Behold! The lone creative! Purveyor of both art direction and copywriting from a single brain!

In my career there haven’t been that many of these freaks of nature, but they tend to be really fucking good at the job (no one lets you work alone without a shedload of proof that you can do both disciplines to a high standard). Names that spring to mind include Grant Parker, Jeremy Carr, Jeremy Craigen (they used to work together. It must have been like being in a room with four creatives), Paul Silburn and Dave Dye (ditto).

So anyway, although they are expensive, you only need one of them, so if you currently run a creative department, surely it makes sense to hire two of these multi-disciplinarians rather than a single team for the same cash.

Aside from that financial benefit, they’ll use half as much loo paper, cause half as much wear to the carpet and need half as many keycards to get into the building.

Big savings all round.

And you’ll only need one invite to all the awards dos they’ll inevitably attend.

Check this out.

(Thanks, D.)

Um…?

(Thanks, L.)

(Thanks, J.)

The Church of Christian Kindness (Thanks, W).

Worst campaign speech of all time:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMgyi57s-A4&feature=player_embedded

The United States of Movies.

I wasn’t alive in the fifties, but it strikes me that there are some pretty odd things about advertising today that can’t possibly have been the case when the industry was getting into its stride.

Making non-existent ads to win awards

Taking on accounts for nothing to make your agency look fat and healthy.

Recommending media channels because they’re new rather than effective.

Moving accounts around in London because of a decision that was made in Nairobi.

Creating another awards scheme that caters for much the same ads as several existing ones.

Agencies making a huge amount of their income from behind the scenes client services that have little or nothing to do with advertising.

Strategy trumping work.

Clients binning hundreds of thousands of pounds of work in the middle of a recession.

Lots of big agencies scrapping over a crumby little account just for the chance to say they’ve won something.

It just seems, occasionally, that advertising has gone from an industry that promoted the goods and services of others to something slightly different. It now appears that the image of the agency has become  excessively important, leading to odd behaviour that has in turn led to a lack of respect from clients who know they have the pimp hand all day long.

Have we become our own worst enemies, appearing like a series of desperate suitors, each fighting to impress a bunch of boss-eyed munters, whilst forgetting that said boss-eyed munters (and her fit friends who left town a long time ago) don’t find desperation attractive or respectable?

Apparently, tonight’s Campaign Big Awards are going to give TV Ad Of The Year to this*:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idLG6jh23yE

Now, leaving aside the question of financial doping (I think if you gave quite a few creatives £27m – the rumoured final budget, including £3m on post – they could probably create something pretty good for Nike), I have a slight problem with this.

The ad is from W&K Amsterdam (although I believe the creative team were from W&K London), so what is it doing winning the TV section of the Campaign Big Awards, an award scheme that must surely be UK-based?

Well, a quick check on the CBA website explains that ‘The Campaign Big Awards celebrate the best creative advertising that has appeared in the UK. Yes, many of the entries will be from UK agencies, but agencies from around the world can enter work that has been published, displayed, or transmitted in the UK.’

Why on earth would you create an award scheme to celebrate the best creative advertising that has appeared in the UK?

The BTAAs has overseas category for work from UK production companies that appeared abroad (helping Trakto/Partizan to some good wins), but that was just one award out of the others that were there to celebrate the excellence British advertising.

Campaign, the UK’s only significant ad mag, is about to celebrate the advertising of Holland.

Why?

Fuck knows, but for me it’s just going to emphasise the paucity of the UK’s creative output in the last year.

Rather a strange thing for Campaign’s award scheme to do.

*My information about this result could be wrong. If so, apologies. My point about the awards still stands.

Comedy, analogy, randomness, sexiness, product demo…

There are many ways to skin an advertising cat, but how many of us reach into our knife drawers and slide out the blade marked ’emotion’?

It’s a tough one (as I said to a planner last month, ‘Which emotion are you talking about?’ I think the English language, oddly, has yet to create a word for the swell of feeling that we all get when we see that photo or watch that movie or book that transexual dwarf for that birthday party), but if you can get it right, it can persuade in a way that’s beyond the surface of the other methods.

But then its success does depend on a response which is about as subjective as it gets: one man’s heart-swell is another man’s damp toilet seat. We can all laugh at the John West Bear, but how many of us will find the same touching moment touching?

With that in mind, here is a new ad from NZ that has emotion in spades:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvwMPGwUSO8&feature=player_embedded

Does it float your monkey or fart in your lift?

This is how they have attempted to rehabilitate basketball star LeBron James:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdtejCR413c&feature=player_embedded

(Thanks, L.)

Now imagine the same ad but with Wayne in the starring role.

If we could get round his guaranteed inability to act I think it could be quite fun:

‘Should I pay less than £200 for a pack of smokes?’

‘Should I stop shagging granny whores?’

‘Should I urinate in the loo instead of the street?’

‘Should I apologise to Ryan and Paul for implying that they’re a pair of old wankers?’

‘Should I give the first shit about Colleen’s handicapped sister?’

‘Should I play well for any of the teams dumb enough to pick me over the past six months?’

‘Should I play better or continue to complain when people boo my boo-worthy performances?’

‘Nah. I’m Wayne and when it comes to whatever the fuck I want to do, I just do it.’

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVjTBHEnj04&feature=player_embedded

I’m always amazed when Star Wars characters turn up in ads, but on top of that, this is a great, unobtrusive way to show the range of electrical crapola that CPCW flogs, just in time for Christmas.

Well done Steve (creative) and Sam Brown (director).

The only thing missing would be C3PO, who is quite obviously gay, on all fours with a **** in his ****, being ******* by ***** and *****.

Slightly random, I know, but here is the next chunk of my Hall of Fame.

(There is an overall point to this that I will come to eventually, but for now I’d be interested to know how well – or otherwise – you think these hold up.)

1997:

Others from the same year include Levi’s ‘Kung Fu‘, Guinness ‘Statistics‘, Ford Puma ‘Steve McQueen‘ and Supernoodles ‘Dog’, but they’re not quite brilliant enough for the ITIABTWC HoF.

At some point in the future: classic ads from other years.

New Massive Attack video (Thanks, D).

Stephen Fry on Wagner (thanks, C).

Gangsta Lorem Ipsum.

Lame-mongous from Lynx:

More desperate than Desperate Dan after ten years inside.

And to round things off, here’s the quote of the day from The Situation:

No matter what T-shirt you select, whether it’s fitted, graphic, sequined, bedazzled, crew-neck, deep-V, wifebeater, or what-have-you, it’s about being proud of who you are. If you want to bust out a deep-V that’s safety-cone orange because you think that’s your color, then wear the hell out of that fruity shirt so everybody in the club knows that nobody owns it like you do. Set the trends, don’t follow them. I wear what makes me feel good because I’m at the tip of the spear—the cutting edge of fashion that’s fresh to death. When I see something I like, I grab it. My only system when I shop for fresh apparel is my own primal reaction to what I see, the moment I see it. When I enter a store, I trust my eye to zero in on what’s mint. That’s the single most effective system I have for knowing when to pull the trigger on a purchase. If I find myself hemming and hawing, that’s a clear indication that the garment in question is not destined to make my rotation. I walk away from the rack because I’ve failed to make a connection to those threads. On the other hand, if I know from the moment I see it that that particular piece is going to make me look awesome, I trust my instinct completely and it comes home with The Sitch.

I couldn’t have put it better myself.