Friday Fun
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By the way, the few of you who voted in the last poll seemed to prefer Veronica.
Says a lot.
D&AD In-Book, T-Mobile Event And Ogilvy Tributes: Right And Wrong
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You can pick the sweetcorn out of it, but the only thing that seemed odd to me was the entry of Cadbury’s Eyebrows in 41-60 seconds.
That’s it.
One entry for what most people would consider to be the event ad of the year.
Talking of event ads, here’s a shot from this evening’s T-Mobile extravaganza:
It was a massive karaoke event hosted by Vernon Kay (no relation, although I have met him a few times and he’s really nice). I walked around as the crowd seemed to have a lovely time singing Hey Jude and Is This The Way To Amarillo.
Then I had to leave.
It was a bit rammed and they kept filming me with the second unit.
Which brings us to David Ogilvy.
Odd, really…
You can get one person to write one article about a man that says everything that needs to be said, with just words and (electronic) paper.
Or (and I never tire of watching this) you can marshall 100 members of the current iteration of the greatest civilisation the world has ever known and produce the most dismal, pathetic, foetid puddle of monkey diarrhoea ever committed to YouTube.
Anyway, I hope the above ill-thought-out gubbins passes a bit of pre-bank holiday weekend for you.
x
UPDATE:
Apparently I missed Pink singing in Trafalgar Square.
T-Mobile appears to possess a fuckload of money:
How To Advertise On YouTube, A Good Ad And The D&AD Nominations
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I’d like to embed it, but I’m afraid you’ll just have to click through here.
It’s a great way to use a medium that has yet to be properly exploited, either artistically or commercially.
And here’s a good ad for Channel 4.
And the D&AD nominations are out.
Congratulations to Mark, Andy and everyone at Coy! Communications; Simon and Nick; Laurence and Mark (I think); DHM (who now have a nomination in every year they’ve existed); Paul and everyone at This Is Real Art and everyone else who got one.
A Coupla Things…
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Want to see what happens in the next T-Mobile event ad?
Well, you can see it live and even participate:
What does participating entail?
Who knows?
Only one way to find out…
Also, this is fun.
Remits: Never Mind The Quality; Feel The Length
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Over the last few days, I’ve had the pleasure of reading Steve Henry’s and Dave Trott’s Brand Republic Blogs.
Coincidentally, they both ended up being about the same thing.
Steve says that ‘Most agencies are still hanging onto a very narrow range of conventional solutions.’
While Dave suggests that ‘Advertising starts with finding a way to get a result. Against often superior competition. And sometimes the answer may not be advertising at all.’
They say a lot more besides, but the general thrust of their arguments is that advertising agencies shouldn’t restrict themselves to ‘advertising’ because it may not be the best solution for a client’s problems.
That forces us advertising people to think outside our normal parameters to search for the correct solution without fretting about the fact that we aren’t making a 90″ cinema ad. It broadens the palate of available to solutions to include, well…anything, from better staff service to alternate reality gaming. Surely that’s a wonderful thing. Surely the best solution, regardless of convention, should always be our aim?
Well, absolutely. But are advertising agencies the best places to find these solutions?
It seems to me that advertising agencies are either misnamed, or need to become hybrids of all the current choices of solution discovery. Of course, almost all of them are doing just that, with companies that used to provide their clients with nothing but press, posters, TV and radio gradually branching out into t’internet, events, iPod apps, virals, movies, theatre and everywhere else you can stick a logo.
This is understandable: the original media pie is shrinking at alarming rate, so for your average ad agency diversification is a must.
But are they qualified for this? In theory, an ad agency is a building that contains a bunch of bright people intent on doing something positive for their clients. But so is a PR company, a digital media company and an event organiser. They all specialise in solutions that ad agencies now feel they ought to provide, and I imagine, like ad agencies, they are all trying to barge each other out of the way for that ever-diminishing chunk of client cash.
And it’s not restricted to agencies: I recall reading a recent interview with Claire Beale, editrix of Campaign, where she mentioned all the other things that Campaign provides as a brand (she might have referred to it as ‘extra value’). This includes, for example, the website, the blogs, the award schemes and the extra little magazines based on some theme, such as Asian Media.
And why not?
On the face of it, no reason at all. But here’s a question for all the clients out there: how do you now distinguish between the different people who are supposedly able to offer you that all-important solution when so many of them seem to be offering exactly the same thing?
Technology Pros and Cons
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Technology has brought us many wonderful things: instant access to more information than anyone could process in a lifetime; your entire music collection in a box the size of a fag packet; George Foreman’s Lean Mean Fat-Reducing Grilling Machine.
But it’s also given us a new-ish situation in the world of advertising.
With the colossal advances made by Photoshop, many art directors are now better at producing images via that software than they are with paper and pen. This has meant that scamps (black-and-white sketched rough versions of prospective ads) have been replaced by something much closer to the finished article.
‘Wonderful!’ I hear you cry. ‘Clients will now be able to see exactly what we’re trying to do, and can therefore approve it without fannying around wondering whether you want the jumper to be blue or green.’
But that’s actually the downside, too.
The gap between a black-and-white sketch and a finished photograph is so great that you can fit in the ideas that occur to you during the process. The end result won’t be exactly what the client approved (unless he wants a black-and-white sketch), but then he’s not expecting that, so a bit of a surprise is par for the course.
However, with Photoshop, he’ll be expecting something pretty much identical to the layout. Any deviation will be a cause for meltdown and he’ll be able to point to hard evidence of your flagrant disrespect for his authority.
In extreme cases, they can take a look at the photoshopped image and say, ‘Why can’t we just run that?’ Then you’re really fucked.
In addition, we have the wonderful world of reference, or ‘things that are a bit like some aspect of the ad you intend to make’. It might be the style of photography, the colour of the clothes or the type of music, but you are now obliged to provide anything that can bring the unmade ad to life. This makes complete sense, after all, it’s just an extension of the director’s showreel or the photographer’s book, but what if you’re trying to create something that’s never been done before? What reference would prepare you for this:
The holy grail of creative advertising is originality, so the need to provide an approximation of the finished work before you start could be something that reduces that originality.
The recent proliferation of work whose roots lie in a YouTube clip is testament to this phenomenon, however, if most of the public is unaware of the reference then as far as they are concerned the originality is intact and the ad works.
And it might be worth bearing in mind that clients can be nervous about the gap between the original idea and the finished article, so that YouTube clip might reduce the client’s fear factor and save a concept that might otherwise die.
Perhaps a reduction in originality is the price you pay for getting your ad made.
Whether or not you think that’s a price worth paying is between you and the part of you that worries about things like that.
Plus Ca Change
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The results of this week’s poll are probably pretty similar to the results I’d have got if I’d run it ten or twenty years ago. That is: over 40% of you would most like a D&AD Pencil for TV, followed by just over 20% each for Poster and Press, with Integrated coming in fourth with 12%.
So what does that tell us? Well, aside from the fact that radio is still the ginger stepchild it’s always been, the digital love-in has yet to gain any kind of equality in prestige with its old-school brethren.
I thought TV and Cinema would win, but I didn’t think Press and Poster would be twice as popular as Integrated, and never mind Websites and Online; they barely registered.
It seems that this blog may well be read by people who grew up with the triplet pillars of TV, Press and Poster, so you hold them dear in your hearts and high in your estimation. In addition, they are the three easiest media in which you can show someone else how good you are. Send them a quicktime or a pdf – they’re miles more immediate than the little films you make to sum up your integrated campaign. Also, and this is probably the hardest thing for advertising, digital still isn’t coming up with the kind of work that makes ATL creatives think it’s cool, or even worth working on. The work imbues the category with status, and until that happens, it’ll still feel like metaphorical nerds versus metaphorical film makers.
Of course, I think we’d all take a Pencil wherever it’s coming from (even Radio Crafts or Writing for Graphic Design) over no Pencil at all, but when it comes to the favoured categories, this might as well be 1979, not 2009.
New Poll, by the way. Enjoy.
People Are Working Away For Weeks At A Time In The Vain Hope That They Will Amuse You
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An interesting phenomenon of the internet, that I don’t recall anyone predicting, is the enormous amount of time devoted to the anonymous amusement of strangers.
Here’s my favourite recent example:
That must have taken ages. Will Brickvader profit from it in any way? Will it have any significance beyond your mild amusement? Is it simply that we are now allowed to look through people’s keyholes at their hobbies?
I think it’s the third one. In the digital age, it must be quite fun to show off something you’ve spent a long time honing to perfection. In the old days you’d just make your model of the Cutty Sark out of matchsticks and hope that someone unfortunate enough to come over for tea actually gave a shit. Now you can tootle around on your PC, whack the result on YouTube and with a bit of luck you might be worth a few minutes of Lilly Allen’s or Graham Norton’s time.
Nothing wrong with that, I suppose (said the bloke whose blog writing has probably taken up even more time for even less return than Brickvader’s movie mixing).
And here’s another:
UPDATE:
I could have made this post a bit deeper by exploring how these films are making it impossible to monetise the internet through their provision of free content that is better than most paid-for work, but instead I’ll simply suggest that you ‘put the fucking lotion in the basket’.
I Started My ‘Career’ In Advertising About Twelve Years, Two Months And A Couple Of Weeks Ago
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To mark this momentous anniversary, I’ve written a poem (I know poems that rhyme and scan are for thick people, but you get what you’re given).
The ad world was a different place in nineteen ninety-six.
The internet was nascent and could not provide a fix
For every brief that proved too hard for one to quickly solve,
Instead you had to think (and wait for YouTube to evolve).
In fact the web was to some folks a mere object of scorn,
That catered just for Red Dwarf fans and those of kiddie porn.
No Blackberries or mobile phones meant you could disappear
To cinemas or pubs and lose the afternoon in beer.
Each print shoot took much longer so more work could be avoided
As each test shot was set up, checked, re-checked and Polaroided.
There was no W and K, no Fallon, no Cabral,
And yet the ads were better than they seem to be right now.
The budgets were much higher and the only place to go
Was to the door of Tony Kaye (he still had his mojo).
The process differed quite a bit because the client sods
Did not require all those bloody pre-pre-pre-pre-prods
Design and Art Direction? It was resolutely British,
Not Afghan, Dutch, Nigerian, Pharsee or Innuitish.
Umatics, wet proofs, chinagraphs, they’ve all bitten the dust
Like trying to eat at Coast and Eva Herzigova’s bust.
But those days missed some great things too: Gorillas, Mountains, Cogs
And wasting hours of your life on advertising blogs.
The internet was nascent and could not provide a fix
For every brief that proved too hard for one to quickly solve,
Instead you had to think (and wait for YouTube to evolve).
In fact the web was to some folks a mere object of scorn,
That catered just for Red Dwarf fans and those of kiddie porn.
No Blackberries or mobile phones meant you could disappear
To cinemas or pubs and lose the afternoon in beer.
Each print shoot took much longer so more work could be avoided
As each test shot was set up, checked, re-checked and Polaroided.
There was no W and K, no Fallon, no Cabral,
And yet the ads were better than they seem to be right now.
The budgets were much higher and the only place to go
Was to the door of Tony Kaye (he still had his mojo).
The process differed quite a bit because the client sods
Did not require all those bloody pre-pre-pre-pre-prods
Design and Art Direction? It was resolutely British,
Not Afghan, Dutch, Nigerian, Pharsee or Innuitish.
Umatics, wet proofs, chinagraphs, they’ve all bitten the dust
Like trying to eat at Coast and Eva Herzigova’s bust.
But those days missed some great things too: Gorillas, Mountains, Cogs
And wasting hours of your life on advertising blogs.
x
Clients: Here’s The Secret To Really Screwing Creatives
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Ready?
Here it comes.
Buy good ads.
And if you really want to screw us, keep buying good ads.
Here’s how it works: when creatives get a brief they almost always address it in the most optimistic way possible. Even if it’s for the worst client ever, they will attempt to make the best ad they can. It may not take long before the thousand cuts of the process and the client’s track record beats that optimism down, but it will usually be there at the start.
If the ad looks like it’s going down the toilet, you will then get a slacker, less interested creative. Sure, they will still do their job to a decent standard (no one deliberately tries to make a bad ad; bad ads take as long to make as good ones, so trying to make it bad on purpose only creates greater misery all round) but nothing more. They will stop at the ‘OK’ endline, the third idea for a layout, the fifth pass on the script. They will read more magazines during the sound session, they will not push the V/O or the editor and they will not bother to pick up minor slips in the retouching. They will help the ad become twenty percent better instead of fifty.
However, if the ad look like it’s going to be a good one, you will get dedication that your fee could not hope to cover. You will get weekends and evenings that do not appear on the timesheet; you will get bat-like hearing at the sound session and hawk-like vision at the grade; you will get a pair of people and an entire support staff of post production helpers who will try dozens of different routes until they find the very best one; they will let your problems eat away at them while they are eating away at dinner; they will miss children’s football games to attend pre-lights; they will call the director ten times a day, and he will call them back; they will pore through the reference, listen through the pre-prod and work through the night.
In short you will have many times more than that which you have paid for, and it will translate to a better ad for you.
Get a reputation for this and the good work will start earlier. ‘Ah, a brief for Honda/Levis/VW,’ they will say. ‘Better burn the midnight oil on this one.’
And, amazingly, all this extra work will make them happier, you happier and your boss happier.
Go on: screw us.
We love it.