If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

When I were a lad all round here were campaigns: series of ads with common features and a common idea that continued to build a deep, long-lasting message for a brand.

There was Peter Kay’s No-Nonsense John Smiths ads, Good Things Come To Those Who Wait for Guinness, and the majestic years of Economist Red-On-White poster work, to name but three.

Happiness Is A Cigar Called Hamlet and Heineken Refreshes The Parts Other Beers Cannot Reach rubbed shoulders with Stella’s Reassuringly Expensive and Levi’s feature-based run of classics.

Now all of the above have disappeared (some temporarily resurrected then killed again), and as I look around I see very few actual campaigns where you know what structure the next one will follow and then the point it will make.

It seems we have campaigns that either manage but a few executions (Sony Bravia Balls, Paint and Bunnies; Cadbury Gorilla, Eyebrows, Airport) or campaigns that feel like a series of very tenuously connected one-offs (the current Ikea work, John Lewis, Old Spice). Obviously there are some examples of great work within those examples, so perhaps we don’t need campaigns as such, but I’m interested in why such a successful advertising form, one that built on years of affection and interest as each execution went by, has seemingly bitten the dust.

Is it because clients leave their jobs after a short time, only to have their successors look to make their own mark by starting from square one?

Is it because the talent is no longer strong enough to support years of quality?

Is it because clients are now happy that their brand is a simple word (‘progress’, ‘love’, ‘thrive’), from which executions can spin off in myriad directions?

For a good example, look at Lynx/Axe: it started off with a solid idea from which dozens of great ads can and did spring (spray this on yourself and become attractive to beautiful women). Then it went a bit odd:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhgU0euVL_s

A great ad, but now the idea is: keep up with a demanding girl.

Then even odder:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4Iwgl2hbd8

idea: you won’t get laid if your competition is an astronaut.

So bang goes the central idea, replaced by some other stuff.

But no one else seems to mind, or even seems to have noticed.

I just can’t help wondering if it’s another ingredient in the current ad malaise.

Here’s a follow-up to that moms-help-you-out-or-something ad for the 2012 Olympics:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57e4t-fhXDs

It’s very well made, and the idea’s a good ‘un, but I really wanted to see this alternative angle:

Open on lots of shots of moms putting plasters on little kids who have been hit, and consoling others for being bullied.

This gets worse as the kids grow older until we see moms visiting older kids in hospital after they’ve been beaten up with baseball bats and knives. Or perhaps we see a mom finding her son hanging from his bedroom ceiling. Maybe there’s a mom identifying her son’s body after he’s been tortured to death or another after he’s been sodomised with beer bottles then set on fire.

Endline: We decided not to sponsor the Winter Olympics because Russia practices and preaches institutionalized state homophobia.

Fuck Russia.

Signed, P&G

Just a thought.

How about it, P&G?

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

It’s the touches.

I mean, the idea is lovely, but it’s the executional details (eg: the mom hiding behind the cleaner) that must have come after the initial idea that really make this wonderful.

That campaign is a tough act to follow, but they keep doing it.

You know where the hat is going?

That’s right: off.

UPDATE:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW7Fmi8_kfU

Welcome to 2014, a year in which Faye’s comet will reach perihelion and Russia will demonstrate its hatred of homosexuality by staging the calendar’s campest event: The Winter Olympics.

That aside, I know what you’re thinking: it’s been three/four/five days and I need a fucking drink right fucking now.

Either that or you’ve promised yourself this will be the year in which you achieve something significant or memorable outside of your expected daily tasks. Perhaps you intend to reduce the extent to which your abdominals resemble a hundredweight of uncooked bread dough, recreate the Bayeux Tapestry out of liquorice, or resign, go to work for Amnesty and actually make some sort of positive contribution to planet earth.

Whichever it is, you’ll need a little fillip, and that’s where the 157th most influential advertising blog in the world comes in.

Here’s a little video I watched the other day of a conversation between Tim Ferriss and Neil Strauss, which not only contains absolutely all the essential tips, helpful websites and effectiveness strategies you need to write a book, but also many pieces of advice that can apply to any goal you might have taken on:

See you in 365 days with your tasks completed…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8nJKWJTsUg

Sorry about that.

To balance it out, here’s Coppola and Lucas discussing Kurosawa and Kagemusha:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLPV3nUyTvwwrDy2K-Bj3TSLJ1EoZMeV5T&v=S_f9E-qd6Os

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

And a chat with Scorsese and Coppola:

Michael Caine teaches film acting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjqkQlvCs-M

Quentin Tarantino, David. Russell, Ben Affleck, Ang Lee, Tom Hooper and Gus Van Sant chat film:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAK3aUq25fo

Woody Allen on Parky:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldBQ4icOzWk

Hitchcock Masters Of Cinema interview:

Scorsese interviewed at Brown University:

And the only thing that matters to any of us is love:

I’ve written before about the fine line between getting the most from your staff and abusing the grey area that allows you to ask them to extend their working hours.

When I was a freelancer the difference became very clear: I might be called in to work a Sunday, but I’d be offered an extra day’s pay for that inconvenience (sometimes a day and a half). The full-timers had to do the same extra hours as part of their contract, so their happiness wasn’t quite as colossal as mine. From my perspective it seemed as if many Creative Directors were sneakily getting the work of a person-and-a-half for the salary of a single person.

Now, I’m not saying for a minute that people should never have to work weekends or evenings – it’s often in their interests as campaigns get completed on time and at a higher quality, conferring benefits on both the agency as a whole and possibly the creatives themselves – but there has to be a limit to those requests and ideally some sort of time-in-lieu compensation, if possible.

When you just work people to death, you can end up, well, working people to death. When that article was left on a comment on this blog last week another commenter said:

I work for an Asian company, albeit in London. They are totally mental, have no regard for human life and are obsessed with status (hence the buckets of scam awards they crave). It probably wasn’t the 3 days straight that killed the poor fucker but rather the years of abuse leading up to it. Look at the education league. Korea top for education and child suicide. What matters?

What matters indeed? Probably not the ad the poor copywriter was working on. But I think we’re all aware of the pressure that often exists alongside the presenteeism that infects so many agencies. These days, when the client is an even more powerful king than it was before, the feeling that we ought to be supplying ever more ‘routes’ and ever more executions of each route in ever more media channels sits like a giant cloud over many creative departments. It’s very difficult to measure the subjective value called ‘quality’ but no such problem exists when it comes to quantity. Just place a ruler against the pile of paper or count the pages of the Keynote; the extent of our devotion is right there in Googled images and YouTube references.

So what does this all come down to? Well, the comment I left suggested it’s up to all of us (employers and employees) to take responsibility for the situation. Asking people to work hours that are seriously detrimental to their health is ultimately of no benefit to anyone, just as working 30 hours on a Red Bull drip can only end in disaster. There’s no need to continue flogging the already well-flogged, just as there is no need to behave like a compliant serf for the umpteenth day in a row.

But I also understand that perhaps that’s easier said than done, and that some will feel the pressure more than others, and feel less able to speak up. That’s where employers must be as vigilant. We don’t have the physio data that tells professional  football managers when their players are entering the ‘red zone’, but we all have experience, eyes and ears. Using them to avoid misery, decreasing performance and death seems like the least we can do.

So how do you feel about your own situation? Are you overworked? On the edge? Just dandy? Let us know…

New reaches me this week of two interesting new takes on the idea of getting people to drink less.

Coincidentally both come from AMV BBDO, where people are sober all the time and they don’t have a bar in the office (except for that one on the ground floor).

The first is the latest attempt to encourage people not to drive the morning after they drink.

http://vimeo.com/82306078

Apparently they took the actor out for a lot of drinks and then got him to record the voice track.  Then they shot the same actor a couple of days later (sober) as he lip synched to his drunk self. No post production; just booze.  Dominic Savage directed.

So it’s nice to know that getting people drunk can lead to fewer people getting drunk.

Talking of fewer people getting drunk…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=od9vBBDXakc

I assume that was also done in camera. Good to come at the same issue from the angle of humour.

Here’s hoping they both work.

Why Thriller was such a great album (thanks, T).

Really fucking pointless photoshopping of Jennifer Lawrence (thanks, J).

Michel Gondry animates Noam Chomsky (thanks, R):

What words were invented the year you were born? (Thanks, J.)

Director and writer audio commentary from Taxi Driver:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2U_flduhfss

Leo, Jonah and Marty on The Wolf Of Wall Street (thanks, J):

Guy apes real estate ads (thanks, J).

Fashion or porn? (NSFW; thanks, D).

Amazing tilt shift pictures of cosmos (thanks, S).

Are you a writer? Fancy a free house in Detroit? (Thanks, T.)

I was sent this rather nicely shot, NSFW ad the other day (thanks, S).

It’s a spoof of this campaign from Hennessy, which is a load of old poo.

Here’s what the director, Andrea J Colomb has to say about it:

I guess I’ve always wondered why no one has ever taken the piss out of ‘What’s Your Wild Rabbit?’. Asking for trouble… and why not poke fun at a 70 million dollar, pretentious ad campaign and a billion dollar corporation with my 5 dollar (and a lot of favours) film?