I found this absolutely DREADFUL ad.

Derivative, sexist, predictable…it’s probably been nicked off something similar from YouTube.

I’ve had to watch it fourteen or fifteen times to really get to grips with how awful it really is.

And now I’m going to watch it again, just in case there’s something rubbish about it that I missed.

Last week I put up a post suggesting that winning awards for an ad can be a good source of cheap media that will be chewed over for years by a certain wealthy, influential, media-centric demographic.

As I continued to ponder this idea, two more things occurred to me:

First, I realised that I got most of my initial knowledge about Amnesty International from Indra Sinha’s early 90s press ads that I read in D&AD annuals. They were long-copy whoppers that detailed, in beautifully written prose, just how important the organisation was and the type of problems they helped to solve. So, as a young ad nerd who just wanted to become a better copywriter, I read every word of them several times over and now Amnesty is the only charity I donate to. The same thing happened (except for the donations) when I read David Abbott’s beautiful, Pencil-winning RSPCA ads, and on the American side of things, Washington’s Holocaust Museum and the Truth campaign against Big Tobacco only came to my attention through the appropriate One Show Annuals, yet the information they presented have always stayed with me. I suppose I paid them far more attention than I would have done had I come across them in their regular media schedule, making their relatively small entry fees money well spent.

Second, I was chatting to Mark Denton the other day about Nike Plus. We couldn’t understand how an invention that amazing, something which transcends advertising and marketing to improve and affect the lives of so many, could have just passed us by…until we read about it in awards annuals. Now, without wanting to flatter myself, I’m a fairly computer literate, media savvy person and part-time twat, who is interested in both running and music AND I own an ipod and some Nike trainers. You’d think I’d be a complete bullseye for Nike Plus, and yet they failed to reach me. Maybe I don’t pay enough attention to advertising, but I’m stunned that such a paradigm-shifting event only found me when it started to win advertising awards. Actually, I can’t think of that many significant pieces of advertising that have reached to me through the natural spread of the internet, other than Honda Cog and Dove Evolution.

So all I can say is ‘thank you’ to advertising award schemes for enriching my life beyond where it would otherwise be.

And to anyone with something interesting to say who doesn’t know how to reach me, make it into a good ad, run it once and send it in to Creative Circle, D&AD, Cannes or The One Show. I’ll read every word.

Possibly.

Last week, I (amongst others) pointed out how lovely the new Creative Circle annual is.

Then I came across this for D&AD:

It seems to demonstrate the harsh truth that you can slave away for ages on something, then have it turn out to be a pointless waste of time.

I’m not 100% sure that’s what D&AD wanted to say.

The other odd thing is that they haven’t even used the right colours. Why is it white at the top?

And the music is rubbish.

Perhaps it’s time D&AD recognised that all of its communications really ought to be worthy of inclusion in its own annual, otherwise, what’s the point?

Because I did love this:

I dunno. It’s a fucking amazing animation technique, but I hope they paid Blu, especially when you see what’s at the start of their YT film.

The new Skittles ad is out:

It’s better than almost all the ads that are out there and yet…and yet…it feels somewhat disappointing.

To me, the problem is one that is common in many episodic art forms that have experienced success: it feels like it’s been written by a fan of the campaign, rather than by one of the people who came up with the goods in the first place.

Other examples of this include Friends from about season 4 onwards, the first episode of season 5 of The Wire, The West Wing from about mid-season 4 onwards, and Spongebob Squarepants from Season 6 onwards. Then there’s all the great old campaigns, like Heineken and Hamlet, that had to lose quality and eventually end.

And when you think about it, it’s an entirely reasonable problem: the shot-in-the-dark unexpectedness of early success can disappear when the task changes from originating something good to merely replicating it. Do we have to get Chandler to say ‘Could I be any more…’? Does Jed Bartlet have to whip his jacket on in that cool way everyone likes? Should Spongebob still like Squidward in the face of such vitriol? Do we need to junk those moments as dead cliches and come up with something completely new? Will that mean we lose the essence of what was great, or will such changes preserve it?

And no one really knows the answers to those questions, otherwise we’d still be watching Peyton Place (I concede there are many long-running serials, but they are usually patchy soaps that can take a few drops in quality).

In the case of Skittles, I’d imagine there would have been literally hundreds of rejected scripts. Why do the Sour man, the Pinata man and the Beard make it over (presumably) so many others? Well, that’s more a question for Gerry Graf, and the reason why he and Ian Riechenthal and Scott Vitrone probably get paid more than I do.

So here we are with Tailor.

I’d say it doesn’t work as well as the others because there’s nothing funny during the ad. The conceit is amusingly surreal, but unlike the others, there’s no elegant build to an even funnier climax.

The others also had depth of character: the frustrated Pinata man, the melancholy Toucher, the cocky Sour man, the sneaky Beard guy…they all had something about them that no one in Tailor has, something that allowed you to see a back story that made you feel as if this was just one of a hundred odd things that happen to them every day.

And it’s as if they couldn’t really think of a decent ending. They’re hard to do, and Touch has the best ending of any ad, ever:

So that leads us into the last point: the bar was set so high, it was a bit of a poisoned chalice. I was amazed they came up with so many crackers, particularly Pinata, which followed the peerless Touch and still held its own.

And as a final note, many people on Creativity have given it five stars, so maybe I’m just wrong (I’m not).

In between waiting for updates on the ‘Hot Chicks with Douchebags’ blog, I noticed that Cinematical had a review of a new movie playing at the Sundance Film Festival.

The blogger doesn’t like it much, but for those of you who are interested in movies and advertising, here’s a movie about advertising: Art and Copy appears to be an uncritical, US-centric celebration of the history of commercials, featuring contributions from people like Cliff Freeman, George Lois, Lee Clow and Dan Wieden. It’s also backed by the One Club.

I’d be very surprised if it got a cinema release over here, despite being up for the Grand Jury Prize – something tells me the audience for the reminiscences of Mary Wells may be somewhat limited.

Then again, maybe it’ll be this year’s March of the Penguins.

Here’s an interview with the director and George Lois:

Last week’s poll was a close run thing, but the majority of you preferred the idea of having one big nose to ten small ones by 20 votes to 18.

This week’s poll is a little more practical.

By the way, I love this blog roll thing you can put on the side. I might go crazy and really mess around with the layout, or put some ads up.

And if you’re interested, Slumdog Millionaire was good, but not as good as Milk (although both are far better than the awful Seven Pounds and Gran Torino).

Ad:
Copywriter (in case he’s a mate/twat)?
Art Director (ditto)?
Agency (5 marks off for Grey etc./Five marks added for Fallon etc.)?
Is this the blag ad you were allowed to make on the side of the boring main campaign?
Did this air between 3am and 4am on Christmas Eve?
On the Teachers’ Channel?
Is it the director’s 120″ that ran once?
Was it a real chore to get the client to buy it, or did it sail through?
Was it a chore to get the planner to drop his/her fuckwitted but well-researched strategy for this simpler one?
Has it already been done by someone else?
Big country where we might have seen it, or shitty backwater in former Soviet Union?
How long ago (five years means it never happened)?
Has it had the high profile backing of an ad luminary, even though it’s shit?
Have the entrants blown a 25×4 up to A2?
And used spot varnish on the serifs?
Did they slightly alter the cut from the one that ran?
Is it the token entry from the shit team in the big agency who might slit their wrists if it’s not entered?
Is anyone involved on the jury?
Are they important enough for it to make a difference?
Was it shot by Frank, Danny, Ringan, Fredrik etc.?
Fashionable client (Nike, Sony, VW etc.)?
Has it already won anything?
Is it a full-bleed picture with a logo in the bottom right-hand corner?

Any more?

I was alerted to this by the words, ‘Strangest thing I’ve seen today by a country fucking mile’.

It is.

It’s also NSFW.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

The list of least year’s most irritating ads has come out and, surprisingly, four of the 20 ads are from WCRS.

But just how irritating are they? I can’t argue with the British Public (believe me, I’ve tried), but I actually love the hatstand insanity of Phones 4U (number 5). I wrote a post about it last year on the other blog detailing the reasons why I just can’t believe a campaign of this nature has been approved, made and run for several years:

Then there’s Churchill (number 7). Hating on insurance ads is like shooting fish in a barrel, but I think Churchill’s ads are some of the least irritating. That dog is quite funny and the scripts are much better than they used to be:

The third and most confusing entry is Oatibix (number 8). It doesn’t appear to be on Youtube, but isn’t that the ad where the couple are sitting in a layby having breakfast when a massive lorry appears with the word ‘Likeaweetabixonlysmallerandmadeofoatsbix’ (or similar) on the side. The couple then suggest that the name Oatibix would be better? I thought it was quite a good way of getting the name across.

And then there’s Holland and Barrett at number 14. I can’t really remember it, but I think there might be two characters called Holland and Barrett who work in the shop. Was it that bad? It was certainly an improvement on the Kim Wilde days.

Of course, it’s all down to personal taste and who am I to judge, but surely WCRS isn’t really the purveyor of the most irritating ads in the UK (even DLKW only has two on the list)? I always think of it as quite a nice place that makes nice advertising.

But maybe that’s just me.