Balls

I've never got that thing where clients get praised for their "courage" when they buy a decent ad.

It seems to me to be setting the bar patronisingly low. Surely they're just doing their job properly?

But I must admit to a certain admiration for whoever bought the new poster campaign for Heinz "Tastes Like Home" soup. And for whoever sold it to them.

No photo, I'm afraid, but for anyone who hasn't seen them, the ads consist of a massive product shot with the headline printed as instructions or ingredients on the label. Stuff like "Ingredients: aunties and uncles who aren't really aunties and uncles". The strap is something like "one taste and you're home".

It's not brilliant, but it's good. And it pops like hell. Why? In large part because there's no logo. Because there's no logo, it doesn't look like an ad. And because it doesn't look like an ad, you look twice.

When you think about it, the omission is entirely logical. The product shot is, as i said, huge, so the viewer is in no doubt about what's being advertised. Why add another element that communicates no new information?

But logic is generally no match for habit. And clients habitually advocate for few things more stridently than their logo.

Someone here has had the balls to break with habit and dogma. And they've been rewarded with an infinitely more effective ad as a result.