Harvey Nichols and DDB tell critics to piss off

Harvey Nichols and its agency DDB London have come out fighting after a volley of criticism of its summer sale ad featuring a (retouched) model wetting herself in anticipation of the shopping fest to come.

The upscale store group, a favourite venue of both fashionistas and footballers wives, says its sale smashed all previous records with essential bits of kit like Chloe and Stella McCartney handbags selling out in its Knightsbridge, London, store in 20 minutes and one male customer snapping up 21 ‘units’ of Givenchy from the menswear department (I’ve no idea what a Givenchy unit is or what it’s doing in the menswear department). Sales were equally spectacular in Birmingham and Manchester apparently.

DDB business director Paul Billingsley says defiantly: “Once again, Harvey Nichols has proved that stand-out creativity drives business results. To have achieved these sales figures in the current economic climate is a triumph of brave over beige.”

Which will only serve to stoke the ire of critics like my friend George Parker, of Adscam fame, who averred that “the wankers responsible for this piece of shit (Jeremy Craigen, Nikki Lindman and Toby Brewer) should be taken behind the bicycle shed and beaten with an old inner tube until they wet themselves. Then they should be banned from the ad biz for life. Bill Bernbach would have had them thrown off the roof of the building.”

Well it takes all sorts (as George probably wouldn’t say).