If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

Vicki Maguire is the joint ECD of Grey London.

If you listen to our chat you can find out how…

Working on a market stall and plying an older gentleman with alcohol can make you a better writer.

Paul Smith taught her the value of generosity.

Declining a placement can get you a job instead.

You can learn more from arseholes than good people.

Going to D&AD with a less ‘fashionable’ agency can have unexpected benefits.

Working at O&M is different to working at W&K.

The East End needs to stay shitty.

You can open a sweet shop.

Then tension between old clients and new ways of working can be a good thing.

Being a copywriter can literally save lives.

Lifepaint may not be as terrible as I thought.

My Moral Arbitration Ceremony is essential for the good of the industry.

Thanks, Vicki. I really enjoyed our chat, so if you’re ever in LA do pop round for a cup of tea or a kale smoothie.

(If any of you were hoping for Jeff Labbe, a technical hitch means that’ll happen sometime in the future. Next week:  the great Mark Denton.)

Amazingly, you can now just subscribe to this podcast, like proper podcasts, by looking up If This Is A Blog Then What’s Christmas on iTunes. Or, if you prefer, listen to it on Soundcloud.

ITIAPTWC Episode 3 – Vicki Maguire

Here’s some of Vicki’s best work:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILxjxfB4zNk

America’s most beautiful libraries.

Excellent writing advice.

And excellent food tips (thanks, T).

Intricate map of alt music history (thanks, G).

Scorsese’s career in movie posters.

Cool Jeff Back and Seal cover of Manic Depression (thanks, G):

Fucking amazing 70s haircuts (thanks, T).

People screwing up in infomercials, soundtracked by The Smiths (thanks, C):

The truth about the importance of an advertising creative (thanks, D).

Timeline of Republicans deserting Trump (thanks, G).

Fantastic psychedelic posters (thanks, T).

Scorsese’s list of essential foreign films (I’ve only seen 11. thanks, G):

Hong Kong in the 1950s, captured by a teenager.

Epic rap battles, Hitchcock vs Spielberg (thanks, G):

Little kid jumps like horse (thanks, G):

As someone with a keen interest in language, I wonder when the world ‘mate’ came to mean ‘arsehole’:

The second episode of If This Is A Podcast Then What’s Christmas is an interview with Simon Veksner:

Simon has been a very successful copywriter, winning D&AD pencils and a Cannes Grand Prix (back when there were only about five categories in which you could win one). So we discuss how he got to that position, the brilliant creative direction of Jeremy Craigen and Ewan Patterson, how the keys to success are making friends with the traffic department and reading David Hume’s take on idea generation, and how digital vs TV comes down to advertising creatives being ‘praise whores’.

We also have a good chat about his Scamp Blog. It might seem like a long time ago now, but that blog was essentially the creative mouthpiece for the entire industry (Simon reveals that it used to get hits than Campaign’s website). In fact, it was so big that when Google temporarily shut it down the situation merited coverage in the national press. So we explore its origins and the reasons behind its fame.

We end on a conversation about his move to Australia and his recent venture in setting up a social media company.

I hope you enjoy it. I’ll leave you with an apology for any points where the sound might get too loud or quiet, a downloadable version of the podcast (still trying to work out the iTunes thing) and a few of Simon’s best ads.

Next week: Jeff Labbé, director of the Barnados ad below.

Cheers!

(P.S.: in case you’re wondering if there’s any method to my choice of guests, I’m trying to vary things a little in terms of eras, backgrounds, geography and even – gasp! – gender. I will definitely get round to asking everyone you’re thinking of, but my order may not be quite the same as yours. Schedules are also important as I have to record most people under the cosh of an eight-hour time difference, which is a bit of an arse. As always, please suggest people and I’ll add them to my list.)

Jay-Z on the epic fail that is the War on Drugs.

The amazing Playing Lynch site for David Lynch’s meditation foundation (thanks, H).

Making wax food (thanks, T):

Artist makes hi-tech digi versions of his shit childhood pics.

More amusing answers to photoshop requests.

Epic hat trick shots (thanks, F):

Superheroes as 16th Century aristocrats (thanks, T).

My friend’s husband was given a 10-year bullshit prison sentence. Here’s her amazing blog.

The top 50 music videos of the 90s (thanks, J).

Blaine blows Pharrell’s mind:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RM4ZBCecnz0

Great designers choose their favourite album covers.

Every Best Picture:

https://vimeo.com/153299361

John Coltrane in 20 quotes (thanks, M).

Sort of update of George Michael’s Freedom 90 video (thanks, L).

Insanely good Prince solo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vs0npz_pTJ8

What’s in a Chicken McNugget? (Do not watch within 1000 years of eating a Chicken McNugget. Thanks, D):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPSOTRyIB2c

Johnny Depp making weird faces:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dir0cOFmrOM&feature=youtu.be

Brilliantly shot, compelling, intriguing, entertaining and (most crucially) with a satisfying payoff.

Well done, all concerned.

Advertising is full of words phrases that have pretty much no real meaning. Here are a few:

State of the art: this morning I was cold called by a company offering me a ‘state of the art’ home security system. The meaning of that phrase is: ‘the most recent stage in the development of a product, incorporating the newest ideas and the most up-to-date features’. Sure, this is probably true, but what does it really mean in terms of solid benefits you can point to? Nothing. You can call anything ‘state of the art’ and no one can say you’re wrong.

Best-ever: I think the idea of a company making something really good then deciding to sell a worse version of it is a bit strange. Having said that, there are plenty of rumours of products that really are a slightly worse version of what a company has managed to develop. That way the incremental improvements can be spread out and sold over a longer period of time for more profit. But that’s not what this phrase is given to mean. It suggests a better version of your Twix/Hoover/Audi has just been created and is now available. Like I said, nobody is going to explicitly sell you a crap iteration if there’s a better one around.

Delicious/Tasty/flavourful/rich: subjective/subjective/subjective/subjective

A fraction of the cost: which fraction? 1/1000? 999999/1000000ths? Fractions cover pretty much every possible division, so ‘a fraction’ means nothing.

Natural: everything’s natural if you think about it; after all, we all sprung from ‘nature’. But perhaps this refers to those things that are not exclusively man-made. Well, you can bet that with the current uses of pesticides and cultivation techniques, something described as ‘natural’ may not quite align with the image in your head. Sure, it might have been plucked from rolling fields of verdant pasture, but it’s slightly more likely that it was grown on an intensive farm, protected by some quite troubling pesticides then frozen for several months in South Africa before reaching your mouth. Natural? Kind of. Then again, that’s like the people who complain that homosexuality is unnatural then go and watch TV.

Organic: I think we all know that the definition of this word is pretty shaky. Yes, it means that it must meet certain standards, but there’s much debate regarding whether or not those standards actually make any difference to the product (other than the extra 20% on the price). Crops grown in organic soil are often planted next to non-organic fields whose pesticides can leach through under the ground. Yes, there is a bit of meaning to this, but it’s a long way from what it implies.

Ultra/Mega/Incredible/Amazing: bollocks/bollocks/bollocks/bollocks.

Limited Edition: it pays to look for the number to which an edition has been limited. 3 is good; 500 is not bad, but ‘several million’ does kind of take the shine off the implied scarcity value:

Environmentally friendly: this doesn’t have to adhere to anything at all. There’s no governing body, no set of standards and no consistency, which is why so many companies use it.

For a limited period only: literally every single thing exists for a limited period only.

Artisanal: this means ‘made in a traditional or non-mechanized way’. Does that make it better? Who knows? And who can testify as to what a ‘traditional’ method of manufacture really is? Nobody. Like ‘organic’, ‘artisanal’ is a word that means nothing more than a 20% price hike.

Homemade (or in the US, ‘house made’): this one really intrigues me. Does a restaurant have to make something in a real home then bring it to the restaurant in order for it to be homemade? Well, one dictionary defines it as ‘made in the home, on the premises, or by one’s own efforts’. So… everything, then? I guess that might exclude ready meals and packets of biscuits, but I don’t suppose it has to. I can’t believe anyone really cares enough to pull people up on this, so restaurants presumably add it to any old dish description and slap on another 10%.

Value: value is something that only exists relative to a person’s opinion. Value has no value. So a ‘value’ bag of crisps might represent more crisps for less money, but if I don’t want it it has no value.

Quality: this is often used on its own, without a qualifying adjective (eg: Quality Butcher), leaving us with the question, ‘What kind of quality are we talking about?’. Do they mean a low quality butcher? (Presumably not). But even then, what do low or high quality represent in this instance? It’s never explained, so people can say ‘quality food at low prices’ and it means absolutely nothing, but they can also say ‘high quality food at low prices’ and it means exactly the same thing.

Oven baked/pan fried/oven roasted: have you ever tried to roast or bake something outside an oven, or fry something outside a pan? Pretty darn tricky.

Do you have any to add to the list?

The 25 most rewatchable films.

Insanely good makeup transformations (thanks, T):

All the movies Bill Clinton watched in the White House.

Interesting questions from someone trying to buy DiCaprio’s Malibu beach house (thanks, T).

Jimmy Page on the theremin (thanks, T):

The Monty Python argument sketch performed by two vintage speech synthesisers (thanks, V):

Voodoo Chile live:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJarvWcSNMY