Where to start?

A few points:

1) Other countries do it much better than the UK.

2) There’s no real reason why the UK should be so shite. Tough conditions such as low budgets (Subservient Chicken) and big brands (Ikea, Nike, BMW etc.) can produce classics in other countries.

3) UK Digital agencies are now easily in their second proper decade of mediocrity.

So here’s the major reason why: in the UK, digital advertising is still thought of as the nerdy, poorly-hung virgin to the Veyron-driving superstar that is Above The Line (I exaggerate to make a point). The glamour, budgets and salaries are all still in conventional media, and so therefore is the talent. I’m not for a second saying that is right, or good for the business, but if we’re all going to be honest about it, we have to admit that a job in a digital agency is only marginally more attractive than one in a direct agency.

The problem with this is that the vast majority of digital creative jobs are taken by the people who came closer to the bottom of the class at St Martins/Watford/Bucks/Wherever. Of course, there are a few exceptions and the blurring of lines between the two disciplines means that some of the talent inevitably crosses over (is it any surprise that probably the UK’s best-ever digital campaign, Met Police Knife Crime, was done by a big senior team in a big ATL agency? And ditto last year’s online Phillips films), but in general, a digital agency has a smaller and lower quality talent pool to choose from. This in turn means that the work doesn’t really get any better and the job remains as (un)tempting as ever.

Fortunately, some ATL creatives are making the crossover (eg: Alex and Adrian at Glue) and might help to bring things on, but the problem remains that for many digital agencies, much of life is spent doing the digital version of someone else’s ATL campaign, so less creativity is required, less job satisfaction is available and again, the job is less tempting to the best in the business. Also, if ATL agencies have good digital briefs, why would an ambitious person want to restrict themselves to a single medium?

Oddly enough, I have noticed that the digi-guru types (lots of places seem to have one; I’m not sure what the real job title is, but you know who I mean) in big ATL agencies are foreign. They seem to be in it for the chance to do great stuff, not because they couldn’t hack it ATL. Perhaps it’s just a matter of perception: in other countries they have great digi work to look up to, so find it entirely reasonable to aspire to that. They might also have less good/glamorous TV to entice them away (yes, I know UK TV is also pretty poor at the moment, but it’s still better than the digital work).

What’s also funny about this is fact that in 2007 there were doomy, industry-wide warnings that if a creative didn’t have any digital work in his or her book by 2009 they’d be a dead dinosaur, forever banished from the advertising industry. Well, that’s patently turned out to be complete bullshit. It’s nice if you’ve got some but it’s far from essential if you want a big job in a big agency. The emperor’s new clothes aspect of the medium has led to the feeling that ‘wolf’ has been cried (I know I’m mixing my fairy tales). When will digital be a really big deal in this country?

Another part of the problem is that much of digital’s success has ridden on the back of ATL. Cadbury’s Gorilla and John West Bear weren’t designed as virals. They just spread through the interwebz because they were a fucking brilliant TV ads (read the Ad Contrarian on this very subject). Another example of the best ATL-ers doing the real biz (same with Nike Write The Future) that makes digital waves.

So what’s the solution? Unfortunately, like most people who work primarily in non-digital, I’m not sure I care. I can be inspired by great work from around the world and see the UK’s ATL agencies get the closest to emulating it. If the UK’s digital shops don’t smack it out of the park it’s hardly a reason to lose any sleep.

I could have cut and pasted the post but there are also comments, so you’ll really feel like you’re getting your money’s worth.

Enjoy! (As the internet people say with alarming regularity.)

Here’s an article that endeavours to explain the disappearance of ‘names’ in the world of advertising (thanks, V).

It’s an interesting theory but I’m not sure I buy it.

The main hole lies in the assertion that the credit is spread throughout many names these days because integrated campaigns are the result of many people’s contributions. But that suggests that people have stopped making successful work in conventional media. Although there are still people producing good (if not classic) work in these areas, they have little fame or standing to show for their skillz.

I’ve mentioned this before, but in the context of this article it’s probably worth repeating that the most successful TV/print/radio ads of the last few years have not made ‘names’ of the teams behind them. Why? Well, there are probably many reasons, but I think one of them is the Campaign Big Awards. Before they existed there were five easily digestible award schemes in this country – Campaign Press, Campaign Poster, D&AD, Creative Circle and BTAA  – you knew what they were for and a handy book or booklet (free with Campaign in the cases of the first two and the last) let everyone in adland know what the good work was and who was responsible for it. If someone’s name featured several times it was plain to see and that contributed to the status of the ‘name’.

Now Press and Poster have been taken away, along with any status they could afford, to be replaced by a new scheme which has zero status. It’s prohibitively difficult to find out who has been nominated before the Campaign Big awards and prohibitively expensive (the Big Awards book costs a tenner and I have no idea how you go about getting one) to find out who has won. But then nobody really gives a monkey’s anyway. This is because the Big Awards cover digital and, sorry my digi friends, but no one who works in above the line advertising really gives a shit who has won any of the digital awards. No one. Absolutely fucking zero people.

So the guys and gals who win these worthless digi awards get the same prize as the people who win the TV and print versions, which means that if you see one on someone’s shelf you have no idea if they made a very good TV ad (unlikely in recent years) or a banner you didn’t hate that much. This means that two sources of ATL creative prestige have been replaced by one source of creative apathy (the Big Awards have planners on the jury FFS! Who gives a fuck what they think about ads? Nobody in an ATL creative department. That’s right: absolutely fucking zero creatives in above the line agencies give a shit about planners’ opinions on finished ads, and before the planners among you get all testy about that, number one: it’s true, so live with it, and number two: I’ll bet a day’s salary you don’t give a fuck about what we think of quant versus qual or whatever the fuck it is you spend your time debating with a copy of Monocle shoved up your arses*).

True, we still have the BTAAs, but they’ve been devalued in recent years by a lack of truly great TV ads. Creative Circle enjoyed a brief renaissance under Mark Denton but took a step backwards this year by awarding Campaign some kind of prize and allowing a pair of dolly birds to choose their favourite ad of the year and award it a Gold, devaluing entirely said Gold. And that leaves us with D&AD: foreign jurors none of us has heard of means we can’t value the opinions of the juries. What have you done, Mr. CD of TBWA Hockenheim? Madame ECD of Publicis Djakarta? To be honest, we can’t be fucked to find out. If it was something really significant we’d have heard of you, but it isn’t, so we haven’t, so meh to the lot of you. And now that the Annual is online, the hard-copy book isn’t really worth waiting for. We already know what’s in it, and it can’t play TV ads or integrated case studies like the web version can.

So there aren’t really any creative awards worth giving a shit about anymore, ergo, it doesn’t matter who has won them, ergo there are very few opportunities for creatives to gain status in 2011.

That’s why, in the UK at least, there are no Names.

Interesting to hear that it’s happening elsewhere.

*Smiley face made out of punctuation

I’ve been thinking a bit about social media lately, and it strikes me that the whole thing is exactly like a men’s changing room (swimming pool or gym rather than clothes shop).

Now, I must admit that it’s been about fifteen or twenty years since I was last in one but I have a feeling they haven’t really changed much. They all smell of bollock and are inhabited by one of three types:

1: Mr Sheepish. This bloke is very shy and reserved. He wants no one to see his lower portion so he might well shower with his trunks on and put his pants on under a towel. In social media terms he either doesn’t get involved at all or he joined Facebook a couple of years ago but never updates his status. He doesn’t see why anyone would want to share what they’re doing with all and sundry. Can’t some things just remain private? However, although he doesn’t want anyone to see his business, he does like a sneaky peak at the photos of his teenage daughter’s friends on their diving holiday, just to see that they were behaving themselves (and to inspire an unfathomably guilty wank).

2. Mr Average neither tries to hide nor makes an exhibition of himself. Getting changed is a largely functional process that gets him from the outside world to the pool and back again. For him, social media is good to keep in touch, share a few pics and maybe organise a party, but he’s not much of a Twitterer (just follows Stephen Fry, Lady Gaga and his boss) and he’d never go as far as Four Square because he doesn’t actually want everyone knowing that he’s down the pub when he should be working on a spread sheet about yellow fat marketing.

3. Mr ‘Coo-ee! Get a load of my cock!’. This is the chap who behaves exactly as he does in the office, but with his genitalia on full display. Whether chatting to friends or demonstrating karate kicks, he’ll do so apparently unaware that his meat and two veg and flying hither and yon in a most unseemly fashion. In social media terms this is the guy who signed up to Twitter when the rest of us thought it was as sad as voluntarily watching Love Actually. He went through Bebo and MySpace, perhaps even creating a wang-out avatar for Second Life, and now ‘Likes’ everything from Vin Diesel to Cif, joins ten Facebook groups a week and updates Foursquare when he goes from the bathroom to the kitchen.

I’ve never been in a woman’s changing room, but I’ve seen a few (Carrie, Porky’s, Bring It On etc.) and imagine they are pretty similar places, just with more tits and fannies and fewer penii.

Advertising’s been going for a long time, so long in fact that it’s often called the world’s second-oldest profession.

But even if we discount the early years of BBDO Pompeii and DDB Londinium, there’s now been a good half-century since Bernbach’s creative revolution kicked in. Since then, we’ve been able to see how the greats have scaled incredible heights: from John Webster to Juan Cabral, Tim Delaney to Tom Carty, David Abbott to Dave Trott, the list of people who have shown us the way forward and tickled the public’s balls is long and distinguished.

So why is it that we’re not getting any better at it? When Webster was telling the country to Watch Out There’s a Humphrey About, or Follow The Bear he didn’t have nearly as many previous greats to learn from and progress; he was just feeling his way in the dusk. But now that we’ve seen the kind of things that can work and the ways to success you’d think we’d all be creating even better stuff than he did.

And are we?

Are we fuck.

I do understand that no one has bettered Hendrix or quite reached the peaks of Citizen Kane, but this is advertising. Hundreds of briefs get answered every day with the benefit of the knowledge of what has gone before, but the overwhelming mountain of dismal dross out there would seem to suggest that either the lessons never get learned or they are not actually learnable (or we’re all a bit thick).

I suppose it’s the unending quest for the new that leads us to discard the old with an indecent lack of respect. Perhaps the baby has been thrown out with the bathwater – warm charm being rejected at the same time as the odd overused filmic technique.

But whatever the reason, I get the distinct impression that very few people in the industry are sufficiently aware of what’s gone before to be able to have a crack at surpassing it.

Instead, we just start from scratch over and over again, leaving the greats of the past further and further behind.

What a stupid bunch of cunts we are, eh? (Smiley face made of punctuation).

What does a trillion dollars look like? (Thanks, K.)

The well behaved tyre:

Have you just had sex? Would you like to sing a song to mark the occasion?

Surprisingly funny commentary about food that hasn’t been put back in the right part of the supermarket (thanks, J).

Sammy’s Space Savers:

The worst, most depressing rapper of all time:

A real redneck toy:

How have you lived this long without a 20″ canvas of Paul Ross, particularly when the reviews are this good?

Make a Christmas dinner that makes the Man vs Food guy look like Karen Carpenter:

Incredible animation for you to rip off (thanks, J):

While flicking through The Sun I came across the strangest, funniest, most fucked-up collectible doll ad I had ever seen:

Here are some details that take the insanity just a little further (click to enlarge):

And here’s the truly wonderful copy:

UPDATE: I’ve been sent this several times in the last day or two. It’s things real people never say about advertising or something, and it’s pretty funny.

Jesus fucking Christ, Charlie Brown…(Thanks, Ad Contrarian.)

‘It’s a look at marketing that serves true human needs.’

‘Creativity is most powerful when it creates humankind acts, not just advertising…They activate and amplify the human purpose’

But

‘Creativity is not an option anymore.’

‘A human brand purpose is what rallies people and creates brand populism.’

‘People are living their lives at the speed of real time.’

‘The incredibly vast digital landscape we now operate in opens up infinite canvases for brands to create value in people’s lives.’

‘To engage people, brands will need to balance complete clarity and consistency of meaning with breathtaking spontaneity of behaviour.’

Has this much wank ever been committed to a film outside of Handjob Boogaloo 6?

UPDATE: More utter, utter, utter, utter wank (check the explanation of why it’s called Humankind and weep).

And Humankind? That sounds really fucking familiar:

The sonnet where every line is an anagram of the title, and the whole thing rhymes.

The 50,000 word novel that doesn’t use the letter E.

The 224-word palindrome poem.

A six-word story with a beginning, a middle and an end.

The man who wrote over 1000 books.

By the way, my favourite palindrome is, ‘ret tebh cums if lah dnoces eh ttub, but the second half is much better’.

If so, you’ll enjoy this (thanks, G).