If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

Saul Bass wants to make beautiful things, even if nobody cares (thanks, J):

Talent imitates, genius steals (there are loads more of these if you click through to the YouTube page. Thanks, K):

Steve Jobs on Dragons’ Den (thanks, G):

I can’t stop laughing at this (check out Andrei Arshavin at 1′):

And along similar lines, an entire site devoted to white people rapping poorly.

The Tarantino Mixtape:

Play the game where you have to try not to shit your pants (thanks, A)…

Then watch Cole the Rapper pee his (warning: this might be even worse and more depressing than the awful depressing rapper I linked to a couple of weeks ago).

And, oh God, here’s another one (thanks, D):

The very funny Black Swan make up tutorial (thanks, W):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3HLQlW_jwM

A history of rap in 4 beatboxing minutes (thanks, R):

Let’s be honest here, the only reason 99% of you read this blog is to waste a bit of time during the working day.

Of course, I am chest-puffingly proud of making a contribution to that (I dream of the day I am officially responsible for 100,000 wasted man hours), but I wonder…

Where else do you go to piss about from nine to five?

I’ll start with a few of my own crackers:

All of the previous day’s football highlights.

LA property porn.

Celebrity scuttle.

Quid pro quo, Clarice…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0P0iPoukGeA

‘In return for one night together, eating proper food with proper gravy.’?

Don’t you just love that subtext that’s supposed to guilt frazzled parents into making sure they have a proper meal ‘together’ with ‘proper’ food and ‘proper’ gravy (by the fucking way, Bisto, your powdery shit from under the fridge isn’t ‘proper’ gravy. That would be the juices from whatever meat you’ve cooked – tricky with a sausage, I grant you – mixed with flour and a drop of wine/cider/sherry/similar. And if you claim to make proper gravy, what’s improper gravy? A cup of the runs?)?

This giant food corporation (RHM) has the bollocks to lecture us about how we bring up and feed our kids? They make Mr. Fucking Kipling cakes! How many extra calories have they piled on the nation’s waistline over the years? How many child-parent arguments have been sparked off by the desire for one more Bakewell Slice? You don’t really fucking care about the fabric of the British family, so don’t try and serve up this mendacious load of shitmongous condescension.

And for the fucking record, sausages aren’t exactly ‘proper food’ either. Unless you buy the expensive ones, they are generally reconstituted abattoir scrapings, as much sawdust and dirt as testicle and eyelid, and pouring your dessicated  turd powder over them isn’t going to help.

So, bottom line: you are inconsistent, duplicitous cunts who have tried to leverage the guilt of Britain’s parents by suggesting they have failed in some way if they haven’t done what their kids really want, namely: to sit down in a kitchen with their parents and eat shit in shit sauce.

Thanks for that.

Arseholes.

Back in the day, some of London’s agencies only offered clients a single answer to their brief. I only have proof that this was the case at Lowe, where Frank made it well-known, and AMV, where I worked.

That might seem like a strange idea to some of you. I mean, how many of you work in an agency that does that today? None, I’ll wager. The current situation is typified by a client I worked on who had a clause in his contract saying that he would be offered three solutions to any brief. However, if he didn’t like any of the solutions he could (and usually would) then demand a further three routes and so on until the number was closer to twelve.

Now, you might think that there’s nothing really unreasonable about this, after all if you were buying a coat and didn’t like the one the man at the shop offered you then you would feel entitled to check through the rest. But then advertising isn’t clothes shopping. The client agency relationship ought to be one established on the basis of trust, where the client will believe in the the agency’s ability to choose and provide the best solution (and why anything else?) and see it through to reach the optimum conclusion. To go back to the clothes analogy, it would only apply if you had three prior meetings with Miuccia Prada, Mr Reiss and Mr Byrite, chose the designer most sympatico with your coat vision, gave them several months of back and forth about exactly what you wanted out of this particular coat at this particular time, then a further month to make it with constant contact throughout the process. I’d guess that by then you would know what you were getting and would be quite pleased with the result.

So there’s no more trust. Not real trust. Clients will say there’s trust because to say anything else would be a bit insulting, but let me repeat: CLIENTS DO NOT TRULY TRUST THEIR AGENCIES.

Why? Well, we could come up with lots of reasons for that but pretty much all the fault lies with agencies. Over the years some of them may have acted in a high-handed manner that they couldn’t possibly justify (those ridiculously over the top parties may not have helped. Clients might well have wondered how agencies could afford them then adjusted their terms of remuneration accordingly). Now we also have the brain drain, where worse pay and conditions (still very cushy compared to a nurse, but all adjectives are relative, aren’t they?) have led to the very best leaving the industry to be replaced by, well, not the very best. So clients look at what they are offered and might not think that much of it, so they ask for more work and that suggests even less trust.

So clients don’t trust agencies for some pretty good reasons. But this situation then gets exacerbated by the agencies’ collusion in the lack of trust. If an agency gives several routes then they do not have integrity. They are not spending their time doing their very best work because they are spending a lot of time on routes which will they know will die (not their very best work). They are showing ads in the hope that the client will chose one, pay them and move on to the next one. They also know that there are few measurable consequences of this: ads rarely increase sales on their own, so unless you have laid a real turd, no one can really take issue. Keep your head down, do something adequate and hope no one notices.

If an agency genuinely offered only its best stuff then the client would be able to trust in the fact that this was the case. What we have instead is agencies implicity saying: ‘I Dunno what’s any good. You choose.’ How can you trust someone who does that? You can’t. The client then has to do the choosing, make the decisions and erode the trust still further.

So clients do not trust agencies, but agencies do not act with integrity.

Which came first? No idea, but until one side starts acting with trust or integrity, this will never improve or end.

UPDATE: check this from about 2:50 (thanks, Anon):

See what you can do with no budget?

Charming.

(Thanks, D.)

For those who are interested, the top five in each category can be found here.

1. Congrats to my old AD Cam and his number 5 TV ad.

2. Congrats to RKCR/Y&R for their ‘5th best agency in the world’. I guess that makes them officially the best agency in the country.

3. Congrats to the Dixons campaign – most awarded in the world.

4. Congrats to Donald Gunn for thinking up a way of making loads of money just by adding up awards and making it all a bit secret so we can’t just do it ourselves.

The joy of destruction (thanks, J).

An unscientific study of what drugs do to creativity (Thanks, K).

Axe Cop! Written by a five-year-old, illustrated by his 29-year-old brother (thanks, M).

Another spoof case study. Soon someone will have to spoof spoof case studies (thanks, M):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oo7_eFftuM&feature=youtu.be

What’s it like living in other countries? (Thanks, K.)

This isn’t by Chris Cunningham, but it reminds me of his work (NSFW):

Where to start?

A few points:

1) Other countries do it much better than the UK.

2) There’s no real reason why the UK should be so shite. Tough conditions such as low budgets (Subservient Chicken) and big brands (Ikea, Nike, BMW etc.) can produce classics in other countries.

3) UK Digital agencies are now easily in their second proper decade of mediocrity.

So here’s the major reason why: in the UK, digital advertising is still thought of as the nerdy, poorly-hung virgin to the Veyron-driving superstar that is Above The Line (I exaggerate to make a point). The glamour, budgets and salaries are all still in conventional media, and so therefore is the talent. I’m not for a second saying that is right, or good for the business, but if we’re all going to be honest about it, we have to admit that a job in a digital agency is only marginally more attractive than one in a direct agency.

The problem with this is that the vast majority of digital creative jobs are taken by the people who came closer to the bottom of the class at St Martins/Watford/Bucks/Wherever. Of course, there are a few exceptions and the blurring of lines between the two disciplines means that some of the talent inevitably crosses over (is it any surprise that probably the UK’s best-ever digital campaign, Met Police Knife Crime, was done by a big senior team in a big ATL agency? And ditto last year’s online Phillips films), but in general, a digital agency has a smaller and lower quality talent pool to choose from. This in turn means that the work doesn’t really get any better and the job remains as (un)tempting as ever.

Fortunately, some ATL creatives are making the crossover (eg: Alex and Adrian at Glue) and might help to bring things on, but the problem remains that for many digital agencies, much of life is spent doing the digital version of someone else’s ATL campaign, so less creativity is required, less job satisfaction is available and again, the job is less tempting to the best in the business. Also, if ATL agencies have good digital briefs, why would an ambitious person want to restrict themselves to a single medium?

Oddly enough, I have noticed that the digi-guru types (lots of places seem to have one; I’m not sure what the real job title is, but you know who I mean) in big ATL agencies are foreign. They seem to be in it for the chance to do great stuff, not because they couldn’t hack it ATL. Perhaps it’s just a matter of perception: in other countries they have great digi work to look up to, so find it entirely reasonable to aspire to that. They might also have less good/glamorous TV to entice them away (yes, I know UK TV is also pretty poor at the moment, but it’s still better than the digital work).

What’s also funny about this is fact that in 2007 there were doomy, industry-wide warnings that if a creative didn’t have any digital work in his or her book by 2009 they’d be a dead dinosaur, forever banished from the advertising industry. Well, that’s patently turned out to be complete bullshit. It’s nice if you’ve got some but it’s far from essential if you want a big job in a big agency. The emperor’s new clothes aspect of the medium has led to the feeling that ‘wolf’ has been cried (I know I’m mixing my fairy tales). When will digital be a really big deal in this country?

Another part of the problem is that much of digital’s success has ridden on the back of ATL. Cadbury’s Gorilla and John West Bear weren’t designed as virals. They just spread through the interwebz because they were a fucking brilliant TV ads (read the Ad Contrarian on this very subject). Another example of the best ATL-ers doing the real biz (same with Nike Write The Future) that makes digital waves.

So what’s the solution? Unfortunately, like most people who work primarily in non-digital, I’m not sure I care. I can be inspired by great work from around the world and see the UK’s ATL agencies get the closest to emulating it. If the UK’s digital shops don’t smack it out of the park it’s hardly a reason to lose any sleep.

I could have cut and pasted the post but there are also comments, so you’ll really feel like you’re getting your money’s worth.

Enjoy! (As the internet people say with alarming regularity.)

Here’s an article that endeavours to explain the disappearance of ‘names’ in the world of advertising (thanks, V).

It’s an interesting theory but I’m not sure I buy it.

The main hole lies in the assertion that the credit is spread throughout many names these days because integrated campaigns are the result of many people’s contributions. But that suggests that people have stopped making successful work in conventional media. Although there are still people producing good (if not classic) work in these areas, they have little fame or standing to show for their skillz.

I’ve mentioned this before, but in the context of this article it’s probably worth repeating that the most successful TV/print/radio ads of the last few years have not made ‘names’ of the teams behind them. Why? Well, there are probably many reasons, but I think one of them is the Campaign Big Awards. Before they existed there were five easily digestible award schemes in this country – Campaign Press, Campaign Poster, D&AD, Creative Circle and BTAA  – you knew what they were for and a handy book or booklet (free with Campaign in the cases of the first two and the last) let everyone in adland know what the good work was and who was responsible for it. If someone’s name featured several times it was plain to see and that contributed to the status of the ‘name’.

Now Press and Poster have been taken away, along with any status they could afford, to be replaced by a new scheme which has zero status. It’s prohibitively difficult to find out who has been nominated before the Campaign Big awards and prohibitively expensive (the Big Awards book costs a tenner and I have no idea how you go about getting one) to find out who has won. But then nobody really gives a monkey’s anyway. This is because the Big Awards cover digital and, sorry my digi friends, but no one who works in above the line advertising really gives a shit who has won any of the digital awards. No one. Absolutely fucking zero people.

So the guys and gals who win these worthless digi awards get the same prize as the people who win the TV and print versions, which means that if you see one on someone’s shelf you have no idea if they made a very good TV ad (unlikely in recent years) or a banner you didn’t hate that much. This means that two sources of ATL creative prestige have been replaced by one source of creative apathy (the Big Awards have planners on the jury FFS! Who gives a fuck what they think about ads? Nobody in an ATL creative department. That’s right: absolutely fucking zero creatives in above the line agencies give a shit about planners’ opinions on finished ads, and before the planners among you get all testy about that, number one: it’s true, so live with it, and number two: I’ll bet a day’s salary you don’t give a fuck about what we think of quant versus qual or whatever the fuck it is you spend your time debating with a copy of Monocle shoved up your arses*).

True, we still have the BTAAs, but they’ve been devalued in recent years by a lack of truly great TV ads. Creative Circle enjoyed a brief renaissance under Mark Denton but took a step backwards this year by awarding Campaign some kind of prize and allowing a pair of dolly birds to choose their favourite ad of the year and award it a Gold, devaluing entirely said Gold. And that leaves us with D&AD: foreign jurors none of us has heard of means we can’t value the opinions of the juries. What have you done, Mr. CD of TBWA Hockenheim? Madame ECD of Publicis Djakarta? To be honest, we can’t be fucked to find out. If it was something really significant we’d have heard of you, but it isn’t, so we haven’t, so meh to the lot of you. And now that the Annual is online, the hard-copy book isn’t really worth waiting for. We already know what’s in it, and it can’t play TV ads or integrated case studies like the web version can.

So there aren’t really any creative awards worth giving a shit about anymore, ergo, it doesn’t matter who has won them, ergo there are very few opportunities for creatives to gain status in 2011.

That’s why, in the UK at least, there are no Names.

Interesting to hear that it’s happening elsewhere.

*Smiley face made out of punctuation