I fucking hate mission statements. Fuc. King. Hate. Them.

The idea that Pret a sodding Manger is on some kind of a mission to provide us with sandwiches and coffee is hyperwank. The only mission they’re on is to make some cash out of a sandwich shop. The mission statement is almost always a big smear of cackbabble designed to make you think that the Estonians manning the counter on minimum wage care more about the arrangement of cheese and tuna than they do about sending their mammas enough money to keep them out of prostitution.

Anyway, beyond that, I also think it’s very important to have a mission statement.

You see, I think there’s a difference between corporate mission statements, which are usually designed to disguise a grasping desire for pots and pots of cash, and your own personal set of principles, which may include a grasping desire for pots and pots of cash, but you don’t have to disguise the fact because the whole thing is just between you and yourself.

Your mission statement need not be permanent or even completely clear, after all, life is an amorphous, constantly-shifting grey area where priorities can change on a daily basis. And it need not be noble, moral or ‘good’ (again, it’s just a little secret to keep in your head). All that’s required is a certain of focus on one thing, then that can point you in the right direction whenever you have to make all those important decisions.

If your primary goal is money, you can always choose the option that provides more of it. If it’s seeing your kids grow up, then you can decide to do only that which will maximise your time with them.

Of course, it can make you what some people refer to as a ‘cunt’, but it’s up to you: do you want to step over your friends for a more lucrative job or would you rather earn less money and have lots of mates who think you’re a lovely person/doormat?

Actually, you may need several mission statements for different parts of your life, but they’re always potentially useful, if only in the cause of avoiding the wastage of time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQsA2eW6-Vo&feature=player_embedded

Justin Bieber is brilliant.

If you slow him down 800%.

And for comparison, here’s the original:

This should be an olympic sport:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ho0WfS8opaI&feature=player_embedded

(Thanks, W&W.)

The architecture of Mad Men.

Top class mash-up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNUTYHJrutw

Rachel Zoe is literally a complete fucking idiot.

Someone’s collected all those fucking stupid pictures of fruity girls getting their A-Level results (Thanks, A).

In case anyone’s interested, here are some tasting notes on some of what I’ve drunk so far (haters of the wanky, stop reading now):

2003 Leoville Barton is probably too young right now, but we had it in a demi, so it worked brilliantly: a perfect balance of fruit, alcohol, acid and tannins that was complex and concentrated, yet very easy to drink.

1999 Haut Claverie was a revelation. As a small Sauterne producer of little note one might wonder if it would hold up for eleven years, but it did so brilliantly. Honeyed succulence that matched the best of the appellation.

1999 Tour Blanche, also in demi, made for an interesting comparison with the Haut Claverie. Of course, TB is a premier grand cru classe so it was always going to have more depth, but even in the half it was still too young. Delicious, but with obvious indicators of greater heights to be climbed in the next 5-10 years.

2004 Confiance is Depardieu’s Bourg effort and like the man himself is a ballsy, gutsy, big fat bastard of a wine. Not a lot of subtlety, but worked well for what it was.

2004 Caillou Blanc du Chateau Talbot was excellent. I’m a big fan of the white wines produced by the Bordeaux big guns and, although this was nowhere near Margaux’s Pavilion Blanc, it still had enough understated complexity and concentration to stand up to Talbot’s wonderful reds. We also bought the 2007 but may give that a couple more years.

2004 Pavilion Rouge. This is Margaux’s second wine but it had all the hallmarks of delicate finesse for which its big sister is world-famous. We tried it alongside the Leoville Barton and it made a telling comparison between the St Julien and Margaux appellations that left us in no doubt as to just how different wines can be even when their terroirs are just a few miles apart.

Chateau Carbonnieux blanc 1999 is another white Bordeaux, this time from Pessac-Leognan and, like the Talbot, had a freshness and depth that left it with the delicacy of a Sauvignon Blanc (I fucking hate Sauvignon Blanc) but with the richness of a Chardonnay (I fucking love Chardonnay).

I hope that helps (smiley face made out of punctuation).

This morning I was in a wine shop in St Emilion and as I took in the bottles of Ausone, Cheval Blanc, Figeac etc., my thoughts, I am ashamed to say, turned to advertising.

(The situation did make me feel a lot like Swiss Toni. ‘You know, looking at classed-growth Bordeaux wines is a lot like making love to a beautiful woman…’ Or, in my case, ‘a tortuous advertising analogy that might work as a blog post’.)

I don’t know if many of you are into wine, so I’ll assume a massive and in-depth knowledge. If this starts to get a bit wanky just skip the rest and wait for the obligatory YouTube shite I’ll inevitably post tomorrow.

If you work in advertising,or wine you can make the choice to go your own way, taking a financial risk to produce what you think is right. The creative might be the vigneron, the agency might be the terroir and the client might be the climate, allowing for classic vintages or cat’s piss, depending on the combination of what’s available.

Of course, there is then the market. In the case of wine, this is the legion of restaurants, caterers and private buyers who might want your grape juice. In the case of advertisers, it’s the Target Market, who will sit in front of whatever you produce.

At some stage of both industries, you will make the decision, often without realising it, to go with either what the market wants, or what you think it should want.

In wine, a man called Michel Rolland was recently hired by many vineyards to help them produce a ballsy, up-front wine that was high in alcohol and made to be consumed young. This is because another man called Robert Parker provides annual ratings of all significant wines that people rely on a great deal, and this is how he likes his wines. So, in an effort to sell, many wine makers began to forego the true soul of their wines to chase the Parker dollar, while a few others dug their heels in and decided to make wines that were non-Parker because they did not believe in this money-grabbing homongenisation (I’m simplifying things, of course, but the gist of this is true).

So, in making ads (and in making most other ‘arts’), one can do what the Rolland winemakers did and chase the middle of the road because that is where most of the money lies. Or one can forge one’s own path in an attempt to make something more original that one believes to be ‘right’, despite the fact that, financially, that may cause one to fall flat on one’s face.

Interesting, though, that advertising has no specific Michel Rolland or Robert Parker to guide the taste in any particular direction. However, it does have a herd mentality, driven by fear to produce whatever is of the prevailing taste, no matter how dull the results may be.

And, let’s face it, the industry also has a great lack of people willing or able to go their own way and find a path that leads to something brilliantly different.

The pressures to aim for the cash are great and the path to originality can sometimes feel like Noah as he built his ark beneath a cloudless sky, but then, as we all know, people get very rich making piss like Jacob’s Creek, so why bust a gut trying to make D’Yquem?

The answer to that question might be where you find yourself.

Anyway, while I’m on the subject, I think I might do some more wine-related blogs in the next few days.

This morning I was in a wine shop in St Emilion and as I took in the bottles of Ausone, Cheval Blanc, Figeac etc., my thoughts, I am ashamed to say, turned to advertising.

(The situation did make me feel a lot like Swiss Toni. ‘You know, looking at classed-growth Bordeaux wines is a lot like making love to a beautiful woman…’ Or, in my case, ‘a tortuous advertising analogy that might work as a blog post’.)

I don’t know if many of you are into wine, so I’ll assume a massive and in-depth knowledge. If this starts to get a bit wanky just skip the rest and wait for the obligatory YouTube shite I’ll inevitably post tomorrow.

If you work in advertising,or wine you can make the choice to go your own way, taking a financial risk to produce what you think is right. The creative might be the vigneron, the agency might be the terroir and the client might be the climate, allowing for classic vintages or cat’s piss, depending on the combination of what’s available.

Of course, there is then the market. In the case of wine, this is the legion of restaurants, caterers and private buyers who might want your grape juice. In the case of advertisers, it’s the Target Market, who will sit in front of whatever you produce.

At some stage of both industries, you will make the decision, often without realising it, to go with either what the market wants, or what you think it should want.

In wine, a man called Michel Rolland was recently hired by many vineyards to help them produce a ballsy, up-front wine that was high in alcohol and made to be consumed young. This is because another man called Robert Parker provides annual ratings of all significant wines that people rely on a great deal, and this is how he likes his wines. So, in an effort to sell, many wine makers began to forego the true soul of their wines to chase the Parker dollar, while a few others dug their heels in and decided to make wines that were non-Parker because they did not believe in this money-grabbing homongenisation (I’m simplifying things, of course, but the gist of this is true).

So, in making ads (and in making most other ‘arts’), one can do what the Rolland winemakers did and chase the middle of the road because that is where most of the money lies. Or one can forge one’s own path in an attempt to make something more original that one believes to be ‘right’, despite the fact that, financially, that may cause one to fall flat on one’s face.

Interesting, though, that advertising has no specific Michel Rolland or Robert Parker to guide the taste in any particular direction. However, it does have a herd mentality, driven by fear to produce whatever is of the prevailing taste, no matter how dull the results may be.

And, let’s face it, the industry also has a great lack of people willing or able to go their own way and find a path that leads to something brilliantly different.

The pressures to aim for the cash are great and the path to originality can sometimes feel like Noah as he built his ark beneath a cloudless sky, but then, as we all know, people get very rich making piss like Jacob’s Creek, so why bust a gut trying to make D’Yquem?

The answer to that question might be where you find yourself.

Anyway, while I’m on the subject, I think I might do some more wine-related blogs in the next few days.

So read it.

a) Nice Chianti.

b) Cheeky Lafite.

c) Big Amarone.

The answer is c).

It is. Go on, look it up.

No, not in the movie. In the book.

For reasons far too dull to go into, I’m currently reading The Silence of The Lambs. It follows the movie pretty closely (or rather vice versa), but there are some interesting changes, including that most famous line (it is also not followed by the sentence, ‘Lecter then sucked in air like a starving man gobbling up an unruly oyster’.)

I know, I know: that’s interesting enough. I have already rewarded your kindness in visiting ITIABTWC with that little tidbit alone, but hang on, there’s more:

The process of adaptation is a fascinating one. Many people have told me that No Country For Old Men is a virtual carbon copy of the book (The Road certainly was, although they left out the bit about babies cooking on a spit). Whereas Schindler’s Ark is a very dry read with very little narrative, unlike the tear-stained movie it inspired.

The reason I point this out is that no one ever really explains how the process of adapting a movie is actually very similar to that of ‘adapting’ your ad script.

Both go through many layers of approval, budget strictures, eye-watering research and lots of witless, talentless, tasteless cunts poking their noses and oars in to the detriment of the final product.

And both involve changes that can make the initial script look unrecognisable.

For example, I heard the the initial script for Levi’s Running Through Walls (I can’t call it Odyssey; I’m not quite enough of a wanker) had a man waking up in a box, then breaking out of it before doing some other stuff that sounds a bit too on the nose. The Glazer read it and basically came up with the ad we all know and love.

Of course, the creative process can also take things in the other direction, but it’s worth remembering that what’s on the piece of A4 is just a starting point.

Will it be massaged to brilliance or rogered to oblivion?

Well, unlike in Hollywood, advertising writers do get some say in the process.

Whether that say makes any difference is up to you.

(Of course it fucking isn’t. It’s up to the client’s wife.)

It strikes me that there are some things that are always assumed to be good or bad, whether or not that is actually the case.

Take, for instance, shoots abroad: jetting off to some other part of the world at someone else’s expense to sit around on a set or location then eat and drink in the most expensive restaurant you can find, also on someone else’s dollar.

Of course, that is often a pleasant experience, but it can be rendered shitemongous by a wide variety of factors: are you leaving your young kids/hot significant other behind (I know that can also be a plus point for some people)? Have you already been to said location on many occasions, thus exhausting its novelty value? Will you have to babysit an arsehole client or spend time with a hated account director? Is the ad likely to be rubbish, therefore ending up as a month-long waste of career time? Is said location (eg. Prague) fine for a day or two but pretty dull any longer than that? Is the location amazing in theory but quite grim in reality (Yes, Havana, I’m talking about you)?

Equally, choosing and meeting directors is fun if they are any good, but if not, trawling through Wankbucket Productions and Spaz Films is a strange kind of hell. You’ll be talking to them because Frank/Chris/Fredrik etc. didn’t want to know, and now you’re at some production company you’ve never heard of, talking to a director whose self-confidence is in inverse proportion to his talent. And you all have to pretend the ad you’re making isn’t a load of old plop, otherwise you’d shoot yourselves in a mercy-killing-cum-suicide-pact.

Then there’s the other side of the coin; the things that seem shit but aren’t (necessarily): for example, working on the worst account in the agency. Of course, this can often be awful, but before Cog, Grrr and Impossible Dream, Honda was one of the worst accounts in UK advertising. The work was dreadful and I can’t imagine people were to enthusiastic about trying to change that. But bad accounts are good for the same reason that good ones aren’t: do a good Nike ad and it’s just another good Nike ad, but turn Tesco, Honda or Philips around and you’ve really done something great. But you can only do that it you get the ‘shit’ brief on your desk.

What else are we supposed to like that’s actually dog mess? Award dos (surprisingly dull if you’ve been to a few. Especially if you’re neither on the pull or up for an award); Photo shoots (fucking boring unless you are very much that way inclined); agency occasions with free booze (wine always shit, beer always warm); being mentioned in Campaign (less prestigious than being mentioned in Razzle); D&AD entries if you’ve already had at least ten (they redefine ‘meaningless’).

But then there are things that are supposed to be shit that aren’t: meeting clients (if they’re good or interesting it can be a real pleasure/education); account people (some of them – particularly the younger ones – are quite pleasant company; getting fired (see if the grass really is greener elsewhere. It often is); working the weekend (great if you’re a freelancer) and your friends joining the ‘best agency in town’ (you might be jealous at first, but most people I know who work at ‘TBAIT’ fucking hate it there, wherever it may be).

I’m not saying that all the shit things are great and vice versa; just that poo can be disguised as a rainbow and vice versa.