If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

Dave Trott often quotes the statistic that we don’t remember 89% of the advertising we’re exposed to. That suggests that there is a massive amount of built-in wastage that supports the effective parts of an industry worth billions of pounds a year. We create what we create in the knowledge that the vast majority of people won’t give the first or last toss about it.

Isn’t that kind of odd? And in the thousands of years advertising has existed the rate can’t have improved. That might be a result of the giant number of messages we’re now exposed to (after all, who could possibly take in 100% of them?), but still, we all pretty much hate almost all advertising. From the most expensive 90-second extravaganzas to the most bovine banners on the side of your Facebook page, if anyone asked you if you’d like to look at an ad voluntarily you’d think they were mad before telling them to fuck off.

Part of me wonders if that’s the reason some people in the industry are trying to circumvent the inherent dislikeability of conventional ads and are instead trying to create other things entirely: social campaigns that have little or nothing to do with the products they sell, books, tattoos on footballers… Aren’t they all just attempts to sneak ads past people who don’t want to experience the things that interrupt their TV programs? Is it the equivalent of smothering a piece of broccoli in Nutella to hide the taste? Will the public end up becoming inured to these new forms, then hate the industry even more for trying to fool them?

The odder thing is that there’s no consensus about the right way to go. Billions are pouring into annoying ads for shoes that follow you around the internet right after you buy a pair of shoes. Is that a good idea, or are the fake bike paints, TV series and pizza delivery apps better? Never mind all the clients who still think the best use of their money is to fill ad breaks and posters sites.

Perhaps we’re just ignoring a more obvious fact: it doesn’t actually matter where we put a message, or what form it takes, so long as people like it.

Isn’t that all that matters? All that’s ever mattered?

When people talk about what you need to succeed in life they often cite the abstract concept of ‘luck’.

But what is this mysterious, magical power that holds such sway over all our fates?

Well, after careful analysis, I’ve come to the startling conclusion that it’s just some made up bollocks that people use to demonstrate that life is not entirely under their control.

You often hear stories of a person who didn’t catch a plane that then crashed (‘Oh, my God! That was really lucky!’), or won a bet against long odds (‘You lucky bastard!’), or found their other half under unusual circumstances (‘Lucky you decided to stay another day, eh?’). But under the surface the circumstances have not been led by a magic force; they are simply occurrences that happened based on some conscious and unconscious decisions.

The person who missed the plane just happened to miss the plane. They’ve probably missed a few other planes in their life, but none of those crashed, so there was clearly no ‘luck’ involved.

The person who won the bet obviously made a bet they thought they might win, so where’s the luck in that? In fact, it might have come in because of a striker who hit the post instead of scoring. ‘Ooooh! Unlucky!’ a million football supporters and commentators would have said at the time, when, in truth, the striker took a poor shot. Nothing unseen guided a perfectly good volley towards the woodwork.

The couple who meet or don’t meet would do so (or not) based on behaviour that suggests people with similar interests do similar things and that people from similar backgrounds move in similar circles. Put those two factors together and you get plenty of ‘luck’ just waiting to happen.

But the problem with bringing significance to the idea of luck is the abdication of responsibility that comes with it. There’s a famous Gary Player quote: ‘The more I practice, the luckier I get’. That’s the key to it all: you really do make your own ‘luck’, but only if you believe that. If you fatalistically lie down and wait for luck to wave its magic wand, it will wave it far less often than if you work harder, meet more people, look for more opportunities, take more chances and generally enhance all the things that are under your control.

And yes, there are elements to life that you really don’t have any say over, and they can affect you in all sorts of ways, but the more you believe to be under your control the more will actually be under your control.

As John Hunt so succinctly puts it:

Colourised photos with surreal twists (thanks, M).

The importance of colour in storytelling (thanks, J).

Documentary on John Williams composing the score for Empire Strikes Back.

Scorsese Doc:

And while we’re here, Ingmar Bergman on Taxi Driver:

Luxury basketball shizzle (thanks, J).

Bad Lip Reading, Republican debate edition (thanks, J):

Improbable weapons supercut (thanks, J):

Ultimately, the skill we prize is the ability to get other people to do things.

We might call it leadership, as if it has something to do with being in the front line when you’re asking people to go into battle, but you can motivate people in so many different ways that selecting one style is a bit disingenuous. Some people at the top of organisations or departments get the best out of people by positive reinforcement, while others use fear, or guilt, or double bluff, or leave it up to the person they’re motivating to work it out for themselves.

The annoying thing about that is that they can all work. I’ve been scared into doing better work, but I’ve also just seen how high a boss’s standards are and resolved to live up to them, all by myself. I worked for one guy who I’d show a script, chat about the previous night’s TV, then ask what he thought of the work. He’d hand it back approved even though it had been in his hands upside-down the entire time. He presided over departments that won Agency of the Year several times, so despite appearances he clearly knew how to get the best out of people.

And if you’re an advertising creative, that’s how you get promoted. I once asked a boss whether I should follow the advice of the highly awarded copywriter down the hall, who suggested I tell the client to fuck off. ‘Ben’, my boss replied, ‘that’s the reason why (copywriter X) isn’t an ECD’. So the better writer (but also, alas, a massive, somewhat cantankerous, boozer) had been surpassed in his career by his less talented but people-friendlier colleague. That’s not to say that somewhat cantankerous boozers can’t make it to the top ­– plenty have – but copywriter X was never going to be the guy to fire up a department for a big pitch or make a callow junior happy to go back for a tenth revision on an endline. It was difficult to put my finger on why I was not motivated to impress him, but overall he was just a bit of an arsehole who didn’t seem to like anything much. The stick/carrot balance was weighted too heavily towards the former.

So if you can write a great ad but alienate everyone in the process; get a reputation as a brilliant maverick that nobody wants to work with; inspire grudging, resentful, reluctant admiration; and win the hearts and minds of precisely no one, you’ll only go so far.

However, if your creative work rarely breaks 7/10 but you can persuade a client to give you business; a writer to (gladly) work the weekend; a trade journalist to write favourably about your agency’s recent quiet patch; a superstar MD to join your agency; and a delightful person to marry you, a happy life will be yours.

When in doubt, connect.

Watch a rude man take an amusing tumble.

Analysis of the ending of Goodfellas (thanks, J):

Partridge interviews Daltry (thanks, T):

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

The 37 best sites on which to learn something (thanks, B).

Fireworks ladder (thanks, J):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCW1ObmcLWE

Warhol interviews Hitchcock (thanks, J2).

TV changes to Scarface:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcJ61KEynm4

Rumours abound of a Deadwood movie. Here’s a little video essay on that great show:

That’s very well made, amusingly written and firmly linked to the product. Reminds me of the kind of top stuff that regularly appeared in the early 2000s (I mean that in a very good way).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KpBLFvK4G0

Ditto.

(Thanks, J.)

The most interesting thing I’ve learned so far is this:

And that, my dear friends, is exactly what they did.

(thank, J.)

For those of you who need a primer in the basics of advertising, Dave Trott has kindly offered everything you need to know in one simple TED talk:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0gZfhkoi1E

And when you’ve finished that you can read his new book, 1+1=3:

It’s entertaining, thought-provoking and comes in lovely little bite-sized chunks (I’m sure it’s just a coincidence, but those chunks seem to last about as long as a poo).

Buy it here and have a slightly better life.