What six billion nights of FitBit sleep data tells us (thanks, D).

Find what’s number one all over the world with a simple map (thanks, S).

Crazy giant sculptures (thanks, D).

Pissed-up Cook, Cleese etc. in a thing about The Secret Policeman’s Ball 1976:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-UvHaroYhE

A brief history of hip-hop:

Vince Gilligan on selling Breaking Bad:

How they made Starship Troopers.

In baseball they have a player called a ‘designated hitter’. His job is to bat in place of the pitcher.

And in American Football they change the entire team depending on whether or not they’re attacking or defending.

This made me wonder: would it be a good idea for creative advertising to have ‘Concepters’ and ‘Executors’?

Many times I’ve heard of a great idea that didn’t end up with an equally good execution. And I’ve seen a lot of really good executions made from slight ideas.

The job of an advertising creative is very wide-ranging, and perhaps it would help the quality of the finished product if we worked out who was really good at certain parts of the process and allowed them to specialise.

Some creatives are great at choosing the right director. Some are brilliant with music. Some know when you need to scrap an edit and start again. Some are great at evaluating post-production effects. Some find it easy to get the best out of voiceover talent.

And others are great at generating concept after concept.

Leaving aside the two direct skills of copywriting and art direction, could you make a case for bringing in specialist creatives or teams to have input at certain critical moments of the wider creative process?

As an example, 99% of the radio ads I ever made followed the same process: my AD and I came up with idea, I wrote the script, then we both went through some casting and the selection of a recording engineer with the help of the agency producer. We’d then all kind of took on various parts of the directing, editing and SFX process, with no formal demarcation of roles.

But in 1% of the radio ads I was involved in we used a specialist radio production company called Eardrum. They went through a much deeper casting process, which they then shared with us for final approval. During the session they took responsibility for directing the talent (incorporating our suggestions when necessary). They even helped with the script, making more of a feature of the Terms and Conditions in a way that elevated the whole spot.

Then the ads got into D&AD.

Now, I’m not saying that the specialised division of labour entirely caused the excellence of the finished product, but it certainly helped. Eardrum was able to go through more casting possibilities than we had time for, and their experience and familiarity with the talent smoothed and improved the direction.

So is it a practical suggestion? Let’s look at the pros and cons:

Pros: better work (probably; too many cooks can spoil the broth); the best concept creators can be left to do more of that task, instead of taking weeks, or even months, out of the office on pre-prods, shoots and the various elements of post-production; we already do this in a way by involving specialist typographers and the ubiquitous design department, as well as music consultants, and it works well, so where are we drawing the line, and why?

Cons: Expense (although you could argue that it’s an expense that pays for itself by freeing up people to do other things); some hangover feeling that the creatives ought to do everything, whether it’s what they’re good at or not; demoralisation/confusion from ‘lack of ownership’ (if you take the execution of an idea away from its creator you might end up losing the essence of what the concept was supposed to be. Then again, that might not be a bad thing, after all, you hand a lot over to a director or photographer, trusting them to bring back your original vision with their cherry on top).

The above examples concern people who are currently available to be brought into the process – for a price. What if the entire creative process became specialised and freelanced, in the same way as Eardrum?

You have a script approved. Now what? Call two Director Consultants. They spend their entire time keeping up-to-date with every single director across the world. They check out newcomers from film schools and know what big names are currently looking for. Then you could bring on the Shoot Team: a couple who watch every take like a hawk, make script change suggestions based on new circumstances, and know how best to connect with directors to bring their A-game for that client-friendly take. Then the Posters come in, managing the VO sessions from casting to embedding, liaising with typographers and designers for the endline, and working out the exact editorial style that will make the most of the footage.

Then they send all the info back to the concept creators who have spent the last few weeks coming up with the kind of pitch-winning ideas they didn’t have time to explore on a set.

Of course, many of these things are currently managed by agency staff, but if you’re going to bring in a designer for your press layout, why would you not bring in a consultant for your grading session? One with a ton of experience and a cutting-edge knowledge of what could work for your ad. You might say that’s supposed to be the colourist, but who knows if he or she is really on your side and not simply trying out something for his or her own creative interests? If you’ve ever strongly disagreed with a director or post-person but come up against some kind of protocol brick wall, you’ll know what I mean.

It could be chaos; it could work really well. It could cost too much; it could free people up to work on what they’re best at. If we have UX, experiential and social media creatives, that’s a not-very-tacit admission that the 2017 creative can’t do it all.

Bring in the experts, make the work better, stick to what you’re good at and have a better day at work (and create lots more jobs).

Ethiopians had all the good ideas first.

How pencils are made:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tK3L7O0nXSo

Driverless rooms could be the future.

Real life giants:

Bitcoin made simple:

I’m not bored of the diversity debate. I find it endlessly fascinating, like an Agatha Christie mystery, where more insight happens with greater exploration and thought. And, like one of those mysteries, you can often find something out that occurs as revelatory to you, only to discover that everyone else knew it all along and they now think you’re a bit thick…

Anyway, at the risk of holding up a giant sign pointing to that thickness, I want to discuss a new level of the mystery that I discovered for myself when I interviewed Jo Arscott.

The employment of an ethnically diverse workforce doesn’t necessarily mean the employment of an ethnically diverse workforce.

There’s a point in Jo’s interview where she (a girl of colour who grew up with a white family) mentions being somewhat surprised to discover that she’s not white. I then got the strong sense that Jo has spent large chunks of her life with that perspective: ie, that she didn’t define herself by the colour of her skin. She didn’t grow up in Hackney or Brixton, deeply immersed in the culture of the afro-Caribbean wave of post-war immigration; she grew up on a smallholding in genteel Gloucestershire, and that’s as white as it gets.

So what part of her would bring ethnic diversity to an ad agency? Yes, her experience as a woman of colour, but beyond that, the cultural elements of an urban background are missing. Would a white person from Haringey be more fully immersed in clichéd West Indian culture? Possibly. So what  do we mean by multicultural diversity? Skin colour? Culture? Daily perspective? Upbringing? All of the above?

The question came up again when a friend here in LA asked for my help finding strategic talent to launch his afrocentric product in the UK. I soon discovered that there are very few planners of colour in London, and that there are even fewer with the kind of Afro-Caribbean background my friend was looking for (by the way, if you know anyone who fits that bill, please drop me an email: bwmkay@gmail.com).

UK advertising is a middle-class industry filled with middle-class people, and one could argue that it’s that homogeneity that’s stifling the diversity more significantly than a failure to include a certain number of people with a certain skin colour. And it’s only going to get worse: if you want to be able to survive in a big city on placement or intern wages, you’re going to need another source of income, and that excludes a lot of people.

So if it wants to be culturally relevant to the entire country, advertising needs ethnic diversity in all its forms. But it also needs socioeconomic diversity, because that’s what will bring the diversity within the diversity, if you see what I mean.

White, middle-class men and women can go a long way, but it’s like we’re writing music with half the notes. Find ways to being more voices into the choir and it’s only going to sound more interesting. And I get the ‘meritocracy’ argument, but the problem with that is that you can only judge the merits of the people you see. If there are whole chunks of the population that aren’t even stopping by, you don’t so much have a meritocracy as a ‘who’s the best middle-class white person’ contest.

I bet ten grand there’s a kid of colour out there without much cash, who’s thinking of a million ways to bring something incredibly creative to the world.

Unfortunately, advertising is not currently one of those ways, and until the industry changes things to make sure it is, it’s going to stagnate, atrophy and signal its death with a long and underwhelming fart.

Are you doing anything to stop that fart?

What Steven Soderbergh watched last year.

Global subway typography.

Have you ever gone against the teachings of the Bible?

Best drone shots of last year.

World’s fastest talking man does Michael Jackson’s Bad in 20 seconds:

The Clock:

I was reading this article the other day.

It’s titled ‘Raising the bar for brand safety‘, and subtitled ‘Premium publishers must commit to higher standards for online advertising, not only to safeguard brand safety but also minimise ad fraud and maximise viewability‘. The author is Richard Reeves, Managing Director of the Association for Online Publishing.

I 100% appreciate the intention, but I can’t help feeling it doesn’t exactly practice what it preaches:

As the voice of premium digital publishers and a founder member of the Joint Industry Committee for Web Standards (JICWEBS), the Association for Online Publishing (AOP) is committed to securing the long-term success of the digital ecosystem.

This really starts as it means to go on: with a lack of specificity that leads to the very lack of transparency it professes to want to stamp out. Who are ‘premium digital publishers’? In what way are you their ‘voice’? Is JICWEBS a big deal? What do you mean by ‘success’? And isn’t the digital eco-system the entire internet? Can you really secure anything for such a massive entity? If so, how?

However, this goal is only achievable if the industry works together to create a more sustainable, accountable and reliable future, by adopting universal standards that go above and beyond minimum requirements.

‘More sustainable, accountable and reliable’ than what? What are these universal standards? Who defines them? What are ‘minimum requirements’ and how far ‘above and beyond’ them do you intend to go? 1%? 18% How will we know?

As such, the AOP’s innovative Ad Quality Charter, launched at its recent Inside Out Digital Publishing Convention, aims to commit itself and its members to ethical trading standards and better media verification.

Aiming to commit yourself to something? Why not just commit? How long will the aiming last?  And what are these ‘ethical trading standards’ to which you are aiming to commit? Can you commit to what those might be? Can you aim to commit to what those might be? And ‘better’ media verification than what, exactly? And how much better etc. etc.

The new charter – currently a draft – recognises that the industry must take greater collective responsibility for providing advertisers and agencies with access to quality inventory and verified audiences through a transparent supply chain. It will require the AOP and its members to adhere to stringent quality requirements relating to the contentious issues of brand safety, fraud and viewability.

‘Providing advertisers and agencies with access to quality inventory and verified audiences through a transparent supply chain’ doesn’t specify what ‘quality’ means (high quality? Low quality?), nor does it specify what ‘verified’ or ‘transparent’ mean. I’m sure Mr. Reeves is aware that there are degrees of transparency, verification, responsibility and quality, but his lack of specificity makes him look as if his entire premise is built on rather weak foundations.

It goes on for another few paragraphs, which contain the following undefined words and phrases:

minimise the risk

exploit the industry,

fraud detection and non-human traffic tools

a metric that will exceed the current industry standards.

deliver bespoke viewability metrics

optimise on-page placement based on user behaviour and content consumption

commit to reducing unacceptable ad clutter.

address the root causes of latency and the subsequent impact on viewability performance.

premium consumer experience

ensuring the healthy future of the digital advertising industry.

raise the bar for digital advertising standards,

cleansing and protecting the supply chain

allowing the ecosystem to flourish.

If you want to create better standards and practices in digital advertising, more power to you – God knows the industry needs them. But if the official bodies dedicated to this set their stall out with such indistinct vaguery it doesn’t bode well for the future.

If you stand for transparency, clarity and accountability you need to prove it in your own practices.

After all, if you aren’t going to do it, why should anyone else?

I don’t know if this the case in your neck of the woods, but where I’m from there are a lot of jobs where you place an initial before C and D.

We have ACDs (Associate Creative Directors), GCDs (Group Creative Directors), ECDs (Executive Creative Directors), the plain old CDs, and the grand poobahs, who are now called CCOs (Chief Creative Officers). We also still have juniors, plain old copywriters and art directors, and senior copywriters and art directors.

I might have missed a few (I have heard tell of the RCD – Regional Creative Director), but if you add in placements (or their equivalent), you have at least nine levels of seniority in the creative department. When I were but a nipper there were only creatives (with an occasional informal use of junior/middleweight/senior) and a CD. Some agencies had Group Heads, but until the early 2000s that was it.

In fact, here’s a handy guide to what your current job title would have been in a 1995 UK agency:

2018                                               1995

Junior Copywriter/Art Director        Copywriter/Art Director

Copywriter/Art Director                   Copywriter/Art Director

Senior Copywriter/Art Director       Copywriter/Art Director

ACD                                                Copywriter/Art Director

CD                                                  Copywriter/Art Director

GCD                                               Copywriter/Art Director

ECD                                               CD

CCO                                               CD

So how did things change, and is the new situation better?

I think the answers to both questions might be related:

1. Promotions are free, and therefore easier to hand out than raises. Even though, in this time of 9 levels, promotions have become less significant, they still give people a nice fuzzy feeling inside and a new level at which to join a new agency. So, in these straitened times, they’ve become a cheap way to make disgruntled people a little happier.
2. I think America has had these layers for longer. With the globalisation of agencies via holding companies, the practices of other countries have spread faster and harder, especially as the US office is often the mothership, imposing its ways on the rest of the world.
3. With the fragmentation of accounts and disciplines, more people are in charge of smaller and more diverse parts of a campaign’s creation. Job titles help to differentiate them, although having four CDs on a job must get quite confusing. Then again, having fifteen copywriters, twelve art directors and three CDs would probably be even worse.
4. People can’t help loving this shit. If you grew up thinking the CD was the cappo di tutti cappi, there’s a going to be a little voice somewhere in the back of your mind telling you that it’s still a big deal to become one, even though it now means you’re basically the equivalent of a 1997 ‘senior copywriter’.

Aside from it all feeling a little silly, I can’t see much of a downside. Enjoy your new titles if they make you happy, and if the dude from the social engagement agency now knows he should respect your authority then that can only smooth things along.

Thanks for reading.

Merry Christmas!

Lots of love,

Bx

NYT Year in Pictures.

60 years of logos:

Amusing ad memes.

Black Thought of The Roots on a mad freestyle session (thanks, A):

Supposedly the best movie posters of 2017.

A year of voice commands from a 5-year-old (thanks, D):

JCB hot dog:

Starlings taking off at 200 fps (thanks, D):

https://vimeo.com/110136128

Here’s a delightful guest post from Father Critmas:

People are always asking me, Father Critmas, how can I be more like you? How can I be the World’s Best Creative Director™. And I always tell them the same thing. “How dare you talk to me.”