If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

(Thanks, S.)

Apparently, Trevor Beattie thinks the 30-second TV ad is ‘bullshit’ because we absorb information much faster than that. He says five seconds is the optimum length of message/consumption:

“30 second [TV ads] are ridiculously long, it is a lifetime,” he said. “People know within two seconds if they like something. The absorption of information is so fast these days it is amazing.”

Now, the slightly cynical part of me would suggest that Trevor (speaking at some conference) was looking for a headline-grabbing remark. I’m not saying he doesn’t think a 5-second communication is a good idea, but to say that thirty seconds is bullshit might be overstating the case somewhat.

To me it’s like the adage that we don’t read these days, when the truth is many of us read thousands of words on the internet every day. Can we cope with thirty seconds? Yes. Is five seconds going to work for all the things we want to say? No.

Having said that, I have to confess that I rarely watch longer things through to the end and if a clip says it’s going to be 2 1/2 minutes my heart sinks a little. But that depends what mode I’m in. I’ll gladly read a book for hours, but if I’m in ‘pissing around on the internet’ mode I’ll most likely feel a more pressing impatience. However, I can usually cope with 30 seconds.

I think that’s what behind this might be the standard of ads these days. It’s now so unlikely that a 30-second ad will be a rewarding use of your time that none of us is now inclined to choose that way of spending half a minute. Name a 30-second ad you’ve seen in the last year that you’d go out of your way to watch again. There might be five, but that means the odds are ridiculously low.

So what really matters may not be the timelength so much as what you choose to fill it with. As the big voice in Field Of Dreams almost said, ‘If you build it well, they will come’.

Just been reading this interesting article about the amount of work we should do to be as effective as possible.

If you can’t be arsed to read it it says there’s a lot of research to suggest that the optimum amount of effort for ‘elite’ workers is no more than three 90-minute bursts a day with frequent breaks. We should also have naps and get more sleep overall (sleep deprivation cost the US over $63bn last year).

We’ve probably all read similar studies over the years and reacted in similar ways: I wish I could do that, but the way my job is set up, there’s no chance of it happening. Ad agencies seem to have been moving to the quantity over quality model in recent years, leaving many of us producing a volume of ideas during late nights and weekends only to have the vast majority hit the waste paper bin (clearly, the client is only going to make one ad/campaign). But quantity can be measured by anyone with eyes and an IQ over 70: just look at the number of pieces of paper with ‘ideas’ on them. Quality, however can only be measured by a few, and here’s the kicker: those people are not always right. That leaves us unsure and insecure. We can’t have one idea; it might be the wrong one or it might come out at the wrong time. Let’s have tonnes, and in the process of killing some we’ll feel better about the others that live, for they will have ‘superiority’ over the dead.

Is that a good way to go about the production of work? Possibly. It’s clear that in producing more you are never going to make your best ad worse, and the further exploration will often result in reaching areas you would not have discovered on the first go. But then there has to be a point where an idea is chosen and developed and the more time you spend looking for the initial idea the less time you can spend working on the all-important execution of that idea. I could say that an ad with horsey waves would be brilliant for Guinness, but that’s a million miles from what ended up on our screens.

So can you maximise your working day and still have a life? Of course you can. I think the idea of working in shorter bursts makes a lot of sense. The 20 minutes where the ideas just flow with ridiculous ease should be familiar to most of us, as should the hour and half where it’s like trying to squeeze Dr Pepper from a pigeon. So I’m very much of the school of thought where you should find the method that works best for you and do that, and that’s what I tell my department. After all, I just want the best work and I don’t care how it happens: arrive late, arrive early, work on your own, work with your sister… If the end result is good that’s all that matters, and staying all night to do it can often do more harm than good.

Having said that, it only applies to concepting. Sometimes the demands of execution (creating edits/storyboards/layouts etc.) require longer attendance and that’s just an unfortunate fact of how long it takes to actually make something really good. It’s a shame about the hours, but I find the energy of practical ‘doing’ pretty invigorating.

What are your methods? Is there a giant shadow of presenteeism hanging over your department? Do you stop at your first thought or explore until your eyes bleed? Feel free to comment and educate the rest of us…

Amazing Scorsese documentary (you have to sign in. Thanks, D).

Peevertising (thanks, J).

…which reminded me of this. I am fully ashamed (not really) of how much it makes me laugh.

National Office Of Importance (thanks, R).

If superheroes were sponsored by brands (thanks, W).

Another funny series of emails that I don’t quite believe (thanks, W).

Blimey: porn stars without make-up (thanks, J).

Great explanation of religion (thanks, D):

Take your shot (thanks, G):

Very impressive juggling (thanks, G):

THIS is modern life in one story (thanks, J).

Billy Joel is nice (thanks, S & J):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p04TYk4j0zQ&feature=player_embedded

North Korean anti-USA propaganda film:

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

And finally, a very NSFW song about the Pope, from Tim Minchin (thanks, C):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=fLUSv-JBxos

Tom Kuntz directed it.

To me, it ain’t no Skittles Touch or Old Spice.

I know it’s a high bar, but this seems like one of those Skittles ads we’ve now forgotten about.

Like the one where the guy had a big head or a spotty face or something.

Peace out.

I’m not going to pretend I can dispense ultimate ‘how to CD’ advice.

There are people far better at the job than I who have been at it much longer.

But I think it’d be really interesting to hear from you about how you see the job: what makes a good one or a bad one; examples of illustrative CD moments; how important (or otherwise) they have been to you etc.

I’d love to hear from both CDs and those who have a CD about how the job is done, the difference it can make and how the things have changed for CDs in recent years (if at all).

I’ll kick us off:

I’ve worked for some pretty amazing CDs. Over the years I’ve had the pleasure of seeing my work improved by David Abbott, Dave Dye, Peter Souter, Paul Belford and Nigel Roberts (I’m going to stop writing that list because I’m bound to leave someone out), but they’ve come at the task from different positions. For example, Peter ran the agency as well as shaping the work, so he had an overall perspective that was different to, say, Dave Dye (AMV vintage) whose only job was to improve the creative standard of the work. To me that made Peter a little more pragmatic because he had input from a wider range of influences, whereas Dave was single-mindedly focussed on just one task. Dave made me work harder but Peter gave me a fuller idea of when to push and when to hold back.

When I freelanced the relationship was different because it was inherently temporary, but it allowed me to see far more of the good ones in action as I moved round London and Amsterdam. Working into Paul Silburn was a real education in terms of how he handled those ever-encroaching voices from planning and account management. He had a great sense of when to incorporate those non-creative comments and when to ignore them. He also showed how to keep the creative voice strong when it’s under threat and his unfailing eye for what the public wants was/is also a real asset to improving the work.

From my point of view of doing the job (this whole post started because someone from India sent me an email asking for my take on it as he had just been promoted to the position), I think that what you are ultimately paid to do is make decisions: this is right or wrong; that person should work on that kind of brief, not that one; we should stop now or go another round; that line is or isn’t consistent with the tone of voice; that person does or doesn’t need a raise; this issue should be delayed a day or dealt with now…

This list goes on and on, but that’s what it comes down to: making decisions that result in better work and happier people. Tony Cox once said that being a CD was like keeping the drinks topped up at a cocktail party. There’s a lot to be said for that, although I’d suggest it’s like keeping the drinks topped up at 31 cocktail parties simultaneously.

But sod what I think; what do you think?

Here’s an interview with Quentin Tarantino that you might find interesting:

Around the four minute mark Quentin starts talking about how he had recently analysed the ‘New Hollywood’ era of the last sixties and early seventies. In looking at those films he ended up comparing them to the nine best picture nominees of this year and came to the conclusion that this year, more than any other recent year, the best films have been proper, grown-up, intelligent movies.

Not only that, but if you look at the subject matter involved, many of them look like they would be either modest hits or commercial failures, whereas in reality many of them were massively successful (Django, Les Mis, Lincoln, Pi, Argo, Silver Linings Playbook, Zero Dark Thirty have all taken a fortune at the box office).

That’s interesting, because there’s a theory that the film business mirrors real life quite closely. The great films of forty years ago were made in the context of rebellion, political disaffection, paranoia, Vietnam, Nixon etc., and they ended up being driven from that attitude to be smarter and more questioning than usual. Following that time we’ve had many years of relative affluence and trust (even when we couldn’t respect Bush, Reagan, Clinton, Thatcher, Major and Blair, there was so much money coming in that no one minded enough to really make a stink about it), culminating in a new era of shakier politics, banking scandals, media and police lies, riots, protests, Guantanamo etc., that has combined with a massive recession to produce films that aren’t quite so much vanilla bullshit (Silver Linings Playbook aside).

Annoying that it takes a worse world to create better movies, but every cloud, eh?

The annotated wisdom of Louis CK (thanks, D).

Rules of Pixar storytelling.

Target is racist  (thanks, J).

Ridiculous distribution of America’s wealth:

Nazis were surprisingly fun people (thanks, J).

Everything wrong with Skyfall (not including Naomie Harris’s acting. Thanks, D):

Animals with fraudulent diplomas (thanks, J).

Hitchcock defines a MacGuffin:

Great pet names (thanks, J).

World’s worst puns, with Michael Portillo:

Creative uses of a penis pan (thanks , J).

Breaking Bad, 1995 style:

50 awesome Bill Murray moments (thanks, J).

Star Wars 7, directed by Michael Haneke.

Can someone Photoshop a sun between my fingers? (Thanks, J.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0JF4QxPpvM&feature=player_embedded

I guess its  heart is in the right place, but these are my problems with it:

1. As I pointed out on this blog about six years ago, Unilever, the company that owns Dove, also owns Lynx, possibly the greatest objectifiers of women in the history of mankind. So this is just a giant corporation doing whatever it thinks it has to do to sell stuff. Unilever obviously doesn’t really care about ‘real beauty’, so this just smacks of money grabbing bullshit. I’d rename it the campaign for real avarice, or the campaign for real condescension.

2. So we’re talking about the artifical enhancement of ‘real beauty’ are we? And where do you draw the line with that? Make-up? Plastic surgery? Flattering clothes? I guess you could say that women make their own minds up about those decisions but the effect is the same: woman sees other woman with great tits/big eyes/small bum, doesn’t take into account the make-up/surgery/clothing involved, feels a little less good about herself as a consequence. Same as retouching.

3. No art director who retouches women will give a shit about this. All that will happen is that they’ll get mildly irritated.

Otherwise, great.

I was thinking about my workmates the other day and wondering how many of them went to public school, how many went to state school and what difference it makes, if any.

For those of you who are wondering, I went to a public school called Westminster. It’s right in the middle of London, so we weren’t hidden away in the depths of the countryside, drinking vomit out of each other’s bumholes. Its location made it easy to enjoy culture and booze in quite large quantities, which was nice. I don’t know if there was any great connection to advertising, but Frank Lowe went there (I only found that out in the last few years) and when I was there his partner’s son (Leon Howard-Spinks) was in the year above. Then I went to Watford and I remember at least four ex-public school pupils out of twentysomething people in my year, a much higher rate than the 7% average for the whole country.

I then went to work at AMV and in the first couple of years another two people from my year joined planning and account management (one was Hugo Feiler, now MD at Grey), then another two girls from the year below. That’s a freakishly high average of people from one school to end up at one company (150 people leave Westminster every year), but AMV did have a fair few ex-public schoolers, some of them utter cocks. Was there a policy to hire them (mainly in account management) or was it just a case of like for like, with people at the top having been public school and hiring those people they most identified with (I don’t think David Abbott or Peter Mead went to public school; not sure about Adrian Vickers)? There might also have been a hangover of many clients being public school and the agency wanting to hire people who could identity with them, play golf with them and chat about soggy biscuit etc.

So… lots of ex-public school people in the industry, almost certainly higher than the country’s average, and that means a lower proportion of people who went to state school. So does it make a difference?

That’s a much harder question to answer (partly because I don’t know who exactly did and didn’t go to public school). Certainly, there are lots of very successful advertising people who went to state school (Dave Trott, my old boss Mike Cozens, Tony Davidson, to name but three), but has the over-population of richer, more privileged people changed the perspective the industry has on the people we’re supposed to be speaking to? Or has that education led to greater gains in certain areas?

Advertising is often accused of being out of touch with the people it supposedly talks to. The reason for that accusation is often laid at the door of our greater salaries and London lives, but I’d have thought there’s a case to be made for the greater number of ex-public school pupils adding to that distance. What is life like for a housewife in Warrington on £200 a week? For many people in this industry that’s a question that is only answered by watching an episode of Supernanny or My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding (and obviously that answer is both wrong and without substance).

Of course, many ex-public school pupils have created some quite brilliant ads (hello, Jeremy Craigen), and maybe their golfing presence in account management has smoothed the path of several D&AD winners, and maybe our different perspective on life has added some unexpected ways into advertising problems. So maybe the pros and the cons cancel each other out.

Or maybe not. What do you think? Are you from public school or state school, and what difference do you think it has made?