If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

I’ve often wondered how some countries become world famous while others remain completely anonymous (I should stress here that ‘famous’ means ‘famous’ in my limited, Western European perception).

For instance, both Ireland and Jamaica are known throughout the planet despite being relatively small and poor.

Every small town in Europe seems to have an Irish bar, and whenever you’re abroad you always seem to bump into someone from the Emerald Isle. While the music and culture of Jamaica is something you can find everywhere from Dutch tea towels to American movies.

So why is it that they punch above their economic weight while Turkmenistan and Equatorial Guinea just fade into the background?

My totally unscientific theory places the blame/thanks squarely at the door of branding.

Ireland owns green, which denotes its landscape and lets you know immediately whenever you see something Irish anywhere in the world. This suggests an admirable attitude of exploration, which is then backed up with little extras like Guinness (loved around the world) and the gift of the gab/great literature (also loved around the world).

Jamaica owns red, gold and green, but it also owns the spirit of being laid back through its music and its reputation for having natives who like to smoke da ganja. We’d all love to be swinging happily in a hammock listening to Bob Marley as the waves lap on the golden sands nearby, so we all love the idea of being Jamaican.

Both countries have accidentally created fantastic brands that sell themselves 24 hours a day, and that serves them well.

But then there’s the daddy of them all: the USA.

You could hardly suggest a country of endless wealth (or debt) and 300 million people was punching above its weight, but American culture rules the world to an extent that far surpasses every other country in the world combined.

Movies, music, TV and literature are four ways in which the Land of the Free bestrides the world like a colossus, but if you go to the States you’ll also see that its design and attitude often brings forth an admiration and/or affection that you just can’t put your finger on.

For example their broken down old diners evoke a million familiar emotions, even if you’ve never been in one; their used car lots have the kind of signage that makes them seem cool in a way that ‘Mick’s Second Hand Cars’ just can’t compete with, but beyond that they seem to have a brilliant knack of making things seem way bigger and better than they actually are by branding them in a way that grabs some part of your head or your heart.

Even things which mean nothing much to the rest of the world, like the Department of Homeland Security, The Supreme Court, the Iowa Caucus, Twentieth Century Fox, the Tri-State area, Hall Of Fame, Independence Day, Inland Empire, Triple Doubles etc…

They just know how to squeeze something out of nothing until you give a shit and want it despite yourself.

And it translates into trillions of dollars a year for them.

And much as you’d like to deny it, I’d bet that there’s something American that just plays your insides like a piano.

And this is its soundtrack:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0uplUvP_Qg&feature=related

Remember this classic?

Of course you do. It’s still cited as one of the best ads of the past decade or two, and rightly so.

Sony seems to agree, and have now bestowed upon us this too-similar-to-be-an-accident, much worse retread:

It’s funny, isn’t it? Even when it’s quite clear what the charm of Double Life is (its lack of supersized budget, its intrigue, its strange and wonderful cast of characters etc.), the people responsible for the remake have decided to jettison every single aspect of what made it good in favour of the kind of tiresome shite you’ll forget even as you’re watching it.

I’ve had many, many briefs since Double Life that have asked for a ‘Double Life’ (by that I think the client and account dudes mean that they want to have the kind of massive success they don’t have the balls to make) but never one that asked for the Double Life.

It’s a peculiar kind of laziness that again shows the client side of the industry just what we’re made of: ‘Stand on the shoulders of giants? Hmmm… That’s a bit of an ask. How about we look at what the giants did and just urinate on it while lying in a hammock?’

Sold.

(So much good shit, mainly thanks to Peggy.)

The alphabet of film (thanks, P):

Typo of the year (thanks, P).

You awake to find yourself in a DARK ROOM (thanks, S):

The first minute of all the Bond films (thanks, P):

I don’t know why anyone would want all the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue pics, but here they are (thanks, P).

The trailers of all the Oscar nominated movies in one convenient place (thanks, P).

Charlie Brooker’s brilliant Sun poem.

Boy loses prize in gang sign furore; doesn’t take it very well:

Everything is a Remix, Episode 4 (thanks, P):

http://vimeo.com/36881035

LED surfer (thanks, S).

Movie’s rap 99 Problems (thanks, P):

http://vimeo.com/36667856

Interview with someone who left advertising and is happy.

The Evolution of Louis CK (thanks, P):

You may not have noticed, but this year London will be hosting a sporting event called The Olympic Games.

People will run, jump and throw things in an attempt to do so to a greater extent than their opponents.

It’ll be amazing, particularly the canoeing.

You might also be surprised to know that accompanying this event will be an enormous amount of advertising related to the event. Many large corporations (and, I fancy, your local snack bar) will be proclaiming their…um…connection to the Games in some manner which will be in no way contrived. Each communication will thread together the relationship between corporation and sport so seamlessly that you will wonder how you never spotted such a thing till now.

Exhibit A:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n-9-6ULjHY

So there you have it. I hope you liked that; you’re going to see an awful lot more of them in the next six months.

(By the way, seeing that reminded me of this brilliant short film from 1978:

How do I close those brackets?) Oh, like that.

Hi.

Last year I invited any and all of you to come to an introduction for the Landmark Forum.

This is the post I wrote. Charmingly, a few of you took me up on my offer.

If you didn’t come, I’d suggest you re-read my post (and its links to The Observer, Time, New York Times etc.) and see what you think.

At the very least, as Dave Trott suggests, you can look at the situation from a position of knowledge and make your own mind up then. All I’d say is that in my experience, and in the experience of all the people I know who have done it, it can clear an enormous amount of shit out of your head in three days, leaving you clear to do pretty much anything you want.

The reason I bring it up again is because they are having a special introduction for people in media on the 28th of February. It runs from 7-10pm at 203 Eversholt Street London NW1 and it’s free, with no obligation to stay any longer than you wish.

If you have any other questions, drop me a line at bwmkay@gmail.com, leave a comment or get in touch with Landmark yourself.

If you follow British football you might be aware of the recent saga between Patrice Evra and Luis Suarez.

If you’re not, I’ll just sum it up quickly: in a football match between Liverpool and Manchester United there was a bit of a niggly war of attrition between one of Liverpool’s strikers (Suarez) and one of Man U’s defenders (Evra). There was a bit of nasty tackling, pinching etc. (yes, I know they’re grown men, but what can you do?) and a few words spoken, which culminated in Suarez calling Evra, in some form, ‘Blackie’.

That elevated the whole thing to a row about racism (Evra is indeed ‘black’) that got quite complicated. Suarez, who is Uruguayan, claimed that this was a common and innocent term of address in his native country (like ‘blondie’ or ‘ginger’), but Evra thought it wasn’t. Then they both gave evidence to a neutral committee who released a 115-page report on their findings, concluding that, although it was the word of one man against another, Suarez’s was the less believable of the two, so they found him guilty of ‘using racist language’ and banned him for eight games, adding a fine of about an hour’s wages.

Since then (around New Year), the issue has been barely out of the press: Liverpool’s players wore T-shirts in support of Suarez but the club didn’t appeal. Man Utd’s players and fans all thought justice had been done. Then on Saturday the two teams played each other again, but at the beginning of the match, when the two teams shake hands with each other, Suarez didn’t shake Evra’s hand. This led to a FUCKING GLOBAL MELTDOWN. Man Utd’s manager said this could have cause a riot; when Man Utd won Evra celebrated right under Suarez’s nose; Liverpool old boys condemned Suarez, saying his behaviour was not befitting Liverpool Football Club; Liverpool’s manager claimed he hadn’t seen the non-shake… Then Liverpool’s owners made player and manager apologise and that might be that.

And that’s the short version.

What I found amazing throughout the whole thing was the wholehearted belief on both sides that they were utterly in the right. My Twitter feed contains fans of both teams plus plenty of neutral sports journalists, all of whom who had hundreds of things to say on the matter. But they were often in direct opposition to each other.

Some wise people on the Guardian’s sports blogs pointed out that if the teams were reversed each set of fans would be taking the opposite position just as strongly, but the idea that the people involved could take such a detached view of the situation, shrug and shake hands is ridiculous (the great Liverpool manager Bill Shankly once said: ‘Some people believe football is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.’).

Now, if I were Dave Trott I would explain how this is a quite brilliant allegory for the extent to which clients and creatives take and defend positions that neither can relate to, but I’m not, so I’ll just leave that for you to work that out for yourself.

But what I will say is that in this case F. Scott Fitzgerald trumps Bill Shankley: ‘The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.’

Good luck with that, Man U and Liverpool fans.

Lovely shots of massive rock stars and their parents (thanks, G).

TeapartyJesus (thanks, W).

Every Wes Anderson slo-mo, set to Ja Rule (thanks, P):

YouTube pronunciation guide (thanks, R):

Classic nudes, photoshopped (thanks, P).

The modern version of Eric Gill chatting to Charlie Chaplin (thanks, T).

Karate training rap (thanks, J):

Lovely pictures of kids smoking.

Fine video for Jay Z and Kanye’s Niggas In Paris:

Filming the police can be dangerous (thanks, G):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFjQKcwbTdY&sns=fb

Lovely environmental ad (thanks, G):

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Honda ad compared (thanks, P):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgkAUa0X7hk&feature=youtu.be

A young lady named Jane Hoag, a reporter at Life’s Los Angeles bureau who had attended the same school as Sinatra’s daughter, Nancy, had once been invited to a party at Mrs. Sinatra’s California home at which Frank Sinatra, who maintains very cordial relations with his former wife, acted as host. Early in the party Miss Hoag, while leaning against a table, accidentally with her elbow knocked over one of a pair of alabaster birds to the floor, smashing it to pieces. Suddenly, Miss Hoag recalled, Sinatra’s daughter cried, “Oh, that was one of my mother’s favorite…” — but before she could complete the sentence, Sinatra glared at her, cutting her off, and while forty other guests in the room all stared in silence, Sinatra walked over, quickly with his finger flicked the other alabaster bird off the table, smashing it to pieces, and then put an arm gently around Jane Hoag and said, in a way that put her completely at ease, “That’s okay, kid.”

Here is a bunch of very good guerilla ads.

But do you, like me, tend to harbour a degree of doubt for these little confections?

It’s a shame, but a category that was set up in all fairness to reward a funky new(ish) form of advertising has now been abused like a catholic choirboy. I just end up looking for the Photoshopping clues or the myriad reasons why a tiny brand would never fork out hundreds of thousands for an ad that only 300 people would see.

Which is a shame, because there have been some truly excellent examples of the genre (read into this what you will, but many of them happened before you could win a Pencil for ‘Ambient’). But then every category becomes subject to award-blag abuse: two minute director’s cuts of cinema ads that ran once; press ads that appeared in a school concert programme; posters that were flyposted rather than paid for; DM sent to three people…

First, the great idea. Then the awards for the great idea. Then the abuse of the awards for the great idea.

*sigh*