If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

First up is this excellent NewsWall, which offers the day’s headlines in gif form that you can then click on to find more. I think we underestimate the engagement of young people in the issues of the day, but for those who do find a newspaper off-putting this could be a welcome change.

And just in case, C4 are turning E4 off so that its viewers get the message to get out and vote (instead of watching Hollyoaks, if that still exists):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pahIcUi0kns&feature=youtu.be

Nice ones.

Mitch Hedberg compendium (thanks, V).

Literal New Yorker cartoons (this made me weep with laughter; thanks, C).

Great pics of Chinese nail houses.

Quite wonderful: an oral history of Airplane!.

Christopher Nolan and Bennet Miller chat (thanks, G).

Vintage supercars left to rust in a forest (thanks, J).

Interesting neologisms (thanks, D).

Ex-cops smoke dope for our education:

Nabokov’s love letters (thanks, T).

Economy of storytelling: the opening of Back To The Future.

Julia Louis Dreyfus’s last fuckable day:

Tortilla record player (thanks, J2):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjOerycMxM4&app=desktop

Chrome extension that saves pages that make you smile (thanks, M).

Has any brand kept up such a consistently high standard by essentially making the same ad over and over again?

I’d argue not.

There’s a new BT campaign in town, and it’s certainly… interesting:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA5SIsvWYlc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwmsk06PAHo

I kind of like it, but that’s in spite of a few things that I often have very little time for, i.e.: BT ads, Ewan MacGregor, ads about ads, Robin van Shitwipe…

But I think it works better than it should. Ewan gives a decent performance, the twatty creative is quite amusing and they pull off the old American trick of simply saying all the product stuff out loud in the context of the gags so you don’t notice it as much.

It’s missing that top-US-level of writing (the gag about mum calling and the guy pretending it’s a girlfriend is a bit so-so), but it’s not bad (although a combined 25,000 YT views in four days is a little concerning).

But never mind what I think – I don’t even live in the country this runs in…

Tell me, dear reader, what do you think?

I’ve been a dad for nine years and some kind of creative manager for ten, and yet it’s taken me this long to notice the similarities between the two tasks, at least to the extent that I thought it’d be worth a blog post.

1. Retaining/releasing information.

This situation extends all the way up to government, but it certainly applies every single day in parenting and managing: what is the point at which letting people know what’s going on becomes harmful or counter-productive? As a parent you tend not to make breakfast more interesting by explaining how mummy and daddy are about to miss a mortgage payment or why that planned brother or sister is on hold because daddy can’t get it up (obviously these are fabricated example situations that have nothing to do with my own life – smiley face made out of punctuation). There are simply some things that kids don’t need to know, at least at certain ages. Younger kids won’t understand and older kids can end up extrapolating too much from whatever they’re told.

Similarly, it’s probably not the best idea to explain every knock-on effect of an account loss to a junior copywriter. Sure, if it means you have to let him/her go, then blab away, but if you’re having to downsize the HR dept or stop serving Fox’s biscuits at client meetings then that info is not going to help. Even at higher levels you might be having a row with the holding company about making 8% cuts instead of 11%, possibly resulting in redundancies, but putting the shits up everyone by giving them daily updates on the situation is not going to help anyone.

2. IT’S NOT FAIR!

Another one that continues through the rest of your life. Why did he get that when I only got this? Why does Andy get a lollipop while I only get a penny chew? Why did Mike get a raise when I didn’t? Managing comparative rewards and punishments is bloody hard. You might not even have two lollipops; you might have forgotten how many raises happened and when; you might be planning a big raise next month… Dave Trott once told me he went to a parenting advice thing where he was told that the two things you have to be are positive and consistent. I find positivity much simpler to default to, after all you can find the positive in pretty much anything if you look hard enough, but consistency is a bitch because your definition and perspective on it will never be the same as someone else’s.

3. It’s 24/7

There are times in the day/week when your kids and job are much more front and centre than at others, but they’re always there, lurking in the back of your mind. Another aspect of this is the feeling that you’re neglecting one when spending time with the other. Of course, you feel guiltier when you’re working instead of parenting, but if you’re working on an email that really needs to go out but your daughter wants to play Barbies then the temptation to break her little heart can be greater than you’d like.

4. You’re nurturing a big project that has plenty of ups and downs

Managing a dept: you win a few, you lose a few, but you keep heading in the right direction looking at the bigger picture and shaping things to be in a better place as you learn to improve together. You feel a compulsion that drives you through the tough times to the highly rewarding moments on the other side.

Bringing up a kid: ditto

5. You’re having a huge effect on people’s lives

Of course there’s the practical stuff, like whether you’ve given your kids dinner or given your middleweight creatives a nice office, but the touch points of your effects are constant and significant. For example you might make an off-hand comment that your son will never become a footballer because he spends every evening dancing. Your son might then read more into that, perhaps thinking that you don’t consider him tough enough, or believing that he’s somehow let you down, or indeed that you’re delighted by this and he should now try to join the Royal Ballet. Similarly, someone in your department might see you walk right past them without saying hello and wonder what they’ve done to anger you, fretting about it for days. You might simply have been deep in a thought about how on earth porn shops stay open when it’s all free on the internet, but he just saw the slight and it ruined a chunk of his life. So the actions of a manager can have great but unintended consequences, just like the actions of a dad.

6. Ending

You can resign from a job and, in much the same way, drown a kid in a canal.

Here’s a quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald that’s been doing the rounds on Facebook recently:

But… Hang on… Isn’t that the same guy who said there are no second acts in American lives? That there are no second chances once your first shot has come to an end?

Well, no. That quote was actually saying that Americans search for immediate results, so they don’t wait for the second act (as in the second act of a play). As far as second chances go, he’s all for them, but EVERYBODY uses that quote to illustrate the lack of second attempts at ‘life’, or to get all sniffy because FSF was WRONG, the braindead KING OF FUCKWITTAGE!

While we’re on the subject, it’s also interesting how people quote ‘Shakespeare’ when they’re actually quoting one of his characters, who might not actually be an incredibly insightful playwright. For example ‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be’ is said by a character in Hamlet called Polonius, who one could describe as cynical, insincere, arrogant and sermonising, which makes his advice a bit shaky. But that doesn’t stop people quoting it as something Shakespeare himself would suggest.

Do you have any other examples of the above?

Robert De Niro’s private office (thanks, J).

Londoners: would a bomb have fallen on your house in WW2? (Thanks, J2.)

Excellent plants made from recycled plastic bottles (thanks, J3).

Fantastic interactive comic that explains the Blackwater killings.

Top pickpocket:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02mqrx1RexI

Cool Google guide to Abbey Road (thanks, J4).

Sopranos creator analyses final scene in depth (thanks, J).

STOP THE PRESS! THE GOLDEN RATIO HAS NO RELATIONSHIP TO AESTHETICS! (Thanks, J.)

Fucked up poodle grooming art (thanks, J3).

Great rebels (thanks, D).

Japanese karaoke masturbation game show (thanks, J3).

Hillary Clinton laughs a lot (thanks, F).

Why gay marriage is WRONG (thanks, J3).

Possibly the best commercial of all time (thanks, J3):

I find those logos fascinating.

Obviously you get more if you pay for more, but how much is the placement worth?

And how do Puma feel about getting two placements you can’t really see?

And what the hell is Vitality?

And does anyone ask the people not to move about too much for fear they might obscure a 50k logo?

Are seven Emirates logos really doing any more than six, or five?

Is anyone other than me paying any attention to them?

Huawei just paid for one with not great placement, but their logo is more clearly visible than Puma’s. Did they pay more than Puma?

Did anyone see this and use Barclays’ #spiritofthegame hashtag?

Why does Barclays use two different logos?

Would they sell their logo space if, say, Twix wanted one of their much-coveted central stripes?

Is there anything left that could really do with having a nice juicy logo slapped onto it?

There are layers to a top-class game of football:

People who don’t really care for the sport just see 22 men kicking a ball around on some grass. They have no interest in, or comprehension of, the intricacies of the game.

Then you have people who follow the game a bit. They know that there are four defenders who cover different parts of the pitch even though they work together in a unit. They’ll understand wingers and strikers and stuff like the offside trap.

Beyond that would be people who have perhaps followed the game since they were kids. They know the context, they read the sports pages, they understand whether a game really matters and why. They’ll also be aware of the positions with a bit more sophistication: is a team playing 4-4-2 or flooding the midfield? Perhaps the inferior team is having to ‘park the bus’ against a more skilful group of attackers.

But then there are people who understand the whole thing: they see who’s moving where and why; they understand how a false nine drops deep or why a number 10 plays in the hole. Essentially, stuff like this.

So different people watch the same thing but see completely different things. It’s the same with movies: if you were a top-class cinematographer you would appreciate nuances and achievements with the lighting and framing that an average punter might not. And in music someone might catch all the obscure references David Bowie has jammed into a track, while someone else might just sing along to the catchy melody.

In advertising I find it fascinating to look at situations that I experienced as a junior from an entirely new perspective. Back then I just saw what I believed to be a good idea without the wealth of experience that allowed my CD to more accurately judge the same idea perhaps to be ‘shite’. That CD might also have the greater context that says going for a crazy triple-pike-with-tuck idea might not be wise considering the current mood of the client, instead plumping for the more direct effectiveness of a swan dive, or indeed a bomb. The CD might also think that an idea from a junior team might indeed be better, but the safer idea from the expensive seniors has a better chance of being executed to a higher level of quality.

The CD is seeing the patterns that the junior cannot see, but equally those patterns may be invisible to the Head of Planning or Account Management. They might not even be that clear to the CD, who could be going on instinct and might not even know exactly why he chooses this photographer over that one, or at least it may be much harder to articulate.

So the better you become, the more of the game you can see. But does that make you better at it? Not necessarily. If it did, all the Bowie nerds and footy geeks could be producing Hunky Dory or sitting in the dugout at Emirates. Having said that, you can’t be Bowie or Wenger without seeing the patterns; you just need the extra bit that then gives you the belief and ambition that makes you think you can apply them successfully.

Here’s the latest Dove film that supposedly attempts to make women feel good about being what society has made them believe is ‘average’. Or something:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DdM-4siaQw

This is actually a very complicated issue that is being dumbed down through oversimplification (here’s a Guardian article on the ad and one from Buzzfeed that was removed under controversial circumstances that make Unilever (and Buzzfeed) look a bit cunty). A giant conglomerate (Unilever who, as I have mentioned many times, makes Lynx/Axe, the product whose advertising has objectified women more than any other) attempts to advertise one of its brands by marking two doors either ‘Average’ or ‘Beautiful’. That way we can see how women feel about themselves and make some kind of statement that society has been bad or wrong for making women feel as if they are average instead of beautiful. Apparently, according to a survey commissioned in an entirely unbiased manner by Dove, 96% of women regard themselves as average

There’s a behind the scenes film, but it’s more concerned with showing how difficult it is for the (mostly male) team behind the ad to travel to lots of different countries in a short space of time. So I am left with some questions…

What do the doors lead to? A shop? A museum? A lap dancing club? Why are women going through them at all? This is important because if I saw two doors marked ‘Average’ and ‘Beautiful’ on the front of, say, a department store I wouldn’t even think I was supposed to be making a choice about how I supposedly feel about myself. I don’t believe all the ‘Averages’ really thought they were downtrodden, depressed women with low self esteem who demonstrated this feeling by their choice of door.

In addition, there are plenty of women in this film who are objectively beautiful (including the very first one and one who appears to be a model at 3:17). Where were the 25-stone ladies, or the old age pensioners? Would they have messed the film up a bit by being clearly ‘average’ (or below average)?

Why ‘Beautiful’ vs ‘Average’? By definition most people are average: average intelligence, average height, average beauty. That’s what average means: the typical value in a set of data. It’s a long time since I did statistics as part of my degree, but depending how you want to impose parameters, a full 50% of people might well fit into any definition of average, with 25% of outliers, in this case ‘ugly’ and ‘beautiful’, at either end. It seems to me that many of the women making the average choice did indeed fit into the definition of average in terms of their physical appearance. And here’s the important thing about that: THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT. Unless we’re going for the Disney definition of beautiful in which we say that ‘we’re all beautiful inside’ etc. (which really has nothing to do with Dove, which exists purely to enhance your outward appearance) then there are people who are more or less beautiful as far as a generally agreed definition of certain traits of physicality (eg: long, shiny hair instead vs bald, or smooth, clear skin vs covered in varicose veins). Dove ain’t saying that bald women with varicose veins are ‘beautiful’, so what are they saying? That women should definitely evaluate themselves on the basis of physical appearance, but they should be more positive about it. Is that a good thing for the objectification of women in general? I would argue not.

So I have some doubts about the mechanics of the experiment, and I have other questions about whether or not it really empowers women or makes them relate to themselves in a more positive way.

What I have no questions about is this: many giant companies will fling out any old bollocks to cynically manipulate people into parting with their money. The less we fall for it, the better.