HEAD BLOG

When I sit down to write an ad or plan a campaign I can spend an hour or two browsing the Internet. Some people might recognise this behaviour as evasion but I like to call it the search for inspiration.

I’ll avoid the usual advertising temples and wander instead to sites that can take my mind away from the blank page before me. These sites could be great little bookshops or they could be this one, The British Larder.

I fully expect TBL to add ‘great’ into its title at some point because for me it is a haven of inspirational writing. Great recipes too, of course, but really, like a great menu, it is the writing which inspires.

On Saturday I cooked Maddy’s Horneado. And it wasn’t decided on the spur of the moment but rather considered over the course of the previous week. I’d read the diary entry which accompanied it and it had inspired me to give it a try.

The results were wonderful. I’ll be able to do it my sleep after a few more goes and I’ll refine the process so mine looks more like the one photographed by Maddy. The real warmth, however, is in the writing.

Recipe sites can be fairly dull. As extensive a resource as it is, the BBC Food site reads more or less like a Haynes manual. There is no inspiration. There is nothing to give the reader an insight into another mind. Occasionally we might learn that a dish used to be favourite amongst prostitutes but generally we don’t.

In the advertising world we aim to inspire, to excite. Hopefully we can do this by finding an element within the product that speaks to us and use that to inspire and excite others. I’ll often find myself sitting somewhere playing a little thought experiment, imagining how I could advertise whatever shop or product is in front of me. Usually this involves wanting the shop to do something human, to understand why it is I’m there in the first place and make my visit more personal.

With The British Larder I don’t have to. I can just wallow in a beautiful product: that of a personal, relevant and deeply inspiring cooking diary.

If only her taste in films could follow suit