If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

Beautifully shot, makes sense and is, as far as I know, original.

That’s a great combination.

Hi Ben,

This being the week of Cannes, many creative people are on the continent who would not otherwise be.

Last week I caught up with a couple of good friends who are now Aussie CDs. Coincidentally both of them did the same thing that I found odd’n’interesting: the work they mentioned having been part of or impressed by was the kind of thing that you would only have seen if you found the time to watch case study films.

I won’t use the real names (combination of anonymity and can’t quite remember the details and don’t want to get them wrong), but as they said, ‘Have you seen Persil Island?’ or ‘He did Smarties House Party’, I looked a little blank. This is not in any way to denigrate these fine achievements, but it’s an interesting illustration of how diverse and award-centric these conversations have now become.

Back in the day you would see a TV ad, or maybe a poster, in real life, then when someone mentioned it you could have a chat about its merits.

Then both scam advertising (no way you’d see that on real TV) and the rise of international work (ditto) meant that you’d have to seek out the work in Lürzer’s or wait for the D&AD annual/One Show to come out (and there were still no case study films to watch). But the number of ads you ‘should’ have seen was still manageable.

Then blogs (such as this one) showed the best ads in the world as soon as they became available. In fact, part of the PR machine for ads feeling big and known deliberately includes these channels, so you might well see the award-y work well before it actually wins anything.

But now we have the rise of the case study film, where so many award schemes require the two-minute explanation of the campaign for it to be successful in any way. Several categories (Branded Innovation etc.) need such films, while categories that never used to (Outdoor) now routinely give explanations about posters that power villages or elaborate stunts that take over a Danish square with old ladies dressed as bikers.

All well and good, but when do you watch them? I assume other ad blogs etc. show these films, but I never really come across them (nor am I particularly keen to do so), except over the next fortnight, when I’ll watch the absolute best on the Cannes website. Then that’s it for another year, and I will be condemned to offer further blank expressions when told about Nike: Project Frottage or Uniqlo Tramp Wank Week.

Apologies in advance.

A couple of days ago an author friend emailed to ask how I make time to write. This was my reply:

I write a fair bit after I’ve gone to bed (11-12:15). 

Then I read this interesting blog post on the subject.

To be a little more complete than the above I’d add that I don’t watch a great deal of TV (I think Fashion Police is literally the only programme I refuse to miss, and I do a box set every month or two, but that’s it). Yes, my job is demanding, particularly at the end of the day, but there’s always a bit of time between when I get home (and hopefully put the kids to bed) and when I go to sleep. I try to use it to write because the bottom line is this:

There is no other way to create a novel (or short film, or Lego representation of Yoda).

You have to find the time, and it’s right there, waiting for you to use it.

Of course, the majority of people don’t use their spare time for that purpose, or for anything ‘constructive’, and there’s nothing wrong with that. The point I’m making is to promote one thing only: workability. If you want to do x, be that writing a book, playing with your kids or making dinner, you have to make the time to do it, otherwise it won’t happen.

And that might be stating the obvious, but unfortunately obviousness doesn’t correlate with likelihood.

Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park for the duration of Jurassic Park (thanks, J).

What people are Googling in real time (thanks, G).

Bask in this wonderful guitar playing (thanks, T):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXq4GlHgROQ&feature=share

This site, gangsta slanged (thanks, C).

Best movie phone conversation (thanks, G):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hroUeu4IvpE

Desk safari (thanks, J).

The construction of Disneyland:

Ghost stations of the London Underground (thanks, J).

Amazing Mortal Kombat flick book (thanks, S):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDNjIEU0lFk

And another fine Mortal Kombat link (thanks, A. Another flip book here):

Kinetic type: Conan O’Brien.

Alf from Home and Away, not quite as I remember him (thanks, A):

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

Letterman asks about drums (thanks, O):

Kim Dotcom, the raid (thanks, G):

Over the years of writing this blog I’ve read many comments that suggest one kind of advertising is better or worse than other; that producing mediocre or even shit ads is somehow an awful way to spend your life; that some art forms offer true creativity and are therefore superior to others.

Well, maybe that’s the case, but maybe it’s just bullshit. Is The Wire better than EastEnders? You could certainly find millions who would argue each side of that. Is Dylan better than One Direction? Ditto. And when it comes to art, as in art, does Picasso beat Renoir, Chagall or Rubens? If so, why?

Of course, there is no ultimate measure of such things, only subjective opinions that swirl around looking bigger or smaller, more or less right depending on who is talking and who is listening.

But fuck all that. Let’s lay the order out properly so you know what a valuable or pathetic person you really are:

Art: proper old art like that renaissance stuff comes first, and paintings ahead of sculptures. Then modern stuff, with the more famous being superior to people you’ve never heard of. The more other people say it’s great, the better it is, and that applies to almost all art.

Literature: The old stuff gets the best press. Shakespeare and Dickens (I know Shakespeare’s were plays but it’s writing, innit?) seem to be the giants of the form, then all those nineteenth century Jane Austen/Thomas Hardy/Dostoyevsky/Flaubert types. 20th century guys like Joyce/Fitzgerald/Faulkner/Nabokov/Steinbeck etc. Then modern ones like Amis, Coetzee and Rushdie. Middlebrow people like Nick Hornby come next, followed by commercial fiction, romance and Jordan novels.

Film: modern masters such as Kubrick, Scorsese, Coppola etc. win, but only in their 70s heyday. Then the old greats: Hawks, Welles, Wilder, Ford etc. Then the best of the new, such as the Coens and Paul Thomas Anderson. Then drop down a level in each of those categories and keep going until you reach Michael Bay. Indies always beat blockbusters.

Music: up there with film, but in a different way. Boring people like classical music; cool people like rock. Dylan, Hendrix, The Beatles, all that stuff… You can’t really compare it to Mozart or Beethoven, so don’t even try. Pick your faves and you can make a case for most of them (except Steps and the Vengaboys).

Photography: Classic greats such as Cartier-Bresson, Lartigue, Man Ray, Cappa, Strand etc, then anyone who has worked for Magnum, then the reportage fellas like Salgado and McCullin, then modern people like Gursky, who are further down the list because they use post, the cheating bastards.

TV: this is now close to passing photography. Its only problem is it has yet to make its way into art galleries where it can bask in the reflective glow of the surroundings. Of course stuff like Mad Men, The Wire, Breaking Bad etc. are the current best and best of all time (we’re in a golden age, people; enjoy the fuck out of it). Then there’s old stuff that people say is good, like Our Friends In The North and House of Cards, then good old comedy like Blackadder and Fawlty Towers and finally, everything else.

Advertising: this is the order: cinema, TV, posters, press, experiential wank, radio, digital, below the line. And then: big brands like Apple, VW, Nike etc., then small brands you’ve never heard of, then big brands that are boring and shit, like Asda. So a good ad for Nike in press beats a great ad for Cif in cinema. It’s all about tell-your-mates-ability. Good work is always cooler, but the bigger the brand, the better. Advertising people might care more if you knock a boring brand out of the park, but your mates probably won’t understand why that’s such a big deal. In the world of advertising people good work for shitty brands is given three extra marks out of ten for difficulty, but like I said: no one else gives a toss

Of course, none of the above is true. I just made it up to give you something to fume/chortle about on a Thursday morning.

(Except secretly you know it is all 100% true and it either bruises your soul or makes you swell with pride to admit it.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=TrBMb82iv4Q

Interesting campaign, this one.

Comes out of the product in two ways, completely distinctive, simultaneously makes no sense and lots of sense.

What’s not to like?

Here’s that ad-whore Audrey Hepburn selling out for Galaxy.

I’m surprised she agreed to do it, really. After all, she was always incredibly thin thanks to an eating disorder developed during the German occupation of her home country of Holland. In the Dutch Famine that followed in the winter of 1944, the Germans blocked the resupply routes of the Netherlands’ already-limited food and fuel supplies as retaliation for railway strikes that were held to hinder German occupation. People starved and froze to death in the streets; Hepburn and many others resorted to making flour out of tulip bulbs to bake cakes and biscuits

When the country was liberated, Hepburn said in an interview that she fell ill from putting too much sugar in her oatmeal and eating an entire can of condensed milk. Hepburn’s wartime experiences then sparked her devotion to UNICEF.

So she wasn’t really that into eating shitty chocolate on a bus, not that Mars or whoever is behind that ad gives a fuck.

Last week I had the pleasure of meeting a potential new agent (I’ve finished the sequel to Instinct but my old agent wasn’t quite right for me. He got me a good deal with Penguin but he didn’t have enough experience in exploiting my further rights for movies, video games etc. Also, he wanted to concentrate more on non-fiction. We parted amicably).

The new guy is Darley Anderson, and he’s the agent of people like Lee Child and Martina Cole, so he knows a thing or two about selling books.

Our conversation was very interesting because it highlighted several issues about the literary world that hadn’t really occurred to me and probably don’t occur to the vast majority of people who read or write books.

The main difference between Darley and most of the other literary agents is his commitment to publishing as a business. Most of us consider books to be special things that see us through our first break-up, or a trying bout of glandular fever when no friends were allowed to visit for six months. Of course that’s true, but they are also ‘things’ that need to be ‘sold’ otherwise large corporations go ‘bust’, and if that happens no one gets to read about incidents of dogs in the nighttime or lives of Pi. Commercial fiction financially props up literary fiction. Without Martina Cole there is no Hillary Mantel, so we can either acknowledge and foster the writing of the books that sell millions of copies in airports or we can look down our noses at them for failing to be Thomas Hardy or Kazuo Ishiguro. (By the way, I am fully aware that ‘literary’ fiction can sell in great numbers, but it does so far less often than commercial fiction.)

So we discussed Lee Child a great deal and he told me that Lee has absolutely no interest in becoming a ‘brand’ himself. He is only interested in promoting the brand of Jack Reacher. This is based on the fact that Harry Potter, James Bond and every superhero ever invented are far more memorable and powerful than the people who created them. Lee and Darley fight tooth and nail to reduce Lee’s name on his covers and increase the point size of Jack.

Lee  seemed to have a very pragmatic vision for the massive success of his novels from the outset. He writes a book every year without fail (sometimes two), working from September to March. You can guarantee there will be a Jack Reacher novel out in hardback in September, to be followed by a paperback for the holiday market the following summer. That’s what the creation of a brand is: the consistent supply of what your consumers want, and that doesn’t necessarily mean following a kind of formula as Lee/Jack does; it can also mean literary eclecticism along the lines of Ian McEwan’s output. His fans expect a well-written novel, often with some shocking violence and dark humour, but the inconsistency of his output is his brand, so people expect the unexpected. Along the same lines, many actors and musicians have a brand (AKA something they are very good at). When Tom Cruise leaves the action hero brand people tend not to bother with his films, even though he’s a massive star. Equally, The Rolling Stones brand of edgy rock is incredibly strong, but if Mick Jagger tries to step outside it with some solo work, no one is interested. People love Cadbury’s Dairy Milk, but Cadbury’s Smash failed because it went outside the brand.

So you have to choose your game. Do you try to create a deliberate degree of consistency that will have people returning for more of what they’ve already liked, or do you believe that literature is a pure art form that consists of whatever the muse drops into your lap, or whatever stories you need to tell? I believe there’s nothing wrong with either route, but both involve playing a different game to provide distinct benefits for the people that play them. If you want money or (in my case) to make a movie from your story then creating a commercial fiction brand will drastically increase the odds of both those things coming your way. However, if you want to feel you have artistic integrity, or indeed artistic quality (however subjective that notion) then you probably want to just write ‘books’ and not really mind that they don’t sell that many copies and need to be compatible with a day job so that you can pay the rent (of course, most books exist in the area in between the two).

This can then throw up the thorny issue of whether or not you aim for the absolute pinnacle of everything you try to do, and what that really means. We could all try to be Dickens, but even he was thought of as a commercial fiction writer who was disregarded until many years after his death. Is it wrong to aim for popularity and not spend years searching for every single one of the mots justes? Like I said, there is no wrong. You are allowed to try to do things that aren’t what other people consider to be the best use of your time. It’s probably best to just aim for something that makes you happy and fulfilled, then spend your life trying to achieve it. You might find that the journey leads you to a destination you weren’t expecting.

(PS: Lee on how he writes. Great advice.)

Living movie stills (thanks, G).

The people you see on Jeremy Kyle (thanks, T).

Danny Boyle’s 15 Golden Rules of Filmmaking (thanks, L).

Let’s hear it for Patrick Stewart on domestic violence:

Alan Fletcher’s archive (thanks, W).

Remarkable commentary for Lionel Mesi goal (thanks, G):

Famous people’s business cards.

What stand up comedy is all about (thanks, E):

Realistic newspaper comment simulator (thanks, W).

Detailed Back To The Future timeline (thanks, G).

Wonderful hate mail from Mr. Bingo (thanks, S).

Crazy Kit-Kit flavours (thanks, J).

What’s not to love about David Bowie?

Johnny Rotten on Judge Judy (thanks, G):

Generate an excellent movie concept – instantly!(Thanks, A.)