Pixar’s rules of storytelling (thanks, P).
Leica on Ed Templeton:
Funny (thanks, W/G):
The most powerful photos ever taken.
Hours of fun (thanks, K).
Why smart people are actually stupid (thanks, P).
LA in the 50s (thanks, P):
For all the 90s kids out there, Ren and Stimpy’s animator advertises Stüssy (thanks, P):
I have no idea what will win the Grand Prix
I think in this year, more than any other in recent memory, there is no runaway winner. Also, there is nothing I can think of that’s truly of Grand Prix standard.
This is the best ad that springs to mind in recent memory:
And these are some picks for the GP that seem fairly Silvery/Bronzey:
Like a bad 90s ad:
Nice, but feels awfully familiar:
Silver in any other year:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJtk4akaEME
Good but not great:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdWkKKSckNk
Top of the UK class:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSLOnR1s74o
Any other suggestions?
As regular readers (hi mum!) will know, I have trouble putting pictures up on this blog. Problem number one is WordPress won’t let me do it; problem number two is I’ve exhausted my enthusiasm for solving problem number one.
So if you want to see these great Harvey Nix press ads, check ’em out here.
Why are they so good?
1. They’re brave. Come on, models who have pissed themselves? When did you last (or ever) see an ad that explicitly featured urine? And in a funny way. Incorporating piss that makes you laugh into an ad for a major brand is quite some achievement.
2. They’re beautifully art directed. I know HN ads are always beautifully art directed, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to do. I confess that I’ve never heard of the team, but the AD has done a really excellent job.
3. Great ads on brands that have a history of great ads is much tougher than it looks. The bar is higher, expectations are higher and the it’s-not-as-good-as-the-last-one-ometer is immediately set to the red zone. And now I’m trying to remember the last time HN did a press ad that really stood out like these do. It probably wasn’t very long ago, but I’m often too drunk to recall such things.
4. All the advice people get about disruption, asking forgiveness instead of permission, shaking things up etc. is so often talked but not walked. Here it is loud and clear in ads that will definitely get noticed, talked about, liked and remembered.
Hooray!
(I love it when ads are good.)
Sorry. Been busy in LA this week, hence the lack of posts. And this weekend ain’t the best, but thanks to P&J for making it much better than it would have been (i.e. non existent) without you.
Retrofy your Mac (thanks, J).
Blek Le Rat stencil artist doc (thanks, P):
http://vimeo.com/41423944
The Wire the musical (thanks, J).
Django Unchained trailer (thanks, P):
The history of US advertising on one easy site (thanks, P).
Malcolm Gladwell book generator (thanks, P).
This is a fascinating documentary made by Tom Shadyac, the director of Ace Ventura, Liar Liar and Bruce Almighty. He went looking for the answer to why we’re here, interviewing many interesting people along the way.
The answer he found is that we’re all connected in ways we may not even be aware of, so if you don’t give much thought to the way you live your life, here’s an opportunity to spend 80 minutes doing just that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMj9N5Io0ts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QVd7ULdh4w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rg72DjcvlyE&feature=fvwrel
I’ll ask again: why do people do things like this?
And thanks to L for reminding me of this:
The Surrender Monkeys have owned the interweb this week with this little gem:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sC1CLnmtQFo&feature=g-logo
Sean Bean dies in every movie (thanks, L & E):
This’ll tee you right up for the morning (thanks, J):
What’s the fucking job number? (Thanks, J)
Five seconds of every US Number One since 1993 (thanks, P).
A photographer recreates Banksy’s stencils (thanks, P).
Fantastic vid for Kanye and Jay Z’s No Church In The Wild (thanks, P):
http://vimeo.com/43051867
Samuel L Darth:
Advertising moment gifs (thanks, A).
This is the letter Bill Bernbach sent when he left Grey to start DDB (which later became Adam and Eve DDB). All I can say is plus ça change:
Dear colleagues,
Our agency is getting big. That’s something to be happy about. But it’s something to worry about, too, and I don’t mind telling you I’m damned worried. I’m worried that we’re going to fall into the trap of bigness, that we’re going to worship techniques instead of substance, that we’re going to follow history instead of making it, that we’re going to be drowned by superficialities instead of buoyed up by solid fundamentals. I’m worried lest hardening of the creative arteries begin to set in.
There are a lot of great technicians in advertising. And unfortunately they talk the best game. They know all the rules. They can tell you that people in an ad will get you greater readership. They can tell you that a sentence should be this short or that long. They can tell you that body copy should be broken up for easier reading. They can give you fact after fact after fact. They are the scientists of advertising. But there’s one little rub. Advertising is fundamentally persuasion and persuasion happens to be not a science, but an art.
It’s that creative spark that I’m so jealous of for our agency and that I am so desperately fearful of losing. I don’t want academicians. I don’t want scientists. I don’t want people who do the right things. I want people who do inspiring things.
In the past year I must have interviewed about 80 people – writers and artists. Many of them were from the so-called giants of the agency field. It was appalling to see how few of these people were genuinely creative. Sure, they had advertising know-how. Yes, they were up on advertising technique.
But look beneath the technique and what did you find? A sameness, a mental weariness, a mediocrity of ideas. But they could defend every ad on the basis that it obeyed the rules of advertising. It was like worshiping a ritual instead of the God.
All this is not to say that technique is unimportant. Superior technical skill will make a good ad better. But the danger is a preoccupation with technical skill or the mistaking of technical skill for creative ability. The danger lies in the temptation to buy routinized men who have a formula for advertising. The danger lies In the natural tendency to go after tried-and-true talent that will not make us stand out in competition but rather make us look like all the others.
If we are to advance we must emerge as a distinctive personality. We must develop our own philosophy and not have the advertising philosophy of others imposed on us.
Let us blaze new trails. Let us prove to the world that good taste, good art, and good writing can be good selling.
Respectfully,
Bill Bernbach
(Via ad-aglance. Thanks, S.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cQMFyJ3FRGQ
(Thanks, D.)