The things there are no questions about: it’s beautifully made, affecting, gloriously shot and rather moving.

The thing there is definitely a question about: should a large corporation use a commemoration of World War One to sell Christmas pudding etc.?

The YouTube commenters generally say yes.

The Guardian says no.

But fuck them. The important thing is: what do I think?

Well, it’s not the first time Sainsbury’s has exploited celebrated British soldiers to sell mince pies (check out 3:04 here), and I did in fact express a degree of queasiness last year. So in the interests of being consistent and not hypocritical, I still feel a bit uncomfortable at the ‘use’ of that moment in WW1 to make some more money for a giant corporation.

Does the money for the Royal Legion mitigate things? Or is it just a way of Sainsbury’s deflecting possible negative opinions? In the end the old soldiers get some cash, but it’s a small fraction of what Sainsbury’s will make from running this ad. It’s almost as if they know they’ve jumped on the back of something a lot of people care about and feel a bit apologetic. Or a giant company that has responsibility to its unhappy shareholders is just really lovely. One of the two.

I dunno…

This stirs up so much shit in my head I might as well be on a bag of ketamine: WW1 exploitation; lovely, lovely Christmas; it might have been done by friends of mine; I’m writing this in a hotel room in Bangkok; should we even celebrate what soldiers did in wars?; I now love sticky rice and mango; corporate greed in 2014; PLAY THE PIPES OF PEEEEEEEEAAAAAACCCCEEEEEEE; what’s that lady doing with that ping pong ball?

I’m going to bed.

ICYMI, The best thing on the internets last week.

Shake It Off 1989 stylee (thanks, J):

Drop It Like It’s Hot with no music (thanks, D):

Excellent B&W photography.

Art in film (thanks, J).

Random Darknet shopper (thanks, T).

Nic Cage on classic rap album covers (thanks, J).

Quite, quite wonderful (watch to the end; thanks, J):

What’s it like to be a cinematographer? (thanks, G.):

Hidden secrets in Fight Club (thanks, J).

72 great things.

There’s plenty to agree/disagree with in this very long year-old blog post. 

I can’t be arsed to go through the whole thing, so you’re on your own.

All I can say for sure is that a couple of the comic strips are pretty funny and it’ll kill 15 minutes on the lav.

Here’s a great article from ‘Hey Whipple’ author Luke Sullivan on what makes a great CD. There are many wonderful pearls to extract, but I wanted to bring up one point that Luke hammers home towards the end:

Another thing I wish I’d heard less of when I was a young creative?

It usually comes during a creative meeting. Someone in the back of room puts down their donut and says, “Well, if I could just be the devil’s advocate here for a sec….”

Dude, shut up.

Ideas are fragile. The bubble can pop so easily. Instead of being the devil’s advocate, why not be the angel’s advocate? Don’t just blurt out what you hate about something. Not liking stuff is easy. Anyone can do it. It’s harder to find out what’sgood about the idea. The trick is finding that little coal and then blowin’ on it till it’s flame.

I forget where I read this quotation from writing coach Jay O’Callahan, but it went like this: “It is strange that, in our culture, we are trained to look for weaknesses. When I work with people, they are often surprised when I point out the wonderful crucial details – the parts that are alive.” He went on to suggest, “If our eyes are always looking for weakness, we begin to lose our intuition to notice beauty.”

I found this very same advice from a venture capitalist, David Sze of Greylock Partners: “Anyone can tell you why something’s going to fail. The real trick is to find out why something will succeed.”

There is, of course, much to agree with here. It is indeed the CD’s job to spot diamonds, whether they be in the rough or glinting right in front of your face. However, I just want to explore in greater detail what a CD should do when faced with an idea that might not fly in its current form…

‘The trick is finding that little coal and then blowin’ on it till it’s flame.’ Absolutely, but what if there is no little coal? Or what if the coal would require a great deal of blowing to reach a flame that’s either going to be very small or much smaller than another flame you (the team) have ignited? I think it’s also the CD’s job to make the call of when it’s not worth pursuing a certain idea because there are limited time resources and one (or more) of your other ideas is better. That’s not to say a CD shouldn’t be positive if there is positivity to be found, but just as you sometimes have to scrape away the rough to expose the diamond, you also have to tell the team to stop digging if they have accidentally found themselves in an underground cubic zirconia lab.

Luke also says ‘when you eat a turd, don’t nibble’, and I’d say, both as a creative and a CD, the desperate search for something worth pursuing in an idea that needs to die is more damaging, in terms of wasted hope and effort, than a quick bullet to the back of the head.

There isn’t always something good in every idea (and by ‘good’ I mean ‘worth pursuing in the context of the other work’), and telling people there is will only lead to heartache on both sides. On the flip side, Luke is right, that if there’s a faint glow that looks like it could become a forest fire then blow on that puppy like a motherfucker. But don’t apply those electric heart paddles to a corpse.

Have I mixed enough metaphors?

Here’s an article on that very subject (indeed, with that very title) from Anomaly ECD Alex Holder in The Guardian.

First off, Alex is a friend of mine, and I’ve already taken my hat off to her feminist efforts.

So can advertising and feminism ever get along?

Unless I’ve missed the point, Alex argues that by compromising her feminist principles in some situations she is placed in a more advantageous position to make greater strides elsewhere. Fair enough. An unemployed Alex, or one who works in a less persuasive industry, might do little or nothing for the advancement of feminism. We’ll never know for sure, but I can see how that might make sense, after all we have some evidence to back up her claim.

So do the ends justify the means?

Only you can decide…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJYwfEI4Fyo

According to the Guardian:

Ray Shaughnessy, creative director at Wieden + Kennedy, the ad agency behind the campaign, said: “This year’s campaign is an important step change for Tesco. They are doing all sorts of unexpected things to help people have a brilliant Christmas. It won’t just be about them making sure you get the best turkey on the table; it will be about making sure that people feel Christmassy too.”

‘It will be about making sure that people feel Christmassy, too.’ (My added comma. I would also have removed ‘that’.)

What an ‘important step change’.

What did they do last year? Use a calypso for the soundtrack? Create a story around the Easter Bunny? Set the ad in North Korea?

Nope. They made sure people felt Christmassy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_4AOpcBwZ4

Slightly odd press releases aside, will it rescue Tesco from its current doldrums? Well, sorry to everyone involved, but as we say in my neck of the woods, this ain’t gonna move the needle.

It’s so generic that it could be for anyone from Boots to Morrisons, and considering its explicit aim, it doesn’t even make me feel that Christmassy. Perhaps a heavily disguised version of ‘What A Feeling’ wasn’t the best choice of track. The sentiment is fine (if enough people can tell what it is), but it’s got nowt to do with Christmas.

‘It’s Christmas, and we’re here to help, every step of the way’, they claim. Great, I’d like some sausages devoid of horsemeat, accounting devoid of lies and a workforce that isn’t paid on zero hours contracts, please. And if you can pay your suppliers fairly, that would also be a bonus.

I dunno. It seems like a strange move all round: first, it doesn’t feel like the kind of thing W&K would do, and second, it’s a timid move for a broken giant that needs boldness and strength.

Right, that’s enough about Christmas. I’m sitting in the 29-degree heat of Singapore, so it’s time for a trip to Raffles for a dirty martini. When I get back I’d love to know what you think.

Seven great Soderbergh DVD commentaries.

Great portraits on coins (thanks, M).

Check out Kurt Cobain’s Montage of Heck (thanks, L).

Send someone a poo (thanks, J):

Cumming or drumming? (Thanks, C).

Eminem + The Beatles (thanks, A).

Birdman is an a amazing movie. Here are two vids that help explain why:

Interesting ad for pizza rolls (thanks, J):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAalGQ5LSpA#!

Food porn index (thanks, M).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iccscUFY860&feature=youtu.be

It’s another corker.

Haven’t we all wanted a pet penguin at some point?

And the conceit of a million Calvin and Hobbes comics was ripe for the picking.

The only thing I don’t like is the fucking awful version of one of my favourite Beatles songs. It sounds like Chris Martin at the end of an extremely wistful wank.

Otherwise, good show.

Again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMB0akORnm8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgxrueRDJS8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jojCbteZPY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-enEHM24sU

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

They’re clothes, innit? So not much to say.

Just make ’em fun.

Job done.

For some reason I’ve recently heard of quite a few situations where a huge amount of money has been dropped on a Tv commercial, or even a campaign, only for the result to be deemed not quite right then shelved.

I think it happens more to American ads because the annual budgets are larger, so one poor move is more easily consumed by the big pile of cash, but I’ve certainly heard of many UK ads that haven’t quite turned out right for whoever makes the decision to run them. Interesting how close you can get to the finish line of having your ad on TV before having your hopes, dreams and creativity dashed on the rocks of subjective taste.

Then again, you never really know exactly how an ad is going to turn out before it’s finished. Who among you hasn’t been surprised by the end result being better or worse, or just different to what seemed to be promised by the script, or even the director’s treatment? I know I have, and I didn’t have the luxury of choosing to bin whatever didn’t match my taste.

Funnily enough, I also noticed a glaring example of such an event happening in the world of movies. Imagine if you put a director who had made a recent Best Foreign Language film-winner with two of the hottest stars on the planet at their absolute peak. Would you expect the end result to be quietly shopped around then left to die in the toilet? Probably not. More likely you’d be expecting further Academy recognition. Alas, none would be forthcoming (and it doesn’t even look that bad):

In the music business it’s even worse, with everyone from Prince to The Beatles binning finished work.

So I wonder if you’ve experienced this, and, if so, to what extent?

(By the way, tomorrow I embark on a month-long trip to various parts of Asia. Maybe I’ll blog more sporadically as a consequence. Maybe I’ll treat you to some thoughts about Jakarta or Seoul. Lucky you!)