If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

Here’s a delightful guest post from Father Critmas:

People are always asking me, Father Critmas, how can I be more like you? How can I be the World’s Best Creative Director™. And I always tell them the same thing. “How dare you talk to me.”

The best films of the year?

How rubber bands are made (thanks, T):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TIXDbxtzMY

David Bowie’s top 10 tips:

And Prince’s:

And Tarantino’s:

And David Lynch’s:

And Maya Angelou’s”

Christmas reputation management (thanks, R).

Last night I went to a screening of this wonderful movie:

Due to an interesting quirk of people from the movie business generally going to one particular LA cinema (the Arclight in Hollywood. The sound and picture are always brilliant) they’ve started having Q&A screenings so that Academy voters and their friends can see the stars/directors and ask them about the movie (a couple of weeks ago we went to see Murder on the Orient Express, topped off by an interview with the very affable Kenneth Branagh; Al Gore showed up for the Inconvenient Truth sequel; Margot Robbie, Justin Timberlake and Kate Winslet have also popped by).

So this showing of The Shape of Water ended with an interview with the director, Guillermo Del Toro, and two of the stars: Octavia Spencer and Doug Jones.

(I love GDT. He makes horror films with heart and humour, as well as blockbusters that have more brains than most. And he’s had an interesting life – for example, his dad was kidnapped and James Cameron gave him the money to pay the ransom.)

Here are three things Señor Del Toro said that could be applied to stuff you’re working on:

1. The relationship with an audience is like a game of tennis: you express part of the story, but for that to work, you need the audience’s response, so they hit it back, you reach that expectation and hit it over the net again. But the real trick is not to hit the ball straight at them. You need to give it something interesting and unexpected so they have to stretch a little to make the return. If you see TSOW you’ll notice yourself constantly reappraising the situation and how you’re responding to it. That’s the fun.
2. Along similar lines, you have to give the audience what they’re expecting, but not in the way they’re expecting it. So this film has a beast that’s a hero, a damsel who’s in charge rather than in distress, a leading man who’s an arsehole and a villain who’s a good guy. That helps the ball spin over the net in very satisfying ways.
3. When he was six, GDT saw The Creature from the Black Lagoon but he was disappointed that the creature and the girl didn’t get together. So he spent ages drawing them as a couple, going on bike rides together etc. Cut to 52 years later and he finally made the version of the movie he really wanted to. So never, never give up on your dream, even if it takes 52 years.

Which tech era did you grow up in? (Great charts; thanks, D.)

Privacy or pizza? Pizza.

How matches are made:

How well do you know your Christmas ads? (Thanks, G.)

Pick a country and a decade, then enjoy (thanks, J).

Cray cray video (thanks, J):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=48&v=_jolA2GYwZg

Life on London’s first AIDS ward.

Kubrick’s cameras:

Timelapse construction of The Louvre Abu Dhabi (thanks, D):

Lots of screams replaced with Tom Cruise’s weird scream from The Mummy:

Every story is the same:

Beautiful art made from rubbish (thanks, D).

Great mashups of yesteryear (thanks, T).

Great Jay-Z interview.

The one time of year UK advertising gets a big shot in the arm is Christmas:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jw1Y-zhQURU

Thanks to Adam and Eve DDB’s stewardship of John Lewis we now have this kind of 2-month British Superbowl, where each of the big retailers squeezes out a couple of minutes of heartwarming loveliness for our collective delectation. As it’s been going for quite a long time now, it’s easy to dismiss certain efforts as ‘not as good as last year’, or ‘not as good as that other client’s’, but I think it’s worth taking a moment to appreciate that the whole shebang actually has the entire country (and some parts of the world) talking about advertising, and that’s a rare thing these days (I even heard Russell Brand mention John Lewis’s Christmas ads on his existential-angst-themed podcast).

Hats off for that, but is there something we can learn from the phenomenon?

Well, here’s an obvious point: pretty much all the talked-about ads are long TV commercials. Sure, they sell the odd toy alongside, or make a concomitant (love that word) donation drive, but none of those extras would exist without the 500lb gorilla: a long, usually expensive, TV ad with a big media spend. That might just nudge us into thinking that TV advertising is both far from dead and still the best way to create famous work.

And you’d have to assume that these ads work, otherwise there wouldn’t be more and more of them, year after year. If John Lewis’s Christmas sales had tanked into the toilet these ads would have done the same.

Another point: good old traditional ad agencies have still got it, as long as they’re trusted to come up with the goods. A&E DDB produces great stuff every year, alongside AMV, Grey and the others. Has an agency with a strange single noun name (Mother aside) come up with the goods? Maybe, but have they matched the big boys in fame and craft? Nope.

And have these ads needed a huge amount of intrusive internet surveillance to be effective? Are they behind the indiscriminate harvesting of our personal details? Is each one laser-targeted at our eyeballs via an in-depth analysis of our every last fart and nose pick? I don’t think so.

So the upshot seems to be: good old fashioned TV ads from good old fashioned agencies still kick ass. Yes, they are the tip of the pyramid as far as ads go, but that’s looking at it backwards: clients could have more tips of more pyramids if they trusted great agencies and their creative departments to produce more great TV advertising during the rest of the year.

And yet all the natter is about programmatic, data and Googlebook.

Sheesh…

There’s a lot of noise these days about ethics, especially as they pertain to the corporate world.

Back in the Noughties, corporations simply functioned as they wished (within the law, or however they could afford to stretch it) but some added an element of Corporate Social Responsibility. Did every corporation that provided these acts of kindness do so out of the goodness of their hearts? Possibly not, after all, there’s no such thing as altruism. But the good deeds were done, so does it matter why?

Maybe, maybe not. There are actually dozens of nuanced arguments on either side. If you want to have a good read of them, check out the CSR Wikipedia page.

But now the conversation had moved on. Pretty much every industry has a perspective on its own ethics, particularly insofar as they relate to climate change, and, latterly, sexual harassment. Are they taking that interest because the public demands it, and it therefore affects the bottom line, or because of some moral aspect that affects the future of the planet?

Generally it’s a mixture of the two, and just like CSR there are vast swathes of grey in between them.

Here are some of the questions that don’t have easy answers:

Many companies have been incorporated with the financial imperative as the most important issue. If they do something that prioritises anything else above the generation of money they can be sued by their shareholders. But what if they were to lose money in the short-term by closing a coal-fired power plant and switching to solar? They might make more money in ten years’ time and beyond, but the immediate losses won’t please shareholders that need to cash out soon, or may not be alive to see the long-term benefits. So does the company risk the litigation to do what is most helpful to its future existence/moral stance, or just go for the money now?

What should the extent or nature of your ethics be? If you’re a person you can be omnivorous, vegetarian, vegan or even fruitarian (only eating fruit that has naturally fallen from trees). Is a vegan ‘better’ than a vegetarian? In terms of resource usage, yes. In moral terms? That’s debatable. In the corporate equivalent you might use your financial resources to treat your staff better by paying them more or giving them more benefits, but what if that compromises your environmental efforts? Such expenditure might mean that you can’t buy energy-saving lightbulbs or insulate your factory. Is one better than the other? That’s an impossible question to answer definitively.

What if there’s a clash between morality and law? Most countries have not codified stringent ethics into legislation. they might provide recycling bins or sign the Paris Accord, but will they treat people of all religions in exactly the same way? Will they ensure a reasonable equality of pay via proper corporate taxation? Will they allow democratic elections on a regular basis? As those of us who follow the news have seen, solid arguments backed by millions can be made on all sides of these questions. And if that’s the case, how will the finer points of subjective corporate morality survive such debates? Clearly it will be impossible to please everyone, so who gets to impose their morality, why and how?

And those are just three questions in an area with thousands. The fact that there isn’t a clear solution makes it obvious that there isn’t such a thing as ethical absolutism, only ethical relativism.

But that shouldn’t lead to paralysis. Within each question is a choice to live up to your own standards. That might mean financial compromises, or a difficult legal fight, but you simply have to decide what you want more: the benefits of the ethical decision, or an easier life in a world that doesn’t work for you (and perhaps millions of others).

Damn, I think I just posed another annoyingly difficult dilemma…

When it comes to assessing advertising, some of those in the industry divide themselves into two people:

Person A

They have an excellent idea of what advertising needs to be for the general public. They gain this insight by looking at the advertising they experience on a daily basis and saying, ‘Wow, that’s really annoying. Being followed around the internet as a result of having your privacy invaded and your conversations spied on really sucks. There’s no way I’d ever recommend my clients to advertise in that manner because it would leave their brand with a sheen of negativity that encompasses untrustworthiness and general dislike.” They realise that big logos make them turn pages faster, cramming lots of stuff onto billboards makes them impossible to take in, and preroll makes people hate brands because they are responsible for a tedious delay in gratification. They know that programmatic digital buys can often result in ads appearing in unsavoury places where they are ‘watched’ by bots that the client then has to pay for.

Person B

They take an ad brief for preroll without question. They say that it’s just a little 5-15 second ad that’s kind of the price of running a site like YouTube. They increase logo sizes because they were asked to by a person in a slightly bad mood, and anyway, they’ll be able to enter the ‘awards’ version that ran once somewhere obscure and cheap. They recommend programmatic because it’s a great way to reach a lot of people for not a lot of money, and besides, everyone’s using it so can it really be that bad? They don’t really mind the idea of their ads following people around because the public understand it’s how ads work these days, and besides, it’s not their problem if the general public dislikes their client as a result – the general public hates all ads, so this one won’t really make much difference. They’ll make a poster with seven different typefaces and four different messages because it means their bosses will chill out and it won’t really affect their wages or career prospects because the aforementioned ‘award’ version will win a Creative Circle Bronze.

Of course this isn’t everyone, and of course I’m exaggerating (ever so slightly), but I do wonder why we often look at our work like ‘ad people’ and then get annoyed at the results when we look at them like ‘consumers’.

Unlike others, we can actually change the things that annoy us. We’re often there in the room with the people making decisions (hell, we might even be the people making the decisions), so we can use the facts to persuade clients to do what’s effective, interesting, disruptive, memorable and beautiful. Bus drivers, civil servants and zookeepers don’t get that privilege; they just have to suck up the bad stuff.

It’s like being in Number 10 Downing Street every day and saying ‘Yes, Theresa, Brexit is a great idea that will advance Britain’s position in the world and bring economic prosperity for all of her citizens,’ and not, ‘Hang on there, Theresa. Can I just show you this graph and these documents that prove Brexit is going to be a disaster for millions of people?‘

I’m not saying that 100% of clients will listen 100% of the time, and they might well have some pretty good graphs and documents of their own, but if you don’t fight the good fight you have to continue having the annoying experiences.

Next time you get the chance, do yourself several favours and make something both of you will enjoy.

I have to admit that for years I was pretty sniffy about LinkedIn. I used to think it was the boring Facebook for nerdy squares (or something). Then again, I used to think Facebook was the boring Facebook for nerdy squares, so what do I know…

Anyway, I’ve got into LinkedIn much more in recent months. Why and how? Read on…

1. I always link to everyone who asks. This is partly because I don’t want to appear rude, but also because you never know who might be a useful or interesting connection. I wonder how many of you keep your networks ‘manageable’ rather than open. Does that mean I’m inundated with posts? Not really, but there’s always fresh stuff on my feed.
2. Having an open network means I get articles and posts from a wide range of people with all sorts of jobs who live all over the world. I don’t think I’ve met more than about 10% of them, so I’m always reading about unexpected things that keep my mind broadened.
3. I got into LinkedIn when I was gainfully employed. I don’t know how important this is, but a sudden appearance on LinkedIn can often denote the end of a job. If you don’t want to denote that, jump in now (unless you just lost your job. Actually, never mind – just do it whenever you like!).
4. I have a feeling there are vast slices of super-LinkedIn that I have no idea about. Sometimes a post appears in my feed with 10,000 likes and 2000 comments and I wonder how the hell that happens. I think I’m also a bit of a relative LinkedIn newbie, so I may be missing a bunch of interesting nuances and skills.
5. The big LinkedIn dude in my feed is a guy called Tom Goodwin. He’s Head of Innovation at Zenith USA and he seems to do several interesting posts a day which then get 5000 likes and 500 comments. But he seems like a good bloke and I think a drink with him would be fun.
6. LinkedIn often feels like a D&AD annual from 10-15 years ago. When I wander through through the names of people LinkedIn thinks I might know they tend to be very interesting creatives in the Autumn of their careers. I find it very interesting to see what they’re up to now.
7. You can apparently link with all sorts of fascinating CCOs, CEOs, Presidents, Chairpeople etc. of past and present. A case in point: I’m not entirely sure why Mark Wnek linked to me a few months back, but I find his new project fascinating.
8. There are in-jokes on the site, like being rude about Gary Vaynerchuck, but I’m 100% certain Gary doesn’t care about that. In fact I think he wears such attention as a badge of honour. People also like to complain about those who use LinkedIn to express political opinions or as some kind of dating site. I don’t see much evidence of either.
9. There’s a lot of public proclamation of worker availability and worker need (that might be kind of the point). I think it’s great that a forum to connect workers and recruiters exists that allows both to express themselves creatively (or not, as the case may be).
10. I once asked a couple of questions that spread around the site like wildfire. They asked about the existence of ad agencies that had female or minority names above the door (not many do, at least compared to the number with just white guy names). The reaction made me realise just how fertile the diversity debate is. Anyway, I wonder how much this post will be shared around, but if I want to give it an extra push I’ll need to finish with a LinkedIn in-joke question.

Do you agree?