OMG… 30 minutes of Jerry Lewis’s infamous holocaust movie have surfaced!

Terrible signs.

The New York Subway in the 80s (thanks, T).

Curbed outtakes (thanks, T):

2016 Tarantino commencement speech:

Interesting defendant…

Today the wider media shook its head at another dismal example of the ad industry’s most pathetic behaviour…

The headlines:

ADVERTISING INDUSTRY SHAMELESS IN ITS MORAL BANKRUPTCY

SENIOR AD INDUSTRY FIGURES DEPRESSINGLY CORRUPT.

JUST AS WE THOUGHT: ADLAND POPULATED BY CRAVEN, SCHEMING FUCKWITS

LYING, DECEIT AND FAKERY ALIVE AND WELL IN AD INDUSTRY

“WE’RE SO SHIT AT THIS, WE HAVE TO MAKE THINGS UP” ADMITS PACK OF TITS

Seriously, can everyone involved in this just fuck right off?

It’s hard enough trying to maintain credibility in the face of the jargonistas who can’t use one word if 35,000 will do.

And all the online ads that are so annoying that adblockers are the only way of maintaining your sanity.

And the sophomoric race to the next shiny new thing, like kittens chasing the light from a laser pen…

When we have to deal with another Lifepaint cackwipe it really doesn’t do us any favours.

For a communications industry whose entire reason for existence is to present things in their best light we are pretty fucking AMAZING at doing the opposite when it comes to ourselves.

I’m currently driving from New York to LA and back (family holiday).

Somewhere between Columbus, Ohio and Triadelphia, West Virginia, I saw an Oreo truck, which made me think: who invented Oreos? And isn’t it fucking amazing how popular they’ve become and remained, across many countries?

Isn’t it funny how much we venerate music, movies and art, yet barely spare a thought for Etch-a-Sketches, Prets and biros, all of which often impact our lives in much more fundamental ways.

Look how creative Arctic Monkeys and 12 Years A Slave are! Watch as they sell a million albums or win a bunch of Oscars! Compared to the genius who discovered the Mars Bar combination of caramel, nougat and chocolate they are both gnats farts.

And no, I’m not saying that creativity is a popularity contest, but to have made such a consistent, positive and lasting impact on so many millions with an invention is surely a far greater act of creativity than an album whose shelf life is a couple of years at best.

You could even compare these other things to classics like Casablanca or St Pepper: they’ve lasted decades and still give the same enjoyment to subsequent generations that weren’t even born when they were invented.

Monopoly, Coke, Robertson’s Golden Shred, your favourite magazine, Clarins make up (or whatever brand you like), Levi’s, Tetris, cats eyes (the ones in the middle of roads), Post-Its, Le Creuset saucepans, the X-Box, Ray-Ban Wayfarers, your favourite blogs and podcasts, Pedigree Chum, a great pillow that holds its shape, the Rubik’s Cube, those Saucony trainers that take five seconds off your mile time, a Zippo lighter…

They may not have award shows at Cannes for all of the above (the product design section of D&AD has been eclectic enough to include the iPhone and a JCB, but very few of the kind of things you buy every day), but they ought to be as celebrated as any integrated, 360, mobile wankathon that might win a few Grands Prix.

As an example, here’s a massively-awarded spot from a while ago that might as well never have happened:

What’s a greater act of creativity, that or Cadbury’s Creme Eggs?

And what great creations do you think are more deserving of recognition?

Illustrated maths (thanks, T).

Cats=works of art (thanks, T2).

Food logos redesigned to show their calories (thanks, J).

In the Euros, please support Wangland (thanks, X).

More Euros: the Onion Oracle (thanks, A&O):

In my USA cross-country trip I have mostly been listening to RHLSTP. So much good stuff:

I was listening to some podcast the other day where a famous person (can’t recall who) pointed out that no one teaches you how to be famous. The way she put it was that other famous people don’t just turn up at your door one day and give you the manual; you have to work out every aspect of it yourself. Everyone is different, so every situation is different and no single set of rules can apply to everything.

Which made me think about how advertising creatives learn their craft.

Let’s assume you went to college first. Watford, St Martins, Ad Center and the other ones all give you some level of education which you then take on and hopefully use to get a job in an agency.

Then what?

Then it’s up to you. In my personal experience there are four main sources of further education:

1. Other, better creatives. Maybe they’re in your agency, maybe they work elsewhere but you hear snippets about how they go about their thing. I was lucky enough to work in the same department as many of the copywriters from The Copy Book, but it also took a willingness to learn from them. Being able to show my copy to Mary Wear, Nigel Roberts, Tim Riley, Peter Souter and, of course, David Abbott was an immense privilege. Maybe your department isn’t quite as star-packed. If not, perhaps it’d be worth moving to somewhere that is.
2. Other, better people in general. I had a staff meeting recently where we each had to bring along an inspirational book, which would then be given to someone else at the meeting. I chose the Hamiltome because Lin-Manuel Miranda has smashed through so many doors that were bolted shut, and if you’re going to be any good at anything you’ll have to do the same. But there are thousands of examples to choose from. For a more original perspective it might be a good idea to look outside your own field.
3. Books. I know people say you shouldn’t try to learn from old award books because the work in them is already a year or two old, but I still think you can gain a lot by looking at the rhythms and cadences that often show up in good copy (no idea about art direction, sorry). As far as concepts go, I always preferred the pop promos section to the advertising pages; the work seemed fresher and further away from the beaten track. There are also overall guidebooks, such as Hey Whipple, Squeeze This!, that certainly won’t do you any harm.
4. Everything in the whole world. Surprising one, this: literally anything can help you make your work better. Whether it’s good ads that make you jealous, shit ads that boost your confidence, a certain colour of green jelly, the clothing of Steven Seagal, a trip to Gravesend, a trip to Guadalajara, cattle, teeth, treehouses, jam, a rectal prolapse, a duck, a duck down duvet, the logo on your hoover… You get the picture. Clearly, the more you stuff into your brain, the more chances you’ll have of making some kind of conceptual connection.

Have you learned a bunch of excellent shiz from an unexpected place? Have you bothered to continue your education? Does this all sound too much like school, which gives you the shivers because school was really horrible, especially when Darren Witherspoon pulled down your pants in front of the football team, earning you the nickname ‘peanut’?

Confessions of a stock photography model (thanks, W).

What would happen if humans disappeared?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wy7Q6wazD_E&feature=share

In-depth analysis of the rapping and rhyming in Hamilton.

Creativity is like breathing.

Showrunners of dark dramas (inc. Louis CK) explain their craft.

Your brain is not a computer.

The nine best Fantasy Football Phoenixes From The Flames.

The gun bed:

Brexitbelly (thanks, J).

What everyone earns on a $200m movie (thanks, J):

Click, hold then move your mouse (thanks, S).

I think this might work well with headphones and a spliff (thanks, S):

Hi there,

My friend and former colleague Tom Hares is starting a company called Buzzbikes.

Basically, it puts ads on bikes that are then seen around town as they are ridden and parked.

The riders get a free bike made by Mini Cooper, in exchange for which they have to make sure the bike is out and about a certain number of days each month.

It’s already backed by some very smart people, and you too can invest here from as little £10.

And you can find out more/apply for a bike here.

Tom is a top bloke, and the idea does seem like one of those ‘why didn’t I think of that’ ones, so do have a look (full disclosure: I’ve looked very hard into investing but I’d have to pay tax on any profits in both the US and UK, so it doesn’t work for me, but if I were based in the UK I would definitely give it a go).

Cheers!

Ben

PS: Hegs is a fan…

https://vimeo.com/169811800

Dear occasional commenter and longtime reader Anonymouse,

Could you clear something up for me about your most recent comment…

Fuck average people. 

Awards shows aren’t for them.

Was that intended to be a joke? I thought it was, but others have interpreted it differently (that doesn’t invalidate Dave’s blog, by the way; it’s still 100% pertinent and relevant).

“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulder of giants” – Isaac Newton.

Simple, isn’t it? People do stuff so when the people who come after them do the same kind of stuff they can learn from the original efforts and improve the end results.

But it doesn’t happen as often as you might think: nobody has improved on the guitar playing of Jimi Hendrix; movies are far worse then they were in the 70s; no one has managed to balance readability and literary excellence beyond that of Charles Dickens; no artist has captured the depths of humanity better than Da Vinci, Michelangelo or Raphael; and, of course, ads are nowhere near as good/liked/impactful as they were a decade ago.

Why?

After all, we have all the knowledge of those who went before us; the least we can do is get to their level. Then, with the added benefits of improved technology, greater tools and a more civilised world (better medicine, longer life expectancy, lower likelihood of going to war etc.), we ought to surpass any previous efforts. But we clearly don’t, so here are some possible reasons why:

1. The people who did the amazing thing first will always be held up for their greatness because of the added element of pioneering a new path. Many people can play like Hendrix but the ability to blaze an entirely new trail in an art form is not something that happens by standing on someone else’s shoulders. True greatness comes from originality, so the people who merely reiterate will never be perceived as giants to the same extent as the trailblazers. I think that Wolf Hall could sit up there with great 19th Century literature, but the fact that it has appeared 150 years after Dickens somewhat diminishes the perceived quality.
2. Great creative minds explore new areas that may not have previously existed. So a person who might be able to further the art of the movie could now be inventing Snapchat or the Tesla or (more likely) writing Breaking Bad, The Wire or The Sopranos. TV is far better than it used to be and movies are far worse. It doesn’t take a genius to see that the two situations might be related. You could make the argument that TV writers such as Matthew Weiner and David Simon stood on the shoulders of the giant David Milch or the giant David Chase. (Why so many great Davids? No idea). But that meant that they did not stand on the shoulders of Francis Ford Coppola or Martin Scorsese.
3. Circumstances can make it harder to improve things. Let’s take the ad industry: a brain drain to other creative jobs; smaller budgets; smaller real wages; the rise of new media, which is inherently less immediately impressive (try explaining an experiential takeover of a town square vs showing a 60-second TV ad); the rise of the global corporation and the pan-global ad, which has to appeal to far too many people at once; the overall malaise caused by all of the above… These factors have contributed to the general reduction of quality in advertising to such an extent that the likelihood of a spunky youngster coming in and setting the industry alight is much smaller. The shoulders are not just the artwork of before; they are the situations in which those shoulders do or do not exist. A contextual pull for Hendrix’s music (the rise of the Beatles, Stones, Clapton, Floyd etc.) helped to make it happen. Ditto the onrush of great 70s movies that railed against the lies and paranoia of Nixon-era USA.
4. Distraction. Is it a coincidence that the last decade has seen worse movies, music and advertising at the same time as the rise of Facebook, Twitter and a million other online tidbits? I speak from experience when I say that the lure of the internet makes it really hard to stay focussed on your creative endeavour, and I’m not the only one. The tyranny of choice can seep into most of your life, strangling your ability to find a thing you want to do and stick to it. Where will this end? How many of us have the discipline to disregard something so tempting and concentrate on the hard yards of creating greatness?
5. It’s been done. So many art forms have reached such a level of excellence that the idea of taking one on and improving it can seem intimidating to many people. For every brave fool who thinks he/she can better Mozart there are a million others who decline the opportunity to even attempt such a thing. And the road narrows, so that each subsequent generation has to wade through an ever-increasing mountain of brilliant work. Seems like a bit of ball-ache, so let’s just have another evening of Netflix and chill, yeah?

Are you trying to be the next Dylan/Monet/Hitchcock? If so, do you feel helped or cowed by the previous excellence? And if you’re not bothering, is it because of one of the reasons above, or something else?

Hyper Reality (thanks, C):

Violent medieval rabbits (thanks, J).

Spielberg’s commencement speech:

Amazing smoke rings:

Are we all characters in a simulated video game?