If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

If you walk down any street you’ll see a whole load of things that only exist because people want them.

Bookies, pubs, charity shops, Argos, McDonalds… Some might have a Crabtree and Evelyn or a Pizza Express or several interchangeable coffee shops.

In fact, people don’t just want them, they want them enough to justify an ongoing business.

And beyond those retail establishments we also have drainpipes, yellow lines, cars, people, dogs, houses, windows (I could go on, really I could: paving stones, bouncers, litter…). And they’re all there because people want them to be there.

Some human beings enjoyed the idea of backing up their differences of opinion with money, then at some point since then enough people agreed that this was a good way of spending time to justify entire multi-million-pound chains of bookmakers.

Other human beings liked to be able to drive up the street without parked cars getting in the way, so a bunch of them got together and arranged for people in charge to paint yellow lines next to the kerb and fine people for parking on them.

Still others came across dogs and quite liked their yappy warmth, or their ability to fetch stuff, so they trained them to be domesticated. Then so many other people liked this idea that they spent millions of pounds breeding them into types that would be most likeable, covering a very wide definition of that word. Then pet shops were created and here we are with loads of people owning loads of dogs.

They want them.

I find this interesting because I regularly catch myself dismissing all sorts of things as being ‘shite’ or ‘rubbish’ (e.g.: X-Factor, Adam Sandler movies, lots of types of trainers etc.). But the truth is they only exist because people like them, and if they’ve come to my attention, we’re probably talking millions of people. So they’re not shite or rubbish; they’re just some stuff I don’t like. But they exist because an awful lot of people disagree with me.

That doesn’t mean I can’t try to justify my dislike for them, but it does help put that in perspective sometimes (hint: especially when you’re a London media twat writing an ad for washing powder that needs to tickle the fancy of a housewife in Warrington).

Happy New Year!

Oddly named shoes, well reviewed (thanks, W).

50 years of Bond titles:

British person problems (thanks, A).

The Boat Race vandal being interviewed by the Taxi Driver Artist:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ou4TP2JXOw

Two young/new creatives called Rob and Joe sent me this the other day.

I hadn’t really thought about agency names for a while, so looking at that chart reminded me about all the fuss over Mother’s nomenclature. Back in the mid-nineties, when Mother was born, we all had a big laugh at an agency calling itself something other than the names of the founders. What tits these Mother people are! we guffawed as the siren notes of Roll With It wafted through the stench of stale Stella. Obviously since then we’ve stopped laughing at non-name names and embraced them with nary a raised eyebrow, an occurrence that is thanks in no small part to the massive success of the aforementioned Mother.

Now agencies (particularly those started by a couple of digi no-marks whose names mean nothing to anyone other than their immediate family) have fully embraced the opportunity to think of a word that sums them up, or doesn’t sum them up, or sounds nice, or sounds fucking stupid, leaving us with the reverse situation where the trio of names has become a decidedly odd way to top the agency stationery. Look at Adam and Eve, an agency that could quite reasonably been called Priest and the other two whose names I’ve forgotten (Golding, maybe?), but instead they went biblical on our asses and I still don’t know/care why they chose those particular words (why not Sodom and Gomorrah? Cain and Abel? Jesus and Barrabas?), but it’s worked, and there they are shoving poor old Doyle, Dane and Bernbach to the right hand side of the little plaque outside the office.

I can tell you from the one opportunity I had to name an agency that possibly less goes into it than you might have thought. We were given a few days to name what became Lunar BBDO and we went through everything from Cream to The House (an early press release had us named The House before some other company in the world of media told us we couldn’t use it. That’s the real problem: all the good names have been taken. I think Cream had also gone). Lunar was a last minute suggestion that we all liked, then like any good ad agency we post-rationalised the fuck out of it to pretend it was a very deliberate decision (Lunar… tides… change… the influence of the moon… blah blah blah). As time went on we realised it didn’t really matter at all, and as long as you don’t call you place Savile, Glitter and West, no one will really give a shit anyway.

As Jeremy Bullmore has so sagely pointed out on many occasions, things give names meaning, not the other way round. So spend a billionth of a second on the name and the rest of the time on making great work. That way your name will be cool, whatever it is.

Artistic longevity is a funny subject.

Despite the fact that we have many examples of artists who have remained vibrant beyond the age of retirement we are often surprised at this, as if the ability to express yourself creatively must wane with the passage of time.

The example I find most interesting is that of the Rolling Stones, who are often cited as the best defiers of old age. The fact that they continue to exist in the world of rock and roll seems paradoxical because the genre was a young man’s game for so many years. There were no septuagenarian rockers in the fifties and sixties, leaving us with an ingrained impression that the people who write and perform that music ought to be young. So as the Stones grew older many of the public saw their advancing age as inappropriate for the music. Their generation is the first of the ageing rock musicians, but there’s no reason why they shouldn’t keep going. Obviously they are self-employed, so there’s no one but the public to tell them to jack it in. If they’re enjoying it, their audience is still hungry and they continue to be artistically viable, then why not?

But they’re far from alone. Picasso, Michael Frayn and Lucien Freud are examples of people who have been at the top of their game long after supposed retirement age. In popular music alone we’ve just had great new albums from Bob Dylan and Neil Young that have compared favourably with their very best work.

So if we can accept that, why is advertising such an ageist industry?  It exists as a pyramid, full of young people at the bottom with progressively fewer oldies closer the top, and that’s despite the huge amount of purchasing power contained in the grey pound of the baby boomer generation. It is fundamentally neophiliac, with novelty prized above all else and occurring as a matter of course. You have awards that are heavily based on originality, marketing managers who throw out their predecessor’s successful campaign because it reflects badly on them and accounts being put up for statutory pitch so the procurement department can save a few quid: new, new, new. And with so much churn and a financial imperative to pay more younger people less than fewer older people, the industry continues to age like Benjamin Button.

But there’s an odd tacit admission in all this: almost all the people in advertising management are older. They are supposedly the best people in the business, able to judge the work of others and usher the entire agency in the direction required for greater success. So why aren’t more older people kept around to increase the overall level of quality? The answer, of course, is money: with cheap quantity prevailing over expensive quality. But what are we losing because of that? Lots of people leave the industry before they reach middle age, a time where they might be getting to their best, perhaps because they are deemed too expensive. Perhaps they threaten their boss’s job. Perhaps they leave by their own choice, but that has to come down to the fact they find another way of expressing themselves creatively for money to be more attractive. Shouldn’t we make them feel more welcome?

When it comes down to it the bottom line always seems to win, but we may never know how many Dylans, Picassos or Frayns we’re losing.

Brighton’s fantastic Christmas lights (thanks, D and V):

Warmest wishes from adland (thanks, J).

The greatest hip-hop songs of all time (thanks, A).

Procatinator (thanks, S).

CCTV footage of the ferry to Shetland (thanks, D):

Awesome people hanging out together (thanks, A).

Dildo knight destroys opponent (thanks, J):

110 predictions for the next 110 years (thanks, V).

Illuminated skateboard fun:

Real estate agents (thanks, J).

Dancebox (thanks, S):

here.

(Thanks, T).

As a society we have a strange relationship with money. Here are a few examples:

It costs a lot to go to Madame Tussauds but it’s free to go to the National Gallery. Pay £20 (or whatever) to see some crappy tat or pay nothing to see some of the greatest art in the history of the world. And yet the National Gallery is never so packed that you can’t get in and have some decent space to check out a Turner or two. But then there might be a temporary exhibition that contains works from the somewhat unloved permanent collection and you won’t be able to get a ticket for love nor money. 300 days of the year no one’s interested in the picture; add some hype and it’s bedlam.

Related to that is the oddness of the cinema. Movies cost the same no matter how expensive they are to produce – £13 for Amour is the same as £13 for Rise of the Guardians. But never mind how much it cost to produce; movies also cost the same no matter how good or bad they are. I know there’s no ultimate empirical measure of cinematic quality, but it’ll cost you the same to see Taken 2 as it will to see The Master. What if a movie became more expenisive depending on its rating on Rotten Tomatoes? And what about 3-D? Why is that the one production expense we have to pay more for (usually in shit films)? Then there’s having to watch ads before the movie. On Youtube you are able to click ads off after five seconds and that site is free. In the cinema you pay up to £20 a ticket to sit through something you’d switch off at home, or pay money to avoid on Spotify or Kindle. So it’s widely accepted that people will pay to avoid ads, but you can’t do it at the cinema. They don’t even have an exact timetable so you can come in when the ads are over (ads: 3.20. Trailers: 3.35. Movie: 3.45). Why not? Don’t they want to get more people into the cinema instead of pissing them off? Or is it part of the deal with the advertisers that timings are kept vague?

A similar situation happens with books. Many of the greatest books in history are available almost for free, but the latest Jeffrey Archer might cost £20 in hardback. Here is something that is universally agreed to be ‘better’ that will cost you nothing, and here’s a load of crap that will set you back £20. Which you would you prefer? ‘Oooh, could I please have the expensive crap?’

The poorer people are, the higher the proportion of their salary they give to charity. Do people become richer because they’re tighter? Possibly, but I think the reason behind this is that if you earn £100k then the idea of giving £5000 to charity isn’t that appealing. But if you earn 20k you’ll be more likely to give away closer to £1000.

And what about airlines? The Easyjets and Ryanairs are much cheaper if you book early, but surely the tickets sold at the end of the booking period are the ones they really need to get rid of. If they’re left with a planeload of people who all paid £10 then surely that’s bad business. What it comes down to is a subtle tax on our lack of organisation. Or, to put it another way, a kind of reward for being organised. How odd that airlines reward us for thinking ahead.

The sites people use the most these days, such as Facebook and Youtube, are basically free (leaving aside their crappy attempts to slip ads in and monetise the experience), but we resent the hell out of any attempt to change them in a way that inconveniences us for the generation of cash. But it must cost many millions to run Twitter etc., and they give a great deal of pleasure, so why are we against paying a little to make them happen? I think it’s because they started for free (as they have to in order to get the early punters in), and when that changes people are not happy about it. I guess the Times’s move from free to paid for is an example of what can happen there: some money comes in but people desert the experience in droves (‘I have to  pay for high-quality journalism? Like I’ve done for years and years in the past? Fuck that.’). And then there’s always the good old BBC, which some of us pay a sort of tax on each year, allowing people from around the world to use it for free. And of course that’s always going to provide some pretty stiff competition to any of the newspapers that actually want to make some cash.

So why do we pay for some greater elements of quality and quantity and resent others? What seems worth the cash and what doesn’t? It must be very difficult to price anything that isn’t a solid thing to be owned. All the above are abstract experiences that bring some sort of pleasure or stimulation, and that’s totally subjective and therefore pretty darn hard to put a price on.

Excellent police motorcyclist (thanks, S):

The bad Santa gallery (thanks, T).

Man raps to Chris Brown’s ‘Look At Me Now’ in Family Guy voices (thanks, S):

Crazy Russian drivers (thanks, R):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXz4P6EpX3s

Game of Thrones as Seinfeld (thanks, S):

There was a Frankie Goes To Hollywood video game on the Spectrum (thanks, T):

Amazing Christmas lights set to Gangnam Style (thanks, S):

People having a worse day than you (thanks, B).

Best receipts.

25 best Dr Dre beats (thanks, A).

Pictures of hipsters taking pictures of food (thanks, W).

Shit London.

100 masters of animation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiA3C5JCnsQ&feature=player_embedded

White Christmas, Gangnam Style:

http://vimeo.com/54526179#

If Gand Theft Auto starred a horse (thanks, T):

Fun to watch.

A good truth about laydeez and parties and all that.

Well shot.

I like it.

Nice one.

(Interest declared: I know Rob and Mike, who are the very talented creatives behind it.)