How to talk at TED (thanks, S):
Joe’s barbecue and foot massage (thanks, J):
Stanley Kubrick answers a question (thanks, T).
Funny parenting tweets (thanks, T).
Germans dubbing a porno (thanks, J2):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYXnngJyzXk
Incredible trick (thanks, J2):
Game of Thrones latte art (thanks, T2):
I was just reading this article from a US advertising site. It says that characters in ‘funny’ ads tend to react in unrealistic ways, and suggests a bit more humanity of character would help.
It doesn’t do much for me, I’m afraid. I mean, The Man Your Man Can Smell Like is plenty funny without being even vaguely realistic. Same goes for The Most Interesting Man In The World.
Actually, I’m only linking to it because it made me think about humour in advertising. I don’t see many TV ads in the real world of America, and I have even less of an idea about the funny ads of other countries, but I seem to remember more ads being funnier in the past. Maybe I was more easily pleased, or just younger, but I can’t recall many ads of recent years really making me laugh.
Humour has always seemed to me to be a great way to elicit a positive reaction and make an ad memorable. This is because laughter is communication; a way of telling people you like something. So when it happens in a room of people it can give a more immediate impression that something is liked. Try watching that Ikea ad where the woman falls out of bed:
Everyone in the room might like it, but you’ll only know if you have a chat about it afterwards.
Whereas this will bring obvious and immediate approbation wherever it appears:
Now, I’m sure you can tell by the flip-phone that the above ad is a bit old. Is that indicative of anything? Not sure. It might just be my memory, but I’m sure there were more laugh-out-loud thigh-slappers 10-15 years ago (and beyond) than there are these days (please feel free to correct me with suggestions in the comments).
If I’m right, is there a reason for that? I could quickly leap to the oft-mentioned-on-this-blog brain drain that means advertising has less talent coursing through its creative departments. Writing and producing shit-hot yuck-based advertising is very hard, so if the people doing it aren’t tip-top (golly, my hyphen key is getting quite a workout today) then nor will the jokes be.
It might also be something to do with the directors. In those days Danny Kleinman, Kuntz and Maguire, Brian Buckley and Fredrik Bond, would be guaranteed to turn your 7/10 script into a 9/10 laff-fest. But aside from Mr. Kuntz, I’m not sure those people are producing funny ads anymore.
There might be another reason: fashion. These days ads seem to be heading in the direction of the tugging of the heart strings that John Lewis has popularised, or the corporate guilt trip of Like A Girl/Dove etc. And maybe it’s easier to make those ads. Once the point has been made you can tell the story with a less craft: let the mawkish acoustic version of the famous pop song do the heavy lifting, or make the most of the tears of the sad people who realise how insecure they’ve been (yes, I know the very best of these are immensely well-crafted, but the imitators are less so). By way of proof, here’s a not-very-funny list of last year’s best ads.
Are ads less funny now? Is my memory piss-poor? Do my reasons hold water? And, most importantly, do you care?
Bill Hicks’s ‘It’s just a ride’ in comic form (thanks, T).
Dude poos in London’s best toilets before his bum is sewn shut (thanks, T2).
The largest-ever analysis of gender in screenplays is more interesting than it sounds (thanks, D).
Scorsese on framing shots and opening credits:
What’s the story behind your password? (Thanks, R&S.)
Tripmunks: all four Chipmunks movies played simultaneously at half speed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-7ApMCZKwY
The Doors x Steptoe and Son (thanks, D):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_o1jQkFD3I
If you delve into the success stories of anyone who has made it, the emphasis will tend to be on the twists and turns of good fortune, or the ideas that seemingly exploded from nowhere to propel the lucky genius to his or her greatness.
And that’s entirely understandable: those parts of the story provide the juiciness and fireworks that make us raise our eyebrows in wonder and admiration. The thunderbolt moment when certain lines in Hey Jude popped into Paul McCartney’s mind, making no sense until John reassured him of their greatness, are fascinating:
But the days and days when Paul (might have) walked around with shit lyrics swirling around his head, or the hours and hours where he (possibly) fretted over the melody for ‘Nah nah nah na-na-na-na, na-na-na-na, Heeeeey Juuuude!’? Boring! Other than perhaps an indication of how long the period between 2/10 shite and 10/10 genius lasted, people will rarely give you an idea of the work and persistence that goes into great creations.
And I think that’s damaging.
When we want to be inspired by great artists, and we read about the one-off moments of chance, the act of creation seems more remote. How can we engineer such thunderclaps of genius? They seem to just appear to the great ones, and if we’re not among the chosen recipients we have to accept our lot and be lesser creative people. And what of those incredible coincidences of fortune that led to the chat with the lady who accidentally said the line that became the great title of the book that sold it to the big publisher etc. etc.? You can’t make those things happen to you, so why bother trying?
Well, (and people generally don’t want to hear this, hence its absence from these tales of brilliance), it’s the long, sometimes boring work that leads to the the great luck or the unexpected visits of the muse. Paul wrote music all the fucking time, for years and years and years. He did those 10,000 hours in Hamburg with the lads. So when, eventually, the lines and melodies for Hey Jude appeared, it wasn’t a result of lying around stoned (well, partly); it was the consequence of the boring old work.
But the great thing is that the boring old work is an option available to literally all of us. You don’t have to be a special person, touched by God, to be a Beatle, or Picasso, or the person three offices down who keeps winning more awards than you. You just have to put the hours in, and if you’re so inclined, an improved set of circumstances will be yours.
The great golfer Gary Player said ‘the more I practice, the luckier I get’. Sorry if that’s boring, but at least it’s possible.
(PS: if you want to see how interesting the story of the ‘work can be, check out Dave Dye’s recent account of the effort it takes to make good work better.)
How is Japan even real? (Thanks, D.):
Hand art illusions:
Muppets doing So Watcha Want? (Thanks, J):
Coppola and De Palma Have a conversation about The Conversation (thanks, T).
Buzzfeed got people high then showed them a sloth (thanks, T).
Get yourself some cash money clipz (thanks, J2).
Ghosts of architecture past (thanks, D).
British words all Americans must learn (thanks, D).
Scorsese! De Niro! Foster! Schrader! Oral history of Taxi Driver (thanks, A).
Great TED talk on procrastination (thanks, F):
Continue reading here.
Overall the message is: we’re cool with you working less at W&K London and we’re proving this by asking people not to email each other between 7pm and 8am; we’re only having meetings between 10 and 4; if you work weekends or evenings you can claim the time back.
The main reason is to give employees’ brains the rest they need in order to be able to function at their optimum level. Y’know: devices now mean that we’re always on, so reducing the way they can swamp you with email etc. is a good thing.
Great idea. Not sure I agree with this bit so much, though:
As pointed out in Campaign, we do get called Weekend+Kennedy sometimes. Just as ‘72 and Sunny’ get called ‘72 and Sunday’ and BBH get called GBH. But there’s a reason these agencies, and others like them, have decent creative output. It’s because we work long and hard to get to the best work we can.
‘Decent’ creative output? Interesting adjective. These agencies have acquired a reputation for having long working hours because that’s one of the methods by which they believe they can create ‘decent’ ads. Has that really been worth it? (By the way, just to be clear, I’m not saying that these three places alone are producing work that is generally of a ‘decent’ standard, nor that they don’t have long histories of creating truly outstanding ads. They have been great in the past and their current output is probably of the same standard as it has always been, relative to the other agencies; it’s just that the general level has been getting worse for years and that means that what used to be 10/10 is sometimes closer to 8 or 7.
If ‘the best work we can (do)’ is ‘decent’ then working ‘long and hard’ to achieve it suggests that all sorts of things might be wrong. Sure, it could be the constant connectivity of recent years, but maybe, just maybe, there are other reasons behind the post–Gorilla malaise in which advertising still appears to find itself. Let me think… ummm… The talent drain? The reduction in budgets? The reduction in relative salaries? The ever-shortening deadlines? The sending of money and talent in the direction of ‘big data’ and ads that follow you around the internet all the bloody time? Agencies making the industry look like it’s full depressing liars by creating non-existent work in order to win awards?
I think W&K should be applauded for giving this a go, but I hope due consideration will also be given to advertising’s other difficulties, otherwise all the peace and quiet in the world is not going to change much.
Punk band collectors cards (thanks, T).
Churchill’s booze sicknote (thanks, L).
Google’s very hard interview questions.
The Seinfeld theme as a surprisingly decent track (thanks, H).
The AMAZING Thousand Hands of Guan Yin (thanks, L):
The 20 best Tarantino scenes (thanks, J).
Here’s the latest pronouncement from Martin Sorrell, the ex-accountant with a background in Economics.
One of the things he says is that ‘we’re not in the advertising business anymore’. I don’t think I’m way off the truth to assume that ‘we’ refers either to his many WPP agencies, or possibly the industry as a whole. Apparently data has taken over and ‘John Hegarty wouldn’t recognise 75% of what we do’.
Now, far be it from me to suggest this is all a load of headline-baiting bollocks, but this, like most of what Marty says, is a load of headline-baiting bollocks. Data has been part of advertising for many years. It’s one of those things that fuels the planning department and allows them to tell you all about the quant vs the qual. So what’s changed? Apparently we’re using more of it and its importance is growing, but does mean WPP’s agencies are no longer in the advertising business?
Of course not.
It just means that WPP’s agencies are now making more money out of creating and selling data to its clients and Marty’s speech helps make them feel comfortable about that so they then spend more.
Do Y&R, Ogilvy and JWT’s global agencies still create actual ads? Yes. So are they still in the advertising business? Yes. So is Marty talking crap again in order to make more money? Hmmmm… I wonder…
And if you had any doubt, have a read of the final quote in the piece: “In that cocktail it’s very tough to grow your top line and you have to contain your costs… companies are pulling in their horns and becoming very risk averse.” (My italics.)
As Jessie J so eloquently asserted, it’s all about the money, money, money and sometimes that means certain people have to be all about the bollocks, bollocks, bollocks.
Francois writes:
Hi everyone,
Our project is to buy a 5 acres land in the desert to make it an open creative space for people needing a space for their project.
Help us with your donation and have the chance to come enjoy the land, tools and facilities!
We still have 26 days to go with the fund raising.
$4,000 will allow us to get the land,
another $2,800 will help us build the first facilities (Toilets, Water tank, solar panels, a bar, lights and tables)
Finally we’re hosting an opening party on May 28th, everybody welcome!
Thanks you all for your donations and shares!
5 ACRES
Obviously you are more likely to feel the benefit if you live in LA, but plenty have donated from abroad, and you can do the same.
Good luck, Francois!
The other day I became the lucky recipient of this book:
It’s Sell! Sell!’s ‘manifesto for a new creative revolution’ and it’s full of excellent advice on how to improve the current, somewhat underwhelming state of advertising.
That places it alongside the many brilliantly provocative points and suggestions of both The Ad Contrarian and Dave Trott (and perhaps even the lower-quality musings of this very blog). All four of us have spent years pointing out things that might not be as workable as they could be, or putting forward ideas that might help the industry regain whatever used to make it attractive to talented creative brains.
Has it worked? Maybe. Perhaps things would be even worse without our suggestions, but let’s face it: with each passing day advertising seems to get more disappointing. Whether it’s once-great agencies trading TV advertising for sports marketing or advertising’s love affair with data and technology relegating creativity to a footnote or the mistaken belief that individual targeting is the way forward, the industry seems to be heading to places that serve neither it nor the consumer.
Why is that? Well, the problem with human beings is that knowledge is not enough. How many of us know how to lose weight? Over a billion, I’d guess. And how many of us want to lose weight but just can’t seem to? Just under a billion. Knowing things doesn’t make the difference.
So what does? Alas, the answer to that is different for everyone: fear, indolence, stupidity, comfort, ignorance, boredom, fatigue… Then we need the real reason, or the reason behind the reason: why are people happy with the status quo? Why do they think they can’t improve things? What is holding them back? Again, this is different for each person, and it is so damn hard to unpick that stuff. Even if people wanted to make the changes they would take years of therapy, or a weekend at the Landmark Forum.
As much as I hate to suggest it, I think we’re going to continue on this downward spiral (with some delightful and sporadic exceptions) until enough of us are motivated to make the changes that can turn the ship around.
So the question is, which of us really cares?