If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

I’ve had three long-term art directors and they’ve all left the country (I’m trying not to take it personally).

Two of them are now CDs at Droga 5 in Sydney (excuse me if I got the exact job title wrong, D and C; I think one of you is also head of art), while the other is the CD or ECD of Saatchis Vietnam, so it seems to have worked out quite well for them.

Other friends of mine, such as Dylan Harrison and Simon Veksner, have also made a great success of moving Down Under, and they’re far from the only ones. I recently joined LinkedIn only to discover that many ex-colleagues are now working very successfully all over the world.

And that seems pretty impressive.

Back in the day, when the UK was the envy of the world ad game, the idea of moving abroad was stigmatised as some kind of admission of failure. Why, after all, would you move from the best? If you did so that would have to be a move downwards. But now we’re all aware that great work can come from almost any country on the planet (except Micronesia; their Cannes record is a fucking shit show), and it’s no coincidence that so many Brits have ended up surfing (geddit??!) the wave of Antipodean excellence.

Obviously this isn’t all a result of the rise of other nations; it’s also a consequence of a drop in the quality of UK work. But what came first, the brain drain or the off-putting British shiteness (and weather)? Has there been an overall drop in global quality? If so, this is not a UK exodus so much as people reaching a certain point in their careers and making the most of a new opportunity. Like I said, it seems to have gone well for many of them, so it seems like they made the right decision.

So, as someone who has yet to leave this scepter’d  isle, I’d like to know: have you left your home country? Has it worked out? Why did you do it? Would you ever go back?

Answers on a postcard…

Shop window displays on the eve of Kennedy’s funeral (thanks, T).

Amazing rap names poster (thanks, J).

Hitchcock’s definition of happiness (thanks, J):

Adventure Time’s writers’ tips.

Charlie Kaufman screenwriting lecture. Amazing life lessons here (thanks, J).

Insanity and animation at the next level (thanks, C):

Unexplainable images (thanks, G).

Bjork explains TV (thanks, A).

Too much awesome (thanks, J).

The sublime Orson Welles frozen peas rant (thanks, V):

Interesting pair of comments on the blog today:

Anonymouse says…

Dunno why but all these advertising self-references put me off the industry. All the tumblrs, the virals, etc. I just hate them.

I think it’s because they always make out like we do a stupid job. Which doesn’t have to be the case. It used to appear quite cool. Now we position ourselves as childish and moronic.

To which Crappywriter replies thus…

I think you’re right. But, with our collusion, we have allowed a once reasonably noble industry with clever people doing wonderful things to become moronic. We are moronic. You only have to go to a tissue meeting with a client to understand that we are now cunts.
Maybe you don’t like these things because they are true.
I no longer give a fuck. I have been in it a long time and they’ve won. We have lost. If you give a fuck you go mad. Just take the money, say “leverage” at meetings, write their stupid ads that make them happy and laugh at them behind their backs.
That’s what I do.

I think that’s a fascinating subject/point/area.

There’s a lot of truth in what Crappywriter says about the state of the industry; the job has changed enormously, and now the days in which the swashbuckling genius of a Carty and Campbell was hitched to a maverick visionary like Kaye or Glazer, seem as distant as the days in which Greece produced the world’s entire supply of enlightened thinking. Our stock has fallen and, like a climate change denier, you’d have to be wilfully bloody-minded to be under any other impression.

But what to do about that?

Relatively good work and/or salaries are still possible, of course, but the 90s don’t appear to be on their way back, and those days of helicopter shots in the Mojave have indeed been replaced with huge numbers of tissue meeting wankathons (for most people. I’d just like to say, for the avoidance of doubt, that my job genuinely involves none of that stuff and I’m quite delighted about it), but can anything be done about the seemingly inexorable slide to further dreadful hours in Slough pretending to give a shit about brand equity?

Well, the short answer is always ‘yes’. How can it not be? If Gandhi kicked Britain out of India, and Mandela led his country after 27 years inside, then you – yes, you – can sure as hell take a once-great industry back to its halcyon days. And the moment you think it’s impossible it will indeed be so.

So the question is do you care enough to put in the effort to change it, or would you rather be pissed off with your lot and see out your days Slough-bound?

There’s no right or wrong answer. All I’d say, as Gandhi would, is ‘be the change you want to see in the world’.

But of course, if you don’t really want to see that change, carry on as you are. Nothing bad’s going to happen, except you could well get to the end of your life and reflect on what might have been in a way that makes you cry quite a lot in front of your grandkids.

Seems like a bit of a waste of your time here…

(Thanks, D.)

Great pisstake.

Where are the boundaries in frightening people on behalf of a large corporation?

Obviously we ad people are unofficially paid to elicit emotional reactions from those who ‘enjoy’ our output, but no one ever seeks to define those reactions beyond what is considered to be against the wishes of Clearcast.

Real tear-jerkers, such as the new Sainsbury’s and John Lewis ads, are completely fine, but if you tried to put a brain-munching zombie in your commercial you wouldn’t stand a chance. Despite that, these ambient fear-based stunts never seem to be subject to the same kinds of strictures as their TV cousins.

Of course the ambient stuff has no regulatory body to insist on what’s right or wrong, but how far can we then go in scaring, swearing or stimulating the genitalia of an unsuspecting public?

Would anyone like to give it a proper go and report back?

(Thanks, D.)

Amazing.

It sells hard.

It entertains like a motherfucker.

My next truck will be one of them Volvos.

Realistically colourised historical photos.

Brilliant police mug shots from the 1920s (thanks, J).

Fancy a Stormtrooper costume? (Thanks, D.)

Disney princesses with lustrous beards (thanks, J).

the Terry Gilliamification of great art (thanks, S):

Movie poster clichés (thanks, B).

Peel garlic very quickly (thanks, L).

White supremacist is part African.

The world’s worst Tesco (thanks, J).

Books with the most Amazon stars.

Shitty photos of couples (thanks, B).

Worst toys ever (thanks, J).

Best corporate Twitter conversation of all time (thanks, T).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49sKKbmuQCg

This is a really good one. I think it’s what Tesco’s wishes it was.

It smothers Tesco’s effort in brandy butter then sets light to it.

Great observations, and even though you know (I assume) that this was all shot in August, it feels really genuine (see ‘truth’ post below).

And it got me 94% of the way to a tear or two.

UPDATE: apparently it’s all genuine footage from last Christmas. That makes it even better.

ACTUALLY, SECOND UPDATE: the more I think about it, the more the ‘money shot’ (the returning soldier) bothers me. The other scenes are just gently funny reminders of the Christmas we all love and enjoy; THAT shot is a giant supermarket that makes hundreds of millions of pounds a year using the incredibly emotional moment of a soldier retuning safely to his family for the purpose of selling Jaffa Cakes/sprouts/cheap whisky. I don’t see what one has to do with the other and feel a bit like another giant corporation has cynically used a family’s emotion to make a bit more money.

Thoughts?