Moths
Claire Watson, copywriter at Leith, talks about moths.
This week I am going to branch out into the topic of moths. The reason I am expanding our horizons in this way is because I have recently taken grievance with the tiny, grey faced criminals. At the end I will attempt to loosely tie a tenuous thread back from moths to advertising, if such a link should kindly present itself.
There was once a blissful, some might say ignorant, time when I thought that moths were a mythical creature. A whimsical being that comically ate holes in the clothes of fictional characters. Something that might nibble at Gandalf’s Y-fronts in the depths of Sharps fitted wardrobe. Or snack on Harry Potter’s cloak, packed away in a dusty loft, while he’s away summering on the Côte d’Azur.
This magical world of moths was all very well until recently, about to go to a wedding, I unpacked a cashmere coat borrowed from my Mum, along with a pair of wool trousers. Only to discover they had eaten most of the coat and the entire ass area out of the trousers. This is when I realised moths are not the stuff of fairytales. They are perverts and sadists, who want you to fall out with your mother and to go to weddings in assless woollen chaps.
They are also, I reluctantly add, beacons of refined taste. Preferring the finer things: silk, cashmere and velvet, with a particular fondness for a Merino wool. Just before I strangled one of the moths who ate my trousers, he said to me, ‘Darling, if you wouldn’t dine at Toby Carvery, you can’t very well expect me to eat your Primark polyester socks’. At the very least, moths are in the market for a six course tasting menu at Martin Wishart, with no intention of footing the bill.
Thankfully, a tenuous link back to advertising has just occurred to me.
In Grayson Perry’s documentary, ‘All in the best possible taste’, you can see how the influence of our peers is the biggest driver of our personal taste and product choices. If Pandora two doors down has an ironically gaudy, gold pineapple lamp, it’s inevitable you will want one too.
In this day and age, we have an even bigger pool of peers online to inform our choices. From Facebook to blogs, Instagram and Twitter, there’s a whole new world of people telling us what to buy. Rather than seeing someone in a pair of cool trainers in da club on Saturday night and wondering whether to ask them where they’re from, you probably follow that person on Instagram and can click a link to buy them in seconds.
As wonderful as big shiny TV ads are, in terms of influence, it’s more difficult for them to compete with someone a consumer follows religiously on Instagram. Intercepting this world with fresh, snackable ideas can acutely target audiences in a way a big foisty TV ad would find harder to compete with.
Tenuous concluding statement: Keep things fresh and don’t let moths get to your advertising strategy. And if you actually do have moths in your wardrobe, I recommend moths balls. Please stay safe this winter, no one wants anyone to come to the Christmas party in anything assless, backless or bottomless.
