Hunter S. Thompson vs The Hells Angels (thanks, B):

Pretend to your parents that you’re a drug dealer.

Fast food truths (thanks, L).

Wrestling is fake (thanks, V):

Motherfucking website (thanks, C).

Slight misquotes on T-shirts (thanks, J).

Fuck overfishing (thanks, P):

Amazing Breaking Bad video (spoilers alert; thanks, T).

Very funny blog (thanks, W).

World’s most beautiful data viz.

Watch Kanye get his bottom handed to him (thanks, F).

Not very inspirational quotes (thanks, T).

Breaking Bad bloopers (not as good as the ones for The Cannonball Run).

I love the idea.

I love the product range.

I particularly like the art direction of the product range.

But there’s something that doesn’t feel quite right here.

It feels like it’s trying too hard to be funny (check the ‘Lincolnshire gravel from Lincolnshire’ line):

Like the rest of you, I’ve seen some incredible HN ads over the years and they’ve always had an understated, intelligent tone that allowed you to get the gag; these rather force feed you with the yuks, and for me that just ain’t quite HN.

But overall that’s a pretty small quibble against a nice piece of work.

Art Director extraordinaire Dave Dye has just started imparting his colossal advertising wisdom on a blog.

He used to be my sort-of boss at AMV, so I have had plenty of first-hand experience of how useful his advice can be.

I remember when he first arrived. My knowledge of his physical appearance was gleaned entirely from his picture in D&AD’s The Art Directors Book. Funnily enough he didn’t look quite the same as that shot (not black and white, none of his face in moody shadow), so I didn’t recognise him. Beyond that I’m pretty sure he was dressed quite smartly, so when I first saw him in the studio at AMV and he smiled in a friendly, hello-ish manner at me I thought, ‘Who is that account bloke and what’s he doing in the studio?’.

Then I found out it was Dave and proceeded to fail to impress him to a quite stunning degree. We’ve had many a cup of tea since and he’s reminded me a couple of times of an occasion where he took me to task for something (almost certain laziness) and I resolved to work harder. Dave then popped down to my office at around 4:30 to find that Paul and I had gone home. I don’t recall that specific afternoon, but that’s probably because it describes so many similar situations and I just can’t narrow it down to the one he’s talking about.

Anyway, Dave was a top CD. You always slightly feared taking your work to him because 1) he has very high standards and 2) He and Sean would take the piss out of your work if it was takethepissoutof-able. But then your work always ended up better, so it was worth the extra work (by this stage I was working harder. Nearly losing your job can do that to you).

Then he popped off to start CDD, which produced a lot of truly great work before collapsing due to reasons it took 4 hours and several pints of beer for Dave to explain.

On then to DHM and more great work before that changed this year to become Hello People, and so another phase of presumably great advertising begins.

Oh, and just in case he pops into your studio in a suit, this is what he looks and sounds like:

I’ve had three long-term art directors and they’ve all left the country (I’m trying not to take it personally).

Two of them are now CDs at Droga 5 in Sydney (excuse me if I got the exact job title wrong, D and C; I think one of you is also head of art), while the other is the CD or ECD of Saatchis Vietnam, so it seems to have worked out quite well for them.

Other friends of mine, such as Dylan Harrison and Simon Veksner, have also made a great success of moving Down Under, and they’re far from the only ones. I recently joined LinkedIn only to discover that many ex-colleagues are now working very successfully all over the world.

And that seems pretty impressive.

Back in the day, when the UK was the envy of the world ad game, the idea of moving abroad was stigmatised as some kind of admission of failure. Why, after all, would you move from the best? If you did so that would have to be a move downwards. But now we’re all aware that great work can come from almost any country on the planet (except Micronesia; their Cannes record is a fucking shit show), and it’s no coincidence that so many Brits have ended up surfing (geddit??!) the wave of Antipodean excellence.

Obviously this isn’t all a result of the rise of other nations; it’s also a consequence of a drop in the quality of UK work. But what came first, the brain drain or the off-putting British shiteness (and weather)? Has there been an overall drop in global quality? If so, this is not a UK exodus so much as people reaching a certain point in their careers and making the most of a new opportunity. Like I said, it seems to have gone well for many of them, so it seems like they made the right decision.

So, as someone who has yet to leave this scepter’d  isle, I’d like to know: have you left your home country? Has it worked out? Why did you do it? Would you ever go back?

Answers on a postcard…

Shop window displays on the eve of Kennedy’s funeral (thanks, T).

Amazing rap names poster (thanks, J).

Hitchcock’s definition of happiness (thanks, J):

Adventure Time’s writers’ tips.

Charlie Kaufman screenwriting lecture. Amazing life lessons here (thanks, J).

Insanity and animation at the next level (thanks, C):

Unexplainable images (thanks, G).

Bjork explains TV (thanks, A).

Too much awesome (thanks, J).

The sublime Orson Welles frozen peas rant (thanks, V):

Interesting pair of comments on the blog today:

Anonymouse says…

Dunno why but all these advertising self-references put me off the industry. All the tumblrs, the virals, etc. I just hate them.

I think it’s because they always make out like we do a stupid job. Which doesn’t have to be the case. It used to appear quite cool. Now we position ourselves as childish and moronic.

To which Crappywriter replies thus…

I think you’re right. But, with our collusion, we have allowed a once reasonably noble industry with clever people doing wonderful things to become moronic. We are moronic. You only have to go to a tissue meeting with a client to understand that we are now cunts.
Maybe you don’t like these things because they are true.
I no longer give a fuck. I have been in it a long time and they’ve won. We have lost. If you give a fuck you go mad. Just take the money, say “leverage” at meetings, write their stupid ads that make them happy and laugh at them behind their backs.
That’s what I do.

I think that’s a fascinating subject/point/area.

There’s a lot of truth in what Crappywriter says about the state of the industry; the job has changed enormously, and now the days in which the swashbuckling genius of a Carty and Campbell was hitched to a maverick visionary like Kaye or Glazer, seem as distant as the days in which Greece produced the world’s entire supply of enlightened thinking. Our stock has fallen and, like a climate change denier, you’d have to be wilfully bloody-minded to be under any other impression.

But what to do about that?

Relatively good work and/or salaries are still possible, of course, but the 90s don’t appear to be on their way back, and those days of helicopter shots in the Mojave have indeed been replaced with huge numbers of tissue meeting wankathons (for most people. I’d just like to say, for the avoidance of doubt, that my job genuinely involves none of that stuff and I’m quite delighted about it), but can anything be done about the seemingly inexorable slide to further dreadful hours in Slough pretending to give a shit about brand equity?

Well, the short answer is always ‘yes’. How can it not be? If Gandhi kicked Britain out of India, and Mandela led his country after 27 years inside, then you – yes, you – can sure as hell take a once-great industry back to its halcyon days. And the moment you think it’s impossible it will indeed be so.

So the question is do you care enough to put in the effort to change it, or would you rather be pissed off with your lot and see out your days Slough-bound?

There’s no right or wrong answer. All I’d say, as Gandhi would, is ‘be the change you want to see in the world’.

But of course, if you don’t really want to see that change, carry on as you are. Nothing bad’s going to happen, except you could well get to the end of your life and reflect on what might have been in a way that makes you cry quite a lot in front of your grandkids.

Seems like a bit of a waste of your time here…

(Thanks, D.)

Great pisstake.

Where are the boundaries in frightening people on behalf of a large corporation?

Obviously we ad people are unofficially paid to elicit emotional reactions from those who ‘enjoy’ our output, but no one ever seeks to define those reactions beyond what is considered to be against the wishes of Clearcast.

Real tear-jerkers, such as the new Sainsbury’s and John Lewis ads, are completely fine, but if you tried to put a brain-munching zombie in your commercial you wouldn’t stand a chance. Despite that, these ambient fear-based stunts never seem to be subject to the same kinds of strictures as their TV cousins.

Of course the ambient stuff has no regulatory body to insist on what’s right or wrong, but how far can we then go in scaring, swearing or stimulating the genitalia of an unsuspecting public?

Would anyone like to give it a proper go and report back?

(Thanks, D.)