If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

To be an advertising creative, you have to be able to do the following things:

1. Come up with ideas.

2. Present those ideas to other people in such a way that they understand and are enthused.

3. Write scripts/descriptive paragraphs/headlines/copy.

4. Marshall and enthuse other creative people to create your vision.

5. Incorporate comments from a wide range of different people who have varying degrees of authority over you (CD, Client, MD, CEO, friends, creative collaborators etc.), choosing which are worth listening to and which should be ignored, and if the comments you don’t like come from someone with power over you, how best to avoid incorporating those comments while keeping your job.

6. Choose collaborators based on information that may not be altogether complete. For example, your budget and script will only attract a so-so director from Splange Films. How do you know he or she will be any good? How do you select him or her from fifteen reels of other mediocre directors? How about the Next Big Thing who might only have an ad that’s not exactly like yours to go on? What about their reputations? Do you go with Great And Difficult or Less Great But Collaborative?

7. Understand what you are actually watching during a shoot. The only person who really knows what is going on is the director, so you have to have the confidence not to stifle him, yet the balls to kick up a fuss if he’s going off-piste. Will these shots work with the music track you like? Is that performance consistent with what you had imagined? If you ask the production company producer if you can speak to the director one more time will the director get pissed off and throw his toys out of the pram?

8. Deal with agency politics. Who is the new CD going to be? Who might get fired? Is it OK to nick a brief off that team? What about that team? If you get in with that Board Account Director will he get you that top brief? If you come onto a project late will you have a better chance of being the one whose ad gets made?

9. Hold your own in post. Can you explain why you think an edit doesn’t quite work? Why that sound effect is too loud and coming in too late? Why this music company needs to be asked to go again? Why that grade is a shade too green? Can you incorporate even more comments from even more people who know better than you and stand your ground? Is it worth standing or should you save up your foot-stomping for a later issue? What’s the best way to coax people round? Are you OK with little white lies? Big black ones?

10. Manage your career. Should you switch agencies now or later? Is your salary high enough? Is that the right agency to move to? Should you listen to all the stories about a place, or take them with a pinch of salt? How do you persuade your boss that your ad really needs to be entered into Digital Crafts: Cinematography at D&AD? Should you have lunch with that CD? Shoud you be persuaded by that headhunter.

Part of the reason I’m pointing this out is that it seems pretty obvious that it would be darn hard to be good at all of the above.

Very few have been; even fewer are now.

But when you look at the odds, it’s amazing that anyone would even get close.

I’ve been sent this a few times and I have to say it’s one of the most batshit crazy things I’ve ever seen:

The greatest gang fight of all time.

The saddest album covers of all time (thanks, K).

One of the greatest ads of all time (thanks, A).

I can’t get enough of these dubstep videos (check out the David Brent one):

What’s the difference between Britain, the UK and England/Scotland/Northern Ireland/Wales?

How to leave a Facebook comment (thanks, S).

If movie posters told the truth.

How long did Bill Murray spend in Groundhog Day hell (or heaven, depending on how you look at it. Very deep film, etc.)?

‘I say, ‘Mr Caribou, maybe you have to take one for the team’.’ All the Sarah Palinisms in one handy website.

And finally, the most illegal thing I’ve ever seen in the history of wrestling (thanks, N):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DU4TDGlbTz8

Yes, it’s a blindingly obvious pun, but it’s been really well made and repays a few extra viewings (Thanks, R):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ulbjaKmKG0&feature=player_embedded

Flicking through Campaign I find that someone called Jonathan Mildenhall has been asked to explain his job at Coca-Cola:

‘Our unique role is to integrate the strategic mandates of our brand growth agendas with that of the creative resources and ideas of creative industries such as advertising.’

He goes on to say, somewhat amusingly, ‘Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t always an easy balance to strike.’

Thank god he cleared that up.

Do people just go to America and get lessons in spewing diarrhea from their mouths?

And where is this man when you need him?

(I must say it helps if you, like me, have a four-and-a-half-year-old son who worships Darth Vader):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R55e-uHQna0

One of the things I learned at Watford was that advertising ideas ought to contain a truth that people can relate to.

Of course, that is exactly what all good music, books and other arts are based on, so why not advertising?

But what is more powerful, a universal truth or a specific one?

Of course there are some things money can’t buy; for everything else there’s Mastercard, but how does that compare to St George and its English-will-love-it-but-others-will-be-non-plussed attitude?

In these days of pan-planetary globalisation, the universal truth is more likely to be the one trotted out (that’s if you get a truth at all), but I can’t help feeling that a shotgun might get more shots in the target, but it won’t have the deadly accuracy of a rifle.

The difference may come down to what you set out to do. Trying to please a million people may get you liked by those million, but trying to please 100,000 might get you loved by those 100,000, and the message might then be sharp enough to include those you hadn’t even thought of.

Take Skittles, Old Spice and Gorilla. All were enjoyed internationally, but that wasn’t their intention. They were made for a national target market that then expanded through the interwebz.

Last year’s TV winners at D&AD had no internationally-intended ads, instead awarding local gems like these:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZQyaAD-IL4

In fact, you have to go back to 2006 to find the last internationally-targeted winner:

So there’s nothing wrong with a universal truth, but the smaller your target, the greater your shot of hitting them right between the eyes (does that make sense? Kind of. You know what I mean).

An old piece of copywriting advice suggests that you imagine you are talking to just one person as you write.

Could be worth a try.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pB1JegEG4dM&feature=player_embedded

I’ve written before about how hard it is to get Hatstand right.

Is it subjective?

Do any of you prefer this to Touch, Pinata and Beard?

If successful Hatstand is a matter of random chance then why have almost all the Skittles ads since Pinata been a bit disappointing?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnwsAr8eBQA&feature=player_embedded

(Thanks, L.)

I think it’s distinctive and memorable, but Garrison sounds like he’s at the wrong end of three pints and a spliff.

The other thing is that at the end YouTube offers you the chance to view Cog, Impossible Dream and Grrr, reminding you how much better they were.

I suspect the dead hand of STRATEGY made this a little more generic than it might have been, and that stops it being great.

UPDATE: and please can we end the digiwank, for this is the digiest wankiest of them all (thanks, R).

Have a good hearty read of this (thanks, R).