If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

Not 100% sure of his every waking moment, but there is this Lynx ad that’s appearing around and about:

(Thanks, L)

UPDATE: That’s Frank Budgen, by the way.

Well, Geoff Seymour did come up with ‘Reassuringly Expensive’, ‘The World’s Favourite Airline’, ‘The Australian For Lager’, the Cockburn’s ‘Lifeboat’ ad, ‘Irn Bru – Made In Scotland From Girders’, and this:

Cheers, Geoff.

Or Predator Rap?

At some point your advertising career will come to an end for one of the following reasons:

1. You couldn’t keep up.
2. You interrupted a PPM with your elephant impression (the one involving your genitalia and trouser pockets).
3. You were sent down for a twenty stretch, possibly for the brutal murder of a client.
4. You couldn’t give the first fuck about 25×4 price ads for carrots anymore.
5. You kept getting kicked upstairs until the most important decision of the day involved choosing which helicopter to take into work. Going into work seemed pointless.
6. You died, possibly from the boredom of going to Slough for client meetings.
7. You time ended.

Point seven occurred to me the other day when I was downloading some Suede off itunes.

It’s often suggested that retirees may not be able to hack it any longer, or they don’t care anymore or people stopped wanting them. But what if, like Suede, they had a time?

In the nineties, Suede were pretty big. Now they’re not. Are they shit? Can they no longer play their instruments? Has their taste completely disappeared?

Maybe, but maybe they had their time, a time when their drive, talent and look was right for the public. Then it wasn’t. Is it their fault that they didn’t continue to adapt after Britpop to prolong their cultural relevance? were they lazy? Should they have compromised their art to shape to a perception of the market?

Perhaps they were just lucky enough to synch with a huge audience for several years, then most of that audience moved on.

If you’re creative you need a number of people to be receptive to that creativity. There are no guarantees (look at Gorilla and Trucks), so if people want your stuff, ride the wave while you can.

You never know when it’s going to end.

This ad was made about five years ago for the Buckfast quaffers on the North side of Hadrian’s Wall:

This, on the other hand, just won a few golds at the BTAAs, but was made only last year:

(Thanks, G.)

Here (thanks, L).

“It seems to be different this recession time around. Instead of cutting advertising budgets to the bone as they did last time, advertisers this year are maintaining their budget for the most part, but are calling for tough, slug-it-out, retail advertising.

“One of our biggest clients, one we have done some of our best work for and won more awards for than any other, suggested that we are not able to do the kind of advertising the times demand. ‘You can do great image stuff, but can you do price advertising?’ he asked. The reason? We had resisted a client-suggested headline: WAS 299 NOW 249.

“The hardest part to comprehend is that these tactics are not working. They have been trying to recover by offering rebates, cutting prices, only to find that sales have continued in their downward spiral. It never occurred to them to take a look at the product.

“And anyway, who says that tough, sales oriented price cutting advertising can’t be creative? And who says sales promotions can’t be exciting?”

Jay Chiat, October 1982.

A few more significant posts got in the way of the usual trenchant analysis of last week’s question of the week and the setting of the new one.

Please accept my abject apologies.

I asked which cuisine you preferred. Amazingly, Italian won. People like Lasagna and Tiramisu. Who saw that one coming?

Anyway, I realised about halfway through last week that I had meant to post a different question, one whose answer might at least be vaguely interesting.

At some point in the future I’m going to do a post about legacy, or how you are remembered when you’re gone (not necessarily dead; perhaps just retired). This was inspired by an episode of The West Wing where Toby worked out how to reform social services, but the only way he could implement his plan is if Jed was unable to take credit for it. So they debated it for a few hours, while I thought it was one of the most pathetic things I had ever seen.

But hang on…

Legacy is actually important. In the case of Jed Bartlett, or Tony Blair, success or failure can make a difference to how their political stance is perceived in future. The Welfare State leaves everyone with no money? People may not be so keen on it in the next election. Increased taxation creates a demotivated workforce? No votes for that anytime time soon.

And in non-political circles, does an attempt at trailblazing creativity lead to good financial consequences? Does boring, route one football’s results justify its tedium? Is it a good idea to give a film director final cut? The lasting impressions of these decisions can be the difference between whether they’re allowed to happen again, or not.

So, legacy can matter, but the West Wing Question remains: would you prefer a big success that you can never take credit for, or a small success that everyone knows about?

And for reading through that load of old toss, here’s how to waste the next 12 minutes seven seconds of your life:

(Yes, I know this has been around for a while, but is that really going to stop you watching it again? And besides, youngsters read this blog, and they might not have seen it.)

65 years ago thousands of unbelievably brave men and women landed in France.

By common agreement, nothing brings what they did to life better than this:

I don’t know about you, but I’d have just wet my pants and hoped it all went away before I had to stand in front of a bullet.

Fortunately, those guys didn’t.

They went through something that makes all this prissy nonsense about the credit crunch look absolutely pathetic.

They really did their bit.

And now it’s your turn.

This summer, the surviving soldiers from Operation Overlord are going to return to France to commemorate D-Day, probably for the last time.

And we’re going to pay for that to happen.

The Overlord List details every one of those soldiers, and you have the privilege of being able to sponsor as many as you like for their return to those beaches. You can find someone from your area and raise the money to send him or her across.

Get together with friends and divide the cost. Organise a pool tournament and make the prize a sponsored veteran of the winner’s choice. Hold a 1940s Swing night, like the one I’ve just been to, and raffle what you can to help them.

Although The Independent are publicising this campaign, I found out about it through Trevor Beattie, who is really driving it. He told me that Richard Branson could easily find all the money himself, but that’s not the point. The point is that we owe these men everything and the chance to help them commemorate what they’ve done is something we should all be able to share, so that we can say thank you.

So check the website, sponsor a veteran and do something that is purely good.

This opportunity is a rare and beautiful thing.

Apparently, there were only four golds. How tight is that? Here are the other three:

Maybe the other winners are here. Maybe not.

UPDATE: Silver(s) for VW Everyday, BBC Penguins, Binge Drinking Boy, Barnados, VW Dog.

Mother was agency of the Year, Rattling Stick was Production Company of the Year.

No Silver or Gold for HSBC Lumberjack, VW Fight, Shelter House of Cards.