If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulder of giants” – Isaac Newton.

Simple, isn’t it? People do stuff so when the people who come after them do the same kind of stuff they can learn from the original efforts and improve the end results.

But it doesn’t happen as often as you might think: nobody has improved on the guitar playing of Jimi Hendrix; movies are far worse then they were in the 70s; no one has managed to balance readability and literary excellence beyond that of Charles Dickens; no artist has captured the depths of humanity better than Da Vinci, Michelangelo or Raphael; and, of course, ads are nowhere near as good/liked/impactful as they were a decade ago.

Why?

After all, we have all the knowledge of those who went before us; the least we can do is get to their level. Then, with the added benefits of improved technology, greater tools and a more civilised world (better medicine, longer life expectancy, lower likelihood of going to war etc.), we ought to surpass any previous efforts. But we clearly don’t, so here are some possible reasons why:

1. The people who did the amazing thing first will always be held up for their greatness because of the added element of pioneering a new path. Many people can play like Hendrix but the ability to blaze an entirely new trail in an art form is not something that happens by standing on someone else’s shoulders. True greatness comes from originality, so the people who merely reiterate will never be perceived as giants to the same extent as the trailblazers. I think that Wolf Hall could sit up there with great 19th Century literature, but the fact that it has appeared 150 years after Dickens somewhat diminishes the perceived quality.
2. Great creative minds explore new areas that may not have previously existed. So a person who might be able to further the art of the movie could now be inventing Snapchat or the Tesla or (more likely) writing Breaking Bad, The Wire or The Sopranos. TV is far better than it used to be and movies are far worse. It doesn’t take a genius to see that the two situations might be related. You could make the argument that TV writers such as Matthew Weiner and David Simon stood on the shoulders of the giant David Milch or the giant David Chase. (Why so many great Davids? No idea). But that meant that they did not stand on the shoulders of Francis Ford Coppola or Martin Scorsese.
3. Circumstances can make it harder to improve things. Let’s take the ad industry: a brain drain to other creative jobs; smaller budgets; smaller real wages; the rise of new media, which is inherently less immediately impressive (try explaining an experiential takeover of a town square vs showing a 60-second TV ad); the rise of the global corporation and the pan-global ad, which has to appeal to far too many people at once; the overall malaise caused by all of the above… These factors have contributed to the general reduction of quality in advertising to such an extent that the likelihood of a spunky youngster coming in and setting the industry alight is much smaller. The shoulders are not just the artwork of before; they are the situations in which those shoulders do or do not exist. A contextual pull for Hendrix’s music (the rise of the Beatles, Stones, Clapton, Floyd etc.) helped to make it happen. Ditto the onrush of great 70s movies that railed against the lies and paranoia of Nixon-era USA.
4. Distraction. Is it a coincidence that the last decade has seen worse movies, music and advertising at the same time as the rise of Facebook, Twitter and a million other online tidbits? I speak from experience when I say that the lure of the internet makes it really hard to stay focussed on your creative endeavour, and I’m not the only one. The tyranny of choice can seep into most of your life, strangling your ability to find a thing you want to do and stick to it. Where will this end? How many of us have the discipline to disregard something so tempting and concentrate on the hard yards of creating greatness?
5. It’s been done. So many art forms have reached such a level of excellence that the idea of taking one on and improving it can seem intimidating to many people. For every brave fool who thinks he/she can better Mozart there are a million others who decline the opportunity to even attempt such a thing. And the road narrows, so that each subsequent generation has to wade through an ever-increasing mountain of brilliant work. Seems like a bit of ball-ache, so let’s just have another evening of Netflix and chill, yeah?

Are you trying to be the next Dylan/Monet/Hitchcock? If so, do you feel helped or cowed by the previous excellence? And if you’re not bothering, is it because of one of the reasons above, or something else?

Hyper Reality (thanks, C):

Violent medieval rabbits (thanks, J).

Spielberg’s commencement speech:

Amazing smoke rings:

Are we all characters in a simulated video game?

I would like to preface this post by making it very clear that these are simply the arbitrary opinions of one 42-year-old bloke, and not to be taken seriously.

TV first. Only two pencil winners. Here’s one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj4MzMK6F9k

Thought this was decent but surely not one of the best ads of the year. Nicely shot, but a maximum 40-second idea strung out for a minute. Good twist, but is it great? Nope. 8/10

This was the other TV winner:

Another good-not-great one. The ad is a fun, entertaining watch, and feels jauntily original, but is the payoff 100% satisfying? I’d say 82%, so I’m going to give it another 8/10.

Press ads:

Apparently this is a bigger idea where Burger King’s competitors (not McDonald’s, who declined to participate) were asked to collaborate on a burger for World Peace Day. So is this the press ad from that? It doesn’t really work on its own, so is it a part of some mixed media thing (it also received a Pencil for Integrated and Innovative Media)? No idea. Anyway, it really only works if McDonald’s is involved and you know what it’s about, so as a standalone press ad I’ll give it a slightly confused 7/10.

Writing in advertising went to these radio ads for Dove. Radio is always a bit of an odd category – if you look down the years you’ll find variable quality among the winners. But I think these are very well written and produced, and the reveal at the end is powerful. I’ll give these a 9/10.

The other writing winner:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8k2ZtzpMns

Fucking brilliant. 10/10

Outdoor. Bit of an odd category, this one. Doesn’t seem to be about posters so much as stuff like this (this is the TV ad for a beer brand that uses its waste products to make car fuel):

Very good idea, and the carried it through well. Leaving my ‘Outdoor’ reservations aside, I’d give this a 10/10. Here’s the full explanation.

Then there’s this one. Another stunty thing, but at least it’s on a poster site. Not quite as impressive as the beer thing but still very good. 9/10.

Radio: these ads from KFC are very good work for a tricky sector in an unpredictable category. 9/10. And a lovely bit of writing and VO in these for Doom insecticide – 9.5/10.

Film Crafts: this won for Use of Music and Direction. Both very good, but I also liked the editing (but not the pay-off) – 9/10.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xh9jAD1ofm4

Gold pencils: as far as I can tell, this one is for some people who make sticky tape. They hung loads of it from the ceiling in an exhibition hall. To give you an idea of how jealous I am of this idea, take ‘fuck-all’, divide it by infinity and stick it up the arse of a passing fly. 3/10.

This one, however is a full-on 15/10 idea:

Having the idea is amazing; making it happen is amazing x 1,543,835. (Small quibble: the above Vimeo link appeared in November 2014, making it eligible for last year’s D&AD. I wonder why it was entered this year.)

Did you agree with the above? Are there other ads you’d like to highlight? Are you wondering why I didn’t cover direct and mobile and all that jazz? (Answer: life is just a few seconds too short). Have a look at all the winners here and give as many shits as you can muster.

Class A marketing: drug dealers show us how it’s done (thanks, N).

When Dylan sounded like Snoop.

Odd Sarah Silverman short (thanks, D):

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

A blast from the past: Kriss Akabusi Sex Stories.

A small plug for the guys who design and maintain my sites (this site designed by Paul Belford).

A guide to using the tube.

Neat data viz on how wealth inequality happened (thanks, D).

Lots of great Serpico stuff.

Great pics of the early years of hip hop (thanks, R).

I was listening to this football podcast the other day. It’s an interesting analysis of why Jose Mourinho’s appointment as the new manager of Man United makes a certain kind of sense that may not be immediately apparent to the majority of football fans.

(For those of you who aren’t into football, allow me to give you a quick background to this situation: cast-iron, 24-carat thundercunt, Jose Mourinho has been a ridiculously successful manager, winning league titles wherever he goes, and occasionally the Champions League, too. He’s also been a toxic mess, sacked three times for being shit after he was good, and for creating schisms and hatred amongst his players, then leaving the clubs in quite a mess. By now everyone knows what they get from appointing him: a desperately insecure man who has to make every situation about himself, while throwing scoolground-level barbs at other players and managers. He also creates teams that occasionally play very good football, but more often simply spoil things for the other team, creating fucking boring games that are played by some of the most skilful players in the world.)

Anyway, the podcast suggests that actually managing a football club (not just the team, but the entire enterprise) to trophy-winning success is a very difficult thing to do. What is much easier is to spend a ridiculous amount of money on ‘star’ players and managers to keep people watching all over the world. Maybe Man U will win things with Mourinho; maybe they won’t, but it doesn’t actually matter because the aim of Man U’s Executive Vice-Chairman is to make money off the ‘brand’. If Man U stay ‘big’ then they can leverage sponsorship and other commercial deals to ensure that the cash flows in, no matter what happens on the pitch. They’ll probably spend another £100m-£200m this year, taking player spending in the last few years to over £400m. But if that nets them £800m in deals, it’s all good.

The men who took over Manchester United several years ago are the Glazer family, who actually leveraged the money they needed to buy the club against the club itself, leaving it in colossal debt, which they’ve been paying off ever since. But apparently that doesn’t matter because it hasn’t affected team spending, and the Glazers appear to be cool with doubling down on that stance by making it ALL about the money. Football has been big business for a couple of decades now, but this situation is simply growing beyond anyone’s imagination.

So Man U are playing a different game: use the football to bring in the money, which is the opposite of the previous practice of bringing in money to support the football. And this is all a longwinded way of saying that people may not be playing the game you think they are. Does BBH’s transition to a ‘Sports Management’ agency that doesn’t seem to give a toss about TV ads a new way of playing a different game that has nothing to do with great work? Does Martin Sorrell give the first toss about how good his companies’ ads are if they’re making loads of cash in other ways? (Last year I spookily asked if WPP was following the model of a football club, kind of the flipside to this post.)

In these days of huge amounts of cash and power sloshing around in channels of subterfuge it’s hard to know exactly why trusted institutions are behaving in unexpected ways, but it really just comes down to that quote from All The President’s Men: follow the money.

When I were a lad the D&AD Pencil was a very clear indicator of massive creative talent. To have one or two was great; to have any more than that was the kind of achievement reserved for a top 1% creative. Many brilliant copywriters and art directors missed out on that final confirmation of their talent because they were not given out lightly. I recall a few years where not only did a certain jury not award a Pencil, they even didn’t let any work into the Book.

So there used to be this kind of mythology about who won them, who missed out, why a great ad won for one thing but not something else. It was all kind of interesting and led to the D&AD Pencil being the one award a UK creative really wanted. I recall someone asking my old boss Mike Cozens if he thought a creative would prefer to win a Cannes Grand Prix (there only used to be four or five of those back in the mid 90s) or a D&AD Gold (Mike had two of those). He replied that the D&AD Gold would be the more coveted, partly because they were as rare as rocking horse shit, and thus jurors were loathe to give them to anything not 150% worthy.

Anyway, fast forward to this year and news reaches me that Pencils are no longer so rare (this may have been the case for a few years; I haven’t been paying attention). They now give a plain wooden pencil for anything that got in the book. so how many did they give out this year? Well according to this count the number is 747.

747.

Seven hundred and forty fucking seven.

Now, I get that the plain ones might be worth less than the yellow ones, the black ones or (Jesus wept) the fucking white one, but this now means that a D&AD Pencil has been utterly devalued. It’s like hyper inflation; the advertising equivalent of the Zimbabwean billion dollar bill. It’s become meaningless. When you flood the shelves of creative teams with that many Pencils they cease to become a respected badge of honour and instead take on the cachet of a Cannes Shortlisting. Perhaps they’ll make trophies for that soon.

I recently followed a Facebook chat about D&AD in general, in which the great Mark Denton, winner of several Pencils when they were hard to come by, added the perfect quote from The Incredibles: ‘When everyone’s super, no one is‘.

I’m currently reading an interesting book called Lying, by a neuroscientist called Sam Harris.

It’s an essay on the damage that can be done by even the smallest white lie and it suggests that we can radically simplify our lives and improve society by merely telling the truth in situations where others often lie. If you lie to a friend in front of another friend the second friend will then realise that you might lie to them, too. This may not be conscious, but it will slide in somewhere and leave your relationship damaged. Or a friend might ask what you think of a painting they just completed. If you don’t like it but you tell them it’s great you’re doing the social equivalent of sending them out with a ‘kick me’ sign on their back. Is that what a real friend would do?

Anyway, it’s full of similar examples and makes a lot of sense, but instead of making me consider the problems caused by lying it made me think about how many great things happen when we tell the truth.

I don’t just mean telling a friend how their painting could be improved; I mean being authentic, open and fully self-expressed. Here’s an example:

Now, I’m not saying that Will Ferrell is in poor condition, but he’s not exactly Brad Pitt in Fight Club. Does he care? If he does we certainly can’t tell. He’s just comfortable in his own skin (literally) and it makes him more likeable. Those of us who would rather not let it all hang out for fear of being judged have to live a somewhat hidden life that reflects fear and a greater value placed on the opinions of others, neither of which are generally considered to be attractive traits.

Another example is Howard Stern, the US radio DJ. I listen to him most days as he goes into ridiculously graphic detail about whether or not he masturbated the previous night, what kind of porn he watched as he did so (usually babysitter scenarios), what his clean up tissue routine is, when he takes a dump and how he wipes his arse. Now, that might sound to you like an unpleasant overshare, but it’s actually surprisingly refreshing. He doesn’t talk about this stuff in a boastful or titillating way; more like an explanation of a trip to the supermarket or attempt to cook dinner, and it tends to come off as self deprecating, particularly as he regularly mentions how small his penis is. Perhaps you have to give it a listen yourself, but millions tune in every day, partly because there’s actually a mega-famous A-list celebrity who happily talks about every part of his life, whether you feel comfortable about it or not. And why shouldn’t people discuss masturbation or going to the toilet? Why are those subjects considered to be taboo or disgusting? Perhaps if more people were open about that kind of thing people wouldn’t behave like 12-year-old boys or matronly aunts when those topics come up, and maybe people wouldn’t be so squeamish about getting checked out for testicular or colon cancer.

Anyway, I digress…

I’m not saying that everyone should share every thought that pops into their head; that would be disastrous. But I am suggesting that repression and suppression can often end in misery and restrict our connection to other human beings. After all, what is it about art that we really appreciate? It’s anything that shines a light on the human condition and makes us feel as if our experiences are not ours alone. You may not want to be the one who puts their hand up to express a vulnerability, but you sure appreciate those who do.

And it’s a path to artistic success:

Louis CK suggests the way to creative fulfilment is to say what you believe, and that trying to please people is a short-lived victory.

Richard Pryor’s open, truthful style broke barriers for people to talk about race and sex: “When you hear him do those routines they are making it easier for people of different races to talk to each other and laugh with each other. It was groundbreaking.”

You may not like Kanye West, but he was the one who said what we were all thinking:

And what about the way social media silently encourages us to present the very best sides of ourselves? Wouldn’t it be great if the fear that surrounds every dismal humblebrag were replaced by bold authenticity?

Just to be clear, I am as guilty as everyone else of the sins of mendacity mentioned above, but I’d be delighted if there were more truth shared around the planet. And why does it seem so hard? I can’t help thinking that we’re liars by habit, drawn to the short-term gain, somewhat unaware of the long-term pain. It’s scary putting the real version of yourself out there, because if it gets rejected it’s a rejection of you instead of one of the masks you wear. But on the flipside of that, if people accept the false version of you then they’re only accepting one of the masks, and that sounds more than a little sad.

I think the above also applies to brands. Pretty much all of them try to present their best face, but only a few actually have a face that’s worth presenting. It’s the dodgy ones that want to seem so much better than they actually are that don’t endear themselves to us: lying about your CO2 emissions to fool people into buying your car; using sweat shops to make your products while preaching about global togetherness; using the words ‘natural’ and ‘healthy’ in their loosest and most flexible senses; banks wittering on about how they help small businesses while they help the super rich to avoid tax and launder money for drug cartels. All crashingly disappointing, but does it do them damage? Well, the corporate world in 2016 seems to default to the kind of behaviours we disapprove of, but then they’re so powerful that the negative consequences aren’t as prevalent as we might like. The Sun still sells millions of copies post-Hillsborough and Leveson; Starbucks is still full of queuing punters even though it shamefully pays little tax; Donald Trump lies several times a day and his support only grows. Perhaps our knowledge of this subterfuge is interpreted as some kind of authenticity, strengthening the brands in a roundabout way.

Hopefully this blog has been an expression of authenticity: I’ve told you all about my salary record; even as a freelancer I’ve criticised work/agencies that I see as damaging to the industry; and I blab on in great detail about my actual opinions on a wide range of topics. Has it done me any harm? Not that I’m aware of. Has it done me any good? Well, I like to think that any benefits have come from my authenticity – there aren’t many outlets for this sort of thing; perhaps that’s why some people appreciate this one.

As David Abbott once said: a small admission gains a large acceptance. So what does a large admission gain?

Steamboat Willie – Koyaanisqatsi remix (thanks, T):

Brilliant wooden sculptures of famous film directors.

What it’s like to be Stanley Kubrick’s assistant for three decades.

Celebrities photoshopped to look like their crappy fan art (thanks, V).

Forklift Driver Klaus (thanks, A):

15 things you didn’t know about Pet Sounds.

Every Metallica riff played in four minutes (thanks, J):

Excellent observational photographs (thanks, J).

Drive, the Uber version (thanks, J):

Funny photoshopping (thanks, J).

Great Hamilton article.

Finally, there’s an introduction to Landmark for creatives happening in London 7pm this Monday (23rd). Let me know if you’re interested (bwmkay@gmail.com). It will be amazing (I promise!).

A friend and I were just discussing the recently-relegated Newcastle United. We both found it kind of odd because we’d lived through the 90s, during which time Newcastle were a frantically entertaining and relatively successful club. One week they’d lose 4-3 to Liverpool, the next they’d buy Faustino Asprilla to shore up their title challenge.

So the dissonance comes from the old perception we had of the club vs the current reality (being shite, run by a malevolent discount sporting goods CEO, only playing well when they’re on TV etc.).

I experienced this first-hand when I freelanced at one of the post-Frank versions of Lowe in 2009. My AD and I had lived through years of Lowe producing some of the best advertising in the world, and although we knew it was no longer that Lowe, we couldn’t help thinking it still had something in its fundamental structure that would still allow it to produce greatness. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case; by that stage it was mainly the London outpost of an uninspiring international network, producing some pretty dry ads for Knorr, Vauxhall and Cif.

There was no longer any Stella Artois, Olympus, Paul Silburn or Vince Squibb, so what made Lowe Lowe? And, indeed, what was ‘Lowe’? I suppose once the great accounts and brilliant staff had departed it was no different to any other so-so ad agency. Soon after, it merged with an agency which, up to that point, had been pretty mediocre, becoming DLKW Lowe, and the transformation was complete*. But I still hear the word Lowe and think ‘good advertising’, which makes me wonder how long perception lasts beyond a material change.

I recall David Abbott once suggesting that a person or company could live off its reputation for three years. I think that period of time differs depending on the strength of the reputation and who is regarding the person or entity. The rational, analytical side of an observer may understand that the good times have definitely left the building, but the emotional memory may live on. I wonder if it takes as long to fully lose a reputation as it does to gain one; Lowe had spent so long being so good that I found it hard to wipe away the entirety of that perception.

And of course it works in the other direction. Look at Grey: for so many years the punchline of jokes about the worst agency in London, it now regularly wins the most creative awards in the country, and genuinely pushes the advertising envelope (even if some of its efforts are depressingly scammy). However, in the back of my mind it’s still slightly Grey, slogging its way through a depressing series of P&G shitefests.

I suppose we experience so few spot-changing leopards that it’s a situation we rarely have to confront. Most things stay somewhat consistent over time so we’re used to retaining our initial impressions of them. Perhaps it takes a long time to trust any kind of change because we need enough examples of the new entity to cancel out our perception of the old; one swallow doesn’t make a summer, nor a single penguin a winter.

So live off your fat days, or accept that if you’re crap today it’s going to be hard to shift that perception, even after the reality has changed.

*By the way, I don’t pay enough attention to the current UK ad scene to know what state Lowe is in these days, but I do know it has a fine pair of ECDs and some excellent senior creatives, so I’m hoping for the best.

The utterly wonderful and excellent book on old VW ads is back,       bigger, better and more complete.

I'll let one of its authors, the great Alfredo Marcantonio, take up the story of the new edition:

I did indeed, and continue to do so. 
If you'd like a copy, it's available all over the world, and would make a fine gift for any ad nerd, VW nut or person with exquisite  taste.