If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

I was just reading this article about how movie marketing is going to have to change in the face of people watching their TV online after it’s originally scheduled.

Apparently, the problem with this is that the carpet bombing approach Hollywood takes to get the biggest opening weekend possible gets harpooned by their Friday ads effectively running on Monday when it’s too late.

Well, far be it from me to tread on The Ad Contrarian‘s toes, or to sound like a cranky old luddite, but some of this article doesn’t ring true to me.

Let’s take a closer look:

‘A recent study for cable giant Comcast found that 62% of respondents reported using DVRs, online sites like Hulu, or VOD.’ Now that sounds scary, but gives no detail of how much they do this and to what extent it affects real-time TV. I was actually surprised the number was so low, but it’s presented with the vibe that 62% of all TV viewing is done this way. The truth and the implication are miles apart.

‘Greg Kahn, executive vp business development director at media agency Optimedia, estimates that the Web portion of film-ad budgets has doubled to about 10% during the past five years. “I expect the digital component of movies’ media budgets to increase further,” he said. No shit, Gregory. You’d have to be a blind idiotic turtle to think anything else, never mind an ‘executive vp business development director at Media agency Optimedia’. Give that man a raise. But what had this doubled from? $5 to $10 or $500m to $1bn? The article doesn’t say, which makes me think the number is low otherwise it’d be worth shouting from the rooftops to back up the tone of Greg’s incredible insight. And again, the ‘doubling in five years’ strikes me as incredibly fucking low.

“What TV was in the 1980s the Internet is now,” says Peter Sealey, marketing strategy expert and CEO of the Sausalito Group, as well as a former president of marketing at Columbia. “The time spent by many in the core 18-24 movie audience on Facebook is higher than on TV. You’ve got to follow these eyeballs.” He predicts this fall TV season might bring “a diminished role of high-profile movie spots” on TV. Peter is another genius, although he’s very good at saying meaningless things that you can’t really argue with: “What TV was in the 1980s the Internet is now” How? What does that even mean? They’re both popular? As popular as each other? Engaging? Water-cooler-y? It’s almost as vague as “The time spent by many in the core 18-24 movie audience on Facebook is higher than on TV”. How many? And does that mean we can crowbar ads into their hours on Wordscraper without pissing them off? And ‘this Fall TV season might bring “a diminished role of high-profile movie spots”‘ Way to hedge your bets. What’s that, a 50% fall or a 0.000000001% fall?

‘So Lauer is trying to get the studios he works with to spend a higher-than-usual 2%-5% of their ad budget on such alternative methods.’ Hang on. A couple of paragraphs earlier it was 10%. And are we all stunned that Lauer wants studios to up the money they spend with him?

‘The best-known DVR producer, TiVo, has during recent years promoted special solutions to studios, offering ad placements throughout its DVR pages and features.’ I bet people love that. Buy TiVo to avoid ads then TiVo will stick some ads where you can’t avoid them to make up for it. It’s like buying a special mask to shield yourself from being pelted with human excrement, only to have the mask’s makers paste some shit into the front of the mask for when you put it on. Or something.

Peter Sealey assigned his MBA students at Claremont Graduate University this year to draw up a marketing plan for Sony’s upcoming “Green Hornet.” “If they show me a TV-centric campaign, grades won’t be that good,” he said. Yes, Peter: ‘Show me a campaign that uses the medium in which studios spend the vast majority of their money (presumably because it works to some degree. I’ve heard studios aren’t overly keen on wasting cash) and I’ll fail you.’

Oddly enough, though, Peter’s quaint approach to teaching is exactly that taken by many of today’s ECDs.

I can feel my brains leaking out of my ears…

I fucking hate mission statements. Fuc. King. Hate. Them.

The idea that Pret a sodding Manger is on some kind of a mission to provide us with sandwiches and coffee is hyperwank. The only mission they’re on is to make some cash out of a sandwich shop. The mission statement is almost always a big smear of cackbabble designed to make you think that the Estonians manning the counter on minimum wage care more about the arrangement of cheese and tuna than they do about sending their mammas enough money to keep them out of prostitution.

Anyway, beyond that, I also think it’s very important to have a mission statement.

You see, I think there’s a difference between corporate mission statements, which are usually designed to disguise a grasping desire for pots and pots of cash, and your own personal set of principles, which may include a grasping desire for pots and pots of cash, but you don’t have to disguise the fact because the whole thing is just between you and yourself.

Your mission statement need not be permanent or even completely clear, after all, life is an amorphous, constantly-shifting grey area where priorities can change on a daily basis. And it need not be noble, moral or ‘good’ (again, it’s just a little secret to keep in your head). All that’s required is a certain of focus on one thing, then that can point you in the right direction whenever you have to make all those important decisions.

If your primary goal is money, you can always choose the option that provides more of it. If it’s seeing your kids grow up, then you can decide to do only that which will maximise your time with them.

Of course, it can make you what some people refer to as a ‘cunt’, but it’s up to you: do you want to step over your friends for a more lucrative job or would you rather earn less money and have lots of mates who think you’re a lovely person/doormat?

Actually, you may need several mission statements for different parts of your life, but they’re always potentially useful, if only in the cause of avoiding the wastage of time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQsA2eW6-Vo&feature=player_embedded

Justin Bieber is brilliant.

If you slow him down 800%.

And for comparison, here’s the original:

This should be an olympic sport:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ho0WfS8opaI&feature=player_embedded

(Thanks, W&W.)

The architecture of Mad Men.

Top class mash-up:

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

Rachel Zoe is literally a complete fucking idiot.

Someone’s collected all those fucking stupid pictures of fruity girls getting their A-Level results (Thanks, A).

In case anyone’s interested, here are some tasting notes on some of what I’ve drunk so far (haters of the wanky, stop reading now):

2003 Leoville Barton is probably too young right now, but we had it in a demi, so it worked brilliantly: a perfect balance of fruit, alcohol, acid and tannins that was complex and concentrated, yet very easy to drink.

1999 Haut Claverie was a revelation. As a small Sauterne producer of little note one might wonder if it would hold up for eleven years, but it did so brilliantly. Honeyed succulence that matched the best of the appellation.

1999 Tour Blanche, also in demi, made for an interesting comparison with the Haut Claverie. Of course, TB is a premier grand cru classe so it was always going to have more depth, but even in the half it was still too young. Delicious, but with obvious indicators of greater heights to be climbed in the next 5-10 years.

2004 Confiance is Depardieu’s Bourg effort and like the man himself is a ballsy, gutsy, big fat bastard of a wine. Not a lot of subtlety, but worked well for what it was.

2004 Caillou Blanc du Chateau Talbot was excellent. I’m a big fan of the white wines produced by the Bordeaux big guns and, although this was nowhere near Margaux’s Pavilion Blanc, it still had enough understated complexity and concentration to stand up to Talbot’s wonderful reds. We also bought the 2007 but may give that a couple more years.

2004 Pavilion Rouge. This is Margaux’s second wine but it had all the hallmarks of delicate finesse for which its big sister is world-famous. We tried it alongside the Leoville Barton and it made a telling comparison between the St Julien and Margaux appellations that left us in no doubt as to just how different wines can be even when their terroirs are just a few miles apart.

Chateau Carbonnieux blanc 1999 is another white Bordeaux, this time from Pessac-Leognan and, like the Talbot, had a freshness and depth that left it with the delicacy of a Sauvignon Blanc (I fucking hate Sauvignon Blanc) but with the richness of a Chardonnay (I fucking love Chardonnay).

I hope that helps (smiley face made out of punctuation).

This morning I was in a wine shop in St Emilion and as I took in the bottles of Ausone, Cheval Blanc, Figeac etc., my thoughts, I am ashamed to say, turned to advertising.

(The situation did make me feel a lot like Swiss Toni. ‘You know, looking at classed-growth Bordeaux wines is a lot like making love to a beautiful woman…’ Or, in my case, ‘a tortuous advertising analogy that might work as a blog post’.)

I don’t know if many of you are into wine, so I’ll assume a massive and in-depth knowledge. If this starts to get a bit wanky just skip the rest and wait for the obligatory YouTube shite I’ll inevitably post tomorrow.

If you work in advertising,or wine you can make the choice to go your own way, taking a financial risk to produce what you think is right. The creative might be the vigneron, the agency might be the terroir and the client might be the climate, allowing for classic vintages or cat’s piss, depending on the combination of what’s available.

Of course, there is then the market. In the case of wine, this is the legion of restaurants, caterers and private buyers who might want your grape juice. In the case of advertisers, it’s the Target Market, who will sit in front of whatever you produce.

At some stage of both industries, you will make the decision, often without realising it, to go with either what the market wants, or what you think it should want.

In wine, a man called Michel Rolland was recently hired by many vineyards to help them produce a ballsy, up-front wine that was high in alcohol and made to be consumed young. This is because another man called Robert Parker provides annual ratings of all significant wines that people rely on a great deal, and this is how he likes his wines. So, in an effort to sell, many wine makers began to forego the true soul of their wines to chase the Parker dollar, while a few others dug their heels in and decided to make wines that were non-Parker because they did not believe in this money-grabbing homongenisation (I’m simplifying things, of course, but the gist of this is true).

So, in making ads (and in making most other ‘arts’), one can do what the Rolland winemakers did and chase the middle of the road because that is where most of the money lies. Or one can forge one’s own path in an attempt to make something more original that one believes to be ‘right’, despite the fact that, financially, that may cause one to fall flat on one’s face.

Interesting, though, that advertising has no specific Michel Rolland or Robert Parker to guide the taste in any particular direction. However, it does have a herd mentality, driven by fear to produce whatever is of the prevailing taste, no matter how dull the results may be.

And, let’s face it, the industry also has a great lack of people willing or able to go their own way and find a path that leads to something brilliantly different.

The pressures to aim for the cash are great and the path to originality can sometimes feel like Noah as he built his ark beneath a cloudless sky, but then, as we all know, people get very rich making piss like Jacob’s Creek, so why bust a gut trying to make D’Yquem?

The answer to that question might be where you find yourself.

Anyway, while I’m on the subject, I think I might do some more wine-related blogs in the next few days.

This morning I was in a wine shop in St Emilion and as I took in the bottles of Ausone, Cheval Blanc, Figeac etc., my thoughts, I am ashamed to say, turned to advertising.

(The situation did make me feel a lot like Swiss Toni. ‘You know, looking at classed-growth Bordeaux wines is a lot like making love to a beautiful woman…’ Or, in my case, ‘a tortuous advertising analogy that might work as a blog post’.)

I don’t know if many of you are into wine, so I’ll assume a massive and in-depth knowledge. If this starts to get a bit wanky just skip the rest and wait for the obligatory YouTube shite I’ll inevitably post tomorrow.

If you work in advertising,or wine you can make the choice to go your own way, taking a financial risk to produce what you think is right. The creative might be the vigneron, the agency might be the terroir and the client might be the climate, allowing for classic vintages or cat’s piss, depending on the combination of what’s available.

Of course, there is then the market. In the case of wine, this is the legion of restaurants, caterers and private buyers who might want your grape juice. In the case of advertisers, it’s the Target Market, who will sit in front of whatever you produce.

At some stage of both industries, you will make the decision, often without realising it, to go with either what the market wants, or what you think it should want.

In wine, a man called Michel Rolland was recently hired by many vineyards to help them produce a ballsy, up-front wine that was high in alcohol and made to be consumed young. This is because another man called Robert Parker provides annual ratings of all significant wines that people rely on a great deal, and this is how he likes his wines. So, in an effort to sell, many wine makers began to forego the true soul of their wines to chase the Parker dollar, while a few others dug their heels in and decided to make wines that were non-Parker because they did not believe in this money-grabbing homongenisation (I’m simplifying things, of course, but the gist of this is true).

So, in making ads (and in making most other ‘arts’), one can do what the Rolland winemakers did and chase the middle of the road because that is where most of the money lies. Or one can forge one’s own path in an attempt to make something more original that one believes to be ‘right’, despite the fact that, financially, that may cause one to fall flat on one’s face.

Interesting, though, that advertising has no specific Michel Rolland or Robert Parker to guide the taste in any particular direction. However, it does have a herd mentality, driven by fear to produce whatever is of the prevailing taste, no matter how dull the results may be.

And, let’s face it, the industry also has a great lack of people willing or able to go their own way and find a path that leads to something brilliantly different.

The pressures to aim for the cash are great and the path to originality can sometimes feel like Noah as he built his ark beneath a cloudless sky, but then, as we all know, people get very rich making piss like Jacob’s Creek, so why bust a gut trying to make D’Yquem?

The answer to that question might be where you find yourself.

Anyway, while I’m on the subject, I think I might do some more wine-related blogs in the next few days.

So read it.