SCHOOL reunions can be great. But they can also be a big wake-up call to the fact that we're getting older and that perhaps the good old days have gone forever.
After my last reunion, where we counted how many old schoolmates were no longer with us, I - like most of the others - went on a diet and did some more walking to try to hold back time.
But the old-fashioned values of the good old days don't always seem to be quite as important any more. Our old pal Charlie has produced some excellent research that shows that these tougher economic times have sent us back to relying on the things that have always been important.
So, staying home is in fashion again, along with fish and chips. And we didn't cancel the Foxtel in the family budget cutting, although the news this week from the Government is that it looks like Foxtel got cancelled from its Telstra ownership. But that's a story for another day.
Attendance at church has also held up, even if we are going to the newer churches.
Louise always has a running commentary on life and she was telling me in her role as an arts aficionado that she was recently at a sell-out concert by James Morrison, who was accompanied by one of our great symphony orchestras. Morrison performed a new work written especially for him and received a standing ovation. He then brought the house down at the after party with a scintillating trumpet rendition of the timeless standard The Battle Hymn of the Republic. He learnt it on his mother's knee while she played the church organ.
All the marketing people reading this column know how important it is to be innovative. In fact, if you don't throw out the old stuff and come up with something new, you're seen as being a bit of dinosaur.
I think we might have misread people a bit about the things they hold dear. This week in England, 92-year-old Dame Vera Lynn took her No. 1 hit We'll Meet Again to the top of the charts again. The ''forces' sweetheart'' first recorded the song in September 1939. At 92, she breaks the record set in 1993 by 54-year-old Tina Turner when What's Love Got To Do with It made No. 1.
So, Louise says to me: ''What has advertising learnt from all this back-to-the-past stuff?''
I always like to defend my colleagues, so I trotted out examples of some campaigns that were really good and are still going - ''Beanz Meanz Heinz'', ''Is Don, Is Good'' and ''I'm Loving It'' from McDonald's.
That defends advertising people, I thought, until Charlie reminded me of a meeting he attended years ago with a young advertising agency executive. Wanting to show how clever and modern he was, he questioned the group by asking if they couldn't come up with a better line than the one they'd been using - ''Oh what a feeling''?
Just as well they didn't throw that out. Toyota's been looking good with it for decades; although I doubt that it will have the longevity of our Vera or a spiritual classic.
Harold Mitchell is executive chairman of Mitchell Communication Group.
