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Does any of this look familiar to you?

I have to admit it does to me. Of late I’ve become more and more aware of how frequently I check various social networks and apps on my iPhone.

Oddly I’ve found it’s the times I didn’t have the phone with me that made me most aware of when I would have checked it. It’s almost unconscious; standing in a queue – reach for the iPhone, waiting for the kettle (at work not home) to boil – reach for the iPhone. I have clearly formed a habit.

On a recent day out I hadn’t charged my iPhone and so my use of it was dramatically limited. My wife commented that it was “nice to have me there” and I could only agree – it was much more relaxing and rewarding to fully “be there“.

But I digress. I clearly fully recognise the the syndrome this advert describes, but I don’t see how it works to promote a new smartphone. I’ve read that it is targeted at non-smartphone users, but don’t see how will highlighting behaviour that is a potential annoyance to that audience will encourage them them to buy a smartphone, and quite possibly become a heads-down smartphone user.

That being said – it is a great ad.

I was saying just the other day that I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen a really great advert. Well I’ve just seen the best ad I’ve seen in a long time: Write The Future from Nike.

Sure it’s a huge budget epic full of over-paid footballers, but it captures the passion and the nail biting tension of the 90th minute brilliantly.

As a friend used to say “it only takes a second to score a goal”.

Viewers of the UK TV station ITV have voted for the advert of the decade, even though technically this decade doesn’t end until the end of 2010, but what’s another year between friends. The winner was the excellent ‘Go On Lad’ from Hovis:

I was going to challenge this, and say that they were wrong, all of them, wrong, and that the best advert of the decade was St George from Tango, but I’m alarmed to find that this advert dates back to 1997 – the decade before. Time flies and all that…

Anyway here now is the advert of the previous decade; St George from Tango.

I have a soft spot for Virgin Atlantic having been fortunate to fly Upper Class on a number of occasions. I’ve always thought that the Virgin brand came to life completely on Virgin Atlantic.

Virgin Atlantic is 25 years old; I remember when they launched – 25 years has flown by (sorry). To celebrate Virgin have released a great advert stuffed full of brilliant 80s references from a red braced city boy with brick mobile to Our Price records which I’d forgotten even existed; see how many you can spot:

I love that all of the other airlines are beige or grey.