If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

Sorry, I don’t usually do politics, but have you read the first paragraph of Polly Toynbee’s Gordon Brown assassination on the front of today’s Guardian?

“Another engine breaks away from Gordon Brown’s fuselage, and the damage done looks set to bring him crashing out of the sky. Even if he can judder on, the injury done will diminish him further. Which other engines may now break away too? Those who would bring him down say the prime minister is beyond repair. The party faces a terrible choice it can no longer avoid.”

Look, you stupid turd, you could choose any metaphor you like for this belly-flop (there’s one) of a government.

In future, try not to use one that references the most recent tragedy in international news.

Jesus Christ…

As I wend my way through this delightful land we call ‘ad’, I notice a couple of things that pique my interest.

Today’s is, as the title of this post suggests, the idea that people often think of themselves as one or other of these two chaps:

For example (and these generalisations are for blog-writing purposes only) I have noticed that above the line creatives look down on their direct brethren.

They also look down on the digital guys, who try to pretend they’re looking down on the ATL dinosaurs but they secretly know they’re on a lower rung, otherwise they’d be paid more and ATL creatives would be trying to get their jobs.

Good directors look down on creatives.

Creatives look down on bad directors.

They also look down on all account management.

Planners look down on creatives like a motherfucker.

Actually, I think planners look down on everyone. I have a theory about why this is but it’ll offend some people I like so I’ll keep it to myself.

Agency management look down on their staff.

People who don’t work in advertising look down on those who do because our jobs are seen to be a bit frivolous and wanky.

But they look up to us when we say we’ve just done a V/O with John Craven or Patsy Kensit.

Copywriters look up to authors.

Designers look down on art directors for ‘selling out’.

People in award-winning agencies look down on people in agencies that concentrate on selling. This is because they believe ‘selling’ means Cillit Bang, whereas a Clio Finalist award is an indication of genius.

Despite D&AD’s best efforts to devalue its own prestige, winners of Silver Pencils look down on all other award winners.

Maybe I’ll fill a few more of these in as they occur to me.

Doris Willens seems to think so.

In her new book, ‘Nobody’s Perfect: Bill Bernbach and the Golden Age of Advertising’ she slags him off as an INSECURE man who didn’t write any of DDB’s great ads himself.

He was comfortable with the FAMILIAR, often eating the SAME FOOD and wearing the same sober suits.

He was even FRUSTRATED at not writing the BOOK he always wanted to.

Well, I guess that makes him like Colin Millward, Albert Einstein and virtually every copywriter who ever lived.

What a twat.

(Doris Willens, I mean. Not Bill Bernbach.)

When it comes to creating ads there are two schools of thought: come at the problem like a consumer, with no real knowledge of the product and category other than that which you’ve picked up in your everyday life; or immerse yourself in the product, learning every single thing you possibly can the better to educate the target market.

The position you take may depend to a degree on the extent to which you are lazy. After all, the former option can be done from the comfort of your desk, with little effort required beyond just being magical old you.

The second option might involve doing what we can express in a representative practice: the factory tour. Of course, today this might mean a time-consuming and taxing visit to the corporate website or a flick through any available corporate literature.

This can, however, mean an actual tour of a factory.

About five years ago I went on the factory tour of all factory tours. We were about to pitch for Birdseye, so all the competing agencies were invited to (I think) Suffolk to check out the Birdseye HQ.

Was it helpful? Ultimately not. Some twat from McCann Erickson spilt a large jug of orange juice across the large table we were working on. The resultant physical discomfort from the fallout of this spillage made walking round miles of frozen peas and fishfingers a fairly unpleasant experience.

But overall, I’d suggest that the more crap you can stuff in your head about a product, the more likely it is that something interesting is going to come out.

Here’s an example of an ad that was created by two teetotal creatives after a visit to the pub to enjoy a pint for research purposes only:

Good, isn’t it?

What on earth is all this about?

I mean seriously, WTF?

There’s bloody barking on purpose, like Rubberduckzilla:

Then there’s this effort that seems to think there’s an idea going on somewhere in the vicinity.

But I’ve looked with an electron microscope and I can’t find hide nor hair of it.

On their own, four perfectly British institution-y ads for British institutions.

But why now?

I can understand Persil celebrating 100 years, but 125 years of M&S? 140 years of Sainsbury’s? 123 years of Hovis?

I’m assuming there’s something behind all this that I just haven’t been able to spot. Have the planners in the different agencies all had a meeting and agreed that a big chunk of nostalgia will promote a sense of trust and stability in these untrustworthy and unstable times? Is it all about shoring up a solid profile rather than thrusting ahead into a future unknown? Or, least believably, did three companies (I’m leaving Persil out of this; anyone’s allowed to celebrate a 100th anniversary) independently think that 123, 125 and 140 years of existence is a birthday worth celebrating all at the same time.?

(Thanks, L.)

(Some clients are wankers.)

This spot for Thinkbox is very good.

Very good direction, very good performances, very good ending.

See? It’s very good.

Which is why we must doff our cap to these:

(Interest declared: they were done by friends of mine. Nice one, Laurence and Mark.)

If you’ve never had to do idents, you might think they’re fairly simple little things.

Not so.

First problem is the short time lengths, usually 6×5″ and a 10″ and a 15″. If you think writing a good 30″ is hard, try getting a decent ad into five seconds.

Second is almost always budget. Idents tend not be considered in the same way as normal ads, so your minute of footage usually has to be made with the kind of cash that would be cheap for a regular 30″.

Then you’ve got the fact that, despite a flurry of Pencils in the 1990s – including a Gold for Doritos:

…they’re not all that sexy, and would be unlikely to attract a Budgen or Glazer. That means your potential talent pool is smaller from the word go.

So let’s pat the good ones on the back.

The difficulty level is high and the kudos level low.