It would seem that the medium, more than the actual message, of a fairly innocuous piece of DM could, in theory, destroy a brand.

A recent study of drivers, who had a tendency to decorate their vehicles with stickers (bumper and other) were found to have a greater likelihood of road rage and aggressive behaviour. It is just one more thing to think about when building a campaign. Do you really want aggressive, short tempered brand advocates running amok like a scene from Mad Max?

(photo credit)

Fact: It takes 14 hours and 40 minutes to fly from Dubai to Sao Paolo.

Fact: The longest commercial is 14 hours and 40 minutes.

This is not really surprising as the commercial in question promotes the Emirates new route, and is a monologue by chatterbox Brazilian Fernando Ferreira about his homeland, its culture and whatever else takes his fancy. Creative directions like this are perfect for the online message, and for creating a stir.

I've also heard rumours of non-stop flights between London and Sydney soon. Although listening to an Ozzy go on about how much better they are at cricket, rugby and just about everything else might just be a bit too much for anyone to bear.

There's a little itch I've been wanting to scratch for some time and I'm curious as to how many other people share my view.

Marketing chaps, advertising gurus and the wily designer all work in harmony like a well-oiled eel responding to the briefs that flick our way with the most up-to-date hard-(and soft)ware, using the latest technologies, keeping abreast of the latest trends, predicting the next big thing (animals are the next swoosh by the way) and inventing the future of business to business communication. So why have we attached a playground label to our noble profession? 

I'm thinking of petitioning a move away from B2B towards a more grown up BtoB. We're not at school anymore, scratching on the desk with a compass C+R4Eva. While Prince might be able to make a nice living writing cute pop songs like Nothing Compares 2U that doesn't make it OK.

There are numerous (pun intended) examples out there of companies who also suffer from the same symptoms - Phones4U, Talk2Me (not what you think, just google if you're curious), and Parcel2Go, as well as snackfoods/Golf solutions like Pro2Go (obviously H2Go, a New Zealand bottled water with a clever name and a blindingly sweet logo, is in a totally different league).

Shouldn't we advise our clients better? Just consider the continued hassle of giving out a url over the phone to a call centre inTimbuk2 trying to order the latest Zappasonic® C5.2 (or a crowded bar in oh-so-trendy-Shoreditch to that certain someone) that you are damn sure will fulfill your every business need, plus you have a coupon for 10% off orders over $499.99... "My email address? Sure, Alex at Eating 4 2 dot com" you say. "Alex at eating for too dot com?" crackles the reply. And you blame your IT's overzealous spam filter regime?

So rally round and join me with my 26 little alphabet friends and lets kick that 2 into touch.

N.B. If you happen to know what the word is that describes the word/number interchange shenanigan please post it in the comments!