Purely because of its copy, I’ve liked the Innocent brand ever since I bought my first Innocent Smoothie a long time ago. Then I started working for a true Innocent fan who regularly bought smoothies for the whole team, highlighting the reasons why he loved the brand; yes, he even brought in A Book About Innocent: Our Story and Some Things We’ve Learned, which, by the way, is just another one of many reasons why this simple food brand seems to always go that little bit further.

As for their copy brilliance, they call their offices Fruit Towers and their helpline the banana phone, and after establishing that the smoothie is “gently pasteurised, just like milk” they encourage you to “shake it up baby”. Finally, in the list of ingredients, which is full or real, healthy fruit, they note that the smoothie includes “1/3 of a squeezed orange, 0 armbands… or any other inflatables in the pool whatsoever”. If any other brand tried it, it would be corny, but for Innocent it works.

Innocent is extremely tongue-in-cheek without ever really becoming annoying. Innocent writes about how good it is (the whole ‘no additives’ schpiel) just like all other juice and smoothie brands, but the difference is that Innocent is telling the truth. It’s a simple, no-bullshit approach marketing, completely in line with the idea of bringing people just what they want; really, there are no additives – just fruit.

And that, combined with passion that is seemingly bursting out of every bottle and cow van as well as the website, makes Innocent a brand to admire. Pure no-bullshit goodness with a sense of humour, and designed well. Simple. Or, if you like, innocent.

I am often amazed by the double standards of the Advertising Standards Authority. Most recently, I was disappointed by its decision to ban a campaign for Antonio Federici ice cream that was considered offensive to Catholics.

The campain consists of a series of posters portraying religious devotees indulging themselves, and their guilty pleasures include Antonio Federici ice cream. One shows two (male) priests about to kiss, the strapline reading “We believe in salivation”, and another shows a priest and a nun striking a seductive pose. My favourite is probably the pregnant nun.

Though the play on the concept of forbidden fruit is quite funny, as a Marketing Director, I would never have put money into this campaign. There’s nothing brilliant about it, and even though controversy can work wonders at times, I very much doubt that it would help the brand much in this case.

Still, the Advertising Standards Authority’s decision is debatable at best. There are laws against discriminatory advertising, yet it’s the discriminating party that’s won here. Like so many times before, the sensitivity and ignorance of a community of people have limited the freedom of speech.

I’ve been pretty offended by a number of things done in the name of Catholicism, but no one’s suggested that we ban the religion or its propaganda because of that. Why? Because there’s nothing wrong with disagreeing with each other; we share ideas, we discuss them, and we grow.

No one is saying that priests are gay. No one is saying that priests and nuns sleep with each other. It must have happened the odd time though; once or twice, a nun must have fallen for the forbidden fruit and fallen pregnant.

In the name of Bill Hicks: forgive her.

In today’s issue of Stylist, political journalist Sonia Purnell wrote about how the cuts in the emergency budget will mostly affect women. Quite a few alarming conclusions – but I’m going to act the unlikely critic.

350,000 women will lose their public sector jobs in the next few years because of spending cuts, Purnell writes. Only 150,000 men in the public sector will be in the same situation.

Local councils will suffer from some drastically tightened belts as well, and three quarters of their employees are women.

Purnell further argues that the 20% cut in the police budget – one of the worst affected sectors – will result in safety fears for women. And on she goes; it’s all doom and gloom for the ladies.

Needless to say, all of the above are worrying facts. Cuts are seldom greeted with warmth, and certainly the fact that they in this case appear to hit harder against the poor (and yes, according to Purnell also against women) is a troubling truth. But cuts had to be made.

I’m going to argue that Purnell’s reasoning is somewhat inconsistent. Her first two points highlight that a majority of employees within the two affected sectors are women, and hence they will have to take the hardest hit. Yet, when writing about the police force, she’s completely ignoring the fact that a majority of its employees are men, instead chosing to focus on the end result of fewer police in the streets. There’s no lack of logic here – and I agree – but it seems obvious that Purnell has been very selective in her focus in order to create a coherent argument.

My main problem with Purnell’s article, however, has nothing to do with methodology or logic. I simply worry that she is attacking the problem at the wrong end.

I’ll be honest: I’m not a fan of the emergency budget, nor am I a fan of our new government. That the budget would hit hardest against the poor and women comes as no surprise to me; I expected nothing more from Osborne and his friends. But if we’re going to talk feminism and female empowerment, I want to start elsewhere.

Why are a majority of public sector and local council employees women? Why do more men tend to choose a career that pays well? And why, on a fluffy, altogether philosophical note, can’t women walk the streets at night without satefy fears?

Some say women are better suited for certain types of jobs, and they happen to be within the public sector; others mean that work satisfaction is different for men and women, and money isn’t everything. I sometimes wonder if the working conditions of some jobs are discriminating against certain types of lifestyle, and whether the dreams we are encouraged to develop as kids are determined to a great extent by gender. Whether we like it or not, mothers are often expected to take on a larger share of the parenting work in the UK, and as such they may be ill-fitted for some safer, better-paid positions.

Do we solve the problem by not cutting funds from the sectors where women work? Or do we open the door to a equal opportunities in regards to career choice and parenting, in the hope of more integration in the work place and equal pay? Better still, why not start early, look at our schools and focus more heavily on encouraging traits like respectfulness, open-mindedness and agility?

It’s a big challenge, and I don’t have all the answers. The closest I’ve come to inspiration in the last few days, however, is this schools programme run by the charity Womankind. Here’s thumbs up to them.

Times are tough for print publications these days, and it would be easy for them to simply choose to play it safe and hope that the current trend slows down. With this in mind, I was delighted to see that The Economist – or AMV BBDO, to be fair – has dared to take a risk and engage with its potential audience by asking them to take a stand.

“Drugs should not be legalised,” says one poster and lists the reasons why. Other posters highlight the issues around trading human organs and prisoners’ voting rights, while one about the legalisation of prostitution puts pros and cons against each other. “Where do you stand?” goes the strapline.

It’s refreshing to see a publication that could easily fall into the conservative, dry bracket become thought-provoking, open-minded, and bold. Publisher Yvonne Ossman told The Guardian that “a significant pool of potential readers” has been identified, and I think she’s on to something. I’m one of them.

Are you passionate, forward-thinking, and interested in the great debates? Do you want to read to-the-point, considered articles to keep a finger on the pulse? Then maybe you should read The Economist. And that’s a sentence I never thought I’d hear myself say.

(A tiny part of me is of course raging that AMV BBDO managed to write down three pros and three cons in regards to the legalisation of prostitution without even mentioning gender and the objectification of women. I know the lists were not exhaustive, and I know provocation was part of the brief, but still. Come on. Next time, Ossman, think about it; know your pool of potential readers.)

I’m about a year and a half late, but I’ll justify it with the fact that I’m clearly not part of the target audience. And as such, I am amazed that indeed the Whopper is stronger than friendship.

The Whopper Sacrifice Facebook Application was developed shortly after Burger King introduced its new Angry Whopper last year. The idea? Defriend ten friends on Facebook, and get a free Whopper. And don’t even try to be discrete about it; the application itself will ensure that each defriended Facebook user gets a notification informing them that they’ve been ditched for a Whopper.

Facebook friendship and real friendship are not the same, you say. True. I could happily remove at least ten of my Facebook friends without missing them or feeling the least bit embarrassed or rude. But for a Whopper? I can think of many good reasons to remove them, but a Whopper isn’t one of them.

So the Whopper was angry and the application was brutal, and people loved it. It was different in that you weren’t asked to promote anything, at least not in the most straight-forward of ways, and it was fun because… well, why was it fun, exactly? Because it justified a mild form of bullying? Because of the irony of telling someone that you love a Whopper more than you love them?

Creative, unusual methods to use social networks for branding purposes – great. But if unusual just means negative and creative just means childish, not to say moronic, I’m out.

“Instead of paying more than £200 million [a year] to buy ad space in the media, why shouldn’t we use publicly owned channels, such as government websites, to deliver public-service messages?” said Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office Minister in charge of Whitehall’s efficiency drive, at the Conservative Party conference this week.

What Maude wants is for the BBC to run the coalition government’s advertising campaigns free of charge, and he poses the rhetorical question: why shouldn’t we?

I’ll tell you why they shouldn’t.

The BBC shouldn’t run advertising campaigns of any kind, because it is a publicly funded broadcaster that should serve us unbiased news and information, not sell us things.

The BBC shouldn’t run the coalition government’s advertising campaigns – not in exchange for a fee, and definitely not for free – because it should remain unbiased and not take sides in political debate.

The BBC shouldn’t run the aforementioned advertising campaigns, because it is an institution whose responsibility it is to scrutinise our government and its work and help us maintain transparent politics with proper accountability.

In essence, the BBC shouldn’t do anything at all just because it’s told to do so by the government – not despite being funded by it but because of it – but should do anything and everything in its power to remain an unbiased, objective platform for political and cultural debate and education.

Otherwise, it is no longer a trustworthy broadcaster worthy of public funding, but yet another component in the government machine.

It would probably sound a lot better if I said that all I want is a challenge, that nothing could be more satisfying than reviving an old brand that has lost all its appeal. And sure: who doesn’t want a tough brief? Figuring out how on earth IKEA ended up becoming a low-end, last-resort brand in the UK, and turning it around, is certainly right up there with my Top 10 dream projects.

Yet, there are days when all I want is to be inspired, to learn from the best, and to be a part of something truly amazing. Those days, all I want is to work for Amnesty International, and this poster by Warsaw-based agency Leo Burnett is one of many reasons why.

About a month before the recent Swedish general election which saw the far-right Sweden Democrats gain 20 seats in the parliament, the party’s official commercial was released to public outcry. The clip was banned on TV4, the main commercial TV channel, and social networking users and newspapers alike speculated persistently on who or what agency might be behind it. The general opinion was clear: working on a commercial for the Sweden Democrats is just not acceptable.

Then Mad Men’s Peggy, as the embodiment of all our consciences, raised a similar point in a meeting: “Why should we make ads for a company that refuses to hire negroes?” Her rational boss, Don Draper, answered: “Our job is to make men like Fillmore Auto, not Fillmore Auto to like negroes.”

Whether the above scene was intended as a signifier of the change in attitudes that has taken place since the 60s, or as a reference to show that these questions always have been and always will be asked by some and ignored by others, I don’t know. But it did make me wonder: where do we draw the line for how much responsibility I, as a contractor working on behalf of a client, can take?

I have a feeling that very few people would sign up for a brief like the Sweden Democrats’ without admitting that it’s a moral dilemma. Somehow, I doubt that as many would struggle with a brief from a client who doesn’t take their fair share of environmental responsibility. Likewise, pure racism is likely to be more of a no-no than gender inequality.

We seem to agree that working for an organisation is a form of endorsement of the work they do, but no client is perfect, and at some stage there’ll have to be compromise. But where? What values are you ready to flush down the loo for an interesting brief?