If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

Have a look at pages 12 and 13 of this week’s issue.

It’s on the IPA’s Future Of Work report, which details the changes advertising needs to make in the future in order to thrive (I’d use the word ‘progress’. ‘Thrive’ is a long fucking way away right now).

Without wanting to climb too far up my own arse (it’s not a happy place to be), much of it echoes my own ceaseless whingings and witterings on this blog.

‘…all of which makes a advertising a considerably duller place to make a living…’

‘…employees are expected to be flexible to suit the company, not the other way round…’

‘Agencies admit to being increasingly nervous about telling clients how to run their business.’

‘For new recruits, we need to present working in an agency as significantly more exciting and empowering than working elsewhere.’

‘Agency bosses must make major changes that won’t come easily.’

‘Agencies are finding it difficult to make their businesses profitable and most admit that much agency profit comes from non-core services.’

‘The pyramid structure and cult of career progression, which results in people leaving the industry in their thirties…was singled out as another major issue.’

‘One client sums up the structure as agencies making money by employing three very clever senior people and “500 five-year-olds”‘.

‘Digital has made the portfolio offered by agencies more complex. It has shortened response times, and though it’s perceived as cheaper to buy, it’s more expensive to service. It’s also breeding a 24/7 access culture and getting in the way of face-to-face meetings.’

So now it’s official.

By the way, no one, and I mean no one in charge is going to give the first fuck about all this.

Sorry.

Things will just continue to worsen until the toilet backs up with months of undigested chicken jalfrezis.

By then, anyone good will have left and the whole industry will resemble a Siberian whorehouse on Christmas morning.

You need an out.

*Oddly enough, despite the massive slagging I gave them in March, Campaign have seen fit to put one of my posts in this week’s ‘Best of the Blogs’ section. My title for this post is not a reciprocation for that ‘kindness’.

…The Stewart Lee book, ‘How I Escaped My Certain Fate‘.

There was a passage in it that caught my eye:

‘Whether something is a homage or an act of theft depends on the relative fame, status and wealth of the homager and the homagee. When advertising scum rip off Bergman or Wenders or some obscure brit artist for a campaign and say that it was a homage, the real effect is that simply by virtue of the mass audience their adverts achieve as opposed to the minimal audience enjoyed by most actual art, it immediately renders the subject material a cliche by association rather than validating it in some way.’

I have to admit that I can see where he’s coming from. You do a nice little scene in your classic movie and someone ‘homages’ it up the arse, suddenly transforming it into a work of turdage.

And it’s hard to justify. Someone creates a little bit of genius, you borrow it and it becomes, to some degree, a scene out of an ad that you borrowed because you couldn’t think of something yourself and in the process devalues the original work to the point of shitterama.

Instead of choosing a recent example of this, I thought I’d find the highest ranking film in the IMDB top 250 and its most pathetic rip-off.

I know most of you are too young to remember this, but the throbbing cunt-faced cheek of this ad was the talk of the town in the mid-nineties:

You might also be too young to be aware of the point of homage:

Anyway, I guess that’s the tricky thing about art: once it’s out there, it’s out there, and there ain’t much you can do about it.

UPDATE: Sorry, I didn’t realise that the Schindler’s clip I originally chose had no red girl in it. The new one is much better.

About ten years ago I had an idea with which I would bore people in social situations. It was that someone really ought to do a musical based on Dirty Dancing. Every one of the many people I told about this thought that such a thing would be a great success, to which I replied, ‘I know! Look, I’m not that bothered about all the money or whatever, I just think someone should make it’ (I’m not sure why I said this; I fucking hate all musicals except for South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut. Why I should feel the urge to improve the lives of hen nighters and homosexualists is beyond me. Maybe I’m just all heart). At some point I thought I might be lucky enough to bend the ear of someone who could actually do something about it.

Anyway, as you might have noticed, in between having that idea and writing this post, someone went and made Dirty Dancing: The Musical. I have no idea how big a hit it is, but it seems to be fairly popular. This success doesn’t bother me in the slightest, after all, the gap between having that idea and making it real is enormous, and I never came anywhere near bridging it.

Then, a few years later, I had an idea to make a toaster with see-through sides so you could know when your toast was done. With the assistance of a couple of colleagues I got a bit further down this path, eventually getting quite far with a proper designer who seemed to be able to make it happen.

Then I talked to a friend of Jamie Oliver who put me in touch with his product guy and he told me that having the idea is maybe 10% of the process, which then requires manufacturing (you tend to get this done in China where people happily sell all new ideas to other manufacturers), distribution, retail positioning, marketing, advertising etc. up against very strong competition. They guy said that it was pretty hard for Jamie, so it would be much harder for us.

At that point I kind of lost interest – it was starting to sound like a giant headache – and that ended up being the right thing to do because John Lewis began selling a proper see-through toaster and we would never have got ours out in time to compete. And then I was listening to one of Ricky Gervais’s podcasts about a year ago (it was quite an old one) and about halfway through it, Karl Pilkington mentioned the idea of a see-through toaster. That podcast was probably heard by about  five million people, so thank god we didn’t put anything more into it.

I also had an idea for Top Gun the musical. That was easier. After Dirty Dancing, thinking of an eighties movie that hen nighters and homosexualists would like to have remade as a camp stage show with additional songs was pretty easy. Top Gun would be a massive hit, but then so would, I dunno, The Breakfast Club or The Lost Boys. Anyway, I was a little further beyond giving a shit by that stage so, y’know, whatevs.

But all this leads me to my latest ‘bore everyone’ idea: a programme that makes your computer keyboard sound like a real typewriter, including the all-important shhhjjjjjjjjjj-ding! return key. Again, I’m not bothered about the cash; I just want someone to make it then send me a copy. So come on, somebody must be able to do it, and you know it’d sell millions at a fiver a time.

Come on. I’ve done all the hard work (smiley face made out of punctuation).

Read out the proposition then twist it entertainingly.

The selling gets done clearly but is then out of the way to allow for 20 seconds of entertainment.

The quality of that entertainment is, however, down the extent of your skillz.

This one was done by some people whose skillz are, as the kids say, mad.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F_G2zp-opg&feature=player_embedded

(Via the excellent Toadstool Blog.)

A computer can now make ads.

Apparently the results are pretty mediocre, but that would then make them of a similar standard to the vast majority of advertising done by human beings.

So where does that leave the industry? Well, I think there are three possibilities:

1. It will make no difference. I think this is the most likely outcome. Despite the fact that most clients and agencies don’t seem to give the first shit that the work they take so much time and effort to produce is mediocre, as soon as anyone gives this thing the green light, everyone involved loses their jobs, including the marketing department. No longer will Spewtex Washing Powder require six levels of clients. Instead, advertising could just be something the MD sorts out on the crapper in between Sudoku puzzles. To avoid this happening, I think we’ll all just pretend this thing doesn’t exist so that the wasteful, shit-making machine that is the current advertising industry can carry on its quaint little circle jerk.

2. It’ll make a bit of difference. There are plenty of small clients that could get professional so-so advertising rather than amateurish so-so advertising, and they might like to use this programme. Also, if many of today’s marketers were honest with themselves, if they got their ads this way it wouldn’t be any worse, but it might be cheaper. However, there will always be the others who pride themselves on their need for innovation, making them immune to the programme’s charms.

3. It could get more sophisticated/better, making it good enough for every client. Pretty much all technology improves with time and this may not be an exception. There will still be some requirement for originality and the stewardship that ensures quality of execution, but a really good version of this programme could replace 90% of what ad agencies currently produce.

Oh look! One more reason why you need an out.

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

Like everything with Jack Black in it, the actual movie looks shit, but I do admire this ‘bumming of real movies’ strand of Orangery.

Better than most ads, quite funny and as big as Black’s arse cheeks.

I give it 8/10 (it’ll win a few minor awards, particularly the Eurocrap ones that seem to be automatically impressed when a BIG STAR is involved).

(Hey, maybe we should all start rating ads out of ten, then there’ll be no argument about EXACTLY how good they are.)

Dali on What’s My Line?:

The Empire Strikes Back the way it should have been made:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOjzLggAKis&feature=player_embedded#!

Hungover Owls.

See how much of this you can watch without crying (I managed 22 seconds).

Being hilariously rude about cute creatures (Via Hey Whipple on Twitter).

Is this a capella version of ‘Bitches Ain’t Shit’ better than the original?

Status updates of great historical events (funnier than it sounds. Thanks, M).

Scott Pilgrim vs The matrix:

The world’s best countries.

If you’re going to resign, do it like this. (Via Desmond on Twitter).

Scorsese’s fucking boring new Chanel commercial (warning: you will not get this minute back):

Many of us do jobs which supposedly demand insight into every facet of human nature; into the wild and gloomy recesses of something so unutterably complex it has defied the comprehension of the most intelligent people ever to walk the earth.

Of course, we can understand to some degree, but to know, to really know what the hell motivates millions of discrete and mysterious entities? No fucking chance.

And yet we (planners more than the rest of us, but we all think we have something of a clue) tout ourselves as experts. We claim to know. We claim to be able to produce words and images that will alter the directions of minds so that they end up bent to the will of those that pay us.

Shysters, the lot of us.

You see, if we were truly able to do that which we claim, we’d be the richest and most powerful people on earth. And why? Because no one can do it.

Richard Branson, Rupert Murdoch, Martin Sorrell, Stevie Wonder, Barack Obama, David Cameron, Jack Nicholson, the XX, Martin Amis, Simon Cowell, Pharrell Williams, The Situation, Billy Joel, Harry Dean Stanton, Hare Krishna, David Hockney…

None of them knows. They can all have a good guess, and they might well succeed, but they will also surely fail.

And there’s no shame in that.

Just as long as you’re aware of your crashing, regular, inescapable, dismal propensity to do the wrong thing.

For the first step on the road to recovery is admitting you have a problem.

Mousetrap ads have been done.

DoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDoneDone

(Thanks, R)

What actually happens when  a client meets an agency for the first time?

‘I’d like to sell my chocolate bar to lots of people.’

‘Right. Well you’re going to need a 360-degree engagement campaign.’

‘Um…’

‘It’ll give you some conventional media along with the digital, social, experiential and DM that will make sure your engagement is fully holistic.’

‘Is that good?’

‘You can’t really do anything else.’

‘OK. And all the places will say ‘buy the new Astro Bar with toffee and toasted banana’?’

‘Sort of. On TV we might prefer to go for a brand message that talks about how nice chocolate is in general, then on Facebook we could have a vote on how many banana chunks you put in the bar. It’s pull rather than push, you see. Then we might create an app that is actually a game, perhaps an updated Space Invaders so that people can engage with the Astro Bar brand. Later, in the digital part of the campaign, we could get people to upload videos of themselves eating Astro Bars all over the world, and then we might upload an Astro Bar song to iTunes.’

‘Could we not just run a TV and poster campaign with a big shot of the bar and a nice clear line, like ‘New Astro Bar with toffee and toasted banana’?’

‘You could, but then you’d lose out on a big slice of the crucial 18-24 demographic that likes to use the internet.’

‘Do they not watch TV or walk past posters?’

‘Well, technically, yes. But surely you want something that’s going to get them more engaged, more involved in the Astro Bar brand experience?’

‘I just want people to buy the bar.’

‘That’s why you need to give consumers a chance to become part of the brand, to create the meaning of Astro Bar along with you, to feel some degree of emotional investment. To scale the giddy heights of brand saliency until they immerse themselves so deeply in the Astro Bar experience they are swimming in a pool of liquid engagement, picking fruit from the tree of real-time value justification and frottering their loins on the soft, spongy genitalia of long-tail impact analysis.’

‘Um. I think I’m going to try the other agency down the road.’

‘Be my guest, but they’ll tell you the same thing. You see, we’ve all agreed to turn selling a chocolate bar into an enigma of utter bollocks so complicated that it will make separating two spider webs in the dark, drunk, on a row boat in heavy weather seem as simple as blinking. By adding layer after layer after mind-crushing layer to the process we’ll be sure that you have no idea what you’ve paid for, how to measure its success or why things have reached this pretty pass. Yes, you might say, but humans are essentially the same things they were twenty years ago: they read lots of magazines, drive past posters and watch hours and hours of TV, but that would be missing the point. You see, we need to make a cunt-load of money out of this and unless we make up more shit for you to pay for we’ll be fucked. In fact, in many ways, we’re already fucked. Kids are making films for tuppence and getting them seen by hundreds of millions of people for precisely fuck-all. How can we compete with that? To be honest, we can’t. That’s why bullshit, more than it ever was, must now be the ordure (sic) of the day.’

‘Where do I sign?’