If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

What happens when you drop acid and interview Danny Dyer? (Thanks, J).

Name 10 things that aren’t Skrillex:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Z1RRslsFxA&feature=player_embedded

Steve Wonder drum solo. Bullshit is that guy blind (thanks, E):

Very funny mapping stereotypes (thanks, D).

Lots of space shuttles taking off and looking groovy (thanks, G):

http://vimeo.com/27505192

Legal analysis of 99 Problems (thanks, P).

A clam eating salt off a table:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Qp1nrhJAX3I

Celebrities close up (thanks, P).

Illustrated A-Z of unusual words (thanks, K).

If you missed this in the comments section of the HBO post here is an excellent GoT rap (thanks, C):

Movie truth in posters (thanks, L).

If you work in an advertising agency, chances are most of your time will be spent trying to differentiate your client’s product from its virtually identical competitor.

Thanks to free market capitalism, if anyone comes up with a great innovation for their product that people like, it will be replicated by a competitor as quickly as possible.

Think about how much difference there is between a Nike trainer and one from Adidas. Or the distinction you have managed to perceive between the acceleration of a BMW and an Audi. The cleaning power of Persil versus Ariel. The taste and nutrition of Yeo Valley and Rachel’s Organic. The benefits to your cat of Whiskas over Kit-E-Kat. The refreshment of Becks and Kronenbourg*. The facilities and interest rates offered by HSBC and Nat West. The ease of use of Go Compare and Confused.com.

In the public’s eye there is no real difference between the products themselves, so people in advertising are employed to take something which doesn’t really look good to a consumer and make it look much better. Or, to put it another way, they have to spend their days putting lipstick on a pig. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s actually very helpful for the consumer to have something with which to differentiate the almost-identical things he or she wants to buy (the alternative is to be paralysed by the tyranny of choice). But for most days of an ad agency’s life it will be doing the equivalent of setting fireworks off near its clients’ products and shouting, ‘Hey you! Look over here!’ at passers by.

I can’t help wondering if this is what has given rise to the supremacy of the creative ‘idea’. Long before I started in advertising, creatives would be encouraged to look somewhere around the product for something distractingly entertaining to elevate it above its peers. Another breakfast cereal? Better invent a Honey Monster. Another pint of bitter? Better attach it to a no-nonsense person. Bar of chocolate? Drumming gorilla.

Perhaps advertising ideas are just necessities born from homogenisation.

Some brands create moments of utter beauty to take the lipstick to a whole new level of exaggerated distraction (how safe is a tiny little Polo?):

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

Of course, this is why we have brands, those formless, abstract essences of one company that supposedly distinguish it from another. But it’s funny when you think about the extent to which billions of pounds and millions of people are employed in the art of applying make-up to farmyard animals.

The very rare times that a product is amazing and persuasively attractive in its own right, as well as somewhat unique, you’ll most likely see that reflected in advertising as a form of well-crafted product demonstration (e.g. Dyson). Everyone else proves the maxim that if you don’t have anything good to say about yourself, say it about something else (that’s not really a maxim; I just made it up).

*Of course, there are slight differences in taste between beers and between chocolate bars etc., but I would argue that the taste must be incredibly close, otherwise the ads wouldn’t concentrate so much on anything but the product.

Scamp is posting again in a slightly different format.

So why’s he back? Well, I think the post explains it, but there’s anything else you need to know about creative advertising’s foremost blogger, here’s a bit of bumph:

Scamp, the advertising blog run by Australia-based creative Simon Veksner – formerly the No.1 ad blog in the UK and one of the most-visited advertising websites in the world – is re-starting after a 2-year hiatus. Launched in 2006, Scamp was the first advertising blog to be written by a creative, and its witty commentary on the latest ads and advertising trends, plus a regular series of ‘Tips For Young Creatives’, made it a must-read for the creative community in the UK, and highly popular worldwide. The ‘Tips’ section of the Scamp website was turned into a successful book, called ‘How To Make It As An Advertising Creative’, but Veksner shuttered the blog in 2010. “There was a conflict between writing a feisty ad blog, and working as a creative director in a big agency,” Veksner explained to Campaign Brief. “But now that I have set myself up as a creative independent (Veksner left the Deputy ECD role at DDB Sydney earlier this year, having moved to Sydney after a 4-year stint at BBH London) I can speak with the independent voice that a good ad blog requires. Having said that, I am not going to be writing daily news and gossip this time around, but will be aiming for a more in-depth, once-a-week post – of dubious usefulness – every Monday.”

Welcome back, Scampy-poo. It’s been kind of lonely without you.

Designing Bond’s world (thanks, P):

Designing Bond’s look (thanks, P):

The history of the electric guitar in 100 riffs (thanks, V):

Brilliant retro Tokyo subway posters (thanks, B).

And more retro geek goodness (thanks, A).

How to make a celebrity perfume ad (thanks, J).

McRibs forever or AIDS? (Thanks, J.)

Amusing Barclays spoof (thanks, P):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FK47iLdPm64&feature=player_embedded

America: a review (thanks, S).

Poo poo design (thanks, L).

How to build a pop song (thanks, P).

Man is interviewed by his 12-year-old self (better than it sounds):

As I watched this I wondered how could anyone do such a thing?

How could anyone make that polar bear look so real?

Hats off to the post dudes.

Or the bear handler.

As far as the ad goes, I’m afraid they’ve spent a lot of money presenting something too exaggerated for me to really engage with. Look, the coming situation is really like a polar bear walking around the shittiest parts of London then getting a bit depressed.

Except it isn’t.

It’s more like people digging up large parts of the Arctic while the polar bears possibly have to move somewhere else. Only that’s not quite as interesting visually. But it does make more sense. And treats us with a bit more intelligence.

I think it’s summed up by the most popular YouTube comment: Simply and scary. We have to do something.

What exactly?

(Oh yes, and the choice of music: Everything In Its Right Place! GEDDITT??!!)

I once worked at an agency where using famous people in advertising was so commonplace that I was able to find a celebrity ad for every single client we had (and it was a big agency).

Nothing wrong with that; after all, some of the best ads of all time have featured famous people:

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

But why do they work so well?

I imagine the obvious answer has occurred to you: the use of the celeb is like an endorsement from someone many people already like. Even though Peter Kay doesn’t drink a pint of John Smiths in the ad and Henry Kissinger doesn’t read a copy of The Economist, they both took the money, so we can assume they don’t hate the brand (would they have endorsed the Nazi party for the same fee? I think not). And that’s like a massive version of your best, most respectable, over-achieving mate telling you he likes a movie: it instantly becomes more attractive.

But there’s another reason why famous people work so well: ads that feature people have to get the characteristics of those people across in a very short space of time. It’s an almost impossible task, which why almost all ads without famous people in them fail to do just that. Instead you’ll watch a cipher, a cliché or a stereotype, because the ability to identify with a character, and thus get involved in their narrative, is dependent on knowing their motivations. Someone we ‘know’ because he’s a ‘rich banker’, ‘surly goth’ or a ‘family dad’ will be easier to follow than someone we’ve never seen before.

But a famous person? We know all about them: Peter Kay is a straight-talking northern comedian; Henry Kissinger is an intelligent international statesman; Carl Lewis was one of the greatest runners in the world; Stephen Fry is brainy and kind of patronising etc. I’m reducing those people to quick sentences, but we all have an idea of who they are, how they act and why motivates them, so when they are added to a narrative we don’t need minutes of backstory to identify with them.

Of course, the non-celeb character can be conveyed in the time it takes to create an ad, but that takes great skill:

UPDATE:

Other 30s well-drawn characters:

Awesome 404 error page designs (thanks, P).

Don’t leave Facebook open (thanks, J).

Sorkinisms supercut:

Douchebag strategist (thanks, J).

Best Boris Yeltsin moments (thasnks, J):

Incredible timing photos (thanks, P).

Jaques Tati being a goalie (thanks, A):

Urban skiing (thanks, J):

Hyper-realistic photos (thanks,P).

Beautiful Disney staff manual (thanks, A).

So there’s some big hoo-ha about the tactical voting that went on at Cannes this year. Apparently all the WPP offices got together and planned to ‘kill’ Omnicom, the holding company of DDB, TBWA and BBDO. DDB’s Worldwide Grand Creative Poobah, Amair Kassaei said, ‘I have since been notified by no fewer than 12 jury members that people from other holding companies this week are being briefed to kill Omnicom, especially BBDO, DDB and TBWA, this is a fact.’

So that’s pretty bad, isn’t it? After all, in a world beset by venality and corruption, advertising awards, particularly the Cannes Advertising Wankathon are the last bastions of evenhanded judgement and scrupulous fair play.

Or rather it isn’t. I’ve heard of and witnessed plenty of jury decisions that had nothing to do with the quality of the work. One guy got a silver instead of a gold because he left the room halfway through judging to attend to some work emergency. People have been denied Pencils because they’ve already won too many of them. Undeserving ads have won Grands Prix because people on the jury were trying to block the favourite and keep its CDs on the lower rungs. And that’s leaving aside the whole issue of ads made entirely for juries (love those highlighter pen ads from Chile). A few years ago an agency spent over $1m to make an ad a client didn’t ask for and didn’t pay to run that went on to win two Grands Prix. Nobody batted an eyelid.

And as far as Cannes goes, when I was a BBDO CD we had a worldwide conference where all the work we were about to enter at Cannes was circulated amongst the BBDO Cannes jurors. There was no suggestion of this being corrupt – it was just a way of making sure our work could stand out a little more amongst the thousands of ads a Cannes juror has to sift through. If an ad was crap of course it wouldn’t get a BBDO juror’s vote, but if the jurors could be more aware of a good ad then where’s the harm? Some ads get a ton of random pre-Cannes publicity from trade press previews that are are little more than return favours for a big lunch. Surely that’s far more ‘corrupt’.

But that aside, let’s get some perspective: the whole thing is a game. If you want to take it seriously, be my guest, but if you view it as a fun little bunfight where lots of highly-paid people try to beat each other to meaningless metal lions then this whole ‘kill Omnicom’ thing is all a bit pathetic (in the interests of full disclosure I should point out that I am an Omnicom CD). It’s be nice to think that every single ad award was a clear, neutral judgement of pure quality, but if you believe that you probably still write letters to Santa.

Kassaei continues: “The problem we have at the moment is, Cannes used to be the World Cup of advertising because of the qualification and the result of the juries, and at the moment I don’t have a feeling we are at the World Cup of advertising because a lot of people are playing politics instead of judging the best work of all.”

Good heavens! Is Cannes really not the World Cup of advertising? Has it really begun to morph into the Eurovision Song contest, where shite song after shite song was awarded victory with absolutely no complaint, but when neighbouring countries started to vote together people were up in arms as if it really really mattered?

If you entered something in Cannes this year and are dismayed that your money might have been wasted because of this ‘corruption’ then you shouldn’t be allowed to have control of several hundred Euros. And the whole crapolafest is brought into sharp relief by the fact that Martin Sorrell of WPP (the Omnicom killers) also believes that his agencies have been the victim of tactical bloc voting in the media awards.

So everyone’s messing around with everyone else to make sure their team wins.

And the woods are packed with bear shit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMfSGt6rHos

Yes, it’s excellent.

Yes, I’d love to have done it.

Yes, it is a somewhat underwhelming Cannes Grand Prix.

Like I said a couple of weeks back: not a vintage year.

Proof?

This won a gold:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwrZzk-45Jk

Bill Murray colouring book (thanks, A&E).

Worst book covers ever (thanks, T).

Cool Bruce Haack promo (thanks, R):

What is empathy? (Thanks, P):

Funny Dutch Monty Python on English sport (thanks, R):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AOqSj8HJl4

Barbie suicides (thanks, J).

That guy from 30 Rock gets abused as he tries to buy a hot dog:

The making of a MacDonald’s product shot (thanks, T):