The Last Post

After 3 years and 707 posts, I've decided to discontinue Scamp.

Reasons? Partly a desire to free myself from the daily commitment of having to entertain one of the world's most demanding audiences - time-wasting creatives. And partly a decision to redeploy my spare time into something else. (Yes, I'm writing a novel. NOT set in an advertising agency).

I've learned so much doing this. That there's no such thing as unanimity of opinion in our industry. That creatives are majorly riled by work that takes its inspiration from another source (much more than Shakespeare or Picasso were!) And that HTML is bloody fiddly.

I've also learned new words, such as 'low-involvement processing', 'blogroll', and 'meh'.

There have been many highs. The tons of amazing comments and contributions from my readers. Getting a book commissioned, based on my Tuesday Tips, which comes out next year. And perhaps best of all - getting to meet so many wonderful people in the real world, through the blog.

I won't put up a list of my favourite posts, but the Top 20 that you lot seemed to enjoy the most (or be most vexed by) were:

The Top 3 Advertising Cliches - 105 comments
Mr Strings - 116
Dancing Eyebrows - 135
Grandmaster Flashmob - 108
Virgin 25th Anniversary Ad - 100
A Terrifying Counter-Theory - 103
Advertising For Atheism - 105
A Ballad For David (Ogilvy Athens video) - 138
Tuesday Tip No. 60 - What Would Dave Trott Do? - 118
HSBC Lumberjack - 117
Tuesday Tip No.58 - Beat The Finger - 112
Job Opportunity In Paradise - 122
Fallon's Print Work - 151
Goodbye Lenny - 107
Dave Trott Live - 246
Fallon's Budweiser Campaign - 232
CHI Pay - 103
Cadbury's Trucks - 136
Top Ten Creatives, Directors and Agencies - 103
Dothetestgate - 229

Future internet historians picking their way through this digital ghost-town will find my Tuesday Tips of dubious use to young creatives here and the Polls here.

There are too many people who deserve my thanks for me to be able to name them all. But I will just single out Scowling A.D. Thanks for putting up with it, Nick.

Friends, readers, commenters - I wish you all the very best.

Goodbye.