If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

A song about being on cocaine.

(Thanks, D.)

All the swearing on Twitter (Thanks, R).

Best debut features of all time.

Flight of the Conchords gig posters.

Sigur Ros point out how the advertising industry likes to bum them (thanks, P).

The architecture of Inception.

Internet protocol (Thanks, ALS).

Nice short film on visual metaphors (Thanks, L).

Man vs Elevator (elevator wins).

Johnny Depp is a lovely, lovely man.

Actually, as far as internet protocol goes, there’s a section in that link about the delightful ways in which people and companies sign off their emails. Perhaps it would pass a few dreary minutes if we could all contribute (anonymously, of course) any that we are aware of.

Allow me to start with CHI’s (thanks, P/R):

CHI&Partners – winners of: 2 Golds at British Television Advertising Awards (including ‘Best 60/90 second commercial’) Grand Prix at DMA Awards (Direct) Grand Prix at Revolution Awards (Digital) Click here to see the work.

Please feel free to leave your own.

Here is one of the best ads of all time:

Doesn’t it hold up just brilliantly today?

It would easily have won BTAA ad of the year for the last few years.

Have a look at each example. They are both original and universal and that is a really tough combination to get right.

And the VO: John Cooper Clarke is a very unusual but absolutely excellent choice, conveying a sort of bemused ironic tolerance (try asking your next VO to do that).

And that lovely pause where the bloke spits. It’s a truly wonderful example of intelligent, original, brave advertising that you just can’t argue with. We all want to be that guy who doesn’t play by the shitty little rules in life, and here’s 60 seconds that gives you really smart permission to do just that. How many times can the brief, ‘Don’t run with the herd’ have been crapped out by a lazy planner? Here is the best way to answer it.

And here is the best thing to play someone who says you shouldn’t do negative advertising. Do an ad with a fat naked bloke and the words ‘don’t masturbate’, then set a car on fire.

Thank you Charles Inge and Lowe. The Cannes Grand Prix was well deserved (it beat Surfer, fact fans).

*An occasional series where I hark back to better days in the forlorn hope that they will return.

Here are a few ‘classic’ ambient ads from the book ‘Long Live Advertising’ that make me want to puke:

Complete bullshit from South Africa. Imagine what would happen when the next cases came through the hatch. Squashed fucking eggs, that's what. So I'd have thought this was taken on a non-moving conveyor with some of the creatives' suitcases and friends. Many awards, mucho bullshit.

A great example of the 'people looking at our brilliant ambient idea' shot. Multicultural and both genders. Hooray. But Nike have fucked up the running track. Oh no. Maybe those runners are thinking, 'What a bunch of cunts Nike are, fucking up our running track.

'She eats light mayonnaise'. Who? That bit of hair, of course. This even has the dog doing the mandatory looking. Unfortunately he's wondering if it's a blonde rat or something he can hump.

Some T-shirt that makes you like your arse is hanging out. Not sure why, but the real bullshit here is in the description, where it says that the pictures were turned into ads in 'party magazines'. I read several party magazines. All of them existing only in my imagination.

I know these won a lot of awards, but they're just complete and utter bollocks. Plastic hands poking through drains made to look like jails? First off it looks like the people are trapped down the drains, then they have to crassly write 'wrong opinion' on the fingers, then you're supposed to give a shit. But what's it really saying? Something about the ubiquity of wrongful imprisonment? But wrongful imprisonment isn't really ubiquitous. If it were, we'd know about it, negating the need for these scammy examples of award-whoring bullshit, I mean ambient ads.

Here.

When I was a nipper and all round here were fields, I used to have an unhealthy obsession with my D&AD annuals.

I had a pretty good collection, only missing one of the last thirty, and was nerdy enough to know them inside out.

Now I don’t really give a toss about them. I read my last one once then gave it away to a young creative who I thought might have more use for it than me (having said that, I do use the online annual a bit. It’s much more convenient and you can view the films).

I think I’ve written about this before so I’m not going to go on about it again, but what I wonder is whether or not there are junior creatives out there who regard the annual in the same way as I (and Chris Palmer, Mark Denton, Dave Dye, Peter Souter and many, many others) used to?

Are you a junior creative who has pored over and memorised the annuals?

Do you wait for each new collection of in-books and nominations with bated breath?

Are you dying to get your first entry?

Did you get your first entry this year and do a little wee of excitement?

I do understand that D&AD has suffered, through no fault of its own, from the fact that much of the work in it has already been seen in Archive or any one of a dozen other shows around the world, each trying to hoover up the entry cash from agencies and networks desperate for those Gunn Report points. But then D&AD might also have to blame itself as its awards have become homogenised with the others through the mandatory inclusion of foreign jurors who like the same kind of ads that win at Cannes.

Is there now a generation of up-and-coming ‘talent’ who don’t have much respect for what has gone before, condemning us to repeat the past through ignorance of it?

Is the fact that this is the third mediocre year in a row in UK creative advertising point to an onward downward trend that is bound up to a degree with the lessening of D&AD’s status?

And can anyone under 30 complete this headline: ‘If you can’t tell if it’s a Bechstein or a Steinway then it isn’t a…’?

I’d be really keen to find out because the mystique D&AD used to have must have been bloody hard-won. If it goes, how and when will it ever be regained?

I don’t watch a great deal of TV, but I’m fairly sure that this is the country’s most hated ad campaign:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvqzx1bA488

(That’s actually my favourite execution because it has subtitles. What the fuck for? And if you look on the YouTube page, the fat cunt singer actually has a name: Gio Compario. What a cunt. By the way, the giant fat cunt also has a blog, along with his own website. Cunt.)

But…

I think it’s probably also the country’s most famous ad campaign. Here’s a little bit of evidence:

some other company's 6-sheet, Camden, 3-10-10

Like Esure, it really has entered the national psyche, and alas, alas, a-fucking-las, I’m sure the people responsible are just stoked to the hilt.But then the real problem is that it’s just one more irritating sore of a campaign that is also very successful. That means that more of these kinds of campaign will be made and we’ll all have to suffer just a but more.

And that throws up two unanswerable questions:

Why does this kind of shit ‘work’? (There are plenty of other campaigns, good and shit, high and low media frequency, that fall flat on their faces and certainly don’t have people graffiti-ing other people’s advertising. Why is this one – and Esure – so famous?)

Why, if you had even the dimmest 0.000000000000000000000000000000000176 watt light shining from the depths of your soul, would you ever want to besmirch the collective cultural landscape like this? It’s literally like taking big buckets of shit and smearing them over all the walls of the UK until we submit and say, ‘Yes, we remember that you are the people who smear shit all over the place and do something else that we don’t really care about’.

Could everyone involved please Go Compare their genitalia to a circular saw, really, really closely, in the dark, while paralytically drunk.

PS: and it’s ‘thank your LUCKY stars’, you twats.

So my book (to be published 9th December; buy it here) has been printed and sent to me.

It came in a big box with 24 copies and it was so exciting I did a little wee.

If you are thinking of writing a book and are wondering what the upsides might be, one of them is opening a big box with a penguin on it and seeing your words in a bound collection of pieces of paper that’s exactly like Freedom by Jonathan Franzen, only possibly not quite as good. Upsides to come include having it in the poor, long-suffering British Library, along with literary salons such as Tesco, Asda and Smiths, each of which have been kind enough to take on 10,000 copies to make 30,000 Christmases just peachy.

Here is a short guided tour:

Full Metal Disney:

(Thanks, R.)

Don’t you just love David Shrigley? Well, here’s an interview.

Fallon and Timberlake take us through the history of rap (Thanks, A).

Play asteroids on websites.

Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook movie.

Heavy storm inside a cruise liner (this is absolutely amazing. Thanks, P).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xqQ6OoYuF4

Over at the wonderful Denver Egotist they’re debating the pros and cons of balancing an ad career with having kids.

All the arguments are in there (and the comments section), but I might as well stick my own dreary oar into the water.

As someone with a couple of young kids, I can say that becoming a parent does change your attitude to work. Of course it does. It puts things in perspective; it makes you realise that the logo size on a 25×4 ad for chicken fillets is about as important as one of the farts you did last August, and it stops you thinking that the best thing you’ve ever produced is a pencil-winning print ad for tampons.

But then for some people this isn’t the case. They want to further their careers, and whether that’s for themselves or so that they can pay the school fees for Jonty and Charlotte, it means that they see less of their kids than perhaps they should (and who is to say how much one should see one’s kids?).

So you pay your money and take your choice.

Currently, advertising is quite demanding on the time of someone who wants to be a grande fromage, so if that’s your aim, you do have to decide. However, I think it’s perfectly possible to do well enough in both that neither side feels let down. You may not be parent of the year or ECD of a demanding network agency, but you may well be all the happier for it.

And for further, more definitive advice, check number two on this list.