The mood film ad (thanks, ALS):

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

I think that’s the worst example I’ve ever seen, and for such a lovely car, too.

In case anyone’s wondering why this fits with Monday’s rant about what’s wrong with advertising, mood film ads are a brilliant example of how lazy money grubbing produces awful advertising.

MFAs are easy to write because they are virtually interchangeable. They are usually produced because no one has bothered to think up a decent strategy, so someone suggests coming up with a bunch of a generic platitudes that make the client feel all warm and fuzzy about himself and his company. These are then cobbled together with a load of stock footage and shown as white-on-black captions that spread a little bit as they come onto the screen.

Voila! A 60-second frotter that plays to the basest conceits of the average client.

‘So this is a mood film we’ve put together to show where we feel the brand can go.’

‘It’s great. Love it. Nice job.’

‘So, with that in mind, here are the scripts for the ad.’

‘The what?’

‘The scripts. For the ad that we’ll write based on this strategic insight.’

‘But why can’t we just run this?’

‘It’s…it’s…(remember, you cannot say it is shit in any way) just made with generic stock footage. It’s not really individual enough to reflect precisely what you guys do. It can’t have the loving craft of a properly made ad.’

‘Looks fine to me. How much would it cost to run?’

‘Um…we can’t put an exact figure on it…’

‘How about a rough neighbourhood?’

‘Uh…30 grand, maybe, if we use that music.’

‘And a new ad would cost…?’

‘Well. we’ve budgeted it at around the 270k mark.’

‘And will it be nine times better than this?’

‘Well, it’s all relative…um…’

‘Look, Tarquin, just run the fucking mood film.’

So your valiant attempt at a client arselick ends up as a pile of shit with your agency’s name on it.

Sure, the produced ad probably wouldn’t be nine times better, but that’s partly because Tarquin and the client would conspire to make it shit.

Might as well run the mood film.

UPDATE: You might find something interesting in this article about a journalistic midlife crisis (thanks, B).

I don’t know much about Jimmy Kimmel, other than he’s a late-night American chat show host, and his show once featured the brilliance of ‘I’m Fucking Matt Damon‘.

Anyway, I was reading American GQ the other day and one of its features was an interview with him about the Jay Leno/Conan O’Brien contretemps of earlier this year.

(For those of you who, quite reasonably, don’t keep up with late night American chat show shenanigans, here’s a brief background: in America, there are a bunch of chat shows every evening from 11:30 (I have no idea why they’re on so late or why so many people watch at this hour). Each major channel has one but the biggie is NBC’s The Tonight Show. It was fronted by Johnny Carson for 30 years then there was a big hoo-haa in 1993 about who would take over from him on a permanent basis. The choice was between the regular stand-in, Jay Leno, and one of the most successful hosts on another channel, David Letterman. Eventually, Jay got the job, leaving Letterman (very pissed off) to continue on CBS to this day. Aaaanyway…fast forward to 2004 and a formal agreement is in place for Conan O’Brien, host of the 12:30-1:30 slot to move up and take Jay’s place in five years’ time (2009). The time comes and The move duly happens, with Jay moving his own chat show to 10pm. Alas, the move is a bit of a disaster for NBC: low ratings for Jay’s show lead to low rating for the following news programme and consequent low ratings for Conan’s show (people might also have liked Conan less than Jay on the Tonight Show, but Jay’s show tanking didn’t help). Double aaaaanyway… After seven months of this, Jay suggests to NBC that they give him The Tonight Show back and elbow Conan out of the way. NBC says yes and finds itself in the weird position of having to run the end of Conan’s time as host while he takes the piss out of them):

It was, after all, a shitty thing for both Jay and NBC to do (Conan would like to emphasise that as this is a dispute between multimillionaires, he does not deserve anyone’s sympathy), but Jay is the big boy here with a couple of decades on the primero chat show in the States under his belt, so the network decided to side with him.

So this is where Jimmy Kimmel comes in. I have no idea if he’s friends with Conan or not (if any American readers can shed any further light on this situation, do comment), but as another late night host, he thought Leno was a fucking cock for what he did, so he started to express that thusly:

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

So when Jay saw that (which was fucking cool IMHO), he and his people thought it’d be a good idea to get Jimmy on his show and show the world that they were ‘buddies’. Didn’t work. Did. Not. Fucking. Work. (this is the best, bravest, most heart warming thing I’ve seen in ages. The skill with which he tears Leno a new anus is quite stunning. The best bit is from about 2:20):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axwO6BkCtIo&NR=1

There are loads of other clips of further fighting and sniping and Conan’s leaving speech and Conan now getting higher ratings than Leno etc. Please feel free to check out more of the story.

But back to Kimmel.

In an industry where people can be arseholes but no one calls anyone on it for fear of ruffling the wrong feathers, Kimmel came out and made it quite clear he thought Leno was a cunt. He stuck up for doing the right thing (here’s where an American reader who knows more about him tells me he’s otherwise a wanker) and I love that.

Plus, he would appear to be very funny:

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

And that’s why I *heart* Jimmy Kimmel.

I don’t know how it happened, but this blog is often thought to be a bad-tempered whinge about the things that aren’t quite tickety-boo in the world of advertising.

Well, yes, I suppose that is sometimes the case, but I get the impression that my motives may be somewhat unclear.

For the avoidance of doubt, it might be worth pointing out that, in theory, I love advertising. Anyone in the industry who knows me well will tell you that I’m a massive ad geek, a nerdy twat with a depressingly encyclopedic knowledge of the best work of the last twenty years and beyond.

So when I write about the state of the industry in negative terms, it’s not because I’ve always thought advertising to be a soulless and superficial way to spend your career, or because I want the industry to come to an end. I just think it’s sliding off in the wrong direction, heading for a big old swimming pool of the runs.

I would dearly love there to be a brilliant ad made every day. If that were the case I would put it up and rim it senseless. You might be surprised to know that I actually lean in the direction of being more positive than I really feel, but that’s because the good stuff needs all the support it can get. However, there’s no point talking up the bad stuff, the results of advertising’s turn for the worse. That would only help (in a tiny way) to legitimise the direction in which things are going.

And I am 100% certain they are going in the wrong direction (apologies if you’ve heard any of this before, but I’m still fucked off because things still aren’t getting any better):

Ads are worse than they used to be: 2010 is the third straight year without a truly great ad from any UK agency. The UK has yet to produce a piece of digital or integrated work for a commercial client to match the great stuff produced by agencies from USA, Sweden, New Zealand, Australia or many other countries around the world. The UK hasn’t won a TV advertising Pencil since 2008 and has never won a Titanium or integrated Grand Prix. The facts speak for themselves, so you can feel free to disagree, but you will be pissing into quite a strong wind.

The love of money is the root of all shite: the efficient use of every single pound appears to be the sole motivator for practically everything produced by this industry. Yes, I am fully aware that advertising is a business, but it is a business that makes a product which is difficult to fully quantify. Does your ad need a helicopter shot or a cherry-picker? Three days of editing or four? A shoot in Morocco or Prague? When the pound is king, the cheaper choice will be made, whether or not it is the best or most appropriate solution. This extends to the employment of creatives: why hire a good, experienced senior team when you can get three mediocre junior teams for the same price? Most clients and agency management neither know nor care about the difference between good and great, and they certainly don’t want to pay for it. And that’s not to say that ads have to be expensive to be good, but they have to be creative, and that can involve a tricky sell, one that might strain the client relationship, jeopardising that kick-back to the holding company. I know of at least one massive UK agency where the account management department are explicitly instructed to sell the easy route and not the one which might require greater client persuasion. That way the agency makes more money and the client relationship stays nice and smooth, but the work is unlikely to be anything other than blah, and that’s been proven time and time again.

Which kind of leads to some sort of point about the overall motivation of the industry: if anything has made its shit-steaming, vomit-scented presence felt over the last ten years, it’s the influence of the holding company. Almost all the significant UK agencies are owned by a much larger company that likes profits – lots and lots of profits – and in these straitened times that financial imperative is even greater because these companies are owned by shareholders and the only thing any of them want is more money. Whether a massive pension group or your granny, almost everyone who invests in a business does so to increase the amount of their investment. Further down their list of priorities comes employee happiness and much, much further than that, a decent showing at Cannes. So the buck stops with people whose only motivation is a buck, and it is extremely unlikely that anyone in the chain of power is motivated by anything else (yes, I realise that this is a somewhat grey area with a few exceptions – we’re not toiling in sweatshops with no toilet breaks just yet – but the generalisation holds). Then we have the start-ups, none of which claims to have great creativity as their raison d’etre. Even if they believed they would put great ads before anything else they would never be so dumb as to say that publicly; after all, it might put off a client who would like some motherfucking ROI, thank you very much.

Then there’s the other money factor, which dictates that companies much squeeze as much work as possible out of the lowest number of employees. I can’t remember when this crept up on us, but in many agencies, if you agree to work for them, you agree to do so during whichever late nights and weekends they believe they require. It makes perfect sense: why pay for another employee when you can get another 20 hours a week out of your current workforce for nothing? Now, don’t get me wrong: I have nothing against working long hours to improve the creative work – most good creatives will want to put in long hours just to make sure their work is as good as it can be – but all too often it’s a grim exercise in generating quantity to make sure the client gets enough routes to choose from. I think there’s a simple test: if the creatives want to do the extra work, the work is good; if they are dragged in moaning, the work is shit, or worse – mediocre.

I believe that the money factor is the start point of a vicious circle that is causing serious and irreparable damage to the industry.

As I’ve pointed out before, a salary in the low six-figures was not uncommon in the creative departments of the mid-eighties. Fast forward to today, and you’ll find that a similar amount is similarly prevalent and possibly less so. In 2010, one very large UK agency has a department with only one team on over £100,000, and they have serious CD responsibilities. Again, I’ve pointed this out before, but £100,000 could buy you 800% more property in the mid-eighties than it can today, so in effect advertising creatives have had an 800% pay cut.

I’m not asking you to cry for anyone on that wage, not when nurses and teachers are on less than a quarter of that, but the good salary has been a factor in attracting talented people who might otherwise work in other countries or industries. The worse the potential remuneration, the worse the calibre of employee, especially when (see above) they won’t be attracted by the non-existent opportunity to do good work.

By putting itself in this position, the advertising in the UK is killing the goose that laid the golden egg. Ads used to be great, so people liked and respected the industry (to a degree) via its output. If there are fewer people to make that great work, less great work gets made and the industry becomes still less attractive, then the quality of people who want to work in advertising in future will be worse, and so on…and so on…

The way in which the business is now set up, agencies make a lot more money than they used to from behind the scenes bullshit such as strategic audits and research analyses. This is where the Rise of the Planner is gaining momentum at the expense of the Creative. The creative work is both less important and less lucrative, leaving a gap for the planners to have close and constant contact with clients, allowing them to syphon off much client cash for wiffly toss that verges on the completely fucking useless. Of course, the management are keen to encourage this because it keeps the client’s money in the agency, but to the detriment of the end product, which becomes marginalised and forgotten.

But isn’t this just a microcosm of what has happened to the UK since the seventies? During that decade we stopped manufacturing actual physical products and became a country of service industries, of which advertising has been a significant and successful example. But let’s take it a stage further: advertising now produces a lower quality product (and, I believe, a lower quantity product. Have you seen how many old ads are being repeated at the moment?), while the number of internal wankathons increases. Will that not continue to devalue the industry as a whole? Surely someone will eventually turn around and realise we have million-pound strategies producing tuppence ha’penny work.

Is there any other evidence for this malaise? Well, I find it odd that people and organisations that have a cast-iron history of producing brilliance have not done so for a while. Think of your favourite director, creative or agency and name something they’ve done in the last few years that is up there with their best work.

See? Almost impossible. But that can’t be a coincidence. How did so many people lose their mojo at exactly the same time? Are people being given less time? Money? Trust? Respect? Are they having their work scrutinised and picked apart by the bean counters more significantly and regularly? Are the easy-sell scripts leaving the great directors to fight over far less top-drawer material? Is the marginalisation of creatives (and Creative Directors) leaving those post-production battles lost before they’ve even been fought?

Whatever the reasons, and there are probably many, the end results are undeniable. The best people are not allowed to work at their best. You are not being allowed to work at your best and that, ladies and gentlemen, is fucking insane.

But do people really care? I know of a creative team who have gained a D&AD nomination in the both of the last two years, but thay have yet to buy themselves an Annual to see their achievements immortalised. Partly it’s a question of money (couldn’t D&AD give away copies to the nominated people who make an annual possible?), but more than that, it’s a question of giving a fuck. Twenty or thirty years ago, aspiring creatives would live off baked beans to save the money for their Annual. They revered the work and wanted to emulate and surpass it. No longer.

When I was starting out there were many ‘star’ teams, pairs of people who produced award-winning brilliance in various media year after year. Now such people either do not exist or their significance and fame has been greatly reduced. It’s another part of the vicious circle: without shining examples to look up to, the younger generation of creatives are less motivated to be committed to the cause. Yet another benefit (being celebrated for great work) has disappeared, making the job still less attractive. Young creatives are paid less to produce worse work that fewer people care about. How can that lead anywhere except down a spiral to somewhere even worse?

And on that point, if they are less inclined to care, how can we expect them to put in the effort required to be even better? Being a great creative takes a lot of work, but also a lot of self-motivated learning. No one can make you take copywriting and art direction improvement classes; you have to want to do that yourself, but for the reasons above, fewer people want to. And that’s yet another reason why the work will get worse, spinning us round the vicious circle ever faster.

I know, I know, I know that the job is still enjoyable, that it still beats cleaning paraplegics’ genitalia for a living, that it’s relatively well paid versus the work you have to put in. I’m fully aware that it’s a bit of a cushy gig that can, on its good days be awesome, fun, stimulating, exciting and fulfilling.

I also know that this problem is far from exclusive to the advertising industry. Journalism, TV and film production and many other of the media jobs have also been humped dry by the money men, lowering standards and raising disaffection.

But that doesn’t mean it’s OK.

The above couple of thousand words have been said before on this blog. Chances are you’ve read them before. God knows, you might have nodded in reluctant agreement. But nothing’s changed. The work continues on its downward slide. The whinges of ITIABTWC are coming true, day in and day out, in your very office. In America, great creatives are leaving their agencies to start their own shops that they can mould to a form that gives them the chance to scratch that creative itch a little harder, and finally, with Richard Flintham’s departure from Fallon, the same thing is starting to happen here.

I don’t know a single UK creative who is happier with his working circumstances than he was a few years (or a decade) back. On the other hand, I do know more and more who have left their jobs, either to emigrate from the country or the industry. And these are good, clever people. The brain drain is happening right fucking now, and the industry only has itself to blame.

But what can you do about it?

Well, there’s the rub: almost certainly nothing, except find work that satisfies you. That might mean setting up your own place. It might mean finding something different to do. It might mean staying in the industry and doing whatever you can to make sure a beacon of creativity still shines through the fug of mediocrity, hoping that one day things will turn and diamonds are again prized above excrement.

Become the change you want to see in the world (© Mahatma Gandhi). Go, find your smile (© City Slickers).

Or sit in the toilet until it fills up with so much shit that it chokes the life out of you, leaving you an anonymous, ordure-ridden corpse, forever to be forgotten as just another citizen of Planet Earth who let the bastards grind him down.

It’s up to you (smiley face made out of punctuation).

Nicolas Cage losing his shit:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xP1-oquwoL8&feature=player_embedded

Not sure about this child’s drinking cup.

Blomkamp’s teaser for District 9 follow-up:

How bacon is made (I think this is supposed to be disgusting but worryingly I didn’t mind it. Thanks, K):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0DbcUUO-hI&feature=player_embedded

(If you liked that, here’s a whole load more, including pianos, Coke, bubble gum and cymbals.)

Generate your own rave (thanks, L).

Make your laptop transparent (Thanks, K).

(Thanks, G.)

Although it did make me wonder what the same agency would do for other charities.

Perhaps they would pour piss down your leg for MS.

Or take you to another country and force you to become a prostitute for The Helen Bamber Foundation.

Maybe starve you to death and cover you in flies for Oxfam.

I think any of those would win Best Ambient at any award show in the world.

The failure of England in this year’s World Cup was the latest example of how product and personality can go hand-in-hand.

Before the squad of arrogant grannywhore-banging, lazy, boozing, diving, millionaire arseholes who piss in the street (actually, that’s just Wayne Rooney) popped over to South Africa I had already lost interest in how well they would do. This is because I find the behaviour of people like Gerrard, Terry, Cole etc. so unpleasant that I can’t take any pleasure in their success. They are a bunch of utter wankers, and I feel that supporting them is somehow endorsing or ignoring this fact.

So even if they had produced some great football (ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!), I’d still have found my enjoyment of it tempered by the fact that I would not like to spend even a minute in the company of any of them (by the way, this extends to my enjoyment of the Nike ad of this summer. It’s a great piece of film, but the celebration of Ronaldo, Rooney and Ribery sets the wrong example to children everywhere).

Maybe it’s just me, but I find it really difficult to dissociate the actions from the person, no matter what the field.

The fact that Michelangelo was a bit of a cunt makes me like his Pieta, David and Sistine Chapel a little less.

John Lennon was a nasty shitbag. Maybe that’s why I’ve never been inclined to explore his solo music.

I find I’ve enjoyed Roald Dahl’s books less since I found out what an incredible arsehole he was.

And Christian Bale’s non-stop wankerfication makes me dislike almost all his movies.

I’m not sure why I bind the artist and the art together so tightly. Perhaps it’s because I feel there should be consequences to people’s bad behaviour so that they and others might be discouraged from it. It feels somehow that some of the arseholes of this world are getting a big tick to just carry on as they are, receiving pats on the back or tons of cash as they fuck people over.

Then again, there’s the other side of the argument that says the negative sides of their personalities are inextricably intertwined with their brilliance, that one would not be possible without the other.

Well, I think that’s horseshit. Examples such as Bobby Moore, David Hockney, Alan Bennett, Thom Yorke, Michael Frayn etc. (why is this all about men?) show that you can be a good bloke and a genius.

Would Gerrard be a worse player if he never dived? Would Sean Connery’s acting have suffered if he hadn’t been a wife-beater? Would Tiger Woods be any less of a golfer without all those STD-packed nights with porn stars and hookers?

Somehow I doubt it.

The cast of The Hangover 2 recently rebelled against the decision to give the alcoholic racist Mel Gibson a cameo, ultimately causing him to be removed from the film. I was heartened by this until I read that he was being replaced by the lying adulterer Bill Clinton.

I give up.

I saw this on TV the other day.

It reminded me of this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnABZM83hqg

Coincidences aside, shall we have a sweepstake on when Stella with make another ad that is anywhere near as good as the work they produced at Lowe?

I’ll guess February 2014.

I’ve been out of the country for a while, but now that I’m back I note that in my absence the square root of fuck-all has happened in the world of advertising.

The only real ‘story’ I can find seems to be something to do with a department store showing some sort of snuff video of a kid killing a dog (check the comments):

Very weak joking aside, this is another interesting example of many intelligent people crossing the hell out of the Ts, dotting the fuck out of the Is and still not noticing the explosion of diahorrea on the duvet cover.

Odd, isn’t it?

I’m not saying for a moment that I’m surprised the agency and client let it through (I’m fairly certain that I wouldn’t have noticed it – I don’t like dogs very much, so if one freezes to death in a kennel, well, shit happens), but it amazes me the number of checks and balances you can put an ad through and yet still miss something the general public finds both obvious and really rather offensive.

I’ll bet many, many discussions were had about the United Nations make up of the cast, the age of the kids, how fat the office worker should be, the type of varnish used on the wooden stairs, the number of raindrops on the windscreen etc…

I bet they even sent at least a dozen emails back and forth about the specific breed of canine to be left in the snow to die.

But the doggycide scene stayed in.

Ah well.

We’re all human, even when we’re inhuman.

PS: have you read the legal that says ‘Toys featured range from £10 to £199’? Apparently someone thought that a vague approximation of the costs of some of the goods in the ad had to be specified in type along the bottom of the screen. Why? Do Vodaphone ads say ‘Calls featured range from £1.23 to 16.33’? Should McDonalds ads say ‘Comestibles featured range from 69p to £2.17? No. That would be fucking insane, but lets give a ballpark for the toys in case the viewing public can’t go to the shop and read the price tags.

No Classics.

But there was COI ‘Breathe‘, T Mobile ‘Dance‘, McDonald’s ‘Poem‘, Barnado’s ‘Turnaround‘ and Coke ‘Organist‘.

Any suggestions for 2010 (so far)?

I’d go with John Lewis, Nike and Match.com

Maybe there are others.

I have jetlag.

I am staring at the screen like a mong.

Goodnight.

Oh.

No Classics.

But we do have Cycle Safety ‘Awareness Test‘, Some Government Body’s ‘Binge Drinking Boy‘, Cadbury’s ‘Eyebrows‘, HSBC ‘Lumberjack‘, Levi’s ‘Secrets and Lies‘, VW ‘Everyday‘, Shelter ‘House of Cards‘ and Toshiba ‘Time Sculpture‘.

I think this is the beginning of the current malaise. By the law of averages there ought to be a few classics and ten good ads a year. If there aren’t, there might be something more fundamental that’s not quite right.

Pop back on Monday to see how 2009 fared (spoiler: it was also pretty shit).