But wait till you read the copy:

Although I write a bit, I’m no more than 80% sure about how to deploy the colon and the semi-colon. However, I am 100% certain the above has got it really fucking wrong.

‘Joy is not being found relaxing in front of the television’? Do you mean that the abstract notion of ‘joy’ does not relax in front of the television, or do you mean that you can experience joy by not being found relaxing in front of the television? Either way, your opening sentence has the verbal equivalent of cerebral palsy. If you mean that you won’t find joy by relaxing in front of the television, I beg to differ. Try watching The Wire or The Sopranos or series two of Deadwood, or Weeds (I could go on). And if the BMW X1 is perfectly engineered to ‘satisfy every whim’ then I fear for the way in which it caters for sadomasochistic paedophiles.

Stop it. Please. YOU ARE MAKING ME HATE YOUR BRAND.

N, from Bristol, writes: ‘I was reading your blog about an ad addict & wondered if you’d seen these cartoons that are running in campaign? I think they’re pretty nifty, but no-one seems to have picked up on them yet. I just dragged the images off the campaign website, there are more on there if they interest you.’

Thanks, N.

I had actually noticed the ‘placement team in the lav’ one, but not the others. To be honest, I think of the diary page of Campaign as the final circle of hell where there will be nothing but pictures of morbidly obese management types in fancy dress, regurgitations of articles from the Home section of the Sunday Wank about how such-and-such Head of Planning has a really nice Aga in their country house and ‘water cooler’ conversations that make me wonder and worry about the sanity of Campaign’s staff. And let’s not even mention the routinely interchangeable pick and turkey of the week.

Anyhoo, yes, N, these cartoons are very good. Witty, perceptive and well-drawn. The artist, Jay Taylor, has a website. Enjoy. meanwhile, here are the cartoons:

PS: I love this ‘crowdsourcing’ of blog posts. Makes me feel great. Until I use the word ‘crowdsourcing’ and then I feel like a prize cunt.

PPS: I can’t get the pics to enlarge. Sorry. They’re just about readable but probably bigger on the website.

So here is the reason i think we are all disillusioned by advertising now.

I used to get high on ads.

I could sit and inhale D&AD annuals and One Show bibles for hours.

I would go to bed and lie awake feeling high on the scope of creativity and left field thought – and the copywriting was pretty fucking wow, too.

I’d wake up in the morning and discover scribbles of ideas on bits of paper next to my bed, like used needles and empty foil packets.

During the day I’d hang out in other creative team’s offices, and if I saw an award annual or a lurzer’s archive I hadn’t read, I had to borrow it. I had to inhale that, too. (Most of these fellow addicts were loathe to lend out anything, so I will confess right now that it usually meant me staying late so I could indulge after they’d left. Locked offices was no deterrent. After all, I was an addict).

Then I discovered SHOTS, and I started to look like Bubbles from The Wire. Pasty, sleepless – constantly waiting for the next hit of ads.

There were enough ads out there and, pre-internet, the world moved slowly enough for there to be a constant stream of drugs for me.

Print, Poster, TV, (and occasionally a kooky little direct-mail piece, but very occasionally).

What I didn’t realise at the time was, to continue the analogy, I started off smoking marijuana every day – and I could put them away and re-smoke the same joints again and again and get pretty much the same sort of high.

But then Tom and Walter happened, and they manufactured the most powerful drug on the planet.

Seeing Surfer is The single biggest high I have ever had from an ad. It was heroin. I wanted to watch it again and again. It was the perfect hit. And I wanted other people to share the ad with me. I wanted to watch it for the first time vicariously through these Surfer virgins.

Not long after, the internet went full scale, and I was exposed to everything all at once.

But it wasn’t enough. I needed more.

And to make matters worse, I wasn’t getting as high on joints.

Ever since then, and I don’t think I’m alone with this, I’ve wanted a hit as pure and beautiful as Surfer.

But it’s never quite happened.

Smoking a joint, aka seeing a good poster or a nice print ad was still fun, but my system required more than that now. My expectations had been blown away and I wanted the manufacturers to keep blowing me away with their blow.

But they weren’t.

There were a couple of nice hits.

Sony Balls put me in a bit of a trance but I don’t think it gave me that inspirational buzz I was looking for.

Gorilla had me giggling again like a stoner.

And when I look at the ads that are considered big at the moment, like the bread one – yeah they’re ok, but it’s hardly heroin.

Nowadays there is the digital age, too, and we’re all exposed to new drugs, like the great schlep and the best job in the world.

Yeah, they’re good, but again, they don’t satisfy an addict like me.

Anyway, meanwhile, we’ve had the client prohibition era, and what it’s left me feeling is that there is a world of addicts out there looking for the next hit, meanwhile in stark contrast to my needs the manufacturers are diluting the street product with research and lack of confidence and ignorance and lower budgets.

So recently I’ve been going to AA (Advertisers Anonymous) to try and get support and talk to other people who feel the same way. I’m trying to kick the habit. I’m trying to stay away from blogs, because I know that each consecutive hit after the initial hit will only disappoint. Someone needs to do better than make the next surfer, they have to make the first something else. Someone out there might read this and think, “that’s me, I can do that”

To that person I say, Please.

Please.

Thanks for that, A. I know your pain. I’m just off to shoot up a little QTV, followed by a nice pipe of that super-strong Eric Silver shit.

Clive Pickering, creator of many an excellent ad is now the co-creator of an excellent ad-related award scheme.

The One Shot film festival is a competition to see who can make, yes, you’ve guessed it, the best ad that consists only of a single shot.

If you’ve already heard of it, you might not know that the deadline’s been extended to 31st October, they have a new website and they have now linked up with Madrid’s cult film festival, Cinemad, to become their guest festival (guestival?). Cinemad will screen the One Shots and may even present the awards.

So why not have a go? No clients, no budgets, no BACC, no end of fun.

Talking of fun, check out Alex Bogusky’s annoyingly brilliant blog. (Thanks for the tip, S.)

It’s miles better than this one, so why not erase ITIABTWC from your bookmarks bar right now and replace it with Alex’s good, good stuff.

You know it makes sense.

I slagged off the print, but I rather like this:

It might be a bit bollocksy, but it’s also big, stirring, beautiful and I reckon The Kids will be ‘down’ with it.

And it makes sense, unlike We Are Animals.

Award books are funny old things. Some people love ’em, others act as if they have been fashioned from fresh marmoset droppings.

When I was a junior I read an article by Peter Souter that suggested any aspiring creative ought to read all the D&ADs until he knew them off by heart. He said that the creatives at Simons Palmer Denton Clemmow and Johnson (it was the best agency of the early nineties, for those of you who were born then) used to play a game where one of them would name a headline, the next person would have to name the copywriter, the next would have to name the year and so on until some poor sod had to name the page number (if Mr. M. Denton Esq. is reading this, perhaps he can tell us whether or not it’s true).

Many other brilliant creatives I’ve met over the years have also sworn by this method of improvement, as it provides an excellent schooling in what it takes to be the best of the best.

However, other people eschew the award book devotion because they think it means your influences are the ideas, work and styles of two years ago (by the time an annual come out, the work inside can often be that old). And anyway, you shouldn’t look for influences in other people’s old ads, you should instead get out in the fresh air and take your inspiration from clouds, rainbows and camembert.

I think there’s something to be said for both sides, although I believe there’s another reason why award books are A GOOD THING: if you flick through a good one, you’ll find all sorts of subjects to send you off in all sorts of directions. You might see a dog, China, old people, clocks, teeth, bananas, doilies, sailing, kippers etc. and that can freshen up your train of thought no end.

So rather than using them as a style reference, why not make the most of their eclectic content? You never know where it might lead.

Also, they are a good place to find directors/designers/typographers that you might not be aware of. Nobody can be expected to keep tabs on all the good stuff happening from every craftsman in every part of the world, so an award annual can act as a fine digest for this information. If any one argues that this information would be out of date, remind them that people can, in some instances, actually produce excellent work in more than one year.

At the very least, having them around makes it look as if you care about good work and that can hardly be a bad thing, even in this day and age.

If any of you are looking for a darn fine bit of photography, you need look no further than the delightful Sean and Ben.

Not only can they take a brilliant picture or two, they are thoroughly good blokes who make a cold pint go by in a most pleasant way.

If you don’t believe me about the first bit, may I point out that they won a Gold at the inaugural Campaign Photo Awards this week.

If you don’t believe me about the second bit, ring them up and challenge them to make an hour in a pub an enjoyable experience.

They can be contacted at Coy! Communications on 0207 434 0557.

And here’s their winning pic:

Just watch how Paul moves:

Isn’t that perfect?

Also, I write for you as someone who once did such a bad mock History A-Level that I gave up trying to bullshit after about one page and just wrote a letter of apology to my teacher instead.

Here, for your amusement, are some other people who have been to the same place (I think the ‘expand’ one is genius):

Reader Paul S. of Charlotte Street, London writes:

Saw your blog about the Dublin Castle

Slightly off topic but ever since we were in Minneapolis I’ve wondered why gig posters here are so shit when in the USA they are amazing works of art. We discovered these guys two blocks from Fallon’s office and used them for some projects.

They design gig posters for most of the venues in MInneapolis and then get paid by selling the posters at the gig and online. A similar thing happens in just about every city in the US where local designers make great posters.

Thanks for that. Good point, well made. I might go and ask the Dublin Castle why their posters are so shit whilst waving some Aesthetic Apparatus artwork in their faces.

On another point, the deceased dinner party guests poll was won by Jesus. Good for him. But did he really exist? I thought he was like the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy or something. Anyway, he’ll be the life and soul by turning everyone’s water into wine (here’s hoping it’s ’61 Petrus rather than the more appropriate Blue Nun).

I voted for Mo Mowlam. Fantastic lady.

New poll today.

I took this picture outside The Dublin Castle, a venue for up-and-coming bands in Camden.

On the face of it this just looks like a programme of the venue’s bands. They print it and replace it every couple of weeks, and every couple of weeks it draws my eye. Not because I’m interested in attending any of the gigs, but because it’s actually a bare representation of thousands of hopes and dreams.

Who will be chosen for the big time? The Guns of Pig Alley? I Thee Lothario? Danny Conners and the Ladders?

(Perhaps none of these, for their names are immensely shite.)

Bound up in each of those names is a network of band members, managers, friends, families, groupies, hangers on etc. who are all crossing various parts of their bodies, hoping from the depths of their aortae for further success.

And yet, most will fail.

And all those big, fat, squashy dreams will deflate to nowt.

But.

But.

But.

One might survive, sending all the dreams to explode in a fireworky crescendo across the night sky.

And it’s all there in that humble, black-and-white, replaced-every-couple-of-weeks, messy old gig poster.

(By the way, I’m going to stick my neck out and tip Shot Dead for the hit parade. I like their name. It has attitude.)