PERSPECTIVE: Howard's rhetoric was well timed and well judged.

Late last year I wrote about a lunch held for Campaign journalists, at which an agency boss stood up and showed, by way of an end-of-year summary, a reel of superb commercials by other agencies.

My mocking column provoked a stronger response than almost any I have written. Two days after publication I had received 30 e-mails and one hand-written letter. The breakdown of opinion was as follows. Number of people agreeing that said chief executive's stunt was tosh: 26 (Amazing, isn't it, how seeing another agency ridiculed in the trade press provokes attacks of extreme schadenfreude?) Number telling me it was outrageous that I had reported events that occurred over the lunch table: three. Number disagreeing with me: two.

Usually my mailbag is smaller, and more mixed. Here is the sort of feedback I tend to get: 'I admire what you wrote last week and next week would you please reprint the following press release about my brilliant career/company/ad campaign.' 'Why do you hate me/us?' 'From reading your coverage of (insert name of any creative/media agency here) I am convinced Campaign has a vendetta against us.'

Anyway, the first blockbuster ad of 2004 could easily have provoked another mocking column from me but it's not going to. Michael Howard's 16-point political creed, published last Thursday to mark the New Year, is an exceptional political advertisement. At a minimal cost (one insertion in The Times), it was reproduced everywhere and got massive coverage.

Admittedly the tone was mostly over-the-top motherhood and apple pie stuff but this is an approach most employees of big companies are familiar with from all-staff memos. Emotional language, whether in the corporate memo or the political ad, is a kind of patois that we all accept. So Howard's 'I believe that people ...