If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

Mexican Beatles lookalike convention.

An oral history of Mork and Mindy.

Prince’s long-hidden and fucking awesome cover of Creep (the solo around 7:15 will allow you to die happy):

Will the real Republican please stand up? (Thanks, P.):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltoon8MXnSo

Twisted wood frames (thanks, J).

A Christmas gift or two… or ten (thanks, G):

Watch Trump try to dodge a bald eagle (thanks, G):

Purple War (thanks, N):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VKfpz77X0c

An interesting email reaches me on the subject of a dysfunctional partnership:

Hi Ben, 

No problem.

My 2 cents? I remember feeling exactly this way at various points in my career. I felt like the central idea was the only thing that really mattered, and if I had come up with more of them than my partner then I felt resentful at the degree to which he CLEARLY wasn’t pulling his weight.

Then I got a bit older and realised I was doing two stupid things:

First, I was getting myself in a froth over something unimportant. It would genuinely piss me off to the point of almost ruining good partnerships and friendships. I recall having a really big stand-up row with one of my ADs on our second week of placement at AMV. We were actually pissed off at each other so needed to vent, but I think it was just down to feeling like we might be fucking up this great opportunity and taking everything WAY too seriously. Anyway, we went back in the building, wrote some good ads and stayed for several years, thankfully avoiding the kind of stress that might have given me a heart attack, all for some Sainsbury’s price ads.

The second thing I realised is that I was wrong. On balance I think I might have come up with more ideas than one or two of my partners, but then someone has to say the idea bit. If you keep score about it then you’re only going to annoy yourself and your partner, and it will never reflect that fact that your partner’s suggestion to go down the pub or watch that old Aerosmith video was what made the idea pop into your brain. It doesn’t mean you won, or you were better; it just meant that, as a team, you cracked another brief. Hooray! Now the hard work starts. And that’s the other thing I learned to appreciate: as a copywriter I’d generally find that more of the work was done at the front end of the creative process. Art directors handle more of the later stuff: selecting photographers; sitting in the studio for hours on end moving type around; making the reds a little warmer in the grading suite. In the end the amount of work done by both of us was pretty even, and the execution was incredibly important to the success of the ad. That’s one thing they didn’t really teach us in Watford. Yes, the idea is critical, but so is the way it’s executed, so you need to be a team that’s good at both.

I digress…

That was just some general advice for those of you who think your partnership is unbalanced – it might be all in your head. But as far as the above situation goes, I can see some other big problems that are all too common…

‘I’ve avoided bringing it up because she doesn’t handle criticism well’? 

Here’s some news: most people don’t handle criticism well, especially when it’s aimed at their creative output. If she’s told you an idea then she’s taken a chance on you liking it, and you’re supposed to be tight together, so when you tell her it’s no good it’s probably understandable that she doesn’t handle it well. You might argue that she should rise above it, and that she ought to understand and accept the slings and arrows of the job she’s chosen, but you’re only two years in, so it might still smart. And are you giving that criticism in the right way? Are you sure you’re right? You’re not a CD, so who says you should sit in judgement of her ideas? I’m just being provocative to make a point, but it’s worth thinking about whether or not she deserves your criticism. I fucking hated those Yeo Valley ads with the rapping farmers, and if my AD had presented them to me I’d have laughed in his face. But then I’d have missed out on making some famous and well-loved ads. So if I don’t know for sure, how do you? The answer is nobody does, so maybe give her another chance.

The other thing that sticks out for me is ‘I’ve avoided bringing it up’. Yes, I know it’s hard, particularly as you have to spend all day together, but if you’re not going to be honest with each other then yes – you might as well split up. Take her out for a coffee and show her this post. Tell her you know she’s good but she seems to have gone a bit quiet lately. Is there a reason for that? You’re supposed to be her partner and be there to support her. It sounds like you haven’t even delved into why. Get drunk if you need to, but have it out. Clear the air. If she used to be good, she can be good again. She hasn’t just turned into a moron in a few months. Maybe, just maybe, the space you’re creating, with the odd misplaced sigh, or the roll of the eyes you thought she wouldn’t notice, is inhibiting her creativity.

Last thing is you could be right. She might be a millstone round the neck of your ascent to the advertising heavens. It wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened, and if that’s the case, sure: find another partner and split up with her (in that order). No idea who’ll get to keep the job in the fancy agency, but if you can’t do it together that’s the kind of quandary you’re going to have to face.

(The final thing you can try is the Landmark Forum. I swear by it. So do Dave Trott and Mark Denton. It might clear away what’s causing some of the above. Or it might make you realise you’d prefer to be an airline pilot.)

Do any of you have any advice for my anonymous reader?

As a sort of companion piece to the ‘career or work person’ post from a couple of weeks ago, I’d like to delve into what exactly an ad creative should do if he or she wants to ‘progress’.

The eagle-eyed amongst you might have noticed that I’ve put inverted commas around the word ‘progress’. That’s because one person’s definition of that word might vary wildly from that of another person. I think the conventional attributes of progress for an advertising creative would include some kind of seniority within an agency, a larger salary and perhaps bigger  briefs. Or you might start your own agency, become a director or leave the industry altogether and becoming a successful timber merchant.

Whatever your definition of progress it requires moving forward from your current position. For most ad creatives it seems like the obvious way to do this is to produce famous and/or award-winning work. That’s really the only thing anyone has to measure your worth with even a little objectivity, so it’s the strongest factor that can set you on your path to somewhere else.

When I was a nipper I was very, very aware of this. It seemed like the only route not only to progress, but also to that incredibly valuable asset, ‘the respect of your peers’. I would argue that it it still the most reliable and measurable way to get ahead. Hollywood screenwriters say that it’s good to get something made, good or bad, because it means lots of people (director, producer, actor, money men etc.) believed you could create a script good enough to film, and that’s a big, wide endorsement. Even if a CD doesn’t love your ads by his own taste, he or she might concede that if they won awards, you must be doing something right.

But that’s only the first, basic stage. If that’s all you do, you’re going to become one of those career creatives, who either manages somehow to produce good work till they retire, or quietly drifts off to smaller agencies and more niche product sectors till they retire. If you want to avoid that situation you have to get into some form of management. Often this will be offered to you if you continue to produce good work (after all, if you can do it, you could probably help others do the same), but you can certainly give off a vibe that it’s not for you. Here are some of the best ways to do that:

Be rude in meetings, especially with the client.

Show a ridiculous degree of refusal to compromise, especially at the expense of something more important.

Be unable to recognise that anything might be more important than the exact Pantone shade of green in your full stop.

Have no patience for improving the work of your fellow creatives

Have poor personal hygiene.

Be late with great regularity, especially to meetings with any of your bosses.

Be taciturn to a fault.

To progress, you can do the opposite of these suggestions, but you also need an element of getting people to root for you. This is because progress requires your ‘superiors’ to speak up in your favour and place you in positions of responsibility. If they think you’re going to do badly in those positions, they aren’t going to recommend you for them. It will make them look bad and they’ll hate you for that.

So, hopefully you’ll be able to make that happen by being friendly and intelligent in front of those who can steer your progress. It’s obviously a bad idea to say stupid things, but saying nothing in meeting after meeting will leave people with the impression that it’s not you who comes up with the goods, and even if it is, there’s no benefit in bringing you to a client meeting. You’re going to have to take a few risks and put your opinions out there. Sure, your boss might disagree with them, but if they’re smart and backed up with some facts or experience then you should be OK.

It also helps if you’re someone other people like to have around. This doesn’t mean you have to compromise your snarky principles – well, actually, for many people it does. Realism is fine, but when it strays frequently into cynicism and negativity you’re simply going to turn people off. I recall an account man at AMV who was relentlessly positive, seeming to me and my fellow younger creatives like a dim puppy-dog with absolutely no critical faculties. Then I heard my boss explain that he loved having this guy around because helped bring the energy to a 3am pitch or a five-hour train ride to see a client in Skegness. Now I entirely understand that.

Can you fake it? I imagine quite easily (I don’t fake my own positivity; it’s all stems right from my ever-thrilled heart), but maybe you could actually find something enjoyable in volunteering to look after the placement teams, or offering to call the cab when the train’s late. It’ll connect you to people, who will then like you and, as Bob Dylan said, you’ve got to serve someone; why not make it one of your colleagues?

Anyway, you’ll also find a natural curiosity in what you’re doing is very useful. What is your client’s competition up to? Is there a new exhibition you should tell the rest of the department about? Are Finland producing any good ads right now? The person who has that curiosity can often win the affection and respect of his her peers (so long as he or she is not an arsehole about it).

Which brings me to the final and most important way to make progress: don’t be an arsehole. Yes, many apparent arseholes have succeeded, even remaining in quite prestigious jobs for considerable periods of time. But that is because they are definitely not being an arsehole to at least one person who matters. We’ve all seen idiots, dickheads, shitbags and arseholes make progress; we may not be privy to the way in which they please their bosses, but rest assured they do. Anyway, I’m trying to say it’ll be easier if you just avoid being an arsehole altogether. This should be obvious – I mean, who wants to hang around arseholes? But people can show a surprising tendency towards arseholism and it never helps.

So that’s my ‘made-it-up-as-went-along’ guide to making ‘progress on the creative side of advertising.

If any of the rest of you have any other suggestions, please leave them in the comments.

Love Actually given a detailed shoeing (thanks, E).

600 fake posters highlight the Paris climate change summit.

Economic Hitmen (thanks, G):

A great NSFW promo like they used to make:

Funniest UK tweets of 2015 (thanks, B).

All the Star Wars vehicles sized to scale (thanks, R).

How to clean your nose the easy way (thanks, J).

Excellent Miyazaki doc:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52raDbtNpa4

Adele’s Hello by movies (thanks, A):

Billy on the Street, Julianne Moore acting edition (thanks, G):

Here’s a really excellent read.

UPDATE: it disappeared for a while, but I think the link now works.

But just in case it disappears again, here’d the text from Tom Demetriou, co-founder of Rockbox:

Dear Advertising,

Thanks.

You people are all totally out of your minds and you know that. But bottom line I owe you a lot.

I went to high school. I learned nothing.
The summer after graduation, I worked construction. I learned something.
I went to college. I learned nothing.
I worked in advertising. I learned everything.

That’s hyperbole. But that’s one of the things I learned.

 Yeah, I bitched and moaned about it. At the office late on a Saturday night, working on a doomed pitch, revising the presentation per our boss’s instructions, which he casually phoned in from a bar.

 “What did he say?”
“He said, ‘Too much Llama.’”
“What?”
“More sales associate. Less Llama.”
“Less Llama? That’s the entire fucking concept!”

 Which begs the question. What exactly is the right amount of Llama to put in a :30 TV commercial for a retail furniture store? Chris Cima, Jason Niebaum and I will never know. It remains a mystery wrapped in an enigma sleeping in a recliner. We lost the pitch.

I left agency life, and those inexplicable kinds of verbal exchanges, almost two years ago to start a new company with some friends. And with that distance comes some sincere appreciation.

I guess this letter to advertising was partly motivated by Thanksgiving sentiment. I also just felt like writing something. Either way, it’s going to sound like a late night booty call.

Hey, Advertising. Miss you, girl.

Do I mean it? Eh, I don’t know. Put it this way. I feel it.

The summer I worked construction, I got my ass chewed all day long. It wasn’t just profanity. It was profane profanity. Technicolor language was the electrical current that powered the whole operation. They were hard guys who did hard work. They dealt, almost exclusively, in reality. The cinderblocks were plumb to the line. Or not. The wall went up on time. Or it didn’t. So I figure they had the right to use foul language. As long as they built those walls, they could say whatever they wanted. One of the masons was named Alan. He had two tattoos, one on each arm. One read, Alan. The other read, Fuck You. What did it matter? He was a brick mason. And he was good at it.

Compared to that dusty, 100-degree, foul-mouthed landscape, Corporate America is a bright and shiny, but ultimately bland place. Tasteless, colorless and odorless. (No disrespect to all my friends at various levels in corporate America, but I think you would agree?) Short on colorful ass chewing. Long on political acumen. Sure, there’s humor. But it’s shrewd. Everybody watches every word they say.

Conversely, in advertising, you have to say all kinds of stupid shit. All the time. As a matter of survival. If you bore your peers, they trash you. If you bore your creative director, she trashes you. Why? Training. If you bore your clients, they fire you.

No doubt, advertising is a twisted game. Recently disparaged and dismantled by both a dying man and Jerry Seinfeld. For me, the most profound problem with the business was always this: It asks you to give everything you’ve got, to convince people to buy a bunch of shit they don’t need.

If Elon Musk wants you to work 60 days straight to put a human being on Mars, hey, you know what? You’re in. But when the agency asks you to work 60 days straight to convince people to eat more pizza, well, after a while, that gets to you.

It’s 1 am on a Sunday night. You walk into a war room plastered with three weeks’ worth of your work. You can no longer smell the B.O. because it’s mostly your B.O. The junior account person realizes you forgot to write the :15 versions of the :30 TV spots. The head planner and the agency president are still debating a nuance of the strategy. The travel team is on a plane in the morning. The presentation to the client is in the afternoon. You’re exhausted and emotionally spent and you feel the weight of it all. Everything is riding on this. Then you remember. You’re selling graham crackers.

You can have a kind of out of body experience (I’ve had several) floating above the room, saying to yourself, Who in their right fucking mind would give the time of their life to this? And the answer, muttered under your breath with a mix of perpetual bewilderment and pride is, Me.

The truth is, as an existence, agency work is closer to a construction site than corporate America. You don’t just chime in on email chains. You make stuff. Cool stuff, by the way. And your wall, it gets measured. The day of reckoning is never far off. If not tomorrow, then the next day. You’ve got to walk into a room, not with some bland report, or some cut and paste agenda, but with The Answer.

What’s The Answer? Well, that’s debatable. And here, I think, lies the heart and soul of the attraction. As Chuck Klosterman observes in his brilliant book, Eating the Dinosaur, on why we’re obsessed with reality TV:

In most people’s daily lives, nothing unusual ever happens.

Nothing.

Ever.

Every single day is exactly the same. Every morning. Every commute. Every meeting. They know exactly how it’s going to go.

But in Advertising, when you walk into the room with your artsy fartsy, fancy pants ideas, nobody has a clue what’s going to happen. Whatever you predict, whatever you feel in your gut, you’re wrong.

You think they’ll love it? They fucking hate it. You think they’ll hate it? They fucking love it. You get a standing ovation and then, inconceivably, impossibly, it all unravels in the blink of an eye. The person you thought was your enemy stands up and defends the work. The person you thought was your friend pulls out a knife.

That is the thing about advertising.

It’s exciting.

As fellow Creative Circus alumnus, Jonathan Cude, recently wrote, advertising teaches you mental toughness like no other business. A thick skin is standard issue. Eventually you grow a rhinoceros hide.

You come up with a terrific idea. They kill it because they don’t like purple. You explain the idea can be blue. Too late. It’s dead. You come up with a better idea. It dies a long, slow death of unknown causes. Then, up against the wall, in the clutch, you deliver another idea, your best one yet. The perfect solution. The magic elixir. The silver bullet. There’s a new CEO and he fires your agency.

You learn to be like Bruce Lee in the final scene of Enter The Dragon. Smashing all the mirrors until you finally stick a spear in the man with the iron fist. You can’t just be good. That’s not good enough. You have to be really fucking good. And that’s not good enough either. You have to be relentless.

It’s that intensity, combined with the creative process, combined with the total unpredictability that gets people hooked. Advertising is thankless. Morally dubious. Usually pointless. Shockingly dysfunctional. Only the mentally tough and slightly deranged can hack it, or would even want to. But if you can last awhile, when you come out the other side, you realize you’re walking around with a degree unlike any other. There’s no education like it in the world.

You know how to make something out of nothing. You know how to make decisions under pressure. How to work fast and smart, under the gun, right down to the last millimeter of wire. You can take a big, bloated bag of facts and boil it down to the bone. You can take meta-speak and turn it into plain talk. You can take an insult from a CEO. You can find, not the right words, but the right word. You know how to tell a story. You know how to make a point.

And you learn all this the hard way. Which, of course, is the only way anybody ever learns anything. Just like the brick masons, advertising people say all kinds of crazy shit. They earn the privilege.

Allow me to conclude this note of philosophical thanks with some real thanks. There are many people I worked with who I never appreciated nearly enough at the time (I probably felt too much a victim of my circumstances, or maybe I was just tired). Writing this list maybe a little self-indulgent, but hey, it’s Thanksgiving weekend, and the thanks are long overdue:

 Thank you, Norm Grey (in header photo) and MJK, for teaching me the creative process. Not to mention, introducing me to my wife.

Thank you, Sylvia Gaffney, for teaching me about color.

Thank you, Luke Sullivan, for teaching me that simplicity = sacrifice (with the image of a Double Mint twin in the crosshairs).

Thank you, Mark Fenske, for teaching me how to write a sentence.

Thank you, Dennis McClain, for teaching me what business I was in.

Thank you, Bill Oakley, for teaching me how to rope-a-dope and come out swinging.

Thank you, Jim Ferguson, for teaching me how to tell a dirty joke. It truly is an art form.

Thank you, Todd Tilford, for teaching me how to write poetry for a living.

Thank you, Cameron Day, for teaching me how to be a world-class talent and class act at the same time.

Thank you, Wade Alger, Jay Russell and Bob Brihn, for teaching me to lead by creative example, how to argue for ideas based on their merits, not dictating from your box in the org chart.

Thank you, Scott Brewer, for teaching me to find the utterly disrespectful humor in absolutely everything. You’re right, Scott-o, the laughs are in there.

Thank you, Shep Kellam, for teaching me how to write a TV spot like a page in a novel.

Thank you, Phil Gable, for teaching me it’s not enough to be nuts, you have to stay nuts. More people should try it. Love you, buddy.

Thank you, Brian Brooker, for teaching me to write with restraint. I’m pretty sure I bombed here.

Thank you, Tom Hansen and Mike Swenson, for teaching me to how to present to a big room. 

Thank you, Sunshine Stevens, for teaching me how to be a one-man gang.

Thank you, Eric McClellan and Tim Galles, for teaching me the meaning of relentless.

Not that I know how to do all those things on the list. But, hey, I saw it done.

Thanks, Advertising.

I owe you everything.

Maybe that’s hyperbole.

Maybe not.

A couple of days ago I was listening to John Ronson on the Nerdist Podcast. He was promoting his latest book, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, which is all about internet shaming. You know the kind of thing: well-meaning person makes slightly misjudged joke on Twitter, and by the end of the week he/she has been hounded from their job by a baying pack of judgemental wolves.

When I was listening to it I recalled an incident in the heyday of Scamp’s blog when the youngish team who created this ad…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahg6qcgoay4

…were pilloried to the nth degree because it was effectively a remake of someone else’s virtually identical observation test. If memory serves, the vitriol ran to over 200 comments, with opinions running very high indeed. In the post itself Scamp said that it was a brilliant ad with a great chance of a D&AD Pencil. Unfortunately for the team it didn’t win. Did the antipathy, or exposure of the source harm its chances? I’ve certainly been on juries where a favoured ad can be binned by a single person explaining that it had been ripped off something already in existence.

So the mob got their way and the team was, in advertising terms, punished. But why that ad?

Back in those days (2008) there seemed to be a lot more conversation about whether or not ads were ripped off other pieces of art or culture. Some seemed ‘fair’ (as in the original footage seemed to resemble the later ad in an undeniable way), but this ‘influence spotting’ began to descend quickly into desperation. I recall someone managed to dig up some crappy footage of a drumming gorilla that resembled the great Cadbury ad to the same extent a doormat resembles a Persian rug (I should probably now acknowledge that I stole that metaphor from The Rachel Papers by Martin Amis). People even suggested Guinness Surfer was some kind of a rip-off because images of waves as white horses had already ‘been done’.

Odd, really, because advertising has often reappropriated the work of others. Think back to The great Holsten Pils campaign of 1983:

…Which was a conscious nod to one of the big films of the time, Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid:

And people didn’t mind at all. In fact, it won D&AD’s Gold award that year.

So why is one a crime and not the other?

Allow me to explain. For proper ad shaming four conditions must be met:

1. The ‘stolen’ idea must be created by a smaller/weaker/poorer person or entity. If you nick the work of a massive Hollywood studio then it’s fair game. We all like an underdog, and when it’s a UK ad agency vs 20th Century Fox, we’re all on the side of the little guy. However, if the original work was created by some struggling artist, they become the underdog and the ad people are the mean giants, crushing the little guy for the chance of an award. You can of course use the original creator to make the ad, giving him or her credit and cash. That seems to be nice enough behaviour to avoid the bell of shame.
2. The team that stole the ad must lack power and standing in the industry. If a giant CD who has won a tonne of awards ‘borrows’ the work of someone else, people don’t seem to mind. This is because we kind of think that they didn’t need to borrow the original work; they have already proved themselves capable of creating much great original work themselves. So we don’t really see the borrowing as borrowing, so much as kindly bringing exposure to an obscure piece of work. Also, people tend to get less traction slagging off the powerful and important, so are less inclined to do it.
3. The theft must look lazy. If you took an influence and gave it a twist to improve it enormously (see above Guinness Surfer example) then you’re OK. If, however you effectively stuck a logo on something and hardly changed it, or – heaven forbid – made it much worse, then you have committed the extra crime of failing to use the ad industry’s money to stand on the shoulders of giants and at least improve the original. Here’s the best example of that I can think of:

4. The ‘stolen’ ad must have a high profile. Either it’s on TV a lot, like the above Berocca ad, or it’s going to be up for an award or two. Otherwise why bother giving it a kicking? If you cry foul on a small space press ad for a village hall cheese sale the only effect you’ll have will be to look like a pedantic nit-picker who wants to make himself look good for spotting obscure references.

So there you go: conditions for ad-shame. As I said, I’ve noticed far less of this stuff being called out in the last five years, so either it doesn’t happen as much or people don’t care as much. Or both.

I certainly don’t give much of a toss anymore, so even if someone sends me the two pieces of work and asks me to expose the thieves, I usually can’t be bothered.

Have you wanted to use the bell of shame lately? Or have you stopped caring because ads are generally too shit to care about where they came from?

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

Funny, tonally right and aimed at a target just starting to disappear up its own arse.

Nice one!

(Interest declared: the director was my mate Mark Denton.)

NFL Bad Lip Reading (thanks, J):

Another fine explanation of the Theory of Relativity:

Amusing Black Friday deals (thanks, G).

Hateful 8 featurette (thanks, B).

Surprisingly impressive guitarist who also plays a few digeridoos (thanks, G):

The Lost Weekend: alcoholism in mainstream cinema.

Lightsaber riot (thanks, N):

Simon Griffin, copywriter and reader of this blog has just sent me his excellent new book, Fucking Apostrophes.

To cut a long story short, I’ve written a book. It’s more of a self promotional book than something you’ll find in Waterstones, but I’ve printed about 500 copies (via helpful design friends). It’s called Fucking Apostrophes: A guide to show you where you can stick them. So far there’s only a twitter account (@fingapostrophes) but the website should be live once I’ve tweaked a few final bits.

Thanks in advance, and keep up the great work.

Kind regards,

Simon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlUXh4mx4gI&feature=youtu.be

The way I see it, if prayer is for everyone, there are three possible audiences for this:

1. People who already pray. This might make them feel even more virtuous than they do already, and solidify their faith if it’s a bit shaky.
2. People who are a bit on the fence about praying. Maybe they forget to pray as much as they could/should and this reminds them that you can do it anywhere, no matter what your age or ethnicity.
3. People who think religion is a stupid load of old bollocks. Perhaps this incredibly persuasive ad will get them to reassess their attitude towards the practical help that can be gained from talking to an imaginary figure in the sky who created the world in six days before having a fag break. Good luck with that!

Anyway, all the major UK cinema chains have banned it because they don’t allow religious or political advertising, so God is going to have to wait for all those amazing messages of thanks, hope and/or self-centred greed.