If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

The other day one of Scamp’s commenters put a link up to Arthurkade.com

Initially my interest was merely a bored foray into what might or might not be an entertaining website.

Now I am fascinated.

Is it possible to be this much of a douchebag?

Surely not.

But he’s a real guy whose life seems to match his douchey web profile.

So what gives?

(By the way, don’t visit his website without a taking a look at the Kade Scale – it’ll make you want to gnaw your fist to a bloody stump.)

I think the problem might have been that there is only one famous ‘Brains’, so they couldn’t really do that visual pun again.

Instead we have an ad that seems completely hatstand for less discernible reasons.

If you add this one to Coke and Rubberduckzilla, the whole industry appears to have gone stark, staring batshit.

UPDATE: Oh, I get it now…’On top of your game’…pheasant is a kind of game…I’m a bit thick…

It’s like the client cut the budget, leaving the agency tea-lady to go through a stock footage website, except she’s got bad ADD and just woke up from the coma she entered in 1996.

It’s like Mickey Mouse breathed life into a mood board from Latvia’s equivalent of JJB sports then ate it and threw it up.

It’s like a blind dog covered itself in superglue and ran through the cutting room floor of a shitty Nike ad.

But worse that all that.

It’s fucking boring.

I don’t know what you think of when you think of Blackpool, but for me it conjures up images of corpulent, bearded men hanging around penny arcades and chip shops attempting to ensnare runaways into a web of greasy-handed depravity. That, or menopausal trouts on their third hen night starting fights that would make even the beefiest inebriated southerner run screaming in fear for the next train to Euston.

But hang on, I seem to have got it wrong. It’s actually a hot-bed of continental mystique and sophistication.

Helen France (apparently her real name. How odd), director of tourism for Blackpool Council, said: “Often when we get French visitors – they like to do London, Stratford and Edinburgh and often drop off at a seaside town on the way, and we hope that this will encourage them to come to Blackpool.”

Well, Helen, mission well and truly accomplished. You’ve made it seem like the kind of life-affirming, step-springing delight that I can’t do without for another second.

Either that or a shithole that’s run by a bunch of bovine fuckwits who think French people are as thick as they are.

One or the other.

Here.

Congrats to Mike and Paul and the DDB creative dept.

My personal print Gold goes to this website. (Thanks, L).

The creative world is divided in many ways: asymmetric haircut/normal haircut; skinny jeans/bootcut jeans; steal ideas from Magma /steal ideas from YouTube etc.

But the one that dare not speak its name is keeping a scrapbook of useable idea snippets versus tapping the side of your head and saying ‘it’s all up there’.

I write as one who does the latter, partly because I’m not quite organised enough to keep a scrapbook and partly because I trust the ebb and flow of my brain, allied to whatever I’m experiencing at the moment.

However, I know of many others who keep several years of orderly clippings, random photos and yellowing newspaper articles in those blue hardback books, just waiting for the moment when their usefulness will spring into life.

But there doesn’t seem to be any consensus on which is better.

When I was at college, we were visited by Jim Bolton and Chas Bayfield of Blackcurrant Tango fame. At that stage, they had yet to make that particular work of genius, but they did show us a page of their portfolio that was just a series of little thoughts that might come in useful in future. One such thought was ‘a naked fat man running down a hill is funny’. I don’t know if that’s exactly where Blackcurrant Tango came from, but the relationship is close.

Then again, I once read an interview with John Hegarty where he explained that he didn’t think it was a good idea to keep scrapbooks because your brain then relied on those notes and didn’t work as hard to connect things in the generation of ideas.

I also recall the advice of a novelist who said that it was ridiculous to note your favourite little lines and metaphors for future use because you’d end up forcing them into situations where they didn’t really belong, and besides, you’d have to constantly look through your notes hoping for the right bon mot to make itself known just when you needed it.

Then again, I suppose there are other versions of the scrapbook, such as keeping fffound and Deputy Dog bookmarked for those times when your brain refuses to work. And the walls of my office have often been home to fading Post-Its that say ‘Beadle’s hand/Magimix’ or ‘Tit age vs real age’.

But I’m open to suggestions of technique improvement: do you have any unusual filing systems that you rely on to lead you to the promised land?

It is.

Lovely details (the pack of worms in the fridge), great post, original idea on a done-to-death brief…

What’s not to like?

And if you haven’t clicked on the Deputy Dog link to the right for a while, this is amazing.

Aren’t you always bloody amazed at the indescribable, against-the-odds occurrence of making a good ad?

You come up with a great idea and the first thing that happens is that it goes through the filter of your brain: do I want to make an ad like that? Will that keep the client happy? Will that win me an award? Will the public love it? Etc.

Then your partner has their own set of (possibly completely different) filters that might include wanting to make it closer to his or her speciality (a more visual solution for an AD; more words for a CW). They might also want to go broader with the laughs, older with the cast and more experimental with the director, so you’ll have to deal with all that – perhaps to your liking, perhaps not.

Then it’s the CD, who will have his or her own agenda about what they need to do to keep their job, stop the MD asking why they haven’t won as many awards as last year, or go home early to watch the football. They might know that someone else in the department is doing something similar and will have to choose who gets disappointed. They might have heard the international client in Beijing doesn’t like humour. They might be on the verge of a divorce and just ‘not in the mood’ to deal with your shit today.

Then there’s the account team, who have their own agenda about what they expect, what the client will expect and what will/won’t be an arse to sell.

Then the client gets to run roughshod over all the above. If your script gets to him/her unscathed (or at least in a state that isn’t a complete embarrassment) then you will have to deal with the fact that he/she will have an opinion that comes from a mind which is diametrically opposed to your own. Good luck with that. Then he might pull the entire budget, or, more annoyingly, half of it, so that you have to desperately sew together a silk purse, handbag and matching evening gown from just half a sow’s ear.

Then everyone else will chip in: the TV producer, director, editor, sound engineer etc. And, of course, any of the above might change their mind at any moment, potentially throwing your realigned perceptions into another 180-degree turn.

Then again, it’s just possible that all those little contributions could make your ad better…

You can check out the winners here.

It really confirms what I think we all suspected: last year was a pretty terrible year for UK advertising.

Obviously the British shows, such as BTAA and Creative Circle, wouldn’t show this up, but the One Show and the TV section of D&AD seem in broad agreement that we could have done better.

I wonder what Cannes and the Clios will hold.

It only seems to be showing half the picture. If you double click, you can get a much bigger image in YT.

Can someone tell me how to improve my educationally subnormal embedding skillz?