Thanks to my friendship with Ed Cotton, I am on the mailing list for Butler, Shine, Stern and Partners.  They are the agency for Mini and Converse, among others.  I got back from my travels to find a "moving notice" waiting for me.

Now, this is the sort of thing we have come to expect from the agency world.  This agency, we are lead to understand, more than any agency, suffers a certain "pressure of inventiveness" that means even banal communications must take on new and interesting qualities.  By these tiny floresences you shall know us, and notice that these  florescences are spectacular.  Advertising agencies are always advertising. 

Fair enough.  But as I began to read the notice, it began to work its magic on me.  It lists all the things that apparently turned up as BSSP were preparing to move. 

Some of these things are funny.

And some of them are strange. 

Some are sly and self referencing.   

But mostly, they are particular, really, really particular.

At some point, you discover you have fallen down the rabbit hole.  You are now picturing the old quarters of Butler Shine in incredible, "you are there" detail.  Now the act of moving goes from being a vague event overtaking a distant party, to something I feel I know up close, something I feel I have taking part in.  Wow.  BSSP reinvented the moving notice.  Nice one.

This is a case of discovering the general in the particular, I guess.  (Who was it that claimed to discover the world in a grain of sand?)  What a masterful act of meaning management it is.   At a time when many of the standard approaches to  advertising are under challenge, it is nice to be reminded of what can be accomplished by a three or four photos and a handful of words.