If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

The psychology behind filmmaking.

How Millennials burned out.

Grow a Bonsai:

Great design ideas (thanks, D).

People discussing/recommending their favourite TED talks.

Best movie openings ever.

Paintings of songs (thanks, J).

Work out your British/Irish dialect from this quiz.

The security features of a $100 bill:

How ice sculptures are made:

Guy photoshops himself into celeb pictures (thanks, A).

A tank firing a shell:

Gyroscopic pool table:

Ten hours of fractals with falling tone:

Drawing timelapse:

There’s a French McDonald’s Delivery campaign that’s spent the last week or two doing the rounds on my LinkedIn and Twitter feeds:

The coverage and mentions have been uniformly positive, so let’s have a look at the pros, and if I can dredge any up, the cons:

Pros:

The photos are remarkable. The way they portray a rainy day through a window works brilliantly because we’ve all seen that view a million times, but I’ve never seen it conveyed so accurately in a still image. And it doesn’t just work visually; it also works emotionally, giving you every iota of that drab and disappointed feeling of a wet day from indoors.

The branding must also be very good because, for reasons I can’t quite put my finger on, I always remember it’s for McDonald’s Delivery. Perhaps it’s the very clear logo, and the fact that it’s for a big company that I’m already familiar with. Maybe it’s consistent with the tone of other McDonald’s communications I’ve seen in the past. Whatever it is, it passes that essential test.

It’s clear and simple: ‘Crappy day when you don’t want to go outside? Let us bring your McDonald’s to you’. Got it. If I wasn’t aware of McDonald’s Delivery before, I am now, and if I was aware, I’ve been reminded in a charming way.

Cons:

Why are there five of these things? When I was at college, and in some of the agencies I’ve worked at since, ‘The same ad three times’ was a withering insult. If each new execution isn’t bringing something new to the party, why bother making it? Which is your favourite of these? ‘Tower Block In The Rain’? ‘Block Of Flats In The Rain’? ‘Building In The Rain’? Or is it ‘Other Buildings In The Rain?’ Come to think of it, why are they all buildings? It wouldn’t make the ads much different, but as they’re just views from someone inside a building, why not add a bridge, or a bunch of shops? Why stop at five? Why not do 37 of these?

It’s 100% generic. Is McDonald’s the market leader in delivered food in Paris? I have my doubts. So these ads are really just for ‘delivered food’. Maybe you see them and think you’ll call Domino’s, or your favourite baguette jamon delivery service. There’s nothing that tells me why I should order from McDonald’s Delivery (not another delivery service) on a rainy day. (May I also add that surely delivered McDonald’s is pretty unpleasant. I have nothing against the food when it comes fresh from the restaurant, but waiting 20 minutes for it to come through the rain? Give me a pizza or a curry any day of the week.)

Somewhat related is this post from Dave Trott. It talks about the great Bob Levenson’s test for a good ad:

“Here’s the test,” said Bob Levenson: “If you look at an ad and fall in love with the brilliance of it, try taking the product out of it.  

If you still love the ad, it’s no good.  

Don’t make your ad interesting; make your product interesting.”

Try that test with this campaign: cover up the logo and see if you still love it. If you did before, I’m pretty sure you still do. What most people seem to like about this campaign is the photography. There’s really nothing here that tells you why MD is good enough to spend your money on. I suppose it presumes that we all know if we like McDonald’s already, so it can just let us know that this thing we like or don’t like is now available for delivery. Maybe that’s enough, but maybe a better ad would give me a good reason to give it a go.

I think that’s enough about the pros and cons. Overall I think it’s one decent ad (with amazing photography/post), not five amazing ones. Additionally, I apologize for the cynicism, but this industry has driven me to it: these ads have a big whiff of Cannes fodder about them. I’d love to believe the client decided to run these five virtually identical ads, but I can’t help thinking at least some of this campaign was created purely for the purpose of entering it for some awards.

If it was intended and created with only its effectiveness in mind, I apologise!

‘Half spaces’ is a relatively new football term. It refers to the areas between the side of the pitch and the centre:

These are hard to cover because the defensive team is usually set up to stop opposing forwards on the wings and in the middle. If an attacker runs into the half space the defenders can’t be sure whose job it is to stop him.

I think good writing happens in half spaces; areas where the reader isn’t expecting you to appear, so they don’t have their defences up. We’re all attuned to the approach paths of clichés and tropes, so we’re fully prepared to repel their sorry arses, casting eye-rolls in their direction as we bat them away.

Therefore, to retain the element of surprise, we must head to the half spaces!

Writing half spaces come in many shapes and sizes. Structurally, they can appear as plot twists or unusual situations. In terms of form, they can exist in breaking the fourth wall, writing the story through a new medium, such as emails or text messages, or creating a story within a story within a story.

But I want to talk about the smaller half spaces. With a bit of perspective you can create them inside a single sentence, and certainly within a 30-second ad.

I’ll start with a minor fascination of mine. I’m not sure it has a name, so I’m going to call it the redundant elongation. When you talk about those red things you stick together to make a building you tend to use the word ‘brick’. The thing in the corner of a letter is usually a ‘stamp’, and that thing people drive is generally referred to as a car. But they can also be called a ‘house brick’, a ‘postage stamp’ and a ‘motorcar’. Is there a good reason to use a longer word with an identical meaning? No, and that’s the point. It makes the word stick out a little and prevents the prose from becoming wallpaper. It could also give a character subtle colour, or help the rhythm of a line. So it gets to live in the half space: grenade or hand grenade? Boat or sailboat? Worm or earthworm?

Another one is the anti-cliché. I once wrote an Economist poster that asked, ‘What exactly is the benefit of the doubt?’. I took a cliché and turned it into the opposite of itself: something unfamiliar to give the reader pause. My colleagues did something similar with ‘Carpe annum’ and ‘Think someone under the table’.

But so did Radiohead, in their own special way. Listen to the lyrics of You And Whose Army?, which takes that cliché and twists it into an insecure whinge. And A Wolf At The Door (another cliché) uses ‘Take it with a pinch of salt’ in a long list of sardonic bullshit. Even Robbie Williams reprogrammed ‘Come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough’ in Millennium.

But the real half spaces are the insights that make all good art. Sure you can go deep into the human condition for a Dark Side Of The Moon or Great Expectations, but smaller moments of recognition can be just as powerful because they make us feel connected in a more quotidian way:

The terror of sleeves inching their way down your forearms as you wash your hands.

Why does clingfilm stretch when you want it to tear and vice versa?

What do you do in the no man’s land between a person being close enough for you to hold the door open for them, and the point when they’re a little too far away?

The tingling sensation you get after pins and needles is oddly similar to what happens to your tongue when you lick the end of a 9-volt battery. Are they related?

Why do smoke detector batteries only run out at 4am?

The odd feeling you get when you expect there to be another step at the top of a staircase.

True happiness comes from listening to music in the car and arriving at your destination exactly as the song is ending.

Etc.

So look to the half spaces. Sneak up on your reader, viewer or listener and give them a touch of surprise and delight, one they may not even appreciate till much later. That’s the kind of stuff we like to consume, so that should be the kind of stuff you like to create.

Video game skies (thanks, J).

The story of Friends.

Magnet bouncing on a trampoline:

Like a boss 2018:

Are we living in other dimensions without realising?:

Paul McCartney answers the web’s most popular questions about himself:

A long list of funny commercials, some of which are actually funny.

Surreal self portraits (thanks, J).

Paintings of paintings of paintings (thanks, J).

Best movie scenes of the last 25 years.

In advertising circles the blag is the stuff of legend.

From Graham Fink being told he wasn’t old enough to join CDP and returning disguised as an old man, to those guys I remember trying to get into AMV by ‘living’ in the phone box across the road, the circumventing of rules and rejections to gain an advantage is as common as an idea that originated on YouTube.

I was listening to Dave Dye’s excellent chat with Dave Hieatt, which featured a fine blag story involving Dave H getting into Saatchi and Saatchi by pretending he had to deliver something to Jeff Stark. Dave’s previous chat, with Carlos Bayala, also involves a fine blag story about pretending to be a placement to get in at Leagas Delaney.

And that reminded me of a creative whose name escapes me, who was fired from BMP/DDB many years ago. He got around this by simply ignoring it and coming to work as usual the following day. His boss was too embarrassed to re-fire him, so he just let him stay, which he did for a couple of decades.

I have my own blag story: when I was between jobs in 1997 or 1998 I called up John Hegarty’s PA and told him John had seen my book and like it so much that he’d personally sent me a note telling me to make an appointment to see him. The PA had a good go at suggesting this was unlikely, but I kept up my subterfuge long enough to get that appointment. The fact that Sir Hegs was not actually a fan of the book was a disappointing ending to an otherwise successful blag.

I also did a semi-blag, whereby my partner and I had come to end of our placement at AMV. In theory we needed the sign off of the ECD to return on Monday, but he’d gone home, so what were we to do? Well, we were in the middle of a VERY important small-space price ad for Homebase, so we used that as a kind of bridge to Monday. No one noticed or cared about the ‘blag’, but we rode it to an actual job that lasted several years.

I think the blag has been much-maligned; when they fail people tend to think the people who tried them are a bit sad. But many have succeeded, conferring upon their practitioners the kind of legendary status that means they get celebrated on a blog several years later.

Did you blag? Do you know of anyone who did? Chuck your story in the comments and let’s celebrate true advertising creativity!

Tom Hardy noises:

Untold stories of 2001:

Have aliens found us? (Thanks, D.)

Precarious balloons (thanks, J).

Make up illusions (thanks, J).

Very good article on the fun of writing bad reviews (thanks, J).

Lots of suggestions for the greatest photo of all time.

Derren Brown is a very good artist.

Eddie Van Halen shares his musical journey:

That dreamy intro to Zelda on the N64:

Which supercar is right for you?