If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

I’ve been sent this a few times over the last couple of days:

The Last Advertising Agency On Earth from FITC on Vimeo.

Ha ha, very funny etc.

But how does that tally with this?

Apparently, TV viewing is actually at an all-time high and only 1% (fuck-all) is done online.

And last time I looked, there were quite a few print ads on the pages of almost every non-book that I read.

Suck that up your digital anus, geekoids.

I remember, as I’m sure you do, that a few years back, digital was IT (no pun intended). People were saying that if you don’t have some digi shit in your book by about March 23rd 2010, you would be fucking obsolete. Well, that turned out to be a giant bollock sandwich with monkey shit on top.

Sure, there is a whole effing load of wonderful, supercool, admirable digital stuff (yet the UK STILL hasn’t made a digital across-the-whole-country-famous breakthrough like the three things everyone’s been bleating about for, like, five years: BMW Films, Subservient Chicken and Nike Plus) but the usual, traditional, ‘dinosaur’ media are still the predominant ones in terms of cash and viewership.

And that doesn’t look like it’s changing.

So where does that leave us?

I think it’s time to stop worrying and love the bomb.

Whatever that means.

This is probably some of the best advice you will ever receive (thanks, Dave Trott, via his Twitter feed).

And check out the new blog from my friends, Diccon and Al.

And this is cool (via the excellent Denver Egotist).

To be honest, the competition hasn’t been that stiff, but when I checked out this link on Saturday afternoon I was astounded (I am rarely astounded).

(Thanks, Luke Sullivan of Hey Whipple, Squeeze This. Via his Twitter feed.)

This is amazing for a number of reasons:

First, the idea that television advertising is open to anyone at such a miniscule price is a real breakthrough (As far as I can tell, the service is not open to the UK yet) because it’s the last piece in the universal accessibility of advertising. As the film shows, it’s fairly easy to make an ad for little to no money, so now that you can show it to over a million people for a tiny budget, mass communication is being truly democratised. Say your piece (within the regulations) and find your audience.

Second, it now seems remarkably easy to buy media. Like all of you I am sarcastically certain that media planning and buying is an incredible art that can only be practised by experienced geniuses. Now you can sort out your own media schedule and fill it up for tuppence. 1000 solid responses is a great ROI.

Third, the potential for scam ads is now infinite. The last great frontier – the cheating TV ad – is now within the grasp of any unscrupulous agency. Go for it lads! Fill your boots! Make ad awards seem even more pathetic than they already are.

Even though it’s only available in the US, I’m definitely going to use it to promote my novel.

…In about as tiny and pathetic a way as possible (it’s the last thing mentioned in this list, and they’ve shortened the URL so the ITIABTWC name doesn’t get an airing), but I’m delighted that the guide section of a national paper has seen fit to dedicate an area the size of an anorexic postage stamp to my ramblings:

If anyone’s interested, it had no effect on my visitor numbers whatsoever.

As Hirsute Gentleman says, you want to hate him, but there is an annoying amount of sense being spoken.

Seen one like it before, but still impressive.

Amazing pictures of people made up as paintings from this site (Thanks, D):

And this looks fun:

There was a very good comment on yesterday’s post that questioned why advertising agencies overcomplicate the process so much when it could be so easy.

I’m sure Boobs (the commenter) is already aware of this, but it’s all down to the different motives of the people involved.

On the surface, we all want to make good ads that sell the products or services of our clients. However, under the surface are the other motives.

I’ll gloss over the fact that many creatives just want to win awards (I think I’ve written about that before), and, I assume, many planners want to do the same (by the way, how did planners get ownership of an ad’s effectiveness? So they write those papers that you have to submit to effectiveness awards, but surely the actual effectiveness itself is down to a number of other factors) and mention instead the overall motivation for much that is shitty on Planet Earth: money.

The advertising process is complicated because the more complicated a process gets, the more people have to be involved and the more people who are involved, the more an agency can charge for all those people. This is the reason why traditional ad agencies want to be responsible for digital/design/DM and everything else that used to be done by specialists: there’s a big old pie out there, and the people in charge want every fucking slice they can get their hands on.

If you asked most non-creatives (and probably quite a few creatives) what they want out of their day’s work, the answer would be ‘money’. I suppose there’s nothing wrong with that. Money’s nice and nice things cost money. But then it begs the question: why advertising? There are surely better, more enjoyable ways to make more cash for less work than the creation of ads. Even the skill-sets involved in being client friendly (account management) or doing research (planning) must be useable in a host of more lucrative industries.

I wrote recently how I believed that the residual reputations of an agency can attract people to work there, even if the fuel behind that name burnt out long ago. I think it might be the same with the whole industry. Many people think that advertising is bad at branding itself, but I think that the image of a Porsche-driving fat-cat pulling up to the Ivy for lunch with the famous star of their new campaign is one that still lives on for many people.

Advertising seems like an office job with more glamour than most, so it sometimes attracts the kind of people who want money, but also the kind of people who want to bask in the perceived trimmings. But there’s a strong chance those perceived trimmings do not include ‘the making of great ads’ so much as looking like your life is more fun that that of your chums who earn more than you in The City.

You may have entered this industry with more ‘noble’ intentions, but you’re almost certainly spending your days with people who didn’t.

Monday’s post seemed to loosen up a certain amount of anti-planner vitriol:

‘Planners are a waste of bastard space. Everyone says “Yeah, but the good ones are worth their weight in gold”. Bollocks to that, I’ve yet to meet one. I’ve had the repeated misfortune of working with ones who worth less than their weight in shit.’

‘Re: planners. 99% of commenters seem to agree: they’re a waste of space. So why are clients hoodwinked by their bullshittery?’

‘They take a huge piss into clear running water and make it dun and opaque.’

So I thought the issue was worth an entire post to itself.

I should just say that I have worked with/known some very good ones, such as Jeff, Justin, Jonathan and Will. These guys have offered perceptive briefs with simple propositions, and are good for a chat, too.

However, many of the rest have veered far too close to the dictionary definition of ‘patronising cunt’ for my liking, and all too often their little houses of cards seem to collapse under the merest of scrutiny.

Three examples:

I was briefed by a very senior planner who went on for a while about the brief. He appeared to have spent ages getting it exactly right and was, of course, very confident and supercilious. At the end I asked him, ‘Does the proposition mean X, or Y?’ His response? ‘It’s up to you?’ I then said that surely his research suggested that one was better than the other. ‘Not really,’ he replied. Then and there, I thought that the whole process was bullshit. Someone spends months thinking something through with a client and then ‘distills’ it to an entire page of A4, and yet I can make al choice about its fundamental meaning at my own discretion? (Sorry if the example is a little unclear but rest assured, I was being told that I could alter the entire essence of the brief one way or another with no research or client agreement.) What was the point of the brief?

A planner briefed me, my partner and a junior team on a big project. The brief was very good, with a clear, simple proposition that could lead to some excellent work. We did two days on it and the planner surprised us by coming in with a completely new proposition that none of the four of us creatives could understand. I mean we literally had no idea what the new proposition meant. The planner did, of course, sigh as if we were all quite thick and it was therefore a bit of a chore having to deal with us. Then I told him to fuck off so we could work on the original proposition.

Finally, there was a brief I worked on that smelled of weak bullshit. The problem when you work to such a brief is that your ads don’t stand up at all, and it’s hard to work out whether or not they are right. I went to talk to the (very senior) planner who, after an hour of prodding admitted the brief was rubbish, but it was all he could come up with, so that was what we were going to work to, bullshit or not.

There have also been many comments on other posts lamenting the primacy planners now seem to have in agencies. They get to decide, often above the CD, whether an ad is good enough to leave the building. I imagine that this is a symptom of the uber-primacy of the client: if he has approved the brief then the ad had better stick to it like glue, so the planner becomes his representative in the agency. Management do not want to piss off clients, so no one gets to go against planners.

There may be odd/wrong/dumb briefs with any number of propostions in the proposition, but I find the problem with many planners is the attitude. I have a theory that because planners have done all the research, they consider themselves to be complete experts on the client/product. This then leads to a tone of condescension when they deliver the brief. It’s never that they’ve explained it wrong; oh no. You, the creative, have been too stupid to understand.

For example, I once had a chat with a planner where I asked an (I thought) innocent question based on something I had heard him say: ‘why do you think all planners should have a blog?’

His reply began with the words that epitomise the fucking annoying attitude of so many of his profession: ‘Please don’t misunderstand me…’

When did I misunderstand him? There was no problem of communication, but if there had been, why should it have been a misunderstanding on my part?

Twat.

Then again, as one of the last of Monday’s commenters said:

‘I accept that there are planners out there who sit around word bending and being useless, but if that’s their remit then that’s the agency’s fault. The bunch I worked with until recently were brilliant.’

I hope that’s right, and I hope that’s the direction we’re going in.

Unfortunately, I have my doubts.

This:

Is a spoof of this:

A couple of things I don’t get…

The Lynx ad is a few years old. Odd to spoof an ad that long after it airs.

How famous is the original? It was good, but I don’t remember it crossing over into bigtime public fame.

What’s with all the new ‘jokes’ (shopping bags etc.). Don’t they just dilute the spoof?

Maybe they thought the ad would just work on its own terms, without reference to the original. But if that’s the case, why bother spoofing at all?

I think the girls are better in the new one, though.

And it’s well shot.

And I’m sure the public won’t give a toss about the above points.

One of the more interesting aspects of working in advertising is the frequent contact you have with other people who do the different jobs that make the industry go round.

And how often do those jobs seem less stressful and more appealing than your own?

I’ve regularly found myself in an edit or sound session wishing I was the guy at the desk. You can still pursue excellence but you don’t have to originate the project yourself and the working environment seems cosy and pleasant.

And what about the director? That job appeals to me much less. Again, you don’t have to originate the ad, but overall it looks like a bit of a bugger and the treatment process seems to require such an annoying and large degree of supplication that I’d want to shoot myself on a daily basis. I mean, going cap in hand to Mike and Rich from some wankhole agency in Shoreditch for the chance to shoot some FMCG shitpile? No, ta.

And while we’re on the subject of jobs I encounter but would not want to do, account management and planning can fuck right off too. Particularly the first one. I’d rather eat fibre glass candy floss than clean a client’s alimentary canal with my tongue then get shouted at by Mike and Rich for failing to sell in their choice of director.

Client? Yes, the bit I see looks like fun, but I’d imagine there are many other aspects of the job that would make me want to commit suicide, including working in Slough.

But with the five minutes’ thought I’ve given this quandary, I think I’d like the job of the guy at The Mill or MPC who shows you to your grading suite. He always seems so happy, whoever he is. Either they pump him full of incredible Class As or he genuinely likes meeting, greeting and shifting bookings around.

Any jobs in your sphere that you envy?

UPDATE: my wife tells me that these people who meet and greet at posthouses are actually the job’s producers, so they do loads of other maths and shit. I’m still tempted though.

The wit and wisdom of Andrei Arshavin.

(Via the most excellent Arseblog.)