I’m in the middle of judging this year’s Creative Circle awards.

Game Of Thrones series three, episode two just finished, so I decided to judge the Charity Posters category.

I might watch episode three then judge Press Campaigns.

This enormous convenience is possible because I’ve just been sent the links to do it online. My carefully considered decisions will then be passed on to the Gold Jury, who I believe will allocate the big awards in a more conventional manner (in the conference room of a big ad agency).

Jeremy from Creative Circle informs me that ‘This year we have 425 judges across 3 rounds. In round one any UK employed creative can register to judge. The only reason I need to say ’employed’ is to enable me to verify that they are indeed employed as a creative and not an aspiring creative. Round 2 has over 120 senior creatives judging and in the final Gold round we have 4 Juries. (1) Film and Film Craft. (2) Press, Outdoor and Radio. (3) Design and non film Craft. (4) Digital, Direct and Experiential. Every category has a Gold award allocated, whether the work is Gold worthy or not is yet to be seen. What I am hoping to achieve from this is the fairest voting system in the land where winning a Creative Circle Gold means something. I want to dilute the politics and prejudice that seems to poison other juries. I want the winning work to be a result of the collective opinion of the creative community.’ 

I can see where he’s coming from. Politics, bias and all that jazz are difficult to entirely avoid in the usual judging system, whether that’s because people feel like they ought to be more polite about the work if someone vaguely attached to it is in the room (people are supposed to leave the room during those discussions, but they often don’t ), or because there’s an agreement to block vote against a certain piece of work (definitely happens). Now there are so many preliminary judges and the voting is done so anonymously that much of the scope for that is gone. I suppose there is still a little scope for such corruption on the Gold jury, but you need the experts in each category to attend the final discussions so they can give the necessary information on how good a piece of sound design or digital gubbins might be.

But how do you feel about it? Do you prefer 8 blokes (usually) in a room with all the possible corruption that entails, or does anonymous and faceless rock your world a tad harder?

‘Someone’s stolen our tent.’

If you follow the world of books and publishing you’ll almost certainly have noticed the rise of self-publishing as a legitimate route for getting your work out to a wider audience.

In the old days (pre-2008, maybe), self-publishing was seen as a euphemism for vanity publishing, i.e. paying to have your book published because no proper publisher thought it good enough. But things have come a long way since then, and for many reasons self-publishing is now a legitimate route to market for work that isn’t shit after all.

The main reasons are these:

1. Difficulties with real publishing houses. Companies like Penguin (publishers of my first novel), Simon and Schuster, HarperCollins etc. only have the time and resources to publish a certain number of books, and even then they have to fit into a particular space in the market, or adhere to the current thinking about what might sell (I don’t say that to be denigrating; these are massive companies that are very good at what they do. My novel was published because the Technothriller genre had been poorly served for years, and Penguin saw that Instinct might appeal to the male fiction market). In addition they can be very slow: more than 18 months elapsed between Penguin’s initial interest and Instinct‘s publication, partly due to a rewrite, but mainly due to a need to launch it at the right time for Tesco to stock it. In the meantime my £20k advance, minus tax and agent fees, and spread across four payments, was starting look like an annual wage of £3000 – and £20k was a very good advance back then (It’d be even better now). I also have residual difficulties with rights etc. that I have gone into in this post. Having said all that, if I had my time again I would have done the same thing. Having that little Penguin on the cover of your novel is the kind of endorsement money can’t buy, and the halo effect of being a Penguin author has had many other benefits. But for the vast majority of authors, for reasons of quality and market suitability, being published by a big house is not an option. Smaller publishers are more likely to go for less straightforward (and often higher quality) books, but the gap for these is no bigger.

2. Money. My royalty on Instinct was 63p a copy, which doesn’t sound like much (because it isn’t). But I reasoned that selling loads of books at 63p a copy would be better than selling very few for £3 a copy, which is more like the kind of royalty you can get through self publishing. Amazon offers 70% royalty (they keep the rest, obv) on self published work over £2.99, so if you want to sell your book for a tenner you’ll get £7 back. I’d have had to sell 11 books to do that on my deal.

3. Why not? It costs little or nothing to put your book up for sale electronically, so you might as well see if you can get find a market for your work. Of course, most disappear without trace, but the overall return is far greater than either not publishing at all, or publishing conventionally. This report lays out the facts very clearly.

So I’ve been umming and ahing about what to do with the sequel to Instinct for the last six months. As I mentioned in the post I linked to above, the cons of going conventional could be seen to outweigh the pros, plus I’m curious about what will happen if I self-publish Pursuit (Instinct’s sequel). It’s not as if there’s no turning back: Pursuit can exist in the world of self-publishing, then be rewritten or republished elsewhere. And I know it’s good enough to be out there because I have the endorsement of a very good agent. So I think I’ll see how it goes.

(One thing I do need, however, is a cover, so if you’re up to help me with a bit of design (I’ll pay £100), get in touch on bwmkay@gmail.com and I’ll see if we can make beautiful music together. UPDATE: I’ve now accepted a very kind offer for this.)

Have any of you self-published, or bought books that have been self-published? All info gratefully received.

Amazing street drummer (thanks, N):

Adventure Time creator’s game pitches (thanks, C).

Celebs read out mean tweets about themselves (thanks, D).

The stories behind 23 Beatles songs.

The US army got cats high on acid (thanks, D):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UPLEwK70XA&feature=youtu.be

Cookie Monster x Tom Waits = genius (thanks, W):

And while we’re on the subject…

Orson Welles filming a wine commercial, shitfaced (thanks, W):

And while we’re on the subject…

Scientifically accurate Flintstones (thanks, D):

The Coen Brothers dissect their own films (thanks, T).

A camera falls from a plane into a pig pen (thanks, J):

Confessing things to people mid-conversation (thanks, J):

The Onion reviews Robocop (thanks, D).

Why Facebook advertising is a bullshit waste of time (thanks, V):

In the editorial piece the founder of the magazine, John Bird, discusses how things are so much better now than in the old days.

‘In fact there was so much that was loathsome about the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s I grew up in that you can only come to the conclusion they were loathsome times. And we are well out of those times. I remember how acceptable it was to talk about disabled people as ‘spastics’, as failed and cast-off people who were only good to joke at.

Or women and girls were described without personality, purposeless other than to be on your arm or in your bed or up against a wall.

British governments and many of the people looked upon foreigners as some low form of life, not just because of their colour but their culture, their food and their clothing. ‘John Foreigner’ was how posh people described anyone who wasn’t British.

Children could be beaten on public transport by their parents without anyone turning a blind eye. Even a total stranger might grab you by the ear because of some misdemeanour – a well-tossed stinkbomb might do it – and you would be thrown to the floor.

I remember all these times, and the racism and classism – the anti-humanity of it all – and thank the lord that we got out of it.

But how? What changed?

…The big thing was our embrace of consumerism, from the early to mid-1950s days of commercial television – with its incessant round of TV ads with monkeys drinking tea while chatting and riding push bikes – to the clothes we got on hire purchase from Burton and other high-street tailors.

We became customers, and suddenly coppers, teachers, magistrates, shopkeepers and publicans seemed to realise our evocative power – our money.

We changed so radically that soon, although our working lives might still be shit, we used deodorant and shower gels. And had baths more than once a week and changed our underwear at least twice a week.

And attitudes changed. Appearances changed. The good old days, on reflection, were not that good, and I am so glad we are where we are. But we’ve still got a shit lot to do to make this society more just and free. But then, that’s another story.’

That’s an interesting theory; one that squarely lays much of the credit for the upward mobility of the less well-off at the door of London’s advertising agencies. (I imagine that Alan Parker’s work, which really broke through the class divide with more working class casts and situations, accelerated this effect.)

The current default position for many is to consider globalisation and consumerism as the endless feeding of a giant beast that will not be satisfied until is has gobbled up every resource the planet can produce, and all its inhabitants are hocked up to their eyeballs, enslaved to years of debt.

But further afield, beyond the First World consumerist guilt, the world has been getting steadily better in clear and measurable ways that might not be readily apparent to the middle classes of this country.

If I were Dave Trott I would now make a point about people not being able to see beyond the end of their noses.

But I’m not.

So I’ll just stop here.

(Thanks, D.)

Interesting angle.

I guess it only works if you have a product that most people agree is of very high quality/very desirable, otherwise no one gives a toss who wants it or doesn’t want it.

For example, I think you’d have a hard time persuading the world that people who don’t shop at Sainsbury’s are dickheads, or people who don’t buy Mars Bars are stupid.

I can’t recall any recent ads that have tried this tactic. I suppose its self confidence can border on the arrogant, and perhaps we just don’t live in those times anymore.

On Sunday evening Lego bought the entire ad break and remade some commercials in a Legoesque fashion:

Interesting.

Almost as interesting as this, done in 2012:

(Thanks, P.)

I await the Ex-Lax ad break, featuring popular commercials made out of animated poo, with bated breath.

I’ve seen all sorts of people get paid all sorts of amounts in the creative side of advertising, so I thought I’d detail some of the routes to mad cheddar that I’m aware of.

1. Move agencies. This gives many people the opportunity to lie about what they earn, then get paid a bit more than that. Of course, being poached to work in a new agency is the best situation, as the poaching agency will pay more to entice you, but that’s not the easiest situation to engineer. The agency of your dreams may be full, or they may not like your particular style of work, so if you want the money you may have to go somewhere you’re less attracted to.  It goes without saying that the less appealing agencies will pay a premium to get in good people because they have to compensate for the fact that they’ll be working on worse briefs and duller clients. So a general rule of thumb is: the worse the agency’s reputation for creativity, the more they pay. But now the more fashionable agencies don’t really produce much better work than the others I’d have thought that this premium isn’t what it used to be (perhaps a kindly reader could enlighten us on this point).

2. Win awards. Even though awards and cash don’t correlate exactly, shiny prizes can lead to a raise from your current boss or bring you the chance to move agencies (see above). Many places that cast around for new creative staff quite reasonably look at who has done the most famous/awarded recent work, but within that the person doing the hiring has to look at other factors: was this a world-class ad at the beginning of a career (take a chance on potential), the middle of an otherwise unsuccessful career (possibly a fluke), or part of a consistent track record of excellence (reliable greatness=expensive)? Was it over-awarded in a shit year? Is it too edgy for this agency? Then again, how much do people care about awards these days? They have become a very devalued currency so I’d suggest that a D&AD silver today is not worth the same relative bump that it was ten or twenty years ago. There are now so many awards and the standard is so much lower than it was that a big award may not lead to a great increase or move. There are definitely people with more awards than me who are on less money, but that’s partly because they may not be promotable as CDs, either through inappropriateness or disinclination. Suitability to one job does not always indicate suitability to the other.

3. Get on well with your CD. OK, here’s a massive secret that I’m going to let you in on… come closer… turn the TV down… OK, ready? If your boss likes you, he or she is more likely to give you a raise (this applies to all jobs). That ‘liking’ may come from you doing good work, or it might come from you being mates since college whose kids go to the same school, or anything in between. Bosses give more money to those of whom they think well, and there are many ways for you to do that. Think about what they are (examples that are generally true include being enthusiastic, positive and not very racist) and give them a go (without being too transparent and crawly, otherwise you’ll have the opposite effect). Some people I worked with were certainly the ‘CD’s pets’ and it always stood them in good stead for decent briefs and raises.

4. Get another offer. This is a tricky game to play. You might genuinely be offered a job elsewhere, fret about whether to take it, explain the situation to your boss and get a raise. But you might equally pretend to get an offer and play a DEADLY GAME OF BLUFF with your boss to try to get a raise. Many’s the time I’ve heard of a team telling their boss that they feel they can’t turn down another offer (genuine or otherwise), only to be met with the response, ‘Oh, that’s a shame. Bye’. If you want to try this one out you should be prepared for it to fail. I once got a good raise by getting an offer that never became 100% official, but the agency felt they had to match it anyway. If they hadn’t matched it I’d almost certainly have stayed for no raise.

5. Be valuable to your boss in other ways. I can tell you from my own perspective as a raise-bestowing CD that I can be impressed by my department for many reasons aside from their creative output: providing leadership; showing initiative on improving the way the agency works; winning pitches (doesn’t happen at my place); cracking the tough briefs in a way that may not win awards but might make an awful account more attractive to work on; keeping an entire account running so smoothly that the CD barely has to pay any attention to it, and many other methods. Another team who were my contemporaries a while back did little outstanding work, but they kept a big client ticking over, were always positive and everyone liked working with them (they did win a few awards too, but nothing major), so they were on twice as much as me (I think they also leveraged an outside offer). In addition, our boss was always telling us to emulate them, so it was clear that whatever they were doing was working.

6. Then there’s the random stuff: I know my blog and novel have contributed to the positive way I’ve been perceived. They speak of attributes that come not directly from advertising, yet can be applied to the industry. If someone writes an industry blog almost every weekday for eight years, or writes a published novel then they obviously have a decent work rate. You can also see how good their writing is and whether or not you agree with their opinions. Thanks to the blog I’ve become better known in the industry, and with the value of awards plummeting, that is as good a benefit as any.

Aside from having photographs of bosses in compromising positions with farmyard animals, the above methods are worth a try. At the end of the day I suppose you have to ask yourself how much you need to be paid to justify what you spend your day doing.

One former boss of mine once said that he paid everyone the least he could get away with to get us to stay and work for him. That seemed harsh at the time, but now  it makes perfect sense. Why would you pay more? Then again, he also predicted that my then art director and I would end up on 70 grand with a couple of D&AD pencils to mark how we got there.

Wrong on both counts.

George Michael, Morrissey and Tony Blackburn going through the week’s culture (of May 1984) (thanks, V):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5wfQ74_avw

12-year-old boy writes insightful book on how to understand women (thanks, J).

19 penises to visit before you die (thanks, P).

Danny Dyer’s reflective Haikus (thanks, J):

Liked The Wolf Of Wall Street? Here’s Jordan Belfort’s success webinar (thanks, J):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grRVyc_i8-0

Fucked up Japanese game show gifs (thanks, D).

All Jesse’s Yos, Yo (thanks, J):

Ultimate wake up pranks:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIyQn9jRjP8

 More Pornhub comments on stock photos – this time with Valentines (NSFWish and thanks, T).

Creationists ask questions of non-creationists.

Ice T accidentally recorded a Dungeons and Dragons audiobook (thanks, S).

What’s it like getting a record contract? (Thanks, C.)

Han Solo’s incestuous realisation (thanks, P):