Gasp is over 13 years old

and we have a very definite reputation, but...

We don't zig because everyone zags.

Name: CodeKnight
Price range: $

We do it because our industry has become a playground for charlatans selling their wares. The sky is not falling. People are people, and our habits and desires evolve at a rate that is barely noticeable over thousands of years.

So the rhetoric of “<TV, Outdoor Media, Direct Mail, insert anything here> is dead!” is not only incorrect. It’s dangerous. New tools emerge, but they rarely replace the existing set. In 1976, TV didn’t kill Cinema, it grew it. Even today, TV is not dying... it’s having babies (h/t Thinkbox).

“It took millions of years for man’s instincts to develop. It will take millions more for them to even vary. It is fashionable to talk about the changing man. A communicator must be concerned with the unchanging man, with his obsessive drive to survive, to be admired, to succeed, to love, to take care of his own.”

Bill Bernbach, Advertising Legend.

Reputation different from the norm stories

Reputation different from the norm 02 stories

BE DIFFERENT? BE DISTINCT? JUST DON'T BE THE SAME.

There’s over 25 sheep in the image above. But your brain will remember just two. One black, and one white. And that’s the key. How do you compare with both your direct and indirect competition?

Whilst the terms Different and Distinct are often mistakenly seen as the same, they are not. We achieve differentiation via our positioning, and distinctiveness via our brand codes aka brand assets. And in a world where products are becoming increasingly hard to differentiate, there is opportunity within distinctiveness.

The brief for the iconic Coca-Cola bottle, put out in 1916, read, “(we want) a bottle so distinct that you would recognise it by feeling it in the dark or lying broken on the ground”. It remains one of the best examples of a distinct brand code.

If something is distinct our brain processes it unconsciously, automatically, and quickly. Whereas if it is different the process occurs consciously, effortfully, and slowly. Fans of Nobel Memorial Prize winner Daniel Kahneman will recognise these two modes of thought as "System 1" and "System 2". Either way, one of the biggest threats, is sameness.

DON’T CONFUSE EFFICIENCY WITH EFFECTIVENESS.

As the late, great, David Abbott once announced, “Shit that arrives at the speed of light is still shit.” It’s too easy to confuse efficiency of targeting (right person, right time) with effectiveness.

The big digital  duopoly, Google and Facebook, would have you believe that the answer to any  brief is found via the incredible tools they have developed. But, as David  Abbott so brilliantly and bluntly highlights, that’s just the delivery method.

Twitter, Instagram, TV and other media are often just delivery systems to get word across. Things go viral because they capture the minds of the consumer, not just because they appear on a particular platform.

The unrivalled work of Les Binet and Peter Field has  demonstrated that the power of Creativity and Fame are the  strongest drivers of true Marketing Effectiveness. The reality , as with most things, is it’s not binary - you need a blend.

To clarify, Gasp is not anti-efficiency. Far from it. What we are is pro-effectiveness, creativity, growth, and ultimately success, far before anything else.

Core team

A CREATIVE BUNCH OF SMART, DIVERSE, RITSON-TRAINED, MISFITS.

Our team was established in 2009 by founding partners Giles and Sophie Edwards who believe agency life should be fun, rewarding, challenging and jargon-free. Hell-bent on making our clients more profitable we solve problems to the best of our ability using all the appropriate tools. We never stop testing; we never stop learning (over 80% of our team has completed at least one of Mark Ritson's Marketing & Brand Management Mini MBAs) and we never stop exploring both Sense and Nonsense - The IPA call it 'Logic and Magic'.