When I was a nipper, there were only a few job titles in the creative department of your average UK ad agency.

You had the Creative Director at the top, then maybe a Deputy Creative Director, then the rest of the department, which could use the prefixes ‘senior’, ‘middleweight’ and ‘junior’, but were really just copywriters and art directors.

Larger agencies would have Group Heads, who were kind of like deputy CDs, but that was about it.

Over the last 5-10 years, this has changed.

For some reason, the top job is now Executive Creative Director, and the title of Creative Director is now used to describe anyone from the former Deputy CD to the Group Head to anyone who has responsibility for an account (‘Yeah, well I’m the Creative Director on Marmaduke Dog Food, actually.’)

I think this has happened for a number of reasons:

When I was at AMV around 1999, Tony Cox joined the department. He had been CD of BMP/DDB for many years with a great deal of success, so he couldn’t really come in as anything other than CD. But Peter Souter was the CD and it would have been a bit confusing to have two CDs when one was above the other (Peter hired Tony). Thus, Peter became the ECD, while Tony was the CD.

Fine.

Except (and this is where my facts turn into conjecture) I’ll bet that across town, there were CDs who saw this happen and wondered why they weren’t ECDs. I’ll also bet that upper management of those agencies were only too happy to bestow this prestigious title upon the mere CD because it got them out of giving a raise and it meant that they could boast to clients of having an honest-to-God ECD. Not a mere bogstandard CD, you understand; an E fucking CD.

And the disease spread from there. Over the course of a few years, the normal job title for the person who runs the creative dept of an ad agency has become ECD. This has freed up the CD title for the former Deputy CD or Group Head. So now any agency yet to adopt this system has a CD whose title denotes something less significant in another agency.

It’s also interesting to see what that word executive means. As an adjective (which the E in ECD is), it just means something that is to do with execution or implementation. So an ECD is a CD who is involved with carrying things out. Great. And let’s not forget that an Account Executive is the lowest rung on that ladder, almost certainly because that job carries the proper meaning of the word, which is being responsible for implementation (ie making tea and photocopying).

As a further oddness, I also know of some agencies who can’t actually bring themselves to allow the CD title to be bandied about so freely and have come up with some other titles for the group heads/individual account CDs, such as Creative Supervisors. Truly pathetic. I can only suppose that the people who do this still hold the CD title in the esteem it used to have, even though they have supposedly moved beyond that. It’s like a particularly arsebrained dog in a manger.

So where will this end?

That’s an easy one. Just look across the pond to see the Creative Vice Presidents, Creative Chairmen, Chief Creative Officers, Senior Creative Vice Presidents and all the other daft bullshit that fails to do what a job title, any title in fact, needs to do: tell you what it denotes.

The Evian Viral:

I find it less creepy and more appealing than its roller-skating big brother. It has a charming lo-fi accessibility and the post is unfuckwithable.

According to page 40 of today’s Independent, David Abbott is due to release his debut novel in the very near future.

Oddly, I’ve been told this by several different people in recent weeks, so my breath is fully bated.

No one seems to know what it’s about, but if it isn’t a cross between Jackie Collins and Dean R. Koontz, I’m going to be thoroughly disappointed.

Here’s an interview about it from 2002.

(Thanks for the tip, S.)

Now you can read it too.

In the past you’d expect an article with that headline to detail the evacuation of Frank Lowe, John Hegarty and at least one Saatchi amongst a phalanx of Adland’s overspending 5-star grub-munchers.

Now what do we have?

Just two people.

One of whom I have never heard of, and another who did a few Levi’s ads back in the early nineties.

No so much Adland as a small island off Adland; the Guernsey of Adland, if you will.

But none of that is anywhere near as sad as Campaign featuring it on their website.

Or me regurgitating it for your timewasting delectation.

I think it’s not one of his best, but Glazer on ‘B’ form is still better than most others on the very top of their game.

It’s got the right vibe and the look is fantastic, I just think you’re waiting for something to happen that never quite happens.

The ending is a bit of a damp squib, too.

File under Live With Me, rather than Street Spirit or Rabbit In Your Headlights.

UPDATE: interview with Glazer.

You know how you can tell it’s not an ad? No shots of anyone pointing, as if to say ‘Look at that great thing that’s going on there’. Although there are shots of people genuinely filming it on their phones, so that really does happen.

If you owned 70 Porsches and were revered the world over for producing one of the greatest TV shows in history, would you do this?

Neither would I.

Have a good weekend. The weather (in London) is due to suck.

x

I don’t want to bias the poll in that FHM way, but here’s an amusing Droga 5 ad for an Australian beer that is all of the things beer advertising should be: meaningless, funny, rewatchable and…who needs anything else?

NIce one, C.

PS: if you go on the website, you can choose which banner to march under. I can’t help thinking of myself as a cashed-up Bogan, but actually, I’m a bloke who has done the ‘phantom’ on many occasions.

Bonjour, tout le monde.

Le photographeur Anglais, Brian Griffin, a gagne un pris formidable en France.

Si vous voulez travailler avec lui, appellez Stephen Gash a QI (0207 287 9215)

Nice touches, nice twist/reveal, good work for a reconstituted potato product.

And I’d watch it again by choice.

In fact, I think I’ll do just that.