'Deep reading' your way to better thinking

The week in marketing and advertising, with the latest on media owners, how to 'deep read', a little on Brexit and the latest from Gap, The Beano and creativity

What you read matters. The more complex your reading material, the better your writing. Which means reading good writing, so-called ‘deep reading’ really is food for thought. Poems and literary fiction work best. Watching TV and reading stuff on the web, perhaps via social media, is probably not so good.

The sweetspot where journalism meets the web is in social media. According to editor-in-chief of The Guardian Kath Viner, Facebook is “The mutual enemy”, and she also criticised Google, saying media outlets like The Guardian are in the, "hands of the few, who now control the destiny of the many".

Curiously, longtime critic of The Guardian (and former columnist) Michael Wolff came up with a near-identical conclusion, but criticised the paper for giving away its content for free. Facebook plans to downgrade ‘news’ in favour of your friends’ posts, which publishers are not entirely happy about. Wolff suggests we should “Brexit Facebook”.

As we are on Brexit, we have to admit there are limits to what can be explored post-referendum. But some things of interest have emerged in the past week. Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh thinks the Brexit vote was probably not a good idea, but says the vote perfectly reflected the state we are in.

Why the pro-Europe vote failed could be down to simple genetics argues president of The Engine Group Robin Wright in Campaign. Ad Age wondered what the implications of the Brexit vote would be on the upcoming US elections. Ogilvy’s vice-chairman Rory Sutherland says the distain the ‘remain’ group showed the ‘leave’ group was part of success of the leave campaign, and similar thinking could guarantee Trump a victory in the US.

Raymond Snoddy suggests that media owners will suffer the most from Brexit, and he speculates that falling share prices in this sector will not return any time soon.

Finally, out of all this bleak news, of the post-Brexit memes this is probably the funniest.

OK enough of Brexit.

Dominic Mills gives some perspective on the current spat between Group M and FirmDecisions, with some historical perspective (let’s just say they have history), and problems for Nurofen’s marketing.

Another marketing spat brews in the US, as one maker of chinos begins a pastel-coloured battle with another as Gap poaches Abercrombie & Fitch’s CMO Craig Brommers. Marketing Week columnist Mark Ritson says this is a great idea (for Gap) but unfortunately for them Abercrombie agrees and has sued Gap as Brommers had a non-compete clause.

Over here we discovered that the government thinks that the current fad for virtual reality may be a good idea. Presumably they would approve of new executions of Dennis the Menace, bringing the venerable Beano into the digital age. The Co-op is also looking at digital to revive its fortunes, and has produced an interesting new app to help you work in a paperless environment. Could we use machine learning and artificial intelligence approaches to make email better? Read Holistic CEO Kath Pay’s views here.

In the world of creative, copywriter Andrew Boulton suggests copywriters should defend their commas (and apostrophes, presumably), physically if necessary.

One piece of work worth watching is this remake of The Spike Girls' Wannabe, remade by BBH in London to raise awareness of the Global Goals initiative - look out for the #whatireallywant hashtag.

Is creative work overall in decline? We hope not, but The IPA says its most-awarded campaigns are half as effective as they were in 2011 because creative takes a backseat to other concerns.

One winner at Cannes, Grey, has returned its bronze lion after a huge backlash to its fake i-sea app.

The Euros roll to a conclusion on Sunday. Myvan.com have one of the more interesting takes on the tournament, with this piece on 'Extreme Alpine Football', improbably played on steep mountainsides.

And finally, for those of you belatedly jumping on the Wales bandwagon, here is how to sing Land Of My Fathers if you don't speak Welsh.

Nos da.