Many of us do jobs which supposedly demand insight into every facet of human nature; into the wild and gloomy recesses of something so unutterably complex it has defied the comprehension of the most intelligent people ever to walk the earth.

Of course, we can understand to some degree, but to know, to really know what the hell motivates millions of discrete and mysterious entities? No fucking chance.

And yet we (planners more than the rest of us, but we all think we have something of a clue) tout ourselves as experts. We claim to know. We claim to be able to produce words and images that will alter the directions of minds so that they end up bent to the will of those that pay us.

Shysters, the lot of us.

You see, if we were truly able to do that which we claim, we’d be the richest and most powerful people on earth. And why? Because no one can do it.

Richard Branson, Rupert Murdoch, Martin Sorrell, Stevie Wonder, Barack Obama, David Cameron, Jack Nicholson, the XX, Martin Amis, Simon Cowell, Pharrell Williams, The Situation, Billy Joel, Harry Dean Stanton, Hare Krishna, David Hockney…

None of them knows. They can all have a good guess, and they might well succeed, but they will also surely fail.

And there’s no shame in that.

Just as long as you’re aware of your crashing, regular, inescapable, dismal propensity to do the wrong thing.

For the first step on the road to recovery is admitting you have a problem.

Mousetrap ads have been done.

DoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDone

(Thanks, R)

What actually happens when  a client meets an agency for the first time?

‘I’d like to sell my chocolate bar to lots of people.’

‘Right. Well you’re going to need a 360-degree engagement campaign.’

‘Um…’

‘It’ll give you some conventional media along with the digital, social, experiential and DM that will make sure your engagement is fully holistic.’

‘Is that good?’

‘You can’t really do anything else.’

‘OK. And all the places will say ‘buy the new Astro Bar with toffee and toasted banana’?’

‘Sort of. On TV we might prefer to go for a brand message that talks about how nice chocolate is in general, then on Facebook we could have a vote on how many banana chunks you put in the bar. It’s pull rather than push, you see. Then we might create an app that is actually a game, perhaps an updated Space Invaders so that people can engage with the Astro Bar brand. Later, in the digital part of the campaign, we could get people to upload videos of themselves eating Astro Bars all over the world, and then we might upload an Astro Bar song to iTunes.’

‘Could we not just run a TV and poster campaign with a big shot of the bar and a nice clear line, like ‘New Astro Bar with toffee and toasted banana’?’

‘You could, but then you’d lose out on a big slice of the crucial 18-24 demographic that likes to use the internet.’

‘Do they not watch TV or walk past posters?’

‘Well, technically, yes. But surely you want something that’s going to get them more engaged, more involved in the Astro Bar brand experience?’

‘I just want people to buy the bar.’

‘That’s why you need to give consumers a chance to become part of the brand, to create the meaning of Astro Bar along with you, to feel some degree of emotional investment. To scale the giddy heights of brand saliency until they immerse themselves so deeply in the Astro Bar experience they are swimming in a pool of liquid engagement, picking fruit from the tree of real-time value justification and frottering their loins on the soft, spongy genitalia of long-tail impact analysis.’

‘Um. I think I’m going to try the other agency down the road.’

‘Be my guest, but they’ll tell you the same thing. You see, we’ve all agreed to turn selling a chocolate bar into an enigma of utter bollocks so complicated that it will make separating two spider webs in the dark, drunk, on a row boat in heavy weather seem as simple as blinking. By adding layer after layer after mind-crushing layer to the process we’ll be sure that you have no idea what you’ve paid for, how to measure its success or why things have reached this pretty pass. Yes, you might say, but humans are essentially the same things they were twenty years ago: they read lots of magazines, drive past posters and watch hours and hours of TV, but that would be missing the point. You see, we need to make a cunt-load of money out of this and unless we make up more shit for you to pay for we’ll be fucked. In fact, in many ways, we’re already fucked. Kids are making films for tuppence and getting them seen by hundreds of millions of people for precisely fuck-all. How can we compete with that? To be honest, we can’t. That’s why bullshit, more than it ever was, must now be the ordure (sic) of the day.’

‘Where do I sign?’

I was just reading this article about how movie marketing is going to have to change in the face of people watching their TV online after it’s originally scheduled.

Apparently, the problem with this is that the carpet bombing approach Hollywood takes to get the biggest opening weekend possible gets harpooned by their Friday ads effectively running on Monday when it’s too late.

Well, far be it from me to tread on The Ad Contrarian‘s toes, or to sound like a cranky old luddite, but some of this article doesn’t ring true to me.

Let’s take a closer look:

‘A recent study for cable giant Comcast found that 62% of respondents reported using DVRs, online sites like Hulu, or VOD.’ Now that sounds scary, but gives no detail of how much they do this and to what extent it affects real-time TV. I was actually surprised the number was so low, but it’s presented with the vibe that 62% of all TV viewing is done this way. The truth and the implication are miles apart.

‘Greg Kahn, executive vp business development director at media agency Optimedia, estimates that the Web portion of film-ad budgets has doubled to about 10% during the past five years. “I expect the digital component of movies’ media budgets to increase further,” he said. No shit, Gregory. You’d have to be a blind idiotic turtle to think anything else, never mind an ‘executive vp business development director at Media agency Optimedia’. Give that man a raise. But what had this doubled from? $5 to $10 or $500m to $1bn? The article doesn’t say, which makes me think the number is low otherwise it’d be worth shouting from the rooftops to back up the tone of Greg’s incredible insight. And again, the ‘doubling in five years’ strikes me as incredibly fucking low.

“What TV was in the 1980s the Internet is now,” says Peter Sealey, marketing strategy expert and CEO of the Sausalito Group, as well as a former president of marketing at Columbia. “The time spent by many in the core 18-24 movie audience on Facebook is higher than on TV. You’ve got to follow these eyeballs.” He predicts this fall TV season might bring “a diminished role of high-profile movie spots” on TV. Peter is another genius, although he’s very good at saying meaningless things that you can’t really argue with: “What TV was in the 1980s the Internet is now” How? What does that even mean? They’re both popular? As popular as each other? Engaging? Water-cooler-y? It’s almost as vague as “The time spent by many in the core 18-24 movie audience on Facebook is higher than on TV”. How many? And does that mean we can crowbar ads into their hours on Wordscraper without pissing them off? And ‘this Fall TV season might bring “a diminished role of high-profile movie spots”‘ Way to hedge your bets. What’s that, a 50% fall or a 0.000000001% fall?

‘So Lauer is trying to get the studios he works with to spend a higher-than-usual 2%-5% of their ad budget on such alternative methods.’ Hang on. A couple of paragraphs earlier it was 10%. And are we all stunned that Lauer wants studios to up the money they spend with him?

‘The best-known DVR producer, TiVo, has during recent years promoted special solutions to studios, offering ad placements throughout its DVR pages and features.’ I bet people love that. Buy TiVo to avoid ads then TiVo will stick some ads where you can’t avoid them to make up for it. It’s like buying a special mask to shield yourself from being pelted with human excrement, only to have the mask’s makers paste some shit into the front of the mask for when you put it on. Or something.

Peter Sealey assigned his MBA students at Claremont Graduate University this year to draw up a marketing plan for Sony’s upcoming “Green Hornet.” “If they show me a TV-centric campaign, grades won’t be that good,” he said. Yes, Peter: ‘Show me a campaign that uses the medium in which studios spend the vast majority of their money (presumably because it works to some degree. I’ve heard studios aren’t overly keen on wasting cash) and I’ll fail you.’

Oddly enough, though, Peter’s quaint approach to teaching is exactly that taken by many of today’s ECDs.

I can feel my brains leaking out of my ears…

I fucking hate mission statements. Fuc. King. Hate. Them.

The idea that Pret a sodding Manger is on some kind of a mission to provide us with sandwiches and coffee is hyperwank. The only mission they’re on is to make some cash out of a sandwich shop. The mission statement is almost always a big smear of cackbabble designed to make you think that the Estonians manning the counter on minimum wage care more about the arrangement of cheese and tuna than they do about sending their mammas enough money to keep them out of prostitution.

Anyway, beyond that, I also think it’s very important to have a mission statement.

You see, I think there’s a difference between corporate mission statements, which are usually designed to disguise a grasping desire for pots and pots of cash, and your own personal set of principles, which may include a grasping desire for pots and pots of cash, but you don’t have to disguise the fact because the whole thing is just between you and yourself.

Your mission statement need not be permanent or even completely clear, after all, life is an amorphous, constantly-shifting grey area where priorities can change on a daily basis. And it need not be noble, moral or ‘good’ (again, it’s just a little secret to keep in your head). All that’s required is a certain of focus on one thing, then that can point you in the right direction whenever you have to make all those important decisions.

If your primary goal is money, you can always choose the option that provides more of it. If it’s seeing your kids grow up, then you can decide to do only that which will maximise your time with them.

Of course, it can make you what some people refer to as a ‘cunt’, but it’s up to you: do you want to step over your friends for a more lucrative job or would you rather earn less money and have lots of mates who think you’re a lovely person/doormat?

Actually, you may need several mission statements for different parts of your life, but they’re always potentially useful, if only in the cause of avoiding the wastage of time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQsA2eW6-Vo&feature=player_embedded

Justin Bieber is brilliant.

If you slow him down 800%.

And for comparison, here’s the original:

This should be an olympic sport:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ho0WfS8opaI&feature=player_embedded

(Thanks, W&W.)

The architecture of Mad Men.

Top class mash-up:

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

Rachel Zoe is literally a complete fucking idiot.

Someone’s collected all those fucking stupid pictures of fruity girls getting their A-Level results (Thanks, A).

In case anyone’s interested, here are some tasting notes on some of what I’ve drunk so far (haters of the wanky, stop reading now):

2003 Leoville Barton is probably too young right now, but we had it in a demi, so it worked brilliantly: a perfect balance of fruit, alcohol, acid and tannins that was complex and concentrated, yet very easy to drink.

1999 Haut Claverie was a revelation. As a small Sauterne producer of little note one might wonder if it would hold up for eleven years, but it did so brilliantly. Honeyed succulence that matched the best of the appellation.

1999 Tour Blanche, also in demi, made for an interesting comparison with the Haut Claverie. Of course, TB is a premier grand cru classe so it was always going to have more depth, but even in the half it was still too young. Delicious, but with obvious indicators of greater heights to be climbed in the next 5-10 years.

2004 Confiance is Depardieu’s Bourg effort and like the man himself is a ballsy, gutsy, big fat bastard of a wine. Not a lot of subtlety, but worked well for what it was.

2004 Caillou Blanc du Chateau Talbot was excellent. I’m a big fan of the white wines produced by the Bordeaux big guns and, although this was nowhere near Margaux’s Pavilion Blanc, it still had enough understated complexity and concentration to stand up to Talbot’s wonderful reds. We also bought the 2007 but may give that a couple more years.

2004 Pavilion Rouge. This is Margaux’s second wine but it had all the hallmarks of delicate finesse for which its big sister is world-famous. We tried it alongside the Leoville Barton and it made a telling comparison between the St Julien and Margaux appellations that left us in no doubt as to just how different wines can be even when their terroirs are just a few miles apart.

Chateau Carbonnieux blanc 1999 is another white Bordeaux, this time from Pessac-Leognan and, like the Talbot, had a freshness and depth that left it with the delicacy of a Sauvignon Blanc (I fucking hate Sauvignon Blanc) but with the richness of a Chardonnay (I fucking love Chardonnay).

I hope that helps (smiley face made out of punctuation).