This Post is Not For Economist Readers

Since Scamp has retired his blog [farewell my friend the sphere shall miss you] I feel oddly obliged to post this new Economist advertisement that I just got sent.

First of all, a little history {Sorry I can't help it}.

The Economist ran, for 15 odd years I think, one of the greatest outdoor campaigns of all time. Sprung from the mind of David Abbot [the A in AMV/BBDO] it ran at a light to medium weight, for 2 2week bursts, every year.

And everyone remembers them. Because they were brilliant. Really, truly, brilliant. They were based on the insight that Economist readers tend to skew smart. So they were smart.  They targeted existing readers and were simple white out of red lines.

This is one of the most famous:

My favourite one, which I can't find, read something like

"Most people can't read more than 6 words on a poster when passing by. Fortunately, this poster is for readers of The Economist"

Anyway, it was one of the great poster campaigns - someone even wrote about a book about it [that's right - a whole book about one single medium campaign] - called Well Written and Red [a line from one of the posters].

So this is the new campaign for The Economist - but they have decided to focus on people who DON'T read it at the moment, because generally people have got smarter in the last 20 years.

The tight rope dude is cool -

{I secretly want to run away and join the circus - like John Major. My brother got me trapeze lessons for my birthday - awesomeness}

- here's what they say about him:

This ad uses the image of a wire-jumper (Florent Blondeau) walking through a city on a series of red wires and the strapline “Let your mind wander” as a metaphor for the inherent pleasure in connecting different ideas, and how this is reflected in the wide-range news and analysis available in a copy of The Economist.

As I may have pointed out before, I'm a big fan of connecting different things together.

The ad will eventually be up on the Economist Youtube channel - the link above will self destruct at midnight tonight.

Let me know what you think - it obviously has a lot to live up to - I can't wait to see the posters.