http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNnZCOMI_gQ&sns=fb

*sigh*

Look, it’s doing the job: this thing is getting noticed and talked about like a motherfucker, but…

*sigh*

It’s Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

For those of you too old or young to understand, this is a pastiche/updating of one of the greatest films of all time. OK, it wasn’t The Godfather but it’s a piece of stone cold magic that never, ever, ever, puts a foot wrong. It’s full of great lines, wonderful characters and the kind of balls-out attitude that ignites your 12-year-old heart like a roman candle.

I first saw FBDO in a cinema on Hollywood Boulevard that has since become either a MacDonald’s or a Ripley’s Believe It Or Not. It was one of the formative experiences of my life. The sassy breaking of the fourth wall, the advice on how to skip school, the way that Ferris had every base covered with insouciant aplomb, and all to the sounds of Sigue Sigue Sputnik and Chick-Chickah.

I could go on with incredibly boring stories of traipsing round the Virgin Megastore on Oxford Street to find Oh Yeah by Yello, then discovering it only on a cassette that cost £7.49 in 1987 (you iTunes generation have NO idea how good you’ve got it). Or the bet I made with a friend that the line was ‘Pucker up buttercup’ not ‘Pucker up dipshit’, winning me a Macdonald’s coffee milkshake (God, I miss those). But I’ll have to stop there.

This ad doesn’t make me hate it, or Honda. I just feel a bit sad. I thought that movie’s perfection was sealed in John Hughes’s coffin. Now it’s been dug up by a millionaire who wants a few more million.

‘Snooty.’

‘Snooty?’

‘Snotty.’

‘Snotty?’

Last week I was reading article about a young football manager that questioned whether his mediocre playing career would affect his ability to do the job.

The oddest thing about this doubt is that the two jobs are very different. One involves running around on a football pitch, spending fifteen minutes being told how to do it the same/differently, then running around on a football pitch. The other involves sitting watching half a game of football, spending fifteen minutes telling the players how to do it better, then watching the other half (I oversimplify, but you get my drift). So although knowledge of one might bring knowledge to the other, the mentalities must be quite different.

Look at the top managers in today: Ferguson, Wenger and Mourinho had unremarkable or non-existent playing careers, while Mancini, Ancelotti and Guardiola all played with distinction. So what can we learn from that? Perhaps that a great playing career has nothing to do with being a great manager? Some would suggest that great players would be have more respect for the words of ex-great players (I recall Roy Keane walking out on Mick McCarthy, manager of the Irish 2002 World Cup team with the words, ‘Mick, you’re a liar … you’re a fucking wanker. I didn’t rate you as a player, I don’t rate you as a manager, and I don’t rate you as a person. You’re a fucking wanker and you can stick your World Cup up your arse.”), but great players have no apparent problems listening to Wenger, Mourinho or Fergie.

In advertising this is mirrored in the differences between creatives and Creative Directors: two jobs that are utterly unlike each other, yet you only get to do one if you excel at the other. If you managed to be a selfish bastard who slagged off clients and developed a monomania over the size of a logo then apparently you’re a perfect fit for a job that involves juggling fragile egos, spending much of your day in management meetings and incorporating the views of the holding company vis-a-vis your Q3 figures.

Perhaps the business, with this conventional career progression, is overlooking some great creative directors, people who may not produce the goods when it comes to getting into D&AD, but are much more able to bring the very best out of a department. Actually, wasn’t that the case with Bernbach and Millward? Two of the greatest CDs of all time, pioneers of the creative revolution on either side of the Atlantic, were not thought to be great creatives, yet it did not affect their managerial careers one jot. Name a Bernbach or Millward ad, then name ten classics they steered through as CDs.

I suppose that, unlike in football, there’s little chance that anyone will be nursing a burning ambition to be a CD from the time they’re a teenager, so the likelihood of finding a Creative Directorial prodigy would be minuscule. But what if we’re missing out on some great CDs? What if the new Bernbach is out there somewhere, misunderstood and underrated in the creative department of an unfashionable shop? What if the hunger of frustration is stoking a genius?

I guess we’ll never know, but after several consecutive years of UK advertising mediocrity, something about the current system obviously isn’t working as well as it could. Einstein’s definition of insanity might be worth some consideration.

Excellent documentary about hip-hop and crack:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=k6d7IyDKqdU#!

My white Jamaican dad (thanks, J):

The wonderful Honey Boo-Boo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=VpQrA5RCv7Y

People in movies staring at the camera.

Tattoo spelling mistakes (thanks, J).

Let’s fund this documentary about the humble but wonderful cassette:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7ect212UsVs#!

Spelling Bee fail:

Top rap video, ‘IMDABES’ (thanks, G):

The meaning of ‘mate’ (thanks, J).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6obEMR_aRkA

A friend has volunteered to write a guest post about this ad, but while we wait for that may I just point out a couple of things?

1. The ad is 60 seconds long but is 100% over, finished, dead by 39 seconds.

2. George Lucas is a bigger pimp than Lord Monsignor Lovedaddy the third, who runs almost all the girls between 123rd and 125th.

A few weeks ago I noticed that every single week, without fail, the main headline in Campaign told us that a big account was now up for pitch.

Not sure what today’s will be* (probably something rather exciting, just to make a mockery of the above and below), but I do wonder what that long run of accounts up for pitch could mean:

1. Lots of accounts are up for pitch. The simplest explanation is that for some odd reason of coincidence, the most important thing that happened every week from September onwards was the potential movement of an account. I suppose that’s possible, but then what does that mean? Lack of confidence amongst clients? A new trend for even shorter tenure of accounts? And why might that be? Economic jitters? Perhaps it’s a symptom of the downward spiral of the UK advertising industry that I’ve mentioned many times on this blog: the work gets worse, agencies have less credibility, clients have less confidence and trust in agencies to produce the goods, the atmosphere creates even worse work as the lack of trust takes hold, and then the account goes walkies. That sounds quite plausible.

2. The world of advertising has been quite dull of late. The front of Campaign used to have all sorts of far more interesting stories about so-and-so starting an agency or Mr. Volatile ECD being ‘ousted’. Either these are no longer happening or they’re not making the front page of Campaign, but then I don’t recall many such stories on the inside pages. Is UK advertising getting duller? I remember when January was full of stories about teams and CDs moving or new shops opening their doors. All the prep work would have been done at the end of the previous year (and besides, there’s no point announcing anything like that at the end of the year; everyone’s too pissed to care and will have forgotten by the time the holidays are over) and press releases fed into Campaign in the spirit of a new start to the new year. Anyway, that seems less prevalent this month, so maybe the budgets are tighter and the quietly-executed layoffs are making hirings lass common.

3. Campaign is even more boring than we thought. The running joke about Campaign lasting no longer than a Thursday morning trip to the lav (was that a joke, or is it just true?) is perhaps wearing thin as it struggles to fill its pages. It could be a consequence of the dullness of the industry, after all, with a dearth of interesting advertising or trumped up movements like the inexorable rise of digital, with what does it fill its pages? And I do sympathise: I’d like nothing more than a plethora of sparky ads and contentious issues with which to fill this blog, but it’s pretty dry out there.

So, out of interest, is it just me or is there nothing really going on? Is your agency producing top stuff that I’m not aware of? Has your ECD been replaced by the cleaner? Is there a phantom poo-er on the loose?

Answers on a postcard/comment section.

*UPDATE: The headline on today’s Campaign is also about some account under review.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MwwHJXLjg4

http://vimeo.com/35208320

Good to see my favourite animators adding a nice bit of live action to their skill set.

So there’s this event in many athletics meetings called the long jump. Its supposed purpose is to find out just how far a man (or woman) can jump, but despite the fact that it could very easily measure such a thing, it doesn’t.

That’s because the jumper has to take off from behind a white line that’s 20cm wide, and if the line is transgressed the jump is considered foul and not counted. So long jumping involves another very particular skill that can only succeed in reducing the length of a jump: the concentration required followed by the modification of the jump itself must always mean that the jump is compromised to some degree. Then there’s the fact that the jump is not measured from where the jumper takes off, but the foremost edge of the white area, so each jump ought to include the distance between the jumper’s take-off and the edge of the line, but it doesn’t.

Therefore, long jumping, which could measure the longest jump simply by placing a tape measure between take off and landing, wherever those two points might occur, doesn’t do that, and therefore doesn’t really measure man’s ability to jump as far as he can.

I was reminded of this the other day when watching an episode of Game of Thrones (if you’re interested it’s really very good). The timer showed that it would last 57:34, whereas the previous episode was 55:22, so although it comes in around an hour there is obviously no pressure to conform to the more exact timelengths of network TV (the show is made by US cable channel HBO). I would suggest that this can only improve the show, allowing it to end at its best point, rather than dragging on a bit longer or, more likely, getting cutting short, providing a less good result.

Which brings us to ads. How many times have you wished your ad was a 32.12″? Or a 68″? Well, tough shit, ‘cos (online aside), if its timelength doesn’t end in none-point-something seconds, you’re going to have to go back and make it worse. That’s right: you came up with a great idea, got it through a client/CD/cost controller, got just the right director on just the right day etc. only to come up against some arbitrary chronological imposition that stops it just short of greatness.

I’m not suggesting that it would be easy for TV companies to incorporate more haphazard timelengths, but fuck it, would it be that much of a stretch? You must have noticed those times when the last shot of the last ad in a break stays on screen a bit longer than usual. What’s all that about? Were there a few spare seconds knocking about? Couldn’t we be allowed to put them to good use?

The shaving of a few frames here or there may not seem like that big a deal, but it’s an imposition all of us could do without.*

*I don’t really want TV channels to allow more unusual timelengths. 99% of ads are so shit that a minor change in how long they last wouldn’t make a piss of difference, but, y’know, maybe we could lobby the International Olympic Committee or whatever they’re called.

Fancy a drink at this NSFW pub? (Thanks, S.)

Julian Assange interviewed in Rolling Stone (thanks, P).

Lionel Richie’s Hello made from lots of movie clips (thanks, G):

Anti-Ninja Turtle propaganda (thanks, P):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSXwWZ2SFw4&feature=youtu.be

Apocalypse Later, Surf Now (thanks, G):

Philosophy infographics (thanks, W).

Clay Shirky on the evils of SOPA (thanks, P):

What are the top 1% really like? (Thanks, W.)

Muhammed Ali signing tins of Ovaltine in a Norwich supermarket (thanks, H).

The most amazing waves you have ever, ever seen (thanks, S).

Excellent movie poster mash-up-type-thingies (thanks, A).

If you don’t have or know any kids, feel free to stop reading now. Skip to the Lurpak post or click on the link to Wieden’s blog on the right and read about their latest cupcakes competition/award-winning ad.

If you do have kids you might be interested in Scrapped. It’s a project run by my wife to raise money for our local primary school’s arts fund.

In the project’s own words, it’s ‘making good use of the stuff everyone takes for granted. We have created a one-off, two day event packed with creative workshops to inspire every and any kid.

Create a Scrap City – 3D Trees – Monster Masks – Super Scrap Art – Scrap Hanging Birds – Play Pots & Pans – Cook Something New – Get into Storytelling – Perform with masks…’

I think most parents understand the job mainly consists of thinking up things to do on weekends that your children will find both edifying and entertaining. Unfortunately that’s about nine million times harder than you might think, so thank god for things like this.

Here’s the project’s main site which has more information and booking facilities.

See you there.