Month: July 2009

Another Website Of Perceptive Snickery And Ten Shitty Ways To Write A Headline

After Dontevenreply, we now have the ker-azy fun of whythefuckdoyouhaveakid?

Just as enjoyable, but with pictures too.

And for those of you who are in a more advertisational frame of mind, check out the ten worst headline constructions, from The Denver Egotist.

They left off a favourite of mine that seems to have been used exclusively in America: (Doing something that makes a lateral reference to the product) since (year), eg: Making Pavements Dangerous For Pedestrians Since 1972 or Keeping Dogs’ Tails Wagging Since 1948.

Yawn.



I Love Shynola

The arrival of their brilliant, brilliant, fucking brilliant brilliant brilliant new video for Coldplay (thanks for the tip, D) reminds me that Shynola have made some of my favourite promos:

Let’s just bathe in the wonder that is Eye for an Eye:

And the joyful beauty of You Got The Style:

And while I’m here, enjoy these awesome building projections:

Projection on Buildings from NuFormer Digital Media on Vimeo.



Scientific Demonstration Of The Power Of Creativity

(I found this on the excellent Escapology blog of the Escape Pod agency.)



I Love Good Writing And I Love Swearing

So imagine my delight when I came across this website.

For those of you who have yet to click the link, or refuse to do so until I give you a better reason, this is ‘a collection of e-mails I have sent to people who post classified ads. My goal is to mess with them, confuse them, and/or piss them off. These are the ones that succeeded.’

There are some great ones on the home page, but don’t forget to check out the archive for such gems as Barter My Whore Wife, Brokeback Beach, and Apologetic Nationals Fan.



The Real Something For The Weekend

(Thanks, A.)



Something For The Weekend

It’s turning into a gritty couple of days here at ITIABTWC, but hey, that’s life on the mean streets of Adland:

By the way, today is the last day to cast your vote for the Exec Committee of D&AD, so if you haven’t voted and you’d like good people to do good things that will improve that organisation, email emily@danadad.co.uk

(In case you’re wondering who to vote for, why not try Mark Denton? Apart from having added Zing! and Pow!, he sorted the Creative Circle out and made it properly good again. Perhaps he can do the same for D&AD. Here’s hoping.)

Have a nice weekend

x



Hi Dan, I’ve Finally Watched The Stella Film(s) And CDOTY

On the second of July I decided to rattle on about the new Pimm’s ad.

The post itself was the usual load of ill-thought out crapola, but in the comments section of the post, a guy called Dan decided to take me to task thusly:

I’m not sure if I’d buy anything you say about tv ads anymore.
You pissed all over that Stella campaign for the last year.
It picked up 3 golds at Cannes.

Someone is getting out of touch and it’s certainly not them.

I replied that I hadn’t even seen the ads in question and was therefore innocent of his accusations.

But now I’ve finally got round to watching the bloody things and can give Dan my genuine, honest verdict, leaving him at liberty to take further issue with my taste in ads.

Well…I can say in all in sincerity, they suck big fat elephant balls covered in crusty monkey poo.

I could only manage this one:

I wanted to turn it off after 1:42 but in the interests of journalistic integrity I thought I’d better sit through the whole thing.

Shit on toast, mes amis, shit very much on toast. I’ve never been so bored (incidentally, I just walked out of Bruno after ten minutes. Not on the grounds of taste; simply on the grounds of humour, or lack thereof), but it was the sheer oh-so-pleased-with-itself self-indulgence that made me want to corkscrew my eyeballs out and send them to Mother in a jiffy bag. It’s meaningless twaddle and if that’s what Cannes wants to bestow its much-coveted Gold award on, fuck Cannes right in the ear.

Moving on, I love what the Craigen fans did to this week’s poll. It’s sad, but I’m vaguely touched that enough of you cared to play such a delightful prank on my blog.

In case any of you aren’t regular readers, Droga looked like he had it sewn up 75-25 until yesterday when a giant last minute Craigen vote sent it over the edge to give him a win of 57% to 42%. I guess that’s the kind of affection and loyalty you can only get after years of brilliant ads coursing through your agency and a similar amount of time being, by all accounts, a really top bloke (I have had the pleasure of meeting him a few times and found him to be fine company on each occasion).

There will be a bottle of booze and a trophy on its way to JC eventually. I happen to know he’s a big fan of White Lightning, but only the 2008 vintage, which has heady top notes of meths and urine with a really lengthy finish of hobo ball sweat.



Wait For It…Wait For It….NOW!

As a continuation of the Dominic Savage post below, this is the kind of thing he could do brilliantly. Fortunately, someone has already done it brilliantly.



Dominic Savage

There are some good directors out there who will gladly apply their talents to your scripts in exchange for money.

There’s not a lot of point in talking about all the obvious ones, but I thought it might be worth giving a mention to one who’s not quite as well known.

Dominic Savage (reel here at QI films; interest declared – Stephen who runs QI is a friend of mine) rarely features in advertising award books because his day job is directing highly acclaimed and award-winning TV dramas (including Tuesday night’s Freefall). However, he’s available for ads and I’d say he’s worth a look because he’s better than anyone I know at presenting chunks of modern, everyday Britain realistically.

He often uses improvised dialogue, but also writes his own scripts, which means he understands why some dialogue works but some doesn’t (quite a handy skill if you’re doing a script with dialogue).

It might be worth saying that he came to my attention about five years ago when he did an ad for one of the country’s biggest clients. It was a very realistic slice of life that featured the product as the catalyst for a reconciliation after an argument. It was so realistic that the client refused to air it. I thought this was a great shame. This industry spends an awful lot of its time talking down to people as it attempts to hoodwink them into buying a pair of shoes or a chocolate bar. Heaven forbid anyone was grown-up enough to show a chunk of unvarnished life that simply reflected us back to ourselves and made us think.

Anyhoo, check out this sample of his movie Love and Hate and you’ll see what he’s really capable of:



The True Value Of A Cannes Lion

I think you’ll find this works in a metaphorical sense, too:

(Thanks, S.)