If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

It’s far too long. The flab hangs off the last third like the sweaty moob of a morbidly obese shut-in feasting on his third chicken tikka masala as he wishes to god he might see his genitals just one more time before his coffin is lowered into its oversized grave by a specially rigged crane.

Then the crane breaks and the coffin smashes into the hole and we all have a look to see if there’s anything we can do about the situation, but all we see is thirty stone of pasty, randomly-haired fleshmeat spread amongst the shards of oak like a duvet stuffed with ice cream.

Oh god, we say, Oh god… I will never be able to cleanse my mind of this sight, it will be with me as long as I live, haunting my days, barging its way unbidden into my thoughts like a crack-crazed paedophile, desperate to interrupt the perfect tranquility of a school sports day with his malevolent tumescence.

No! Begone, errant pederast, for I did not choose this.

Just like I didn’t choose to watch the pointless Lexus ad with Kylie and the drums.

Such an issue, isn’t it?

How much do you start on, how much do you end on, do you get more then the team next door?

Well, in the interests of not giving a shit about all that bollocks, I thought I’d let you know how much I earned in my years in the business (if you fancy sticking your own in the comments, we might find that enlightening):

Age 22: £10,000

Age 23: £12,500

Age 24 (fired and back to square one): £12,500

Age 26: £17,500 then £22,500

Age 27: £27,500

Age 28: £32,500

Age 29: £38,500

Age 30: £43,500

Age 31: £70,000

Age 32: £80,000

Age 33: £85,000

Age 34: £99,500

Age 35-37: freelance day rates vary too much to be accurate, but the 20% tax rate is very pleasant indeed.

I do have other sources of income (slave trading, moonshine production, go-go dancing for coins etc.), but you needn’t worry yourself about those.

I’d guess I plodded along a bit in my early years then accelerated as things went along. That might be down to the percentage pay rises (30-40% early on, then closer to 10% later, although that equated to a larger sum of money). I’m not really sure if that’s a little or a lot for my time/awards/responsibilities/work etc., but I never really moved agencies and have been through several recessions and pay freezes. Also, wages have changed a great deal (downwards in real terms) in the last decade, so I’m perfectly happy with what I’ve earned, but it’s never enough, is it? (Smiley face made out of punctuation.)

I hear kids these days start on £25,000, but does that translate to a higher sum later on, or is there a bit of a ceiling that keeps you down? Is middleweight about £50k or £60k? Do you have to take on client responsibilities if you’re on six figures? Do you earn less outside London?

Let’s have a frank (yet almost certainly anonymous) discussion about such things.

Not so much anymore:

I mean, it’s perfectly charming in a Gondry-esque way, but boy is he treading water.

For proof, here’s a similar, but much better video he did about fifteen years ago:

(Thanks again, L.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkp4t5NYzVM

I have to say, though, that they have left out the balancing fact that women earn much more in the pornographic film industry.

Men: 371,083

Women: 1

But it’s a start.

(Thanks, L.)

Today is the turn of Leagas Delaney and ex-BBH/St Luke’s creative Adam Arber and his fascinating Roadkill Toys.

The products are little animals that have been run over on the roads. They come in body bags, with toe tags, death certificates and car bumper stickers. They’ve got 4 characters at the moment: Twitch the Raccoon, Pop the Weasel, Grind the Rabbit and Splodge the Hedgehog. A squirrel is in production. Adam was on Dragon’s Den with the products, and also featured on Jonathan Ross and Graham Norton.

So, pretty successful, but it doesn’t end there:

The products are currently in a touring art exhibition in Europe. At the moment they’re being displayed in Prague in an exhibition called Decadence, next to Jeff Koons and Andy Warhol exhibits.

The Hells Angels in New York ordered a whole batch to strap on to the front of their Harleys.

And Adam’s had quite a bit of hate mail since the launch a couple of years ago. Mainly from bigots and zealots. Here are a couple of examples:

Your videos are such a “bad idea” ones. Some kids are going to kill animals just because them saw it in your videos. I hate everthing here. And I think those videos are urging violence against the animals.

You think maimed animals are funny?  You think encouraging kids to believe that maimed animals are funny is amusing?

I am a novelist and will be using your ‘firm’ in my new book as an example of moral depravity.  And no, I’m not a god botherer.  I’m forty-six with a succesful marketing career behind me and now own two hotels as well as being a writer.  I smoke, drink and do too many things to excess.

Hat’s all the way off to Adam and his sick shit.

Honey Badger don’t give a shit:

Watch someone ride their bike down a cool little street course in some Latin American country:

This chick has got her shit locked down tight:

Hollywood no give a fuck about rip-offs (thanks, S):

Ever seen a footballer kick an owl in the face? (Thanks, S):

Infographics explained (thanks, W).

Wayne’s World in French (thanks, J):

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

Incredible pixel-perfect map of China (thanks, K).

How Old Spice is shot (thanks, M):

And finally, a little Charlie Sheen, dubstep style:

So here we are in 2011 and the UK advertising industry in the UK is still not quite firing on all digital cylinders.

But that’s OK: these things take time. Rome wasn’t built in a day and all that.

So what we can we do to help the process along?

Well, I think the first step on the road to recovery is admitting you have a problem.

And here it is:

Digital creatives and ATL creatives do different jobs, but people like to pretend they’re the same.

When people discuss the conflation of ATL and D creatives, they do so under the assumption that they are all ideasmiths who happen to work in different media. Alas, this is not the truth.

Digital people might occasionally have what ATL people refer to as ‘ideas’, but the greater part of their job involves process (eg: RGA didn’t win all those Nike Plus awards for thinking the original thing up; they just made it happen, designing the look and system). Check a digi agency’s offices out: they usually have many whiteboards on the walls to explain how the digital consumer goes from A to B to C to D to F to G etc. (and that’s just banner to landing page). This means that they can’t possibly be as dedicated to the idea side of things as an ATL creative. That would be like someone at DDB writing a TV ad and fretting about how the consumer comes through the door of the living room, sits in the armchair, finds the remote, turns the TV on, looks for the right channel, scratches his arse etc. Instead they are concerned only with the idea and its execution – entirely different jobs, mentally speaking.

So this produces a friction where one half thinks the other is not up to the job (that it isn’t even supposed to do) and the other resents being thought of as a bit shit (at something they aren’t supposed to be doing).

Perhaps it would help to rename the digital people so that the expectation and disappointment is not built in to the system.

How about facilitators? Conduits? Executioners? Makers? Processors?

It would make the mechanism of collaboration clearer because people would understand their roles more, tread on each others’ toes less and the sneering and defensiveness might just peter out.

You could even have digital creatives who would be specifically employed only to come up with ideas rather than get bogged down in the minutiae of implementing them.

How about it?

For the first time in many a month I find myself reading Creative Review.

In it there is an article on one of my favourite subjects: movie posters.

Apparently there is a niche strand of movie poster design that is commissioned for festivals and art house cinemas. The posters are really excellent, but they never see the side of a bus or the wall of your local Cineplex.

In other words, they are the ‘chip shop’ part of that particular discipline.

But the resemblance to advertising doesn’t end there. Under the subhead ‘heartbroken’, the brilliant Corey Holms explains his feelings on trying to get a big client to buy good work:

‘Every poster is a compromise, and I think that a lot of designers have the same feelings that I do, which is that when you look back at your work, all you see is what could have been…the typeface that got changed, or the shot of the star smiling that I was required to use that removed the intended tension in the poster. The most difficult part of the movie poster industry is that 99% of what we do is thrown in the trashcan. We generate a phenomenal amount of work – six to ten unique posters per designer, per round, and you rarely have more than three or four days to complete them. For me, the most frustrating thing is the incredibly difficult balance between caring and not caring. If you care too much then every single revision and comp that dies rips your heart out, so you have to be detached from the work. And if you don’t care enough, your work suffers. Part of the reason I left the industry is because I genuinely care about the work I do and there’s so much amazing work generated that never sees the light of day. I can only have my heart broken so many times.’

Bless.

If you’ve worked in advertising for more than a year, I’m sure that sounds very familiar.

Nice/depressing to know we’re not alone…

What a shit industry that pats itself on the back for middle of the road yawnfests like this. Imagine the car industry behaving like this. We’d all still be driving Hillman Imps. Its pathetic.

If its a shit year then they should just say no platinum until you cunts sort yourselves out. Or give it to Pixar or give it to Jonathan fucking Ive again. Or even that ridiculous on the ceiling ad. Just not the boring cider thing.

Do more modern minded youngy plucky creatives not go to juries anymore? Are the juries all old conservative dandruffed shouldered idiots?

I dont really give a fuck about awards, but America will see that this is what we think is our best ad. Its like the Brits vs the MTV awards. While they’re giving gongs to Beyonce and Lady Gaga we get all excited about N-Dubz.

Here’s the ad he’s talking about:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaTt291NCYw

I have to say I agree. It’s perfectly nice, but if it makes you jealous you’re probably a bit daft or something.

I assume nobody entered the real best ad of the year (Nike Write The Future), while I hear tell that the other contender (which I’m not going to mention here for fear of starting up that tedious conversation again) was thrown out for being a rip-off (was it a rip-off? Of course it fucking wasn’t. You’d have to be more educationally subnormal that someone who is jealous of Magner’s to think that anyone would nick the content of an ad in these YouTube days AND nick the distinctive track as well).

Here are the Golds.

Silvers.

And Bronzes.

And if you’re really bored, commendations.

Here’s Nigel Marsh’s TED talk on that very subject (thanks, P).

He’s an ad guy who realised he’d been working too hard, then worked out that it’s the little things that really matter.

I know I’ve written about the subject before, but I think it’s worth revisiting.

I’m sure there are many careers that demand time outside working hours, but  it was only the other day that I realised how it happens:

You start off in your career and the whole darn thing is super-duper exciting: your stuff is on TV/billboards/the pages of newspapers and magazines; you’re making movies (sort of); there seem to be ample opportunities for free alcohol; there are at least a few people of whatever gender you find attractive to perv at in the corridors; you feel part of a family (however artificial and spurious that construction actually is) of bright and interesting people; you are getting paid, possibly for the first time in your life etc. etc. etc.

And you almost certainly do not have a spouse or kids, so there is practically nothing stopping you putting in those extra hours at that enjoyable place you work and mucking in together like you’re all in the trenches at Paschendale (except with less mud and bullets and more Corona and layout pads). Then there’s the idea that more work in the early days will pay off later, kind of like compound interest: if you win a few awards in your early twenties and step up to a decent salary early then you get that salary for more years, and therefore make more money overall.

So that’s your early mentality, and it soon becomes habitual; after all, where do you draw the line that separates your non-working life from your working one? When you find your significant other and have to go to his or her best mate’s wedding? When his or her family are down in London for the weekend? When you’re on your tenth row about the time you’re spending at the office?

Up to you, really.

But it’s a tricky one, and some people never draw that line. They think it’s like putting toothpaste back in the tube. How can they work less when they’re earning more? They have to protect that bigger salary because now there’s a family depending on it, so it seems to make sense that you earn a lot of money to maintain the lives of a bunch of people you never see.

Anyway, there’s no right or wrong to any of it, but it might be worth ending with the lesson I once learned from a very high-powered CD: I asked him what it was like juggling being a father with running a big department. He told me that he has no recollection of a couple of years of his kids’ lives. He literally could not remember anything about their existence between year A and Year B.

But during that time they did live in a fuck-off big house, and you should see how many D&AD entries his department got.