Merely seven months in my new-found utopia called Valcuvia, nature is already dulling off the ends of nerves severed by decades of citydom. I’m wrapped tight in it, like chestnuts and ricotta inside a fresh raviolo.       In this place there are more wild boar, lime-green lizards and sci-fi fungi than people. More grunts than past participles. More tusks than manicured smiles.

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And just as joyously on the human front, more people than adfolk.

Here coppersmiths, stained-glass artists, award-winning goats-cheese makers, foresters, pianists, saxophonists, confectioners, stonemasons, even organ pipe makers, outnumber international hyper-global digital content directors by a trillion to one. More anecdotes than key strategic pillars. More home truths than corporate clichés.

It’s why, despite the fact that I’m the only solitary adman here compared to a million wild boar or scores of master strawberry plant-breeders, Valcuvia is an ad community on par with London or Manhattan. Here, after all, any time of day of night, I can get up, close the rusty iron gate that separates me from the needled teeth of bloodhounds, and go find the very folk I’m supposed to be talking to.

Here is where, right next to my friends and sweethearts, my targets live.

The people who (and this might sound chimpanzee stupid to some), surprisingly-enough, aren’t communications people.  

The people who don’t analyse what I write, but for whom I’m paid to write to. To attract and persuade. To take up that two-nights-for-one and all-in breakfast hotel offer. To head for Operto in June. To upgrade to the 257TT. To seduce with the next new fragrance by LoobyLoo.

It’s called snapping out of ad mode, self-worship and in-house assumption, and befriending targets. Not writing postcards to strangers.

It’s one reason why, decades ago, agencies took on insightful waifs and strays from other worlds. Not just colleges. Our targets infused our workplace.

It’s why, just as long ago, I sent my own agency’s youngsters to shadow zookeepers, eat fry-ups with undertakers, meet opera singers and pick asparagus in the pissing rain with farmhands from ten countries. 

It’s why the late and greatest John Webster showed his work to the agency cleaners before presenting it to clients.  

It’s why I’ll spend as much time over a glass or six with a florist in a nearby bar as crafting a sponsored social post she might just read.   

To just discuss, analyse, re-discuss, regurgitate and ruminate what we create with similar-minded members of a closed order is tantamount to incest.  

Who, and so what, do we know? 

Brothers and sisters, go out in the playground and talk to the others.  

I am a wanderer. Yes, I slump into the same red chair each morning at 8, my head a day ahead and my liver twitching from last night. But every twelve years or so, those bits feel a need. A manic itch.  Even if everything at home fulfils me physically, mentally and all else-ally.   

Paris is a love, and I think it loved me. But the city of love it may be, Paris takes its time to love anyone outside its progeny, especially when they’re two metres long, actually say yes, drink New York martinis, work beyond 7 and sing Bach on the street, but I got there in the end. But its time was up. It wasn’t lockdown versus joie-de vivre, two divorces, cancer, bureaucracy, an unrequited love or the final French “non” that broke the camel’s back. Just the ping of the Jolliffe clock.

I’ve moved on by moving back. Before being a copywriter I made church organs, as one does. And some fine and huge ones are made in a tiny little town in Northern Italy. I did just that, right here in 1986 as a gangly unshaven oaf. So whilst Ad-land was in its conceptual and most beautiful heyday, I was surrounded with characters of another kind. It served me well later on. But even then, I vowed to come back. The moment I got off the train two months ago, warm spring rain dousing my neck and beyond, roadside ferns unfurling like mini welcome banners and ash-white woodsmoke casting stripes on army-green mountainsides, I knew I had. 

There are no screening rooms, cinemas, delis, gyms, concert-halls, recording studios or hanky-panky clubs in Cuvio. The shops sell few Bang & Olufsen speakers, silk dressing-gowns, Lalique or 300-Euro truffle oils, but ample lemon trees, huge blood oranges, copper furnaces, vine eyes and goads for stunning adders. The one and a half restaurants offer free handshakes, hugs (from May 8^th), ones for the road and perfectly dry-cured sincerity. The four cheese shops do it all themselves.  It’s where God might go for half-term, a place where wild boar, green geckos, rosaries, pines, hopes and bandsaws live on equal terms with humanity. A village-town hybrid where folk adore you before they’ve even met you. Where ciao means ciao, not what can I sell you.

And yet on day two, jackdaws, poplars and old ladies in black waving my way,  I dug out my red chair from a crate, put the Mac on the other, wrote a manifesto as nearly as I ever could. I’m not going to become a boar-hunter, an adder-stunner or even an organ man again. This isn’t so much a revolution and escape, but a new, delicious, kind, green and pleasant way to answer briefs, thank the world I’m still alive, and carry on.   

Dear everybody, thank you. For the good feelings, even though the world’s felt ill. For  interviews, the articles, the comments, the Andrew Jolliffe this and Andrew Jolliffe that, the you-couldn’t-invent Andrew Jolliffe. Andrew Jolliffe is blushing. For welcoming me into your agencies, home offices, dessert islands, broom cupboards, wherever, even in a dressing gown, jumper and underpants, odd socks or worse. Or less. For turning a blind eye to the coffee stain on the collar, the smeary glasses and the chest hair. And for giving me presents when I get inside. A brief. A bravo. A constructive comment or sixty-five. Santa exists, and works 24/7/365. It’s official. For all the work, for not wanting it all yesterday but for not giving solitude time to erode and darken what it said. And for not letting it mulch down into cut-and-paste grey cardboard counterfeit. Well, most of it. Despite the cloud, you let it shine. Zzing. For asking how I was rather than just how goes the rewrite. For thanking me when it should be the other way round. For paying me on time. For those who haven’t, you’ve still another 10 days. For the daily pats on the back, hugs, nibbles of ears, bravos, beers and kisses on cheeks, even though they were metaphorical. They felt more than real. I raise a martini to you all. Have one with me. Cheers, everyone.  

This might make your bowels gurgle, but I’ll say it.

 

Imagine eating the same one dish for breakfast, eleven o’clock snack, lunch, tea and dinner your whole working life.

 

Something a hyper-ordinary. No spice, pepper or joy. Meat and potato pie without the meat or the pie. Roasted toast. A pastel hue of pasta sauce. Celery with celery-salted celery chips and celery salad on the side. You’ll know a few more. You might have had them at school or borstal.

 

Think what it’d do for the digestion. The first few weeks might be fine. Then you’d be taking war and peace to read on the pan. Then your hair starts falling out, your once pert, rosy cheeks turn to ash and your farts acquire the unsullied roar of a Vulcan bomber. Scurvy would have nothing on it. Your teeth would be in a bucket.

 

And as for your mind, God knows. Boredom would quickly turn to rampant insanity, all for the lack of daily wonder and surprise. Interests would degrade to habits. Morale would turn into meat and potato pie without the potato or the pie. Dawn of the Dead stuff.

 

Enough to make you crave some buttered gravel from the drive.

 

But here’s a thing. Truly, it’s happening everywhere.

 

In marketing departments. In corporate HQs. In corporate crannies and universal strategy offices and brand development departments, central comms and best practice and all over.

 

Except you don’t eat it, you read it.

 

Every day, a diet of transformed functions, change drivers, modalities, operating models, pockets of excellence, benchmarked players, anticipated change drivers, consumer centricities, data-driven decisions, agile innovations, key drivers, turnkey solutions, principal aggregators, integrators of environments and uncountable -isations. Add more here.

 

Every conference, conflab, convention, conf call, catchup, PowerPoint, Keynote, key briefing, key learning session, key something else, breakout, brainstorm and brainfuck.

 

Think what it does for the constitution. The first few weeks might be fine. Then, session by session, doc by doc, you slip inexorably into a semi-comatose syndrome. An industrial poisoning, unidentified by doctors but proven by results. Conditioned into believing there’s no other way to communicate, whole neural centres shrivel and rot like old grapes, like our senses of direction after Google Maps. Then inexorably, the initiative goes down the pan, whether your pants are up or down.

 

It’s not so much the meaninglessness of corporate speak. It’s its Orwellian monotony.

 

No wonder a million corporations take eons to react, act, dare and do.

 

No wonder our original, new, convincing, eye-opening writing often doesn’t open eyes. The path between the eyes, the ego and the imaginations of many who see it is in sleep mode.

 

Here’s a thing. We’ve all got imaginations. Our problem is that many are in a coma. Unchecked, corporate-speak is like an accumulative, lead-poisoned general anaesthetic. And blindingly, it’s nobody’s fault. Just a habit.

 

Think what everyone could do if they broke it. Buy outstanding creative. Ask for seconds of meat and pie and deliciously sweet, salt, sour, bitter and umami words that nourish heads and wake up minds from clockwork routines. At work and on the street.

 

Maybe, for us writers, it’s our duty.

 

Buttered gravel sandwich, anyone?

 

 

 

 

 

I love it when people ask me about Andrew Jolliffe the man, rather than just the writer. In an industry that often regards humans as digits, it’s a breath of reassuring air.  So I was very lucky to be featured in fellow freelance copywriter Nigel Graber’s Copywriter Stories blog this week. We talked organs, fireworks, life, freelancing and the value of doing. Thanks again.

Here’s the link to the blog.  Have a splendid weekend, everyone.

Like the beautiful flower that it is, Paris is opening up.

 

Restaurant tables are being wiped off. A thousand barmen are blasting dust from billions of glasses. Folk are smiling again. Parisians are shouting “Mais Non!” again (mind you, Parisian cynicism survives anything). Mates and muses are shuffling back into town, some rejoicing, some wondering why.

 

Personally, I’m a rejoicer. Three months on my own have been a trial. Yes, I’ve had work. Yes, I do Zoom. Yes, I got called and called. But even the best-crafted words will never replace touches on shoulders, handshakes, hugs and glances. Cameras-to-screens won’t totally replace eyes-to-eyes. There’s a wire in the way.

 

But I’m still here, so before everyone raises a beer to Business as Usual, I think I’ve got some thanking to do.

 

Thank you, everyone who’s paid on time. Even ahead of time. Even in advance. Even though your clients probably haven’t coughed up. You’ve kept me alive. Better still, you’ve restored my faith in humanity. Who said accountants were machines? They have hearts. You’re saints.

 

Thanks to my critics. The ones who’ve still asked for another ten lines, to sharpen a signature, to start over again. In a crisis, it’s easy to let empathy override common sense. Constructive criticism is a sign of confidence. It’s an understanding. It warms me. And work still has to sell.

 

Thank you, everyone on LinkedIn, for not bragging and crooning about the scores of new clients you’ve pulled in over the crisis. It’s let everyone who’s doing their best, really know they are.

 

Thanks to Ben Kay, Mark Fairbanks, Chas Bayfield and all who’ve posted the greatest of great ads from past years. Love them. They’re proof that if work lodges in memories, so will its brands. Create forgettable messages and you end up wasting valuable resources propping them up in minds. Ding.

 

Thank you, the baker who opened till 8.15 when I’d worked till 8.10.  The gendarme who let me pass when I’d forgotten my papers and was busting for a pee. To Plymouth Gin and Kina Lillet for 7PM on Fridays. Just the one. And it’s Friday. To the British Conservative Government for absolutely nothing. To the nurses, the bin men and the checkout girls for absolutely everything.

 

Cheers. Look after yourselves, and have a wonderful weekend.

Some little things lockdown has helped me realise.

Maybe natural catastrophes happen to help us appreciate what we all have in common. Even when viruses, markets and consumer confidence all say no, clients still say yes. Thank you, I love you. When economies slow down, bank transfer systems don’t. Cheers, all of you, even more. When shares plummet, the value of thanks goes the other way. Boredom is probably a bigger killer than a virus, but easier to prevent. And even viruses can’t stop leaves unfurling, shopkeepers smiling or trees bursting into pink and yellow. Old ads are still great ads. Thankfully, the phone rings less each day. But by seven in the evening, I beg it to. Time eats away at many things, but not belief, Beethoven or John Lennon’s “Blackbird”. Even after 90 plays in three months. Good briefs cure lonely days, but only tunes can fix nights. Beetroot soup tastes great on day one, better on day two and something hideous on day 3. So, what’s lockdown done for you?

Thank you, thank you, Chas Bayfield, Mark Fairbanks and others. You turned my lonely lockdown into a joy.

 

You kindly posted some of the most memorable and effective ads of past times. The Guardian. PlayStation. Blackcurrant Tango. UPS. Hamlet. John West. BT. 27 years ago, they inspired me to get into this filthy game. Now, seeing them again reminds me it was all worthwhile.

 

They also reminded me of another David Ogilvy quote. Sorry to mention him so often. It’s just that he was so often right.

 

It’s this. When people aren’t having any fun, they seldom produce good advertising. David Ogilvy had fun. He cracked jokes and threw profiteroles in meetings. And it showed.  Everyone who wrote these gems clearly had lots and lots of fun. It shows.

 

Never mind budgets or big shoots. Just ideas, and places where they could thrive. Where the rest of the world didn’t give a sod, so the mind could wander anywhere.

 

A bit like an elephant in the wild. Free of onlookers and other pests. it charges about, kicks up the dust, pulls up trees, makes as much noise at it likes and screws any other elephant it takes a fancy to. It takes its pick. Revels in the joys of freedom.

 

In a zoo, under expectant gazes, it sits on its arse.

 

I know times are hard. Horrible, even. I know things are tight, and I know we’re fighting. But stop for five minutes and look at it this way. Like it or not, we’re all working from home. Our natural habitat. Free of predatory behaviour from HR. Free from the politesse of open plan. Free from protocols, political pests, awkward silences, other egos and the grating rattle of jargon.

 

So, we’re free to be ourselves. And with freedom comes more than a modicum of fun.

 

If we feel like it, we can write in our pyjamas. By candlelight.  With cats on shoulders. Or parrots. Or stains. Smoking. Eating salted cashews. On the bog. In our birthday suits, our bits dangling wherever. With a teddy as a secretary.  In bin-bags covered in ice-cream, cold spaghetti and olive oil. Stinky or preened and perfumed. In a bathing suit and a tiara. In bubble baths with purple lights and non-stop John Lennon. Or Beethoven. Or Baa Baa Black Sheep. Or something at least one boring fart in the office would tell you to turn the hell off.

 

Whatever turns us on, chills us, casts off whatever’s kept brilliance back-of-mind and lets it spill out all over the carpet.

 

Or if you like, the stuff that the creators of some of my favourite ads could, once upon a time, probably do at work.

 

Look, HR aren’t about. Nobody’s watching. Nobody’s stopping you.

 

We’re so bloody lucky. Think of the bin men, the nurses, the ambulance drivers and street sweepers. They can’t have fun at home all day. But every day they’re brilliant and save humanity.

 

The least we can do is make the most of our natural habitats, be our natural selves and do our bit to save advertising.

 

By the way, I’m writing this in my underpants with peanut butter on my right nipple.

 

Thanks again, Chas and Mark.

 

 

When this is all over, if it really ever is, a new species will emerge from the darkness and inhabit the earth.

 

What it does and looks like will depend on where it lives, but here are a few guesses. Hair right down to the knees, maybe. Guts down to the feet. Glass-smooth hands. An accumulated allergy to sourdough. Right-angled leg joints. A corkscrew-shaped right index finger. Technicolor livers. Rectangular eyes with a big red “N”- shaped iris.

 

There will be a rainbow plethora of regional and national variations, but one common trait. More space in our cerebral cortices will be given over to the real. And our immune systems will automatically fight horse-crap.

 

After all, every culture on earth has been dealt an almost biblical dose of good old-fashioned reality. Reality so hard and black and white that can’t be denied, disputed, argued with, mown down or even turned into political capital.  Even though a few have tried.

 

What it’s really like to suffer. What it’s really like to do without. What making use of outside time really is. What human beings are really like. What bonding and giving really is. What, given the space, thought and time of day, humility, humanity, kindness, compassion and goodwill really are.

 

And consequently, what our life-requirements really are. For many, this has been a reality-check on what we really require to live, be content, even to enjoy ourselves.

 

 

So, for brands, reality could be once more the genuine article. With visible, puff-free benefits that consumers and society can actually witness. Tangible differences.

 

And for us, less experience metrics, key response motivators, emotional drivers, whatever they were. And back, praise whoever you believe in, to the good, wholesome, old-fashioned what’s-in-it-for-me.

 

Cue the reincarnation of the clear-cut proposition. The irrefutable way in.

 

Cue the lost art of good old-fashioned persuasion. Some people might think that, along with lion-taming, making accordion bellows, shaking hands and saying thank-you, it had vanished from view.

 

Cue stunningly, brilliantly, unquestionably, solid-as-a-brick-shithouse arguments as to why brand X is for you and you.

 

So, sound the trumpets. Light the fireworks. Bang the drums. And cue the artisan persuaders.

 

The ones who learned, through years of hard work, patience and listening, to create and craft eye-catching, mouth-watering, intriguing and irrefutable visual and verbal arguments. Honed to the minds of people who now know who they really are.

 

Fellow creatives of the old-school, this is the cue. And for those who never trained to creatively persuade, now’s the time.

 

 

 

See it as good practice. In the next few decades, a lot of people will need a lot of hard-core persuading on a load of issues.

 

Even bigger mothers than this one.

 

Have a good weekend, everyone.

I’m self-isolating here all on my own. It could be a lot worse.

 

I’m in Paris. And can leave twice a day for bread, eggs, silence, architecture and a chat with a statue. Believe me, Paris is even more beautiful without Parisians.

 

And I have things to keep me going. I still have work. Then there’s a good cello, a decent library and the laundry. Bit by bit, they all help keep me off the gin and out of hospital.

 

The odd social post helps, too. Each day George Tannenbaum reminds me in a different way that we’re living, breathing, emotional humans, not numbers. Arthur Vibert takes me for a scenic walk. Dave Dye stretches my head. And odd mates send me laughs.  Thanks, all of you.

 

I got one yesterday that nearly killed me. In a nice way.

 

It was French cookery gone wrong. France has a culinary reputation, but paradoxically not every French citizen can cook. This was the best of the worst. Steamrollered gateaux. Pornographic Eiffel Tower biscuits. Geometrically square Easter sponge bunnies you could sell to the building trade.

 

I’m no great cook either. And I am a French citizen. But arrogantly, I thought I can do it better. It couldn’t be that hard. Surely. Piece of cake. I dusted down a cookbook from a long-gone girlfriend and blindly opened a page.

 

Clafoutis aux prunes. Plum sponge tart.

 

Measured the ingredients. Cut up plums. Beat the eggs and sugar, added flour and melted butter.  Poured it all over the plums, stuck it in the oven. Ding.

 

And for the next 30 minutes, I texted everyone to say I could cook. Posted the pictures of the dish in the oven. In came a tsunami of bravos. Envy, envy! Baked beans tonight for us, you bugger. You’ve talent after all. Ha.

 

Ping, 30 minutes up.

 

The thing looked like a fossilised cowpat. And you could have bounced it off the wall.

 

Serves me bloody right. Shame on me. Not for dismally failing, but for bragging.

 

Bragging means something different today than it did even three months ago. Then, it was good for business. Today, it’s bloody cruel.

 

Right now, everyone’s doing their best. Today, survival is a milestone achievement in itself. Yet right now there are freelancers who post to freelancers about how, while 90% of us are picking our noses, they’ve landed five brilliant new clients. Because, presumably, they’re either superior beings with wings or born when Jupiter was in alignment with Chelsea.

 

Oh, please.

 

It’s social media’s cruel side. The I’m-doing-great-so-why-the-hell-aren’t-you side. The side that satisfies a few, yet leaves a talented majority feeling hopelessly inadequate.

 

It’s a dank spiral. Kick the more modest while they’re down, and they’ll lose more than a livelihood. Bang will go the confidence. And so on. Down and down.

 

If you’re faring well in a crisis, then good on you. Just keep it to yourselves till the business is once again free to roam, relatively speaking. Meanwhile, remember that great creative people almost question themselves to death.

 

We’re all brilliant in our own way. There are chances out there. Let’s just all help each other get the confidence to find and use them.

 

Inspire us with wit, colour, outrageous thoughts, talks, anything.

 

Because today, I’d rather just see original work, original pleas for work, even confessions and gripes, than smell the toxic fart of a bragger. Like a failed clafoutis aux prunes, it might come back with vengeance.

 

Tonight, I’m doing Poulet de Bresse à la Créme. Wish me luck.  I’ll need it.