Prolonged Exposure

I’ve been off the grid for a while, doing all kinds of stuff. A lot of it is actually what my parents would call “constructive”, but there’s been a few time-wasters in there as well, and one of those was the TV show Entourage. I’ve just done the entire 6 seasons.
No idea why, but it [...]

Gastronomic Adventures and Retail Therapies

“An address of artistic mastery, this freehold architecture of 154 lavish units is a prestigious living defined by modernity that is ahead of others in every sense. Every of its studio, 2 & 3 bedroom apartments as well as 1 & 3 bedroom penthouses reflect qualities of refinement. Already in the vicinity of popular venues [...]

Be Your Personal Photoshopped Best

This is Kelly Clarkson. If you’re not in her demographic, she was the first winner of American Idol in 2002 and she’s had four albums, including hit song “My Life Would Suck Without You”.
I think she’s kind of pretty. She’s Rubinesque and she wears it well. She seems comfortable in her own skin, which, it [...]

Never Mind The Length, Feel The Quality

A couple of days ago c0sm1c left a comment for me on a previous post about copywriting. He (rightly) pointed out that it’s quite often not the writer’s fault. The power dynamics in an agency/client relationship is almost always that the client gets their way. They are, after all, the ones with the cheque book.
It’s [...]

Advertising

cartoons drawn on the back of business cards by Hugh McLeod

Watch My Copy

It probably serves me right for reading the newspapers over breakfast, but sometimes I find myself continuing to stare at a page until my mind goes blank.
Usually it’s not the articles. Standards of journalism here are high. It tends to be the advertising, especially the locally created stuff, because standards of copywriting here are appallingly [...]

AWARE Shows That Singapore Now Has A New Mouth, And It Has Teeth

I saw something happen in media and information in Singapore this month that I’ve never really seen before.
If you’re Singaporean you probably haven’t been able to surf any local sites without scrolling over AWARE in the past week or two.
The women’s rights association was hijacked during their AGM by what seems at this stage to [...]

Ah Wahnt One O’Those Widget Thangs Fur Mah Website

I’ve just plowed my way though the March issue of Marketing Singapore. This month all the stories seem to have been brewed from the same template. They all start off with a variation of:
“For most of us in marketing, 2009 is going to be a tough year. Our budgets have been slashed, our consumers are [...]

It’s Already Messy

My brother Sean coined the saying “as subtle as a turd in a punchbowl” when I was a kid. I have no idea why, it wasn’t something I ever saw at any of our family parties. But it was visually descriptive enough to stick, and it was added to our family’s language of in-jokes.
Over the [...]

You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth

When actor Sean Penn and writer Dustin Lance Black got up to accept their Oscars for Milk last week they didn’t have anything interesting or inspiring to say.
Or at least that’s how it seemed on Singapore TV, because our censors did a quick bit of surgery between the live broadcast and the repeat telecast to [...]