Ads that are not shit.

I'm married to a Canadian.

The first time I was over there for the holiday season, I wandered around the bountiful spread and loaded my plate with absolutely everything.

Except for the turkey. (And that godawful cranberry sauce...)

It was a pindrop moment. As if the air had been immediately sucked out of the room. Simultaneously, both sides of her family offended, all staring at me like some kind of strange southern hemispheric heathen.

Without question, the most boring of all the meats. Absolutely no situation in which it is better than chicken. I will die on this hill.

Great stuff from Mother London and KFC, and proof once again, that if you try to please everybody - you’ll excite nobody.

Conversely, I’ve always found people that drink milk to be a bit… well, weird.

I’m not talking about putting some milk in coffee or tea, or cooking with it, I’m talking about just pouring yourself a big, tall, glass of milk. Let’s just say there’s a reason why serial killers do it in movies.

But I absolutely love this ‘Milk Shaming PSA’ by MilkPEP and GALE. I have a soft spot for a good mockumentary, and the performances in this are great. The kid in the parking lot ended me. And Queen Latifah is an inspired centrepiece.

@stanleybrand

#stitch with @Danielle Stanley has your back ❤️

This one is an absolute masterstroke by Stanley. A woman posted a video on TikTok about how her car caught on fire and the only thing to survive was her Stanley cup. It went viral, and the company quickly responded not by replacing her cup, BUT BY REPLACING HER CAR.

What’s amazing about this response is that it shouldn’t be as ‘genius’ as we’re all calling it. The amount of earned media the brand was already getting from this accidental product demonstration would absolutely dwarf the cost of a vehicle. In many ways, it’s a no brainer. But given how near impossible it is to get some brands to engage with their customers in this way, I have to give them huge props.

Here’s what you get when you give Droga5 a brief to promote a boxing match.

What I like about this is that it really could’ve been shit. There’s no earth-shattering insight here, just earth-shatteringly good execution. Its full of tropes and cliches but executed with such beautiful craft and precision that they actually start working for you rather than against you.

It’s just a brutally simple idea that’s fun and entertaining and nice to look at. And, to be brutally simple in response, often that’s all we need to bloody do. If we took all the time and money we spend overcomplicating what we do with research and data and analytics and customer profiling and every other bliggidy blah and instead gave talented people the time, space, and money to do their job - we’d have more of this.