If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

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

x

Here’s the new VW Polo ad:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeKuFs0KxO8

I’ve been watching a lot of the Leveson enquiry, so I feel as if I ought to lean over that desk like Robert Jay QC, smile sweetly, and ask the following questions:

‘Were you aware that ads depicting someone’s life through the ages have become somewhat prevalent in recent years?’

‘Mm, and the cosily idealised middle-class warmth… Was that a tone of voice you felt that we really hadn’t seen enough of lately?’

‘And did it occur to you at any time that you could finish this ad off with any one of 473 different logos, and still have it work perfectly well?’

‘I put it to you that although the ad is beautifully crafted and firmly effective, both its tone and content could be accused of being somewhat derivative. I would further contend that its attempt to get the viewer to blub gently into his or her PG Tips is a little transparent.’

‘Don’t you think that something like this would have had a better chance of being different, memorable and, ironically, moving?’

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

Rod McLeod, head of marketing at Volkswagen, said: “As well as reinforcing all of the ‘small but tough’ qualities that people love about the Polo, we thought it was important to tell a story which drew people in emotionally and which viewers could connect with.”

All the small but tough qualities? You mean smallness and toughness? And where was the smallness reinforced? Maybe that reinforcement was very, very small, doubly reinforcing the smallness that people love so much.

And Rod thought it was important to tell a story which viewers could connect with. Not a story that viewers couldn’t connect with? Come on… stories that people can’t connect with are fucking great. Here’s one: A man went to the treehouse to suddenly jam sandwich a cat. Then ker-pow, ker-pow lemon ostrich chick dead of night banjo.

I think Rod is a genius.

Walt Disney’s Taxi Driver (thanks, P):

Movie style (thanks, J).

The making of Goodfellas (thanks, V):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhC5vc2U5-w&feature=related

Meet the memes.

NWA and Easy-E albums with just the swearing (thanks, A).

Beautifully animated BAFTA-winning short (thanks, P):

Maurice Sendak, RIP:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZTQib7G2Hs&feature=player_embedded

MCA, RIP (it’s been a bad week; thanks, P):

http://vimeo.com/41657911

You want to see tough? Here’s tough (thanks, F):

Anti-marijuana ad likely to induce psychosis (thanks, A):

Jack Nicholson preparing for his ‘Here’s Johnny’ scene from The Shining (thanks, A).

More funny Amazon reviews (thanks, R).

Skate Ipsum (thanks, P).

And finally, I’m organising a dads introduction to the Landmark Forum on the 21st of May. If you are a dad, or you know a dad, come along or send them along. It’ll be led by a dad, and you can talk about dad things. Or choose not to. My dad’s coming all the way from LA. to see what it’s all about. How exciting. Email me if you want to come and I’ll save you a seat (bwmkay@gmail.com).

Regular readers will know that I very rarely cover the subject of radio.

That’s because I don’t listen to the radio (except for the utterly wonderful Sirius station Classic Vinyl when in LA).

Also, almost nobody gives a shit about radio advertising.

But that’s a bit of a shame, isn’t it? After all, radio is less scrutinised by clients, and because many of your peers don’t care about it, it’s fertile territory for awards (if you’re into that kind of thing). You also get to meet very famous people and tell them what to do for an hour. Wot larks!

A couple of months back I met the lovely Clare Bowen from the RAB, who pointed me in the direction of this initiative they’ve set up with D&AD. So check it out and get inspired.

Also, news reaches me of this radio campaign for Women’s Aid. It’s rather hard-hitting (pardon the pun), but what interests me is the fact that the team used a TV director (QI’s Dominic Savage) to get the right performances from the actors (or maybe he beat the shit out of them).

I find that interesting because the best radio ads I ever did also involved getting some outside help to plump up the casting and direction. If not for the boys at Eardrum, I think the ads would never have made it into D&AD. So next time you get a radio brief, why not see if some of the best in the business can lend you a hand. You have nothing to lose but the shit ads you might have made without them.

If you’re amongst the people I follow on Twitter or one of my Facebook friends you’re bound to have seen one of the oblique online ads for Prometheus. Every time one of them comes out I see it Tweeted or posted by several people, then discussed to death on sites such as Mashable.

Here they are:

First, a fake TED talk:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7YK2uKxil8

Then an ad for the android:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaJD8cGfZCQ

Then the last of several trailers:

And the meta-website.

For those of us who are interested in film and advertising, it’s been fascinating to watch the campaign unfold. I feel as if Prometheus has barely been off my online menu for the last six months. The idea of a future TED talk is a really clever one, as is the android ad, but the really smart thing is how well they fit with the film itself. I don’t think the same approach would work for just any movie, after all, it’s quite arch and knowing, something that would probably not suit a straightforward blockbuster, such as The Avengers or The Dark Knight Rises; nor do I feel that it would fit a smaller indie – that level of marketing power and knowhow would seem at odds with the reduced ambitions of a lower-budget movie.

So as an ‘intelligent’ blockbuster its marketing mirrors the (supposed) experience of the film itself, whilst giving an intriguing taste of what we can expect when we go to see it. Then people can feel all early-adopter about spreading the stuff around the net (for free).

Sounds like a big win for RSA.

(One small point: I’m still not convinced that I want to see it. As a huge fan of Alien and Aliens, I’d have thought I’d be salivating by now, but then my BFI Imax priority booking email came through last week and I did nothing about it. The trailer has left me unconvinced, so I’m waiting for the one piece of marketing Prometheus can’t do anything about: word of mouth.)