Author: ben

Fucking Brilliant New Ad From Glazer/Sony/Anomaly

It’s got humour and irreverence, you can tell it was directed by a master and the idea is spot on.

My favourite of the year so far (along with Old Spice).

(Thanks A.)

UPDATE: I think it’s interesting that some people don’t get it. I can be quite bad at ‘getting’ ads but this one seems obvious to me: this looks cool, but it’s pretty clear that it would look 100 times cooler in 3-D (ie: on a Sony 3-D TV). So buy one. It’s a brilliant negative product demo.

By the way, Balls sold a lot of TVs. Just not Sony Bravias. As an ad it didn’t work for Sony. I think this one will have them flying off the shelves.



Steve Rogers

If you’re looking for a top new director, you need cast your net no further than Steve Rogers.

(Interest declared: he’s just joined Sonny, where my wife works.)

This puppy has won Best of Book in the Creative Review Annual and has been nominated for best ad, best direction and best special effects at this year’s D&AD awards:

And here’s the rest of his reel.



LISTEN UP! YOU NEED AN OUT!

I had a friend a while back who would always bend my ear about whether or not he should split up with his girlfriends.

I’d make it easy for him: was he going to marry them? No. So at some point he was going to split up with them. Why not make it as soon as possible and start looking for someone he preferred?

Which leads me to advertising.

You are my friend and the ad industry is his imperfect girlfriend. You will split up eventually.

Even if the industry does not change one iota from now (it will get much worse, believe me) the statistics are blindingly obvious: there are loads of creatives but very few CDs. This means that as you make progress there will be fewer of you left. Some will fail to make the grade, others will dislike the business, others will get married, move abroad, bum the agency cat and spend seven years in Pentonville etc.

Coupled to this is the ageism: advertising regards the over-forties as geriatric and the over fifties like people who should be wetting themselves in a wipe clean plastic chair while a truculent ‘carer’ cleans Jaffa Cake sludge from the front of their sta-prest pajamas.

Troupled (it’s like coupled but involves a third element. I just invented it) to this is the current fashion for ad agencies to cut costs by employing cheap youngsters to do jobs that used to require a senior. To put it bluntly, few people in advertising give the first, second or third toss about whether an ad is 6/10 or 9/10 anymore, so they’re hardly going to shell out another hundred grand to get the latter, not when the holding company wants its kilo of flesh. Most ads are shit so why does it matter if they’re cheap shit? To the people in charge it doesn’t. IT DOESN’T. You wish it did. You came into the industry thinking it did, BUT IT DOESN’T.

Quapled (see above; four elements) to this is the fact that the pay now stinks. If you’re a junior or middleweight now you are like the bloke who has turned up to the party at 5am, when everyone else has got pissed, laid or the nightbus home. There you stand, explaining how you got lost and had to ask for directions at a service station run by idiots but no one cares. Yes, this party had plentiful beauties from the opposite sex, copious amounts of pure-yet-unaddictive drugs, gallons of vintage Salon and millions of Almas caviar canapes but IT’S ALL FUCKING GONE. The seventies and eighties boys and girls boned, hoovered, quaffed and munched the lot, leaving a little for the nineties guests and not much for the noughties. The well is now drier than a good Martini. This means that whatever you earn from here on in will not be enough for you to retire on at the age of 50ish.

So do the maths: to retire with a decent sum you have to work till you’re 65 in an industry that will almost certainly kick you out in your forties.

You see? You need an out. You need something else to do; an alternative money-making scheme. Yes, the very few will CD themselves to untold riches or create a start-up that will allow them to do the same but this will be around 1% of the total, if that.

YOU NEED AN OUT.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.



Weekend

New Nike ad:

Following MIA’s slaughter of the gingers, we have another promo that won’t be shown on Saturday Superstore (is that still on?), this time for Unkle:

And I’m really starting to go off George Lucas (Parts 1-3 of Star Wars + Indy 4):

(Thanks, K for both those two.)

Another nice ad for Nike:

NIKE SPORTSWEAR: NSW+FBGT from fla on Vimeo.

Interesting ad for Child Hope:

The excellent Not Voodoo is blogging again.

Why not visit the amusing Yellow Part of The Red Brick Road’s website? Brand Mogic indeed.

And according to last week’s poll, 3-4 hours is the most common amount of actual work you do in a day. I guess I have readers in a range of jobs but I’d say that most creatives would fit into that sector. And don’t we moan about it?

Also, is there anything more intriguing to a creative than seeing your CD in another team’s office with the door shut? (No.)

AND, I came across this by accident a month ago, but if you’re an iPhone user, it may change your life: when your iPhone is off, two presses of the ‘home’ key (the circular button at the bottom) will give you immediate access to your basic music controls. No more having to key in 5467, or whatever your pass number is.



Scamp’s Book

Three reasons why you should buy it:

It’s full of brilliant advice from proper people who are really, really good at what they do:

It’s well-designed:

It’s got lots of great insights from someone who has a Cannes Grand Prix, D&AD Pencils and a bunch of other stuff that makes him worth reading:

I’d also like to add that it’s a great bog read. By that I mean it’s all laid out in digestible, bite-sized chunks that you can get through in the time it takes to read Campaign. Or take a dump. You might like to read the interview with Jeremy Craigen over a regular poo. Then again, you could add in Dave Droga’s Foreword and the Paul Silburn interview if you’ve got the runs.

And just in case you missed that Amazon link, IT’S HERE.

(Interest declared: I am friends with Simon. In fact we had lunch today. Yesterday if you’re reading this on Thursday.)



Famous Agencies Or The Lack Thereof

Sitting here in Saatchi and Saatchi London I often get told, although not by the people who work here, that I’m in the only agency my mum has heard of.

That’s not quite true. My mum used to be an above the line copywriter in London, so she’s heard of quite a few agencies.

But that aside, the fame of S&S does get mentioned quite a lot. I recall being at college and having an account person from there showing us a vox pop she had made asking people to name an ad agency. They only named S&S, even if they happened to be standing outside JWT or BBH (a bit of mendacious editing was used there, I’m sure).

Then there’s that truism that it’s ironic that agencies are unable to create big famous brands out of themselves. After all, if S&S could do it, why can’t anyone else?

I have no idea, but it does seem odd, because when you think about it, there are great benefits to be had from such fame:

1) People want to work for you. They’ve heard of you, therefore you must be the best and then they can tell their mums and dads, who will think they do something significant for a living. I once had a team resign because they wanted to go and work on more brands their mum had heard of. Understandable. This is a way of attracting better staff than you would otherwise and probably being able to pay them less.

2) Clients want to give you their business. Similarly, I once lost a client because apparently the uber boss of the company wanted to tell his mates he was with Charles and Maurice’s place (he had moved to M&C, which, I suppose, is sort of the second most famous agency in the country. I bet most of the bovine mouth-breathers in the general population don’t even know the difference, the fucking idiots). So the same effect of basking in a reflective glow occurs and that translates into cash and accounts.

3) Fame begets fame. If people want to interview an industry figure or do an article about advertising then it makes sense for them to choose so-and-so from Saatchi and Saatchi because it’s easier than asking so-and-so from Wieden and Kennedy, you know, that agency that did the Honda ad where it all went round a room like Mousetrap.

So why, in all the years of advertising, particularly the last thirty, has no other agency managed to do this?

We’re supposed to be the experts. Surely it’s like a doctor treating his own sprained ankle, or a vet sorting out his manky salamander? And yet 99% of agencies do it like a decorator who who gets his own wallpaper overlapping and his tiles skew-whiff. Or a prostitute who can’t manage a wank. Or something.

Can anyone think of a reason why an agency would not want to be famous? I can’t really see a downside, or at least a downside that outweighs the massive upside.

And, if so, why isn’t your agency trying to do it?



Adland Loves The 1980s

There’s something funny going on.

If it’s not Mr T selling Snickers or Bonnie Tyler flogging Mastercard, we appear to be in the midst of a full-on eighties revival.

I even saw this on TV last weekend:

Not sure why. I thought the whole eighties revival thing had been and gone by 2008. Should we be into a nineties revival about now?

Just think: Cotton Eye Joe, Chaka Demus and Pliers, Steps, Achy Breaky Heart, Right Said Fred.

Oooohhh… makes you want to gently commit suicide just thinking about it.



The One Show

Results Here.

Now, maybe you’re a more eagle-eyed person than me, but I looked at the list of winners in the proper One Show (not the design or digital bits, which, frankly, I couldn’t give a fuck about) and could only find a single winner from a UK agency.

Four possible reasons:

1. We’re shit (let’s face it, it’s not been a good couple of years, so that might well be the case).
2. And we know we are, so we didn’t bother entering (less likely. Several agencies and production companies enter every year and there is something from Leo Burnett in the Design section, so they almost certainly entered the proper one too).
3. Lack of entry cash (Sure, but the best agencies would still have punted a few grand entering their best stuff).
4. We don’t give a shit about The One Show (well, we seem to give a shit about Creative Circle and (no offence, CC) that’s not nearly as prestigious).

But then, odd as you like is the fact that our only winner (I use the widest definition of ‘our’ here) has only gone and taken Best of Show:

Is that good? I have to confess I’ve never watched it all the way through, or even a minute through (I find myself getting distracted waiting for the cameraman to fall over so I don’t really pay enough attention to the story to find it engaging. And that’s Begbie, isn’t it? Why’s he gone all civilised? I much preferred it when he was glassing tourists for sport).

Anyway, congratulations to the people behind it and congrats to all the nerds in the nerdy agencies that won lots of ‘Interactive’ (meaningless) pencils.

UPDATE: Check that shit out! I embedded like a motherfucker. (Thanks, Guy and Sarah.)



Weekendy Shit Including A Darn Good Ad For Orange

Orange have heeded the wise advice of this blog and changed their dry old pre-movie campaign.

It’s now funnier, smarter and A-list instead of D-list.

Thank fuck for that.

I love it.

Get yourself a job with $6 and a little ingenuity.

(Thanks, F.)

The best World Cup ad so far:

(Thanks, A. Via Twitter.)

Total Recall: The Musical.

Last week’s poll was kind of like a hung parliament of things people liked best in advertising.

New Poll up now.

And finally, I have unearthed the YouTube clip that Juan Cabral stole to make his drumming gorilla ad:



New Skittles Ad

Oddly enough, I think it makes too much sense.

It’s actually an ad which gives a specific benefit to the product.

I don’t think Pinata, Touch or Beard, for example, did that. I know they kind of suggested the sweets are in some way irresistible, but that’s not specific, so the ads could be more random in their fun-ness.