The best agency in the UK currently goes by the alternative moniker, ‘The Palace of Joyless Excellence’.

Great nickname.

It made me think of other agency nicknames and I’m now unable to escape the truth that:

a) Agencies only get nicknames if they’re good.

b) All the agency nicknames denote a tendency to work hard.

Admittedly my sample size is small, but the only ones I’ve ever been aware of are GBH (BBH) and Weekend and Kennedy (Saatchi and Saatchi. Only kidding – W&K).

So… A kind of rueful recognition of the necessary work that goes into making an agency great.

Is that it? Have I missed others, or is the above list really the sum total of agency nicknames in recent years?

Nice little doc on George Lois.

Excellent TED talk about the New Yorker cartoons (thanks, J1).

Amazing shots of cruise ships from above.

Guitars replaced with giant slugs (thanks, P).

Matrix tap decal (thanks, J2).

Newscaster mugged on camera:

Yummy spiders:

GoPro cigar rolling (thanks, R):

What died at Altamont.

The tweaks that made us human (thanks, B).

Celeb name puns (thanks, A).

Dinosaurs x Notorious BIG (thanks, J2):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-v2mvO7Yq48&t=21

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NKvN7U5RXQ

(Interest declared: they’re by my mates Prabs and Jez @ AMV. Nice one, guys.)

This is hard to get right: a kind of hybrid of The Man Your Man Could Smell like and the Dos Equis guy but somehow cooler than both.

Hats off.

More here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKB3anTTioU

I hear the word ‘idea’ bandied about all over the place. Variously I have observed it used to mean ‘the overall concept behind some kind of effort to sell something’, ‘the post-rationalised justification for an idealess execution’ and even ‘some combination of words that we can all cling to like an umbrella in a storm, even though nothing really fits under the umbrella and all our shoes are getting wet’.

But what, in advertising terms, is an idea?

When I want to clarify this I always go back to classics: Happiness Is A Cigar Called Hamlet, Heineken Refreshes The Parts Other beers Cannot Reach, Good Things Come To Those Who Wait.

Great ideas, aren’t they?

Nope.

They’re great endlines.

Here are the great ideas: ‘show how a Hamlet cigar can make you happy no matter how terrible your day has been’; ‘show how drinking Heineken can improve any negative situation’; ‘show instances where waiting for something culminates in a great situation/experience’.

You see, ladies and gentlemen, for me the definition of an advertising idea is this: if you say it to someone, anywhere in the world, they can then come up with the next ad in the campaign. It’s what you say to your creative partner so that they might help you to produce a piece of work. Try saying ‘No nonsense’ to your art director and see what he does. Then try saying, ‘We could show how down-to-earth people puncture poncey behaviour’. Voila: a campaign that lasted decades, through Arkwright, Jack Dee and Peter Kay.

Ideas may not lead to people coming up with a great ads but they at least give people a set of instructions they can work against and a measurement by which to ascertain whether or not their work adheres to the ‘idea’, furthering the campaign.

Ideas can be big, small, or indeed limited to a single execution. In addition there’s a ton of work to do after the idea has been found. But when someone says ‘The man your man can smell like’, that is not an idea. It’s an endline and perhaps it’s a campaign, but it ain’t an idea.

I have a theory that if Paul McCartney released ‘Yesterday’ for the first time on one of his current albums it would not be recognised as the towering classic it clearly is. It was part of the Beatles’ narrative of taking the zeitgeist by the scruff of the neck and inviting it for a cup of tea, but now it would be a reluctantly-tolerated footnote in the McCartney 21st Century solo oeuvre.

Timing, innit? Will a creation ride its context to immortality like a winged stallion, or will it appear to a deafening chorus of indifference?

Although certain marketing moments (Christmas, Summer, the death of the artist) will clearly be more successful, trying to time the point when a work of art is released to maximum effect is basically impossible.

Is the world ready for your work? If so, to what extent? Would it have been received with greater enthusiasm a month earlier, or later? How can you know? After all, a work of art is seen and reacted to and that’s it. It might be reappraised at some point in the future, but one has just as little control over that occurrence. We sometimes talk of things being ‘ahead of their time’, but that just tends to be another way of saying something’s ‘shit, but someone in the future might like it’, or, in retrospect, ‘everyone thought it was shit, then changed their minds but we have no idea why’.

And clearly many people’s artistic expressions seem to be of a time, otherwise they’d be received equally well/badly throughout their entire careers. Some are, but many people hit a peak (or trough) at some point, which is usually attributed to ability when it might just be a case of, as Brian Wilson said, ‘I guess I just wasn’t made for these times‘.

The crazy thing is that you can never be sure. You create, release and hope (or, if you are of a more nihilistic disposition, you don’t give a shit), but you can’t have any control over something that is both indefinable and constantly shifting. In addition you often don’t have say over when your art is released. It may not quite be the optimal moment in terms of the mood of the nation, but Christmas is coming and the publisher needs to put your book out, or the product is about to be launched, and your ad must appear along with it. Will the timing be perfect, or will your magnum opus drown in a sea of similar work that appeared unexpectedly three days earlier?

No one will ever know.

Good luck with that.

Apologies for the delay. Something was up with WordPress.

Fuck around with fun samples (thanks, D).

Mark Kermode analyses the film business (thanks, D).

Interested in great cinematography?

How to write House of Cards (thanks, D).

The filming locations of NYC (thanks, M).

And while we’re on the subject, the oldest known footage of NY (thanks, V):

Cassetteboy on dodgy donors etc.

The decadent life of Jack Nicholson (thanks, T).

Hearing Tarantino (thanks, B):

Every time I’ve seen him speak he’s been funny, charming and deeply insightful.

Take an hour to watch this, or put it on in the background like the radio. You will learn some excellent stuff:

I’ve long contended that any responsible ad agency needs to make the first five seconds of a pre-roll ad compelling enough to make a viewer disinclined to skip the rest.

Instead they usually just put the first five seconds of their TV ad up and, unsurprisingly, people hit that skip option like an epileptic woodpecker.

Until now.

Hats off, Geico:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvcj9xptNOQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Dvx060Rx3g