If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

Apparently, Levis has had to delay the UK launch of its Go Forth campaign because the ad features some kids getting all riot-y.

Personally, I think the attempted association of a certain type of blue cloth with living an incredible life of freedom (to fuck shit up) demonstrates beautifully why this industry is disliked by so many.

“We’re in touch with all corners of the world and want to be sensitive about what’s going on in the U.K. and, specifically, London,” said Rebecca Van Dyck, global chief marketing officer of Levi’s, noting that the brand continues to monitor the situation. “While ‘Go Forth’ is about embodying the energy and events of our time, it is not about any specific movement or political theme; rather, it’s about pioneering spirit.”

Excuse me while I vomit.

An enormous corporation suggests, by undeserved association, that its products lead to a way of being that it thinks will appeal to people who might buy said products. Sure, people have done cool things in the past whilst wearing Levi’s, but the connection between the two is not one of cause and effect.

People do great things wearing many items of clothing (and sometimes no clothing). People do stupid and pathetic things while wearing Levi’s. All the company and agency are doing is stealing what they consider to be ‘cool’ in order to sell more jeans – Nothing more, nothing less.

And now we can see how empty it all is: hundreds of thousands spent on shooting a model in Levi’s going up against riot police rings really hollow today. The guy now looks like any one of the arseholes who have been ruining London over the last week.

Wear Levis and embody his ‘pioneering spirit’? Incredibly enough, I’m going to pass.

Hello all.

A CD friend of mine is looking to hire a senior copywriter who can actually write copy.

Any ideas?

When I got my first iPod, I downloaded all my CDs onto my computer and sold the discs on Amazon.

Last week I got rid of all my DVD boxes and put the discs into two enormous zip up thingies. If I could download them all onto a hard drive as easily as I added the CDs, I would, and would then get rid of the annoying disc containers.

Now all I’m left with is books, but as far as I’m concerned, books are different. They serve two purposes: you can read them, and they look great on a shelf (they also show people how darned clever you are because they can see RIGHT BEFORE THEIR EYES that you have read War and Peace, or Not A Penny More, Not A Penny Less). So there’s no way I’d get rid of them, right?

Well, maybe.

I don’t think I’d ever throw them away (I can’t download them onto a digital device), but I have to say that its much less likely that I’ll be adding to them. You see, I now have an iPad, and find reading from it to be much easier and more enjoyable than trying to hold a book up and turn its pages, particularly if I’m doing something else (stroking my new kitten, eating an artichoke, picking my nose etc.). It’s also wonderfully simple and easy to buy a book instantly, and they’re often cheaper than the analogue variety.

I also accepted the fact that I rarely read a book twice. For example, No Logo has been sitting on my shelf since I read it a decade ago. Its assertions and information were starkly relevant in 2001, but are now virtually meaningless, existing in a world that they themselves changed beyond recognition. There is little point in reading No Logo now, but it was a sort of zeitgeisty classic of its time, and there’s something about having it around that feels right (perhaps I am clinging to the sad semblance of credibility that owning a copy in 2001 gave me).

So with that in mind I can’t see myself buying many physical books in future. I’ve just downloaded One Day by David Nicholls, a book I would definitely have bought in analogue form in the past. I suppose I’ll then read it and store it in my iBooks in case my wife or kids want to check it out, then forget about it, relegating its existence to a postage stamp-sized representation of its cover that I will never open again.

I suppose some of you are now reading this swearing that you will never let anything so vulgar and unromantic happen to you, and perhaps you’re right, but this is the direction in which the world is heading. Electronic books make sense in lots of ways (I haven’t even mentioned how much an arse it is to carry a hardback around), so storing millions of pages on one small device could well be the future for most of us. Is that a shame? Maybe, but what you lose in fusty bits of paper, you make up for in convenience, value and practicality, not to mention the benefits to the environment.

Having said all that, though, I must admit to harbouring an analogue fantasy: when my kids are old enough not mess it up, I really want to get a record player and start a collection of my favourite albums: totally impractical, pointlessly expensive and utterly unnecessary.

I can’t wait.

The greatest movie mirror pep talks (thanks, P):

Beavis and Butthead do Jersey Shore:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAJ-J5fCIoI

Disney copy and paste (thanks, sams P):

Retaphin commercial (thanks, same P):

Stephen Fry vs Anne Widdecombe animated (thanks, M):

Adam Buxton takes the piss rather well (thanks, same M):

Did you ever come to work dressed like someone else?

MTV reserves the right not to give a shit if someone rapes you on The Real World (thanks, J).

Some bloke spends a second in each of lots of countries (thanks, same J):

Ed Milliband has long arms (thanks, same J).

And a beautiful but scary map of every nuclear explosion ever (thanks, same J):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U8CZAKSsNA

I think it’s fair to say that the history of San Miguel advertising is littered with some of the worst attempts at commercial communication of all time.

My brain has cast the vast majority of them from my memory, but just the one that went ‘Si-si-si-si San Miguel’ is enough to send shivers of revulsion through my poor guts.

So thank golly for this new one from Saatchi and Saatchi London (interest declared: it’s by David Goss and Ollie Wolf, who are friends of mine):

The ad spans the life of San Miguel from its introduction in the 1950s to current day, and uses a range of film stock, Hi-8 super8, super16, S-VHS and 35mm to give authenticity to the eras, as well as using vintage bottles and chalices.

And it was directed by Daniel Wolfe, who directed this:

I haven’t bored you about my Water Water Everywhere project for a while, so here goes:

Since we launched the app I keep seeing ads for bottled water alternatives that sell themselves on their environmental credentials.

I don’t know if that’s a consequence of the old adage, ‘to a worm in an apple everything looks like apple’, but I’m sure I didn’t see any before the summer.

And if you click the wweverywhere link above you’ll see the massive installation Sodastream have placed in the basement of Selfridges.

As I pointed out in the water blog, I do understand that these companies are looking to make money (strange change of heart for Sodastream otherwise), but I also believe that doesn’t matter. If a great consequence comes from an impure motive, then who cares? The only thing that really matters is measurable results in real life.

However, this does go somewhat against what I have written before about Unilever (only three of you will recall my rant against the FMCG behemoth: I thought it rich that the company that produced Dove and professed to give a shit about women’s self esteem was the same company that produced Lynx and therefore didn’t).

So I’ve decided to change my mind: if women are happier because of Dove’s advertising campaign, no matter what the corporate mendacity, then that can only be a good thing.

PS: stop buying bottled water. It’s really stupid.

When I was at AMV many of the staff took the Myers Briggs test, a series of questions that would place you in one of 16 different personality groups.

Many big companies use this test because the theory goes that you could interact better with others if you took their personality type into account. For example, if you spoke of an idea in terms of its abstract potential, that would not persuade a personality type that lived for concrete logic, so instead you would look for more a more solid context in which to express yourself, and the whole process would become smoother.

It was kind of interesting (although Ken Robinson is not really a fan) and because so many of us had done it, you could have a bit of a chat about it with colleagues and perhaps find a way to get though any differences more effectively. My only problem was that I was really bad at working out other people’s types, so my attempts to take their perspectives into account were rarely successful.

Anyway, one day a Myers Briggs lady called a few of us creatives together to discuss our recent testing. I’m not sure what the overall point was, but something didn’t quite work for me: I understood what they thought we could get out of this information, but I wanted to ask another question: why are we the types we are? This enquiry was brushed off because apparently it was not a matter that was covered by Myers Briggs, and why care so much about the means if we already had the end?

Well, I just thought that even more accurate analysis could be gained from that knowledge. But then it’s far harder to find out that kind of information.

What separates the good from the bad, or the good from the great? Why are some of us driven and others content with the status quo? Why are some of us neurotic and others carefree?

Of course, these are questions that man has struggled with since the dawn of civilisation, so we weren’t going to solve them that day, but I don’t like to accept things as complicated and important as that without a little more thought. The fact that this system had got so far without that further degree of curiosity seems to me a curiosity in itself.

But maybe that’s just me (and that fact that I’m an ENTJ).

Today’s crappy timewasting links for the weekend can be divided into ‘motivational’ and ‘other’.

Let’s start with the shit that will get you started:

Brilliant motivational music mashup of Shaft, Surfer, Star Wars etc. (thanks, P):

http://vimeo.com/25004046

Scary motivational kid (thanks, P):

And finally, let’s pray for tyres and oil and stuff (thanks, P & L):

Then we have the ‘other’:

Ian Stephenson’s ‘Really Shit’ exhibition reminds me of David Shrigley (in a good way; thanks, J).

Thierry Henry’s 226 goals for Arsenal. Number 31 is the best.

The greatest promo of all time (thanks, J):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHEFbX81XWQ

Thankyourwank – a new low for social media (thanks, B).

And on a similar theme…

Robocop Live!

Funny responses to well meaning signs (thanks, L).

And some funny UK place names (if you like that kind of thing; thanks, J).

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

Not their best, but charming nonetheless.

(Thanks, L.)

And while we’re on the subject of promos, here’s the new one from OK Go: