This isn’t going to be one of those pisstakey posts where I mock the wankarama use of the word ‘conversations’ in advertising agencies.

I think it’s a fine word for describing something that is a back-and-forth dialogue, as opposed to a one-way monologue.

But I’m wondering how much we really prefer a conversation over being the recipient of a single communication.

It seems to me that we have almost taken for granted the idea that the two-way is best, as it gives us the chance to have some power and some say in the relationship. But the problem with that is that we already had all the power we needed, because we’re the ones who have always been able to choose whether to buy or ignore.

Isn’t a conventional advertising message just like a beggar on the street? An entity that wants something from you and has to approach you cold (you might say that the advertiser gives you something but the beggar does not, however, I think the beggar gives you the opportunity to feel good about yourself for just 20p – darn cheap if you ask me)? So we then choose whether or not to give a shit, so the power is all ours.

Every ad we experience is like that: ‘please do/buy/be interested in this thing’.

Now, with conversations, we actually lose some of that power by engaging with companies and products a little more closely so that they can draw us in a bit further in order to get us to buy what they are selling.

So why would anyone want that to happen? Of course, plenty of people do for the (very few) right brands – you only have to look on the fan pages of Facebook to see that – but the idea that we would automatically prefer a two-way chat with the companies that advertise to us seems to make no sense whatsoever.

When Nike offers you an online game or a chance to take part in a fun run, it’s just like letting the traveling salesman into your home and allowing him have a firmer opportunity to sell you something. You are on the back foot in the relationship, feeling somewhat beholden to him because of all the effort he’s made in persuading you. Fine, if that’s what you want, but most of the time it isn’t.

Most of the time you want to do what the hell you like, and very rarely is that having a conversation with a teabag manufacturer.

I appreciate that this flies in the face of current bullshit, and therefore might need a little help embedding itself into the current debate, that’s why I have condensed the above into a handy rhyming couplet:

We have no time or inclination

For advertising ‘conversation’.

Monday’s post was about avoiding showing your work to idiots, but for some reason the commenters seemed keener to discuss brainstorms and exactly how fucking shit they are.

Well, you can give us your own take on this subject in the comments section, but in time honoured tradition, I’ll chuck in my two cents first:

I can only recall being in two brainstorms, about eight years apart. I think this was because the first one seemed so darn crap and annoying that it put me off doing another one for literally thousands of days.

I was a young, naive creative, so when a senior account bod asked if I’d come to a brainstorm, I agreed. After all, what would be the worst that could happen?

Well, most of the time was spent watching junior account handlers trying to come up with creative ideas. And what was that like? Well, it most closely resembled being in a monkey house, watching primates trying to make doilies with a chainsaw. It was then that I realised that good creative ideas were better when they came from people trained to do it, but that doesn’t stop people wholly unable to do it from having a go, and that’s because it’s fun. But for those of us who do it for a living, it’s also kind of depressing, like watching quadriplegics trying to tap dance.

I also felt them looking towards me, as if I, as a creative, might come up with better ideas, cutting through this festival of shit flinging with a sword swipe of genius. Unfortunately, I felt the urge to leave early and throw up in the lav.

Then, years later, some people at my agency suggested we all try to come up with some ideas together (they may not have used the ‘B’ word, but I knew where this shit was heading). Against my better judgement, I agreed. This time was slightly different because it was senior creatives and senior management. However, on this occasion it was just as depressing, but in a different way: the creatives came up with all, literally all, the ideas, while the a/c bods wrote them down and said, ‘anything else?’ in a somewhat infuriating way considering they had come up with nothing useful themselves. It was basically like having a suit in your office while you tried to work.

After a while of this, I got up and suggested that all the creatives would just get together without the a/c dudes and let them know what happened. This really annoyed said a/c dudes, but they just had to suck it up because they were a bunch of cunts and if they weren’t going to contribute, they would just have to add the word ‘shit’ to the word ‘cunts’.

No brainstorms since, however, as a freelancer, I’ll do them if asked. I just might not enjoy them.

Oh, almost forgot: it’s the damn flipchart that really gets up my fucking hooter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxqlw3cKZHA&feature=player_embedded

Here’s a post from Simon Mainwaring (his biog is at the bottom).

I think it’s a load of shitty fucking shit, and I’m going to prove it:

‘More and more consumers are reaching out directly to brands using tools like twitter and brands are responding.’

Yes, but how many more and more? It’s just this kind of lazy, ill-researched conjecture that makes people like Simon look decidedly dodgy. He’s literally saying that more people are writing tweets about brands (presumably than they did at some undefined moment in the past). Well done, Simon. Pat on the back for that insight. Now does it matter? Well, yes, because apparently ‘This cuts ad agencies out of the equation, eroding their traditional intermediary role especially as these exchanges increasingly take place in real-time‘. OK, but does it really? You, dear reader, are an internet using motherfucker; are you reaching out directly to brands using tools like Twitter? I Tweet a fair bit and I don’t reach out to any specific brands. Not a supermarket, a cinema, a tequila, a car…the only brands I follow on Twitter are those whose news interests me, such as Cinematical and THR (and I couldn’t care less about those two as brands).

So if I’m not, and (I assume) you’re not, who the hell is? I appreciate that some people are Foursquaring themselves all over the shop, but I can’t help thinking that they must be the miniscule minority, and that the rest of us couldn’t give a yellow rubbery fuck about whether brands are responding to us on Twitter or not.

‘AGENCIES MUST BECOME REFEREES OF A SHARED STEWARDSHIP OF BRANDS: As the stewardship of a brand is now shared with consumers, agencies must communicate the value of their role to consumers’. I don’t really see why agencies need to become referees of anything, but leaving that aside, why must they communicate the value of their role to consumers? Consumers barely acknowledge the existence of ad agencies now, so why would they start giving a shit at some point in the future? Surely ads are boring enough on their own without having to worry about who makes them.

If agencies merely offer outdated (broadcast mentality) advertising, or worse, manipulative, duplicitous, or disingenuous marketing (even if it drives profit for the brand), consumers will reject the advertising and implicitly the need for an ad agency. Uh, Simon, darling, advertising is pretty much all manipulative, duplicitous and disingenuous (and most of it is outdated like a motherfucker). I don’t like it any more than you do, but at least I’m not naive enough to think that if that doesn’t change,  consumers will reject the need for an agency (consumers couldn’t give a shit about the need for an agency; see above).

I can’t be bothered to copy and paste his third point – you can read it at the link – but he’s kindly pointing out that agencies need to know how to advertise in new technologies (I’m inferring things like apps and ads in video games here). Well, yes, can’t really argue with someone who’s stating the obvious, but those areas are still tiny compared to what he witheringly refers to as ‘broadcast mentality’ advertising. People are watching more TV than ever, and hardly any of them, even the ones with TiVo, are skipping the ads.

‘In an increasingly social marketplace one way brands can engage consumers with confidence (rather than simply talk at them about themselves) is to communicate on the basis of universal values that inform the contribution they make to society and consumers through their service or products’. Excuse me? The last time I looked, most corporations had to be dragged kicking and screaming to make any contribution to society. Only when we started giving a fuck about sweat shops did companies like Nike stop using them, and only then because they thought it might hurt the bottom line.

But hang on, Simon’s got a few examples of how this could work: ‘For instance it could be a healthier burger, volunteer service by their staff or a promotion that raises funds for a cause. I believe the future of profit is purpose and that consumers–fully aware of government debt, the overburden on philanthropy, and the multiple social challenges we face–are looking to their brands to play an increasingly important role in social change.’ This is the really fucking stupid part: apparently consumers are fully aware of the overburden on philanthropy. That was the stupidest combination of words I had ever read in my entire fucking life. But just as I was marveling at the giant gobbets of fuckwittedness on my computer screen, Simon only went and topped them. He seems to think that we are looking to our brands to play an increasingly important role in social change.

At this point I had an image of Simon as some kind of educationally subnormal fairy, floating high above the world, casting little flicks of his wand in the direction of a planet populated by Care Bears and Smurfs.

Simon, listen closely, none of us is looking to our brands to play an increasingly important role in social change (apart from the brands that already do something in that direction, and even then, we don’t really think about it).

You can read on to find out that agencies have been slow to ‘establish a beachhead within the new social ecosystem‘ and that Simon ‘now consults for brands and creative companies that are re-inventing their industries and enabling positive change’.

I’m assuming some of them are thick enough to pay for this kind of bollock-brained drivel.

Look, I’d love for advertising to find a brilliant way forward as much as the next tenuously-employed copywriter, but free-flowing bullshit like this ain’t the answer. Ironically, it’s just another example of the ‘manipulative, duplicitous and disingenuous’ wankitude that Simon professes to hate so much.

The last point David Hare made on Thursday was a really good one.

He said that on The Hours, Stephen Daldry asked him to write several scenes more than fifty times. This was so that he could choose from the very best (and is in direct contravention of David Abbott’s assertion that such behaviour turns creativity into a commodity).

However, there is one giant corollary to this: Hare added that ‘you wouldn’t do that for an idiot’.

And there’s the rub: if you know someone good is choosing then there’s really no downside to working harder – the best solution you reach cannot get worse. Unfortunately, if you are doing this for most clients (and a few dumb ECDs), you will be doing it for an idiot, and therefore wasting most of your time.

Daldry is a very good director, so giving him more good stuff to choose from will result in more good things, but if you were writing for, say, Michael Bay, you would have no confidence in him choosing your best work.

I had a direct experience of this earlier in my career: if I had to write a line for, say, Nigel Roberts, then I would often be asked to have another go. And I was happy to do this, because if Nigel chose my line then I knew it was good; I thought my ad might have a shot at awards and I left his office quite pathetically pleased with myself.

On the other hand, if I had to do the same for (other person who has judged my work in the past) and they rejected it, I’d just stand there thinking, ‘yeah, but you’re shit. In fact, I’m better at this than you are, so why should I give a cat’s bollock about your opinion?’

So the best plan is to work for really good people, then the latter situation never happens.

Alas, though, in this day and age the odds are far higher that you are going to be showing your work to an idiot.

Ashes’n’tits:

(Thanks, T.)

Funny.

Also funny (Thanks, F.)

Funny (unintentionally so, I believe) (Thanks, A.)

Excellent impressionist:

Bacon Or Beer Can is back! (Thanks, C.)

I’ve just seen David Hare give a lecture on screenwriting at the NFT (the lecture wasn’t on ‘screenwriting at the NFT’; it was just held there).

He was very urbane and interesting, talking and answering questions for an hour and a half.

The structure of his talk consisted of his five rules or beliefs by which he writes.

1. (Sorry in advance. I’m going to fuck this up a bit because I wasn’t taking very careful notes, so what I might do is just regurgitate his advice, no matter how many points there are) In any piece of film the director is the only one who has a full idea of the concrete finished version in his head. Everyone else involved will have their own idea of what’s being produced, but it will not be the same as the director’s. Filming of The Hours was delayed for 6 hours while Meryl Streep had the set rearranged to fit her preconception of it. The she did her usual fucking-annoying-but-good Meryl Streep performance.

2. This leads to disappointment. Sir David said that ‘a film they dreamed of as being everything is suddenly something’, and that cannot fail to disappoint (remember all those times you’ve stared stonily at the first cut of your ad, trying to process ten million things at once AND look politely pleased in front of the director?).

3. What does a writer do for a living? mostly he or she thinks. Or to put it less prosaically, he or she imagines (remember yesterday when you were sitting at your desk with your feet up? Back-breaking work). He said that it’s all about the structure, and once that’s in place, writing dialogue is a piece of piss.

4.  In any field, in any meeting, only the idiot speaks first. The most powerful person speaks last, and in film that is the director.

5. Your imagining (the script) is merely a kind of booster rocket to allow the director to do his own imagining before discarding yours.

6. Always end-load your film. Sir Davey said that most films are based on some idea/proposition, eg: Sandra Bullock is a nun who inherits $100,000,000 on condition that she marries a muslim. The problem with that is that it is front-loaded and will not produce a satisfying ending. Start with what happens at the end and build towards it. That way you will have a story that satisfies with its inevitability and sustains its interest until the end. If you’re heading somewhere good, you can’t go wrong.

7. Allow more talented people than you to do their work.

8. Who is the third that walks among us? He illustrated this point with a scene from The Fallen Idol, a Carol Reed film in which a deep and important conversation about a relationship is compromised when a small boy turns up and cannot be turned away. We feel the enormous tension of this scene because the two people involved in it are not ostensibly talking about what they are talking about. This is how and when real life is inserted into a piece of drama. Imperfection that makes it perfect (fans of Mad Men will have seen this in the scene where Betty confronts Don about his secret past while Don’s lover waits in the car downstairs, ready to burst in at any moment).

9. Tell, don’t show. We all know that we are supposed to ‘show, don’t tell’, but in some instances, telling can be the best thing to do because film is not only a visual medium, it is also verbal. Hare illustrated this with this scene from Citizen Kane, which he called the greatest speech in the history of cinema:

10. Finally, oh, hang on. I think this last point could be an entire post of its own, so I’ll do it on the weekend for Monday.

‘When you produce 50 scripts for one shoot you are diminishing the value of the work. It becomes a commodity – easily created, easily discarded. Most of the scripts fail at an internal audit – binned even before they reach a client. This is an incredible waste of our talents – it’s dispiriting and inefficient.

‘Often we require several campaigns because we don’t have a singular creative strategy. We have too many catch-all propositions that need creative work to sort out the strategy. The classic procedure is to agree the ‘what’ of the brief with the client and then to expect an original ‘how’ from the Creative Department. We believe that advertising is a development process not a selection process.

‘Perhaps the most insidious result of this catch-all approach is that it destroys our self-confidence. Since we cannot present three ideas with equal conviction we present none of them with real passion. Most of us are at our most persuasive when we are most convinced – I believe we can only fall in love with one proposal at a time.

‘We need better progressing, better timing, better briefs, better work, better salesmanship.

‘The alternative is unthinkable. A giant ad factory where quantity is more important than quality.

‘Hands up who wants to work there.’

David Abbott, 20th April 1994.

I think I’ve worked at around fifteen agencies over the last year or so, so I think it’s about time I rated them on the most important criteria: lavs and lunch.

Rather than go through them all, I thought it would more gentlemanly only to mention the best bits:

The best loos: this is a toss-up between Grey London and JWT. The first round of judging eliminated any where you are able to hear anyone else going through their motions (particularly on Friday morning after a Thursday on the beerz). There were also marks off for those with a dog-eared copy of Metro or Shortlist. I believe that in the era of the smartphone, those who require on-pan entertainment should play Angry Birds or Bejeweled with the sound off.

The winner, by a short turd is JWT for having a good, swanky set of loos at both ends of each floor. I would also add that their shower policy is second to none: big towels and soap provided by the agency and a good roomy, clean shower. Special mention goes to Saatchi and Saatchi, which has two fancy loos with Dyson hand dryers (I won’t mention its location. Popularity means a greater likelihood of a locked door just when you’re getting the turtle’s head).

Lunch: I have simple tastes, which are amply catered for by EAT. Fortunately there is a branch on literally every single street in London, sometimes nine or ten. However, I am a big fan of this new craze for burritos, and excellent examples can be found at Grey (the van behind the agency), Saatchi and Saatchi (Benito’s Hat, which also has Margaritas Happy Hour on Friday at 5), Anomaly (can’t remember the name) and This Is Real Art (Burrito Bros.). Double however, I find nothing can beat the turkey and cranberry sandwich at Verde in Spitalfields, which is nice and close to…Wieden and Kennedy London. Congrats to them. They also have a fridge with free Coke/Diet Coke/Coke Zero, saving me 65p a day which I could then donate to Amnesty International or blow on scratchcards, depending on my mood.

On that subject, 180 Amsterdam has two fridges full of Coke, Dr Pepper, Fanta and others along with limitless lollipops, snack biscuits and crisps, so that’s a big plus, along with the very good but expensive soup shop whose name escapes me.

If you need to go shopping at lunchtime, JWT gets another big tick because it’s two minutes from Harrods. It’s also above a five star restaurant that serves very good cocktails. Then again, it’s difficult to beat M&C Saatchi/DHM who have all the benefits of prime Soho on their doorstep.

Lowe has a fine lunchtime curry house literally across the road. The agency are such regular customers that the manager kindly gives a free Cobra at the end of your meal.

So that’s the important stuff. If you want to know what they’re like to work in, I would never be so indiscreet (rather boringly, I’ve enjoyed them all, including the ones I haven’t mentioned, such as RKCR/Y&R).

Does your place have an unsung loo that needs a song? Or a brilliant lunchery that we could all clog up?

Tell us of the bogs of BBH, the fajitas of Fallon, the water closets of WCRS, the onion bhajis of Ogilvy etc. etc.

This Thursday sees the 40th birthday party of Saatchi and Saatchi, which is to take place at the Saatchi gallery and will be attended by (as I understand it) all former and current employees of both S&S and McS.

It might also be attended by that senile old milk-thieving witch, Margaret Thatcher, but with a bit of luck she’ll die in the next 48 hours, sparing us any further reminders of her existence.

Anyway, I think it’s a birthday well worth celebrating, and if you don’t agree, check out their finest shizzle and then reluctantly concede that I was right after all.

UPDATE: while on an SSF theme, I have it on good authority (there’s a particularly observant and loose-lipped fly who lives in the corridor outside Richard Flintham’s office) that Flintham and Green are definitely off.

Golly.

Why? Where? How does that leave Fallon, who were already a bit fucked from losing Asda and Sony in the space of a couple of weeks last year? Now all the founders have left (OK, Robert Senior is still half there), how will it continue its Fallonosity? I’m pretty sure Juan’s no longer balls-deep in the place, so does this sound the death knell for one of the two or three best agencies of the century so far?

And, on the other side of the coin, does anyone really give a fuck anymore? Between phone tapping, match fixing and Rooney’s whoring, the News Of The World is where all the action is these days. Working there must be like sitting inside a pus-filled boil at the centre of the universe.

Over and out.