The Overlord List enters its final month today.

April is going to be one big push with all sorts of excellent events organised to get as much money as possible for the D-Day veterans.

The other day I asked Trevor Beattie what will happen if the £350-per-veteran total is reached.

He said that there’s no such thing as too much money. With more donations, those who can make the trip will be able to have their carers with them, and the ones who can’t make it will have live link-ups organised for them back home.

I think it’s safe to say that your money will go somewhere far better than 99.999% of the alternative destinations you might have in mind for it.

In order to spread the word further, we’ve created a print ad:

(Thanks to Andy, Trevor, Mark and Dave, whose advice was both valuable and free.)

If you have somewhere you can run it, please get in touch and we’ll supply it.

Thanks in advance.

In a good way:

This is from last year but I’m quite slow, so I only just found it:

Does anyone have a clue what this ad is about?

I’ve asked a lot of intelligent people, some of whom work in advertising, but no one knows.

What I really don’t get is how someone came up with it, had it approved by all sorts of people, including a CD and a client (or several), then had it made up and run, despite it being beyond the comprehension of some of the brighter members of its target audience.

What about (sorry to say this) the less intelligent Schweppes drinkers?

Many people in advertising think that creatives just like to make nice little films and couldn’t give the first shit about whether or not they sell anything.

And, for the most part, they’re right.

But it stands to reason. If you put a monkey in a cage and reward him for raising his right hand/paw, why would he care about raising his left? Ultimately, raising his left is probably necessary to stave off arthritis, but it’s not going to get him a peanut.

The problem is that the two objectives started in the same place, but they have since diverged in ways that now leave them diametrically opposed.

In the first days of ‘creativity’ (thank you, Mr. Bernbach), every molecule of intelligence, lateral thinking and originality was expended in pursuit of the sale or the brand-build (usually the sale). VW Lemon was a brilliant attempt to sell cars when most car ads were patronising tosh.

But as ‘creativity’ developed, confusion arose: if ads that were harder to get were better, wouldn’t an ad that was virtually impossible to get be the apex of quality? If a lack of brash hard-sell was a good thing, wouldn’t trying not to sell be an even better thing? And if intelligence improved on bovine condescension, then wouldn’t the highest possible brow lead to the best possible communication?

It’s like saying that if an aspirin is great for relieving pain, then 100 would be brilliant.

Over the years, every step in the wrong direction devalued every step in the right one. Creativity began to be dismissed as indulgence and this theory was only compounded by the success of ads that continued to smash the consumer over the head with the dumb and the crass. There have been many awful ads that have been awfully effective, and they are all nails in the coffin of creativity.

But at some point, advertising awards were created and they were given to the work that attempted quality, with little or no interest paid to quantity (of sales). An ad that pushed the boundaries of aesthetics but increased sales by 5% would do better than an ad that pushed those boundaries a little less, but increased sales by 50%.

So the raises, promotions and kudos have gone to the creative pioneers, not necessarily the great salesmen.

And that’s the 100% logical reason why creatives have no incentive to care about effectiveness.

Until they get rewarded for sales, they will barely care about such insignificant irrelevances.

And that’s the topic for the question of the week.

(By the way, I’m dismayed that John pipped George H. to be Best Beatle. George is responsible for Something, Here Comes The Sun, Within You Without You, Taxman, The Life of Brian and Withnail and I. John? I think he seemed a bit nasty. Great songs though. Obviously, Paul and Ringo can go and whistle.)

It’s been shot by Spike Jonze and has gone through a lot of ups and downs over the last few years. But will it be any good? Well, from the trailer, even if it fails, it looks like the people involved have given it a hell of a go.

As someone who has (not always voluntarily) read the book a couple of hundred times over the past few years, I hope it’s as good an adaptation as Horton Hears A Who. Fingers crossed.

(Thanks, L. And thanks for the rabbit soldiers thing as well).

(apparently, USA G.I. is ‘rabbit’ in Japanese – usagi. Which might explain some of this crazy nonsense.)

The government is about to start showing condom ads before the 9pm watershed.

And this is happening just as ‘the raciest commercial ever made’ (© The People Who Made It) launches in that time slot:

Call me old-fashioned (go on) but I think that this ‘raciest commercial ever made’ (© The People Who Made It) will get a bunch of MTV-watching kids in the mood, but they might just forget that they’re supposed to be wearing a condom as they exercise that mood.

Kind of making the problem worse.

This is on page 15 of the main news section of today’s Guardian:

An ad that can only be of interest to a maximum of a few thousand people in a newspaper that has a daily readership of 1,264,000.

And I’m not 100% sure it’s the best ad I’ve ever seen on that brief.