from all quarters. Quite right too. An effective Leader of the Opposition is vital to any democracy and at last, we seem to have one. An eminent
We all have secrets which, when we remember them, shroud us in shame. I’m afraid I have a particularly dark one that I’m forced to remember almost every day of my life. Twenty years ago, I was a working in a big London ad agency with a smart and ambitious young man named Richard Reed.
