I AM THE CLIENT!

60% planners

2012-01-27T16:31:00.000-08:00

Terrifying news, my fellow marketing professionals.

A new agency has been founded (called Founded) and it's staff consists of 60% planners.

Let those words sink into your brain.

THEN GET THEM OUT OF YOUR BRAIN BEFORE THOSE WORDS TURN YOUR BRAIN INTO SHIT SOUP!

Why this is something Founded would like to advertise to clients is beyond me. But what do I know?

(I know fucking everything - EVERYTHING - in case you were wondering if that question was rhetorical or not. IT WAS.)

Let me give you the client perspective on planners. It goes something like this:

Ooohh, shiiit. It's that brainy fucker. Laurence? Fellopia? Jurgen? Owl? The fucker with all the SLIDES. The ENDLESS slides - shit, no, not NOW! I've got about a million emails to forward to my PA. Right - what can I do? Fuck. Er...clashed meeting? No - they just send you all the slides on Vimeo and expect you to watch it. Funeral? No - they come with you and tweet your grief. Er...walk out with an air of imperious preoccupation? No - they're waiting at your office when you get back there. They're like ZOMBIES. Fuck, there's only one way out of this: PUKE.

That's my approach, anyway. When a planner starts talking, I start puking. It's become an almost unconscious reaction. I don't have to force it that much. Habit gets things going, and I just give it the extra bwaaawk at the right moment. Everyone stands back, pretends to be sympathetic and you're out of there before you can say 'How much to dry clean this suit?'.

What the fuck do you WANT me to do? Listen to it? ARE YOU FUCKING MENTAL? That's how they turn you into a planner; they get you to listen to it. Once you start actually listening to it, there comes a point where you go, 'Ooh - I think I see what they mean about post-mobile box-setists versus sofa-hugging Wagamamites!'

That's the point when you start writing haiku. And that's the point you become a different species. Do you understand? You no longer belong to the human race. You become some kind of bullshit-based lifeform that would have Darwin scratching his fucking noggin, saying, 'Well, fist me into next week, I've obviously fucked something up here.'

But, look - this is just my opinion. I wish Founded the very best of luck. They're probably all top-notch chaps who know that the secret to true client satisfaction is BUY THE BEERZ. I'm just giving you my opinion, even though you didn't ask for it.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

Loveshit

2012-01-20T02:36:00.000-08:00

My friends, I have neglected you lately. I have paid you less attention than James Corden pays to daily calorie intake guidelines.

But I have the very best reason for this withdrawal of the attention you so understandably crave.

I am in love.

Not the kind of love I feel for a sausage. Nor a pint of claret and WKD.

Neither is it the kind of love I feel for lapdancers, trollops, tramps, vamps and checkout girls.

This is the kind of love a grown man feels for a grown woman. Adult love. I mean, not like 'adult bookshop'. Mature love. I mean, not like 'mature' love, like on the websites I've found in my mother's internet history. Special love. I mean, not like 'special' love between a woman and her bulldog...oh, fuck it.

I met a real-life woman and I'm crazy-dogshit-in-love with her.

Here's how it happened.

I was at a work function. By which I mean, I was on a table in a juicer, showing the locals how to moonwalk fucking properly, while everyone else was in some conference centre next door, listening to the MD announce something about parking spaces or whatever or something or whatever.

Then a woman walked in.

This was strange, because it was the kind of juicer where any women present are usually strippers or cleaners. And not good strippers, either. Rather, the kind who appear on a Sunday afternoon, between football matches on the telly. The kind who thwock tired, sloppy pingpong balls from tired, sloppy foofs to three half-filled rows of musty housecoats and greasy glasses, the ennui thicker in the air than the smell of toilet cleaner and microwaved egg baps. That kind of stripper.

So, like, it was well fucking weird.

Then she walked to the bar and ordered a drink. Well fucking weirder. (Most birds who walk in to that kind of juicer ask for directions or want to hide from some rapey type outside.)

Naturally, I leaped from the table, stumbled a bit, regained my footing, stumbled again, fell, got up, tripped on a dog (that fucking dog!) and fell onto the bar next to her. As you would.

'Hello', she said. 'Are you drunk, or disabled, or both?'

'I'm drunk-abled,' I said.

'So I see,' she said. She seemed to be drinking whisky, neat.

'Are you drinking whisky, neat?' I asked.

She confirmed she was.

'Why?' I said.

'Because I'm so fucking bored, I just want to numb my brain until it doesn't work,' she replied.

'I'm your man,' I said, and ordered the rest of the bottle.

From there, it was a pretty much perfect first date. We talked about how much I think my superior-in-job-title-only colleague, Rupert Abbott, is a massive squirt of horse jizz. We talked about how she feels trapped in her marriage. How her husband gave up on them years ago in favour of his career. How we both love drinking whisky until we numb our brain until it doesn't work.

Things got a bit blurry at the end. I mean, I definitely remember bending one through her. (And I turned in quite a performance, I can tell you - despited the obvious constraints of being up against some bins round the back of All Bar One.) After that, though, it's not so clear.

I do remember her listening quite intently as I gave my frank and full opinions of Rupert Abbott. And in the dates and days that have followed, it's become clear why.

She's Rupert Abbott's wife.

This is great on a number of levels. But it's particularly spiffing because every morning, when I rock up and Abbott's been there for three hours eating fucking algae or whatever he has for breakfast, and asks 'Jesus, Dave. What did YOU get up to last night?', I can say 'I fucked your wife again and again and again until she literally shat in my bath.' (She did once. It sounds bad, but it was fucking amazing.)

I mean, I don't respond with those words. I just say, 'Wouldn't you like to know?' and go for a well-earned think in the disabled lavs.

Some people might think the whole situation is a bit messy, fraught with moral ambiguity and bound to end in a clusterfuck of soiled hankies and black eyes. But I don't! I just think it's bangtastic!

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

DK hits The Fuck-Up Jackpot!

2012-01-18T05:37:00.000-08:00

WALLOP! I right-hooked the doors of my agency open.

SMASH! I landed a Hulk-like fist on the reception desk.

BANG! I asked the receptionist for one, but she ran off crying.

No matter, because this was a great day, my friends. A victorious day!

Why? Because tucked into my attache case (yes - I use an attache case with combination locks, because I'm fucking 80s tremendous) was a print job containing not one errant double space, BUT TWO!

Yes. TWICE did my agency place two spaces between words, instead of the requisite one. And this, my friends, means I've hit THE FUCK-UP JACKPOT!

'What's that, Dave?' I can't hear you ask because you're not in the same room.

Well, it's the welcome addition to your marketing budget that your agency contributes when they fuck somthing up. Typo in a headline, website missed off an ad, massive pubic thatch not removed from a bikini shot - that sort of thing. It all means the agency's paying for the fuck-up, because they understand that it's the right thing to do.

HA HA! Of course they don't do it because it's right! They do it because they don't want to lose your account! If they did things because they were right, nobody would have heard the words 'We buy any car' a trillion times in the last year.

Now, most clients see agency fuck-ups as something to be stamped out. 'Don't do it again,' they chide, placated by the agency's cheque book.

Let me be very clear: those clients are amafuckingteurs. I am not most clients, however, so I can give you the proper juice:

I love agency fuck-ups so much, I employ someone whose sole purpose is finding them!

Yes. A bloke called...er...something sits in the office with a magnifying glass, a dictionary and a ruler and I don't let him go home until he finds at least one fuck-up on every single piece of work my agency produces.

Rogue pixels, widows, orphans, misaligned logos, debatable commas, dubious grammar - my guy...thingy...will find 'em. And then it's JACKPOT TIME!

I reckon I reclaim about 65% of my marketing budget back from the agency! It's a win-win! Well, it's a win! For me!

After all, the agency boys won't cause a stink. They still keep 35% of my budget. That's better than nothing, and after working with me for a week or so, they learn to adjust their forecasts. They just have to fire someone every time there's a fuck-up. And what's the problem with that?

(That said, I did bump into a creative director who lost his job because I got the agency to pay for a national poster campaign that had a less-than-perfect line break in the legals, but he was fine about it. Well, he didn't say much, to be honest, apart from some stuff about his wife and an operation and losing the house and divorce and rehab, but from inside my BMW, he seemed fine. Sorry - when I say 'bumped into' I mean 'ran over'. Should have made that clear.)

So don't treat mistakes as something to avoid, my fellow marketing professionals! Treat them as a valuable income stream! I certainly do.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

We are your overlords

2012-01-16T13:12:00.000-08:00

The news that TBWBABWABWA has resigned the Muller account came as no surprise to me.

I mean, look at the agency's last ad for the Teutonic Yoghurt Fuhrers.

First, let's agree that 'resigning' an account means 'were about to be fired from'. Agencies are always resigning on me. And I was always just about to fire them. (But, then, I'm always about to fire the agency. It's the only way to ensure decent service, I find.)

Second, let's agree that I'm fucking tremendous. I'm dynamic, wise, kind, sexually incredible, can drink like nine Vikings, have a sensitive and thoughtful side somewhere and I will happily plate a bird off until she's had enough. This has nothing to do with the post I'm writing, but let's all just agree it, because it's fucking nailed-on TRUE.

Third, let's agree that agencies just don't understand clients, as TBWAWBAWTA has proved. They think that really, deep down, we want to do lots of brave, bold, pioneering creative work that gets 45 billion views on YouTube and makes our mothers brag about us down at their swingers club.

We don't. We don't want to be in Campaign, pulling the Campaign face (wear black, pretend you've seen things, possibly in Vietnam). We want to be in Marketing Week, with a picture of us in our cavernous new office, next to the headline, 'World's first billion pound bonus.' We don't want YOU getting blown in pub toilets for doing great work. It's OUR account, you sploots of discharge.

Let me make this simple. Here are the possible outcomes of any campaign and the probable results.

Amazing creative, shit results = client blames agency, agency loses.

Shit creative, shit results = client blames agency, agency loses.

Shit creative, amazing results = client wins, agency loses.

Amazing creative, amazing results = client wins, agency takes credit, client fires agency, agency loses.

See? If we all just make stuff nobody hates, loves, reacts to or ignores, the gravy train keeps on a-chuffin'. Stop trying to fuck it up. Now, off you go and make me an ad with a cute toddler and a ball of wool in it or something.

Why? Because I AM YOUR OVERLORD!

It's Tuesday. It must be time to revolutionise advertising AGAIN

2011-12-20T03:17:00.000-08:00

Fuck off.

Fuck off on a horse.

Go fuck yourself in the neck, you blob of cock-sploot.

You're a cowcunt and a moron.

You're worse than piss; you're a piss-Hitler.

That's what I say to convention, every single day, the second I wake up. And I say it loud. My neighbours are used to it now.

Today was no different. So it can come as no surprise that I've thrown the ad industry another curve ball so curvacious, it's got massive bristolas and a bee-hind that makes J-Lo look flat-packed.

Allow me to say one word:

Fatvertising.

I know - your mind is probably thrashing about like Michael J Fox on a rollercoaster, but let it settle while I explain my - MY - idea.

Obesity is soaring. Right? You don't need medical statistics to know that the Western World is piling on the timber. You have seen them, the humapotomases, dragging their pillar-thick limbs across the concrete of the town centre, defying belief and gravity and taste.

But they are people. These are not animals, nor plants, notr inanimate land masses. They are human beings, with feelings, and the right to a dignified life with financial independence. So I'm going to give it to them.

BY TURNING THEIR OTHERWISE USELESS BODIES INTO MOBILE ADVERTISING SPACE.

Yes - human billboards. Fuck knows, some of them are the size of actual billboards. Holy shit. Why not paper 48 sheets of advertising magic across their incomprehensible arse-ends?

After all, they deserve to derive income from the hard work they've put in. Becoming the size of a mythical bovine monster takes fucking dedication. Why shouldn't they make some dough, rather than just eating it?

Now then - fucking listen to me. This is MY idea. So before you go sticking your latest bullshit ad on a fat man's tits, bear in mind I WILL FUCK YOU LIKE A HURRICANE if you do. Technically, thanks to intellectual copyright laws, the bodies of all obese people in the world are now mine to sell.

So keep your fucking hands off. These people have rights. And I have a right to 20%.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

Things I don't want from an agency

2011-12-12T11:02:00.000-08:00

My fellow marketing professionals, I am about to say something profoundly surprising.

Sometimes, being offered more than you asked for is not a good thing.

Obviously, this isn't the case with the following: hookers, strippers, booze, cars, houses, wanks, chocolates, cheese balls, plane tickets to Bangkok, burgers, baltis, Pot Noodles, staplers, PowerPoint slides written by me, nine-egg breakfast omelettes, telescopes, butter, lube, weaponry or porn.

That's just plain common sense. A child would know that.

But when an advertising agency is offering anything other than advertising, you have to fight your instinct to get free shit and resist. Because what they offer is largely as useful as bacon at a bar mitzvah.

Here's the 'added value' they try to flog you. Don't buy it.

1. Research.

When an agency offers you research, what they're actually offering you is justification for their shitbrain, cowspunk, sexwater ideas - and they want you to pay for it.

Here's what happens. The agency gathers a bunch of people with no minds and puts them in a room with a low ceiling and a mirror. You sit behind the mirror and spy on them while they answer questions about the agency's ideas. They respond with answers that defy belief, logic, understanding and purpose.

Two weeks later, you get a report with lots of bar charts, graphs and a summary page that says, 'THEY LOVE THE IDEAS!' in 72-point type. In red. You also get a bill the size of my ballbag. (I have a fucking monster of a ballbag.)

2. A Christmas film

Oooh! An email from the agency! I wonder what they wa....oh. Oh, fuck. Fuck off. Oh, Jesus fucking wept - they've made the receptionist put on a sexy Santa outfit and they're all singing 'All I Want For Christmas Is A Smooth Delivery Of Integrated Brand Communications' and the MD has begrudgingly agreed to mime a line from behind his desk, clearly with the insistence that they do it in one take and then fuck off, and the creatives all look weird and reticent except THAT cunt who keeps popping up every thirty seconds and clearly fancies himself as a comedian even though it's obviously a front for his deep sexual ambiguity, and the female account directors who all take themselves seriously are in a row, smiling through gritted teeth and spinning on office chairs and trying to sexily cross their legs in a little bit of choreography that was obviously devised by someone who hasn't had two kids, and there's the creative director looking suddenly exposed by having to join in with the rest of the oiks, his veneer of cool cynicism all shot away by having to do a little dance that he would normally refuse to do but he was told to be less aloof in his last performance review, and....oh, make it all fucking STOP.

The worst thing, of course, is not the forced festive fun. It's the fact that, somehow, I'll end up paying for this feculent drool of coprophilic fucking sludge.

3. Seminars

I keep getting invites from agencies to things like 'Revampifying Your Business's 360 Contact Strategy' or 'Brand Ideation In The Age Of The Cloud' or 'Are You A Brand That Can Or A Brand That Won't?'

The first problem with them is that they take themselves seriously. These things used to be an excuse for a tear-up, but now they seem to think this shit is important or something, and everybody rocks up with notepads and bottles of fucking water, and some tool called Barnaby stands up and talks the usual nebulous cock-sploot about...oh, you can imagine.

I tried a few, but I never quite got over the shock of there being no booze. I still can't get over it, to be honest. There's actually a fucking tear in my eye as I write this.

There are more things I don't want from an agency. But they'll have to wait for another post. Right now, I've got a very important thing to do involving a bar, some beerz, another bar, an Indian restaurant, a gentleman's entertainment provider, a hotel room and some gaffer tape.

And it'll all be on expenses!

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

THE MOTHERFUCKER LIST

2011-12-08T03:47:00.001-08:00

On my remarkable blog, I AM DAVE KNOCKLES, I produced a few of these important documents.

The Motherfucker List is a definitive guide to the people who have earned the epithet 'Motherfucker', as judged by an international panel of cultural experts (me), business gurus (me) and style icons (me).

(What do you mean, 'That's not an international panel'? I've been to America AND France, you CUNT. Go stick a cricket bat handle up your cack-flue.)

After some deliberation, the latest Motherfucker List is now ready - and here it fucking well is.

1. The writer of the 1963 Weights and Measures Act

It would have to been written in the 60s, wouldn't it? It was the decade of the pill, obligatory daily banging for the under 25s and drug-induced naked dancing in public. Of course some officious clackhole had to standardise all the weights and measures in the UK - INCLUDING BOOZE.

A 'single measure' is supposed to be between 25 and 35cl. This is not a measure. This is the same amount of snot I emit when I do one of my highly-amusing lady sneezes.

In Spain, where I occasionally spend some R&R time after one of my DK Power Weeks at work, a measure is dependent entirely on when the bartender remembers to stop pouring. If he gets distracted by a chica with particularly bueno bristolas, you could get a good gallon of G in your G&T.

THAT'S a fucking measure. Whoever thought 25cl is an amount worth paying for is a MOTHERFUCKER.

2. Portion Controllers

Do you work in a restaurant? Do you decide how much goes onto my plate? You do?

THEN MAKE MORE GO ONTO MY PLATE, YOU TIGHT MOTHERFUCKER.

3. Asda

If I need to return a cucumber because it's been soiled by a ladyfriend of mine, fucking well give me a refund. It wasn't ME who shoved it up her foof and turned the end to mush. But it WAS me who had to pay 69p for the fucking thing. I mean, the cucumber vs foof thing was my idea initially (and a fucking good one it was too) but I didn't force her into anything. Well, not until well after the cucumber had been put back in the fridge. WHERE'S THE JUSTICE, MOTHERFUCKER?

4. George Osbourne

Balancing the nation's books I understand. Cutting unnecessary benefit spending I understand too. But don't target we disabled folk. I absolutely depend on the benefit I've been receiving since my whiplash incident. Without that weekly allowance, I CAN'T TURN MY HEAD FROM SIDE TO SIDE.

Here's a thought, George - why not up the tax on the dickbags who got us into this trouble in the first place? That's right: the WORKING CLASS AND THEIR FUCKING DEFAULTED MORTGAGES!

I guess that's just too easy, isn't it? YOU MOTHERFUCKER.

5. Simon Cowell.

He's permanently on the list. The MOTHERFUCKER.

A new Motherfucker List will be out soon. It will be just as cock-on as this one.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

Advertising kills advertising in the balls

2011-12-07T08:23:00.001-08:00

One of the things I enjoy most about advertising agencies is their ruthlessly enforced recruitment policy of employing account executives with spiffing bristolas.

Hang on. That's a different post.

One of the things I enjoy most about advertising agencies is the way an account director will brandish his credit card the minute I shout 'BEERZ!'

Hang on. That's a different post too.

Focus, Dave.

One of the things I enjoy most about advertising agencies is the way they constantly attempt to kill the very thing their clients want from them: advertising.

Yes! THAT'S what this post is about! I'm back on course.

I've been presented at by several agencies who want to kill advertising, usually with some cross-eyed planner committing the murder. 'It's dead,' they say. 'It's changed. If you just do advertising, you may as well take your brand and throw it into a well full of shit and snakes and napalm.'

Then they begin the inevitable conversation about conversations and I reach for my Big Box of Self Harm.

One agency told me 'TV's dead!' He looked surprised when I said, 'I ran a TV campaign with your agency last month, you dopey cuntpot.' After 15 seconds of looking blanker than Bruce Forsyth watching Skins, he said, 'Did you include a hashtag?'

Over the years, and with acceleration worthy of a pissed French chauffeur, the ad business has been trying to rebrand. (They should do what they do to me when I rebrand - charge me six figures for a new typeface and a full-stop rotated by 45 degrees. That's always the fucking answer to my problems, apparently.)

I think you agency boyz are making a mistake. We all think the ad industry is full to the ceiling with cunts, twonks, shitpipes, motherfuckers and fassy-cleaners - not to mention assorted dogknobs and jizzgarglers. That's a given. But what would we think of the same people if they said they worked in 'change manifestation' or 'futurescoping' or...FUCKING CHRIST - THE NAMES YOU CUNTS COME UP WITH IN THE REAL WORLD ARE SO STUPID I CAN'T EVEN PARODY THEM.

We can just about bear to deal with you as it is. Don't become even more fucking loathsome. Your industry will collapse and you'll come knocking on my door asking for a fucking job.

(You can't fucking have one. We don't want your type in our business, thank you very much.)

So just accept that you're salesmen with funny trousers, not 'difference architects' or 'brand envisionistas' and we'll all get on fine.

Now fuck off. I've got some work to delegate to my advertising agency.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

The client Christmas bonus

2011-12-02T13:36:00.000-08:00

My dear, dear friends.

To take my mind off working with Rupert Abbott, the world's biggest slab of penile gristle (that's an official title pending confirmation from the Guiness Book of World Records), I thought I'd describe unto you one of the few perks of life as a client.

(Few perks is right. These days, with financial prudence so essential, many of the niceties of our professional life have gone. Lunches are now strictly three courses. I work at least 14 hours a week. I can no longer claim my fishing license on expenses. The list goes on and on.)

However, it's nice to know we still get our Christmas bonus.

Not our actual Christmas bonus. Our other Christmas bonus. The one bestowed upon us by our agency partners.

It's an age-old tradition that follows some well-rehearsed phases. It begins in November when we clients begin the 'Murmurings of Aspiration'. We casually drop into conversation with the agency such things as, 'Did I ever mention that I'm a huge fan of very expensive whisky?' and 'I do so adore business class flights to Bangkok' and 'The day I tire of Rolex watches is the day I detach my colostomy bag and walk into the Thames'.

Next come the 'Puzzlings of the Distant Aunt', where we mention in passing all the relatives we haven't bought Christmas presents for because we have next to no fucking clue what women in their seventies want - especially women in their seventies who spend most of their time, as far as we can gather, talking about the vaginal ailments of their friends.

Finally, in the days before Christmas, we begin the 'Hastenings of the Account Director', where we make direct calls to our ADs and suggest things like, 'The very pressing need I'm feeling to put my account up for pitch might go away if the iPod-shaped hole in my desk was suddenly to be filled. Actually - there are fourteen iPod-shaped holes.'

The generosity of agencies, media independents, production companies, photographers and printers is sometimes amazing to behold.

And if it isn't, I fucking have words. Specifically, the words, 'I'm putting the account up for review, you stingy jizzsack.'

I can't stand meanness. Especially at Christmas.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

The Union of Advertising Professionals

2011-11-27T14:13:00.001-08:00

Take a look at the title of this post.

If you're thinking, 'It says 'The Union of Advertising Professionals', well fucking done, genius. What else do you do? Walk upright? Breathe? Ingest food and pass it through your rectum as fecal waste? Here, have a medal, you dopey cunt.

If, however, you're thinking 'That makes absolutely no fucking sense whatsoever, Dave, because such a union doesn't exist', then you're onto something. I mean, you're not as sharp as me, obviously, but you're not a total Murs.

The question is, why doesn't such a union exist? After all, these are days of mass action, united protest, the 99% standing against...er...like, banks and stuff and being poor. (Is it? Is that what's happening? I really try to avoid learning anything about other people, really. Mostly, I find, other people are far less interesting than me.)

Anyway, why isn't there a Union of Advertising Professionals? The answer is simple: ARE YOU FUCKING MENTAL, AGENCIES ARE DIRTIER HOOKERS THAN THAT THING YOU ENDED UP WITH IN BERLIN WHO COULD OPEN TINS OF BEANS WITH HER FOOF.

It's what I love most about agencies. Like hookers, there will always be one out there desperate enough to grip the sheets, bend over and, to the sound of the surgical gloves mm-popping on, sob 'Okay. I'll do it.'

I have spent many hours trying to think of a request so ridiculous, barefaced, unimaginable and downright offensive that no agency, anywhere, would agree to it.

So far, I've come up with one: Will you join a Union of Advertising Professionals?

None of them would touch it. Not with a barge pole. Not even with my barge pole, which is a fucking doozy.

Over the years, agencies have meekly handed over control of the work they do, they way they operate, the way they're paid, their ownership of the work they produce - it's all ours, baby! What's left for a union to protect?

I could call my agency up right now and say, 'Change the headline and the picture, change the structure of my account team so I only talk to Account Directors, I'll pay you after nine months and when I put the account up for review on a whim I expect you to pay me for the privilege of pitching - and all I'd hear is the furious scribbling of the dollop on the end of the phone taking notes before repeating it all back to me to make sure they'd got it right.

It's fucking great! And now you fucking twonks have handed over the family jewels, the shirt off your back and your Nan's ashes, YOU AIN'T GETTING THEM BACK!

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

Life under Abbott

2011-11-25T01:32:00.001-08:00

My friends, fellow marketing professionals and all you other cunts.

My life at the moment is, putting it gently, about as much fun as being gang-fisted by an army of massive-handed psychotic sex criminals with deep-seated anger issues.

Why? Because Rupert Abbott is now my colleague. So what is a working day with this insufferable cock-pipe like? I describe it below. Read, learn, drop your jaw in shock, feel extreme sympathy for the DK then mobilise yourselves as a fearsome, vengeful army of brutal killers and wipe him from the planet.

1. Morning meetings.

Yes. You read that right. Abbott, the speck of dog-flob that he is, insists on a 'catch-up' every fucking morning, 'before the guys get in'. BEFORE THE GUYS GET IN. In other words, he expects ME to arrive before the fucking drones! I don't get paid more than those twonks to do more work. I get paid more because I can do amazing things between the hours of 11am and 12.30pm. Or 12 noon, if it's a Friday, Wednesday, Tuesday or Monday.

2. Reports.

While I was in a coma, Abbott started writing reports for the board. Reports full of figures and facts and boring shit that only non-creative dullbollocks are into. There isn't a single culture-fisting idea in any of his reports. It's all projected sales and campaign results and metrics and...God, I'm getting a fucking headache.

3. Water.

The cunt only drinks water. Fucking gallons of it. His bladder must work harder than Simon Cowell's fucking girdle.

4. He talks to the drones.

He moved his desk out into what I call 'Mordor' - the open-plan bit where Yvonne and Julie and whatever-the-fuck-they're-all-called sit. He gave up his office! What a fucking dope! Now he has to sit amongst them and soak up the intellectual spatter as they waste air with talk of their tampons and their babies and their hopes and their dreams.

I see them through the shutters of my office. Laughing. But the laughing stops when I walk out there - because they know authority when they see it. The pointless cunts.

That lot is just the start of it. But the combined effect of having Lord Shitfister as a colleague is something almost intangible - it's created a change in the workplace that I struggle to define.

Put it this way - I saw...what's her name, the fat one, face like apricot yoghurt, can't remember...I saw her smile the other day.

Do they...do they like Rupert Abbott more than me?

OF COURSE THEY FUCKING DON'T!

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

I don't care WHAT you say - it's genius.

2011-11-16T02:34:00.000-08:00

Some people have said that Sapient Nitro's pop video / recruitment tool is, among other things, an execrable piece of unmitigated shit, an exercise in self-indulgence not seen since the invention of Katie Price, a smear of cow smegma on a smear of cow shit on a smear of cow fuck, the worst idea ever brought to life, an insult to human evolution and foul enough to make The Yorkshire Ripper think, 'Maybe I'm not so bad after all.'

But they're wrong.

It's actually brilliant. And the reason it's brilliant is because everybody says it isn't brilliant.

How do I know this?

Because it happens to me all the fucking time.

I'm forever being told that my ideas are 'fecal drivel', 'cacky fuckjuice', 'stale enema water', 'rubbish like rubbish has never achieved' and 'a terrible, haunting joke that will cause nightmares and an urge to self-harm forever'.

But I'm a marketing golgotha. A marketing Ron Jeremy. A marketing Dalai Lama. My ideas have been proven to be phenomenal time and time and time again. Cloudvertising? Dadvertising? Both mine - both amazing, both totally unworkable (further proof that an idea is phenomenal), both the spark that caused raging brushfires of jealousy across the marketing world that is in my marketing department.

So, don't worry, Sapient boys! You and me are brothers in creative ideationised futurebombing. We set the agenda, you and me. We're cut from the same cloth - and it's cloth that has 'genius' written all over it in fucking big letters, in red, in comic sans (the greatest typeface of all time), with a drop shadow and some cool Powerpoint effects on it, like a ripple or something.

When everyone says 'How in the name of GOD did you let that piece of crow bile even become a distant half-thought in the bit of your mind where you keep the livid memories of seeing your dad rimming your mum on the kitchen table?' That's when you know you're right. It's the rule I follow every single day, my friends.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

I have been bummed

2011-11-14T05:40:00.000-08:00

Oh, treachery.

Treachery, with your monochrome soul and your cold, long fingers stretching into our hearts unbidden, squeezing out gently the very life we live.

Treachery, your name is Human Resources. And you are the very pinnacle of biblical evil on this human earth.

In short, I've been bummed right up the clacker by those cuntaloupes in AITCH FUCKING ARE.

As Snoop Dogg, or perhaps Ghostface Killah, might say, let me break it down.

This morning, I returned to work for the first time since emerging triumphant from a months-long scrap with what my doctor called 'The hardest fucking coma I have EVER seen.' (He didn't strictly use those words, but he had a look in his eyes - one of total admiration and respect - that told me all I needed to assume.)

Our HR Director, Paul D'Ong, (he's new - used to work in polyfibres), called me on Friday to suggest a 9am meeting to discuss my return.

So, I kicked the doors of reception in, bang on time at 11.30, and spent a while joking with the girls on the desk. (Bless those girls! If anybody can beat the joke they played on me, I'd like to meet them. They had these expressions of total horror on their faces when I walked in and one of them ran off in tears! BRILLIANT! They kept it up until I left too! Fucking LOVE those girls! 'But they said you weren't coming back!' they kept wailing. 'Waah, waaah, waah!' GENIUS!)

Anyway. Paul D'Ong called me into his office.

I did not warm to him. A scrofulous, scrotumular boil of a man, he lurked damply at his desk, festering over a mug of something with a milky skin on it. He bore the mildewy aspect of a man who spent his life either cowering to his superiors, or victimising those below him. I knew his sort. He was a denizen of the committee, the stationery cupboard, the minuted contact report, the timesheet.

He was, essentially, a horrid cockblob.

'Be seated, David,' he gargled.

I be'd seated.

'I've been tasked with, if you will, greasing your entrance,' he continued.

'Greasing my what?' I said.

'Your entrance into the new-look marketing department, David,' he replied, all simpering vowels and claggy glottals. He wore a smile as faint as a memory.

'The new-look marketing department? Have they redecorated or something?'

'No, no. We have restructured. You have a new colleague with whom to collaborate.'

I didn't like the fucking sound of that. So I said, 'I don't like the fucking sound of that.'

'Come, come, David. This is the age of cross-pollination, team-centric ideation, togetherness foreverness...'

'Fuck off. Who's this new colleague?'

'Oh, I think you've heard of him. His name is Rupert Abbott.'

The world stopped.

Rupert Abbott is...was...the Marketing Director at our main competitor, the market leader. He has always been an unmitigated dickprong, shitbar and fuckhole.

It's all here, here and here. Rupert Abbott, basically, is Darth Vader to my Luke Skywalker.

No, he's not - he'd be my dad. He's Cain to my Abel.

No, he's not - he'd end up killing me. He's General Zod to my Superman.

Yeah. I think that stacks up. Basically, he's a fucking douchecrack and I'm great. He's all stupid digital bullshit and I'm proper ads with birds and bristolas in them. He's all 'new era of consumer engagement', I'm all '10% OFF MUST END TODAY'. He's chalk, I'm cheese. (With the proviso that cheese is obviously way better than chalk. Way better.)

'I absolutely refuse to work with that fuckhound,' I protested. 'He's a tool, a dick and a tool. And he knows nothing. And he's a twonk. And a tool.'

'I'm sorry you feel like that, David,' slimed D'Ong. 'But tell him yourself - he's sitting just over there.'

Gasp!

I turned to see Abbott ensconced on a sofa, reading something called 'The Republic' by Plato. (No fucking last name - just 'Plato'. Dick!) He'd been obscured by a pot plant when I walked in.

'Hello, David,' he said, calmly.

'Hello, Rupert, ' I said, not calmly.

Fuck!

I felt very much at that point like slicing off my own cock and balls. But I'll see how the kid develops. Then I'll fire him like Gaddafi in a sewer.

I will not be shaken from my course.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

What's new in adland?

2011-11-11T01:29:00.000-08:00

Having spent some months locked in a violent, no-holds-barred, tear-your-cock-and-balls-off, pub-car-park fist-off with a coma, I've missed the developments that have swept through adland during that time.

So, with my urethra tube removed and my various colostomy attachments gone, I thought I'd take out my Knockoculars and survey the advertising, marketing, communicationing and customer engagementing industries.

(You know, I'll miss those colostomy attachments - I really will. Nothing beats taking a shit without even knowing about it. It's such a gift. We should all have them fitted at birth.)

Anyway, what's the scene on the horizon of the landscape in the vista across the topography of the panorama I see before me?

Let's see.

Advertising

Right. What's happening with my first love? Advertising is the go-to trollop in my marcomms brothel, so I'm expecting a lot.

Oh. Oh God. Oh, Jesus and fucking Mary. What in the name of Simon Cowell's quim is this? This is...this is a fucking hate crime. This should go on trial at the Hague. This is...I can't find the words. This is worse than cat rape. This might even be cat rape - only cat rape perpetrated by a dog, which is the worst kind of cat rape imaginable.

Who are these hateful warblers? What is this? The Abu Ghraib Torture Choir?

What happened? What the FUCK happened? I NEED FUCKING ANSWERS.

Digital

Well, let's hope our digital brethren have spent the last months continuing the mindfucking revolution they're always telling us they started when they started slowing down the internet with their pointless shit all those years ago.

Hmm.

Let me see if I've got this straight. You've spent time, effort, thought and money on allowing me to point my phone at a coffee cup and make it look like whimsical cartoon characters are frolicking about it in a snowbound festive scene?

This gives me nothing more than 'entertainment', am I right?

Well, chaps, if that's your idea of entertainment, you're clearly a bunch of toddler-aged elves with attention-deficit disorder and a fucking Peter Pan complex worthy of PEE WEE CUNTING HERMAN. Fuck you, fuck your wives, fuck your pets, and fuck your brains, suspended as they are in sweety juice, nappy-squeezings, the dribble of little kittens and fucking cutey-pop fizzy bubbles.

Are you fucking stupid? Starbucks is for adults, you cuntshots, you spunkmops, you bowls of shit!

Still, I like the fact one can share one's cute little coffee experience. How cute! I know all my friends would love their in-box filled with this infantile, pointless, life-sapping enema-water.

Is this it? Seriously? I've been in a fistfuckfightfest with a coma since April and all you bunch of jizzends have come up with is THIS load of old horse-fudge?

It looks like I'm needed more than I ever was.

Well, I'm ready to answer the call. And I'll answer it with a one hand on the phone and the other on my ferocious penis, which I have just this minute named The Pink Dragon Of Justice.

Could this be my greatest ever era? You may depend upon it.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

COMA TO DADDY

2011-11-10T09:54:00.000-08:00

My fellow marketing professionals, my colleagues, my sons, my daughters, my brothers, my sisters, my teachers, my students, my barmen, my barmaids, my sex workers, my care workers, my off-licence sales advisors, my massage providers, my dreamers, my wanderers, my friends.

I have returned from beyond the grave.

Actually, scratch that.

I have returned from beyond Guildford.

I've been in a coma in a hospital in...actually, I won't say where. I don't want the place I was resurrected (no I don't think that's an overstatement) to become a place of worship or pilgrimage. The good people there are professionals and need to be left to do their work, not swamped by an army of panting trollops waving their bristolas and saying, 'You brought Davey back to life - bang my fassyhole off.'

No.

Let's just say I was saved, by special people, in a special place. (If you want to thank them, send me a donation and I'll pass it on. Serious.)

My mother (who is a skanky cunt-wart and deserves to have her fucking knees broken) said 'David has passed away.'

What she should have said is 'David has very nearly passed away, having made a poorly-executed attempt at auto-erotic asphyxiation while a trusted Thai ladyfriend mainlined certain secret remedial substances through a vein in his anus, an activity which broke no UK laws, nor compromised the health or safety of anyone but himself.'

But she didn't. And I aim to find out why.

I also aim to find out the following...

a) Why, after several months asleep, I don't feel refreshed in any way - in fact I've got a bit of a headache,

b) Why my balls are the size and shape of a Tellytubby,

c) Why St Pauls has started operating as a campsite (it can't be that bad, can it?),

d) Why I have only one memory of my time in a coma - a single image in my mind of Nigella Lawson deepthroating her own leg.

e) What the fuck is happening at work and whether I'm still a marketing-leading, market-shaping, market-fucking marketing mastermind.

Actually, I know the answer to the last one. Of course I fucking am!

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

Dave Knockles is dead

2011-05-20T16:34:00.000-07:00

Hello everybody who knows David.

This is David's mother.

It is with some regret that I must tell you that David has passed away.

His body was found in his bed, alongside a note which read , simply, 'You owe me £220 you cunt.'

Police have surmised that this was a final demand from a creditor, possibly a prostitute. Or a plumber. They're not sure.

David leaves a mother (me), a house and a job.

He will be missed by all who knew him, sort of.

Although, if we're honest, he was a bit of a disappointment, wasn't he?

His funeral was held last week at a graveyard somewhere. I couldn't make it myself, because I had an internet date. I understand that it was a very moving ceremony.

David left me only his blog and twitter login details, which are fucking useless to me, but which means I suppose I should let you know that he's finally karked it after causing me nothing but trouble.

Anyway, what's done is done and we can't change the past, including having children you shouldn't have had.

The cause of death, apparently, was 'massive coronary explosion exacerbated by anal trauma and sexual upheaval'.

Please join me in...whatever.

Tata, David. I will remember the son you could have been. You useless dick.

The Royal Wedding ad. Because everyone else has.

2011-04-26T02:49:00.000-07:00

Good day, my fellow marketing professionals.

Let me ask you a question.

Have you prepared your Royal Wedding-themed marketing activity? Because the big day is tomorrow and it's getting a little bit tight.

(Well, not for me - I only came up with my stuff last night and the agency are on it now. They laughed at first when I told them, because they thought I was joking or something, but they stopped the chuckling when I had them all in the office at 9pm yesterday. Shame I couldn't be there, but I was watching something on TV. The pub TV.)

Anyway, it's absolutely imperative that you've arranged something for the Royal Wedding. Everyone else has. And if everyone else has, it must be right, right?

I mean, everyone's got a TV, haven't they? And a phone. And a car. So if everyone has a Royal Wedding ad, do you want to be the weird cunt in the ill-fitting trousers with no TV, no phone and no car? The bloke who goes everywhere with a holdall and some sandwiches? The bloke whose house smells of dust and cat litter? The bloke they eventually arrest because he has the eviscerated corpses of 15 foreign exchange students gaffer taped to the rafters in his loft?

Do you? No. You don't. So get a fucking Royal Wedding ad QUICK.

This, of course, is one of the golden rules of marketing: do what your competitors are doing.

Agencies like to tell you to zig when everyone zags, or be a monkey in the kingdom of apes, or take the road less travelled, or fly a kite on rainy days or whatever their pissed chairman spunked out of his Mont Blanc in the early 80s, but this is all pure horse shit, cow jizz and dog piss.

Everybody knows that what your competitors are doing is better than what you do. This is the paranoia-petrol that fuels every marketing department in the world. We gather round our competitors' ads and, though they may feature a blind albino hippo fucking a toddler to death, we think to ourselves, 'Wow, man. They've got a hippo fucking a toddler to death. Maybe we should get a hippo fucking a toddler to death.'

Why do we do it? Because as sure as Simon Cowell has an Oedipus complex, our MD's wife will have shown the competitor ad to him over the weekend and he'll in a foul mood come Monday, when he will inevitably say, 'What do I pay you lot for? They've got a hippo fucking a toddler to death!'

So, what's the Dave Knockles course of action? I call my agency and say, 'What do I pay you lot for? They've got a hippo fucking a toddler to death!' Then I throw something at a wall and storm off to the pub.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

The DK Guide To Retaining Your Clients

2011-04-13T04:09:00.000-07:00

My fellow marketing professionals, I have been asked many, many times whether I am in full control of my career, my drinking, my faculties, my bowels, my mind and my car. And the answer to most of those is, 'Weeeelll, a bit. Sometimes. Or, not. Actually, no.'

However, I am in full, total, complete and unrelenting control of my professional life, thanks to a set of rules I pass on to my agencies - and expect them to follow to the letter.

I reveal some here. This will help you get the most from your agency. And if you're from an agency, it will help you retain your clients for longer.

Rule 1. Mouth is open. Should be shut.

The agency is talking. But the agency should be listening. So why is the agency talking? Probably because they want to expose you to 'ideas'. (You can see the next rule about that.) I like talking. And I like people I am paying to listen to me. Then I like people I am paying to agree with me, do what I want or laugh at my jokes. If you're not doing one of those three things, you must be talking. And as the rule states, 'Mouth is open. Should be shut.'

Rule 2. The ideas are MINE.

I know agencies are supposed to have ideas. But I have ideas. And I'm the one with the cash. So if you have an idea, and I have an idea, whose idea do you think I'll go for? That's right. My idea.

Of course, you may have a better idea. But seeing as I'm paying for your ideas, it's actually my idea. So however you look at it, the ideas are mine, mine, mine.

Rule 3. Do more, quicker, better, for less.

Someone else will. So why can't you?

Rule 4. Agency buys the beerz.

This was actually the 11th commandment, but they only ever seem to give you the first 10 in church. This rule is so set in stone, it's a fucking fossilised fossil. Break this rule and you will offend me more than if you were to fuck my dog to death.

Rule 5. My mother is nearly target audience.

So I run every ad past her. This is research with the (nearly) target audience and is essential to getting the ads right every time. The results speak for themselves: she makes changes to every single ad, which proves conclusively that they were wrong. How much clearer do you want it?

Rule 6. The minute your win my business, you start losing it.

Accept the fact that you are only one phone call away from being fired, having to make a load of people redundant, seeing the story in the press, looking stupid and possibly getting fired yourself. That call is mine to make, and it could be literally fucking anything that makes me pick up the phone. So make sure you don't annoy me, bore me, ignore me, forget me, insult me, get too chummy, be too distant, push your ideas too hard, leave it to me to have all the ideas or make me buy the beerz, and you might be okay. But you probably won't be.

Rule 7. It's your fault.

Something has gone wrong. What do you think will happen. A) I'll stand in front of my MD and say 'Sorry, boss. It was my fault the TV ads had no web address or logo on because I was pissed when we had the meeting about that stuff and told them we were going to 'Break the mould on this one!''? Or B) I'll stand in front of my MD and say, 'That cuntbucket of an agency - if I told them once I told them a million times to put a web address and logo in the ad! It's fucking common sense!'

That's right. It's B. If you stump up the cash to pay for your mistake, you'll keep my business. If you don't, you're dead. Also, I would like you to say, 'I'm so sorry we left the web address and logo off the ad, Dave' while I look you right in the eye without evening flinching or showing any sign of remorse so you can truly understand that I am the fucking boss.

There we go. That should do for now. Stick to that lot and depending on which side of the busines you're on, you'll have happy clients / be able to fuck your agency black and blue.

You'd be amazed how many agencies stick to the rules! And still get fired! HA HA! Ain't marketing just a fucking dream. Well, for me!

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

I AM THE CLIENT! AND I AM BACK!

2011-04-11T03:10:00.001-07:00

Sometimes, like after you walked into the wrong room at a Soho basement members' club and found yourself in the middle of Fistfest Friday, you just want to go somewhere familiar and comforting and safe.

And for me, at this moment, that place is here. Home.

Sure, my other blog, I AM DAVE KNOCKLES, is a mind-felching insightotron that can destroy your balls at a thousand paces, but I have missed being here.

So let me jump right back into my favourite trousers and bring you up to speed with the changes I've been making to my working protocols.

Putting it simply, I've fired my agency.

After a very long and considered fifteen-minute process of assessment using an agreed analysis matrix (my opinion vs theirs) it was mutually agreed by me that they should fuck off and never darken my filofax ever again.

Why? Because they repeatedly flaunted the Rules of Good Agency Practice that I gave them when I was forced by my MD to have them as my agency.

'What's that, Dave?' you say. 'You have a rulebook on how agencies should behave in order to retain clients?'

Of course I do! Do you really think I just make this shit up on the spur of the moment, day by day, teetering along on a fine line between professional humiliation and abject failure, never sure deep down that what I'm doing is actually right, plagued by cold, bitter voices telling me to just quit now before I make myself look any more stupid, lonely and confused in a way that takes me directly back to the playground of a new school where the big boys told me I was going to get beaten up by the school ogre at home time and I hid in the toilets for two hours, locked in a cubicle, rocking back and forward saying 'Why me? Why me? Why me?' over and over again?

No way!

I have rules. And I'll tell you about them next time.

For now, let me just say that the agency took it as well as could be expected when I did the right thing and asked my PA to text them with the news.

The Chief Exec called me a few minutes later (thanks a million for not screening that call, PA) and said something about a 'talentless clown' and 'the kind of spineless shit that's killing this industry' to which I naturally replied, 'I think you've got the wrong number. This is Dave Knockles.'

He just carried on for a bit in the same way, then screamed 'I will ruin you! I will destroy your reputation! I will see to it that your name is mud in this town!'

HA! Good luck with that, cuntshoot! I asked a couple of agency contacts whether they thought my reputation could be destroyed and they just laughed and laughed and laughed. So fuck you, Mr Agency Chief Exec With No Fucking Idea! I cannot be defeated!

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

I AM THE CLIENT. AND I HAVE MOVED!

2011-01-31T07:15:00.000-08:00

My fellow marketing professionals. You can now find my insight, genius and wit at my new blog, which is called I AM DAVE KNOCKLES.

Bring an open mind. And a fresh pair of trousers.

Oooh! And milk! Bring milk. I'm always running out of milk.

Post mortem

2010-11-08T12:07:00.000-08:00

My friends. My dear, dear friends. My fellow marketing professionals. My brothers and sisters in brandcentric communications. My family of envelope-pushers, idea-busters, truth-bombers, paradigm-shifters and ball-belters.

I have news.

I am dead.

I mean, I'm not dead, obviously. When did a dead person ever type? (Not counting Dan Brown, of course. Fuck me - have you read any of that shit? If he wasn't dead when he wrote it, he needs a fucking colosssal excuse.)

No, I mean that my road is run, my race is closed, the show is up and the game is over. I can blog no more. This will be the last time I post here.

I know what you're thinking (and, in the case of the ladies, I know what you're screaming, sobbing and wailing): WHY, DAVE? WHHHYYYYY?

Well, the reasons are many and varied, but the most important are 1) I can't be fucking bothered, 2) Let's be honest - I probably lost it about 6 months after starting and should have cunted it on the head then, 3) My mother found my blog and told me to stop if I want a penny in inheritance, 4) I've pretty much said it all to the point that anyone who's been reading this for the last few months has the equivalent of a marketing degree, if not a P-fucking-hD.

I would like to thank you all for your interest, time, patience and continued support of what was, for a time, the best blog in the world, bar none, ever, without exception. (I don't think that's an overstatement, do you? I mean, name a better one. Go on. See? You fucking can't.)

I hope to return at some point in the future because, putting it bluntly, I'm too fucking good just to jack it all in. For now, though, I wish you good luck and good fortune. (Unless you're a complete shithound, in which case I wish you herpes.)

I am Dave Knockles. And I WAS THE CLIENT!

We win again

2010-11-01T09:51:00.000-07:00

Can you feel it, my agency friends? Can you feel something happening to you? Something slow, something inexorable, something very, very painful and humiliating?

I can tell you what that is: it's us, the clients, winning.

Every day, we're taking control of another square inch of your domain, crawling ever forward towards that special place where all that you hold dear and true is kept locked away.

Here's another example of it.

Some genius yank client has put his business up for pitch (which is a brilliant way to fuck agencies in their paphole anyway) and is also demanding that every competing agency hands over all pitch ideas (for next-to-fuck-all money) AND doesn't want them to pitch for any competitor business FOR TWO YEARS!

This is incredible work! What balls!

Not only are they fucking the agencies now, but also tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after, and so on and so on for ages! What a marvellous frigging wheeze! It also bends one up their competitors' bott-ends by taking agencies out of the market for the forseeable. Superbulent!

Of course, this is absolutely as it should be. Clients, deserve to own all work from pitches, even losing work, because nobody would have done the work if there'd been no pitch. (Even if we only called the pitch to screw the incumbent agency's fees down! Ooh, we are naughty!) So we're doing you a favour, really, when you think about it.

And, naturally, it is only common business sense to restrict the livelihood of an agency because they may, at some point, possibly, work with a competitor. (How dare they work with a competitor? How fucking dare they?)

What's really amazing, though, is that you agency boys just assume the position, bite the pillow and let us give it to you again - just like you always do.

I know, I know - it's demeaning and insulting and makes you die inside. I know. There, there. That's it - just let it out. Oh, you poor thing. Let it out, that's the way. Oooh, have a good blow - there we go. That's it. All better now?

Yes? Good. Now bite that fucking pillow again. I want some more free ideas, you slag.

And I shall have them.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

The adman's anecdote

2010-10-28T04:05:00.004-07:00

The other day - not Tuesday, the other day - I was introduced to my agency's figurehead. This is a man who, I was told, has won more business for his agency than anyone in its history, has handled some of the biggest brands in the world and is regarded in the business as a god. He dates from the days when a single man could devise the positioning, write the ad, charm the client and quadruple sales.

'Whatever', I said. 'Is he buying lunch?'

He was. So I agreed to meet him.

Now, on the upside, the old boy didn't mind shelling out for all the good stuff that clients like: champers, vodders, beerers, lobsterers, mixed grillers and claret 'n' WKDers.

But he also shat out a ball-hurtingly high number of that cornerstone of adland: The Adman's Anecdote.

For my younger fellow marketing professionals, some guidance: The Adman's Anecdote can only be delivered by an elder statesman - someone who saw the gold era of advertising.

It will begin with the words, 'You know...' followed by a pause. This pause is the signal to us, the mere mortals of the marketing world, to shut the fuck up, strap your arse, cock and balls in nice and tight, and get ready for a life-changing bit of insight.

The anecdote will then commence in earnest. Usually like this:

Sir George Pisspot once told me, when he was Chairman of Kodak, that they were having real trouble in the western states of America.

'What kind of problem, Sir George?' I asked (we were very close friends, you know).

'The bastards won't bloody well buy our bloody products. No matter what we do, the bastards won't buy anything. I'm thinking of pulling out of the place altogether!'

I said, 'Give me two weeks, Sir George. I'll see what I can do.'

So off I toddled to the west coast, and I talked to their product man over there, and their sales chap, and everyone else in the company, right down to the receptionist. And after a week, I got them all in the boardroom and said, 'I know what your problem is. But you're going to have to trust me 100% to fix it.'

Then I opened the boardroom door, and Brigitte Bardot walked in. (I'd called her - she's an old friend.)

Well, they were amazed.

I said, 'Meet the new face of Kodak.'

They just applauded. We did some beautiful ads. I wrote the ad where Bardot is looking out from the ad with the line, 'Why I take better pictures than you', and my signature was underneath. And another with a picture of Bardot in a pool, and the line, 'Who is the legend? The subject or the photographer?' with a picture of me and my signature underneath. And another, with just a big picture of me and my signature, with a little shot of Bardot, and the line, 'A legendary adman explains why Kodak takes better pictures. Even if you're just a woman.'

It was a very famous campaign. It quadrupled sales.

Well, I went back to Sir George and said, 'There you go Georgey Boy - I've conquered the wild west for you!'

He laughed and laughed and gave me a Bentley.

The anecdote will then end, and as far as I can tell, nobody has a fucking clue what it had to do with the conversation that preceded it, but nobody has the banjos to say, 'Sir? What the FUCK are you going on about, you old cuntslot? Don't you have an appointment with your proctologist to get to?'

Well, nobody had the banjos to say it until I turned up. His face was a picture! Of hate, mainly.

Still, you have to call it like you see it. I fucking do. Even when I'm absolutely smashed, which I was. A lot.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

You wankers

2010-10-28T04:05:00.003-07:00

So I'll blog a bit more

2010-10-28T04:05:00.001-07:00

But now I'm back

2010-10-28T04:04:00.000-07:00

I have been away

2010-10-28T04:00:00.000-07:00

Oh, my head

2010-10-19T12:08:00.000-07:00

I have had, for the last four days, a hangover of the kind that ravingly dipsomaniac tramps can only dream of.

Here's why.

As my last post revealed (shockingly and amazingly and like a tabloid newspaper with a massive pair of balls), I had caught my agency's CEO getting a chobble from a junior account exec (a boy one) and had gently negotiated my way back into the creative process.

(Previously, the same CEO had barred me from getting involved in any way in the creative at all, full stop, no way, never. I have no idea why he wouldn't want my incredible and envelope-pushing creative genius involved, but he bribed me with money and bristolas, so I didn't really question him.)

Naturally, being back in the creative fold demanded that I celebrate my banger and balls off, so I headed out into London in search of an establishment that would serve me a modest glass of shandy and a prawn bap.

And everything would have been fine if I had found such a place.

But all I could find were heaving boozers filled with dirty old skippers absolutely obsessed with robbing me of my dignity and innocence, and bar staff who simply refused to exchange my hard-earned loot for anything but pint pots filled with brandy, claret, WKD and brandy.

What's a boy to fucking doodle-do?

Well, after five or twelve of that kind of establishment, I very much tired of the whole jape and told Janice, Yvonne and Dawn from...whoever they worked for...that I wouldn't be able to fulfil the demands they'd been making of me for the previous hour. (These fucking women - bang us like that, gobble us there, spit on my things - they were unbelievable. Well, I think that's what they were saying. There's a chance that it was me who was saying it, but even so. Jesus.)

So, I moved on in search of a more spiritually enriching venue for my celebration and, after a quick dart into The Booze Pantry for some medicinal four-litre bottles of Latvian whisky, wouldn't you know it, I happened upon a church. The door policy seemed quite strict (they were locked) but I managed them to talk them, and then kick them, into opening up for me.

Now, I like a church. And this one was just perfect. It had a nice stained glass window that was beautifully and evocatively lit by the golden neon light on the adult book shop over the way. It was very soothing. So I did what I think the Lord would have wanted: I filled the font with scotch and stuck my face in it.

Some time later, according to medical reports, I died.

Not just in a figurative way. I very definitely died, with the heart stopping, the breathing ceasing and the bodily fluids exiting from all the major orifices (they don't fucking show that on Casualty, do they?)

Luckily, I was disturbed by the vicar's wife who was coming to prepare the church for a fete the next day. Seeing me prostrate on the deck, with that beatific light bursting through the stained glass and onto my lifeless body, she came over all saintly and leapt on top of me, frantically pumping my chest and performing the breathy-gob life-saving stuff.

Dear reader, it worked! (Thank fuck, eh? Can you imagine a world with zero Knockles?)

Now, the vicar's wife, seeing me bathed in glorious light through the stained glass window, clearly thought I was in some way special. You know, blessed or, possibly, the second coming. Because when she saw my eyes open, she sat there, straddling me, roaring 'Yes! Yes! YES!'

Obviously, that's when the vicar, walked in.

Did he like what he saw? Clearly not. He ran over to his wife and shouted, 'VERONICA! OF ALL THE PLACES!', and started pulling her off me, quite roughly for a man of the cloth.

In my slightly befuddled state (I'd just fucking died, remember) I perceived this as an act of aggression and I stood up and...well...kicked his fucking teeth in. And properly. I can't remember much, but I do recall hitting him squarely in his googlebox with a pretty hefty crucifix, and drop-kicking him over the altar. I also called him 'God's fuckpiece' and a 'holy shit', which I admit now was unfair.

His missus did a lot of noisy begging and pleading that put me off my stride, so I staggered off into the night to recuperate. After a night like that, I needed a darned good rest!

And I had one, once I'd got back home from Delilaz. (Well, they had a BOGOF on lesbo shows - it would have been a shame to miss it just because an hour earlier I was clinically dead for an undetermined amount of time.)

That, then, is why I had a hangover.

The story has a happy ending, mind (apart from that trip to Delilaz). I popped along for a chat with the vicar's wife to explain everything. (Her face was a picture! Of a very frightened woman, to be exact.) She was understandably jumpy and mentioned calling the police but I bunged her a big wodge of loot to cover all the costs and buy some new bibles, and she was as good as gold. I also threatened to really fuck her husband up if she breathed a word to the filth. So - all smiles in the end!

The lesson, though, my fellow marketing professionals, is this: don't die. It can leave you with a fucking awful headache.

Of course, death can't touch Dave Knockles.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

Eat my balls, agency motherfuckers!

2010-10-14T12:44:00.000-07:00

My fellow marketing professionals, I have news.

I am finally free of the creative shackles placed upon me by my agency! (You may remember that they requested that I stay away from my advertising and let them, the 'experts', do it all.)

They also offered me a very attractive remuneration package and as many girls as I could fit into my trousers.

(Now, I am a man of integrity so I took that bri...incentive because I knew it was better for the development of that agency. They'd get nowhere with me always showing them how to tear down the walls of their minds with all kinds of crazy creative shitbombs. They'd learn nothing! No - better to let them figure it out themselves and donate the massive monthly bonus they gave me to charity. Which I will definitely do, once I've decided which one to give it to. Serious. Also, I have to pay off the swimming pool I'm having put into my front garden.)

Well, that was how it was. But that is not how it is. Not since today when happenings happened, and occurrences occurred.

I was in the agency for a regular update meeting, of the sort where they try to tell me things about sales and profit and all that shittage, and I just tear the room to pieces by dropping mental depth charges like, 'Don't tell me about sales. Tell me about smiles' and 'Where does my reputation begin and my brand end?' and 'Where the fuck are the croissants I like, you useless cuntburgers?'

It was all going as it always did. So when the planner stood up, I made my usual sprint for the shitter, where I intended to stay until I thought it safe to return.

I am so very glad that I did. Because when I booted open the trap door and prepared to walk in I beheld a wonderful sight.

There, sitting on the throne, wearing an expression of blameless rapture, was the agency's chief executive. (Yes - that one! The one who suggested I fuck off out of the creative.)

And there he was.

Being fellated.

By a very young account executive.

And not a female one.

Now, Dave Knockles is no homophobe. What two people do with their own fists in the privacy of their own home is their business. But I happen to know that this particular Soho toffee-bonce has a wife and two kids called something like Fudgey-Mint and Apple Mac.

So, after he'd pulled his bespoke trousers up, and sent the young Charles or Henry or Oliver on his tearful way, and said 'Fuck' several times, and stopped crying, I thought it only fair to say, 'Dear oh dear oh dear, my old mate. Now I'm no planner, but that looks to me like the kind of demographic cross-pollination your missus definitely wouldn't approve of. Or is that just evidence of agency integration?'

At first, he just called me a cunt. But finally, he said, 'What do you want?' (Then he called me a cunt again.)

'Well, I'm struggling to make ends meet on that measly bung you're giving me,' I said. 'I've got a fucking swimming pool to pay for - so you'll need to double the dosh.'

'Fine,' he said. (And called me a cunt.)

'And I'll need to approve the creative work from now on,' I added.

This time, he really called me a cunt. And a fuckface, a shit-eating cock, a stupid prick-end, an idiot bastard and a moron. But in the end, what could he do? (Apart from call me a cunt again.)

I walked back into the meeting and, do you know, I actually enjoyed the planner's presentation. Particularly the bit on...actually, I tell a lie. It was still so tedious and confusing I wanted to shit my own liver. I just had a big smile on my face.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT! AND I AM FUCKING BACK!

I have been to hell and back

2010-10-12T08:00:00.000-07:00

My friends, I have been sick.

But not like you're sick. I mean sick like Chernobyl residents, lepers, bubonic plague victims and Michael Jackson.

Yes. That fucking sick.

It began as a small throaty tickle which, frankly, I ignored because I was drinking absinthe at the time. And smoking a cigar. And eating a balti.

I couldn't ignore it the next morning, however, when I woke with a noseful of luminous gloop and a voice like a 70-a-day smoker. (Which I'm not. I've never smoked. It's a sign of weakness. Unlike drinking, which is a sign of immense power and coolness. These are facts.)

So, being a management machine and shining example to my staff, I struggled into work at 10.30 and battled through as best I could, though I needed a really good think in my darkened office from about 11am until...ooh...about 4.30pm. I just asked the work experience girl to come in every half an hour and wipe the mucus from my nose, mouth, face, shoulders, arms and shoes, where it seemed to be pooling quite a lot.

The next day, matters worsened. The flu-like symptoms seemed to remain constant, but I developed a positively brutal attack of diarrhea, coupled with painful stomach cramps and explosive vomiting.

On more than one occasion, this required me to fire a stream of molten brown lava from my clackshoot while at the same time yacking like a teenager on neat scotch and raw bacon.

This wouldn't be a problem if my bathroom had been designed with this tricky manaoeuvre in mind. I've performed the 'double evacuation' many times. But my executive toilet is some way from my executive sink and my executive bath. This made things complicated. And fucking messy.

In the end, I developed a technique which I call 'poopee'. Essentially, you poo just like you'd pee - from a distance, aiming into the bowl, firing an arc of feculence through the air to its target. Given the fact that I was, more or less, pissing out of my arse, this was quite simple.

Well, after the first few goes. Sort of.

Let's just say that there was a certain amount of collateral damage. (The cleaner's face the next day was a fucking picture when she saw it! Strangely, after she'd cleaned up, she seemed to have lost any power of facial expression at all. She looked almost...I dunno...dead. You know, inside. Weird. Cheeky cow asked for extra pay, though! 'You can't have extra,' I replied. 'But you can come back tomorrow and do it again.' I'm not a monster, you know.)

Well, after that you'd think it couldn't get any worse.

But it did.

I mean, I shat the bed pretty much constantly for the whole next day, and the day after that I went to the doctor and puked in her mouth.

Not on purpose! God, no! She was examining my throat and flicked my sick button with the wooden thing she was holding my tongue down with. The rest was down to mother nature, or God, or whoever designed the sick button. It wasn't my fucking fault, that's for sure.

I'd been really battling to keep a hold of my lunch (nothing too rich - just a couple of Pot Noodles and a box of scotch eggs and a microwaveable burger and a packet of cheese balls) so I was definitely due a bit of a barf.

Well, I let it go just as she was opening her mouth to speak. It's actually quite striking how much she swallowed. And - get this for irony! - she was just about to say 'Try not to throw up again - it's bad for your throat'! (She told me this when I phoned her in hospital later. She was recovering after having her stomach pumped, and a small operation to remove a scotch egg from her esophagus. She seemed stoical, if psychologically damaged.)

After that, things got really bad. But I won't go into it because I'm not one of those people who goes on and on about their illness in graphic and disturbing detail.

Anyway, now I feel as chipper and tremendous as ever, so I'm going into the agency to demand a room full of people come up with solutions to problems I don't have.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

Client Prerogative

2010-10-05T01:15:00.000-07:00

During my many years as a guide, mentor, guru and source of inspiration to the younger generation of marketing professionals, I've had to develop teaching tools that will appeal to that audience.

One technique I've found particularly effective is to base my teachings on a popular song. And what could be more popular than Bobby Brown's seminal 'My Prerogative'? Everybody loves My Prerogative.

So, here's the DK version, which I have renamed 'Client Prerogative'. Singing this (with dance moves) to a room full of wide-eyed, gobsmacked young marketing wannabes is always a highlight. (Although I've actually only done it once - which is weird, right? You'd think people would want to learn how to be a client through the medium of funk and dance.)

You can read the original lyrics here. Mine, I think we can agree, make them look shitting useless.

Client Prerogative
(Brown, Knockles)

Everybody's talking all this stuff about me,
They all think I'm im-press-ive,
I'll take a small commission,
To help sway my decision,
That's client prerogative.

They say I'm lazy,
I really don't care,
That's client prerogative.
They say I'm abusive,
But they can go and fuck themselves in the clackypipe,
Getting paid is how I live.

Some messy questions, how am I so dyanmic?
But they don't understand my zen-like focus on the bottom line,
I really don't know the deal about her brother,
Or who her brother is, or who she is for that matter,
In fact, this part of the original song makes no fucking sense, sing...

Everybody's talking all this stuff about me,
They all think I'm e-ffect-ive,
Product in the headline,
I'll miss your every deadline,
That's client prerogative.

It's the way that I wanna live,
I can do just what I feel,
No-one can tell me what to do,
Cos what I'm doing, I'm doing for the ongoing improvement of profitability and consumer delight.

Don't get me wrong,
I'm not really souped,
Ego trips not my thing,
All these agencies,
Really get me down,
I see nothing wrong in
Spreading myself around.

It's client prerogative,
I can do what I wanna do,
And if you're giving out 'gifts',
I'll certainly take a few.

Everybody's talking all this stuff about me,
They all think I'm pro-duct-ive,
Bristolas in my advert,
Make me very glad-vert,
That's client prerogative.

That's client prerogative (repeat 'til fade).

If you're a young marketing buck (or buckess, or whatever the female equivalent of a buck is) then try singing this to yourself a few / hundreds of times a day and see how your career takes off.

I will share more of my groundbreaking teaching tips in the coming weeks. Or I may not. That's client prerogative!

(HA HA! I am a funny fucker, I really, really am. My agencies have always endorsed this view when I've asked them the question, 'Am I a funny fucker or what?' They all say 'Yes!' All of them. So I must be.)

Anyway, I've got to go and do something for the afternoon in a location that's conveniently close to my house.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

Man appears in ad

2010-10-04T08:04:00.000-07:00

HOLD ON TO YOUR DANGLEBAGS AND PREPARE TO HAVE YOUR MINDHOLE BLOWN WIDE OPEN!

A man off the telly is set to appear in a TV ad in which he holds a product up in front of the camera and attempts to forge a link in the minds of consumers between himself and the people who make the product - even though that link does not in actual fact exist at all!

The man, the least famous of three quite famous men, has in the past claimed to have some affinity for the product - though this turns out to be the general product, rather than this specific product, which he has never actually mentioned at all.

The decision to use the man as a 'figurehead' for the product has been heralded as a groundbreaking step in the world of advertising. One man, an advertising expert called something, described the use of the celebrity as 'a complete first, a never-before-seen strategy, a turning point for our profession and a revelation for the world at large'.

While some dissenters, mainly the entire general public, are suggesting that this has been done more times than Madonna and is, in fact, so tiresomely predictable that it makes them want to reach inside their own throats and tear out their genitals from the inside, many inside advertising are - quite literally - wanking themselves to a soapy fruition and convincing themselves that this isn't a bone idle pissing away of a client's cash.

Jesus, I'm bored of advertising. I might go and do something else more enjoyable. Like fuck my own face with a cricket bat I've had marinading up a cow's clacker for a month. (I actually have one of those. I just can't remember where I left the cow.)

How hard can it be, really?

If you're going to have a celeb, have one with bristolas that look like the winner of the prize pumpkin competition. Especially if you're advertising beer! It's fucking simple, but you lot seem to consistently and willfully ignore the golden nuggets of 24-carat solid gold diamond bullion advice I'm dishing out.

Jesus!

Anyway, I'm off to do whatever I fucking like.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

Rebranding. The Secrets.

2010-09-27T12:08:00.000-07:00

My fellow marketing professionals, I'm delighted to welcome you to this, my seminar on rebranding. Help yourself to refreshments and biscuits - but not the chocolate ones you clackerpipe because I saw them fucking first. (Jesus, you're a greedy cunt. Anyway, I coughed on them before you came in, so fucking forget it. Unless you want herpes.)

Now. I have covered this subject previously, and basically argued that the only reason for a rebrand is a) someone at the client end is bored of the logo or b) the marketing budget needs to be used up before some fuckhat from accounts takes it away.

(I've never understood this practice, by the way. ALL accountants know that departments use their budget up on useless shit because they'll lose what they don't spend this year off next year's budget. They KNOW this. In fact, I once went into accounts to argue the toss over an expenses claim (a bar bill of a couple of grand at Delilaz which was absolutely essential to the business because...I'll tell you later) and they were all frantically flicking through office supply catalogues, circling expensive chairs and elaborate staplers. Turns out they were trying to use up their own budget by the end of the year. That's right - they even take away budget FROM THEMSELVES if it isn't spent.)

Anyway, I'd like to add a little depth to my previous (undeniably fuckmazing) musings on this subject.

When considering a rebrand, the first decision you have to make is about your company's / product's name.

Do you want a new one?

To help reach that decision, a few questions you could ask yourself are 'Is my company's / product's name a load of old shitwipes?' 'Does it remind me of an ex-girlfriend / overly-familiar uncle / South American town where I got mugged, drugged and had my kidney stolen?' 'Do I...oooh...I dunno...you know...sort of...like...well, it's a bit...you know...hmm...sort of...you know...just...like...bleurgh? Like? You know?' That should help throw some light on things.

If you do decide on a name change, a small word of warning. Prepare to get financially fisted right up your little plinkyshoot. The agency will see it as an excuse to launch any number of trouser-fuckingly lengthy and expensive research projects, all of which will point to the inescapable truth of the name 'Hello', 'Bloop' or 'WeAre(insert old name)'.

Still, it'll involve a lot more meetings, lunches and generally complex-looking stuff to pass on to your gaffers, so it's not all bad. If anyone gets sniffy about the cost, just tell them that the guy who came up with the name 'Orange' is working on it. Even if he isn't. Which he won't be.

Next step is to think about your brand's current 'personality'. A good way to start is to imagine your brand is a person, then think about their characteristics and traits. Perhaps even give them a name!

So, is your brand a feisty young woman with an active social life? Or a dedicated, mature man with a patient and prudent approach to life? Then again, is it a right old cunticular fucklug who says things like 'Fare thee well, until the morrow' every time he leaves the office, and eats his sandwich at exactly the same fucking time every day, sitting there chewing and chewing and chewing every mouthful, and you just fucking know he's counting each bite so each morsel of the same ham and the same cheese and the same bread he's had every other cunting day gets the same perfect masticatory treatment before it slithers down that fucking neck of his, past that fucking adam's apple that bobs about when he talks like a fucking buoy on a riptide?

That exercise should help you decide on your brand's personality. When you think you've got that right, decide on the personality that you'd prefer it to have. Then just call the agency and say something like 'I want my brand to be a married 30-something woman who still likes a drink and getting one up the chutney. BY FUCKING THURSDAY.'

(That's briefing, my friends, but don't expect to be that good at it right away. I've honed my skills for 20 years.)

Finally in this seminar, I'd like to raise the issue of what agency's sometimes call 'brand essence'. This isn't a baking ingredient (as I found out at the expense of an entire weekend's shopping and a large slice of my dignity), but a way of boiling down to a phrase or a handful of single words exactly what a brand means to its consumers. For example, a brand may be 'hopeful', 'honest', 'youthful' and 'lively'. When creative work is shown, they may refer back to these words, demonstrating that each execution is consistent with those values.

Don't be fooled by this load of fucking hogtoss.

You're the client, and you pay the bills, and you fucking decide whether a piece of work is 'hopeful' or whatever or not.

In one presentation, some fucker tried telling me that the colour red, which featured heavily in the work, is 'passionate and vibrant'.

I said, 'No it fucking isn't. It's cold and unpleasant and deceitful'.

He said, 'Er...I think it's generally widely agreed that red is an energetic colour.'

I said, 'Well how come the woman who ran off with my Dad and stole him away from my mother and me wore red a lot? Not that I'm bothered because I never really got on with him and who needs a good hug from your Daddy anyway, when it gets dark and you think there might be spiders and all you can hear is your mum drinking gin downstairs with the radio on full blast, just sobbing, sobbing, sobbing? And who really needs to feel those big protective arms around you, strong and warm and reassuring, and a soft, kind voice telling you that everything's going to be okay, don't worry Davey, I'm here, son, I'm here? I fucking didn't.'

Of course, he had no answer to that.

That's all for now, my friends. That should be enough to blow your fucking minds anyway. Right now I have to go and look at all my competitors' marketing and suggest my agency copies it but makes it different.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

My left ball

2010-09-24T05:44:00.000-07:00

Hello, my friends.

I have been maintaining a reasonably low profile this week. This has been because, putting it as simply and clearly as possible, my left conker has been more swollen than a fat man at a free buffet.

Now, the more responsible amongst you might respond with a suggestion that I should have visited the doctor the minute the issue arose.

And that's fine.

But I look at this from a different perspective entirely. I look at this from the perspective of someone who very simply couldn't be bothered to go to the doctor.

So, you see my problem.

I had a massively swollen plum which demanded medical attention. And yet I couldn't be bothered to get that medical attention.

(By the way, the results of my latest poll show you're of a similar mind. Nearly half of you suggested my engorged cobbler was 'Nothing to worry about, tra-la-la-la-la, it'll go away stop looking at it why is it so big? 16%, mind, thought it was a sign of massive virility. Heartfelt thanks to you lot.)

This conflict has lead me to attempt to find my own cure. I've tried popping it with a series of increasingly large needles. I've tried slapping it with a metal spoon. I've tried slamming it in the fridge door.

These attempts not only caused me the kind of pain that makes you think you might puke and shit yourself at the same time (and not in that Saturday night / Sunday morning way that's a tiny bit fun, deep down). They also failed to have anything like the desired effect. On the contrary, they seemed to compound the problem. That's right: if anything, they made the swelling worse!

By Wednesday I had exhausted all the other common sense cures. (That includes sitting on it, shouting at it, smearing it with Deep Heat, smearing it with butter, smearing it with goose fat, putting leeches on it, putting salt on it, putting it in very hot water, putting it in very cold water, spraying it with weed killer, scaring it, mocking it, ignoring it, playing practical jokes on it and getting it exorcised.)

So I went to the pub (actually, pubs) and drank like Paul Gascoigne at...well, anywhere they serve booze. I kept drinking - with nothing more than sheer fucking guts keeping me upright at times - until this morning.

Now, somehow, I'm stone cold sober and my swollen dangleberry has deflated!

Well, actually, whatever was inside it has come out. But, like a 50-stone man after extensive liposuction, the skin hasn't retreated to its original position.

By which I mean, I no longer have a massively swollen pocket billiard, but I do have a hugely stretched and flaccid scrotum. It's hanging down to about an inch above my knee.

But, hey! I'll take that over a bollock that looked like backstreet boob job.

I hope that sets your mind at rest if you'd been concerned about my wellbeing. (And, be honest, you fucking were.)

So, I'm now off to something I will describe to my colleagues as a 'thing' or a 'sort of meeting' but which everyone concerned knows very well is a massive piss-up at the expense of the agency.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

Planning definitively defined. Definitely.

2010-09-20T05:37:00.000-07:00

My fellow marketing professionals, we have a winner!

In a poll that has had the entire global marketing and communications industry talking, we have managed to succinctly define exactly what planning is.

(I have been on a long quest myself to define this elusive discipline myself, which you can read about here, here, and here if you can be bothered - though I doubt you can, what with all that Facebooking and X-Factor and Twitter and Bebo and twatshaftingly important stuff you simply must keep on top of or the world and all it holds will crumble into its component molecules and drift into fucking space. God, you make me fucking sick. Just switch it all off for five cunting minutes, can't you? Fucking DO something? Read the paper, have a wank, punch a cat - anything.)

Ahem.

Focus.

And I'm back!

My initial research narrowed a definition of planning to three possibilities.

1) Something cunt-panels do.

2) Somthing fuck-wedges do.

3) Something spunk-jugglers do.

The results are in :

Option 1 got 36% of the vote.

Option 2 got 21% of the vote.

But the winner was option 3 with 41% of the vote.

So, there you have it: planning is something spunk-jugglers do.

I do worry slightly, however, that the narrow victory over 'something cunt-panels do' means we can't be as confident with that definition as perhaps we'd like. Will we always worry that, when explaining planning as 'something spunk-jugglers do' we will always have at the back of our mind the thought that, somehow, we should introduce the idea of it also being 'something cunt-panels do'?

My fear is that, yes, we will. So I propose a solution.

A coalition.

I suggest 'spunk-jugglers' as the Cameron and 'cunt-panels' as the Clegg, with the result that our final definition is thus:

Planning is something spunk-juggling cunt-panels do.

Surely that's something we can all agree on.

Anyway, I'm off to write a meaningless brief for the agency that consists of meaningless jargon I've cut-and-pasted from previous meaningless briefs.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

Why Friday is 'Achieveday'

2010-09-17T00:47:00.000-07:00

I don't call Friday 'Friday'. I call it 'Achieveday'.

This is because Friday is the day I achieve goals, goals, goals.

Here's how it pans out. (My fellow marketing professionals may appreciate the insight into the working practices of a man once described as 'marketing's answer to the bubonic plague'. Do you know how fucking effective the bubonic plague was? Exactly.)

I arrive at the office early. And I mean cocking early. 10am at the latest - and I'm at my desk immediately. No pre-breakfast wank on a Friday for Dave. No way. Friday is all about getting the job done and done and done.

Next, I start multi-tasking. I eat my breakfast baguette (bacon, egg, sausage, lamb chops, sausage, egg, bacon, tomato, beans, hot dogs, egg and brown sauce) while phoning a couple of adult chat lines and tackling the inevitable mountain of emails. (Some mornings, I have more than fifteen. I fucking know.)

My general protocol with emails is simple: delegate everything except doctor's appointments or stuff that will make me look good.

Delegation is vital to 'Achieveday'. I am, putting it mildly, a fucking genius of delegation. It wouldn't be excessive to say I'm the Pele of delegation. In fact, I'm the Louis the 16th of delegation. In fact in fact, I'm the Leonardo cunting Da Vinci of delegation.

In fact in fact in fact, I'd put it like this: I delegate, therefore I am.

So, up to the hour of 11am, I am a blur of delegation. Forward! Forward! Forward! That's not a motivational chant, that's me dealing with my emails. Forward! Forward! Forward! Bang, bang, bang!

At 11am, I need some management calm. I need space. I need to focus. So down come the office blinds, off go the lights and I have a well-deserved think on the office sofa. Strictly do-not-disturb time, this. You can't work as hard as I do and not need a chance to recharge.

When noon comes, I'm back in the game. Kerwallop! Generally, I'll spend half an hour checking through ads, correcting headlines so the product name is in there, asking for bigger bristolas in the artwork, researching the ads with my mother (she's nearly target audience) - all the usual stuff a good marketeer will do.

Now that my agency is paying me not to get involved in the advertising, however, I'm free from 12. So I get down to the Dog and Hog to start the Friday management lunch meeting early.

This is a hugely important meeting.

The Friday Management Meeting (I came up with that name, by the way) is absolutely pivotal to the smooth running of the company. Over a few glasses of shandy, we discuss, debate and...er...another 'd' word...the issues that face the company.

Then, over a few glasses of claret 'n' WKD, brandy 'n' brandy, lager 'n' Aftershock and so on, we keep discussing, debating and another-d-wording all afternoon. Then we go to Delilaz, my preferred executive gentleman's club and - as a perfectly justifiable reward for our labours - we use company petty cash to pay attractive young girls to frot us.

After that, we really let our hair down.

As my MD, Big Andy Poleman, says: "Slags and booze. Profit and loss. There's no difference."

Now, I don't strictly understand the detail of what he means. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if it didn't make any sense whatsoever. But as God is my witness, I find the practical demonstration utterly inspiring.

The day usually ends somewhere around Sunday morning, when we all wend our way home and prepare our excuses for phoning in sick on Monday.

It's not easy. But it works.

Soon, I will offer more insight into my working life. But right now, there's an 18-year old Latvian with bristolas the size of my head demanding that I pour Krug up her foof.

I will rise to that challenge.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

Hello? Campaign? HELLLLOOOOO?

2010-09-15T01:08:00.000-07:00

It turns out that The Ad Contrarian, American advertising's best blogger, has signed a deal to write for Adweek.

So as British advertising's best blogger, surely Campaign should be knocking a fucking hole in my door to get ME to sign.

Have they?

Have they fucking balls.

What is wrong with these people? WHAT IS WRONG WITH THEM?

Here I am - the golden fucking goose - and they...or am I the golden egg? Or is my blog the egg?

Hang on. Let's fucking think about this for a second. I'm the goose, right? That makes sense. But the eggs I lay are the blog posts. Yes?

Were the eggs golden, or the goose? Was it a normal goose, but the eggs were golden?

Surely a normal goose laying golden eggs would be no use. You might eat the thing before you knew it could lay golden eggs. But, then again, a golden goose would just sit there being...gold.

Jesus. This is hard.

Hmm.

What to do?

Fuck it - I'm a golden goose laying big, shiny golden eggs. Let's just agree on that, can we?

Yes?

Good.

Right. Where was I?

Ah! That's it: fucking Campaign. What a bunch of cuntbuckets.

Anyway, I've got frigging work to do. I'm off to sit in a series of pointless morning meetings with my agency, the sole purpose of which is to provide an excuse for a massive free lunch.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

My advertising gland is going to burst

2010-09-14T04:08:00.001-07:00

The above is an image of an advertising gland, an organ situated close to the bullshit node, behind the pretension nodule. You can see from the yellow discharge to the left that this advertising gland has ruptured. Without adequate and regular use, the advertising gland will wither and die. Once dead, it can never be revived.

This is the worrying diagnosis I received today. Now, I received that diagnosis from myself rather than a doctor of any kind, but still - it's not something you want to hear.

Now that my agency are paying me large sums of money to keep my hands well and truly off the advertising - and any other form of communication - I'm struggling to cope with the build-up of genius that oozes from me every minute of every day.

I imagine this is how Ron Jeremy feels after a week off.

Indeed, the urge to advertise is just spilling out of me.

This morning, while ordering my bacon, sausage, bacon, egg, egg, ham, lamb chop, sausage, beans, fried bread, sausage, bacon and toffee sauce baguette, I found myself blurting out 'Breakfast isn't breakfast without a breakfast baguette' to the kid behind the counter at Ali's Kebab Exhibition.

Then, when Derek Balls came in to fix the computer that seemed to give up the ghost the day I was testing a new driver in my office (I will never understand computers), I said, 'Balls IT. When your IT falls, give Balls a calls.'

He just looked at me and said, 'I always knew you were a fucking alcoholic.'

I said, 'Alcohol. For man. For woman. For ever.'

He shook his head and turned away.

I said, 'Turning Away. The silent gesture that speaks a thousand words.'

Then he walked out of the door.

And just as I was saying, 'Doors! Get into them!' it became clear that I need, on a very fundamental level, to advertise stuff.

So I thought I'd start by just advertising the first thing that came into my head.

Here's what I came up with:

It's a campaign for Bristolas UK, a body that I intend to create. We'll devote our professional energies to the furtherment and promotification of bristolas.

Anyway, the first piece, a 6-sheet poster is aimed at people who think that bristolas are just for breastfeeding babies. They aren't! They're for all of us! It uses Comic Sans, which is amazing and the king of all typefaces.

The second demonstrates a new usage of the product, which will open up whole new markets. Here I've used Arial, which is the other great typeface.

Is there anything you'd like me to advertise? You know, just so I don't go out of my cuntbarging fucking mind?

Whatever it is, you know it'll be top notch. Just let me know. I'm officially taking requests.

Anyway, I'm off to do whatever the fuck I like without thinking about it.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

The Dave Knockles Lectures, 1: The Art of Pablo Picasso

2010-09-10T00:49:00.000-07:00

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this, the first in a series of lectures I will be giving on subjects outside my field of expertise.

Today, I will be discussing The Art of Pablo Picasso.

*Ahem*

Picasso, perhaps more than any other artist of any period, demands our attention. A celebrity in his own lifetime and creator of some of the most distinctive art in human history, he was a man who constantly reinvented himself and his art. He is regarded as perhaps the greatest and most talented artist that has ever lived, and is conferred the kind of adulation normally reserved for deities, rock stars and movie icons. Part truth, part myth, part legend, his is a reputation that towers higher and higher with each passing year, casting an immovable shadow over the world of art and, it could be argued, over the entire human race's collective unconscious.

He is the artist I am most fiercely passionate about.

Why?

Because I think he's a pile of absolute cunting shitcakes.

As I say, I'm fiercely passionate about him. And I will use this platform to expand on my theory that Picasso was, and is, a total pile of fucking nonsense who couldn't even draw a frigging face without royally fucking it up for Christ's sake.

Take a look at the image above, titled 'The Weeping Woman', painted in 1937. Well, the title is handy, because I can make out a woman, and couple of tears too, but - seriously - this looks very little like a weeping woman. If you came across a weeping woman who actually looked like this, you'd assume she'd been brutally gang-raped by a Pantone chart, a creature from the 12th dimension, a rolling pin and a pack of fucking toddlers.

Take a look at this bag of spanners too.

This absolute fucking eyesore is called Woman In An Armchair, and was crapped into existence in 1913. Woman in an armchair? Are you fucking sure, Pablo? Can you see a woman in an armchair? You can? Then I think you need to get to fucking Specsavers, sharpish, mate - BECAUSE THERE IS NO WOMAN, AND NO FUCKING ARMCHAIR. There may be some bristolas in the middle there, but not fucking nice ones.

That's nothing, though, compared to this crime against reason.

This, apparently, is Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, 'painted' in 1907.

Now, one might assert that this work, unlike those above, actually fucking looks like something. And I would agree with that point. But surely the most disappointing - even insulting - transgression here is the fact that he had FIVE naked women in front of him and he made them look like THAT.

FIVE. NAKED. WOMEN.

And I'm assuming they were lookers because they were models. (I've never seen a bad-looking model, apart from when we did a pan-European campaign out of Romania a while back. Jesus. Harrowing, that was. They all looked so fucking sad. I kept saying, 'Cheer up, for fuck's sake! What do you have to be miserable about? You're models!' I didn't know they'd all been press-ganged into a sex squad to service Ceaucescu's generals. But even so - it's still regular work! Did they see my point? Did they shitballs. Pure ego, some people.)

Where was I? I can't remember. Let's move on to what is considered one of Picasso's finest works: Guernica.

Inspired by the German bombing of the Basque town, Guernica, the painting is a stark depiction of the horror of the Spanish Civil War - and of man's capacity to inflict suffering upon his fellow man.

My take on it? Meh. Bit fucking drab, innit? And, YET AGAIN, nothing looks like anything. But I'm getting used to that now.

The true tragedy of Picasso's life, of course, was that the cunt could actually draw!

Look at this self-portrait from 1901.

See? He can do it! I mean, it's a bit rough and that, but it's a proper painting. But even when he's not really fucking about, he can't resist being a prize shithound. Look at 'L'arlequin assis' from 1923.

Everything's there: it looks like something, it's got colours in it, it looks like he can actually draw and...screech!...slam the brakes on, Pablo! It looks like you're getting dangerously close to something good! Better fuck it up, eh?

What a proper, proper cuntshank.

Now some say that Picasso, in the face of the rise of photography, shunned the need for realism in painting and began to dissassemble his subject in order to find new ways of expressing something fundamentally I wonder if I remembered to Sky Plus X Factor over the weekend because I'm bound to be out and I really don't want to miss it, not now it's getting really interesting and Cheryl's got AIDS or whatever it is.

Where was I? I can't remember again. Fuck it, that's enough, innit?

In summary, then, one can view Picasso in a number of ways. As a talentless chancer. As a pointless piss artist. As a certified fucking screwball.

But I prefer to see him as a tortured genius.

Only without the genius.

That concludes the first Dave Knockles lecture. I hope you found it of use. If you'd like to ask any questions about the points I've made, feel free to use the comment facility supplied herewith.

Good day, and thank you for listening.

The Dave Knockles Lectures

2010-09-09T01:04:00.000-07:00

I have for some time been considered a marketing expert, guru, legend, genius - call me what you will.

I am the man, after all, who devised cloudvertising, identified a way to suck the gay market dry, invented the 'bristolas, product name in headline, big price flash' holy trinity of perfect advertising and...well, loads more. Fucking loads. Basically, I've forgotten more than you know. Sometimes, I forget what I know. Some days, I forget everything. It's almost like I know absolutely nothing at all and my head is completely empty. But then I just make something up and it turns out to be total genius.

Anyway, I am not just one of the leading figures in modern marketing.

I am also a man.

Yes - just a man.

But a man who can help the people of the world find a better way to live by imparting the knowledge he has built up over a life that could, without exaggeration, be considered cuntissimally amazing.

Now that my agency have agreed to let me have nothing at all to do with the advertising, I am free to communicate with the world in ways that I hope will benefit every woman, every man, the children are the future, imagine all the people, together as one, teaching the world to sing.

If you see what I mean.

(What do I mean?)

I'll change the fucking world, basically.

I will do this through a series of lectures. I will call these The Dave Knockles Lectures because I am Dave Knockles, and they are lectures. So it makes fucking sense, innit?

The first of these lectures will be on one of the subjects that, outside the world of convention-busting marketing and communications innovation, is something I am most passionate about:

The Art of Pablo Picasso.

I will complete this lecture over the next few days and deliver it here on my blog, in person. Well, in person via the words I write. In other words, it'll be like every other post on my blog. What about it? If you've got a problem with that, I suggest you scrunch it up into a ball and fist it right up your fucking hoop, you shitathon.

Still, it will be a real fucking eye-opener. You know this.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

R.E.S.P.E.C.T. Find out how to give it to me.

2010-09-06T05:21:00.000-07:00

There I was, a man in full control of his destiny, walking with a distinct swagger, full of vim and vodka, barging confidently through the doors of his agency, knocking some woman or other over, stopping abruptly to watch her fall backwards and upend her coffee all over her face, stepping over her while she moaned about burns and ambulances and stuff, feeling on top of the world - everything was fucking great.

I even got a smile from the receptionist when I sashayed up to her and whispered, 'Are you feeling okay?' 'Yes,' she replied. 'Great,' I said. 'Then feel this.'

I say a smile, it was very much an attempted smile. It actually looked for all the world like a strangled mask of revulsion, but that's nerves for you. (Poor little thing. She doesn't know how to handle herself when DK turns on the charm!)

Still, I was in ball-twangingly good fettle and bursting with cracking good ideas about how to reach the single mums market (I'd invented another marketing first with 'slagvertising' - small billboards on the pushchairs of teen mothers).

When I walked into my account director's office, though, he wasn't there there. Instead, perched like a shitting owl on the edge of the desk, was the agency chief executive.

'Hello, David,' he murmured. 'I wonder if you'd like to come to my space for a chat?'

Space? Whatever.

So, we took a private lift to the 300th floor to an office that was, indeed, a space. By which I mean it was the fucking size of space. It looked like the inside of Barbarella's rocket ship, only with deeper, lusher carpet on the walls - like the building was growing cunting angorra - and a shining Antarctic of white desk in the centre.

He moved behind it (eventually - it took minutes to walk round the fucking thing) and sat in a chair that I think had been bought in the clearance sale after God moved offices.

'David, I think we should talk,' he said.

'PARDON?' I shouted.

He picked up a phone. A phone next to me buzzed. He gestured at me to pick it up.

'Hello?' I said.

'David, I think we should talk,' came his voice, sonorously, right into my ear.

'What about?' I replied.

'You'.

'Oh.'

'We don't want you in any way to have anything whatsoever at all to do with any element of your advertising.'

'Riiight.'

'Not one single ad, not a full stop, not a pixel.'

'What's a pixel?'

'It's a...it doesn't matter. Are we in agreement?'

'No! I AM THE CLIENT! I want you to do exactly what I tell you to do, all the time! It's how I work!'

Then he said something irresistible involving a sum of money, a list of the agency's most bristola-centrically talented account executives, a bar tab at a particularly swanky Soho club, free access to a number of adult-focused TV channels, a year's supply of Pot Noodle, an account at Booze 'n' Shit (my local vintners), the number of a girl who does a particular, legally-unmentionable thing on a professional basis and an agreed number of ads I can do whatever I like with every year.

Now that, my fellow marketing professionals, is how to show respect for your client. He recognised - transparently - that as a force of creative marketing fuckmazingness, I'm streets ahead of him and his little multi-award-winning agency with a huge reputation for doing brilliant work. He knows it. (You should have seen his face when I mentioned slagvertising! Astonished!) So he worked it, girlfriend. He found a mutually agreeable solution.

Of course, it works better for me than him. I mean, even with three mono 10x2 ads a year, I will revolutionise advertising every fucking time. He's been done - but that's the way it should be!

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

Crowdscraping

2010-09-02T01:08:00.001-07:00

I apologise for just using stories from Campaign as the basis of my blog, but...actually. Hang on. I don't apologise. Fuck you.

According to Campaign, BT's agency recently asked its target audience to decide what happened next in their long-running 'Adam and Jane' campaign. And the public spoke, via Facebook, with 1.6 million votes being cast. 70% of this great army decided that Jane should get up the stick.

This is being called 'crowdsourcing'. But I beg to differ.

Personally, I think crowdsourcing is excellent. It cuts out the agency and lets me get directly to a vast army of creatives around the world who are willing to do absolutely frigging anything for the chance to win a paltry sum of money. I get shitloads of ideas to look through, I only pay for the one I like, I save a fortune on agency fees, and the creatives get...well, fuck-all, but tough shitballs on them. They should get a proper job innit?

BT's strategy could better be termed 'asking morons what they want to see in commercials they don't give two fucks about'.

This is not what great advertising is about. Great advertising is about the strategic and creative vision of one person (usually me) with the drive to take an idea (usually mine) and devote the time and effort (usually other peoples') it needs to make it happen.

What BT's agency have perhaps forgotten is the first rule of marketing: your customers are a bunch of ungrateful shithousing cuntspurts who should be avoided at all costs and regarded simply as money with legs.

Everyone knows this. Why in the wide, wide world of women would anyone want to consult this vast hoard of drones on what they want to see in the commercials? They're fucking idiots. Of course they wanted 'Jane' to be pregnant. They're all morons. And probably women.

I wanted 'Jane' to get her bristolas out, force 'Adam' at gunpoint to eat his own foot, then dive into a giant pool full of other women with their bristolas out. That would have made an interesting commercial. As it is, we got 'Jane' telling 'Adam' she'd let one of his undercooked spunks weasel its way up her fassy and come to some simpering agreement with one of her eggs - an egg which was probably as fucking dour and joyless as she is.

Ask the general public anything and the consensus will be 'Oooh, I dunno. Summink nice.' Look at the fucking coalition government! Look at the result of X-Factor EVERY CUNTING YEAR.

The general public - and I apologise if you're a member - are cunts. The only thing they should be allowed to decide on is which punitive finance package we sell them when they buy our consumer durables. End of. Finished. Done. No more. End of. Done. Finished. Finito. DONE.

Period.

Anyway, enough. I'm off to ask my agency to do a free ad for my friend's friend's friend's friend's friend's friend's friend's friend's friend's friend's friend's friend's friend's friend's friend's friend's friend's friend's friend's friend's friend's friend's friend's friend's wife's hairdressing business. And they'll fucking well do it.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

Nuns and knobs

2010-09-01T05:40:00.000-07:00

Jesus wept. Possibly literally in this case.

It seems an Italian ice-cream maker has caused a minor fucknado by using randy nuns, gay priests and pregnant ladies of the cloth in its ads.

And I have to say that this disgusts me.

I am not easy to shock, but I feel in this case a sense of outrage and deep-rooted offence that I haven't experienced for some years.

Why?

Because this isn't how you cunting well offend people! This is AMATEUR HOUR! Fuck my back teeth, boys! Is this the frigging BEST you could do? Seriously? Minor titillation with a fucking nun? I've got entire LIBRARIES of nun-based porn. This is not new territory. This is creatively stilted. This is cunting yesteryear! This is the Stephen Gateley of offensive advertising. By which I mean it's dead, but nobody's really that fussed.

(See? Now that was offensive.)

I can't believe anyone would tread this dreary path. It offended me. Actually, it did more - it fucking offended me. Actually, it did more - it put me off my Pot Noodle. And if you put me off my Pot Noodle, you are a cocknozzle and a cuntpot.

If you really want to put people's backs up, this is the way to go.

Not only an erotically-charged image of the People's Dead Princess (well, apart from the human music stand, which is fucking surreal) but the 'Diana' range of undies was released on the anniversary of her fucking death.

That, my fellow marketing professionals, is how you offend people.

Now, I'm off to make a series of ill-considered changes to some headlines that retain some of the words but utterly remove the wit, intelligence or craft in favour of patronisingly crude sales messages.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

Marketing With a Hammer

2010-08-24T13:24:00.000-07:00

The man in the image above, up there, look, just above this sentence, there, is Friedrich Nietzsche.

He was a philosopher (which is an olden-days word for 'unemployed') who had some pretty firm ideas about stuff. 'God is dead' was his big line. He was always saying it. Parties, down the shops, in the boozer - all the fucking time.

Well, I imagine he was. I dunno. I only just found out about him on Wikipedia. I was searching for 'French Nazi porn' and he came up, along with a lot of French Nazi porn, obviously. Anyway, that's not important. What is important is that he is now the inspiration for my entire approach to life and marketing.

Yes.

Mainly, because I saw he did this bit of philosophy in a book he called 'Twilight of the Idols' (which means fuck-all, let's be frank). He also called it 'Philosophising With a Hammer'. There were some short, sharp bursts of philosophy - sort of like being twatted in the face by a big blunt lump of blaaargh.

Now that I do get. That's got me written all over it. So I'm going to make like an agency creative using YouTube and 'be inspired' by it. Or, putting it another way, I'm nicking it and claiming it as my own.

Here it is then: Marketing With a Hammer.

A target audience will only be a target audience for as long as you consider it a target audience. The rest of the time, they're just cuntspanners like everyone else.

Build it and they will come, as long as what you're building has something free or deep fried or with its tits out.

A good idea usually appears to be a bad idea, until you do it and it works. The lesson? Pursue bad ideas like Madonna pursues latino underwear models.

They will tell you that it can't be done. And if you're trying to do a tasteful retail ad, they're right. Stop fucking about, get your head out of your cackshoot and make the price flash much, much bigger.

The agency of the future is already history. I have no clue - none whatsoever - what that means, but I am absolutely convinced that some cunt-clacker somewhere, probably one in a planning department in Soho, wearing unimaginable trousers and hair that belongs in a psychiatric ward, has said it, believed it and tried to shove it down the throat of a client who just wants to get pissed for crying out loud.

A campaign needs three lives. The first to survive the creative who wrote it, a second to survive the creative director and a third to survive the account team. That's why, when it gets to me, it has run out of lives and MUST BE DESTROYED ON PRINCIPLE.

Designers believe that the ability to operate a Mac combined with the ownership of 15,000 typefaces equals talent. It does not. It equals 30 quid an hour.

The world is full of dreamers because the night is full of dreams. Or, to rephrase...er...yeah. Let me see. The world is full of dreamers...er...hmm. Look, I'll be hones: I've overstretched myself with that one. Let's move on.

Bristolas, product name in the headline, big price flash. This is the holy trinity of advertising. Do it any other way and you might as well stick your advertising budget right up your fucking dickybox. (That felt like more familiar ground.)

That's enough Marketing With a Hammer for now. There will be more. And it will be similarly amazing.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

She stinks like a pig in July but I love her

2010-08-22T12:24:00.000-07:00

Oh, would you look at her?

Would you look at the girl in the bubble from Sure's latest BO-Fucker For Birds ad?

I don't often fall in love (in fact, it may never have happened, thinking about it - birds are a right fucking pain in the wallet, eh fellas? Know what I mean? Wallet? Eh? HA HA! I'm funny - it's fucking official) but I think I've gone this time.

She's beautiful, this girl in the bubble. Have you seen how she accepts her rank and despicable social stigma with such benign grace and dignity? Have you noticed how she smiles gently to herself when the lift arrives as she realises, 'No. Not for me this everyday convenience, because I smell like a rugby team's shitter after a night on the boiled egg vindaloo.'

Oh, how she touches my soul!

But, frankly, I go right off her when she's welcomed back into normal, polite society. The bit at the end when she's showing offer her boyfriend disgusts me, I have to say. The way she shares a little joke with the other non-stench-riddled bird is sickening.

'This is 'im,' she's saying. 'Yeah - the one I toljoo abaht innit? The one who does all vem funny fings annat wot I toljoo abaht and, cor stroof, ain't men a pain, eh, wot wiv all nair football and silly ways but we love 'em, don't we, can't live wiv 'em, can't live wivaht'm, s'right vo, innit?' Etc, etc, et-cunting-c.

I want to meet this woman, and confiscate her deodarant. I want her in her bubble, all angelic and coy (albeit an angel who smells worse than a month-old corpse in a Saharan wheelie bin).

I don't mind that you stink, pet! I like it! I mean, I fucking reek!

I think we should get naked, turn the heating up to maximum, get under a thermal duvet and roll about making our own porridge. You know where to reach me. I await your call.

All that said, it's a jolly good ad, showing product benefit in a compelling and diverting way. If she had her bristolas out and their was a price flash, it'd be close to perfect. You can't have everything, though, eh.

Well, unless you're me.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

I'M SO EXCITED! AND I JUST CAN'T HIDE IT!

2010-08-18T06:10:00.000-07:00

My friends, I am back!

I'm back in the heady, crazy, wild, lawless, kooky, fruity, freaky, inventive, demented, reckless, relentless, redoubtable, remarkable, re-fucking-splendent world of consumer durables marketing!

And I'm loving it like footballers love aggressive behaviour towards women!

Like Icarus, the prodigal son from the Promised Land, who rose from the grave after the Germans crucified him, or some shit, and then rose from the ashes of the lost Ark to pull the sword from the stone, or whatever, I am back at my old desk, with my old team, doing my old job.

Only I am now...fucking get this...Director of Marketing.

Take a second to roll that name round your mouth like a fine vintage claret with a splash of WKD.

I'm not some pissy, shitty, cunt-pole Marketing Director. I'm the fucking Director of Marketing.

(The 'of' is like adding foie gras to a Pot Noodle. It transforms the name into the ultimate statement of status. For example, The Queen of England sounds fucking...like...regal, doesn't it? But 'England Queen'? Fucking shithawks.)

So, there I was, Monday morning, bursting through the doors and striding with masculine certainty towards my old desk like a wild, wandering tomcat returning to its favourite spot in the sun after spending a few months working as Marketing Director at Europe's leading distributor of sex gizmos for the over-50s.

(Something's not right with that last sentence. Can't put my finger on it. Ah, fuck it - only words innit?)

All the old gang were there: Shit Alan, the bloke with the limp who fixes stuff, all the members of the marketing team whose names I never committed to memory - everyone! And it was so good to see them....hang on, let me correct that...it was so good for them to see me! (I could tell by the open mouths and blank, terrified looks of sheer delight. One of them even fainted! Now that's adoration!)

I was straight back into the old routine - delegating like a fucking maniac up to about 10.30am, then closing my office blinds and settling down for a good, long think. I had a really, really good, deep think, then it was straight over to the agency for a lunch meeting.

This new bunch was hired by the last guy, so I thought I'd give them a chance. (Also, Big Andy Poleman, my MD, told me he'd kick my cunt off if I fired them.)

I must have been thinking very deeply because I bombed through the agency doors at 4pm, pretty much on time for the 1pm meeting.

It was the usual scenario. Receptionistas with A-grade bristolas looking bored behind a giant, monolithic white desk, like an iPod fucked Stonehenge, and straggly gatherings of gangly dandies hanging about doing fuck-all.

I headed for the receptionistas and leaned in close. 'Hello, ladies', I murmured provocatively. 'Are you two professional chicken-trainers? Because you've got my cock doing cartwheels!'

(Bless the poor little things, they couldn't hide their excitement, playing all coy and shocked and offended and mortified. You know the act, right fellas? Anyway, they sent me on to my meeting, once they'd stopped crying.)

I'm sorry to say that my first impressions of this new agency weren't good. A bank of confused faces, questions about what time it was, 'I thought you weren't coming', all that shit. But I soon smacked them right upside their imagination by yelling 'Let's fucking kick some shit into the balls of this account! IT'S FUCKING KNOCKLES TIME!'

That shook them up! (Four of them couldn't take the energy - they just got up and left! So long suckers! You can't stop the Knockles Train, so get on board or get out of the way!)

Anyway, they slapped some ads on the table and I perused them thoughtfully. I felt like a four-balled stallion about to mount his bitch. (Or whatever they mount. A steed? I want to say steed. Flossy? Fluffy? Filly! That's it - filly. Is it? Fuck it.)

Now, bearing in mind that Big Andy Poleman had told me not to change anything the agency was doing, I knew I'd have to make my changes subtly. And boy did these ads need changing. No bristolas, no product name in the headline, no price flash - schoolboy errors.

So, after a short, respectful pause I simply said, 'I would just like to make a few subtle changes. I WANT BRISTOLAS, THE PRODUCT NAME IN THE HEADLINE AND A FUCKING BIG PRICE FLASH. DO IT! BY 5.30! GOODBYE!'

And that was that. It was reassuring to know I can still give creative direction as well as I ever could. Sweet cunting Jesus, it's good to be back.

Right. I'm off to tell the agency to do more, to a higher standard, faster and for less money.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

Photographers. The truth.

2010-08-11T06:40:00.000-07:00

I've worked with photographers. I've stood there in the cold while they look at a landscape for upwards of fifteen minutes before saying, 'Nope. This isn't right. The light's too...gooey.' I've watched as they try endlessly and repeatedly, like a clockwork autistic obsessive/compulsive, to make a single hair on a model's head stay exactly 13mm from the adjacent hair. And I've watched as 5pm approaches and the shots suddenly start to get done a lot fucking quicker.

Oh, I've worked with photographers.

Someone once said of photographers that 'it's not the man behind the camera - it's the camera in front of the man'. And that someone was me, just then. What I mean by it is, simply, 'a bloke with a camera' becomes 'a photographer' when the cost of the camera exceeds the cost of his car. But essentially, it's still a bloke with a camera. If he has a good camera, he will be considered a good photographer. Excellent camera? Excellent photographer, clearly. Amazing camera? Well done. You're an award-winner.

So, yes, some of them are chancers. But not all. Some of them are delusional fruitcakes. And, to be fair, many of them are just inveterate bullshitters.

I invite you to find out for yourself by looking at photographers' websites. Here is what you will find in the 'portfolio', 'gallery' or, if they're a proper cunt, 'art' sections.

Americana

All photographers will have a series of shots from mid-America, featuring huge landscapes, run-down diners, weathered signs, wonky old lights and, probably, a bird in a checked shirt pondering the faded glamour of America's heartland while, if you're lucky, revealing one of her bristolas.

The gritty portrait

All photographers will have stark, detailed, black and white head shots of ugly people. This shows that they can shoot real people (even though nobody but photographers wants to shoot real people, I mean, fuck me, why would you?) and that they aren't just shallow fuckbars obsessed with models and their bristolas (though the work they get paid for will exclusively feature models and their bristolas).

The girl in the wheatfield

All photographers will have a shot of a girl in a field, waist-deep in a crop of some sort, turned slightly away from the camera, looking off across a natural landscape while perhaps gently fingering a wheatsheaf or flower and, if you're lucky, revealing one of her bristolas. This demonstrates the poignant relationship between nature and man and the delicate balance of sorry I drifted off for a second there.

The celebrity

All photographers will have a shot of one or more celebs. They will all be simply shot in black and white and will 'show the real person behind the name'. They will also all tell you that they 'only had five minutes to get the shot'. This is just a cover for the fact that photographers haven't actually invented a different way of shooting celebs that isn't 'showing the real person behind the name'.

The thinly-veiled porn

Photographers are all dirty sex-grubs who enjoy peering through curtains at the erotic pursuits of others. But since this is against the law, they just peer through a camera at the erotic pursuits of others instead. Combine this with a ready supply of would-be models prepared to do anything to get their portfolio going and you have a pornucopia of nudey-bird shots. Nudey birds on horses, nudey birds in mud, nudey birds looking in mirrors, nudey birds holding parrots, nudey birds bending over a kitchen worktop and fingering a...no, you'll have to excuse me while I nip for a wank.

The personal project

I'm not really capable of fully describing the rank stupidity and pointlessness of some of these. I once saw a photographer who raced through his portfolio of nudey birds on pogo sticks etc, just to get to his personal project. He had titled it, simply, 'Me', and it was a series of shots of himself, his possessions, his friends, his gargoylesque grandparents and, of course, his penis. 'This is me', he kept saying. 'But this is you too.'

It fucking wasn't me. It was him. It was very clearly him. Fuck knows what he meant. But I'll tell you what I told him: 'Look, son. Photography's a fucking cinch. Model with big bristolas next to product. Click click click. Pub.'

I stand by that. I can't honestly imagine why you'd want to take a photograph of anything else. Apart from the nudey birds.

Anyway, I'm away to place a series of increasingly pointless and time-consuming calls into my agency just as they approach the deadline for a different, pointless job I gave them.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

STAND BACK. I AM READY TO EXPLODE.

2010-08-10T06:20:00.000-07:00

As Dr Dre so memorably put it...actually, I don't know any Dr Dre. I'm not even sure who he is.

As Dave Knockles so memorably put it, I AM THE FUCK BACK!

I have returned, like the prodigal phoenix from the wilderness, back to the company and the market where I became the marketing legend, guru, ideas-busting genius and acclaimed insightologist that I am today.

I'm back in consumer durables. Where I belong.

Big Andy Poleman (my MD again) made me an offer I couldn't refuse. (Mainly because if I did refuse it, he said, he'd punch my cunt off.) I made him sweat, mind! Nobody hurries Dave Knockles into a decision! He demanded a response in 24 hours. He got one in 26. That's brinksmanship, my friends. It's all about the size of your fucking pellets.

So, what will I do, now that I'm back?

Well, I'm not back, actually. I have to serve a week's notice. (Another employer stupid enough to only have me on a week's notice! I know! Idiots! You only keep staff you really aren't sure about on a week's notice! I can't believe pretty much everyone I've worked for has made the same mistake.)

I will serve out this week with diligence and professionalism, even though Mark Schitz, my soon-to-be-ex-MD responded to my resignation with a puzzled look, a slightly frozen expression of fear and then the words, 'Who are you again?' (He said he thought I'd left some time ago. What a fruitcake! Adios, sucker!)

So, while some would serve notice at home doing fuck-alll, I will be at the boozer with my Blackberry well and truly ON, ready to field calls. (Well, I say it'll be on, I mean on vibrate, obviously. I don't want to annoy my fellow regulars in The Cock and Balls. And I'll keep it in the car, of course. Rude, innit, looking at your phone all the time?)

I will then begin my new / old job WITH THE PASSION OF A SIX-HEADED MARKETING BEAST STRAPPED TO AN EXOCET FLYING THROUGH A VORTEX OF ENTHUSIASM AND FRESH THINKING.

Now, I held a pitch just before I left, then I held a pitch at my new place, but I'm not going to go through that again. Pitching is so time-consuming for client and agency alike, and so costly for the agencies that lose. I also firmly believe that for the client, stability is a brand's best friend. (Also, Big Andy Poleman said if I even thought about changing the agency, he'd fuck my legs up with a hammer and then punch my cunt off.)

So it'll be straight back in the saddle to the breach of the coal face with a new lease of lust for life in a well-worn pair of shoes in pastures new. Or some shit. I don't know. I'm fucking wankered again. Fuck off.

I can't wait to see my old team again! I'm looking forward to seeing their faces when I walk in! They don't know how lucky they are to work for me twice.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

Fuck it

2010-08-06T07:12:00.000-07:00

I've got a job offer on the table and I can't fucking decide what to do for the life of me.

Blllaaaaargh. You know? Pfft. Blaap. Splllaaaaaargh. Can't fucking decide. Shit shit shit.

On the one hand, I could go back to my old place and be the Director of Marketing (which is fucking different to Marketing Director - FUCKING different) of the number 2 in the European consumer durables market relating to, or directly involving, cleaning clothes and or soft furnishings and or other fabrics.

Or, on the other hand, I could remain Marketing Director of Europe's number one distributor of sex aids, love machines, erotic devices, pornographic enhancement utensils and...well...big fucking dildos for the over-50s.

It's a tough one. I can't decide. I can't decide. I can't decide.

So, I thought I'd get all fucked up on beer and booze and WKD and claret and scotch and Malibu and sherry and scotch and gin and booze and beer and see what happens.

S'like...you know? It's really fucking...like...blaaaagh. You know? Like...just...fucking what? Come on! Fuck off! It's like that. It's exactly like that.

I don't know what to do. I've got a decision to make. FUCK!

It's like...well, put it this way: you know when...NO! I tell you what it's like! It's like....oooh, what's the fucking word now? It's like those things, those fucking things you get when you're a kid...er...GAAAAAGH! What are they? I can't remember. Fuck it. Never mind. It's just...you know...YOU know. You know?

It's like that.

Cor. I'm writing this in the boozer now. I've got my laptop all set up like and that. Wifi. Wireless and that. I've had a few pints of things and some other pints and a bottle and some glasses and stuff and, really, honestly...like, seriously...I think I can't make my mind up just yet.

Maybe I should have another pints of bottles or whatever and that.

HA HA! Someone just said to me...HA HA HA HA! That was brilliant! Oooh, fuck, that was hilarious! He just comes up to me and says...HA HA HA HA! AAAAH HA HA HA HA! Oh, it was fucking brilliant! He said it all...like...funny and that! Oooh, priceless. You should have been here.

Oooh, it's great working in the pub. I'll decide on my decision in a bit.

Anyway, I'd better call the agency and get them to change everything on the ads they're doing.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT AND IT'S 4PM ON A FUCKING FRIDAY!

KNOCKLESFLASH!

2010-08-05T05:28:00.000-07:00

Wow.

WOW.

I just took a call from none other than Big Andy Poleman, the MD at my last company. (The company, it could be argued, where I carved out a niche as a marketing legend.)

Here's how it went:

"Alright, Knockles, you fucking cunt."

"Jesus! Hello, Mr Poleman."

"Look, are you busy? I mean, after we fired you because you're shit, did you get another job?"

"Yes. I emailed you and everything."

"Did you? I never read that shit. I get one of the slags to do it for me! HA HA! (Laughs and coughs for 2 minutes.)"

"Er...what's up, Mr Poleman?"

"Call me Andy."

"Okay. What's up, Andy?"

"Actually, go back to Mr Poleman. You calling me Andy sounds fucking horrible."

"Okay. What's up, Mr Poleman?"

"Well, since you left, things have been going very well."

"Right."

"Sales have quadrupled."

"Oh."

"The bloke who replaced you got a new agency in and they're doing all this really good stuff. You know, ads and all that shite."

"I see."

"Well, that's the fucking problem. It's all the agency, innit? That cunt's doing fuck-all, but he cost a fortune."

"Right."

"So I thought, 'Why don't I get Knockles back? His wages are a third what this fucker's on and the agency's doing everything anyway."

(See? SEE? I fucking told you that doing good ads was career suicide.)

"So what are you saying, Mr Poleman?"

"I'm offering you your job back, you dopey cunt. What do you think I'm fucking doing?"

"Oh. Cor. Right. Er...I'd have to come back on improved terms."

"You always were a cheeky cunt, Knockles. Right - I'll improve your job title from Marketing Director to Director of Marketing. And you can have my old BMW. Well, not the old one - the one before the one before that."

"Wow. I'll have to think about it, Mr Poleman."

"You've got until tomorrow. Don't be a cunt. Poleman out."

*Click*

Phew! What about that? I know I've just put the phone down, but I really don't think I've ever had a better telephone call than that!

'Director of Marketing!' Back in consumer durables! A 2002 BMW!

I'll have to think hard about this.

Give me your thoughts, my friends. What should I do?

Anyway, I'm off to take all the wit and subtlety out of some headlines.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

Pitching for clients!

2010-08-04T04:59:00.000-07:00

I am, as many of you will know, a marketing professional of unrivalled experience, talent, insight, envelope-busting creativity, girth and ferocity.

So you've probably been wondering how I behave in a pitch.

(I imagine many of you have wondered what I look like naked too. Come on, ladies. Admit it. Power is an aphrodisiac and they don't come more powerful than the Marketing Director of Europe's NUMBER ONE distributor of adult gadgets / marital erotic enhancement devices.)

Well, I've already revealed what pitches are actually about: making yourself look good in front of your peers by making the agency look stupid.

Here, then, are my top tips on how to achieve that goal.

1. Interrupt.

A trusty favourite, this one. Just as the account man is getting started, butt in. Plain and simple. Butt the fuck in. He may be starting to talk about how great his agency is or how much they want your account or ARE YOU THE PEOPLE WHO DID THE AD WITH THE DOG IN IT?

See? Easy, isn't it? Just butt in. It throws the account man off his train of thought and shows your colleagues that you are so fucking awesome, you're prepared to stop this minion in his tracks and dominate the conversation. A bit like a bear would, or perhaps a shark.

2. Drop a bomb.

This is similar to interrupting, but more disruptive. It's disrupterrupting, if you will.

Before the pitch, think of half a dozen 'big' questions about marketing theory, the current advertising landscape, the state of the economy - wotevs. Just like the interruption technique, wait until the speaker is in full flow and then 'drop a bomb', butting right in like an angry goat with a hard-on, launching your pre-prepared question.

For example: We believe that the way to leverage maximum impact in this market is TELL ME. WHAT ARE THE TWO BIGGEST THREATS TO CONSUMER LOYALTY IN YOUR OPINION?

Ker-fucking-boom. The bomb is dropped. Again, this will make the speaker look flustered and weak, while you look like the big fucking cheese who can do whatever he likes to the agency because you're the boss.

One note of caution: make sure the question has nothing to do with whatever the speaker is talking about. It must be totally unrelated to cause maximum fluster, confusion, tension, anxiety and suicidal thoughts.

3. The Great Wall of Laptop

Simple, this one. Take your laptop into the pitch, pop the screen up and hunker over it, as though working. Do this while the presentation continues, and be sure not to make any eye contact with anyone from the agency. This will unsettle them deeply and make you look super-cool and important.

Sometimes, I get all my colleagues on the pitch panel to do the same, so we're all working away on laptops. It's brilliant. One agency boy, when face with this Great Wall of Laptop, said, 'Do you want us to pause for a moment while you guys finish what you're doing?'

Played right into my hands, that. I barked back (keeping my eyes fixed on my screen), 'WE'RE FUCKING MULTI-TASKING! IT'S WHAT WE DO HERE! AND WE NEED AN AGENCY THAT DOES THE SAME! YOU CLEARLY AREN'T THAT AGENCY. I SUGGEST YOU FUCK OFF!'

I can't tell you how good that made me look in front of my colleagues. Shame, really, because they'd got a strategy that I reckon would have quadrupled sales.

4. Sleep

Quite simply, have a snooze. What says 'I'm the Alpha-Alpha Male round here' more eloquently than sleeping right in their faces?

Use my gifts wisely, my friends. (Or use them unwisely. Who fucking cares? It'll only be some agency you fuck over enough to make them fire a load of people, but that's hardly kiddy-fiddling is it?)

With that, I must away. I've got some ads to approve and a nice, fresh red pen in my hand. I'll probably be making changes just so I can use it!

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

Dixons show Saatchi's who's boss

2010-08-03T05:02:00.001-07:00

Remember these ads? Oooh, didn't adland grab hold of its scrawny dink-donk and give it a good frot over them?

Widely regarded as brilliant, everyone fucked on about how well written they were, how the concept was simple and clever at the same time, how they were fundamentally linked to the client's essential proposition. A brilliant example of advertising at its best, they all said.

Well, it looks like the client knows best. They're calling a pitch.

I think they've got it bang on. There's only one way to respond to a successful, critically-acclaimed campaign.

Find a new agency.

Why? Obvious, innit. Everyone's talking about fucking Saatchis. Nobody's talking about the client. And why would that client want people talking about his or her (but let's be honest, probably his) agency?

To be honest, if I was the client, I'd be fucking livid. How dare they? How fucking dare they increase sales with ads people actually want to look at? What the fuck were they thinking?

I'll make it simple for the agency boys, so they hear it loud and clear: if you increase sales with horrible ads, everyone blames the agency and the client gets a bonus. If the agency increases sales with brilliant ads, everyone congratulates the agency then the client gets fired because, well, it was all the agency, wasn't it? The lesson: don't do ads anybody likes and everyone wins.

Saatchis must be kicking themselves. Doing good ads? Fucking amateurish.

Anyway, I must dash. I've got to brief my agency on an ad that needs to go tonight. I've also got a four-hour lunch planned, which I'll be doing first.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

Pitch day. A client's perspective.

2010-08-01T12:10:00.001-07:00

Look at these calm, professional welcoming clients ushering an agency into a pitch. Aren't their warm expressions just perfect? Wouldn't their beneficent demeanour put any agency and its pitch team at ease (even the jumpy creative guy who's the only non-suit in the agency who can really present but who sweats like a fat uncle on a dancefloor)?

Yes. Absolutely.

And that's why I'd never have cuntwodges like them working for me.

A pitch is war. A pitch is a world war. A pitch is World War 7 and I'm General Dave 'Knuckles' Knockles of the 4th motherfuckfacing Battalion. You agency shitshooters just walked into my theatre of conflict and you'd better have come with some serious firepower or you're going to leave in a bodybag.

In fact, fuck it - you're going to leave in a carrier bag because there'll be fuck all left of you but teeth and jam. (And pubes. There are always fucking pubes, aren't there, no matter what you do.)

Yes, I called you in. Yes, I gave you a brief. Yes, I changed that brief radically with a week to go. (And, okay, I changed it back again with two days to go. And, fair enough, I changed it completely again the night before the pitch.) Yes, this pitch is only happening because I have asked for new agencies to give me their view on my business.

But I'm not here to listen to your ideas. I'm not here to bathe in all 266 slides of your soapy Powerpoint hot-tub. I'm not here to see the creative work you've probably done far too much of, because you fuckers always do.

No.

I'm here to make a series of pedantic and confusing criticisms designed to impress my peers by making you look inept. And it will work because you're too desperate to win the business to point out that I'm talking utter fuckchunks.

Do you seriously think I'd give you a brief, spend an appropriate and respectful amount of time digesting your response to it and then follow your professional advice?

Go fuck a cat!

How does is reflect on me when I follow your advice and it works? Shitting badly, that's how.

'Hey! Did you hear about Knockles? He increased sales by 130%!'

'He did? How'd he do it?

'He listened to every word the agency said!'

'Then why are we paying him? Fire his balls off!'

What kind of wet-balled jizzmop of a marketeer would actually listen to his or her (but let's be honest, probably his) agency? You'd have to be thicker than Simon Cowell's corset to allow your agency to take any credit for anything.

Take it from me, I'm a seasoned marketing professional and widely regarded as a genius in my field. DO NOT PAY ANY ATTENTION TO A WORD YOUR AGENCY TELLS YOU. IT WILL GET YOU FIRED.

So on pitch day, don't pay a Blunkett's bit of notice to what the identikit Jaspers and Victorias are telling you. Just do everything you can to make them look stupid in front of your colleagues. It's one of the ways I rose from Marketing Executive to Marketing Director in just 17 years.

(Oh, yes. You read it right. Seventeen years. Fucking frightening, isn't it?)

Tomorrow (or the day after, or the day after that, or, like, whenever) I'll tell you exactly how I did it to the agencies that pitched for my business last week.

Now, though, I've just decided that all my ads need changing and I'm going to tell my agency all about it, even though it's 9.50pm on a Sunday motherbastard night.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

How not to behave before a pitch

2010-07-28T11:48:00.000-07:00

The days before a pitch can be some of the most nerve-wracking, ball-clenching, winky-shrivelling, anger-inducing, resentment-causing, argument-creating, resignation-causing, punch up-generating, affair-ending times in an agency's life.

I should know! I've called more pitches than I can remember! Some of them just for the fun of it! Or even just to see the look on the account director's face! HA HA! (I am a funny fucker - all my agencies have told me!)

Anyway, I've built up enough experience to know how an agency should conduct itself in the final days before a pitch.

The temptation, I know, is to make any and every attempt to sway the client's judgement, to push them by any means to choose me me me me look at me me we're so amazing we'll do anything for you me me me.

Here's what I think agencies should and shouldn't do.

1. Do not call me on the pretense of asking if I have a projector.

'Heeeeey, Dave, mate. I was just wondering if you guys have a projector over there for us to present with for the pitch, mate. Because we are going to need some serious hardware for this presentation, mate! We've got some amazing work, honestly, mate. No lie - this is some of the best this agency has produced, mate. Can I just talk you through it, mate? The creative guys don't want me to, but I just think it's so good that I want to share it with you, my mate. If you could just let me know what you like and don't like, mate, that'd be...'

Fuck off.

2. Do not call me on the pretense of asking if I have a laptop.

This is exactly the same as the projector call, but usually comes about half an hour after the projector call.

Again, fuck off.

3. Do call me and ask me if I want to have lunch to discuss the pitch arrangements.

By all means, let's get together over a coffee / sandwich / 3-course lunch / 5-course lunch / 7-course tasting menu / 7-course tasting menu with wine / 7-course tasting menu with wine which leads into a monumental tear up ending with your account exec's ladyfoof balanced on my chin. I mean, purely to discuss the logisticacious and arrangementitial requirements of the day itself.

For instance, will I have a projector? Will I have a laptop? These are fundamental questions that need to be answered. Over lunch.

4. Do send me a little present every day for a week before the pitch.

Nothing says you care like a little present. And nothing says you really care like a little present every day for a week. Nothing extravagant, just a little something. A bottle of scotch, for instance. Or a bigger bottle of scotch. Or a hog roast. Maybe two tickets on the Eurostar to Paris and a grand to spend. Perhaps a little car. I dunno. I'll leave it to your imagination. Just try to make it relevant to the pitch. For instance, if you're pitching for a company that makes boilers, fly me to the Maldives, where I can experience what central heating feels like, only outdoors. If my company makes watches, fly me to Dubai, where they sell watches. That sort of thing.

5. Do not be a load of blokes.

There's nothing worse during the final days before a pitch than to think that the agency coming to pitch is just a load of blokes. What you should try to be is a load of birds, ideally with big bristolas or, failing that, then huge bristolas. I know it sounds like a tiny detail but, believe me, it can make a massive difference when it comes to decision time!

I hope that helps! It should. I fucking wrote it.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to brief my agency with a six-word email I wrote when pissed.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

I AIRBRUSH THEREFORE I AM

2010-07-26T05:21:00.000-07:00

Apparently, the government are considering asking advertisers to add a kitemark to all ads which contain airbrushed images.

They'll request that advertisers add the symbol on a voluntary basis as part of a national effort to put body images issues on the political ma...NO! I CAN'T CARRY ON WITH A STRAIGHT FACE!

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!

ARE YOU FUCKING NUTS? YOU WANT US TO VOLUNTEER TO TELL THE PUBLIC WE'RE BULLSHITTING THEM RIGHT IN THE FACE WITH EVERY SINGLE AD WE PUT OUT?

Ahem. Sorry. Let me try to continue without cracking up. Good. Right. Ahem.

NO! I'VE GONE AGAIN!

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Ooooooh, shit, that is FUNNY! That is ball-wiltingly, fuck-bangingly, twat-splashingly FUNNY.

F.U.N.N.Y.

Imagine, advertisers actually volunteering to show the public what their product actually looks like. Imagine it! Actually showing people as they really are. Actually showing flacid hamburgers, crack-addled models, paltry servings, ineffective washing powder and all the rest of the shitsplosh that we flog without so much as a single solitary toss about whether it's good, bad, needed or not.

'Hello, turkeys! We've got this great idea called Christmas. Just put an X on this piece of paper and we'll chop all your fucking heads off!'

Fuck me. I haven't heard a joke this good since Madonna's last single.

Well, just to be clear - I won't be volunteering to remove airbrushing from my ads.

Why? Because I AM THE AIRBRUSH! KOO-KOO-KER-FUCKING-CHOO!

GAAAH! I'M OFF AGAIN!

Pitch battles, part 3

2010-07-22T04:24:00.000-07:00

After a proper chemistry meeting and a not-so-proper one, it was yesterday the turn of the third agency on my pitch list.

This was the regional agency with a 'hub' in London and some impressive results.

According to their website, they are 'groundbreaking strategists with award-winning creative thinkers of global stature'. They have also worked for Coca-Cola, Nike, IBM, the BBC, Proctor & Gamble, Apple and Orange.

(The work on the site, however, seemed limited to a manufacturer of air conditioners and a leaflet for a local kennels called Janet Balls Dog Hotel. They were very proud of it, though. 'Our innovative print solutions for Janet Balls Dog Hotel increased profits by up to 400%.')

So, I headed to their London 'hub' for a chemistry meeting and, hopefully, a massive tear-up.

The 'hub' part of it was clear: it was around the size of a hub cap. Squeezed in as an afterthought in a bunker-like concrete building at the bowel-end of an industrial estate, it had just enough room for a small coffee table, three collapsible chairs and a kettle.

The 'London' element I was less sure of. We seemed, as far as I could tell, to be in cunting Lincolnshire. Now, I'm no geography teacher, but if we were in London, it was very, very North.

The two agency principles were the Chairman / President / CEO / MD / Global Account Director, and the Chief Creative Officer / Global Digital Strategist / Global Creative Head / Global Head of Art / Global Head of Copy.

Their business cards were bigger than the fucking Telegraph.

We squeezed into the 'hub' and Lee, the Chairman Global President Etc, gave me a passionate and lengthy description of his company's strengths. They are 'the fookin best agency in fookin Cheshire by a fookin mile' and 'as good as that fookin London lot anyday' and 'always winnin loadsarawards and fookin' all that shite'.

Meanwhile, the Creative Global Whatever Etc, was drawing with a black marker pen on some kind of board.

When Lee finished (saying, I think, 'we're dead fookin creative - we've even gorra fookin meetin room wivvuh fookin chair like off of James Bond and that') the Pan-Continental Creative Overlord Etc turned to reveal his work.

He'd drawn a light bulb. On a blank canvas.

'That's what we'll do for your brand,' he said in a barely audible, throatily rich whisper.

Then he fell off his chair, out of the door and into the corridor, where he coughed like a dying hound for a worryingly long time and then walked off, presumably to the nearest boozer.

'See whorrah mean?' said Lee. 'He's a fookin creative genius, he is.'

'Is that it?' I asked.

'Yeah,' replied Lee. 'Wotchuh reckon?'

'I reckon that bloke's your Dad,' I said. 'I'd catch up with him before he dies without leaving you his massive debt and chronic alcoholism.' Lee ran off, with a look of familial concern.

Fucking weird, eh? Nothing more to do but head home without so much as a pint of shandy inside me. (I got back into town, naturally. Then I had a pint of shandy, substituting the beer for scotch and the lemonade for scotch.)

Can't say I was impressed. Still, I think I should let them pitch. It'll be fookin mental.

Right, I'm off to claim virtually everything I've bought over the last month on expenses.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

The client dead act

2010-07-21T05:07:00.000-07:00

Hello, agency professionals. This one's for you.

You know those meetings you sit in with clients, the ones where they seem to be doing their very best to appear dead?

It could be a one-on-one chat, it could involve every cunt from the CEO to the bloke who delivers the tampons, it could be a pitch. But you know the ones. They're the meetings where you start thinking 'Are they actually dead, or am I the most boring fuck-knacker on earth? Am I just not making sense? Do they know something I don't? What the fuck is going on? I'm fucking dying!'

And then you try to liven things up, so you start gesticulating. And you speak a bit faster, and you up the volume. Then maybe you stand up and walk about it a bit, like they do in films. And perhaps you try the odd fist-pump on the table.

By the end of it, you're a widly gesticulating twatbox who's pacing wildly around the room and whacking the table while shouting.

And still the client sits there, deader than Subo's libido.

Well, the truth is this: WE'RE DOING IT ON FUCKING PURPOSE.

It's Lesson One at marketing school. But why do we do it?

1. It makes you nervous and vulnerable and self-conscious and embarrassed and, therefore, more likely to do what we want / charge less.

2. We enjoy it.

I particularly enjoy doing it with creatives. Creatives are always more nervous anyway, because they've produced another one of their precious babies, another masterstroke of incisive thinking, another Cannes winner - and they're worried you're going to fuck it in its cackslot. Which you are. But not until you've sat there in stoney silence and let them talk themselves into a pile of bullshit, after which you can swing into action and make them change the headline so it's got the product name in it, make the colours more like the ones you used in your new kitchen and change the visual to a bird with great big bristolas. You know, all that stuff we have to do to ads to make them fit for the public.

I tell you this secure in the knowledge that there is absolutely no defence against it. Nobody I've ever tried it on has been able to retaliate effectively. Indeed, any attempt to retaliate proves it's worked. And even though you now know we do it, it'll only make you more anxious, self-aware and perplexed when you see that we're doing it to you.

Right. I'm now looking at you with dead eyes, expressionless and silent.

Still doing it.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

Dr Pepper. What's the worst that can happen? Oh, shit.

2010-07-20T08:56:00.000-07:00

My fellow marketing professionals, news today of a monumentally dropped bollock by Dr Pepper's digital agency should send a grave warning to you all.

It should send you the following stark and undeniable message: NOBODY IN DIGITAL ACTUALLY KNOWS WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON AND YOU SURE AS SHIT DON'T EITHER.

When pitched the idea to 'hijack Facebook statuses' the client would, I'm pretty sure, have been thinking two things. First, 'Oh, shit - what the fuck is a Facebook status?' Second, 'Why would anyone want hijack it?'

But this client, poor fucker, may have been feeling for some time that all this digital stuff is pretty confusing and intimidating and not nearly as much fun as doing TV spots like I used to and I really wish they hadn't moved me into this stuff just because I'm the only one who knows how to switch my laptop on.

So while the pre-pubescent Creative Strategic Technologist was selling the idea, this client may also have thought, 'Fuck me. I have no idea what this is about. But if I look like I'm not on board with it, my career is going to be more fucked than Keith Richards' short-term memory'.

And, clearly, the folks who had the idea didn't really know what the fuck would happen. Did they? Really? I mean, really really REALLY?

Now, the agency's relationship with Coca-Cola (that's the world's biggest client) is 'under review'.

Quite right too. This may have been a perfectly innocent mistake but the client must act swiftly to retain control and, more to the point, make any and every desperate attempt to avoid being fired faster than a paedo clown.

I'd 'review' the relationship too. I'd review it like I review what's on the bog paper after I've wiped my clacker-shoot. You know, just before I chuck it down the shitter for ever.

Most of all, though, I'd NEVER DO ANYTHING DIGITAL EVER.

Nobody knows what the fuck it does, how it works or what it's for. Come on. Let's talk fucking turkey here. Let's just go back to TV ads and stop trying to show off. You might as well leave your danglebag swinging in the breeze amongst a swarm of angry hornets as trust your career to the toddlers in the digital playpen.

(Apart from anything, when you put bristolas in an ad - which you should always do - you want to see them on a big screen, innit? Not squinted through the grease on your iPhone.)

I hope you all take note. You should.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

Pitch battles, part 2.

2010-07-19T03:19:00.000-07:00

For the client, the pitch process is, on the face of it, little more than a series of free lunches, booze-ups and jollies punctuated by bouts of ego-massage, brown-nosing and barely-concealed bribery.

Fucking great, eh?

The first chemistry meeting of my latest search for a new agency was a balls-on humdinger, and resulted in this restaurant review. It was a classic of its kind from a big agency: light on detail, big on booze. Obviously, it set a high standard. I know it set a high standard because I can't remember anything about it at all, and I woke up the day after in my clothes, halfway up my stairs, with a sore knob and a jester's hat on.

With that quality of adland schmoozing fresh in my mind, next up for a chemistry meeting was the incumbent agency, Steve. (I don't mean some ironically-astute, uber-cool outfit from some funky shithole in East London who thought it would be funny to call an agency 'Steve'. I mean it was actually a bloke called Steve.)

Steve has a Mac and a bedroom. That's his agency. He has no receptionista with Euro-model looks and spiffing bristolas. He has no iconic film memorabilia in his lobby. He has no creative director who once stood next to Ridley Scott in a lift but passes it off as a 'collaborative project'. He has no board of directors you only see when you threaten to move the account. In short, he's a fucking amateur.

My hopes weren't high before the meeting, but when we sat down in his kitchen and his fucking syphilitic cat kept trying to hawk furballs into my shoe while I drank THE WORST CUNTING TEA I'VE EVER TASTED, I knew this would be a tough afternoon. So it proved.

He began by showing me pictures of his kids, of which he seemed to have about fucking forty. At least three of them looked like potatoes with mouths and one, whom he described as 'my little princess', would have no trouble getting work as a part-time fucking gargoyle. Then there was one - I shit you not - that looked like a cunting turnip with glasses.

That killed an hour. Then I got his wedding photos, some 'glamour' pictures he'd taken of his wife back when she only had the six chins and, most fuck-numbingly awful of all, his paintings. Let me tell you, I don't know much about art, but I know what I hate: all of his paintings. Even the ones of naked women.

I was beginning to wish he'd die at this point, but I'm not a total cunt-bucket, so I tactfully said, 'Look, Steve. I'm not saying you've got no chance of winning this pitch, but if you DO win it, it'll be because every other single agency in the world has been blown up, closed down or turned into a massage parlour. So why don't you shut you fucking bean-hole and give me a bell when hell freezes over or Madonna discovers her modesty.'

I think that was fair.

Once he'd stopped blubbing and hanging onto my leg and self-harming and all that nonsense, he opened the front door and let me go.

The lesson for you, my fellow marketing professionals, is this: there's more to an agency than the work. Yes, Steve can churn out the same shit a big agency will for a fraction of the price. But the marketing isn't as important as the marketer. We are visionaries and experts, and we deserve to sit in nice agency offices, have nice agency lunches and be given nice agency blowjobs. The price of these extras will be charged to our employers - and so it fucking should be.

It's the way I have always worked. And it's the least I expect.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

Lunch. A review.

2010-07-14T13:25:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I had a lunch. It was at a restaurant. This is a review of that lunch.

Now, I'll be honest from the start, right? I don't know what this restaurant was called. I'm not even sure where it was. And I definitely had no fucking clue what I was eating. I was being schmoozed ragged by a big fancy ad agency who wanted my business and, frankly, they just tipped booze down my neck until I forgot that my name is Dave and I have a birthmark the shape of a penis on my penis.

So, I've had to guess at what I was served using my own culinary knowledge. With that in mind, here we go.

A restaurant, London.

Some restaurants, I always feel, are like a pair of slippers. By which I mean, they're not places I want eat. Then there are restaurants that are like a lady's foof. That is somewhere I would like to eat.

Er...I had a point here.

Oh yeah. This restaurant was a total and utter lady's foof. And a very nicely appointed one at that.

Once seated, several things happened. First, I made my standard request for balti which, as per cunting usual, was refused. (All restaurants should serve balti. All of them. If you disagree, you can stick a fist up your own flue.) Next, some booze was brought to the table, which I drank. And drank. And drank a bit more.

Then they started bringing me all these little bits of food. I thought at first that they were bringing me my dinner in fucking installments, but it turns out these were amuses bouches. There was a slice of smoked badger with cabbage sputum. There was a huge plate bearing a single pork scratching. There was a dainty little cup of beetroot and vitriol soup. There were pelican cheeks with butter drool.

(They're fucking FREE, these little bits of whatever. Where's the sense in it? What's in it for anyone? They're like Roger Federer's left arm, or post-cancer Kylie: tiny and a bit pointless.)

Next, a plate of nearly-proper food arrived. It was a square of something sort of brown on a square of something green. Sadly, someone had hawked up a massive slick of lung-gunk and flobbed it copiously across my food.

I called the waiter with a gentle 'OI! CUNT-BAGS!' and sent him scurrying back to the kitchen. He returned a minute later to explain that it wasn't actually the contents of the chef's sinuses, but a 'foam'. It tasted of foam, so I think it was a foam foam.

'It just disappears in the mouth, sir', the waiter explained.

'What's the fucking point of food that disappears in my mouth?' I asked.

'It's a textural thing,' he replied.

'Oh,' I countered.

Next, I was distracted by a bottle of booze, and then a plate of fish. It was fish, neatly and lovingly drizzled with the juice of a different fish. It came with a small salad of Faberge eggs, angel pubes and slices of seared Loch Ness Monster. At least, I'm assuming that was what was in it because I looked at the bill later and that dish alone cost more than I pay for a full massage at The Temple of Adulation in Prague. (And I don't fucking skimp.)

I saw that lot off in about 30 seconds, and then there was a bit of an incident where I fell off my chair and onto someone else's table sort of completely. Then I went to the lav for a while / ages, and then I sat down to the main course. It was an utter success. Smooth, unctuous slices of cow's back, or ears, or udders or something, were dabbed tenderly with a sauce of Bovril and HP, while a delightful scattering of crushed pickled onion Monster Munch added a wonderfully moreish crispness to the plate. That lot went in about a minute, and then I played this little game where I went round the table eating everyone else's too. They laughed and laughed!

The champagne turned up next, so I really can't remember whether I had dessert. There was nothing puddingy in the massive slick of puke I left on my front step, so I think I skipped it and moved straight onto drinking in earnest.

So, overall? Well, if I could remember what it was called, where it was or what I ate, I'd recommend this place heartily. Especially if you like stupid food that costs more per ounce than Simon Cowell's boob job.

The scores:

Overall: 7 Knockles

Meat: 2 / 9 Knockles (depending on what it was)

Bristolas: 3 (very uptight waitresses who allow virtually no goosing)

Ambience: 5

Ability to rinse their customers for every penny they've got: 10 Knockles

There you go. Fucking good, that was. Stay tuned for more indispensable culinary insight. You know you want to!

Why? Because I AM THE RESTAURANT CRITIC!

Pitch battles, part 1

2010-07-12T03:13:00.000-07:00

LET'S GET READY TO RUUUUUUUMMMMMBBBBBLLLLLLLE!

In the blue corner, weighing it at £230 million in annual billings, with a pitch record of 7,345 wins, 123,486 losses and 45,399 'we'll call you soon's, hailing from Soho in London, it's THE AGENCY WHO USED TO BE GOOD BEFORE THEY GOT BOUGHT OUT BY THE MULTI-NATIONAL AND WILL PITCH FOR ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING NOWADAYS BECAUSE THERE'S THIS REALLY UNPLEASANT FUCKER FROM THE GLOBAL HQ IN THE STATES WHO COMES IN EVERY QUARTER AND FIRES THE FIRST TEN PEOPLE HE SEES!

In the red corner, weighing in at £55,566 annual billings, with a pitch record of 2 wins, 44 losses and 3 'don't fucking ever call us again's, hailing from a back bedroom in Essex, it's THE INCUMBENT - WHICH IS ACTUALLY ONE MAN AND HIS MAC WHO'S BEEN PAYING HIS MORTGAGE WITH THIS ACCOUNT FOR FIVE YEARS AND IS LITERALLY SHITTING HIMSELF AT THE PROSPECT OF LOSING IT BECAUSE HIS WIFE HAS MADE IT VERY CLEAR THAT HE'LL BE OUT OF THE DOOR QUICKER THAN AN UGLY BACKING SINGER IF THE DOUGH STOPS ROLLING IN!

In the other red corner, weighing at £7 billion annual billings, with a pitch record of 3,000 wins and zero losses, hailing from somewhere outside the M25 but with a 'hub in the capital', it's THE REGIONAL AGENCY WHO CLAIM TO BE ABSOLUTELY MASSIVE, PERFECT IN EVERY WAY, WITH A BULGING AWARDS CABINET AND A RECORD OF MAKING EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEIR CLIENTS AWE-INSPIRING AMOUNTS OF CASH THROUGH THEIR GROUNDBREAKING APPROACH TO CREATIVITY - AN APPROACH WHICH THEY CLEARLY APPLY PRETTY FUCKING HEAVILY WHEN IT COMES TO THEIR OWN WEBSITE, EVEN THOUGH THE ONLY WORK ON IT SEEMS TO BE FOR A BRAND OF AIR-CONDITIONERS AND A SMALL FURTHER EDUCATION COLLEGE SPECIALISING IN HAIR CARE!

And in the other blue corner, weighing in at undetermined annual billings, with a pitch record of zero wins and zero losses, hailing from Shoreditch, London, UK, it's THE SOCIAL MEDIA START-UP THAT'S SO FUCKING NEW AND INNOVATIVE IT HASN'T DONE ANY WORK WHATSOEVER BECAUSE IT HASN'T FOUND A CLIENT THE TWO FOUNDERS CALLED TRISTAN AND BEAUREGARD WANT TO WORK WITH BECAUSE WHAT THEY OFFER ISN'T THE KIND OF THING JUST ANYONE CAN GET THEIR HEAD AROUND IT TAKES SOMEONE WITH REAL VISION AND AN APPRECIATION OF HOW THE ONLINE CONVERSATIONAL FLOW CAN BE STEERED TOWARDS LONG-TERM BRAND AFFILIATION IN WHAT THEY CAN ONLY TERM WEB 3.0 OR POSSIBLY EVEN 5.0!

Yes. My pitch list is together. The chemistry meetings will come first. Then the battle royale to secure the business of Europe's leading supplier of erotic gadgetry to the 50-plus market will commence.

It will not be for the weak. It will feature several rounds of bare-knuckle buying of beerz, lunch and gifts - and even then there will be the final undignified punch-up when the creative gets presented.

It is how it is. It is how it must be.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

Thomas Cook. More Knockles than Knockles!

2010-07-09T02:43:00.000-07:00

Thomas Cook are demanding a signing-on fee from agencies. They want a cool million quid from the agency that has their account.

WHY DIDN'T I FUCKING THINK OF THIS? IT'S GENIUS!

All the time I was paying agencies to work for me, I should have been asking for that money back as payment for the pleasure of doing it! In fact, while we're on the subject, why the fuck should I pay agencies at all? Shouldn't they pay ME? After all, I'm giving them work, which is a Good Thing. Shouldn't they pay for that Good Thing? Why should they get a Good Thing for shit-all? They've being conning us all along, the fuckers!

Thanks, Thomas Cook. Thanks for showing us all the right way to do things. I'm slightly embarrassed I didn't cook this wheeze up myself, but you can be darn sure I'll be using it from now on - and so will every other client in the world! Ker-fucking-ching!

While we're on the subject, however, I think it only fair that I get a fee from Thomas Cook for having to sit through the Redknapps' fucking wedding video. Here it is. Try not to puke, shit yourself or pull your foreskin over your head, stick dynamite up your clacker and jump through a window. This is not a Good Thing. This is a Bad Thing, and I want my cunting money.

Agency boys - prepare for a new way of being fucked in the ear!

Why? Because THOMAS COOK IS THE CLIENT!

The truth behind the Marketing Director's broom

2010-07-02T00:50:00.000-07:00

Advertising agencies have an expression : The Marketing Director's Broom.

This mythical appliance is wielded when a Marketing Director begins a new job and sweeps ad agencies, media buyers, bogroll suppliers et al down the shit-shoot and into a world of redundancies, self-recrimination and explosive alcoholic arguments.

Right now, in at least ten of the nation's advertising agencies, an account handler is walking back into the agency with a distinctly twitchy sphincter because he or she will have to announce to their colleagues, 'They're getting a new Marketing Director'.

Everyone thinks they know what this means. They think it means that they will shortly be fucked inside out and wanked onto the scrapheap without so much as a bin liner to put all those fucking pictures of their kids in.

They are right.

The first thing I do when I take a new position is to fire the agency. Sometimes I don't even look at the work they've done.

Why? Because they're not my fucking agency. They're 'the incumbent'. And they're some other cunt's agency. So if they're brilliant, everyone will give that cunt the credit. And if they suck harder than Madonna on a tour bus, everyone will look at me to sort out the problem. Either way, I don't come out looking like a big fucking hero - which I do if I fire an agency and get a new one. Look at me! I got a new agency! They've got a planner who looks like Eraser Head and a creative director who used to be in a fucking band! Woohoo! Hooray for Dave!

Another important point: being the new Marketing Director is the most perfect of perfect times to have a pitch. And we all know how much fun pitches are. (Unless you're an agency, of course. Then it's an absolute fuckmungous batshit nightmare that costs you a fortune!)

Anyway, the long and short of it, my fellow marketing professionals, is this: the saddest word in advertising is incumbent.

Listen to it. I-n-c-u-m-b-e-n-t. Ooooh, fucking shoot me, why don't you? I'm the incumbent. I've got less reason to live than Subo's dietician.

'The incumbent' sounds like a benign polyp they find on your nudgers. 'Mr Knockles - if you just lift up your dangle-bag, you can see you've got a very uninteresting lump there. Don't worry, it's just an incumbent. We'll call it and say the words 'agency review' and it'll shrivel up and die.'

So, within 25 seconds of starting my new job, I called up the incumbent and said those fateful words: 'Hi! I'm the new Marketing Director. I think I need to...you know...freshen things up a bit.'

Then I held the receiver away from my ear as the screams rang out, the pleading started and the P45s were prepared.

The Marketing Director's broom is real. I've got one, and I fucking use it.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

Dirty old boilers

2010-06-30T05:56:00.000-07:00

Well, well, well, well, well.

Well.

It turns out that an awful lot of old women - and a lot of old men - are spending their retirement with a prosthetic genital device shoved squarely up their foof, fundament or fizzog.

This is what I've learned during my first few days at my new place of work, Europe's leading supplier of love toys, sex aids, marital gadgets and wang-enhancing technology to the over-50s.

As Marketing Director, I've got to figure out a way of getting even more over-50s ladies and gentlemen (although if you knew what I know, you wouldn't call them ladies or gentlemen) to feel that a battery-powered erotic appliance is essential to an improved quality of life.

"Dave, I want every pensioner in Britain fucking themselves dizzy!" says my CEO, Simon Schitz.

He's keen to push two products in particular. One is supposedly an 'anal stimulator' but looks more like a Transformer dry-humping a Tellytubby dressed in a PVC SS uniform. Personally, I'd rather put a starving bulldog wearing a wire wool jacket up my fire exit, but there you go. The other product is a 'sensual massage device', but I'm not convinced it'll be used for 'sensual massage', principally because it is lovingly crafted in the shape of an absolutely monstrous dong. And I don't just mean porno big, either. Some of the blokes in my special films look like their Dad could be a baseball bat, but this thing is on a whole different scale. It's not even eye-wateringly huge. It's fascinatingly huge. You can probably see it from space. Or Birmingham, at least.

Anyway, those are the two campaigns I am about to create. Obviously, I need an agency to help me create them / do what I tell them too. If anyone knows of any that are willing to learn at the knee of a veritable Stephen Hawking of marketing, let me know. Just remember, they need to be fucking cheap.

I'll bring you more on my new adventure soon - including news of my new colleagues. Spencer Spencer, the warehouseman, for instance, and Mary Hinge, my secretary. Also, the goth receptionist, Lollipop, who is apparently very big on the fetish scene. I can imagine she is, because she's fatter than a manatee bingeing on cheese pasties and Frazzles.

I look forward to educating you further. And you look forward to it too, don't you?

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

I AM THE CLIENT AGAIN!

2010-06-25T02:46:00.000-07:00

My fellow marketing professionals. It gives me immense pleasure to announce that I AM CUNTING BACK!

This morning I accepted an offer of employment from Simon Schitz, CEO of Europe's leading supplier of marital aids, pleasure enhancing devices and prosthetic genitals to the over-50s market.

You are being blogged at by his new Marketing Director & Hygiene Supervisor! (It's about a 60-40 split, in terms of time.)

To all my ex-colleagues, I have one simple message: SUCK ON MY NEW JOB, YOU FUCK-BOWLS! YOU SAID I WAS FINISHED! I AM NOT FINISHED! I AM JUST BEGINNING! I AM IN CHARGE OF TWO DEPARTMENTS! NOT ONE! TWO! PUSH THAT SLOWLY INTO YOUR CLACKERS, HOLD DOWN 'MENU' AND 'SELECT' - AND REBOOT YOUR FUCKING DANGLEBAGS, YOU SCAT-FELCHING WANKSLOTS!

Great things are going to happen, my friends. Great things. And I can recommence your education in the fine and mysterious arts of marketing communications with an emphasis on envelope-busting idea-bombs that engender consumer delight. I can also continue my new sideline in reviewing restaurants, as well as generally enlightening the world with an occasional series I'm calling The Dave Knockles Lectures.

You will surely tune in.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

Come dine with me!

2010-06-22T01:53:00.000-07:00

As a farewell to my Florida diaries, I'd like to describe the night Kelly-Anne-Marie-Jo offered to take me to dinner at her Uncle Clint and Auntie Sally’s place.

When dining in the home of others, I find it essential to abide by three rules. Always arrive on time, always compliment the cook and never anally prolapse all over the hall.

Well, on my visit to Uncle Clint and Auntie Sally's peaceful home, two out of three wasn't bad.

We arrived bang on time and were greeted by the smell of freshly baked bread. It was lovely, but turned out to be a yeast infection Uncle Clint picked up in a Vietnam brothel in 1968 and hasn't been able to shake. Still, a lovelier couple you couldn't hope to meet, and we were soon being served something sort of brown and chewy, a meat of some kind, which they said they'd made in their bathroom. Jerky, possibly? Turkey? Turkey jerky? Dunno.

At the dinner table, Aunt Sally revealed a veritable Macy's Parade of home-cooked Americana - meaning most of it was beige and fried and looked like it contained more fat than a rolled loin of Elvis.

A model of polite gentrification, I gratefully sampled everything on offer, from the fried meat to the fried other stuff, and only got grease on my tie /face / back two or three or twelve times.

But delicious as this all was, I had noticed a distinct lack of booze. The pint of scotch 'n' bourbon I'd had while driving over was wearing off, so I asked for a beer.

'We don't take alcohol in this house', replied Uncle Clint, curtly.

I'm a man of manners, so I nipped to the loo to gather my thoughts and let the panic attack die down. It was there that I saw a bottle marked 'Moonshine'. 'Ha!' I thought. 'You're rumbled, Uncle Clint!' And I necked the lot. It had a distinctly corrosive edge, but was no worse than my home-made absinthe. I think I only blacked out for 10 minutes. Or possibly 100 minutes. Only a zero, innit?

Anyway, I emerged in time for dessert, or for dessert being cleared away, and decided to involve Clint and Sally in a little British culture. I called him a stupid old cunt and offered to punch her tits in. I think I may also have done a little Morris dance on her kitchen worktop. I certainly fell off her kitchen worktop more than once and I can't think of another reason why I'd be up there.

(Dessert, by the way, was something beige and fried, with ice cream.)

Well, the evening seemed to be wrapping itself up at that point, so I rolled along the wall to the door, and that's when it happened. I noticed a shade of brown on the stair carpet that I knew only too well.

(I suffer from a complaint which causes me to explosively and immediately empty my bowels when I see a certain shade of upper-middle class rustic brown, commonly used in ads found in Horse & Hound.)

Well, the effect was predictably instant, shocking and unstoppable. The involuntary roar came first, which clearly shocked Clint and Sally, but it was when I fell and expelled a volley of angry brown feculence from each trouser leg that Clint suffered his first heart attack. (The other two were just tremors, really.) As always, it was quite something to behold - like Jackson Pollock having a particularly expressive outburst in an oxtail soup factory.

(The irony was that the 'Moonshine' I'd consumed was in fact a brand of multi-purpose surface cleaner, and Aunt Sally had nothing with which to clean up my little mess! Life, eh?!)

As usual, everyone ignored the real victim: me. Uncle Clint can have a shower, then heart surgery, then a few years of rehabilitation, and he'll be fine. I have to live with this affliction forever.

Anyway, goodbye Florida. Thanks for the memories. And the herpes. I will be back.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT OF SEVERAL EXCELLENT HOOKERS THERE!

Your nan's dildo

2010-06-18T02:16:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, while you're looking the other way, opportunity sneaks up on you and pops its bristolas in your ears.

So it was that, while presenting an award at the Adult Industries Marketing Awards the other night, I met the founder and CEO of Europe's leading supplier of sex toys, marital aids and performance enhancers to the grey market.

Two days later he called to ask if I would be interested in becoming his Marketing Director.

After being cruelly allowed to resign by my last so-called company, this could be a chance to again flex my massive management gland, and to push the envelope of marketing invention once more.

Give me your opinions, my friends. Adviseify me. Should I become the Marketing Director of a company that sells dildos to your nan? (And not just dildos. Some of the them are MASSIVE dildos. And butt-plugs. Butt-plugs! Who knew old people were so fucking dirty? Did you know? I didn't know. And, fuck me, you should see some of the strap-ons they sell! Seriously! Either your nan is a lesbian with that busted old crone three doors down, or she's banging your poor old grandad up his poor old clacker - a clacker which beat the fucking Germans! Talk about an eye-opener. And I don't just mean your grandad.)

Is this a gift horse or a fucked old nag that needs to be turned into glue? Help me, my friends!

Why? Because I AM ABOUT TO BE THE CLIENT AGAIN, OR POSSIBLY NOT!

Dave Knockles' World Cup Round Up

2010-06-17T00:46:00.000-07:00

As a one-time leading light of the marketing, communications, advertising and creative industries, I feel it's about time I offered a definitive guide to the World Cup-themed commercials currently running.

Let's start with Nike's understated little low-budget effort.

That bit above was sarcasm. I'm very good at it. (That bit wasn't sarcasm.) I know from an industry source that the budget for this commercial was over £1 billion. Or something. It was a lot, anyway.

So the chaps at the agency will be pretty fucking embarrassed when I point out the obvious flaw with this great Southfork of an ad: You forgot to put the price in, boys! You forgot to add 'From just £44.99 at JJB Sports, Footlocker and all good sports retail outlets, see website for details, terms and conditions apply.' AMATEURS!

You also left out a bird with substantial bristolas modelling the boots wearing just a football shirt (a schoolboy error, that one), and missed on the opportunity to upsell all the other stuff Nike makes. I mean, in those 3 minutes of footballers getting fat, then getting knighted, having statues built of them, blah blah blah, you could have featured a good 75 other products.

All in all, a noble effort, but fatally lacking in bristolas, price flashes and a shouty voiceover. I expect better next time.

Next, Pepsi unites a continent that's been fucking itself ragged for centuries.

Well, some people might say that this ad, here in its full never-to-be-seen-anywhere-but-the-creatives'-showreel 150-second version, is a wang-shrivellingly patronising piece of imperialistic corporate horse shit. But what do they know? Maybe the people of Africa, up to their throats in poverty and debt, could be brought together by a group of multi-millionaire footballers and a big flag with 'Refresh your world' on it. How the fuck do you know until you give it a shot? This is a vision of a new politics for Africa. Football, a big flag and a load of locals who aren't killing each other because they're too busy having a fucking good time. Can't we just try it?

Next, Pringles.

Great ad. Anelka demonstrates how to use the product, and Crouch does his funny little robot dance - the one that was all over the news...oooh...four years ago. It's perfect - 'The Crouchbot', as I have just termed it, is now a cliche so old and tired that it worries it's going to die every time it takes a shit. For marketeers, this is good news. It means there's no danger of it upsetting anyone. And that means pay rises all round. Good work from the agency. (NB - It doesn't matter that watching the ad makes you glaze over and start wishing that thing on your ballbag is a tumour.)

So, a mixed bag so far. We've got a missed retail opportunity from Nike, the hope of a new dawn for Africa from Pepsi (though they've disguised it as a massive mound of awful double-chewed shit) and a classic piece of lowest-common-denominator thinking that would have ensured a comfortable night's sleep for the marketing department.

Let's hope we see some advertisers using more bristolas and bigger price flashes in their World Cup advertising. If it's out there, I will bring it to you.

Why? Because I AM STILL THE CLIENT!

Dave does Porky's

2010-06-14T06:37:00.001-07:00

Ensconsed in Paynted Laydeez, a tremendous bar I discovered on my recent sojourn to Florida, I was being shown the sights by a fine and upstanding young lady called Kelly-Anne-Marie-Jo.

Those sights mainly consisted of bits of Kelly-Anne-Marie-Jo herself, and bits of her friends, Shaqueena, Lashonque, Gabriella De Souza Margerita Hernandes De Calderon De Margerita De Souza, Pati-Belle May, Scout-Mystery Lockhart and Missy Parabchakraporn.

These spunky young women made me feel welcome in at least 94 different ways. They even made sure I was well-fed by taking me to some of their favourite slop-houses, burger-dens and grill-sheds. One of them, Porky's Last Stand, I felt worthy of my second ever restaurant review. (I'll carry on in the style of my first. If ain't broke, don't fucking fix it, innit?)

Porky's Last Stand, Florida.

When I walked into Porky's Last Stand I had a healthy appetite, a spring in my step and around 40 dollars in cash. When I left, I could barely walk, I could barely see, I had torrential meat sweats, I had sick on my tie, there was a dull, throbbing pain in my dangle-bag and I had 32 dollars in cash.

But those aren't the only reasons I love this place. There are more.

It's not an easy place to love, mind. Some might see a salad cart ridden by a pig (pictured above) and assume that its creators have as much taste as a South African divorcee shopping in Trump Towers for a leopard-skin Hitler outfit. Indeed, generally speaking, the place looks like the set of Seven Brides For Seven Brothers staged in the Liberace Care Home for the Overtly Rococo.

But, really, does anyone actually give a fuck what a restaurant looks like? Personally, I'd eat dinner at a table in the middle of an especially ill-tempered gang-bang if they kept the claret 'n' Malibu coming.

We started with some 'buffalo wings', but if they were made of buffalo, I'm a fucking Dutch monkey's uncle. No matter - whatever they were, I ate them and then all the others they brought. And then the rest.

My companions were keen for me to try the sirloin, but I said, 'Fuck that - I want steak'. The piece of cow that came sizzling to the table was the size of a mattress and cooked just as requested: raw enough to taste of blood-bogeys.

By this time, I'd sampled most of their extensive wine list. They have red flavour wine, white flavour wine and also pink flavour wine, and it all goes very well with the scotch. And the brandy.

Now, at this stage, I did something of which I'm not especially proud. I fell under the table while attempting to goose a waitress, and got stuck. Then I panicked. Then, during the ensuing thrash, I had a fairly major digestive malfunction, mostly over the shoes, legs, ears, hair and neck of a very nice woman at the next table.

I raise this only to highlight the superb service of the staff at Porky's who, apart from some tears, threats and thinly-veiled revulsion, were superb. They didn't even complain when a couple of the girls consoled me in the gents (a little noisily - sorry!) or when I accidentally sat at the wrong table and spent 10 minutes whispering porn into the ear of a pumpkin farmer's wife.

We ended the evening with dessert, possibly, and coffee. Or not. I dunno. Who cares? By the time the meat part is over, I'm usually ready to move straight onto breakfast.

All in all, I'd recommend Porky's Last Stand for a Roman orgy.

Scores:

Overall: 8 Knockles.

Meat: 9 Knockles.

Bristolas: 6 Knockles.

Ambience: 8 Knockles.

Tolerance of spending 45 minutes in the toilet with two lapdancers: 10 Knockles.

Price: Apparently, $8 gets you dinner and drinks for nine. That can't be right, can it?

I hope that helps you when you're considering a place for dinner next time you're in Florida. I think we both know it will.

Why? Because I AM THE RESTAURANT CRITIC AGAIN!

The Florida Diaries, part 2

2010-06-11T03:22:00.001-07:00

BUUURRRRPPPP! Cor. Sorry. Just had a Rustlers.

Right. More on my travels in Florida, news of which, I know, excites you more than Madonna in an orphanage for Hispanic male models.

As I mentioned, my route to Florida was a little more complicated than I would have preferred. In total, I spent 140 hours in the air. And after a journey like that, a marketing guru and envelope-pushing ideas-doctor like me needs sustenance.

Imagine my delight, then, on finding this beautiful (well, you know - not beautiful but...sort of...fat and nice) woman at a place I spotted as the cab driver whisked me from the airport to 'anywhere with a bed and access to porn'.

Seeing a sign inside reading 'We serve burgers for breakfast' was a joy mixed with surprise - like finally banging that bird you've been after for months and finding a fiver tucked behind her ear.

I asked for burgers, many burgers, and they did indeed serve burgers for breakfast. I stopped eating them when they ran out of meat.

Refreshed, refuelled and ready to go, I went straight to a hotel, checked in and made ready to find out what Florida has to offer. Then I had a snooze, for about a day, and woke up all squashed between the bed and the bathroom door, and then I went out.

Strolling down the road, I quickly noticed that America is quite big. Nothing is particularly close to anything else. So, after walking in 35-degree heat for two hours and reaching nothing more than deserted petrol stations and the houses of people with more ears than teeth, I concluded I should hire a car.

Two days later, I'd done exactly that. (I got slightly waylaid by a trip to a very nice bar called Paynted Laydeez. Honestly - they really do the service industries much better than us, the Yanks. They could not have been more accommodating, those girls. It was almost moving.)

Behind the wheel of my 4x4 (although it was big enough to be more like a 7x7, or even a 9x9) I began to explore. I travelled beyond the tourist traps and obvious theme park attractions - off the track so well beaten by my countrymen - and rambled freely through the undiscovered towns and communities that make up the real heartland of America.

It was fucking awful. Have you seen these people? Jesus wept. The knuckle-shaped foreheads, the ball-park bellies, the ironic-but-not-ironic hair. I think - I mean, I really think - that this is a different species. It's a devolution. At some point, human beings in that part of the world started regressing, genetically. Eventually, they'll turn into plants. Big fucking fat ones. And this is me talking - someone who's worked extensively with advertising agencies.

So, I headed back to Paynted Laydeez where I met the delightful Kelly-Ann-Marie-Jo (shown above in a whimsical T-shirt I bought her). We became something of an item during my stay and, in a small way, she helped me heal some of the wounds left me by that soulless bitch, boiler and ballbag, Cutella.

I didn't just stay at Paynted Laydeez, though! They don't do food, so I had to leave to eat. I'll be filing a couple more restaurant reviews in the coming days, as well as a description of a meal I enjoyed in the home of a real American family. I think they enjoyed my company a lot! But who wouldn't?

You will surely tune in.

Why? Because I AM THE LATEST SHAREHOLDER IN PAYNTED LAYDEEZ ENTERPRISES!

My debut restaurant review: Fat Boys' Bar-B-Q

2010-06-08T12:49:00.000-07:00

Many friends, admirers, well-wishers and confidantes have suggested, then asked, then begged that I start to review restaurants.

As a modest and self-effacing man, I didn't agree immediately. But then I realised I'd be fucking spectacularly cock-on at it, so here goes - my first ever. I've tried to avoid the usual cliches of the restaurant review game and have instead chosen to develop my own style and scoring method.

Fat Boys' Bar-B-Q, Florida.

Fat Boys' Bar-B-Q has a bar, a barbecue and lots of fat boys. So the name is spot-on. It's not like one of those places in London called Le Foofoo de Poncenpoo, or SLOPS or The Kitchen and Room With Tables where you think you might nip in for a balti and a pint of cognac, but they don't do that sort of thing, oh no, they do pig's jizz on a bed of fanny farts, or stomach and beans, or stuff in French that turns out to be a wasp's bollock.

The room itself is less like a restaurant and more like a barn just after 35 cows and a dozen animal rapists have had a very long and angry party. The waiting staff, however, more than make up for that by demonstrating a consistently high standard of bristola or, in the case of the men, giving me beerz.

The food is, as you'd expect from a barbecue joint in America, more calorific than a deep-fried SuBo. First, I tried pulled pork, which came in a big pile on a big plate. Being nearly totally meat, it was excellent. So I had another one. Then I had some brisket, which was a bit of a cow they'd been cooking since 1976 or something, and that was mainly meat, so that got the thumbs up too. Had a couple of them, I seem to remember.

Then it was time for the main course (which I like to call The Blur because this is generally the point where things go a bit fuzzy, what with the food and the booze and that), and I tried the Sulley's Dawg Burger. 'Why's it called the Sulley's Dawg Burger?' I asked.

'Becuz iss reeyul beeeyug,' replied the waiter. 'And Sulley's dawwwg is reeyul beeyug.' He could teach a lot of copywriters a thing or two, that boy.

It was a superb burger, being mostly meat, so a further thumbs up. I accompanied it with a bottle of a local beer, a local bourbon, a local beer, a local alcopop, a local beer and a local girl called Deedee. Then I tried the 42oz ribeye, the triple-triple-dog (nine frankfurters in a baguette), the Pork Motherload Ribs (basically, 50% of a pig) and the Fat Cow Sandwich (assorted fat from a cow, in a sandwich).

I also tried to eat part of the table, arm-wrestle the barman and marry seven of the waitresses. Sadly, the over-fussy owner would rather his customers didn't enjoy themselves and, with the help of three of his nine sons, threw me into a 'creek', or as we call it, 'ditch full of shit'.

For that reason, I can't tell you what the desserts were like, but all the clientele were fat cunts, so they must be nice.

All in all, I'd recommend Fat Boys' Bar-B-Q for a lads' night out, or a date with a fat, greedy girl you don't like much.

Scores (out of 10 Knockles):

Overall: 6 Knockles.

Meat: 9 Knockles.

Bristolas: 8 Knockles.

Ambience: 3 Knockles.

Tolerance of goosing waitresses: 2 Knockles.

Price: $0.00 if you get chucked out by the owner.

Pretty fucking groundbreaking stuff, I think you'll agree. If you know a restaurant you'd like me to review the shit out of, let me know.

Why? Because I AM THE RESTAURANT CRITIC!

THEY TOOK MY CUNTING CAR!

2010-06-07T14:20:00.000-07:00

THE SCAT-FELCHING CUNT-PILES I USED TO WORK FOR HAVE TAKEN BACK MY FUCKING BMW MOTOR CAR AND I AM ANGRY ENOUGH TO SHIT MOLTEN LAVA AND BILE! GAAAAGHH! FUCK-PIPES!

My fucking BMW motor car! MINE! Apparently, when they give you a company car - THEY'RE ONLY LENDING IT TO YOU!

Did any of you know this? Did any of you fucking think you might TELL ME?

Oh, no - of course! Much better to let me get back from my afternoon colonic and find one of the oozingly corpulent clacker-fucks from HR waiting for me with a pile of papers and the threat of legal action.

He said, this sludgy great diarrhetic smear of a person, 'I'm here for the car, Dave. You should have returned it promptly on the day your period of notice expired.'

(Do people in HR have their minds erased when they enter the profession and have it reprogrammed by some jargonistic fascist fuck-ball robot? Or are they just attracted to HR because they're already a sub-spunk fuck-bubble wank-crack who frots themselves mushy over contract law glossaries from a particularly fascist period of Nazi Germany?)

I tried to fight but, frankly, after a colonic I'm a combination of dizzily euphoric and in considerable discomfort, so I just gave him the keys and said, 'You look after her, you hear?' As he walked away, I simply added, 'You cunt.'

What the fuck am I supposed to do now? My life is over! My BMW motor car is my second home! Without it, I can't do a fucking thing! Can you kerb-crawl on fucking foot? Can you visit the drive-thru on a bike? Can you hump broads on the back seat of a fucking skateboard? NO!

This is a fucking insult. This is a slap in the face that crosses the line beyond the fucking pale.

I will return. I will return with a BMW motor car of such high specification, they haven't invented the fucker yet. It'll have a bath in the boot, be capable of time travel and deliver scientifically-perfected blowjobs at the flick of a switch.

They shouldn't have taken my BMW motor car.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT, EVEN WHEN I'M NOT!

The Florida Diaries, part 1

2010-06-06T11:43:00.000-07:00

My friends, I have returned from a fortnight in Florida with a renewed passion for life, envelope-busting ideacising and, above all, bristolas.

Florida is to bristolas what Champagne is to...champagne. But that's for a later post. First, let me tell you about how my sojourn began.

I arrived at Heathrow in plenty of time to catch my flight. The day before, in fact. (You have to remember that I haven't been on holiday since I was 8. I don't know how the fuck it works.) I popped to the bar for a couple of pre-flight relaxants and got into a nice chat / argument with the barman who, after a couple / five more pre-flight relaxants told me to go fuck myself, so I went to the check-in desk.

'Are you an air-traffic controller?' I whispered to the girl. 'Because I need to land this thing and I bet you've got a very tidy runway.' Sadly, she didn't have time to react because she had to go on her break very suddenly, and was replaced by some lumpen munter with a face like sad cardboard. She looked at my ticket.

'This flight is tomorrow, sir. Bring it with your passport two hours before the flight leaves - TOMORROW.' She said 'tomorrow' a few times more after that, but I was confused by something else.

'Pass-what?' I asked.

'Passport, sir. Your passport.'

Then she explained what a passport was, and then why I would need one, and how to get one very quickly, which I did, after a very large amount of money changed hands and some very thorough checks into my personal affairs (and cavities) were conducted.

It was about as enjoyable as putting your hand into a boiling pan of salted razor blades but I got through it and, JUST, made it back in time for my flight - which I boarded triumphantly at a sprint carrying only my small satchel and a scotch 'n' Vimto 'n' scotch.

The flight was shorter than I expected, but I disembarked at Charles De Gaul Airport ready to knock the US of A on its fanny!

I headed straight for the bar and began drinking in earnest (because I was on holiday, dammit, and I don't let my hair down enough) and, after a couple of hours, discovered that I had, in fact, flown to France. You know, rather than Florida.

Never mind - I spotted a flight to Florida leaving in half an hour, and legged it. Phew! Just made it, despite pausing to do a little sick into a plant pot. Good long flight this time - but Vagar Airport was distinctly lacking in amenities, and the weather was fucking terrible! A good few snifters of something called fredrikk helped keep out the cold but I was expecting...hang on, Knockles! You've only gone and got the wrong plane again, you silly old cunt-fork!

Well, I quickly bade farewell to the Faroe Islands and, via Stockholm, Amsterdam, Heathrow again, New York, Chicago, Bogota (don't ask me!), Mexico City and then Chicago again, I was in sunny Florida!

Some may think such an arduous odyssey a disaster. Not Dave Knockles! I have discovered that I fucking love aeroplane food! The little forks! The little dishes! The little bottles! It's like being a giant! And, if you ask / shout nicely, they keep bringing them!

I'll write more on m trip in the coming days, including how I came to meet the delightful woman pictured above. Her name is...something or other, and just as the sign promised, she served me cunting burgers for fuck-cocking breakfast!

You must return!

Why? Because I AM THE MAN IN SEAT 48A WITH HIS 'CALL HOSTESS' LIGHT ON AGAIN!

Florida. The wink-wonk of the USA.

2010-05-21T00:22:00.000-07:00

After much deliberation, brandy and a small bout of fisticuffs with a travel agent (she was fucking asking for it), I've booked a holiday to Florida.

My decision was made when I looked at it on a map and saw that it looked like a cock and ball set, proudly swishing itself in the Atlantic.

It reminded me of the time when, at a conference in Cornwall, I walked onto the beach at 4am and proudly swished my own cock and ball set in that very same ocean. Coincidence? Surely not. Florida was calling me.

I fly on Saturday from...an airport, and will be gone for two weeks. While I'm gone, I'd like to leave you with these vital lessons in life, management and...life.

Never put a tomato in a burger

It is a ruinous and stupid act, one perpetrated by Burger King every day, millions of times. It can't be right, can it? No. It can't. Can it? No. You're right. It can't.

Always look people in the eye when you shout at them

Sure, 80% of management is about shouting at people until they do what you want them to do. But that shouting is 80% likely to be 40% less effective if you don't make it personal. Make direct and lasting eye contact during bollockings and you'll be 95% more likely to see an increase of between 50 and 75% in the productivity of around 65% of people.

Don't fart in lifts

Unless you're pretty sure someone is about to get in. Waste otherwise, innit?

Food at work is always free

Don't make the mistake I saw one young hopeful make a few weeks ago. At an edit, the inevitable bento box lunch was offered and this kid - this poor, young kid - he declined. He fucking declined! He thought he'd have to shell out himself, so he declined. I guess I should have told him it was all free but, you know, I didn't. Maybe he needed to learn the hard way. And maybe I was looking at the receptionist while she bent over to pick up a box of printer paper. Either way, always - ALWAYS - fill your boots with free work food. And your pockets, and any other receptacle you can get your hands on.

I hope those hints help you while I'm away. I'll see you in a fortnight, you load of clack-knacking fuck-lumps.

Why? Because I AM ON CUNTING HOLIDAY!

A new dawn for Dave

2010-05-18T12:12:00.000-07:00

Well, a man can only stay down for so long. And though Cutella gave me a devastating kick in the cock, balls and that bit between the cock and balls, I must practice what I've always preached: don't waste time thinking about anything - just do something.

Of course, it's not easy to pick yourself up after such a setback, but songs like the above help. Songs that capture what it is to have one foot in the gutter and the other looking at the stars.

(The visuals are great too. This is worthy of someone fucking tip-top like...ooh...me! I'd like to see the agency that could come up with it.)

So, what next for me? Undoubtedly, I will continue to blog, but perhaps in a new place. After all, I am no longer the client. I am a man like any other now. (Well, not like just any other. There are some right clack-poles out there who, frankly, aren't fit to light my farts. But you take my point. Let's put it this way: apart from all the cunt-fudges, bastardos, fuck-munchers and twat-shatters that seem to populate every fucking inch of the world outside my house, I'm just like anybody else.) So, maybe thinking about it, I will always be the client, no matter what I do. Being a client, perhaps, is just part of my soul. Or perhaps it isn't. Or, then again, perhaps it is.

Whatever happens, it will be a true adventure, and the road may often be dangerous, or take me through strange places, like council estates. But, like the song says, 'no mountain's as high as it seems'.

Of course, even if it was, I'd climb the fucker.

Why? Because for now, I AM STILL THE CLIENT!

The Loneliness of the Ex-Marketing Director

2010-05-17T12:01:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, just as the eagle takes flight, it is cruelly struck back down to earth by...like...a strong breeze, or a dog or something.

And sometimes, just as the tender infant deer takes its first trembling steps away from the protection of its mother, a fucking great bear comes and rips its arsehole off and bites its head in half.

So it was today that I, Dave Knockles, Ex-Marketing Director, took my first hopeful journey into a new life. And life, being the cunt-clacker that it is, fisted me so royally up the jack-pipe, I can barely fucking sit down to write this.

It went this way.

I rose early, full of hope, took a cautious dump, breakfasted eagerly, hit the sofa with the jobs section of the local rag and had a quick snooze. I awoke again, still full of hope, and made a few calls. Nobody said, 'You're hired! When can you start?' so I had another shit and went to Delilaz.

That was where things took a nose-dive.

As well as looking at bristolas and drinking scotch 'n' WKD, I go to Delilaz to see my Cutella. Cutella is my woman, my muse, my mystery, my bottomless pack of Pringles. When I'm down, she picks me up. (Sometimes by my dangle-bag, which I am man enough to admit to liking.) When I'm sad she makes me smile. When others misunderstand me, she calls them cunts.

I was desperate to see her. So the minute I'd finished my fourth drink and had had a quick go on a couple of the girls, I sought her out.

'Baby!' I said when I found her, straddling Barry Cradish while he stuffed twenties down her tits.

'Davey!' she said back and booted Cradish off to find someone else to dribble on.

'I've got great news, sweet-jeans,' I said.

'Have you had a pay-rise, flumps?' she replied, excited.

'Even better!' I said. 'I've quit my job! I'M A FREE MAN!'

Her face froze. Only worse. She looked like someone having a stroke.

'What's up, bunny-babes?' I stuttered.

'Well, this ain't good, Davey. This is the oppo-fucking-site of good.'

'Eh?'

'How am I supposed to set up house and build a life of aspiration and quality furnishings with some cunt with no job?'

'But...'

'You'd better fuck off, Dave. My Dad told me about lazy cunts like you.'

'You're Dad's on death row, angel-peach.'

'Yeah - so he knows all about cunts, doesn't he? He's in there with 'em all fucking day.'

'But I'll get a job, fluffy-doll.'

She turned very, very angry. Her beautiful and delicate face became something else entirely. (Well, it didn't actually change that much because the Botox was really working its socks off, but her eyes told me everything.)

'At your fucking age? You must be nuts. Dear me. You need to jog on, Dave. I can't have this. I've got dreams of a minimalist executive home and a staircase made of glass what just sticks in the wall with no bannister or nothing and looks like it's floating and is all see-through and is on Grand Designs, you cunt! You know this! You know about my dreams! You know about my staircase! How could you fucking do this to me?'

Well, there was no arguing with the glass staircase. It had been a dream of Cutella's since 2007. And you can't argue with dreams like that.

As I walked away, slumped, shambling, agonised, I turned, hoping to see her staring after me, distraught.

No such fucking luck. She was sitting on Darren Beanaugh's lap feeding him Monster Munch.

In the words of the song, I just don't know what to do with myself.

This has hit me hard, in a private special place. And I know only one way to get over such a desperate situation: get smashed and find some dirty slags to cuddle.

I will do this now.

Why? Because I am no longer the client.

I am not a Marketing Director. I am a free man.

2010-05-14T02:19:00.000-07:00

I QUIT BECAUSE YOU CANNOT COPE WITH THE GIRTH OF MY VISION

2010-05-12T13:14:00.000-07:00

SCREW YOU IN YOUR EAR YOU FUCKBUCKLE CUNTWADGE MORONS!

UP YOUR FUCKING CLACKERS!

GAAAGH! SCAT-MASHERS!

I've fucking had it. I HAVE HAD IT.

Another bum-rupturingly good idea. Another presentation to the board. Another room full of blank faces, unmoving and cold, like ranked tombstones - only tombstones WHO JUST DON'T RECOGNISE MARKETING CUNTING GENIUS WHEN THEY TITTING SEE IT!

What can I do? I give these people an idea like 'Every Hole's A Goal with the England WAGs' and it's like I've put a turd on a plate, sprinkled it with badger jizz and dead babies, added a dash of pepper and yelled, 'Lunch is served!'

The same happens when I announce my groundbreaking plans to suck the gay market dry. And when I devise a strategy to be the first brand to truly embrace product placement.

Well, enough is enough. The straw on the camel's back has crossed the fucking line.

Big Andy Poleman, MD, just looked into the middle distance during my entire presentation, only squirming and grunting occasionally. (Admittedly, I discovered later that he was getting a blowy under the desk at the time, but he might have delayed that until I'd finished.) Big Alan Cockson, FD, wasn't there because he'd had a heart attack mid-dump for the third fucking time this week. And Big Brian Humpage, Sales Director, just looked at me through his tinted glasses, smirking like the cat that got the cream, as well as a new Audi for hitting its targets.

All anyone said when I finished was, 'Has someone farted?'

WELL, FUCK YOUR SHITTING FACES! I DON'T HAVE TO TOLERATE THIS! I WILL TAKE MY CREATIVE GIFT ELSEWHERE!

I could do anything. I've mastered marketing. I could master something else. I could master teaching, or rearing cows, or producing porn films, or medicine, or managing a Blockbuster, or writing adventure books for girls, or supply chain management, or bar work, or meteorology, or astrology, or pathology, or watch making, or food science, or...well, you get the point.

Er...where was I?

OH YEAH! TOMORROW, I WILL HAND IN MY RESIGNATION! AND WE SHALL SEE WHAT HAPPENS TO THOSE FUCK-CRACKS WHEN I AM GONE!

I'LL TELL YOU: NOTHING!

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT - AND I FUCKING QUIT!

I win the World Cup

2010-05-10T12:41:00.000-07:00

The World Cup is nearly upon us and, with it, the other World Cup: the World Cup of World Cup-based Marketing Campaigns.

You have to have a World Cup campaign. You have to, because everyone else has. And if everyone else has one, do you want to be the tosscock who doesn't have one? Of course you don't. So competition is rife amongst marketers to devise the best one.

I call it The World Cup World Cup (of Marketing, Sponsorship, Advertising and Promotional Communications Campaigns), but that's because I have a way with fucking words and that.

Usually, these campaigns are a complete pile of old cack-spray and nobody deserves to win. But this year, I have The World Cup World Cup sewn up before the fucking thing begins.

Our World Cup campaign this year will be unbelievable. It's title?

THE CLEANASSIMO 'EVERY HOLE'S A GOAL' GAME WITH THE ENGLAND WAGS.

It's part advertising, part promotion, part fucking art. With Fabioni Carpello banning WAGS from the England team camp, the girls are keen to get some exposure during the tournament. It's how they sell more of...I don't know...whatever it is they sell. (They all have ranges, apparently. Not driving ranges, I'm assuming, but you never fucking know, do you?) I'm going to turn that cloying and all-pervading desperate lust for any kind of attention whatsoever into marketing gold.

So, we'll launch the promotion with a TV spot featuring all the England WAGS you know and love, except the ones who've realised that England players are prone to bone anything (concrete, a loaf of bread, a turtle) if it's got a skirt on.

It'll be big, bold, unmissable and unforgettable. While bending seductively over various things (I haven't figured that bit out yet - but they'll definitely be bending over) they'll utter the line 'Don't forget - this Summer, every hole's a goal.' Then they'll probably wink or something.

The promotion will kick in via a leading tabloid. Dispersed throughout every edition will be discretely hidden shots of WAGs with their holes open. (You know those shots of WAGs with their mouths, or 'holes', wide open, at a match, cheering on their boyf /husb? Those.) Every time you spot one, you score a goal, which can be added to our World Cup WAGHOLE Wallchart. Whoever spots the most WAG's holes wins - get this - tickets to the fucking World Cup Final. In 2026. The whole family can play!

I think people are going to love it - especially the board. Most people I describe it too have a big smile across their faces, usually the minute I tell them it's called Every Hole's A Goal! So I think it's going to be popular. My agency are going to think I'm the tits - again!

Do you have a World Cup marketing campaign yet, my fellow marketing professionals? I have. And it's a fucking peach. But, then, you'd expect nothing less!

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

Crisis management and the art of PR

2010-05-08T04:55:00.000-07:00

Sometimes our consumer durables go wrong. Sometimes they go wrong in spectacular, explosive and dangerous ways. Very occasionally (about twice a year) they go so wrong that people are blown to bits, electrocuted to death or drowned in soap suds.

Obviously, this is absolutely tragic on a number of levels.

First, sales take an absolute fucking dive. Second, I have to do a huge amount of work / delegating.

Still, these situations can be handled. And it's down to me to handle them.

Reading this blog, you may think I'm only a marketing and communications legend. But I am also massively proficient, expert and respected in the world of PR. (Max Clifford, for example, once referred to my handling of a story about our exploding CleenyWeeny consumer durable as 'just unbelievable'. Praise indeed.)

The last few days have busied me greatly in this field. A Cleanavia 1100, belonging to a woman in Burnley, exploded while entering its final spin cycle. She was standing in front of it at the time. The drum became detached from the body of the consumer durable, burst through the glass door and hit her square in the face, removing her head and flinging clothes all over the room.

Her poor old noggin was found in the bread bin, topped with pair of incontinence pants, like an avant-garde hat.

Now, while this may sound absolutely fucking hilarious (and it was!) there is a downside. That downside is this: people don't want to buy a consumer durable that may, at some point, behead them. That's why this story needed to go away.

It was a situation that required sensitivity and guile. Here's how I did it.

First, I called the bereaved family (after a respectful amount of time to allow for grieving - four or five hours) and announced myself as a representative of my company. After the usual 'wanker-this and cunt-that' stuff these people seem to love slinging at me, I offered them a deal that would hopefully buy their silence: 25% off their next Cleanavia 1100. If purchased on a Wednesday. Within the next three days.

'But it's a fucking Thursday, you insensitive cunt!' bawled the headless woman's daughter.

'Alright, we'll call it 10% off any time,' I replied. 'You can't say fairer than that.'

She hung up. (I never get over how fucking rude these people can be.)

Next tactic was to engage the local press and spin the story in our favour. This is easy to do because journalists are more like hookers than hookers. They will do absolutely anything you say for a bottle of scotch, a bit of Latvian porn and a curry.

Within two hours, I had a local hack spinning a story with the headline 'Headless woman was crack whore Nazi'. With that as the focus of the episode, there's no way anyone's going to be interested in a killer washing machine.

Finally, just to make sure that nothing got out, I popped round to the grieving plebians the next day with Big Mick The Cunt, our security consultant, and suggested that if they so much as thought about going public, they would meet with a very unfortunate mishap involving their knees, an angle grinder, a chisel, a hacksaw, some gaffer tape, four two-inch screws and a few off-cuts of MDF I have in my garage. I mean, Mick's garage. I mean, a hypothetical garage.

It took a couple of days but it was worth it. Nobody will ever know about the Head-Removing Cleanavia of Burnley. Unless you start blabbing, of course. (Obviously, if you do, Big Mick The Cunt will be round faster than you can say 'Please don't saw off my knees and replace them with MDF'. Capiche?)

That, my fellow marketing professionals, is how to avert a disaster: with a finely nuanced blend of crisis management and PR.

These are the standards I set myself every day. I cannot afford to fail. And I don't.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

Why do you think it's called a 'brief'?

2010-05-05T13:23:00.000-07:00

Right, you wankpipes. (You - you agency wankpipes.) Let me just make my point about briefs very clearly.

I don't really appreciate it when planners - yes, that fucking bunch - send me snotty emails about the briefs I write which suggest that I don't know what I'm doing.

I know exactly what I'm doing. And if you think I don't, you've clearly never seen me doing what I do because if you had you would see that I do what I do very much like someone who knows what they're doing. So up your cunt-end.

Anyway, my fellow marketing professionals, here's what a brief should be. (And don't let those agency toolbags tell you anything fucking different.)

Brief.

It's called A BRIEF! Brief means fast, quick, speedy. Mine are often no more than four or five words. But those words are fucking fantastic.

Short.

Don't go on and on and on about this, that and the other fucking thing. The more you put into a brief, the less you get out. This is a fact, proven by many years in the business. I've written very long, elaborate, detailed briefs in the past and all I got was a lot of bollocks about 'what does it mean?' and 'were you drunk when you wrote it?' - so keep it short.

Not long.

Agencies bang on ad-cunting-nauseam these days about the jaw-dropping, ball-spanking, cock-wilting insights into the target audience, their reasons to buy, the minutiae of their daily lives, their inside fucking leg measurement. So let them get on with it! Anything you write will be turned into reams of unbelievable shitwank by a planner anyway, so spare yourself the fucking headache.

Basically, just tell them you want a press ad, a TV ad, a radio ad, a poster, a whatever - and then tell them which product it's for. WHAT MORE DO THEY NEED TO KNOW?

I'll tell you what they need to know: I PAY THEIR FUCKING WAGES!

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

How to do a bank holiday

2010-05-04T04:07:00.000-07:00

A bank holiday, for those of you in parts of the world that aren't Britain, is a public holiday, usually a Monday. You may have similar holidays in your part of the world, and you may use them in the same way we do: getting devastatingly drunk while charring meat in the rain, or taking children to drop litter at leisure attractions and areas of natural beauty.

My good friends at Delilaz, however, have found a third way of enjoying these precious breaks.

The Barbie-Cue.

The theme is a simple combination of Barbie, the anorexic fetishised doll and role model for young girls, and the barbecue, every man's favourite way of ruining his food.

Now, there may be those amongst you who say, 'Dave, come on. A Barbie-themed barbecue with strippers cavorting about, smelling of meat and whoring themselves for your pleasure? Doesn't that leave a bad taste in your mouth?'

Well, sometimes it does. But that's what happens when you undercook a sausage. The solution is to drink enough to kill any bug known to science. I hope that answers your concerns.

At Delilaz, the scene was undeniably charged with a certain level of erotic energy. By which I mean there were naked women everywhere. But there was also a great sense of togetherness, of community - sentiments often lost to us in modern Britain.

Allow me to take you there. Look around.

Over there, Garry Carrymore (of Carrymore's Carry More Cash & Carry) is being fed a side of ribs by Clorette, Cosmopolita and Evian.

Beyond them, Mick 'Fuck' Ewe is engrossed in conversation / light fondling with Majorette, his very favourite girl, while she tenderly pours gravy over his sausage.

In a booth towards the back, three hardworking executives from a prominent mainstream religion are washing away their sins in a mixture of cava, ketchup, the juice from seven rare steaks and a bottle of baby oil, assisted by six girls they have renamed The Blessed Choir of the Fellatious.

Across the room, close to the bar, Innocentia is manning the spit roast area, looking flushed but sticking to her task gamely.

And beyond Innocentia, in the dark unseen recesses of the lounge, where deals are done and love is found every minute, the embers of an endless grill glow with hot promise, lighting glimpses of fat hands on young bodies, one piece of meat smeared greasily with the juice of another.

Fucking great, innit? Burp.

Maybe you could try it next bank holiday. I might see you there! And you can buy the beerz!

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

The joy of BMW

2010-04-30T01:29:00.000-07:00

'Hello, it's Mr BMW Client here. Is that my agency of the last 20-odd years?'

'Yes it is! How are you? It's been a while! We were beginning to think you'd ditched us!'

'Er...well, we've been having a really good think.'

'Oh.'

'And we've decided to ditch you.'

'WHAT? But we've been your agency for decades! We developed one of the most enduring positionings in advertising history: The ultimate driving machine. It's been widely regarded as utterly brilliant and a major reason for BMW becoming one of the world's leading brands.'

'Yes, yes, we know. But, you know, all that incredibly rational stuff - all those technical innovations and reasons to buy a BMW and brilliantly judged executions and everything. It's just that we're...you know...bored of it. A bit.'

'You're a bit bored of it?'

'Yeaah, we're...you know...a bit bored of it. Janine was saying the other day...'

'Janine? The junior marketing exec you hired because she has big jugs?

'Yeah, Janine - she was saying the other day that she'd been here for 18 months and all she'd heard was 'The ultimate driving machine this, the ultimate driving machine that'. It's boooring!'

'But it's really good! It sells cars! It's your brand!'

'Yeah, I know, I know - don't get me wrong! We love all that stuff. We love all that brand stuff. But...you know...we're a bit booored of it. So we've let one of our American agencies have a pop at the whole thing.'

'WHHHHAAAAAAT? The fucking WHOLE thing?'

'Hey, hey - calm down! There'll still be some local press ads and dealer stuff that needs doing. You know, flyers and that.'

'Fucking flyers? Jesus wept...'

'Well, anyway, these American chaps really have nailed it.'

'Oh?'

'Yeah - get this: JOY.'

'Joy? She's the other one you hired because she has big jugs.'

'No, this is Joy. The idea. Joy the...you know...thing. The feeling of joy.'

'JOY? A BMW?'

'Yeah! Joy! Happy happy stuff. It's brilliant! There's this line: We don't build cars. We build JOY.'

'Oh, God no.'

'Oh, God YES! We're all really excited about it! Janine said her girlfriends all think it's wicked!'

'Isn't she 20? Is she likely to buy a BMW?'

'Not on the salary I pay her! Are you nuts? But it's really different, isn't it? It's a real change for us. Be honest - things were getting stale, weren't they?'

'So, you've gone from 'The ultimate driving machine' to 'JOY'. You're fucking mad.'

'I KNOW! That's what Janine is always saying! BYE!'

The above conversation may never have happened, my fellow marketing professionals. But that's no reason to believe it didn't happen. And if it did, which it might have, it proves one thing: as a marketeer you sometimes have to move in a different direction - one which, to everybody else in the entire cunting world, looks stupid on a scale previously unknown. Stupid like Ashton Kutcher. Stupid like aromatherapy. Stupid like ameoba. Fucking stupid.

That is why the marketing professional is a prophet, a guru, a visionary. Because only we know when something brilliant, effective and timeless has become boring.

It's a great responsibility. But don't let that put you off. I don't!

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

The meeting of my life

2010-04-27T11:49:00.000-07:00

Today was the big one. The day I unleashed the full brilliance of my latest marketing strategy to launch the Cleanassimo range on my agency. The day I gave them an idea so hot, it makes that Icelandic volcano look like a fucking Panda Pop. That's been in the fridge. Or the freezer.

Anyway, today was the day.

As you know, I like to prepare meticulously for meetings. Sometimes, I even arrive on time, just to throw people off their guard - and to show my undiminishable commitment to creating successful partnerships and power-balling every last drop of potential out of every shared moment with like-minded professionals.

I was disappointed, therefore, to have my usually strict pre-meeting regime thrown off kilter by waking up under a car in strange part of town with no socks, shoes, pants, suit, keys, glasses, watch, car or briefcase. 'Some cunt,' I thought out loud, 'slipped something into that 14th pint. I'll have to deal with them later.'

After a dozen or so phone calls, I was on my way to work. (I called 11 cab companies and then figured out I shouldn't tell them 'Just look out for a bloke with his bollocks out'. The twelfth came, no problem! I was in the back seat and buckled up before the driver had a chance to react.)

So, I resuited and rebooted at work, then set off.

Then I stopped in at Rocky's Griddle for a constitutional plate of kippers, lamb chops, kebab meat, beans, black pudding, sherbert dips and deep fried Curly Wurlies.

Then I felt distinctly dicky and stopped again for a dump which looked for all the world as though someone had mixed gravel, oxtail soup, compost, cannon balls, iron filings and raspberry milkshake.

Then I had a little sleep. Then I was fine, and set off again with a real spring in my limp. I torpedoed into my agency's reception at 11am, leaving plenty of time for the 9am meeting.

'I'm a master baker', I sizzled to the receptionist. 'And I've made you a very large baguette.' Then I turned and ran naughtily for the lift, leaving her saying something like 'Why me?' to her friend. (I know, pet! You can't believe your luck, can you?)

Anyway, I bombed into the meeting room and let them have it.

'Here's how we're launching the Cleanassimo range, fuckers! WITH THE PERSONAL ENDORSEMENT OF EVERY SINGLE PLAYMATE OF THE MONTH SINCE RECORDS BEGAN, THEN A COLUMN IN THE SUN IN WHICH JOHN TERRY BANGS SAID PLAYMATES, WRITES A REPORT ON THEIR PERFORMANCE BETWEEN THE SHEETS AND DETAILS HOW EFFECTIVELY HIS ENGLAND CAPTAIN'S JIZZJAZZ HAS BEEN REMOVED FROM SAID SHEETS BY SAID CLEANASSIMO! THERE'S NO NEED TO SPEAK - I KNOW IT'S FUCKING GENIUS AND I DON'T WANT YOU TO THINK, I JUST WANT YOU TO DO IT!'

And with that, my fellow marketing professionals, I received the greatest accolade I have ever received in all the years I have been receiving accolades.

My agency, to a man, simply stood up...and solemnly walked out.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't shed the odd tear, left alone in that meeting room, with the warm orange juice and the pad on which someone had written 'Dave is a cunt-fork' over and over again. (I don't know who Dave is, poor fucker!)

All I could do was leave them to do what I had asked - bring my campaign to life. I know the results will be as good I hope them to be in the bit of my head that imagines everything's going to be brilliant. They won't let me down.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!

In praise of Intel's jingle

2010-04-26T12:31:00.000-07:00

Watch the commercial above. Go on. Fucking watch it.

Notice it's for Dell. That's Dell. Now watch the end bit and see what happens.

YES! INTEL'S JINGLE PLAYS! IN A DELL COMMERCIAL!

Now, I'm sure Intel handed a substantial amount of wodge to Dell for the pleasure of totally hijacking their commercial - something Intel have been doing to computer ads for years - but all anyone remembers is the jingle.

My fellow marketing professionals, this is genius. Rather than go through the tedious work of producing your own commercials, you just jump on the back of someone else's and bang it until it can't walk anymore!

You know, like a parasite. Like a blood-sucking parasite, perhaps a leech, sucking the energy out of another living creature and then casting its husk of a body aside before moving onto the next one.

Or like a cuckoo! A cuckoo, laying its egg in another bird's nest then fucking off for a wank or a pint of claret or to watch the leadership debates, then sitting back while some other fucking mug hatches and then raises its fat, swollen, greedy offspring.

The Dell spot above puts the jingle at the end, but I've seen ads that have the fucking thing IN THE MIDDLE! Imagine that! Some other chump's ad is rolling along nicely when...STOP! BING BONG BING BONG! Right - carry on, fucknut, not that there's any point because anybody watching is thinking 'What the fuck happened there? It went BING BONG BING BONG!'

It's a lot like when you're having a conversation, perhaps with a young lady, and her fucking psychotic twonk-paddle of a mate butts in and says, 'CAN I JUST SAY SOMETHING? I'M HAVING A VERRY HEAVY PERIOD!' And then you have to pick up the conversation again, possibly repeating the bit about how you're a Marketing Director who can literally turn anyone into a star, even though you can think of nothing but blood clots.

Some people say that the Intel jingle is more annoying than having a car alarm going off while a tantruming stage school 4-year old scratches her nails down a blackboard, while a crow with sharpened claws grabs onto your shoulder and pecks at your eyeballs, screeching Girls Aloud songs and shitting on you, while the leaders of the three main political parties scream their manifestos into your ear, all at the same time, while flicking a mixture of lemon juice, piss, cat blood, egg yolk and bleach at your face.

But these people don't know nothing not neither. Stealing other people's commercials and looking them in the eye while you do it is splendid work. And I should know.

Why? Because I AM THE CLIENT!