If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

I hear the word ‘idea’ bandied about all over the place. Variously I have observed it used to mean ‘the overall concept behind some kind of effort to sell something’, ‘the post-rationalised justification for an idealess execution’ and even ‘some combination of words that we can all cling to like an umbrella in a storm, even though nothing really fits under the umbrella and all our shoes are getting wet’.

But what, in advertising terms, is an idea?

When I want to clarify this I always go back to classics: Happiness Is A Cigar Called Hamlet, Heineken Refreshes The Parts Other beers Cannot Reach, Good Things Come To Those Who Wait.

Great ideas, aren’t they?

Nope.

They’re great endlines.

Here are the great ideas: ‘show how a Hamlet cigar can make you happy no matter how terrible your day has been’; ‘show how drinking Heineken can improve any negative situation’; ‘show instances where waiting for something culminates in a great situation/experience’.

You see, ladies and gentlemen, for me the definition of an advertising idea is this: if you say it to someone, anywhere in the world, they can then come up with the next ad in the campaign. It’s what you say to your creative partner so that they might help you to produce a piece of work. Try saying ‘No nonsense’ to your art director and see what he does. Then try saying, ‘We could show how down-to-earth people puncture poncey behaviour’. Voila: a campaign that lasted decades, through Arkwright, Jack Dee and Peter Kay.

Ideas may not lead to people coming up with a great ads but they at least give people a set of instructions they can work against and a measurement by which to ascertain whether or not their work adheres to the ‘idea’, furthering the campaign.

Ideas can be big, small, or indeed limited to a single execution. In addition there’s a ton of work to do after the idea has been found. But when someone says ‘The man your man can smell like’, that is not an idea. It’s an endline and perhaps it’s a campaign, but it ain’t an idea.

I have a theory that if Paul McCartney released ‘Yesterday’ for the first time on one of his current albums it would not be recognised as the towering classic it clearly is. It was part of the Beatles’ narrative of taking the zeitgeist by the scruff of the neck and inviting it for a cup of tea, but now it would be a reluctantly-tolerated footnote in the McCartney 21st Century solo oeuvre.

Timing, innit? Will a creation ride its context to immortality like a winged stallion, or will it appear to a deafening chorus of indifference?

Although certain marketing moments (Christmas, Summer, the death of the artist) will clearly be more successful, trying to time the point when a work of art is released to maximum effect is basically impossible.

Is the world ready for your work? If so, to what extent? Would it have been received with greater enthusiasm a month earlier, or later? How can you know? After all, a work of art is seen and reacted to and that’s it. It might be reappraised at some point in the future, but one has just as little control over that occurrence. We sometimes talk of things being ‘ahead of their time’, but that just tends to be another way of saying something’s ‘shit, but someone in the future might like it’, or, in retrospect, ‘everyone thought it was shit, then changed their minds but we have no idea why’.

And clearly many people’s artistic expressions seem to be of a time, otherwise they’d be received equally well/badly throughout their entire careers. Some are, but many people hit a peak (or trough) at some point, which is usually attributed to ability when it might just be a case of, as Brian Wilson said, ‘I guess I just wasn’t made for these times‘.

The crazy thing is that you can never be sure. You create, release and hope (or, if you are of a more nihilistic disposition, you don’t give a shit), but you can’t have any control over something that is both indefinable and constantly shifting. In addition you often don’t have say over when your art is released. It may not quite be the optimal moment in terms of the mood of the nation, but Christmas is coming and the publisher needs to put your book out, or the product is about to be launched, and your ad must appear along with it. Will the timing be perfect, or will your magnum opus drown in a sea of similar work that appeared unexpectedly three days earlier?

No one will ever know.

Good luck with that.

Apologies for the delay. Something was up with WordPress.

Fuck around with fun samples (thanks, D).

Mark Kermode analyses the film business (thanks, D).

Interested in great cinematography?

How to write House of Cards (thanks, D).

The filming locations of NYC (thanks, M).

And while we’re on the subject, the oldest known footage of NY (thanks, V):

Cassetteboy on dodgy donors etc.

The decadent life of Jack Nicholson (thanks, T).

Hearing Tarantino (thanks, B):

Every time I’ve seen him speak he’s been funny, charming and deeply insightful.

Take an hour to watch this, or put it on in the background like the radio. You will learn some excellent stuff:

I’ve long contended that any responsible ad agency needs to make the first five seconds of a pre-roll ad compelling enough to make a viewer disinclined to skip the rest.

Instead they usually just put the first five seconds of their TV ad up and, unsurprisingly, people hit that skip option like an epileptic woodpecker.

Until now.

Hats off, Geico:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvcj9xptNOQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Dvx060Rx3g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpPYdMs97eE&app=desktop

Yes, it is a little Moonwalking Bear, but it’s a slightly different technique and it worked on me.

Perhaps the tricky thing about it is that it’s advertising the most normal-looking, dull, everyday car in existence. If, in the real world, it attracted your attention for longer than it takes a beam of light to cross the width of an atom then you would need to re-examine your life.

But kudos to the team for making the most out of very little.

I love podcasts. They’re like really good versions of the radio, covering loads of fascinating subjects and costing zilch.

Here are some of my favourites (let me know yours in the comments):

Arseblog Arsecast/Arsecast Extra: I have a journey to work that requires me to spend around 40 minutes in the car twice a day. These podcasts are the perfect length for that and a very enjoyable way for me to keep up with all things Arsenal. I actually enjoy Monday’s Arsecast Extra best and look forward to my Monday morning commute because that’s my special AE time (unless we’ve just lost, in which case it’s all a bit shit).

The Football Ramble: a similar kind of thing, but it covers all the teams. Four or five blokes (I think they’re comedians) discuss the most recent Premiership action like five men in a pub who are both funny and knowledgeable about football. They also discuss the Championship and European games but I’ve usually turned it off by then (pro tip: the first 5-10 minutes is taken up by them answering some kind of surreal question such as ‘which football manger would make the best cowboy’. I tend to skip that). I actually found this most enjoyable to listen to when I was walking round Tokyo and taking a river trip in Bangkok. The contrast between the football chat and the environment seemed to enhance both.

Hardcore History: this one isn’t about football; it’s a long, deep analysis of some period or event in world history (eg: the atom bomb, WW1, Genghis Khan etc.). There are generally several episodes of roughly 1-1.5 hours each per subject and they are absolutely brilliant. Even if you’re not really into history (I can’t say I am particularly) they tell you so many fascinating things about why the world is the way it is today that you can’t help but find it compelling. It’s also presented by the excellent Dan Carlin, who has a great voice and manner (he used to be a radio host). It’s also worth mentioning that this is considered to be the podcast’s podcast, and by that I mean that everyone who loves podcasts loves Hardcore History, and you will too.

Desus vs Mero: do you want to hear a black guy and a guy from the Dominican Republic who live in the Bronx discussing their culture and taking the piss out of every single thing on earth? You may not get all the references (I certainly don’t) but you will definitely laugh out loud more at this podcast than any other. Here’s the visual version of it to whet your appetite (#caucasity, #knowledgedarts, Seth Rogen is the Sesame Street character who comes, and if you follow @thefatjewish on Instagram, he joins this show and is very funny):

Real Time with Bill Maher: this is a podcast of the excellent HBO TV show which dissects American politics from a Liberal viewpoint. Bill has some great guests and skewers all sorts of things with lots of lovely swear words.

WTF with Mac Maron: this erstwhile stand-up comic with a somewhat chequered past has now rehabilitated himself into polite society with this excellent interview podcast. So if you want to hear from everyone from Louis CK (check that 2010 interview and discover the sad reason why Louis once wanked over a trumpet case) to Richard Linklater, this is the podcast for you.

The Tim Ferriss Show: the author of the 4-Hour Work Week and the 4-Hour Body has a motivational podcast that gets some great interviews (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and helps you to reassess your entire life in a more functional way. Possibly.

Sodajerker on Songwriting: this is a couple of guys who do in-depth interviews with great songwriters (and a few shit ones) about their processes and careers. Obviously it helps if you’re into the subject’s music, but they’re all interesting.

The final ‘podcast’ I enjoy is the Howard Stern Show, which as actually a radio show on XM over here in the States. I don’t think there’s a way of getting it if you’re not in America, but the best thing about it is the brilliant interviews that go on much longer than your average celeb delvings and tend to involve far edgier questions. The good news is that most of them are available on YouTube not long after they’ve been broadcast, so fill your boots:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5HsgmyJ4t4

There are loads and loads more but those are my regulars. What are yours?

This looks good:

Myth busting infographic.

There’s a lot of funny stuff here.

Artist changes her name to ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ (thanks, J).

Fine impersonations from Christina Aguilera and Jimmy Fallon:

Kids rock Zep on xylophones (thanks, V):

Rare Kurt Cobain interviews:

Now that I live in LA I don’t get quite the same opportunities to chat about football, so when this week’s Chelsea fan racism piqued my interest I wondered how I could engage in a forthright debate on the topic. Unfortunately for those among you who aren’t into football or racism, I have selected this blog as the forum for that debate. The rest of you, please read on, and do add to the chat in the comments section.

I should start by making two things clear: first, I support Arsenal; second, I dislike much of what Chelsea does, stands for and represents.

Now that’s clear, here’s a video of what some Chelsea fans did on the Paris Metro last week. Further information has since come out about this incident, regarding the people involved and their connections to certain political parties (AHEM – UKIP). You can Google the heck out of it if you like, but a few additional facts:

they were singing a song about how they love their team captain John Terry because he’s racist.

John Terry was found guilty by the FA – but not by a court of law – of ‘using a racial insult’ in 2011.

The FA fined him two weeks’ wages and stripped of the England captaincy.

If Chelsea punished Terry for this they did so ‘in private’. It’s possible did not punish him at all, particularly as several senior employees of the club acted as character witnesses in Terry’s cases; more here.

So those are some facts. Now for some opinions:

Had Chelsea had publicly punished, or even fired, John Terry (after all, many people, if found guilty of using a racial insult by their industry administrative body, would be fired, and if this had been a reserve goalie rather than the team captain it feels a tad more likely that Chelsea might have done that) then it might have sent a message of zero tolerance with regard to racism and reduced the delight these fans seemed to take in having a racist captain.

You might reply that Chelsea does indeed have a ‘zero tolerance’ policy regarding racism, but I would argue that the Terry punishment shows clearly that instead they have a ‘slight tolerance’ policy towards racism. Of course, it would be insane for anyone in this day and age to claim anything other than zero tolerance when it comes to racism (‘Yes, well ‘zero’ seemed a bit much for us, so we do allow the occasional cross burning by the corner flags’), but when push comes to shove what does that actually mean, and what are the consequences?

As the Telegraph article suggests, Chelsea do indeed do many nice things, such as paying the Living Wage, something no other club does, apparently. It has also saved Aldershot FC from bankruptcy and raises a lot of money for charity (not so unusual). They also condemned the racist thugs from the Paris Metro and have banned them from the ground pending further investigation. Then they invited the victim to come to Stamford Bridge and see for himself how lovely the non-racist Chelsea fans really are.

All well and good, but there is now news of further racism, as well as many eye witness reports of other acts of racism amongst the fans that happen with great regularity:

As a lifelong Spurs fan I, and many thousands of others, have been the victims of vitriolic antisemitic abuse at Chelsea FC on a scale not even matched at similarly racially motivated West Ham Utd. For the 30 years I have followed Spurs to away games – in pubs, around tube stations, on the streets around the ground and within Stamford Bridge itself, the venom, ignorance and breathtaking casualness of Chelsea fans’ references to Jews, Auschwitz, the Holocaust and foreskins, often accompanied by a hissing simulation of gas chambers, is simply shocking – not least because it goes unchallenged by police, stewards or the club itself, bar a token reference furtively hidden away in the match-day programme.

I’m certainly not saying that Chelsea is the only club with racist fans, indeed I’d bet all the money I have that there are even some who support Arsenal, but Chelsea seem to have the most obvious and the most deep-rooted. They even have a famous group of supporters, the Headhunters, who have links to the neo-Nazi group Combat 18 (the 1 and the 8 refer to the position in the alphabet of Adolph Hitler’s initials). So Chelsea have a history of strong racism and indeed the crowd shouted abuse at Anton Ferdinand, the victim of Terry’s racist insult, the following time Chelsea played his team, QPR. The club then promised to root out the offenders, but unless that also happened ‘in private’ that didn’t actually happen, suggesting a little more tolerance to annoying old racism.

So tough on racism, but not really on the causes of racism. Zero tolerance so long it doesn’t weaken their team or displease their fanbase. All the right gestures but little effective action. And that’s strange for a team that’s has had many great black players and is owned by a Jewish man.

This weekend they play Spurs, the team famous for having the most Jewish supporters in the league. I assume the club intends to place staff amongst the fans and call for the arrest of anyone who chants about the Holocaust or hisses like an Auschwitz gas chamber.

Actually, I assume it’ll be business as usual, and anyone who feels uncomfortable about that can rest assured Chelsea will be handing out a few more of these on its next ‘Equality Day’:

Three cheers for that…