But whoever you are going to vote for, today is the last day to register.
Go on. Emmeline Pankhurst didn’t chain herself to that horse (or whatever she did) just so that you could play GTA 4 instead of deciding who’s going to run the country.
Or maybe she did.
She was, after all, a very strange girl.
Here is a selection of the posters I saw on a journey from Belsize Park to South Kensington on Saturday:
Questions: have the agency concerned seen the incredibly, incredibly, incredibly fucking famous campaign known as ‘Got Milk?‘, that has been pumping out of Goodby’s for years? If so, why have they so blatantly stolen such a well known campaign? If not, do they not check out any advertising from around the world? Did they perhaps do it in conjunction with ‘Got Milk?’? If so, why not use the endline and art direction? And is there nothing Ramsay won’t plug? Tampax? Paedophilia websites? AIDS blood in a can?
Next:
By that they mean, ‘Go and see something with your grandkids BEFORE YOU DIE, YOU OLD FUCKER.’
Last, but not least:
‘The new busy’? What the fuck is that? To me it looks like the new busy is a colossal ringpiece. By the way, these ads are everywhere on the tube, but I have very little idea what they are on about. And as for how they relate to Microsoft/Hotmail – dear reader, I am stumped. However, I could not give the first shit. To me, Microsoft is not a company I choose to make part of my life. They make Word, don’t they? Or do they? Who cares? Fuck off you boring bunch of dweebs.
Last Saturday I went to see the play Enron, which, surprisingly enough, was about the Enron scandal.
It was good, but some parts were great.
The section that impressed me most was at the end where the disgraced Enron CEO, who got 24 years in jail for being a giant shitwhistle, tried to justify his actions.
He showed a graph that demonstrated how the bubbles, ie, the foolish overreachings of the human race had ultimately paved the way for its greatest successes. One example was the first dotcom boom, where we all rushed headlong into an explosion of interest and investment that couldn’t possibly be sustained. After the inevitable crash we got web 2.0, a much safer and more sensible development of t’internet which Enron’s author argues would not have been possible without the first, overly aggressive kick up the jacksie.
Of course, this is just another iteration of the concept of groundbreakers; men and women who show us the way by pushing the envelope too far. They didn’t know how far to push it because the parameters had yet to be set, but without the pioneers there can be no progress.
Which brings me, with a weary sense of inevitability, to advertising.
To progress in any way, the industry must be prepared for failure. It must be ready for things to go wrong so that we might learn by them and move forward with the knowledge we have gained.
But in more straitened times no fucker wants to do that. For the sake of the fee everyone wants to stay tucked very nicely within the envelope thank you very much. The aversion to risk, which leads to the truncation of progress, is currently all-pervasive, and it would be interesting to see where the next boom of anything will occur.
I find it interesting that this fallow period has followed directly the all-conquering Gorilla.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I get the impression that all over the world clients are currently asking for their own Gorilla, yet would never approve one in a million years (legend has it that a client didn’t really approve Gorilla. They had to wait for Fallon to make it off their own backs and get a positive response from YouTube to be convinced that it would work).
And there’s the problem: we all need to be complicit in moving things forward or the best intentions of one part of the process will be met with a brick wall from another.
Will we see another ‘boom’ that forces progress anytime soon? Well, since Martin Sorrell is so fond of making absolutely fucking cock-eyed predictions that never come within a barge pole of reality, I might as well do the same: the next truly great ad will happen in 2012, and it will be for Brain’s Faggots.
Mark my words.
Properly laugh-out-loud funny 5 second films:
Best promo since Windowlicker:
LOOSEWORLD x Waverly Films: Reggie Watts in F_CK SH_T STACK from LOOSEWORLD on Vimeo.
3-D fun (thanks, P).
Will iPads be really cool? Of course they will.
And my favourite Tiger Woods spoof (thanks, L).
A sound engineer once told me that he was working on an ad with Fred&Farid® when he said something along the lines of, ‘What do think of this mix, Farid and Fred?’
Before giving their opinion, the premier grenouilles de publicite replied, ‘Uh, (name of engineer, who will remain anonymous), not Farid and Fred. Never Farid and Fred. Always Fred and Farid.’
Leaving aside the – ahem – continentality of this assertion, it does throw up (deliberate turn of phrase there) the issue of name order, how it happens and what it means.
I’ve given this an entire crap’s-worth of thought and have come to the conclusion that it is a bit random, but maybe if we look at some examples we can see if there’s any method behind the madness:
Tom and Walt: London’s original team-as-brand. Would ‘Walt and Tom’ have worked as well? Yep, but running ‘Walt’ into ‘and’ is a little bit trickier for the tongue than running ‘Tom’ into it.
Richard (Flintham) and Andy (McLeod): This one makes no sense at all. It gives you ‘and And’ to say. Andy and Richard would be much better. Too late now (unless Richard and Andy at BBH want to try reversing their names).
Nigel and Paul: To be honest, I can’t remember if they were Paul and Nigel or Nigel and Paul. When I worked with Daryl the order often swapped and I think that happened with N&P too.
Shit.
I think, against some pretty stiff competition, this is the most pointless post I’ve ever written.
I should really have just deleted it and let you all speculate as to the wisdom of hiring Jonathan Burley at CHI and who’s going to replace him at Leo Burnett.
But I thought you’d prefer something, however shit, to read.
And people love a Fred&Farid-are-ponces story, don’t they?
If any of you have ever shown a script to a creative director, or a portfolio to a critting team, then you’ll be familiar with that chunk of time when the work is perused and all conversation stops.
It’s an odd moment that I don’t think I’ve encountered anywhere else, but it never seems to get less awkward.
So here, for your more joyful life are some things you can do to occupy yourself during the wait:
1. Whenever Daryl and I did a crit we’d swap the portfolio for an awards annual and suggest the team flick through it for a few minutes. They seemed glad of the distraction and we preferred not to have them trying to decipher every cough and mumble for positive or negative signs.
2. Be like Hannibal Lecter: create a palace in your mind that you can walk round when things get too much for you or you’d simply like to visit somewhere nice. He did it when children were misbehaving near him on a plane; you can do it in a CD’s office. And it needn’t be a palace. Why not recreate your favourite brothel or maximum security prison for violent sex offenders?
3. Count awards. CDs tend to have awards; invariably, that’s part of the reason they’ve become CDs. Have a look and see if they’re the kind that are worth winning, or simply a couple of dozen Mobiuses or Regional Addys. This is very handy information because it allows you to to work out whether to take his opinions seriously or simply laugh in his face.
4. Pretend you’ve received an important email on your iPhone then play Angry Birds or Bejewelled 2. If you don’t have an iPhone just excuse yourself to the toilet and read The Sun for a few minutes. Don’t worry – they’ll wait for you to return.
5. Stare out of the window. There should be at least one in every CD’s office so take a look through it, plan your route home and see if the traffic looks like a bit of an arse.
6. Talk to your partner just loud enough to be heard by the CD then make sure you say something complimentary about something in his office (‘Wow! He’s got a box-set of The Wire! What impeccable taste!). The CD will then like you a little bit more. Possibly enough to give you a placement or pass your script.
7. Scratch yourself, but make it subtle.
Hope that helped.
Other suggestions welcome.
However, really sweary ones about people you hate at CHI will be rejected, just like the fifteen I received yesterday.
Hey everyone.
Wow, there’s was a fair bit of disagreement about that Paul Arden Alexon stuff, eh? What’s the idea? Who knows? Does it Matter?
I suppose we’ll never really resolve it, so let’s move on.
There’s a new one I quite like from GGT for Holsten Pils:
I know it’s a little like Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, but it seems pretty cool to me (might be Griff’s 814th ad of this year, though!).
COMMENTS
Anonymous said…
Fuck me! What a bloody rip. They should hang their heads in shame.
Anonymous said…
This is so lazy. Is this what people are going to do for ads now? Just trawl about in the cinema looking for scenes to pinch?
Derek Hass said…
I like it.
Anonymous said…
Do they think we haven’t seen DMDWP? Just shows how uncreative Henry and Chaldecott are. I bet this is the last ad they ever make, the talentless bastards.
Mr. M. Denton Esq said…
Very funny. Hats off to ’em all. Guffaw, chortle, snigger.
Anonymous said…
Who’s the blonde with the big tits?
Anonymous said…
Yawn. Lazy.
Anonymous said…
I guess the stupid public will love it. It won’t win anything though.
Charles Saatchi said…
Vote Tory!
Anonymous said…
How can these guys call themselves creative? What’s creative about nicking a scene from a movie?
Anonymous said…
This is the kind of thing that makes the public think we’re a bunch of lazy, thieving cunts.
Ben said…
But it’s an homage, isn’t it? They took the original and added something to it. Anyway Steve Martin’s about as funny as missing the plug hole and pouring a gallon of drain cleaner down your jap’s eye. This makes the whole conceit much better, doesn’t it?And what are we saying now, that we can’t be influenced by anything else? Where’s that going to end? If someone does an ad in, say, 24 years time with a drumming gorilla, I bet someone else will dig up a bit of film that it’s a tiny bit similar to and start whinging about it. Anyway, fuck this. I’m off to watch Jim Davidson. He does a really funny black man character called Chalky White.
For those of a literary bent, I’d say it was about as good as Saturday, ie: not one of his best, but still both good and entertaining.
For those of an advertising bent, one sentence in particular caught my eye. It describes the passage of the main character through Heathrow Airport:
‘An avenue of ads for banking and office services, weakly humorous, effortfully eye-catching – clearly, advertising was an industry for third raters – increased his irritation…’
Nice to be dismissed so cleanly and sharply.
However, it might be worth remembering that airport advertising is some of the worst there is: two-word puns over metaphorical pictures of wildlife vie for space with dismal attempts by perfume brands to distinguish themselves from one another.
Very poor.
But overall, is McEwan right? Are we third raters?
Certainly when compared to Nobel Prize-winners, rock gods, successful head teachers in sink estates, Olympic athletes, film directors etc. we are indeed a rung or two below some others. But then we can probably count ourselves a rung or two above shelf stackers, cell-centre operators or people who bum others for money.
Perhaps, after due consideration, ‘third rate’ is something of a compliment.
Then again, of course it fucking isn’t.