In Trumps and Raspberries- Since May of 2003 I've been celebrating communications that came up trumps or deserves a thoroughgoing raspberry - good and bad work for those not familiar with English idiom! And if you have a burning urge to hear the sound effects well I just needed some practice embedding sound effects. Click on the trumpet or the raspberry to enjoy the sound samples. I don't post that often but excellent (and crap) work will take its place here. Why not write and nominate some work? Here's where to find the back catalogue for the first 3 years.

I came to the Chevrolet Tahoe debacle very late. But it has gone far enough that you can get all the fun in a few minutes. For those who aren't aware of it Chevrolet launched their 4x4 Tahoe by putting up a site which enabled people to make their own commercials. What happened is a piece of advertising history. The films which got most publicity used the opportunity of all that glossy film footage to connect the new car to global warming, consumer selfishness, american imperialism you name it. So why am I giving it a blast of the trumpet? Well not because of the brilliance of Chevrolet's agency who claimed they had this outcome in mind all along.Yeah right. No when I saw a film made my General Motors employees saying how great the car was and how proud they were of it - I decided the campaign was a winner. We're bored to death with self congratulory promotional messages. It's predictable and dull and the appetite of automotive manufacturers for this kind of self serving rubbish appears insatiable. What is so refreshing about the Tahoe advertising is that there is a genuine debate going on here which owners and environmentalists are going to have to resolve. But at least they're arguing about real things and not glossy artwork and questionable performance statistics. If you want a potted summary of the most outrageous films try here.

I get to see a lot of agency creds. But this campaign for CSI Live for Channel Five really turned my head. Start with the gimmick of promoting a crime programme by personalising direct mail and viral emails about a crime with the victims name being the same as the recipient. And you get a lot of attention and a lot of email forwarding as people nominate their friends and colleagues as victims. Add an outraged newspaper or two as some wrinklies get scared half to death by the direct mail piece and a stern note from the DMA banning any more mailings and you have notoriety and acres of coverage in the press which lets even more people know that the programme is coming. Then the aficionados start collecting - the mail piece becomes a classic which is being auctioned on ebay for £66. A piece of disposable promotional material now has a tangible value hundreds of times its origination cost. This is how to create customer value. Yes over 5 million people watched the show - one of Channel Five's best audiences ever. But the campaign to promote the show became part of the reason to watch. And let's face it - in the comms business this hardly ever happens.

Right then - I'm not a regular newspaper reader and I can't remember when I last bought the news of the screws but even I feel prey to a DVD offer. These have been driving newspaper sales for the last couple of years - films given away on a daily basis. I couldn't resist getting Clockwise that classic John Cleese film. The paper as you can see went straight in the bin. I mention this because advertisers might choose to spend a pile of money placing advertising in newspapers on the grounds that readers might actually see their advertising. While others reaction may not be as severe as mine, if I were an advertiser I would be asking some very hard questions about why people buy the paper and how motivated they are to turn the pages. DVDs are a fabulous offer but not a page turner. With newspaper circulations in dramatic decline - we're talking a percentage point a month here for many taboloids - the number of readers paying attention may be a lot worse than event the circulation figures suggest. Come on guys write me a story I want to read.