If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

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.

a) Nice Chianti.

b) Cheeky Lafite.

c) Big Amarone.

The answer is c).

It is. Go on, look it up.

No, not in the movie. In the book.

For reasons far too dull to go into, I’m currently reading The Silence of The Lambs. It follows the movie pretty closely (or rather vice versa), but there are some interesting changes, including that most famous line (it is also not followed by the sentence, ‘Lecter then sucked in air like a starving man gobbling up an unruly oyster’.)

I know, I know: that’s interesting enough. I have already rewarded your kindness in visiting ITIABTWC with that little tidbit alone, but hang on, there’s more:

The process of adaptation is a fascinating one. Many people have told me that No Country For Old Men is a virtual carbon copy of the book (The Road certainly was, although they left out the bit about babies cooking on a spit). Whereas Schindler’s Ark is a very dry read with very little narrative, unlike the tear-stained movie it inspired.

The reason I point this out is that no one ever really explains how the process of adapting a movie is actually very similar to that of ‘adapting’ your ad script.

Both go through many layers of approval, budget strictures, eye-watering research and lots of witless, talentless, tasteless cunts poking their noses and oars in to the detriment of the final product.

And both involve changes that can make the initial script look unrecognisable.

For example, I heard the the initial script for Levi’s Running Through Walls (I can’t call it Odyssey; I’m not quite enough of a wanker) had a man waking up in a box, then breaking out of it before doing some other stuff that sounds a bit too on the nose. The Glazer read it and basically came up with the ad we all know and love.

Of course, the creative process can also take things in the other direction, but it’s worth remembering that what’s on the piece of A4 is just a starting point.

Will it be massaged to brilliance or rogered to oblivion?

Well, unlike in Hollywood, advertising writers do get some say in the process.

Whether that say makes any difference is up to you.

(Of course it fucking isn’t. It’s up to the client’s wife.)

It strikes me that there are some things that are always assumed to be good or bad, whether or not that is actually the case.

Take, for instance, shoots abroad: jetting off to some other part of the world at someone else’s expense to sit around on a set or location then eat and drink in the most expensive restaurant you can find, also on someone else’s dollar.

Of course, that is often a pleasant experience, but it can be rendered shitemongous by a wide variety of factors: are you leaving your young kids/hot significant other behind (I know that can also be a plus point for some people)? Have you already been to said location on many occasions, thus exhausting its novelty value? Will you have to babysit an arsehole client or spend time with a hated account director? Is the ad likely to be rubbish, therefore ending up as a month-long waste of career time? Is said location (eg. Prague) fine for a day or two but pretty dull any longer than that? Is the location amazing in theory but quite grim in reality (Yes, Havana, I’m talking about you)?

Equally, choosing and meeting directors is fun if they are any good, but if not, trawling through Wankbucket Productions and Spaz Films is a strange kind of hell. You’ll be talking to them because Frank/Chris/Fredrik etc. didn’t want to know, and now you’re at some production company you’ve never heard of, talking to a director whose self-confidence is in inverse proportion to his talent. And you all have to pretend the ad you’re making isn’t a load of old plop, otherwise you’d shoot yourselves in a mercy-killing-cum-suicide-pact.

Then there’s the other side of the coin; the things that seem shit but aren’t (necessarily): for example, working on the worst account in the agency. Of course, this can often be awful, but before Cog, Grrr and Impossible Dream, Honda was one of the worst accounts in UK advertising. The work was dreadful and I can’t imagine people were to enthusiastic about trying to change that. But bad accounts are good for the same reason that good ones aren’t: do a good Nike ad and it’s just another good Nike ad, but turn Tesco, Honda or Philips around and you’ve really done something great. But you can only do that it you get the ‘shit’ brief on your desk.

What else are we supposed to like that’s actually dog mess? Award dos (surprisingly dull if you’ve been to a few. Especially if you’re neither on the pull or up for an award); Photo shoots (fucking boring unless you are very much that way inclined); agency occasions with free booze (wine always shit, beer always warm); being mentioned in Campaign (less prestigious than being mentioned in Razzle); D&AD entries if you’ve already had at least ten (they redefine ‘meaningless’).

But then there are things that are supposed to be shit that aren’t: meeting clients (if they’re good or interesting it can be a real pleasure/education); account people (some of them – particularly the younger ones – are quite pleasant company; getting fired (see if the grass really is greener elsewhere. It often is); working the weekend (great if you’re a freelancer) and your friends joining the ‘best agency in town’ (you might be jealous at first, but most people I know who work at ‘TBAIT’ fucking hate it there, wherever it may be).

I’m not saying that all the shit things are great and vice versa; just that poo can be disguised as a rainbow and vice versa.

Ah. Okay then, something about this article left a pooish taste in my mouth. Not just about Bogusky, but about our place in the greater world as advertisers. I suppose from time to time, in our quiet moments, we all scour our conscience and find fault with what we do. Unlike most of us Alex has the luxury of being able to do something about it – Excellent. No fault there, questioning and then acting on our culpability in shit is healthy if often deeply cathartic excecise. Keeps the demons at bay. Keeps us humble. Allows for a bit of sleep at night. But there is something arrogant in the way this one blatantly bites the hand that has fed him, worshiped him and made him a wealthy man. To be fair, I suppose it is good what he is doing: walking away, using his talent to a better end. There is nobility in walking away. But there is a righteousness with the way he goes about it, as though we should all do it, as though its a luxury we all can or should afford. In his own way he’s saying “I’m better than this”, and “I’m better than you”. Maybe he is. Hes certainly better at advertising than me, but does he really have to be a better person than me too?

In the end, Good for him for walking away, but I can’t help but to think he still wants us to see him do the walking. Like he’s doing it because he knows we’re still looking. Like he wants to at any moment turn, look over his shoulder and see us watching him, adoringly. Its still all about him. At least thats what I get from the article.

And i haven’t even gotten into the hypocrisy of how he wants to do good for the world but treats those he worked with like turds. Wow. sorry that just came out like a wave.

Thanks for that.

For what it’s worth, I finally read the article this morning and it made me wonder what’s going on inside Alex’s head; not with regards to this particular part of his career but rather what it tells us about his fundamental personality. I think he has a real need to have us (as my friend says above) see what he’s doing, and to be admired for it.

What drives that in him (what drives it in anyone?)? What’s the bit that’s missing that he feels the need to fill?

For further interest, check out his own line-by-line response to the article. Many of the responses are fascinating little windows into a sadly defensive personality, but what seemed most telling to me is that Alex only took issue with the negative things. Apparently the only thing the journalist got wrong were the suggestions that might leave us with a tarnished impression of Mr. B.

And the saddest thing about all of it? The fear with which people spoke of him, too scared to be named for fear of career reprisals.

But maybe we should stop fumbling at the contents of his mind like a freshman with a panty girdle.

Perhaps the whole matter is best left with a pensive ‘hmm…’

I’m on holiday, so I haven’t read this yet, but thanks, P.

(Thanks, P.)

If you work for a top 30 agency, I’ll bet you a fucking ton of cash that there’s someone pretty high up in your creative department who has never done a single piece of advertising work that you have either heard of or respect.

It might be a talentless chap or chapess who blagged his way into CD-ing a digital agency when they were desperate for anyone half decent (although as I understand it, for the most part ,that is still very much the case) and then kept that role when your agency bought their place. Now he’s a CD of Top 30 Place Who Were Gagging For Some Digi Creds, despite being fairly shit at the C part of CD.

It might be a happy, smiley fella who has popped over from some shop in the States where he was Head of Experiential Communications. Now, having designed a shop front for Wankado and Son that won a Silver Andy and a Copper Mobius award, he’s pretty hot shit. Even hotter shit is his headhunter, who has managed to convince Top 30 Place Who Want To Look Like They Are Forward Thinking/Cool that they need this guy.

It might be a useless cunt who has never done a good ad in his or her life but is really darn good with the clients and has worked out exactly which anuses to lick at Top 30 Agency Who Couldn’t Really Give A Fuck About Whether Or Not Their Ads Are 9/10 Or 6/10, and now here he is: boss of a bunch of people who are far better creatives than he.

In the three categories above there are many, many people who are now climbing to the top of the creative depts of big agencies. Good God, I’d love to name names, but that’s the great thing about this: I don’t have to. We all know about the American ‘designer’ who became a CD on a big account at a big agency before being found out and moving on to a few more agencies where the same process happened. Every one of us has encountered a some nimrod who can spout the right digital buzzwords in the right ears to cover up the fact that he’s done no good ads. And we’ve all been down the pub when our friend from another agency explains in stunned disbelief how their cracking idea has been blown out by a retard who’s never even heard of John Webster.

But the real question about this is why? Aside from the reasons I have suggested above, this phenomenon is both a symptom and a cause of the general Fucking Of Creativity that is undeniably going on right across the world: creativity itself is less important, so promoting client-friendly uncreative people is the current move for an MD to make. Equally, the more these berks maintain client retention while simultaneously producing creative work that no one really cares about, the longer they will keep their jobs and the harder creativity gets fucked.

The title of this post will be familiar to anyone who had worked in a proper creative department (by that I mean one staffed mainly by people who have been regulars in The Book). Whenever anyone got too big for their boots or received an undeserved promotion the rest of the department would ask, ‘But what’s he done?’ That was because everyone rose and fell on the back of one thing: their work. The ads they made. The shiny baubles they won for those ads being appreciated by their peers in award schemes that held more sway than the current batch.

Now, if you have three Pencils, they could be for Digital Crafts Cinematography, Writing for Design and Live Action Special Effects. Now, that doesn’t mean your three ads are shit, but it does mean that your award shelf looks the same as the guy down the hall who has won best 60″ TV ad three years running.

So what does it matter? It doesn’t, and everyone knows it. That’s why dildos are getting hired all over the place.

Is there an answer?

Well, you can choose to play the game and make sure you know how to make the people that matter like you.

Or you can accept that’s not why you got into the business, try to make the best ads you can and hope that works for you instead.

It might be a matter of how good you are. Obviously, route one is a brilliant development for people who know how to smile and press flesh but are shit at the somewhat trickier business of creating brilliant advertising. Route two only works for people who really love what they do and are prepared to sacrifice the most secure route to a payrise for a Bronze at Creative Circle.

Route three is being good at both. Fucking difficult but worth a try.

Good luck.

And some advice for writing.

And some other words of advice.

And some more: double dipping and the five-second rule

(Thanks to B for both.)

Inception characters don’t understand Inception.

(Thanks, K.)

XX and Snoop.