Open House

Certain words suddenly become flavour –of-the-month in shiny, chrome offices where the clever marketing campaigns are created.

Until a few years ago, no-one dared touch ‘love’. Then after McDonalds declared they were ‘lovin’ it’, everyone jumped on the bandwagon.

Andrex wanted you to ‘love your bum’…you can ‘love your bingo’ or ‘love your bike’…love is everywhere. Ubiquitous – and subsequently devalued.

‘Better’ is big at the moment. Sky ‘Believe in better’, Virgin ‘forty Years of better’, Santander ‘Driven to be better’. Better think of something new.

Opening Doors think we’re ahead of the game when it comes to the latest word. (But to us, it’s part of what we’ve always done – and always will be.)

That’s because The Guardian has just launched its ‘Open Journalism’ campaign. ‘Open’ is the in-thing. Open Government and Corporate Openess is now filtering through into the advertising vocabulary.

But we have been saying for years that Open is all about being approachable, honest, fair and frank.

To some people it may just be a buzzword. We think it’s the only way to do business.

And who’d have thought that the origins of the latest marketing in-word wasn’t some gleaming office in Soho, but a pleasantly appointed old mill in leafy Cheshire?

(Picture sourced from Google)