If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

There’s an Innocent campaign out and about at the moment. It consists of a bunch of lines that all end with ‘and’. These are the only two I remembered to photograph, but I think they give you the idea:

Questions, questions…

1) I guess the strategy is contained in that first execution; something about a ‘chain of good’, but I don’t really buy that. So you buy an Innocent smoothie and good thing happen beyond the vitamins you ingest? Or maybe the vitamins are part of the chain, and you get fewer colds, miss fewer holidays, enjoy yourself more, die happier…? Is that it? Then what’s the parking man got to do with it? Is it also metaphorical ‘good’ that is unrelated to the smoothie? Who knows? But I think the substantial scope for confusion isn’t much of an asset for an ad campaign.

2) How big was the media spend? I saw three executions. How many did you see? It does look like the campaign will improve if you see more of it, but I can’t say I was blown away way this continuation device. Ads that absolutely require you to see many of them are making life pretty hard for themselves, and if the satisfaction level is this so-so, is it worth it?

3) ‘Parking man’? Is that supposed to mean ‘traffic warden’? Are they not called traffic wardens anymore? When did that happen? Why are we separating by gender when most jobs (flight attendant, actor) are seeking to make themselves as gender neutral as traffic warden was?

Then again, I suppose I noticed the work, and talked about it, and blogged it, which is more than most posters get me to do.

But I won’t buy an Innocent smoothie because it’s basically a bottle of sugary water.

I was reading Campaign last week when I came across an article headlined ‘Fear and loathing in adland’ (interesting note: when I tried to Google said article so that I could copy and paste bits for this post it turned out many such pieces had been written already. Lazy headline writing, or huge amounts of fear and loathing?).

It suggests that ‘years of conditioning have made us all scared. To allow brave, bold work to happen, we must change the old world order’. Apparently we’re all a bit frightened because of the recent recession, but we shouldn’t be because things are much better now (financially). But the problem is more endemic because we’re all conditioned into hierarchies and the fear that goes with them from our schooldays. We then enter the same hierarchies in the workplace where we’re ‘structured like the army’ (oh dear. Where do you work, sir? The answer, surprisingly, is Karmarama. Yes, folks, you read it here, or in Campaign first: Karmarama is structured like the army. Poor sods) with ‘hierarchies and job titles’ (yes, they’re quite unique to the army, aren’t they? Greggs must also be ‘like the army’ with its job titles (assistant/manager) and hierarchies).

It continues: ‘One person’s opinion matters more because they’ve done it for longer and have a bigger job title. They then apply their strength to dominate and put down other in the group’ (oh dear again: Karmarama sounds like a surprisingly unpleasant place to work). ‘In advertising it all goes back to the domination of the celebrity talent. The opinion of the few mattered more than the others and they were to be obeyed at all costs. This cultivates a seam of fear throughout an organisation. People are scared to talk in meetings; they worry about looking stupid and being shot down by their more experienced bosses…’ Well, I don’t know about you, but I grew and learned under more experienced people. I don’t recall them seeking to dominate so much as doing their job unbelievably well (I’m taking about you, Andrew Robertson, or you, Paul Belford/John Gorse/Dave Dye/Nick Worthington/Paul Brazier/Malcolm Duffy/Tom Carty/Peter Souter etc.) and inspiring me to try to do the same. They were almost all very nice guys, and if occasionally I was worried about showing them an ad then that fear was what drove me to make sure it was good enough to come up their standards. That way, amazingly, the work improved. Yes, James Denton-Clark, managing director at Karmarama and author of the article: fear can breed better work, as can ‘celebrity talent’. Think back to the days when the people I mentioned dominated the industry, or go back further to the days of such ‘celebrity talent’ as John Webster and Dave Trott, Neil Godfrey and Tony Brignull, David Abbott, John Hegarty, DAVE BONAGUIDI and NARESH RAMCHANDANI FFS!!! (the blokes who started Karmarama)… all big industry celebrities, and during their prime the best advertising this country has ever produced appeared on a regular basis.

James continues: ‘To display competence is now to deliver ideas that can thrive in this connected community’. OK, point number 1: that’s always been what ‘competence’ in advertising has meant. And point number 2: who wants competence when excellence is available? James says that ‘it’s the ability to nurture and see them through to completion that matters and is what brands now require of us’. Again, when was that not what brands required of us? All those half-finished ads littering the TV screens in the 90s were quite the bugger, weren’t they?

Apparently ‘the people increasingly qualified to have an opinion on this are not necessarily the most experienced’. But they might be. I’m sure there are some people out there who became worse at their job as they went along, but it can’t be that common, surely? ‘Competence is therefore shifting away from the established towards the native’. Again, that word ‘competence’. Here James could be right: listening to people with no experience and dismissing those who have a few years under their belt will probably result in competence rather than excellence. Look at the work these days and compare it to what was done up to 2007. The standards have fallen for many reasons, but I think that the lack of celebrity talent and the prizing of the views of any old Tom, Dick or Harriet over people who might possibly know more than them could certainly be two such reasons.

James then says we ‘must not be scared of breaking down the old order of things’. Well, here’s some good news for him: it’s already happened. The old order is gone, replaced predominately by bland people and equally bland work. James, you’ve already got your wish and it’s turned out really badly.

He also says that ‘more importantly, as individuals, leaders and skilled discipline experts we need to take a close look at how we behave’. Hang on… ‘leaders’? People who lead? That sounds quite hierarchical to me. And what about these ‘skilled discipline experts’? Why do we need them when we’ve got the placement creative to tell us how to kern the typography or prepare the pitch deck? We then have a quote from Jim Collins, who says that ‘companies that succeed are led by people with a paradoxical blend of humility and professional will.’ Yes, that describes Steve Jobs to a T. Ever so ‘umble he was…

I dunno… Overall this reads like the attempted revenge of someone who worked for a few (celebrity) bastards in the past and now wants us to know that the meek are having their day. Unfortunately, that day is producing shit advertising.

You can complain about unpleasant people all you want, but the truth is, many of the most talented people in this business were not arseholes, and in my experience were happy to listen to the carefully considered opinions of those supposedly beneath them. We’ve lost the cachet, the glamour, the opportunities and the rewards that used to make this industry attractive to the very best creative thinkers in the country. Is fear the issue? Yes, but unfortunately it’s the current mealy-mouthed worrying that’s the problem, not the legacy of dominance of the brilliant talent of the past.

Yesterday I received the following email:

Hi Ben,

Curling cats (thanks, C).

Star Wars characters reimagined as 80s high school people (thanks, D).

Spongebob draws a Johnson (thanks, J).

People who tried to replicate cakes and NAILED IT! (thanks, K).

Eye Of The Tiger on a dot matrix printer (thanks, L):

Screaming dog sounds like dying man (thanks, D):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-lthKQa5io

Instant karma gifs (thanks, P).

Sweet Child O’ Mine as 20s New Orleans jazz (thanks, T).

Evolution of artist’s work from age 2 to 24.

Polanski on Chinatown:

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

It was done by my friends Diccon and Al at AMV and illustrated by Paul Pateman, who asked me to stick up this post as a plug, which I am delighted to do. Unfortunately the pictures have come out a bit stretched but I don’t know how to fix that 🙁

If you want Paul to illustrate something for you, get in touch at enquiries@pateontoast.co.uk

Make hair play Huey Lewis songs.

For some reason the one I chose was ‘Stuck On You’.

You’re going to choose ‘Power Of Love’, aren’t you?

I’m in the middle of judging this year’s Creative Circle awards.

Game Of Thrones series three, episode two just finished, so I decided to judge the Charity Posters category.

I might watch episode three then judge Press Campaigns.

This enormous convenience is possible because I’ve just been sent the links to do it online. My carefully considered decisions will then be passed on to the Gold Jury, who I believe will allocate the big awards in a more conventional manner (in the conference room of a big ad agency).

Jeremy from Creative Circle informs me that ‘This year we have 425 judges across 3 rounds. In round one any UK employed creative can register to judge. The only reason I need to say ’employed’ is to enable me to verify that they are indeed employed as a creative and not an aspiring creative. Round 2 has over 120 senior creatives judging and in the final Gold round we have 4 Juries. (1) Film and Film Craft. (2) Press, Outdoor and Radio. (3) Design and non film Craft. (4) Digital, Direct and Experiential. Every category has a Gold award allocated, whether the work is Gold worthy or not is yet to be seen. What I am hoping to achieve from this is the fairest voting system in the land where winning a Creative Circle Gold means something. I want to dilute the politics and prejudice that seems to poison other juries. I want the winning work to be a result of the collective opinion of the creative community.’ 

I can see where he’s coming from. Politics, bias and all that jazz are difficult to entirely avoid in the usual judging system, whether that’s because people feel like they ought to be more polite about the work if someone vaguely attached to it is in the room (people are supposed to leave the room during those discussions, but they often don’t ), or because there’s an agreement to block vote against a certain piece of work (definitely happens). Now there are so many preliminary judges and the voting is done so anonymously that much of the scope for that is gone. I suppose there is still a little scope for such corruption on the Gold jury, but you need the experts in each category to attend the final discussions so they can give the necessary information on how good a piece of sound design or digital gubbins might be.

But how do you feel about it? Do you prefer 8 blokes (usually) in a room with all the possible corruption that entails, or does anonymous and faceless rock your world a tad harder?

‘Someone’s stolen our tent.’

If you follow the world of books and publishing you’ll almost certainly have noticed the rise of self-publishing as a legitimate route for getting your work out to a wider audience.

In the old days (pre-2008, maybe), self-publishing was seen as a euphemism for vanity publishing, i.e. paying to have your book published because no proper publisher thought it good enough. But things have come a long way since then, and for many reasons self-publishing is now a legitimate route to market for work that isn’t shit after all.

The main reasons are these:

1. Difficulties with real publishing houses. Companies like Penguin (publishers of my first novel), Simon and Schuster, HarperCollins etc. only have the time and resources to publish a certain number of books, and even then they have to fit into a particular space in the market, or adhere to the current thinking about what might sell (I don’t say that to be denigrating; these are massive companies that are very good at what they do. My novel was published because the Technothriller genre had been poorly served for years, and Penguin saw that Instinct might appeal to the male fiction market). In addition they can be very slow: more than 18 months elapsed between Penguin’s initial interest and Instinct‘s publication, partly due to a rewrite, but mainly due to a need to launch it at the right time for Tesco to stock it. In the meantime my £20k advance, minus tax and agent fees, and spread across four payments, was starting look like an annual wage of £3000 – and £20k was a very good advance back then (It’d be even better now). I also have residual difficulties with rights etc. that I have gone into in this post. Having said all that, if I had my time again I would have done the same thing. Having that little Penguin on the cover of your novel is the kind of endorsement money can’t buy, and the halo effect of being a Penguin author has had many other benefits. But for the vast majority of authors, for reasons of quality and market suitability, being published by a big house is not an option. Smaller publishers are more likely to go for less straightforward (and often higher quality) books, but the gap for these is no bigger.

2. Money. My royalty on Instinct was 63p a copy, which doesn’t sound like much (because it isn’t). But I reasoned that selling loads of books at 63p a copy would be better than selling very few for £3 a copy, which is more like the kind of royalty you can get through self publishing. Amazon offers 70% royalty (they keep the rest, obv) on self published work over £2.99, so if you want to sell your book for a tenner you’ll get £7 back. I’d have had to sell 11 books to do that on my deal.

3. Why not? It costs little or nothing to put your book up for sale electronically, so you might as well see if you can get find a market for your work. Of course, most disappear without trace, but the overall return is far greater than either not publishing at all, or publishing conventionally. This report lays out the facts very clearly.

So I’ve been umming and ahing about what to do with the sequel to Instinct for the last six months. As I mentioned in the post I linked to above, the cons of going conventional could be seen to outweigh the pros, plus I’m curious about what will happen if I self-publish Pursuit (Instinct’s sequel). It’s not as if there’s no turning back: Pursuit can exist in the world of self-publishing, then be rewritten or republished elsewhere. And I know it’s good enough to be out there because I have the endorsement of a very good agent. So I think I’ll see how it goes.

(One thing I do need, however, is a cover, so if you’re up to help me with a bit of design (I’ll pay £100), get in touch on bwmkay@gmail.com and I’ll see if we can make beautiful music together. UPDATE: I’ve now accepted a very kind offer for this.)

Have any of you self-published, or bought books that have been self-published? All info gratefully received.

Amazing street drummer (thanks, N):

Adventure Time creator’s game pitches (thanks, C).

Celebs read out mean tweets about themselves (thanks, D).

The stories behind 23 Beatles songs.

The US army got cats high on acid (thanks, D):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UPLEwK70XA&feature=youtu.be

Cookie Monster x Tom Waits = genius (thanks, W):

And while we’re on the subject…

Orson Welles filming a wine commercial, shitfaced (thanks, W):

And while we’re on the subject…

Scientifically accurate Flintstones (thanks, D):

The Coen Brothers dissect their own films (thanks, T).

A camera falls from a plane into a pig pen (thanks, J):

Confessing things to people mid-conversation (thanks, J):

The Onion reviews Robocop (thanks, D).

Why Facebook advertising is a bullshit waste of time (thanks, V):