An Anononoymous Commenter Writes
Hello.
Another very kind commenter has written a nice long comment that saves me writing a post.
Thanks Anonononymous (wink).
By the way, I have to say that I haven’t read Campaign for about six months, so if the following refers to anything specific, I plead ignorance.
Take it away, A:
THE DNA OF PRIVATE VIEW
I am going to open my private view by making an observation outside of advertising, possibly relating to one of my adoringly intelligent children, or my gorgeously playful and understanding wife, and then draw a parallel back to advertising. To conclude this piercingly well-observed parallel, I will coin a phrase that I may have stolen from Google and then pass off as my own. I will put a couple of tongue-in-cheek jokes (in brackets) just to let you all know, with a wink, that I’m not taking this whole ad review thing seriously. In fact, I will even tell you that I have only just opened the parcel of “goodies” from my friends at Campaign, even though my PA would confirm that I have blocked out two whole days just to research past Private Views so I can work out a fresh new angle. And when I say fresh, I mean cool, too.
The second paragraph is the one that most of you cynical fuckers will jump straight to anyway, because you wish to keep the department copy of Campaign bile-free.
Mentioning the word “bile” now allows me to launch offensively into my first review like this: speaking of bile, I wished that I hadn’t just eaten my lunch when I reviewed the contents of this first ad, which, by pure coincidence, has come from an agency whose creative director fired me because it took him all of five minutes to realize my talent lay in PR, more than it did in ideas. Well Mr Creative Director who fired me, PR this you piece of shit. This is the worst fucking idea I have ever seen. Apart from the ones I have done myself, but that matters not, now that I am gracing the pages of Private View with my acerbic and weighty opinions.
By now, anyone with any judgement and instinct will not only smell a rather unsavoury waft of horse manure, but skip to the quotes running underneath the pictures and then maybe, but not definitely, look down at the credits to see if there’s anyone they know. Which means the rest of you are probably on placement or junior at the most, and you’re soaking up every word I’m saying as though I were David Abbott himself. And then you’re looking at my little match box picture and thinking, “wow, he’s smart, he’s young, he’s handsome. He really does have it all. How can I be like him?” Well, young college graduate, no one will ever be like me, because I am fucking amazing and I have it all. Just look at my photo again.
But I digress, because the next piece of work is done by a Director that once rejected a script of mine as though it was email fucking spam. And even though I like the work, I will say that I remember coming up with exactly the same idea many years ago, but bravo to the account team for selling it to the client. And then to bring the focus back to me, me, me, I will dust off my coined phrase to remind you of the neat thread that runs through the entire body of this article.
Something like that, anyway. It doesn’t really matter because nobody’s reading this anymore – except for maybe one poor placement team, who have even read Claire Beale’s column while they’ve been waiting (two days) to show their creative director some work. While he carefully crafts next week’s Private View.