The most beautiful ad I’ve seen in a long time:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0D38ODmciw
(Interest declared: my wife is exec producer at the production company (Sonny) that represents the director (Steve Rogers). Hire him. He’s darn good.)
I just checked out the most recent One Show Annual.
Of course, there are some great ads in it, but as I flipped the pages I couldn’t help one tiny little word whispering into my ear with growing persistence:
Scam.
Scam, scam, fucking scam.
I could be wrong (and officially I am), but how genuine do you think these examples are?
Nice ad, and indeed, winning does hurt, but sports injuries tend to be internal, the kind of problems that a plaster can't cure. And are these sports plasters, made with a special stretchy fabric to allow you to continue your training? Apparently not. And what are they really saying? You train, you cut yourself, you put a plaster on the cut and you train some more so that your time is faster? Bullshit, pure and simple.
Hmmm... a campaign for extra strength painkillers. Again, it's very good, but I find it hard to believe that the giant pharmaceutical company Bayer has decided to run such a clean DPS with no legals, packshots or other nastinesses that might get in the way of a nice gold pencil.
WWF: the king scam client of all time. Here's another clean-as-a-whistle corker to join the ranks of their other bullshit. I admire the cleverness, but this has quite obviously not been created to get anyone to donate. 'Visit this tiny website' trumps 'fill in this coupon' any day of the week if you want to win at international awards. Heaven forbid a potential donor would have to suffer that negative space being sullied by something so vulgar.
But that’s not the real crime of that most recent One Show.
For that you have to see the dull-as-ditchwater, no one-has-ever-sat-through-the-whole-thing winner of Best in Show:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NvDev-5qP4
And the ad it beat:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZOm2YhOI4c
Nice one, judges.
Is here (thanks, ermm).
Never mind what I think.
What I think doesn’t matter.
Ever.
What do YOU think?
OK, just one: Two shortlistings? Jesus fucking wept:
UPDATE: hadn’t seen this, but quite like it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxAz9lKvclc&feature=player_embedded
I did an ad like this in my student book, but it was for Loaded and chose a rather less sympathetic charity to take the piss out of. I’m also happy to admit it was juvenile and not something to be particularly proud of (although it did go down rather well when we showed it around).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOwJOcp-Mxk
To do it in real life, and in the Superbowl no less, is a misguided error of epic proportions.
Fuck off Groupon.
Chrysler. Super Bowl. W&K. Kevin Yon did the VO.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKL254Y_jtc
Interesting to compare it to the Virgin ad below.
It’s another observation + VO jobbie, but with a better written and better performed voiceover.
Aside from that, I find the Eminem thing a bit of a distraction. I know he’s Mr. Detroit, but it makes it feel like the ad is trying to make several points at once (maybe it is): resurgence, blue collar values, luxury from hard work, Detroit is not fucked like you thought etc.
I got all that from the pre-Eminem bit. Now I’m just thinking, why is a man with such credibility shilling for a car company? An ad for investing in Detroit, yes. An ad for Chrysler? Hmmm…
Anyway, it’s very well made, so hats off for that.
Directed by Seb Edwards @ Academy.
I went to school with someone called Seb Edwards, but it’s not him.
I think this has been well shot, and is nicely observed.
Not that keen on the VO artist, though – seems a little bland for the visuals.
But never mind me.
What do YOU think of it?
I really like the idea, and in the main it’s very nicely executed.
I’m just not overly fond of the music running all the way through then rising at the end.
To be an advertising creative, you have to be able to do the following things:
1. Come up with ideas.
2. Present those ideas to other people in such a way that they understand and are enthused.
3. Write scripts/descriptive paragraphs/headlines/copy.
4. Marshall and enthuse other creative people to create your vision.
5. Incorporate comments from a wide range of different people who have varying degrees of authority over you (CD, Client, MD, CEO, friends, creative collaborators etc.), choosing which are worth listening to and which should be ignored, and if the comments you don’t like come from someone with power over you, how best to avoid incorporating those comments while keeping your job.
6. Choose collaborators based on information that may not be altogether complete. For example, your budget and script will only attract a so-so director from Splange Films. How do you know he or she will be any good? How do you select him or her from fifteen reels of other mediocre directors? How about the Next Big Thing who might only have an ad that’s not exactly like yours to go on? What about their reputations? Do you go with Great And Difficult or Less Great But Collaborative?
7. Understand what you are actually watching during a shoot. The only person who really knows what is going on is the director, so you have to have the confidence not to stifle him, yet the balls to kick up a fuss if he’s going off-piste. Will these shots work with the music track you like? Is that performance consistent with what you had imagined? If you ask the production company producer if you can speak to the director one more time will the director get pissed off and throw his toys out of the pram?
8. Deal with agency politics. Who is the new CD going to be? Who might get fired? Is it OK to nick a brief off that team? What about that team? If you get in with that Board Account Director will he get you that top brief? If you come onto a project late will you have a better chance of being the one whose ad gets made?
9. Hold your own in post. Can you explain why you think an edit doesn’t quite work? Why that sound effect is too loud and coming in too late? Why this music company needs to be asked to go again? Why that grade is a shade too green? Can you incorporate even more comments from even more people who know better than you and stand your ground? Is it worth standing or should you save up your foot-stomping for a later issue? What’s the best way to coax people round? Are you OK with little white lies? Big black ones?
10. Manage your career. Should you switch agencies now or later? Is your salary high enough? Is that the right agency to move to? Should you listen to all the stories about a place, or take them with a pinch of salt? How do you persuade your boss that your ad really needs to be entered into Digital Crafts: Cinematography at D&AD? Should you have lunch with that CD? Shoud you be persuaded by that headhunter.
Part of the reason I’m pointing this out is that it seems pretty obvious that it would be darn hard to be good at all of the above.
Very few have been; even fewer are now.
But when you look at the odds, it’s amazing that anyone would even get close.