If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

This looks good (and RIP Farah Fawcett, and maybe Michael Jackson (he’s not dead as I write this. UPDATE: He just popped his clogs. Time to get your money back on those O2 tickets. Look, I realise this is a Princess Diana moment for many of you, so feel free to use this blog as a focus for your tributes, grief, jokes about him being a pedlo and righteous ire at his getting away with all those terrible things he did)).

(Second Update: Apparently the O2 concerts are going to go ahead. He won’t sing, but he will hum a bit.)

A couple of weeks ago I went to see Arcadia.

It’s a very enjoyable play with a fantastic cast (except for the young student girl who appeared to have learned to act by watching Hollyoaks) and I heartily recommend going if you get the chance.

It’s not only very funny but it’s also thought-provoking in an entertaining way that doesn’t feel at all didactic.

I only mention this because one of the recurring thoughts that swooshes around my mind on a regular basis is the question of constant progress.

Wherever you go, people want to grow their businesses, make more of themselves and move forward, as if it’s some kind of mortal sin to stay where you are or, Heaven forbid, go backwards.

Richard Dawkins is particularly fond of this idea, suggesting that tradition is the enemy of progress.

However, during Arcadia, there’s an interesting point made by the girl who can’t act. She says that we can stir jam into porridge but we can never un-stir that jam by moving our spoon in the exact opposite direction.

She wants to know why and (spoiler alert) finds that the answer lies in the fact that all actions involve a displacement of heat that is impossible to return to the action, thus making it something that cannot happen in reverse.

In between considering this and, since, leaving rude messages about the crappy actress girl on one of her fansites (she’s got a minor role in the Harry Potter films, so let’s just say 12-year-old girls get very defensive when you trash her), I finally realised why progress is a human imperative:

We can never go back. We can’t unlearn things and we can’t deliberately learn less about something we already know about.

Forwards is the only way we can move and, like sharks, we do it or we die.

I found this simultaneously heartening and frustrating. Sometimes it’s nice to know that something is inescapable: it means you don’t have to worry about trying to escape it. But then, what if you want to keep things as they are? Well, you can’t. You’re always moving forwards, whether you’re getting better at rolling spliffs and playing GTA4, or you’re persuading people to come and look after a beautiful island.

So now I’m going to embrace forwards and I thank Tom Stoppard for helping me to be OK with that.

(larger copies here.)

Personally, I think it’s a load of old bollocks.

But pourquoi?

Well, I think it’s a bit of contrived reasoning that has little or nothing to do with the product. We’re not really like animals, and if we are, it’s not in the way that’s been demonstrated here, shitting in the woods and half-submerging our faces in water. It’s in a more basic, more engaging way, where we can lose our millennia of sophistication to become the creatures of our origin.

Nice pictures for a photographer’s portfolio, but otherwise, meh.

(By the way, there are many other press campaigns awarded this year that are actually pretty good. You can find them at the above link and while away a couple of hours playing the interesting pastime of ‘Bullshit or Real?’)

I love these because they are a New Page, they’ve got some good, original copywriting, the tone of the writing and art direction is spot-on, and they’re really difficult to ignore. They’re an object lesson in how to do print advertising, and the more of that there is, the better.

So the UK is currently performing a big, fat belly flop at Cannes.

That’s all well and good, but before Campaign asks The Agency Head, The Creative Director and The Tea Lady why this is the case, I’ll have a go, and you can join in in the comments section should you be so inclined.

(Actually, this is my wife’s theory, but what the hey.)

The countries that are doing well are the ones that have emerged as international forces recently. They might have won awards before, but now seems to be the big time for South Africa, The Far East, Australasia and other parts of the world that didn’t exactly dominate the previous years.

This could be because of the ever-increasing globalisation of advertising. Those regions may well do the pan-world ads that are usually the remit of Europe and North America, but they don’t do nearly as many as we do. They get to work on more local business because, as international offices, they haven’t yet grabbed all the lucrative, often more homogenised, often duller work.

Look at the ad that’s won the PR and Direct Grand Prix:

Local business, innit? Cummins Nitro Brisbane? Who the fuck are they? Well, they are the agency that just scooped a couple of CGPs.

And look who’s just won the Outdoor GP. That’s right, SA agency TBWA Hunt Lascaris. For a Zimbabwean newspaper.

Network BBDO Jo’burg won the radio GP, admittedly for Virgin Atlantic, but it’s radio, so no one’s keeping the purse strings tight, and the client probably played it once in his car on the way to a golf tournament.

And Japan has won the Media Grand Prix.

That’s a 100% shut out for USA and Europe, the usual winners.

Let’s see what happens in the other categories.

That’s not to say it’s a viable excuse, after all, most UK agencies also handle local business. But you can see from the general output here that we’re not exactly producing our best work at the moment.

Unlike the ’emerging’ countries.

The other day I was having a chat with some other creatives (that live inside my head) and one of them asked what we all thought would be this year’s Cannes Film Grand Prix winner.

Creativity Online picks the sweetcorn out of Leo Burnett’s prediction reel, but I’m not sure.

There doesn’t seem to be an out-and-out favourite, so whatever wins may well not be a conventional TV spot.

If I could choose, I’d hand to either Philips Carousel:

Or Diesel SFWXXX

If it’s not one of those, I think my give-a-shit gland just left town.

The whole point of lat week’s poll was to try and find four disparate men that an equal number number of ITIABTWC readers would like to be/have been.

Well, colour me stoked (as Parker Lewis’s sister used to say), but I got much closer than I ever thought possible.

The results were: Michael Crawford, 12, Jamie Oliver 12, John Webster 11 and (kind of screwing things up, but not too badly) Sid James at 17.

Thanks to everyone who voted. These small near-victories hold a special place in my mouldy cheeseburger of a brain.

And thanks to eveyone who has sent me a suggestion for CD of the Year.

I don’t think I’ll surprise anyone by saying that names like Droga, Craigen, Waites/Saville and Davidson/Papworth were mentioned. I was also delighted to see multiple suggestions for the lovely Damon Collins and one renegade punt for ‘The Client’.

Keep ’em coming and I might whittle the most popular down to a shortlist.

Or I might not.

Right. Now to think of four disparate women you might like to be.

Good lord, there are far too many award schemes out there.

But by that I mean that there are far too many reasons for a bunch of people to charge £250 a time for the honour of being the third best charity press ad in the UK.

Sell! Sell! has just written a trenchant post on the subject, which I agree with in principle, but I’m not sure there’s a system that beats the subjective judgement of a few brilliant practitioners of the craft.

Except…

For this one. Today is the commencementification of the ITIABTWC Creative Director of the Year Award.

It costs nothing to enter and will be decided entirely on your votes. Obviously, this can be subject to abuse, but we’ll assume you’re all going to be super honest, and I can weight the nominations based on the size of the creative department.

If I just place a poll on the blog the winner won’t be a surprise, so if you’d like to vote, just send me an email at bwmkay@googlemail.com

The winner will receive a nice bottle of booze and the most coveted trophy in advertising the Benny.

I don’t know what the deadline’s going to be, so vote early. You can create a fake gmail account if you want to remain anon.

Happy voting!

Sometimes, when you’re wondering if there’s something you can do that doesn’t involve heated debates over the colour of a jumper or the placing of a comma, you might think there’s somewhere you can escape to.

A place where you can just tool along as you like without having to care about the opinions of others that may or may not coincide with your own.

Well you can’t.

There’s always a boss somewhere.

So suck it up.

It’s funny because it’s true:

(Thanks, Anon.)