Live issue/Creative Advertising: some creative brilliance is overshadowed by meeting tips. (Close-Up).(Mario Pricken's Creative Advertising)(Brief Article)

I wish there was a book on how to review books on "How to be creative". It would make this easier.

What we have in Mario Pricken's Creative Advertising, published on 22 April, is a well intentioned teach-in on the methods and techniques used in producing great advertising ideas.

"This is a handbook for brilliant ideas" Mario says. Yee ha! All I need to do is buy up all the copies in print and thus deny Flintham and McLeod, Brazier and Worthington, Nick Bell, Vince Squibb and everyone else the chance to get their hands on this alchemist's formula. Ha! I have won. Sadly, it goes on to talk about Idea Engineering. My heart sinks, I don't think I'll be calling Zwemmers just yet.

Next we're into a section about meetings headed "Dream Team, a basis for every meeting". Sorry but I don't believe any great campaign has ever come out often people sitting in a meeting trying to produce an inspired piece of creative work.

By the time I've got to the section headed "A practical guide to joke making: constructing and disrupting frames of reference", my heart has sunk further than Leicester City. (By the way there is no mention of the use of football analogies in advertising discussions, you could definitely write a couple of chapters on that.)

There are also some blindingly obvious pieces of advice. "Stories can be told in an effective way without using words." No, really, you mean with pictures? And a ...