7 Reasons

Tag: Advert

  • 7 Reasons to buy an Austin Seven

    7 Reasons to buy an Austin Seven

    What’s this?  You’re doubtless thinking.  A 7 Reasons post on a Sunday?  That’s never happened before.  And you’d be right (probably).  But today, history has provided us with one, in the form of an Austin Seven advert from 1933.  And it’s brilliant; I’m so convinced by the arguments contained within it that I want one.  So here, for your entertainment, amusement and personal betterment, is the amazing advert and also a bit of an analysis.

    a period (30s, 1930s, thirties, 1932) car ad (advert, advertisment).  Motoring.

    1.  “It provides the cheapest form of road travel-a penny a mile for four, all in.”  This is astonishing.  If you (or I) were to purchase one of these and operate it as a taxi the profits would be so vast that we’d soon be richer than Croesus.  And conveniently, less dead.  Less than a penny a mile!

    2.  “It is extremely easy to drive, easy to park.”  That’s brilliant.  That will save me spending ten minutes reversing and going forward in a car before saying “fuck it” and abandoning it in the middle of the road.  It will also make it easy to train others to drive it (of which more later).

    3.  “It needs no mechanical knowledge; it is trouble-free.”  It’s an everlasting car that never needs to be tinkered with.  Fantastic.

    4.  “It is good for five, six or even more years of hard use.”  Oh, so it isn’t then.  Still, that’s quite a lot of use.  Especially hard use.  After all, it’s hard for cars to float on the sea, so for it to last five, six or even more years when being used to drive to and from France would be a good performance.

    5.  “It is as fully equipped and finely finished as cars three times its size.”  Superb.  It’s every bit as good as the Austin Twenty-One then.

    6.  “It is free from superfluous weight, being the lightest saloon car made-hence its unburdened power and light running costs.”  Unburdened power:  I like the sound of that and, even if there are costs involved in running the lights, I don’t care.  I’m sold on it.  I want one.

    7.  “It is the only baby car proved by the public for over twelve years.  No other car can give you equal results.”  Wait!  Baby car?  That’s amazing.  I have a baby.  I won’t even have to drive it myself!  I’m going train him to drive (it’s easy to drive, remember) and put him to work as a taxi driver.  Then I can sit back and wait for all of the money to come flooding in.  This is going to be amazing.

    *7 Reasons will return tomorrow, probably in diamond-encrusted form, with gold taps.

  • 7 Reasons According To Them

    7 Reasons According To Them

    Everywhere you go, celebrities are endorsing something or other.  Now it’s our turn.*

    j
    "7 Reasons wanted to stop me. They failed. Now I'm going to crush them in my giant hand."
    "We will be judged by 7 Reasons. When they want to inflict great pain on the world they will stop writing."
    "I've bought a komodo dragon, a cross-eyed opossum, a Kim Jong Il and I've urinated in a policeman's helmet. Thank you 7 Reasons."
    "I adore 7 Reasons; it's an absolute joy to read every day. It's an essential lifestyle guide that has taught me so much about cats and biscuits. Both of the team seem lovely, but I especially like the tall, grumpy one with the spell-check facility. And thanks to the other one, I'm planning a trip to Whitstable."
    "I'm a devotee of 7 Reasons and can categorically state that it is NOT a cult. Not even close."
    "The 7 Reasons Marc Fearns picture book gets me hyped."
    "I read 7 Reasons and now I'd give my right arm to beat the French. At anything."

    *Only words and pictures have been altered and fabricated in the making of this post.  Everything else is real.

  • 7 Reasons That The UK Should Ban Carlsberg

    7 Reasons That The UK Should Ban Carlsberg

    1.  Retaliation.  Relations between the UK and Denmark have long been difficult.   From the eighth to the eleventh centuries they invaded us; in the nineteenth century we confiscated their navy, and in the twenty-first century they sent Nicklas Bendtner to lumber around our football fields and sulk like a moon-faced twelve year old girl.  A giant moon-faced twelve year old girl.  Now, however, they’ve gone too far.  They’ve banned that quintessentially British spreadable yeast extract, Marmite from their country.  The time to act is now and we need to ban something in return.  We can’t ban bacon, because half of the 7 Reasons team will cry and we can’t ban Lego for exactly the same reason.  The only thing left is Carlsberg.

    2.  Strength. The standard Carlsberg is an okay and quite drinkable lager (for a mass-manufactured one).  Sadly, however, we don’t get that in the UK.  We get an insipid watery thing brewed specially for us.  It’s horrible and pointless.  If you wanted to get drunk, you’d have to consume so much of it that your bladder would swell to the size of a small hatchback before you felt the teeniest bit light-headed.  And that’s the moment that your small hatchback would probably be involved in an accident.  With a boat.

    3.  Taste.  The flavour of the UK Carlsberg lager is…well…in there somewhere.  You can definitely tell that you’re drinking something that was once in the same country as some malt and some hops.  Briefly.  But going on an epic search to find the flavour in the beverage that you’re drinking is frustrating and pointless.  And we already have a drink like it in the UK, it’s called water.  It’s cheaper (unless you’re a family with a meter) and you don’t have to go out and buy it, it’s already there in your own home; in the taps.  And it might already have been drunk by a celebrity like Elton John or Ryan Giggs, so it carries a greater celebrity cachet.

    4.  It Comes In A Green Tin.  And I don’t like green tins.  I just don’t.  Never have, never will.  I’m perfectly within my rights to dislike green tins and it’s not at all irrational.  After all, we live in a country where it’s considered perfectly normal behaviour to dislike otherwise perfectly good people because of what vehicle they choose to commute in/on, what football team they support and the brand of shoe they choose to wear.  So my hatred of green tins is far more rational than the cultural norm.  Let’s get rid of the little green tins.

    5.  Because It’s Bad For You.  Marmite was banned from Denmark because it contains additives:  It’s unnaturally potent.  But are the parks and playgrounds and municipal seating areas of Copenhagen littered with – often apparently lifeless – ruddy-faced and dishevelled men clutching half full* jars of Marmite in their limp, grimy hands?  No.  Those men are over in the UK, clutching cans of Carlsberg Special Brew**.     Because that too is unnaturally potent and unlike Marmite, which is good for you, it seems to be quite detrimental to the health.

    6.  Because They Keep The Good Stuff To Themselves.  For Carlsberg make an amazing beer: a strong, rich, malty lager-beer with brilliant sharp hoppy notes.  It’s called Elephant – named after one of the gates to their Copenhagen brewery – and can I get hold of it in the UK?  Can I buggery.  It would be easier to get hold of an actual elephant, and possibly more fun too.  I could keep it in the garden and train it to stand on my next-door-neighbour’s car.  If we banned Carlsberg, my frustrating and usually fruitless search for Elephant would come to an end.

    7.  Because Of The Adverts.  Carlsberg’s advertising is brilliant. It’s high-budget, has consistently great production values and is usually very, very memorable.   But if we have to suffer every last epically dull and unoriginal bore mindlessly parroting, “Carlsberg don’t do *****(those asterisks are to suggest blankness, we’re not subject to a superinjunction)…but if they did….”, every time they see something they’re enthused by, because they believe it passes for original wit, that’s too high a price to pay for it.  Let’s ban Carlsberg: We’d get revenge, lose crap beer, drink more water, rid ourselves of green tins, have healthier tramps and I’d be able to ride an elephant to the pub, where I wouldn’t be tempted to punch a dullard.  You know it makes sense.  Sort of.

     

    *Or half empty, you decide.

    **As manufactured by Chaka Khan.

     

  • It’s That SPAM Again

    It’s That SPAM Again

    7 Reasons To Borrow One Of The 7 Reasons Team

    It’s Sunday today, so we’ve taken our traditional day away from the reasoning-mine and, as they are often wont to do, our thoughts have turned to food. Now, some time back we brought you what we considered to be the ultimate SPAM recipe – Planked SPAM – but now we’ve unearthed something that has easily trumped Planked SPAM and knocked it into a cocked hat.  Whatever that means.  Brace yourself!  It’s…

    A SPAM advert with a recipe for SPAM and baked beans

    Yes, it’s SPAM ‘n’ Beans which is, apparently, exactly right for Saturday night (which is rather a shame as I took my wife for cocktails and to a really good concert in Northern Europe’s largest Gothic Cathedral last night (if only I’d seen this first)). It seems delightfully simple to cook, consisting as it does of two ingredients; SPAM and baked beans.  Simply place slices of SPAM in baked beans and cook them on the hob, then serve in some sort of dirty brown pot with congealed sauce oozing over the side.  Who wouldn’t be overjoyed to be served this?  It seems that the simplest recipes are often the most delicious.*

     

    *Sadly I’m the member of the 7 Reasons team that doesn’t eat meat and – as SPAM is a distant relative of meat – I can’t try it myself.  Any readers care to give it a go?**

    **7 Reasons will be back tomorrow, without any tummy trouble whatsoever.

     

  • 7 Reasons to Shop With 7 Reasons

    7 Reasons to Shop With 7 Reasons

    You’ve laughed with us, you’ve cried with us, you’ve watched us, you’ve read us, you’ve heard us, you’ve written for us, you’ve tweeted with us, you’ve got engaged with us, you’ve had a baby with us and probably other stuff too.  And now, in a new and exciting development, you can shop with 7 Reasons.  And here are seven reasons that you should.

    The online shop of the humour website, 7Reasons.org

    1. Be Unique.  Everyone wants to feel distinctive, unique and a bit special.  And, if you purchase a 7 Reasons t-shirt, the chances are very high that it will actually be unique.  After all, how many people are you likely to bump into in your local pub wearing the same Haystack Poking Patrol t-shirt as you?  And even in the unlikely event that you did meet someone else in a pub wearing that same t-shirt, you could just say, “Hello Marc” and I’d probably buy you a beer.  You’ll be unique or you’ll get beer.  That sounds like a good deal.

    2.  To Marvel At The Emporium.  The 7 Reasons team have (amongst other things) expertise in web design and the retail sector.  You might think that this would make putting together an online shop easy.  But you’d be wrong.  Because in typical 7 Reasons style, the one with the retail background did the web design and the one with the web design background is in charge of the retail side of things (and did everything else).  So if it does crash or start randomly giving away free merchandise you’ll be there to witness/benefit.

    3.  Because Our Wares Are Really Jolly Good.  I didn’t have anything to do with the design of the lemon t-shirt (God or Darwin, depending on your viewpoint, designed the lemon and Jonathan Lee did the rest), so I can say this.  It’s bloody brilliant.  Look at it!  Just look at it!  It’s really a beautiful piece of design.  It’s a pop-art pie-chart in lemon.  Who wouldn’t want to wear that, other than the abjectly wrong and gits?  No one.

    A t-shirt from 7 Reasons (.org)

    4.  Innovation. Because the product range will grow as we think of more things to add.  We’re already looking into producing 7 Reasons Inspirational Beer-Mats, calendars and fridge-magnets, so you’ll never know what you might find there:  A 7 Reasons horse; a 7 Reasons handbag; a 7 Reasons his and his voodoo doll set; a replica 7 Reasons sofa.  Anything.  Or if you don’t find what you want, you might eventually, because…

    5.  We’re interactive.  We can’t think of everything.  We’ve tried and have gotten distracted by girls and tiramisu and things.  But we love great ideas and, if you’ve thought of something you’d like to see in the 7 Reasons shop that isn’t there, you can email us and, if we think it’s a good idea, we’ll look into making it.  And we’ll probably put your name on it too, unless it’s something really small – or embarrassing – in which case we won’t.  Or if you have a really long name like Bartholomew Constantine Washington Penderghast the third, we might not. But if you’re called Jennifer Aniston we definitely will, and that’s a promise.

    6.  Incentive.  Has any other website ever encouraged you to invade a country?  Yes, probably, but only evil ones.  We’re nice chaps though, and we’d like to encourage a more benign, civilised, conquest: So the first five readers that are photographed standing atop the Eiffel Tower waving a Union Flag and wearing one of our France Invasion t-shirts will get the money they spent on the t-shirt refunded.*

    7.  Because We’re Very Excited.   So excited, in fact, that we spent a couple of hours putting this post together about our shop and forgot to include a link to it.  So here it is (this is the link).  Now go and shop till you drop!  Or at least until your arms are very full and you feel a little faint.**

    *We can sometimes tell the difference between the Blackpool and Eiffel towers and we’re also quite good at spotting things that have been photoshopped so no tomfoolery, please.

    **I – Marc – would like to thank my colleague Jonathan Lee for all of the effort that he put into the shop and the merchandise (and for fielding slightly ranty emails about World War Two font styles and spacing without ever losing his cool).  Never let it be said that he doesn’t work very, very hard indeed.

  • 7 Reasons That Goats Should Stare at Men

    7 Reasons That Goats Should Stare at Men

    I’m sure we’re all familiar with the film, The Men Who Stare at Goats, which is based on the work of a secret psychic military unit.  But in that film they’re doing it wrong.  Men shouldn’t stare at goats.  Goats should stare at men.  It’s obvious.  Here are seven reasons why.

    The movie poster for the film, The Goats That Stare at Men

    1.  Men Are More Interesting Than Goats.  This it not universal, as anyone who’s ever seen the queue in a Homebase on a wet Thursday afternoon or viewed the bits between the sport on Sky Sports will testify, but generally, it is true.  After all, men build things; men wage war; men get drunk; and fall over; men morris dance.  Goats on the other hand, do not.  Goats stand; goats chew; goats stand some more; goats sit down.  That’s pretty much it as far as goats go.  If you want to know how relatively interesting goats and men are, just look at the internet.  The ratio of men to goats depicted online is 999999999999999999:1*.  The evidence is overwhelming.

    2.  It’s Less Dangerous For Them Than Staring At Women.  Anecdotal evidence suggests that, in the UK, you are more likely to be physically assaulted in a pub car park by an addled simpleton enquiring, “Are you staring at my bird?” than in any other circumstance.**   And this is a scenario that goats are just fundamentally ill-equipped to deal with.  Rather than diffusing the situation by calmly and rationally replying, “Yes, but in a curious, rather than a lecherous way.  Is her skin naturally that orange?  Did she apply her mascara with a spoon?  Shouldn’t someone be holding her hair back while she’s vomiting?” a goat would just stand there, being a goat.  If they stared at women, our pub car-parks and city centres would be full of hyper-aggressive drunkards punching goats every weekend to the soundtrack of “leave him Gary, he’s not worth it”.  No one wants that, except Gary.  And he’s an idiot.

    3.  Conscience.  In the modern secular age, where our notion of an all-knowing God and right and wrong are becoming ever more confused and blurred, we all need a little help and guidance every now and again.  And what better way to make men consider their actions than by having a goat stare at them.  After all, there are many, many things that you might conceivably do when alone that you would not do when a goat was looking at you.  These include:

    • Picking things.
    • Scratching things.
    • Rubbing things.
    • Pulling things.
    • Poking things.
    • Looking at things.
    • Other stuff with things.

    Could you look at pornography if a goat was staring at you?  No.  Could you pick the pocket of a nun if a goat were staring at you?  No.  Could you have sex with a goat if a goat were staring at you?  No.***  If goats stared at us, we’d live better lives.

    4.  Time-Saving.  If you’re a man you’re probably thinking, I won’t have time to look after a goat.  I have important things to do, I have trains to look at and pants to file and whatnot.  But you’d be wrong.  Your staring-goat would actually save you time as you’d never, ever need to mow the lawn again.  Nor, if you already do this, would you need to go and chew the local playing field for half an hour every day, your goat could do that for you too.  Being stared at by a goat is like being given the gift of time.

    5.  Education.  Goats will get something from the whole staring at men deal too.  They’ll learn from us.  After all, goats haven’t evolved or significantly changed their lifestyle since they first appeared on the planet (unless they evolved from geese, in which case, well done goats, do carry on).  By staring at men, they might learn to do something other than standing in a field and staring at men.  They might evolve to use tools, to walk upright, to tell time or even learn to read books, instead of eating them.  Goats will benefit.

    6.  Responsibility.  This is not universally the case, but many men lack a sense of responsibility and really only get one when fatherhood is thrust upon them.  But being the keeper of a staring goat would engender that sense of responsibility.  After all, there’s nothing like having to feed something, teach it right and wrong (not to butt the television except when East Enders is on, not to gore the cat with its horns etc) to make you realise that you have other things to think about than whether your shoes are a slightly different colour to each other, or whether the light on the floor varies significantly over the 15cm gap between them causing them to appear different…Nope, it’s the light.  Right, where was I?  Oh yes, and the ladies will love you when they see you tenderly strapping your goat into the back of the car before setting off on journeys.  They’ll see you as potential breeding material, so you’ll be more sexually successful.  Though you will have to perform with a goat staring at you, good luck with that.

    7.  Trains.  Men – despite the Clint Eastwood/John Wayne/Buster Keaton strong, silent stereotypes – are gregarious social creatures for whom being alone can lead to loneliness, and that lack of socialization can in turn lead to eccentricity, outright weirdness and a penchant for trains.  The company of a staring goat would prevent men becoming lonely and developing strange habits, which would eventually lead to the demise of trainspotting as a pastime.  It would probably also lead to the end of model aeroplane building and World of Warcraft, so bring on the goats, I say.  Oh, and please send my next-door neighbour his first, as the sounds of his model trains are audible in my loft at night.  And they interfere with me cataloguing my button collection.****

    *This figure is made up.  I don’t have time to count the internet just to illustrate that men are represented there in a far larger number than goats.

    **It’s interesting to note that no one, ever, in the history of drink-fuelled, envy-inspired, pub car-park assaults has commenced proceedings by uttering the phrase, “Are you staring at my fiancé?”

    ***It would be the wrong way round, for a start.

    ****This is untrue.  I wrote it for comedic effect, please, please, please do not send us any correspondence about buttons.  No buttons.  No!

  • 7 Reasons To Stone The Crows

    7 Reasons To Stone The Crows

    Crows sitting on a telephone line in the rain

    1. Farmers. I have never been a farmer, lacking as I do the necessary sheepdog and accompanying whistle. I imagine, though, it must be tough work. Tiring work. Frustrating work. Especially if you have ploughed your field and sowed the seed only to see a flock of crows engulf the scene. It’s at this point when you have a choice. Allow them to eat your livelihood or revert to the stones. Whichever you choose, you also need to invest in a better scarecrow. *

    2. Rivalry. If you live in the city of Adelaide, Australia, you may well support Port Adelaide Football Club in the AFL. In doing so you immediately have a rival. They are across town and are called the Adelaide Crows. You may take exception to defeat at the hands of your nemesis and wish to take matters into your own hands. To, you know, bring some pride back to your end of town.*

    3. Attack. Picture the scene. You are walking along the street, minding your own business, when an armoured vehicle rocks up next to you with crows on its roof. And when I say crows, I mean a Common Remotely Operated Weapon Station. You know, one of those things that you can mount a machine gun on and then operate from the comfort and security of the driver’s seat. If this happens you need to get prepared. If he starts firing you need to use whatever means you can to fight back. And chucking stones at the crows might be your only hope. Good luck.*

    4.  Words. The collective noun for crows is a murder and, if we take that as some sort of corrupted historical instruction, we should be killing them.  Now, shooting them would probably be the best way to do this but, as most of the 7 Reasons readership is based in the UK, there probably aren’t that many gun-owners among us.  This would leave us furiously hurling bullets at them (which would be expensive) or desperately searching for alternate methods of killing them.  Though they live in trees and rope is in plentiful supply from chandlers all around our island nation, hanging them isn’t practical as crows can defy gravity.  Basically they’d just flutter about for a bit then fly back to the branch we’d hanged them from so, in essence, we’d just be tying crows to trees.  Where they live anyway.  This really leaves stoning as the only viable option.

    5.  Australia. In Australia, where the phrase stone the crows is said to have originated – or should that be aboriginated – the crows eat lambs.  That’s right, lambs.  Now I haven’t been too close to Australian lambs, but they seem like quite sizeable creatures to me.  And frankly, if I lived in an upside-down land where large black birds were capable of swooping up from the sky below me and killing animals that are the size of human babies (which apparently have enough to fear from dingoes over there as it is), I’d be ready to stone them too.  Or I’d go even further and rock them.  What’s more, being English, my throws would have a better chance of hitting them than the natives’ efforts.***

    6.  Do The Right Thing. Crows are the proper animal to stone.  I – before I corrected a spelling mistake – spent an earlier paragraph exhorting you, the reader, to stone the cows.  But cows are definitely not an animal that you should be stoning.   They’re large – surprisingly fast – and would probably become quite cross if you were to hurl stones at them.  Not to mention the possibility of being shot by a furious and ruddy-faced farmer.  Stoning cows is wrong.  Stoning crows is right.

    7.  Kia-Ora. Remember the Kia-Ora advert where crows impersonate a hobo-child’s dog to relieve him of his Kia-Ora, despite his protestations that it’s too orangey for them?  You’ll know if you’ve seen it, the music will still be reverberating round your head over twenty-five years later ready to surface when you least expect it to.  Or want it to.  Which is never.

    Enjoy!

    And now we all probably want to stone the crows.

    *7 Reasons would like to point out that we do not condone the stoning of crows whether they be real crows, the Adelaide Crows or the Common Remotely Operated Weapon Station.**

    **No, on second thoughts, fuck them.  Stone away.

    ***We can probably keep this up until the next Ashes series in 2013.

  • 7 Reasons That The Correct Font is Important

    7 Reasons That The Correct Font is Important

    Fonts: Sometimes we don’t pay enough attention to them, but choosing the correct one is vital for your project; be it a full blown advertising campaign, a sign for your office, a Christmas card or a publicity photo. Here are seven reasons why.

    1.  Playfulness.  Kristen is a lovely, whimsical, childlike font which, when used correctly, imbues the work with a sense of playfulness and naivety.  When used incorrectly however, it is not as effective:

    Adolf Hitler poster with a swastika at Nuremberg saluting (salute) with brownshirts (painting, picture,propaganda). ITC Kristen Font

    The message Drive to the East was intended as a call to invasion and conquest.  This poster may still encourage people to drive East, but now they’ll be doing it in Smart cars whilst drinking Innocent smoothies and listening to Death Cab For Cutie.  The Kristen font is too jaunty for Hitler.

    2.  Menace.  Similarly, Fraktur is a font associated with much Nazi propaganda and many of their legal notices.  When used in this context however, it rather blurs the message:

    a cute bunny picture poster to raise funds for the animal shelter.  Fraktur font

    Even the sad face can’t rescue this one.  The font exudes menace and it makes it appear more of a threat than an appeal:  That if you don’t give them money, ranks of jack-booted stormtroopers will goose-step on poor Flopsy. :’-(  Still quite an effective message though.

    3.  Cool.  Some fonts – Sidewalk in this instance – are rather cool and edgy and, when used sparingly, can really make an impact.

    An office notice about washing up teacups using the sidewalk font

    When making a sign for the office kitchen though, they tend to work less well.  The thoughts of the users of the office kitchen will probably range from, “What in god’s name is that abomination on the wall?!”  to, “Wow!  Emma’s like the coolest person ever to have put up a sniffy notice about washing teacups.  Ever.”

    4. Minimalism.  The moon: A cold, empty, stark place which requires an appropriately minimal font and, when putting together an article on whether man will return to the moon, it’s important to use one.  And not this:

    A picture of the moon and speculation on man's return to it.

    French Script really isn’t doing this picture any favours.  It’s over-elaborate, cluttered, and just not spacey enough.  And it’s French.  They’ve never been to the moon.  They rarely go as far as Sussex.

    5.  Seasonality.  Christmas: Evocative of roaring fires, presents, carol singing, peace, goodwill and happy families spending quality time together at home.

    A Victorian Christmas scene bearing the legend, "Merry Christmas To One And All".  Digital Readout Thick Upright font

    But when your Christmas card features the Digital Readout Thick Upright font, you introduce the spectre of The Terminator into the traditional family Christmas, and that doesn’t seem like it will go well.  Even if he does bring presents from the future.

    6.  Clarity.  Clean crisp fonts such as Gill Sans exude class.  With a plain, unfussy font your carefully chosen words are showcased to their best advantage.  The BBC use Gill Sans, and the famous Volkswagen Lemon advert used a similar font.  Sometimes though, it’s not a good idea to go minimal:

    An extraordinary comment on a Youtube video using a Gill Sans font.

    Because the reader’s attention is drawn to every error and mad utterance in your crazed internet rant.  And yes, I did cut and paste this from a comment on one of our posts.  Answers on a postcard?

    7.  Gasp! There’s a lot of snobbery around the use of MS Comic Sans.  And many perfectly reasonable people say that it should never, ever be used; there are websites and Facebook groups that campaign against it.  But they’re wrong.  Because I’ve found a use for it:

    A black and white (B & W) publicity picture (portrait) of Jonathan Lee. (7 Reasons/7reasons.org).  MS Comic Sans font

    You can use it to take perfectly good, artfully shot publicity photos, and make them funnier.  I’m so happy with this one that I’m not even going to charge for it.  Finally, a use for Comic Sans.

  • Russian Roulette Sunday: A Recipe

    Russian Roulette Sunday: A Recipe

    It’s Russian Roulette Sunday again (and ordinary Sunday too) and we’ve realised something:  We’ve never given our readers a recipe before.  We’ve requested them when under pressure; we’ve offered general lifestyle advice on how to do food correctly; and on how food should be consumed, but we’ve never been specific about how to prepare it.  Until now.

    This isn’t our own recipe, it’s one that we stumbled across on the internet while doing something else.  But it’s safe to say that we were amazed by it.  Flabbergasted.  Dumbfounded.  It’s a perfectly genuine recipe that features in an advert for the main ingredient and we haven’t in any way made it up.

    In the past, we may have created and altered posters and passed them off as genuine, but we did that because we didn’t think that anyone would believe us, and we certainly didn’t imagine that thousands of people around the world would download those posters, presumably to use in essays and school projects.  In fact, we feel fairly confident that, as World War II recedes further into history, and internet content becomes ever-more readily-accepted, those posters will come to be seen as genuine, and we – in our usual hapless manner – will have inadvertently caused a revision of history.  We’re actually dreading the day that one of our posters turns up in a newspaper, or a book.  Anyway, we’ve learned our lesson, and this poster is categorically not one of our creations.

    You’re probably feeling a little peckish by now so, Ladies and Gentlemen, discerning readers of 7 Reasons (.org), we present to you, without any further ado…Planked SPAM.

    An advert (ad, advertisment) for SPAM with a recipe for Planked SPAM

    Now, to some people, a meal consisting of SPAM on a plank might seem a little unconventional or unappetising, but rest assured:  When you unveil this culinary master-stroke with a flourish, it will be “…greeted with cheers” by your jubilant dinner-guests.  The advert says so, so it must be true.  We’re not sure what wood the plank should be made from, though pine would probably be nice and fragrant, and less tough than oak.  But you can experiment with your own planks, we wouldn’t want to ruin the fun.  Let us know how you get on.

  • Russian Roulette Sunday: Advertising Take II

    Russian Roulette Sunday: Advertising Take II

    The 7 (seven) Reasons Russian Roulette Sunday logo featuring Christopher Walken from the Deer Hunter

    Hi!  Marc here again.  Last week, as you may recall, we blew our entire advertising budget on a film by Pearl & Dean.  To be honest, we were a bit disappointed by it.  We were so disappointed, in fact, that we thought we could probably do better ourselves.  We reasoned that with my capacity for historical perspective and Jon’s talent for understatement and his innate modesty, it wouldn’t be too difficult to put together a simple and cheap – yet memorable – advert for our website.  Here it is:

    7 Reasons Advert II

    So, in conclusion, please send donations to:

    The 7 Reasons Advertising Fund

    7 Reasons Towers

    London

    W12 7RJ