Delightful whimsy.

(Thanks, J.)

Amusing inadvertent penile visuals.

(Thanks, W.)

Funny Twitter pisstake of BP

(Thanks, A.)

Fun odd ad for some cable website thingie:

(Thanks, other A.)

Stephen Fry on everything (including commenting on blogs):

STEPHEN FRY: WHAT I WISH I’D KNOWN WHEN I WAS 18 from Peter Samuelson on Vimeo.

This was YouTube’s video of the week, but just in case you didn’t see it, this is sublime, majestic, wonderful and all that’s right with the world:

(If you like that, you’ll love this, which I put on the blog earlier this year.)

Interesting advertising use for Chatroulette:

The greatest TV show ever made will soon be on DVD.

And if you’d like to mess around with an iPad (good lord they are pleasant) you can do so in M&C Saatchi’s reception. I’m not sure they let you just walk in and sit there, so I’d suggest asking to see Charles and during the receptionist’s ten minute puzzled search of the building just have a quick play around (it’s also kept precariously close to the open door, so you could just nick it. Don’t nick it. Really).

I think it’s about time I wrote a post on just how darn good Damon Collins is (interest declared: I am Facebook friends with Damon, I used to work in the same dept as him at AMV and we once judged D&AD together. That’s about it).

If you are on Facebook with Damon you will have seen several posts recently where he has mentioned some of the awards RKCR/Y&R have won this year. If my memory serves me correctly (a rare occurrence), they have included seven Clios, eleven D&AD nominations and a BAFTA. Yes, a BAFTA.

That’s quite impressive. OK, that’s very impressive, but even more so when you consider the track record of the agency. RKCR has never been crap – they have too many good creatives and clients for that – but they have never been this good.

A few years ago, the tiny agency I worked at, Lunar BBDO, matched RKCR in D&AD entries, so (in all modesty) I have to say that it can’t have been firing on all cylinders.

Then Damon arrived and the awards just exploded.

Coincidence?

Possibly, but then it’s not the first time he’s managed this trick. Before he joined Mother their advertising for Boots was pretty shit. I seem to remember some bollocks involving Harry Hill and a desk.

Then they hired Damon to CD the account and…

And that wasn’t the only one. We also had the excellent ad where the woman changes into a bikini on a crowded beach and the one where everyone in the country went mad because the sun came out for ten seconds. Big, good, true crowd pleasers for a massive client. Not easy.

He was also an excellent CD at Lowe, with plenty of top work appearing under his leadership.

And going further back, he also managed (with the excellent Mary Wear) to do the odd decent ad as a creative :

So let’s give him his due. He’s undeniably a very, very good CD.

Something I think even Sooty would have to agree with.

Here’s some screenplay advice from a screenwriter friend of a friend of a friend (I think he wrote Citizen Kane, Sunset Boulevard and Chinatown) who read my post on the subject:

As for your post about screenplays… I don’t really have anything to add, really. Bear in mind that just as many copywriters would like to be writing screenplays, so I write screenplays and would like to write novels. Some people are never fucking happy. And for ages I wanted to be a copywriter.

Anyway. What I would say, for what it’s worth, particularly in response to the comments of John W, is this: first, registering a script with the WGA is probably not really worth it. Ideas don’t tend to be stolen in that way, and even if a script is registered there can be rival projects, such as the other Robin Hood movie that came out at the same time as Prince of Thieves.

Second, about this notion that if you have an idea you should be given a shot to write it with no track record. Yes, and I should have seven classic performance cars parked outside and the bathroom from Scarface. But I don’t. And I’m afraid nobody gives a fuck about your idea unless you can prove you’ve got the goods to execute it. There was a time, probably back in the 80s when both ad-land AND movies were more fun, when yes, you could waltz in with some high concept pitch (it’s Die Hard in a mobile library!) and some bloated exec, chiselled off his tits on A-grade Bolivian and getting blown under his desk by some sweet platinum twat, would write you a cheque. That time is gone. It’s virtually impossible for even established film-makers to get things off the ground at the moment unless they involve vampires or zombies or some franchisable comicbook. People are fearful of buying off a pitch even from writers they already know, and even if you have a completed script to tout, the spec market is barren.

Basically I’m trying to offer some consolation. Film is just as wretched as advertising at the moment. The grass might look greener from over there, but I’m standing in it, and from over here it looks like a camp of fucking gypsies have emptied their caravan toilets all over the place and moved on.

And just in case you weren’t quite ready to top yourself, here’s Garrison Keillor on the demise of the fun of publishing:

I ran into my daughter’s favorite author, Mary Pope Osborne, in New York the other night, whose Magic Tree House books I’ve read to the child at night, and a moment later, Scott Turow, who writes legal thrillers that keep people awake all night, and David Remnick, the biographer of Obama. Bang bang bang, one heavyweight after another. Erica Jong, Jeffrey Toobin, Judy Blume. It was a rooftop party in Tribeca that I got invited to via a well-connected pal, wall-to-wall authors and agents and editors and elegant young women in little black dresses, standing, white wine in hand, looking out across the Hudson at the lights of Hoboken and Jersey City, eating shrimp and scallops and spanikopita on toothpicks, all talking at once the way New Yorkers do.

I grew up on the windswept plains with my nose in a book, so I am awestruck in the presence of book people, even though I have written a couple books myself. These are anti-elitist times, when mobs are calling for the downfall of pointy-head intellectuals who dare tell decent people what to think, but I admire the elite. I’m not one of them — I’m a deadline writer, my car has 150,000 miles on it — but I’m sorry about their downfall. And this book party in Tribeca feels like a Historic Moment, like a 1982 convention of typewriter salesmen or the hunting party of Kaiser Wilhelm II with his coterie of plumed barons in the fall of 1913 before the Great War sent their world spinning off the precipice.

Call me a pessimist, call me Ishmael, but I think that book publishing is about to slide into the sea. We live in a literate time, and our children are writing up a storm, often combining letters and numerals (U R 2 1derful), blogging like crazy, reading for hours off their little screens, surfing around from Henry James to Jesse James to the epistle of James to pajamas to Obama to Alabama to Alanon to non-sequiturs, sequins, penguins, penal institutions, and it’s all free, and you read freely, you’re not committed to anything the way you are when you shell out $30 for a book, you’re like a hummingbird in an endless meadow of flowers.

And if you want to write, you just write and publish yourself. No need to ask permission, just open a Web site. And if you want to write a book, you just write it, send it to Lulu.com or BookSurge at Amazon or PubIt or ExLibris and you’ve got yourself an e-book. No problem. And that is the future of publishing: 18 million authors in America, each with an average of 14 readers, eight of whom are blood relatives. Average annual earnings: $1.75.

Back in the day, we became writers through the laying on of hands. Some teacher who we worshipped touched our shoulder, and this benediction saw us through a hundred defeats. And then an editor smiled on us and wrote us a check and our babies got shoes. But in the New Era, writers will be self-anointed. No passing of the torch. Just sit down and write the book. And the New York Times, the great brand name of publishing, will vanish (POOF) whose imprimatur you covet for your book (“brilliantly lyrical, edgy, suffused with light” — NY Times). And editors will vanish.

The upside of self-publishing is that you can write whatever you wish, utter freedom, and that also is the downside. You can write whatever you wish and everyone in the world can exercise their right to read the first three sentences and delete the rest.

Self-publishing will destroy the aura of martyrdom that writers have enjoyed for centuries. Tortured geniuses, rejected by publishers, etc., etc. If you publish yourself, this doesn’t work anymore, alas.

Children, I am an author who used to type a book manuscript on a manual typewriter. Yes, I did. And mailed it to a New York publisher in a big manila envelope with actual postage stamps on it. And kept a carbon copy for myself. I waited for a month or so and then got an acceptance letter in the mail. It was typed on paper. They offered to pay me a large sum of money. I read it over and over and ran up and down the rows of corn whooping. It was beautiful, the Old Era. I’m sorry you missed it.

Tribune Media Services/New York Times

Happy Thursday everyone!

I wasn’t expecting quite such a reaction to the ‘you need an out‘ post of the other day (by the way, if you found it interesting, do have a look at some of the later comments. There is some excellent insight in there, particularly from the Toadstool’s Alan Wolk).

So in the interests of balance I’m going to see if I can suggest why people might wish to work in advertising.

The comment of the self-confessed ‘middleweight’ creative made me realise how much of a difference there is between the young and the older in this industry.

Youth in general, as well as in advertising, is about invincibility and anticipation. You’re giving things a go and there’s no reason why you will not ultimately be the best at what you have chosen to do. Despite the odds, the possibility that you will be a multiple-pencil-winning Hegarty or Abbott is all too real. Yes, it is you who will buck those odds and fuck the poor saps who think otherwise. And in anticipation all is perfect. Nothing has had a chance to go wrong. The final great victory is always around the corner. Why should it not be? No reason!

Youth is also about novelty. I remember when I made my first ads and saw them on TV and on poster sites. Anyone who has had this happen (most of you) will know what a wonderful thrill such an experience can be. You ring your mum, you take a photo of the poster site, you tape the TV show etc. But like all thrills, the more times you experience it, the more it abates. I could be wrong, but I have a feeling that Chris Palmer does not do any of the above. He loves advertising and does it brilliantly, but on occasion he won’t even feel inclined to collect some of the awards he has won. He’s been there, done that and bought the rather expensive limited edition T-shirt off Ebay.

So all the pluses of the above two paragraphs are what makes you want to get into the business. Added to this is the fact that you go from being a toast-munching student to a person with a job. Advertising offers the free booze of the agency meeting and party, the free food of the post-house, the free travel and accommodation of the foreign shoot. Your lifestyle gets better than it has a right to be and the feeling is intoxicating. People older than you are offering praise, taxi drivers are interested in what you do, the bloke off The Fast Show will do your bidding in the voiceover studio. That little fuzzy bit inside you that goes all warm and glowy when something nice happens spends a lot of time in its warm and glowy state.

Then you have awards, which in this industry are plentiful, boozy and, for almost all of us, free. You get pats on the back and the kinds of trophies that you normally see in the hands of Martin Scorsese and The Kings Of Leon. It’s a piece of metal in a nice shape that you can also show your mum (mums have a lot to answer for) and some important, clever people voted for you to receive it. Another mighty thrill.

Then add in the little buzz you get when you’re on a call with a director and he explains how he’s going to get the lighting rigger from Alien to set up your Andrex shot and it’s going to look like the opening of Touch of Evil; the wonder of even the tiniest mention in Campaign; the brief visit from the MD who may not quite know which of you is Dave and which of you is Mike, but he wants to say well done for the new Kenco poster that made his client so happy; your own Mac; a free mobile phone; choosing music from your favourite obscure shoegazing band (even if it ends up getting rerecorded) for your ad; the crew, the lorries and the closed street for your shoot that only happened because you wrote something down on a piece of paper last month…

I could go on. Yes, these are the wonderful elations that await even the most average of creatives in this business (and quite a few people in the other departments). These are why the business feels so extraordinary in your twenties. There is much pleasure to be had. Don’t let that tedious old (I’m not old, by the way) blogger put you off.

But just be ready to discover that much of the above is so surface and temporary that it cannot hold its value for long. The reasons why it disappears like the sandcastles you were once so proud of are inevitable. They are life.

Of course there is pleasure and enjoyment to be taken from advertising as your years advance, but for the reasons I described, they become tempered with downsides and riven with the disappointments that are also impossible to avoid. You will search for greater meaning in your life and I really hope you find it outside an advertising agency.

Having said all that, I still enjoy a great deal of what I do. But I wouldn’t be human if I enjoyed it as much as I did at the end of the last century. I have a new set of values that come with living longer on planet earth. They don’t mean I try any less or do my job to a lower standard, but they simply mean that I, and virtually everyone else who has ever lived, need to find that level of stimulation elsewhere.

I’m delighted to say that I’ve found it, mostly (and you cannot fully understand this until it happens to you) in my kids.

Find your own, wherever it may lie.

I recently received an email from a guy called Marc Lewis.

He’s reopening the School Of Communication Arts this September.

It’s going to be run like an agency, with students being taught by visiting mentors.

These mentors can be online, in person or contribute to a Wiki, and he’d like to involve as many brilliant people as possible.

Actually, I could witter on pretending I’m some expert but instead it might be better to get the info from the horse’s mouth. Here’s how Marc introduced it to me.

I am reopening School of Communication Arts this September. The school closed in 1995 when John Gillard was no longer able to run it.
I was one of John’s last scholarship students, and after a rewarding career I wanted to focus on doing something in my community. This piece in The Guardian explains my motivations.

The videos hosted on Knowledge Peers provide a decent overview of the school’s vision.

Our school is unique for several reasons, which has helped us win the support of the IPA and D&AD as well as nearly a dozen agencies and scores of mentors.

– 50 students and 300+ teachers (mentors)
– 15 scholarships in 2010, rising to 25 scholarships by 2015
– Curriculum written by the advertising industry, not by academics. (see attached, The Wiki Initiative)
– Delivered as a ‘creative apprenticeship’. 12-months in the school followed by 6-months work placements
– Nationally accredited qualification, developed with University of the Arts London Awarding Body
– 3 pathways; Copywriter, Art Director and Ideapreneur
– Ideapreneurs receiving funding to start a business whilst at the school, in return for equity that is shared with partner agencies

We deliver an androgogic style of learning and to make this as rewarding as possible for our cohort, we aspire to bring six mentors a day into the school.

We want those mentors to come from all across the marketing services industry. There is a short presentation about mentoring at the school here.

So sign up at the link above and, y’know, give something back.

And if you want to be a student, all the information is also on the site.

May I direct those of you of a literary bent to this incredible news.

For the rest of you who like funny books that won’t ever win the Booker, E Squared (the sequel to E) is now out in paperback.

It updates all the E characters to a thrusting new agency called Meerkat360. Here is its website.

I laughed, I cried (I didn’t cry). It is very funny, more so if you reside in the land we call ‘ad’ but it’s still a good laugh if you don’t (how do I know that?).

Today I was fortunate enough to have a very pleasant cup of tea with its author Matt Beaumont where he explained some stuff, so I’m going to try to remember it:

1. He waited a while to do the sequel because it gave the characters, and indeed the agency landscape, a chance to change.

2. He was made redundant from McCann’s and used the time and money to finish E. It sold pretty quickly, getting a positive response from one of the first six agents he sent it to. Then it came out (that bit was immensely satisfying) and continues to sell around the world, with sales probably topping half a million by now.

3. He read my ‘you need an out‘ post from a few days ago and agreed with it. His take is that when creatives get into their forties they can often be bored of the process. The novelty of seeing your stuff on billboards or TV will have worn off and because creatives require stimulation, they might find that they want to do something else. The other problem is that if you are removed from your job in your forties it’s quite difficult to get back in to anything decent. He said that he was fortunate to have E to keep him going but it then led to enough other things (eg: more books) but he’s now back at M&C Saatchi where he’s happily doing a bit of advertising.

4. He was once invited to meet the crew of the most recent space shuttle expedition. He had no idea why, but these crews often do PR tours to spread the good word of NASA, and one of them wanted to meet him. It transpired that this spaceman was English but had gained an American passport purely to become an astronaut. When he was on his way to training, his brother gave him E to read. He loved it and passed it around the other astronauts who also loved it. He wanted to take it into space as a personal possession but it wouldn’t fit (you get very little space, ironically enough), so he took a photocopy of the page with Matt’s face on it and then photographed himself holding this page in front of the window to outer space. Then he took it to the International Space Station and got it stamped (they have a passport thingie there). Back on Earth he met Matt and presented him with this piece of paper (Roger Daltrey was at the same ceremony; another astronaut had taken a CD of Who’s Best with him). Cool, huh?

We talked about a bunch of other things but my fingers are tired now.

So Matt’s made a million or so people very happy and continues to do so.

Have a read of both books. They’re funny (rare) and Matt’s a really good bloke.

It’s got humour and irreverence, you can tell it was directed by a master and the idea is spot on.

My favourite of the year so far (along with Old Spice).

(Thanks A.)

UPDATE: I think it’s interesting that some people don’t get it. I can be quite bad at ‘getting’ ads but this one seems obvious to me: this looks cool, but it’s pretty clear that it would look 100 times cooler in 3-D (ie: on a Sony 3-D TV). So buy one. It’s a brilliant negative product demo.

By the way, Balls sold a lot of TVs. Just not Sony Bravias. As an ad it didn’t work for Sony. I think this one will have them flying off the shelves.

If you’re looking for a top new director, you need cast your net no further than Steve Rogers.

(Interest declared: he’s just joined Sonny, where my wife works.)

This puppy has won Best of Book in the Creative Review Annual and has been nominated for best ad, best direction and best special effects at this year’s D&AD awards:

And here’s the rest of his reel.

I had a friend a while back who would always bend my ear about whether or not he should split up with his girlfriends.

I’d make it easy for him: was he going to marry them? No. So at some point he was going to split up with them. Why not make it as soon as possible and start looking for someone he preferred?

Which leads me to advertising.

You are my friend and the ad industry is his imperfect girlfriend. You will split up eventually.

Even if the industry does not change one iota from now (it will get much worse, believe me) the statistics are blindingly obvious: there are loads of creatives but very few CDs. This means that as you make progress there will be fewer of you left. Some will fail to make the grade, others will dislike the business, others will get married, move abroad, bum the agency cat and spend seven years in Pentonville etc.

Coupled to this is the ageism: advertising regards the over-forties as geriatric and the over fifties like people who should be wetting themselves in a wipe clean plastic chair while a truculent ‘carer’ cleans Jaffa Cake sludge from the front of their sta-prest pajamas.

Troupled (it’s like coupled but involves a third element. I just invented it) to this is the current fashion for ad agencies to cut costs by employing cheap youngsters to do jobs that used to require a senior. To put it bluntly, few people in advertising give the first, second or third toss about whether an ad is 6/10 or 9/10 anymore, so they’re hardly going to shell out another hundred grand to get the latter, not when the holding company wants its kilo of flesh. Most ads are shit so why does it matter if they’re cheap shit? To the people in charge it doesn’t. IT DOESN’T. You wish it did. You came into the industry thinking it did, BUT IT DOESN’T.

Quapled (see above; four elements) to this is the fact that the pay now stinks. If you’re a junior or middleweight now you are like the bloke who has turned up to the party at 5am, when everyone else has got pissed, laid or the nightbus home. There you stand, explaining how you got lost and had to ask for directions at a service station run by idiots but no one cares. Yes, this party had plentiful beauties from the opposite sex, copious amounts of pure-yet-unaddictive drugs, gallons of vintage Salon and millions of Almas caviar canapes but IT’S ALL FUCKING GONE. The seventies and eighties boys and girls boned, hoovered, quaffed and munched the lot, leaving a little for the nineties guests and not much for the noughties. The well is now drier than a good Martini. This means that whatever you earn from here on in will not be enough for you to retire on at the age of 50ish.

So do the maths: to retire with a decent sum you have to work till you’re 65 in an industry that will almost certainly kick you out in your forties.

You see? You need an out. You need something else to do; an alternative money-making scheme. Yes, the very few will CD themselves to untold riches or create a start-up that will allow them to do the same but this will be around 1% of the total, if that.

YOU NEED AN OUT.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

New Nike ad:

Following MIA’s slaughter of the gingers, we have another promo that won’t be shown on Saturday Superstore (is that still on?), this time for Unkle:

And I’m really starting to go off George Lucas (Parts 1-3 of Star Wars + Indy 4):

(Thanks, K for both those two.)

Another nice ad for Nike:

NIKE SPORTSWEAR: NSW+FBGT from fla on Vimeo.

Interesting ad for Child Hope:

The excellent Not Voodoo is blogging again.

Why not visit the amusing Yellow Part of The Red Brick Road’s website? Brand Mogic indeed.

And according to last week’s poll, 3-4 hours is the most common amount of actual work you do in a day. I guess I have readers in a range of jobs but I’d say that most creatives would fit into that sector. And don’t we moan about it?

Also, is there anything more intriguing to a creative than seeing your CD in another team’s office with the door shut? (No.)

AND, I came across this by accident a month ago, but if you’re an iPhone user, it may change your life: when your iPhone is off, two presses of the ‘home’ key (the circular button at the bottom) will give you immediate access to your basic music controls. No more having to key in 5467, or whatever your pass number is.