‘Nothing had changed in the mix except the advertising. In the right hands it is a commercial weapon of enormous power. It will remain so. Indeed, I believe it will become even more important to clients. As media opportunities expand and audiences fragment only outstanding work will stand out. The good agencies will be at a premium.’

It wouldn’t be any fun if I copied that out of some article Brand Republic posted yesterday, so why not kill a few seconds and guess who said it and when?

Full marks to the absolutely none of you (except maybe Daryl) who said ‘David Abbott, AMV annual report, 1989’.

So he got the fragmentation of media thing spot-on at a time when Batman had us queuing round the block and Ride On Time was the soundtrack to a million really shitty dance moves. (By the way, does anyone else mentally sum up the eighties with an image of a black guy in cheap braces and a cycle cap with the peak flipped up dancing in a really Uncle Tom-ish, grinny way to The Only Way Is Up by Yazz? Nope? Just me then.)

But even though David Mystic Megged himself a cracker with that one, the rest of the prediction leaves me somewhat perturbed.

Are the good agencies really at a premium?

Aside from what they charge (that really varies from client to client), the gap between the good and the bad agencies and the work they produce has shrunk.

Here’s Grey:

And McCann’s:

To ram the point home, I’d now embed a couple of examples of crummy work done by good agencies but it would be like shooting fish in a barrel. Think of a good shop and it should take you about another nanosecond to think of an ad they’ve created that won’t be troubling the jurors of the BTAA.

So we’re through the looking glass here, people. Black is white and white is black.

Is any agency capable of producing really good work? And if every agency is capable of good or shit work under certain circumstances, what really distinguishes one from another? And, therefore, which ones deserve to charge a premium? And with the coming economic constrictions, will any of them be able to?

It almost feels as if any client can now cast a few pennies to the floor and watch in mordant satisfaction as half a dozen shops scrabble around in front of them, selling any dignity they had for the opportunity to bend over like a cheap streetwalker on pay day.

Or have I had one too many G&Ts?

I’m sure I’m right in saying that Anca, the mysterious Transylvanian UK ad blog stalker, fascinates us all.

She seems to have heard and memorised every piece of music ever written, she has incredible views of forests out of her window, her high school didn’t really mind if she played her guitar instead of learning about Pythagoras and she has limitless time to visit the blogs of (among others) me, Dave Trott and Scamp.

Anyway, she kindly sent me this link today and I have to admit I found it amusing.

Dell was my favourite. Elegant, simple and witty.

Yes, her posts may be too long and a little rough around the edges, but I assume English is not her first language (and I’d love to see your attempts at comments in Romanian/Magyar etc.) and she seems engaged, interested and, yes, a touch barking, but in a nice way.

But we’re English, so we apparently have to regard her with a bit of a sneer, whether she deserves it or not.

Oh well.

Well, here’s an odd little ad:

Will it make people think Mother are as wacky as they were around 2001/2?

Will it make people say, ‘Well at least it’s different. You’ve got to get under the radar with this target market. The usual ‘drugs are bad’ shit ain’t gonna play with Johnny Q. Crackhead’?

Will it make people talk about it?

Possibly.

Will it make anyone, and I mean one single person, take less/fewer drugs than they would have if this ad did not exist?

Absolutely not.

In fact, for all the good this ad is going to do, they might as well have spent the money on a giant daffodil in Shoeburyness that says ‘bananas climb fandango treehouse crimplene pacino’.

And if my tax dollars paid for it, I’d like them back.

While Mr Brooker’s schtick consists mainly of shooting fish in a barrel with swear words and creative similes, it seems he can also provide a fine and helpful insight into the process of writing.

In this episode he interviewed several of the UK’s best TV writers, such as Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong of Peep Show, Tony Jordan of Life On Mars, Graham Linehan of Father Ted, Paul Abbott of Shameless and Russell T. Davies of Doctor Who (which is shit, by the way).

They discussed how they work and what it takes to produce great scripts.

Much of the advice differed, but they all seemed to agree on one thing: as Ernest Hemingway said, the first draft of anything is shit (although Graham Linehan confusingly compared his first drafts to toilet paper. Maybe you can wipe Hemingway’s up with Linehan’s), but the consensus was that the first draft is where the real work begins.

And there’s no reason why it should be any different in advertising.

Or, for that matter, blogs. If any of you are insane enough to re-read what I write, you’ll see that I’m insane enough to do the same, changing sticky sentences or imperfect adjectives as I go, even after I know 99% of the people who read what I write have already done so.

Nothing’s perfect (except maybe the opening sentence of A Tale Of Two Cities), so there’s always room for improvement.

Shrinking that room as much as possible is always a good use of time.

This post is really just an excuse to tell my favourite story about famous people:

Back in the thirties Carole Lombard was going out with Clark Gable.

One day, Carole signed up to do a movie and went to go and meet the producer to discuss her schedule.

He told her that he expected her to shoot on various days of the week, all of which Carole agreed to.

Then he mentioned that she’d also have to work on Sunday morning.

“Oh no,” replied Carole. “I’m not working on Sunday mornings. That’s the only time Clark and I have to fuck.”

Isn’t that priceless? I thought sex was invented in the sixties. I certainly didn’t think Carole Lombard used the F-word. And Sunday morning? How, um…bohemian.

Anyway, in a spurious attempt to make this related to advertising, I thought it might be interesting to blather on about excuses.

In a process that involves so many people, its really easy to blame any part of that process for its failure: The account team didn’t sell it; the client didn’t buy it; we didn’t get the right editor; we couldn’t afford the right track; I was ill during the grade so they made it purple; the media guys bought a 20″ when they should have bought a 40″; we’d have won those awards if we’d been given that brief; we only got three days to work on it.

All may be true; all may be reasonable grounds for complaint.

Unfortunately, they don’t print those in D&AD annuals.

Excuses don’t count.

They won’t help you get to anywhere good.

Want proof? Carole died with no Oscars (but possibly an enormous grin on her face).

Check the Comic Store Guy spoofing 1984.

(Thanks, L)

Here’s the link.

I think it’s a fine, fine list. No arguments at all.

Except…

The Snoop Dogg Orange ad?

I’m sorry, but those ads stopped being funny a long time ago.

Here’s how to write one:

Find out who your semi-washed-up, cash-hungry star is.

Choose what you think is their best known film (in Angelica Huston’s case, reduce an amazing career down to The Addams Family).

Get Lenny Beige and the cut-price Kevin Spacey guy to reject their script and be rude to them with reference to this movie, then suggest script amendments that involves crass inclusion of Orange product.

Star takes umbrage and walks out.

Get cut-price Kevin to deliver a variation on the most famous line of the most famous movie over the end title.

Having said that, I did like the line in the new Dennis Hopper one where cut-price Kevin says that ‘America smells of bus’.

And also having said that, I thought the earlier ones (Vader, Swayze, Roy Schneider, Spike Lee, Carrie Fisher etc.) were genius. It just all started to go wrong with Steven Seagal:

Compare that to the superb writing and timing of this one:

I blame the defection of Yann and Luke (although I think they did Seagal).

And sorry, but I forgot to add just a couple examples that knock any Orange cinema ad into a cocked hat:

‘Shoulda been you, yo.”

“No doubt, boo, no doubt.”

Eurobest results are in.

I don’t know what I was doing a month ago, but I wasn’t reading Brand Republic.

That was when they broke the story of Lego re-running this ad:

It also featured in last week’s Campaign Private View.

The reason I’d have written about it, and the reason I’m writing about it now, is that I once suggested that companies should run their successful past ads if they are appropriate.  

Come on.  You have nothing to lose but the opportunity to bash your head against a brick wall trying to make something that turns out to be a big smelly turd that millions of people couldn’t care less about.

I was chatting to another creative recently and we both agreed that we’re no longer as thrilled by the idea of going on shoots as we used to be, even the supposedly glamorous ones in sunny foreign climes.

Of course, you have to do shoots, and it’s not as if they’re actively bad experiences, but I miss the wife and nipper and (whisper) the vast majority of a shoot is spent sitting beside a monitor trying to stave off the boredom by playing Kill, Shag or Marry and reading Heat, Now and Closer.

But I remember the early shoots, where you’d turn up on location to see battalions of HGVs and hundreds of crew in North Face jackets, and they’re only there because of what you wrote on a piece of paper a few weeks earlier. Good Lord, what a rush!  And then the first foreign shoot! Turning left on the plane! Cracking open the minibar without worrying that a Snickers costs $4.50! Basking in the Cape Town sunshine in December! It was a time of warm wonder.

Then the law of diminishing marginal returns kicks in and you find yourself a decade in, looking at it as you do any other day at the office (slight exaggeration; shoots are definitely cooler than 99% of 99% of people’s days at work and much better than a day at the office).

But is there an element of having to take on the less flighty elements of the job as you go higher up the agency? The more senior you get, the more client contact you have, the more responsibility you’re given and the more pressure is sent your way. (Again, not a problem; just less fun than when things were a little looser at the bottom of the pyramid.)

And then this links back to the ageism of the industry. Maybe agencies don’t want oldsters, but maybe it’s also the other way round. Sure, the more senior creatives want the pay cheque, and the job is far better than almost all alternatives, but it’s pretty unlikely that it will be as fun on day 6000 as it is on day 600.

So maybe the key is keeping that youthful wonder alive against the odds. If you can stay curious, wide-eyed and Walk In Stupid (® Wieden and Kennedy) then you might have a longer career, my son.  I mean grandad.