If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

100 years of film in 100 shots (thanks, D):

Punks look back to their wildest days (thanks, T).

Cool inventions (thanks, P).

Bicycles built off people’s shitty drawings.

Al Jaffee explains how he created those fold-ins at the back of Mad magazine:

Social media overshares (thanks, T).

Fantastic John Stewart interview:

Have you ever wondered why we admire the things we do? What is it about Guernica, Astral Weeks or Great Expectations that has left them venerated as lasting classics?

Sure, they are all beautifully crafted, but what does that mean?

I think it all comes down to difficulty. Could you have conjured up the ideas for those works of art then executed them to such a high standard? Almost certainly not, so that makes them worthy of your respect.

And it’s not just art: Rosa Parks, Edmund Hillary, Albert Einstein, Usain Bolt, David Attenborough, Marie Curie, Emmeline Pankhurst, Gandhi, Amelia Earhart… Can you imagine going through what they went through, or coming up with their ideas? It’s not impossible, but it’s ridiculously hard, so they get to be admired. Whereas the average bus driver, dog groomer or copywriter? Not such a big deal because their achievements tend to look achievable.

Think of the ads that have made you jealous. I think some will have seemed impossible:

…while others might have just made you kick yourself for failing to come up with them:

That Economist ad is a great example of the latter. Could you have done it? Possibly. Did you do it? No. As someone who spent many, many hours trying to come up with Economist posters I can tell you that it never seemed within my ability. If it had been I might have got close to it, but I (and many other people far more talented than me) literally could not come up with it. It was too difficult, and therefore worthy of our respect.

It’s the reason why, when it comes to writing, people admire economy of expression: it’s fucking hard. Wittering on and expressing yourself vaguely in cliched terms is pretty easy, so even if it manages to convey the point we don’t admire it as much. Maximum meaning, minimum means is both a brilliant encapsulation of itself and a guide to artistic difficulty and excellence.

It’s also the reason why certain examples of modern art are derided: it’s easy to dribble paint over a canvas or set up a pile of bricks. But that misses the point: it’s actually very difficult to do those things and have them represent an element of the human spirit or the state of society.

And it’s really only when the difficulty of something hits us that it the excellence reveals itself. For example I recently showed this to my son:

He plays guitar, so he watched the first things Prince did and said they were good but possible. Then I showed him what happens around 4:03 and he conceded that his mind was blown. The playing in that sequence is so difficult he couldn’t get his head round being able to do it. He then said that he wanted to be better than Prince, a man he now admires.

You might think of examples of difficult achievements that you don’t admire, but I’d argue that you can admire the quality of the achievement without liking it or the people behind it. For example:

So that’s all there is to it, really: do things that are either difficult, apparently difficult, or easy for you but difficult for everyone else; then life will be a breeze.

The email-coveting shiteness of all websites.

People mispronouncing Jeremy Hunt’s last name (thanks, P):

Every Prince album reviewed and rated (thanks, A).

Perfectly recreating fashion pictures on a budget (thanks, L).

Cool drones (thanks, P):

Awesome new Radiohead vid:

The 50 most influential gadgets.

Handwriting porn (thanks, C).

At the time of writing, Leicester City haven’t quite won the 2015-16 Premier League title, but they will.

For those of you who don’t follow football, I feel I’m going to need a few facts to explain how seismic and unlikely an occurrence this is. Actually, I only need one: at the start of the season the bookmakers believed it was more likely that Dean Gaffney would win an Oscar.

At 5000-1, the chances of Simon Cowell becoming PM were ten times more likely.

Some have called it the biggest upset in recorded sports history.

As I’ve mentioned before, I love an unlikely success story, and despite the racism, diving and cynical fouls that have accompanied this win, I am fully behind it. It’s a modern day fairytale, where a cheaply-assembled collection of also-rans bested the billionaire-funded behemoths of Manchester City, Manchester United and Chelsea (and everyone else). It gives us all hope.

But it also makes me think: what conditions would you have to replicate in order to repeat the achievement elsewhere? Well, in the world of advertising I couldn’t help thinking of Dave Trott’s creative department of the 1980s. They laid waste to all comers by producing the world’s most popular and award-winning work, but they were a collection of relatively untried youngsters.

It’s well known that Dave wanted his department to operate his way; putting together a team of superstars from other agencies would make this much harder, as they’d be more inclined to question him and try to do things their way (plus they’d cost much more). So Dave found a bunch of talented, hungry juniors and shaped them into a team of world beaters.

The real question is: why does this method work? I have a theory: these days most Premier League footballers earn millions. They drive supercars, date (page 3) models and have colossal entourages hanging on their every word. This makes a manager’s life difficult. How do you dictate terms to a young, stupid millionaire whose friends spend all day blowing smoke up his arse? I think that’s where Wenger and Mourinho now struggle: unless you show yourself to be a faultless legend (at the moment that’s really just Guardiola and Ancelotti, perhaps with Simeone thrown in) there will be doubts, and those doubts will shave 10-15% off a manager’s ability to exert his will. But for a team to play brilliantly together the manager has to assert his will. He must be obeyed, otherwise the plan goes awry and the points are lost. But if you put together a team of players/creatives who are lower down the totem pole they will be less likely to question the manager or CD’s authority, and that can give you the extra 10-15% you need to beat the less committed teams.

Sure, it takes a very good manager, and possibly an alchemical combination of hunger and talent, but you can either make the whole greater than the sum of its parts or, it seems, less.

I also concede that various circumstances also contribute to this situation: lower expectations; an underdog spirit; no giant overlord (holding company/interfering owner) to corrupt the momentum; the power of the novel (teams unprepared for the strength of Leicester; rival agencies similarly unprepared in pitches, or awards juries moved by the upward trajectory of the latest star agency)… But these are circumstances often made by the team/agency, which means they’re also malleable.

So there you go: be a great manager/CD and fill your department with the talented, hungry and cheap.

The rest will be history.

Inside Guillermo Del Toro’s house of curiosities:

Great art in ugly rooms.

Animated Kafka (thanks, T):

People literally ask Reddit for abuse (thanks, T).

Steve Buscemi onesie, anyone? (Thanks, G.)

Best/worst celeb workout videos supercut (thanks, J).

Hi there,

You might recall that I have posted about Adcan before. For those who can’t recall such a thing, or are new to the blog (hi!), Adcan is a not-for-profit award scheme started by my friend Brydon Gerus and now run by several of our friends.

As the ‘about’ section of the website says:

ADCAN is a #makegood movement that mobilises the film and advertising industries to make a real difference in the world. Our free-to-enter film competition offers up-and-coming talent good opportunities to do good work for good causes.

Filmmakers answer live charity briefs and are rewarded with industry contacts and workshops. Charities get free promotional films to help spread their messages and our partnering production companies get to see up-and-coming talent.

It’s this circle of benefit that makes ADCAN so unique.

So if you’re a creative or director who wants to make a name for yourself, go and visit the site, find yourself a brief and do some good things (that might get you a fantastic break in the industry).

And here’s a film explaining the ethos:

Senan writes:

Hi Ben,

Sorry for cold calling like this.

We’re big fans of your blog and thought we’d share a new poster campaign we’ve just done with Dave Dye at JWT.

Basically, we’re big fans of Record Store Day and decided to contact them help this year and help them to promote the day.

Below is the PR blurb for the poster campaign we created, but I’ve attached the work for you to take a look at. We’re really proud of it and hope you like it as well.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. All the best,

Senan

Well, Senan, I do indeed like it. You might even call me a ‘big fan’. Here’s the ‘PR Blurb’ and the work:

The PR Blurb

Creatives Senan Lee and Pansy Aung love Record Store Day and decided to support London’s Soho record stores by creating a poster campaign in which the independent shops and restaurants of Soho could use to promote their fellow indy record stores.

Each poster features a popular Soho business, except with a hidden ‘vinyl’ twist. Stores selected the posters most relevant to them, wrote their names on it to show they support the day and put them up to tell their customers where all of Soho’s record stores are. The team managed to install them in over 50 independent Soho businesses, including Paul Smith, Beyond Retro, Pizza Pilgrims, Flat White, CyberCandy and HarmonySexShops. 

The posters were illustrated and designed by a team of illustrators and designers with a passion for vinyl, including Dave Anderson, Jordon Cheung and Toby Leigh.

Creative Director: Dave Dye

Creatives: Senan Lee, Pansy Aung

Illustrators: Paul Bower, Dave Anderson, Jordon Cheung, Chris Gilvan Cartwright, Mario Wagner, Toby Leigh

I recently read a statistic that the average number of apps downloaded by Americans last year was zero. Can that really be true? Now that we’ve gone through all the ‘drinkable pints’, fart noise generators and Angry Birds I suppose the momentum has slowed somewhat.

But that doesn’t mean it should stop!

My chums at the UK Creative Circle have launched an official app ahead of next week’s Creative Circle Ball. Here’s the blurb…

Keeping you up to date with everything in the run up to the biggest social gathering in the UK’s creative calendar, the handy app enables you to view all the shortlisted, award-winning entries, with the ability to save your favourites into a separate folder.

A whole host of other features have been included to help you navigate the night, including the table plan, guest list, contacts, event agenda and information, and information on all of the night’s sponsors.

There will also be a social feed encouraging guests to post their own photos and statuses from what is promising to be a memorable evening.

Jeremy Green, CEO of Creative Circle, comments: “This really is an exciting development for the Creative Circle and one that should bring out creative community a little bit closer together. The ability to save your favourite work to your phone means you have it on hand for reference at any occasion and you’ll also be able to message other app users – so hopefully plenty of congratulations can be passed around when the winners are announced.”

The app, available to both Apple and Android users, is available on the app store now.

Surely that’s far more tempting than Angry Birds: Ratchet and Clank or Temple Run: 12 Years A Slave…?

A couple of comments on last week’s post probed the revelation that I don’t watch ads on TV.

Butterbean said: ‘Serious question: Do you think you need to watch TV ads anymore to work in advertising?’

Then Mr. Gash said: I think you should Ben. And ask Prod Co people how they feel when confronted with a team who’ve written a tv script….. but admit to not watching any tv.

I can’t be sure – but I’m guessing that Fords (as an example) are designed by people who drive. 

Do Apple check their that their staff actually use the device they’re designing?

Fair points.

I then remembered that I actually watch quite a few TV ads, just not at home. When I’m in the gym I often watch TV (news channels and Seinfeld repeats, usually) and end up ploughing through the many commercials that accompany the programmes. Here are a few recent examples:

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVUBTfr7eo0

Not that bad, really. But I also get a few of these (check the legals):

So I’m not sure how they slipped my mind, but as I usually end up in the gym during the morning or lunchtime I never see primetime ads, and very rarely see Apple ads in their natural habitat. Is that a problem? I don’t think so. The above are a pretty representative sample of the spots I see, and I think they give me a pretty good context for the commercial TV scene in general.

But what if I never watched commercial TV? Would my work suffer? If I go with Mr. Gash’s analogies then perhaps I should, but here are a few points that might stir the pot a little:

1. I never listened to commercial radio after about 1992. That didn’t stop me writing a couple of hundred radio ads, including some that made their way into the D&AD annual. Could I just recall how radio ads worked, allowing me to produce similar things years later? Or, beyond that, did my lack of immersion in commercial radio actually help me to make more original spots? I never found myself trying to replicate what was currently out there, and that might have helped me.
2. Are Fords designed by people who drive? Are Apple products designed by people who use them? Almost certainly, but then a large percentage of people drive and use an iPhone, so that’s a tricky question. Do you need to eat at McDonald’s to make one of their milkshakes? Do you need to wear dresses to design them? Should all barbers have amazing haircuts? I’ve often read of top chefs who rarely eat the kind of things they make because after cooking that stuff all day they prefer to eat something simple.
3. Do we have to be deeply immersed in digital advertising to create it? That’s a little harder because it tends to come to you, and if you prove to be out of the advertisers’ reach you might not see the work (I’ve mentioned before that I was an Apple fan and dedicated runner, but the first time I saw Nike Plus was in award books). I see a lot of annoying banners but very few of the ARGs and experiential stunts that tend to pick up prizes in these categories. Can I come up with a digital ad despite a lack of opportunities to experience them as a punter? I’d have thought so, so why would the same principle not apply to TV ads?
4. Much of my work involves producing advertising that works in different countries, but am I sufficiently familiar with the ad breaks in Jakarta, Seoul or Mumbai? Not really, but then I’d need the whole context of why Indian ads are more colourful/emotional/effusive etc., otherwise I wouldn’t really understand why the ads are the way they are. I’d also need the history of the country to make sure I get all the references, and that’s probably impossible. Instead I rely on the eyes and ears of our international staff, who are well versed in such things, but I still know what a good ad is, and I understand the brand I work for, so I can contribute.
5. I think most of the good ads we see come to us via industry websites and award shows. Is that like the Ford workers constantly test driving Ferraris, even though they’ll never have the need or budget to make one? Or perhaps they’ll learn something from checking the gearbox that they can apply to their own engineering. Then again, many creative luminaries say that the last place you should look for inspiration is award books, which are already out of date and feature work that has already been done. You could watch TV ads all day, but if it leaves you trying to replicate the latest John Lewis style, has it helped or hindered?

At the end of the day I think TV ads are much the same as they were 20-30 years ago. They may have differed in style, but they broadly follow a similar format, so I’d have thought that a great 1990 creative emerging from a coma in 2016 could probably come up with something good, but perhaps shot by Daniel Wolfe instead of Tarsem. So do you need to stay up-to-date with the current state of the art? Or will that do more harm than good when it comes to originality?

What about you? Do you watch much/any commercial TV, and do you think it improves your ability to do your job?

My friend David just put together these nice films about deaf dancers and their deaf dance teacher…

I do like an interesting doc, and these fall into that category. The brand doesn’t get in the way, but it feels appropriate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHLbBgbd-5w

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FN9nsdcAeYQ