If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

When I was a kid there were loads of petrol stations (there was even one in my road), and for the most part they just sold petrol. The motorway ones sold car maintenance crap and those nice powdered-sugar travel sweets, but the city ones were places you really only went to for fuel.

Then they started to sell other things. Magazines, groceries, coffee, mobile phone top-ups, cigarettes, flowers, charcoal briquettes (nice new print ad for VW, by the way) and even booze, just in case you felt just a little too sober as you took the wheel.

They became so good at doing this that they began to make more money off the non-petrol things than the petrol. Then they started to close, after all the property market was going through the roof and those forecourts took up an awful lot of space.

And now there aren’t many left (the one in the road I grew up in disappeared years ago).

So, with that in mind, here’s another ill-thought out theory to go with the many other ones that have appeared on this blog:

Many advertising agencies are becoming like petrol stations because they are becoming less about the business of creating ads as we know them, and more about selling their clients extra services.

If you think about it, this has become a financial necessity, even if your only ambition as an agency is to stand still. The amount of cash your clients are offering for a bit of press, poster, TV and radio advertising has declined dramatically, partly because the media costs for conventional media have plummeted, and partly because costs have been transferred to other forms of advertising, many of which were not created by conventional agencies only a decade ago.

So now agencies are claiming or acquiring skills that are new to them. These skills may be closely related to ‘conventional advertising’, but they are still not enough. An UK ad agency that wants to take in tons of money in 2009 needs to provide other services, almost all of which are process services: researches, audits, projections, strategies, analyses, competitive reviews…Anything that can be generated from the usual personnel of an agency.

Or, to be more specific, the usual non-creative personnel of an agency.

Indeed, this torrent of blah does not require much input from the All-Star-wearing picky little sausages in the Creative Dept. Sure, we might be called upon to provide adcepts, or pointless fucking cannon fodder, but the new streams of income emanate from the planners and the suits.

And this might just be why, in many agencies, creativity is taking an increasingly distant back seat to the other disciplines: it’s less lucrative.

Of course, it still pays to some degree, but that degree is decreasing, and with it, the significance of the Creative Department, and the creativity of advertising in general.

So, back to the petrol station. If agencies are going to marginalise that which is their ostensible function, they will become fewer and further between. Perhaps they will disappear and become something with a new name, such as communication consultancies, leaving the places that actually produce creative work to become smaller, more specialised communication production agencies, that merge with production companies and photographic collectives to do nothing but make the finished product. I imagine that what we now know as an advertising agency will exist, but only in larger incarnations that serve to make the more pant-wetting of our clients feel a bit safer and believe they are saving money through economies of scale.

The nth degree argument of this is that WPP will go back to producing Wire and Plastic Products, perhaps as an additional service for clients that need such a thing.

And the separation of ad agency departments which have always, despite claims to the contrary, been riven by dislike, jealousy, condescension, petty squabbling and diametrically opposed perspectives on life in general, will become formalised, leading to generally increased happiness all round.

It’s enough to make you feel all warm inside.

Fay Weldon, for those of you who are not familiar with her work/career, is an author who has sold a shitload of books, the most famous of which is The Life and Loves of a She-Devil.

In her early career she also worked as a copywriter, and is famous for coining the slogan ‘Go to work on an egg’.

However, in today’s Observer, she confesses that she did not actually think up the line:

‘It was one of those late nights, when the client’s rejected everything and you’re the copy chief and desperate. I flicked through some stuff from 1932 and spotted it, “Go to work on an egg”, so we put that up at the top. It didn’t sell any more eggs, of course, but everyone remembers it.’

There you go: one of the most famous slogans in the history of British advertising, and it’s nicked.

In the same newspaper (Review section), Charles Saatchi says of writing his first ad:

“I looked through copies of Farmer and Stock Breeder and Poultry World, chose some inspiring-sounding words and phrases, cobbled them together, stuck on a headline – I think I stole it from an old American advertisement – and produced “Ask the man who owns them” as a testimonial campaign…”

I think that can only encourage the rest of us to steal lines/ideas ourselves. It’s easier, quicker and there’s a good chance no one will ever find out.

Off you go.

The FT have cobbled together an article about the general state of advertising that feels awfully dated.

Old agencies can’t keep up, everything switching to digital, yadda yadda yadda…

Funny how all the old agencies are still in the places at the top of the (rapidly defoliating) tree.

Some people are very principled when it comes to advertising.

For example, I know of directors who refuse to shoot McDonalds scripts because of their disapproval of how they believe that company has treated rainforests etc. (whilst happily taking Nike scripts when they made sweat-shop kiddies sew their footballs together for tuppence an hour).

Then there are the many people who will not touch cigarette advertising because of the apparent evils inherent in promoting something so unhealthy and addictive (whilst happily promoting alcoholic beverages that are equally damaging, if not more so).

Then there are the companies who will not advertise children’s toys that encourage the kiddies to pester their impoverished parents into buying things they can’t afford (whilst happily advertising certain child-centric brands of crisps and other junk food, which are unnecessary, unhealthy and ultimately a waste of money, whether the parents are impoverished or not).

Anyway, that aside, I thought it might be a good idea to point out what ultimately happens when you work in advertising.

Say, for example, you work on Wrangler. What you are doing is joining ‘Team Wrangler’ to get a person who wants a pair of trousers to buy Wrangler over Levi’s, Farah, Top Shop etc.

When you advertise Amnesty International, you are basically joining ‘Team Amnesty’ to send someone’s charity donations in their direction rather than that of Oxfam, NSPCC or War on Want.

And when you advertise The Sun, you are joining ‘Team The Sun’ to make people choose that tabloid over The Mirror/Star/Sport etc.

The effect is mainly that of brand choice, not ultimate market growth. However, even if you did get people to spend more money on jeans overall, that money is always going to come at the expense of companies who would otherwise receive it for their own goods or services.

And that’s why this post has the title ‘Pick A Team’. You are spending your time, intellect and energy to help someone out at the expense of someone else.

Now, are you sure you want to help Tesco over Safeway? Volvo over Ford? Marmite over Golden Shred?

Because that’s what you’re doing.

Every minute of your working day you are picking a team and fighting for it.

Which might be worth bearing in mind when you think about the principles you apply to the work you take on.

A friend (thanks, C) sent me this compilation of little film spoofs that was rejected by MTV:

I liked it and put it up here.

Then I looked up Fatal Farm on Google and found this:

…which I also liked (and blogged).

Time wasted: 4 minutes and 12 seconds.

Here’s an article from today’s G2 entitled ‘Why this is the summer of the bad advert’:

This summer was looking bad enough without the onset of the worst advertising of all time. The eye-stabbingly terrible spot for Car Spotter – a service you text to find out how much your car is worth – is the clear winner here. A shabby man is loading shopping in to his boot, another man asks, “How much is your car worth?”, the first man says he doesn’t know and that’s basically the end of the ad.

Sadly it’s not alone. There’s that Churchill Insurance dog, the grimly forgettable confused.com and gocompare.com not to mention Dragon’s Den’s Peter Jones fronting a moneysupermarket.com campaign that’s so good the client started shortlisting alternative ad agencies a week after it broke. Even the previously passable CompareTheMeerkat campaign has started to eat itself, with a tediously unfunny “bloopers” spot. When these ads try to be witty and knowing – the Pot Noodles High School Musical skit is another example – they become even more annoying than they artfully admit to being.

When did our ads become so awful? Once, I’d actually ask my brother to call me when the ad break started. These days I’m thinking of swapping cable for satellite just to get Sky+.

Could it be the recession? Perhaps. Ad budgets are falling and redundancies are sweeping the industry – but recessions are historically fertile for British adland. Levi’s agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty launched during the early 80s slump while Tango’s HHCL was founded amid the ruins of Black Wednesday. Indeed, the early 90s and Noughties downturns meant young, cheap talent produced ads such as Ray Gardner berating the French on the White Cliffs of Dover for Blackcurrant Tango or the epic scope of 2001’s 10-part ad-length thriller for BMW starring Clive Owen.

Does it really matter? Yes. The UK ad industry helped launch the careers of scores of writers, actors, musicians and directors including Ridley Scott, Stiltskin, Alan Parker, Fay Weldon, Salman Rushdie, Brad Pitt, Justice, David Puttnam, Peter Carey, Alec Guinness and Dorothy L Sayers.

Unless the industry raises its sights a little higher, however, that particular wellspring of culture looks set to disappear into a puppet meerkat’s swollen belly.

Ordinarily, I wouldn’t bother to put it up. I mean it’s so tit-bleedingly mediocre it makes me want to sit on the business end of a Magimix just to remind me that I can feel something:

But there’s an extra element to this puppy that I feel is worth pointing out.

The people responsible have GONE ALL DIGITAL by creating an entire YouTube channel for the campaign, allowing you to watch various (usually webcam-based) high-jinks from the Mint People.

This is what happens when the number 360 is bandied about like wraps of gak at the 1988 Saatchi and Saatchi Christmas party.

Fill your boots, or lean your face into a hedge trimmer.

The choice is yours.

This is supposed to be the ‘game-changing’ (wonderfully hateable phrase, that one) new movie from James Cameron:

Doesn’t do much for me, but then I’m a big fan of Aliens, and this looks like a cross between Titanic and The Abyss.

Really odd and poor performance from Brad, Spike phones in his direction, the payoff is a crashing disappointment and Softbank? Crazy name, crazy (and shit) ad.

As advertising’s 422nd most authoritative copy-based blogger in the North London area, I’m often asked what my favourite headline is.

Well, they’re like children (other people’s children, obviously), so asking me to single out one amongst the many mewling, puking ankle-biters is an almost impossible request.

Anyway, it’s a Waterstones headline that Nigel Roberts wrote in 1998 (part of a campaign that won a Pencil for Copy in 1999):

Why learn from your mistakes when you can learn from someone else’s?

The reasons why it’s so good are manifold: it articulates an elegant truth that I had never seen anyone bring to life before; it’s a classic sentiment that will be appropriate forever; it makes you think about something that affects virtually every single thing you do, but does so in a way that feels warmly gentle rather than harshly didactic; it is 100% appropriate to the client and its products, but at the same time applies to millions of other instances of the benefits of learning; in the space of twelve words, it actually encourages you to read more.

Thanks, Nigel.

Others that spring to mind?

This is a doggy bag. It contains a dead doggy. (RSPCA, David Abbott 1989).
A table for two? Certainly you old trout. (Linguaphone, Tim Delaney 1987).
Somewhere in this picture 2nd lieutenant Eric Heaton lies dying (Imperial War Museum, Indra Sinha 1985).
’66 was a great year for English football. Eric was born. (Nike, Giles Montgomery, 1994)
The loneliest place in the world is the edge of a conversation (The Economist, David Abbott).

Of course, there are hundreds of others.

If I were Scamp, I’d ask you for your own suggestions.