If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

Over the last few days, I’ve had the pleasure of reading Steve Henry’s and Dave Trott’s Brand Republic Blogs.

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.

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.

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.

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’.

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.

Back in the good old days, advertising agencies were able to offer their clients a single solution to the brief they had been given. This was in fact the case when I worked at AMV in the late nineties: one brief, one team, one solution presented to the client because that was considered to be the agency’s recommendation over lesser ideas which should be discarded (I believe Bill Bernbach summed this up with the question, ‘Why would we show them our wastepaper basket?).

However, as the years went on, AMV’s clients were able to demand multiple solutions. I remember that one actually had a contractual agreement to expect three routes per brief, but this rapidly dissolved when the three routes were rejected and another three routes provided and so on until the client was satisfied.

The reason a client wants and demands multiple answers is obvious: several choices must be better than a single one as it gives the chooser a variety of solutions to select from, and he/she gets more work for their money.

But is that an improvement on a single choice? Not according to scientific research. If you were presented with 950 toothbrushes every morning you’d actually find your bathroom time a paralysing disaster. You’d have the luxury of selection, but it would waste your time and vex you. Then, when you had made your choice, the unchosen alternatives would nag at you forever, leaving you with the residual thoughts of what might have been.

You also end up with an escalation of expectation. With a thousand choices, one of them must surely be perfect? And if it isn’t, we tend to blame ourselves. ‘How could I not find the right ad/puppy/religion out of so many alternatives? I am indeed an arsebrained idiot.’

Humans actually prefer to have less choice. It leaves them happier, and the outcome is usually just as successful.

But is this the case in modern day advertising? Of course not. Many clients will always want and expect more routes because it means their agencies are working even harder for the money they pay them, and that makes Johnny Q. Client feel all warm inside.

And now agencies are so scared of losing accounts that they will do whatever it takes to keep the business, no matter how many vertebrae they put out by bending over so far.

So we have a a vicious circle of more routes, less satisfaction and attempt to cure that dissatisfaction with still more routes.

If anyone fancies jumping off the merry-go-round, science will back you up.

It’s an ad for Philips that apparently plays in a non-stop loop somewhere on their website.

It’s by Tribal DDB, the director was Adam Berg and the CD was Neil Dawson.

UPDATE:

A commenter has suggested that it’s merely an extension of this Sky HD ad:

I know I didn’t really elaborate on my reasons for liking the Philips film, but it’s not entirely because of the technique.

However, a comparison between these two ostensibly similar commercials allows us to examine a few aspects of what makes one ad more engaging than another.

Of course, the technique is superior in the Philips ad. It’s a single shot that moves through an increasingly unfolding narrative that repays attention and further viewings, whereas the Sky ad is a single scene. So we’re not just talking about extra time here; we’re talking about a development of the craft that exploits it more fully and allows us to see it really breathe.

But beyond the technical aspects, the Philips ad also does a great job of the scenarios. If we assume that the original script was a somewhat elaborated version of ‘gang of criminals dressed as clowns battle police in a hospital’, it’s really impressive that every individual vignette (the clown kicking the cop through the window; the wheelchair reacting to the explosion; the man on the floor etc.) all contain a brilliantly contained mini story of their own. It’s very difficult to get one good, well-executed, believably-rendered story into an ad, but to get several is quite an achievement.

Next is the tone. LIke the ad about the transvestite that won Philips a few awards last year, this brings a grown-up edge to a massive corporation. With these scene of mayhem and murder, they are treating us like adults, not running towards a scene of anodyne dullness that would have demonstrated the technique equally well. Thank you, Philips. I like you a bit more for that.

Last, the details. From the location, to the masks, to the cops, to the guns, to the score it all rings true within its context. It brings to mind something from The Dark Knight without looking like they’ve simply ripped off last year’s big thing. Again, that’s a lot of things they got right that they could have got wrong, and that’s a hell of a lot harder than they made it look.

On a personal note, I also like the fact that it doesn’t have that ‘ad’ bit puncturing all the good work. When the guy walks in at the end of the Sky ad, I can’t help feeling like the magic disappears slightly. Don’t get me wrong; I like the Sky ad too, but the Philips clowns played it to the hilt, and in this day and age, that’s something to be admired.

In the early/mid part of this decade, every press ad award in the country seemed to go to DDB’s Guardian work. They had some very good teams: Justin and Adam, Grant and Patrick, Dylan and Feargal etc. who managed to produce consistently incisive advertising on a huge range of topical issues, and the crossword:

Then the Guardian left for W&K. Now, I’m a big fan of the new brand look they created:

It gives them a distinct visual identity that seems very much in keeping with the vibrancy and boldness of the paper itself.

But what they haven’t done (and this may be because it’s not part of the current remit) is continue the topical strand that DDB were so good at.

But no matter; DDB seamlessly moved their skill in that area to a new account: The Financial Times. The look is different to their Guardian work, but the witty commentary on current events has stayed the same:

I know Jeremy Craigen hates the idea of dumbing down advertising. I think we should all thank him for that.

Picture the scene: an eager account person enters your office (for the purposes of this theoretical situation you have to pretend to be an advertising creative) with a smile on his face. “Hey guys,” he says, like the prick he is, “got a cracker for you. Your favourite charity wants to do a huge multimedia campaign and the brief is yours.”

So what’s your first thought: ‘Wow! An opportunity to do some real good.’

Or: ‘Wow! An opportunity to do some real good ads’?

As there’s no such thing as altruism, I’d bet that if most of you were being honest, you’d admit that the second choice was your first thought, and even if it wasn’t, it definitely followed close behind.

Charity advertising is a strange anomaly in the capitalist steamroller that is advertising, but the attractions are obvious:

1. Ease. You don’t really have to get people on your side in the same way that you do with Persil Automatic. Do you care about starving Africans? Devastated Rainforests? Agonised kittens? Of course you do! And so does everyone else. It’s like trying to persuade people that orange is orange. Piece of piss.

2. Awards. Over the years, award schemes have tried to separate charity from ‘other’, but all that does is make your competition even smaller. You don’t have to go up against Nike and VW; you only have to beat the other charity ads.

3. Feeling darned good about yourself. Over the last few years, I’ve proudly worked on Samaritans. It’s great to help out suicidal people from the comfort of your own desk, especially when some of them actually write to the charity to say that the ads have made them feel better. But, again, there’s no such thing as altruism: because they feel good, I feel good.

4. Telling everyone how lovely you are. Do you see what I did in the last paragraph? I told you that I’m as lovely as a puppy wrapped up in a duvet full of kittens and it was all in disguise. Clever, eh? You can even whine about your working day and the boneheaded clients you had to deal with, but all the while you’re actually saying, ‘Look how nice I am. I do nice things for disadvantaged people (and animals when the situation arises), so I’m not quite the complete and utter advertising arsehole you think I am.’

This self-interested loveliness was summed up by a story I heard from an agency that had recently taken on the account of a really good and worthy charity. The team who were assigned to work on the account gathered together in a meeting room to discuss how they were going to work on it. Before anyone else spoke, the Creative Director said that he didn’t want to hear the word ‘awards’ mentioned anywhere near this campaign. Murmurs of agreement confirmed that this was the right and noble way to address the job. Cut to a few months later and all the ads have been entered into all the awards. The original point appears to be that the CD didn’t want to deliberately produce award-winning advertising, but dammit if the agency weren’t going to get their slice of the kudos pie. They did a lot of great work for charidee, but they didn’t like to talk about it. Much.

In the end, it’s difficult to argue against any kind of publicity for a worthy cause, no matter what the motives, but let’s not kid ourselves that those motives are 100% pure.

If we really, really, really cared about the charities we do ads for, we’d leave advertising and go and work for them.

Any volunteers?

By the way, in the interests of moral offsetting, here’s the best TED talk I’ve seen: