“Our proprietary system lives at the heart of insight, powered by data and driven by passion.”

Versus. 

“Barry, can you talk really loud?"

It’s nonsense. 

Taking jets to Cannes to swoon over the latest agency funded charity porn invention designed solely to benefit agency owners over the poor souls whose cause they’re exploiting for a moment on the stage and a gold statue they paid through the nose for. 

Building industry staple research tools that ‘analyse’ adverts to the point where we can create a set of rules that we must never question and never stray from. Rules that guarantee success, as long as that success metric is delivered by the same company selling the research tool. 

Wearing suits to work to make adverts that sell bin bags. Eggs. Bingo. 

Building overblown offices, temples to time spent account managing the soul from every meeting, every individual, every opportunity. 

Grinding, evenings, weekends, birthdays, weddings, holidays…

For what?

For Barry Scott to come along and shit on it all. 

“I’ll just shout a bit or something”. 

And in that moment, without any research, without any giant office, without a single suit, without pain, the greatest single advert of all time was made. 

But where are the awards? Did Cillit Bang clean up the beach of the island inhabited by stray dogs with a bad leg. No. Cillit Bang cleaned up rotten toilets and grotty baths up and down the country. And for that it gets nothing. Not a jot. Not a single inch of press recognition. 

Even today. 20 years since its arrival. 

And if Barry Scott was real and had actually invented Cillit Bang. He’d look down from a cloud of industrial chemical and say “What the fuck are you guys doing? Advertising is not rocket science. It’s entertainment. It’s who can say BANG the loudest. It’s stupid. A big purple bottle with a man in a shirt screaming so hard his eyes bulge in the middle of an ad break for Homes Under The Hammer at pensioners so intensely they can’t fail to listen.”

That’s advertising.

And that’s why we started Thingy & Thingy®.

Not because we want to make more Cillit Bangs. 

But because we think advertising naval gazing is absurd. 

We’re here to have fun. To make some noise and then get the hell out of the way.

Think about it, where is the one place advertising shows up?

• When you’re on your way to something else more interesting. 
• A TV ad sits between the thing you want to watch.
• A social ad sits between the stuff you want to see. 
• A press ad sits between the thing you want to read. 
• A radio ad sits between the thing you want to hear. 
• A billboard sits between where you were and where you’re heading. 

Advertising only exists in places between places you’re interested in. 

So what are you going to do?

Make something dry and sensible and the same as everything else? Congratulations, you just wasted your time, your clients time and the time of those people trying to get to the things they want to get to. 

Ask yourself, what would Barry do?

He’d punch you in the face with a level of volume you couldn’t fail to ignore. He’d wow you with completely exaggerated product demos. He’d get your attention by any means necessary. 

Now Barry was a lunatic, clearly. We’re not saying let’s make more Cillit Bang adverts. We’re saying, metaphorically scream into the face of your audience with something that entertains them. 

Imagine yourself. Do it. Trying to get to the thing you want to get to. But adverts are in the way. What do you want to see? Another talking animal? A dancing family? Someone smiling their way through an advert that introduces the logo in the first three seconds, has pets because people like pets and ends on a 5 second product endcard because ‘recognition’?

Or do you want to see something you weren’t expecting? Something that pulls you out of your trance? Something that tickles you? Moves you? Makes you think? 

In 2005. When your nana was waiting for part two of Cash In The Attic, the last thing she expected to see was a man spraying a tsunami of Cillit Bang into her face and ears. 

And yet Barry did. 

So tomorrow, when you’re reaching for your shirt, your tie. Take a chance. Leave them at home. Go casual. And when Alistair in accounts suggests that we all take a beat to scan the research results on the focus group that ran the overnight test on the animatic for that Cat Litter Tray advert, walk over, put one hand on his shoulder, don’t explain why you’re in your comfies and slippers and get uncomfortably close to his ear and whisper. 

BANG AND THE DIRT IS GONE!

He’ll love it. 

Just don’t tell him Barry’s done it before.