If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

(Thanks, Adliterate.)

This seminal ad came out the year I started in advertising. We all loved this, were jealous of it and read many, many briefs where some lily-livered client requested their own Blackcurrant Tango then wouldn’t touch your attempt at it with a ten-foot pole (possibly with good reason).

Funny to look back on it and see how charmingly naive the ‘fashions’ of the day were. Remember, these are advertising people; they supposedly give a shit about the latest trends and are able to afford them. But just look at what they’re wearing, particularly the guy in the red shirt and waistcoat who seems to be the director.

Do those of you born on the late eighties/early nineties regard this as I regarded the seventies? Quirky, dated and alien?

Anyway, for those of you who haven’t seen what Pencil-winning genius 1996-stylee looks like, check this out:

Sacha Baron Cohen’s fantastic remix of The Next Episode:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw2Fz-SCmfg

Chalk warfare:

Pentagram’s beautiful 40th anniversary film (thanks, P):

History of hip-hop (thanks, B).

Best pen tapper in the world:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GP_aV_SdJLc&feature=related

Remember this ad where a woman with no hands makes breakfast?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IH_-yXdyfQ

Well, here’s the heartwarming story of a man with no hands who can roll a blunt:

Better with a beard.

Gilbert Gottfried reads Fifty Shades of Grey (thanks, J).

Bill Murray’s drunk tour of Moonrise Kingdom (thanks, J):

How to measure the universe (thanks, P):

Get stroked in the morning (thanks, J):

Weak men pay this man to abuse them (and it’s funny):

http://vimeo.com/42209600

Questions:

1. Given the rumours that abounded regarding the terms of WPP’s legal contretemps with A&E (apparently, after leaving RKCR/Y&R, one of them was caught soliciting clients before he was supposed to), does this mean Omnicom owns a slice of WPP? I find that very hard to believe, but it’d make things fun.

2. The new agency is called Adam and Eve/DDB, kind of like AMV BBDO (the smaller, more creative name comes first). It seems like an oddly supine position for a giant like DDB to take. I’m writing this before various details are revealed in tomorrow’s Campaign, but I’m intrigued to know what positions the management of A&E will take at DDB. Will Ben and Emer be the new CDs of DDB, the agency they left to join A&E? DDB London (as it used to be known) is currently without a CD, so it makes sense.

3. Does the receptionist have to say ‘Hello, A and E DDB,’? It’s like a sweet little poem.

4. How long’s the earn-out?

5. Will this get in the way of Emer writing another children’s book? I hope not.

UPDATE: some of the questions are answered here. All looks good (Ben and Emer=ECDs).

Regular reader ‘P’ has just Tweeted the five best Facebook advertising campaigns.

As the post points out, none of these have anything to do with Facebook’s regular advertising, by which I mean those messages along the right-hand side of the screen that promise to ‘reduce your belly in three days with this one weird tip’. If my own experience is anything to go by, regular Facebook advertising is of virtually zero interest to any of its users, who happily update their statuses, play Wordscraper and share photos without paying any attention to the ads.

Here we are, a good decade into the era of proper, well-thought-out internet advertising that makes money for a great many supposed experts, and it feels very much like the entirety of the accumulated wisdom has resulted in something which at best is ignored, and at worst is hated.

Take YouTube ads, for example. Have you ever done anything other than click them off, silently cursing the way they invade your precious clip of a breakdancing child? The long ones you can’t switch off are the most annoying. Large companies pay good money to put a 30-second message on a clip (which always feels like it lasts a minute) that either pisses you off or causes you to look at something else until your real clip is ready.

And that’s part of the problem with advertising on the net: you’re never more than a click away from another site you’d rather spend time on to avoid being bored by an ad.

The Ad Contrarian goes into all this in far more detail than I do, but has it really not occurred to any marketers that advertising on the main internet sites is something that can actively damage the perception of their brand? The unfortunate fact for them is that we all started on Facebook, Twitter and Youtube when they were free, so when ads come in we feel that something good that we really liked has been ruined/violated by the introduction of unwanted interruptions. If they were free once, why can’t they continue being free? And as for the brands that want to access all your information in return for the opportunity to watch a clip, well they just seem creepy and aren’t exactly offering very much in return for such riches.

Going back to the top of this post, it’s clear that the only things that really work in these environments are ‘ads’ that offer some kind of reward in the form of entertainment, offers or information. But that’s as it’s always been: we like things that contribute to us. The rest will be ignored, whether they’re on TV, on posters or online.

And since this was the status quo in 2002, I’m just a little surprised that I’m still able to write about it in 2012.

On Sunday morning I went to see the Damian Hirst exhibition at Tate Modern.

For those of you unable to visit, it’s a quite wonderful experience. There are old favourites, such as Mother And Child Divided, The Physical Impossibility Of Death In The Mind Of Someone Living and A Thousand Years:

But then there is also the room full of butterflies (In And Out Of Love), the perpetually floating beach ball (Loving In A World Of Desire) and that skull covered in diamonds (For The Love Of God), which is in a dark room in the Turbine Hall.

So that’s several of the most famous works of British art of the last twenty years, yet all I read about the exhibition before I went was a series of updates from my Facebook friends telling me how crap they thought it was.

Fair enough; I mean each to their own, and I can certainly understand how a perpetually floating beach ball might not be everyone’s cup of artistic Darjeeling (I should add that I went with my two small children, both of whom enjoyed seeing the inside of a cow), but I thought it was interesting how much you can do and still leave someone utterly unimpressed.

There was a goddamned shark in a tank! A room full of butterflies! Thousands of flies feasting on a dead cow’s head!

Meh.

The funny thing is, even though we often assess awesome things to be ‘shit’,  we miss the wonder in everyday objects just as frequently. For example, have you ever considered all the things that go into the piece of paper that’s sitting on the desk in front of you? The tree that it used to be, the miles it’s travelled, the process that turned a chunk of wood into a perfectly white slice of paper, the shop that has been set up to make it easy for you to acquire the paper for less than a penny, the way that you can apply a million different colours of ink to it in minute detail…

And that’s just a piece of paper.

Not a dove captured beautifully in mid-flight, suspended forever in a tank of formaldehyde, whose ethereal majesty you could gaze upon in wonder as you marvel at the essential mysteries of nature and our place in the universe.

Then dismiss it as crap (to hundreds of people simultaneously, instantaneously, for free, across the planet, at the touch of a button) .

The commencement speech of the wonderful Neil Gaiman.

‘If you don’t know it’s impossible, it’s easier to do.’

‘Nothing I do when the only reason I do it for is money has ever worked out, except to give me bitter experience.’

‘The problems of failure are hard, but the problems of success can be harder because no one ever warns you about them.’

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMv8g8CO4cQ

I have to confess that I don’t really get it.

Why are they all in those shirts? Or not in those shirts? Or in suits?

And what are they all trying to do?

And why?

I feel as if someone has just shoved a massive clusterfuck through my eyes and into my brain.

Start your weekend right!

Dog Cave The Queen (thanks, J).

Amusing pranks (thanks, J).

John Baldessari (thanks, P):

David Blaine Street Magic humour (thanks, D):

Not very good punk CD (thanks, P):

Insane Russian gymnasts:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_xW6eQMkns&feature=player_embedded

Pictures of planners being useful (thanks, J):

Endless David Caruso one-liners:

Sonofabitch supercut (thanks, J):

Beware of homosexuals:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3S24ofEQj4&feature=related

Vinyl trick shots (thanks, C):

Here’s another Skittles ad that isn’t Touch or Pinata:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmF9ylLDBIY

Hello.

Guide dogs are great, aren’t they? Helping blind people get out and about, providing companionship, making sure their owners can cross the road etc.

No downside at all.

Except that it costs money to train them.

However, that needn’t be a problem if we make sure the trainers have got enough money.

So you could just donate, or you could sponsor my son’s bike ride.

He’s six, so we won’t be going to Brighton, but I think a five mile ride would be a worthy sponsorship achievement.

You can sponsor him here, or learn more about Guide Dogs here.

Thanks

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