If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

The Bruno trailer.

They say that nothing can make a bad product fail faster than good advertising.

I might have found an exception.

About a month ago I took out a subscription to The Guardian, which allows me to get about 1/3 off the usual price. You pay for a certain period of time, and The Guardian sends you a sheet of vouchers which you swap at the newsagent for the daily paper.

What they don’t tell you is that several newsagents don’t accept the vouchers, which is a bit annoying if it’s one that’s close to where you live or work. On several occasions I have had to go ten or fifteen minutes out of my way to get the free papers, which for a lazy bastard like myself is one hell of an unwanted bugger.

I started off by resenting these bloody newsagents who couldn’t be arsed to follow the simple redeeming instructions on the back. I mean, fuck them. Did they not realise they were also missing out on my Smarties and Cherry Coke custom (sometimes I have a taste bud age of about eleven)?

But then I asked my local convenience store, Sphere Xpress on Parkway (it’s the best convenience store in the world, by the way. They’re all really nice and they sell Corona and get the papers in early, which is a Godsend if your son is two and likes getting up at six. If you’re ever in Camden and you need some Wotsits or a Reese’s Nutrageous, it’s worth a minor detour), if the voucher thing is ‘cool’ with them. The really pleasant shopkeep replied that actually it wasn’t, because you had to keep ringing up the bloody Guardian and they made it really tricky for him to redeem my vouchers. So I apologised, and told him I felt like a bit of an arsehole. Then I asked him why he accepted such annoyances off me and he said it was because I was a regular customer. How nice is that? I love Sphere Xpress, even if I have no idea why that’s what they’re called.

Anyway, I know from my statcounter that someone at the Guardian reads this blog, so, whoever you are, please make your subscription voucher redeeming process less of an arse. Just because I’ve already paid you doesn’t mean you can fanny around with the newsagents of Great Britain.

So, going back to the opening sentence: I don’t know if this product is failing or not, but I won’t be doing it again because I feel like I’m stiffing Mr. Sphere Xpress, whom I like and on no account would I take any satisfaction from stiffing him.

Not a failure of bad advertising, though (it was the ads that got me to do it); just a failure of poor service.

Talking of which, don’t get me started on Virgin Media. Long story short: never, ever, ever, ever, ever get yourself involved with that steaming bunch of shitwipes.

1. Make it boring.
2. Make it completely believable.
3. Convey the ‘evidence’ in an unremarkable way.
4. Fall way short of the standards set by previous April Fools.
5. Make sure it’s so underwhelming that no one wants to pass it on.
6. Waste the licence fee-payers’ money when times are tight.
7. Put it on YouTube with a title that mentions April Fool.

And, of course, it’s in the same territory as last year’s corker:

The Overlord List enters its final month today.

April is going to be one big push with all sorts of excellent events organised to get as much money as possible for the D-Day veterans.

The other day I asked Trevor Beattie what will happen if the £350-per-veteran total is reached.

He said that there’s no such thing as too much money. With more donations, those who can make the trip will be able to have their carers with them, and the ones who can’t make it will have live link-ups organised for them back home.

I think it’s safe to say that your money will go somewhere far better than 99.999% of the alternative destinations you might have in mind for it.

In order to spread the word further, we’ve created a print ad:

(Thanks to Andy, Trevor, Mark and Dave, whose advice was both valuable and free.)

If you have somewhere you can run it, please get in touch and we’ll supply it.

Thanks in advance.

In a good way:

This is from last year but I’m quite slow, so I only just found it:

Does anyone have a clue what this ad is about?

I’ve asked a lot of intelligent people, some of whom work in advertising, but no one knows.

What I really don’t get is how someone came up with it, had it approved by all sorts of people, including a CD and a client (or several), then had it made up and run, despite it being beyond the comprehension of some of the brighter members of its target audience.

What about (sorry to say this) the less intelligent Schweppes drinkers?

Many people in advertising think that creatives just like to make nice little films and couldn’t give the first shit about whether or not they sell anything.

And, for the most part, they’re right.

But it stands to reason. If you put a monkey in a cage and reward him for raising his right hand/paw, why would he care about raising his left? Ultimately, raising his left is probably necessary to stave off arthritis, but it’s not going to get him a peanut.

The problem is that the two objectives started in the same place, but they have since diverged in ways that now leave them diametrically opposed.

In the first days of ‘creativity’ (thank you, Mr. Bernbach), every molecule of intelligence, lateral thinking and originality was expended in pursuit of the sale or the brand-build (usually the sale). VW Lemon was a brilliant attempt to sell cars when most car ads were patronising tosh.

But as ‘creativity’ developed, confusion arose: if ads that were harder to get were better, wouldn’t an ad that was virtually impossible to get be the apex of quality? If a lack of brash hard-sell was a good thing, wouldn’t trying not to sell be an even better thing? And if intelligence improved on bovine condescension, then wouldn’t the highest possible brow lead to the best possible communication?

It’s like saying that if an aspirin is great for relieving pain, then 100 would be brilliant.

Over the years, every step in the wrong direction devalued every step in the right one. Creativity began to be dismissed as indulgence and this theory was only compounded by the success of ads that continued to smash the consumer over the head with the dumb and the crass. There have been many awful ads that have been awfully effective, and they are all nails in the coffin of creativity.

But at some point, advertising awards were created and they were given to the work that attempted quality, with little or no interest paid to quantity (of sales). An ad that pushed the boundaries of aesthetics but increased sales by 5% would do better than an ad that pushed those boundaries a little less, but increased sales by 50%.

So the raises, promotions and kudos have gone to the creative pioneers, not necessarily the great salesmen.

And that’s the 100% logical reason why creatives have no incentive to care about effectiveness.

Until they get rewarded for sales, they will barely care about such insignificant irrelevances.

And that’s the topic for the question of the week.

(By the way, I’m dismayed that John pipped George H. to be Best Beatle. George is responsible for Something, Here Comes The Sun, Within You Without You, Taxman, The Life of Brian and Withnail and I. John? I think he seemed a bit nasty. Great songs though. Obviously, Paul and Ringo can go and whistle.)

It’s been shot by Spike Jonze and has gone through a lot of ups and downs over the last few years. But will it be any good? Well, from the trailer, even if it fails, it looks like the people involved have given it a hell of a go.

As someone who has (not always voluntarily) read the book a couple of hundred times over the past few years, I hope it’s as good an adaptation as Horton Hears A Who. Fingers crossed.

(Thanks, L. And thanks for the rabbit soldiers thing as well).