If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

Posters: so hard to do well. Is it possible to communicate a big message with real impact using as few elements as possible? Sometimes it is, and here’s a case in point…

UPDATE:

There were a few questions in the comments section, so I asked Paul for a bit more context:

The work is aimed at MPs; no one else. So to answer the question of Anon, you are not supposed to do anything (unless you are an MP).

The Social Economy Alliance is a new organisation. They want to get on MPs’ radars so that all major political parties incorporate the SEA’s ideas into their election manifestos. This campaign coincides with every MP receiving the SEA manifesto on their desks. The cover of the manifesto looks like the posters, so MPs are more likely to take the manifesto seriously if they have seen the ads.

The SEA wants to say something memorable about what they stand for, and the ads need to work in a second because they’re posters in a busy tube station. The choice of the poster sites is based on a package, sold by Exterion Media, that’s designed to influence MPs – that’s why many of the posters are up in the Westminster tube station. The package was bought by SEA before the work was created.

SEA paid Paul ‘a lot of money’, and the ads are up in proper sites on the tube, so they’re obviously not scam (and, needless to say, SEA is a real organisation).

Boris Johnson’s beard is Karl Marx’s beard (I thought that was obvious. Silly me).

Paul is also happy with the tube barriers (see New Statesman link below) but says that the 6-sheets are better because the technique is more elegant and therefore the images are stronger.

Regarding the topicality of the images, of course, the main thing is that the images are iconic and recognisable, and clearly from the left and right. (One commenter thought that the use of Reagan was ‘dated’ but didn’t seem to mind the use of Karl Marx, who’s around 100 years older.)

More info in the articles from Creative Review, The Evening Standard, The New Statesman, The Independent, The Guardian and The BBC Daily Politics show.

I hope that clears things up!

  The campaign supports the launch of the Social Economy Alliance’s 2015 manifesto, which calls for politicians to ditch traditional left/right notions of businesses against society or markets against the state. As you can see, it’s jolly good.

(Interest declared: it was created by my friend Paul Belford, and the copywriter Dean Webb, who I once chatted to over the phone.)

When I started in advertising the chairman of our agency had a personal project he wanted some creative help with. It was a campaign to save his local hunt/shoot, which was under threat from the kind of forces that prize base-level kindness over brutal death etc.

He asked the rest of the department, all of whom declined the opportunity (possibly using the words ‘fuck’, ‘off’, ‘you’, ‘posh’, ‘fat’ and perhaps ‘cunt’). However, when he got round to us we said, ‘Sure, why not?’ I think it was a combination of having little or nothing to work on, wanting a chance to make some kind of mark, pleasing the über-boss, not being immensely bothered about animal rights and the murky arguments for and against shooting animals for fun.

So we created a campaign and we weren’t (as far as I’m aware) ostracised by the rest of the department. Things rolled along until we got fired for an unrelated incident, and I thought no more about it until a couple of days ago when I wondered about the extent to which principles should come into play in your advertising career, or indeed your life.

Of course, the great Bill Bernbach famously said that a principle isn’t a principle until it costs you money, but where should you draw the line? If you dig into most corporations these days you can find dubious practices of one kind or another, from zero hours contracts to shady investments of pension funds, so do you refuse to work for any of them?

I remember being on a Pepsi shoot back in 2001 when I was reading No Logo. Like many others, I was quite taken with the ideas and examples in that book and found myself pretty pissed off with these giant corporations and their shitty methods of making lots of cash at the expense of the poor, overworked sods who couldn’t even go to the lav when they needed to. Sitting next to me was the major Pepsi client, a 70something fella who had seen and done everything in corporate America. He pronounced such concerns to be bullshit and bit of a drag on the essential point of human existence: to keep the wheels of capitalism spinning as fast as possible.

So this isn’t an easy question to answer.

I can’t find the link, but I’ve written before about how we are all essentially cheerleaders for each company we represent, whether as advertising creatives or people who plunk down a Barclays credit card in a restaurant or order a pint of Stella in a pub. We endorse all those corporations to one degree or another, generally without a second thought for the consequences or the alternatives. For my part that’s down to sheer laziness/love of convenience; I mean, would I have the balls and/or inclination to bother that would be required to turn down an HSBC brief on the grounds that they laundered so much drug money? Or refuse to work on a massive multimedia campaign for a 20th Century Fox movie (or indeed refuse to see such a movie) because I disagree with the effect Rupert Murdoch has on the planet? I’d say probably not. And should I feel guilty for that? I suppose so, but whether or not I’d take things to the point where my ‘principle’ would actually cost me money, I’d have to say it’s unlikely.

When I worked at AMV there was a fundamental corporate principle not to advertise cigarettes or products aimed at kids. A few years into my time there I was given a brief for Monster Munch, a product aimed squarely at children. I pointed this out but no one seemed to care very much and then neither did I. When push came to shove it wasn’t a principle at all, or perhaps it was, but that principle had long been beaten into submission by the need/want to generate cash. Maybe we wouldn’t advertise toys, but we’d turn a blind eye to snacks.

So I wonder, have you ever turned down a brief based a a disagreement with the operating practices of the corporation involved? If so, what happened? And if not, what stops you taking things further?

Answers on a Socialist Worker subscription postcard.

If I told you what it was for it might spoil the twist, but it’s very rare I have to (or want to) write that before an ad I post.

Interesting angle on an old brief: funny, charming and definitely worth a share.

Nice one (interest declared: several friends involved.)

38 maps that explain the world (thanks, C).

Great music billboards from Sunset Strip (thanks, J).

Seinfeld emojis (thanks, D).

A little doc on the great (Apocalypse Now) cinematographer Vittorio Storaro.

Hangovers illustrated by taxidermy (thanks, E).

Awesome story, yo.

Great analogies from English students (thanks, C).

The worst musicians of all time (thanks, N).

I just cried laughing at this analysis of Viz perv-baker Fru. T. Bunn.

Mad Men lessons on effectiveness (thanks, A).

Marlon Brando rips Burt Reynolds:

Wu Tang Clan sung by the movies:

What the fuck does the colourist actually do?

How to make McDonald’s french fries (not what you think; thanks, A):

Shots of movies in their real locations (thanks, J).

Jack Nicholson interview (thanks, J).

American Psycho, from book to screen.

Dalek relaxation tape:

Nicki Minaj vid with added flatulence (thanks, P).

And here is how we rock the house, 80s stylee (thanks, J):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy69QAJLUls

And if you like tennis, check my friend Dan’s tennis blog.

For some strange reason I woke up this morning with the laborious but famous endline of this campaign in my head:

If you grew up in the UK in the 80s you will remember well the tiny variations of men, flowers and Impulse-drenched ladies that filled the airwaves, seemingly all the bloody time.

So I just thought I’d cathartically get it out in a blog post.

They were a bit shit, really, but then someone managed to finish off the campaign by giving it a twist and getting in the D&AD annual:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdAW8oJu0pg

(If that video doesn’t work, Google ‘Impulse Art School’.)

On reflection I’m surprised that was allowed to be on TV, I mean, if that had happened in real life I’m not sure how funny the art class would have found it.

Then again, maybe we need more implied erection deodorant ads on TV…

(Thanks, D.)

With some added guff here.

I think they’re a great example of how a top director can make a slight concept feel much more substantial and rewatchable.

They’re clothes ads with the basic concept that the person who wears the clothes looks good (seen that before a few times), but there’s a loose freshness to this angle that elevates the campaign.

But it was posted in December 2012.

So, evidently, the number of fucks given was roughly zero.

And how many more?

About 15,000 since then, including this guy.

Hashtag monumental fuckwittage, as the verbose kids might say.

Here is a bunch of great writing advice from George ‘Game Of Thrones’ R.R. Martin and Robin Hobb, who I just looked up on Wikipedia (she writes fantasy books. No, me neither).

Here are the parts that ring most true for me:

“The best writing advice I had was [in] ‘Heinlein’s Rules for Writers’ by (American science fiction author) Robert A. Heinlein. His first rule is that you must write, and I was already doing that, but his second rule is, ‘You must finish what you write,’ and that had a big impact on me.” – George R.R. Martin

Here’s an interesting truth: if you don’t finish it you might as well not have started it. Yes, there’s something to be said for the hours of writing practice you put in that will eventually benefit your ability, but if you want anyone else to read it, it must be finished to a standard that you would be happy to show. It’s like George Lois’s dismissal of having a drawer of great roughs: they’re meaningless until they are completed. The Question might then be: how do you know it’s finished? When I spoke to David Abbott about that he said (and I entirely agree) that no matter how ‘finished’ you think a draft is, you will always spot glaring errors or instances of crapness when you look at the same material one more time. So you just have to read it, be satisfied/happy/ecstatic enough to let someone else see it and that’s that. The version of Instinct that got me an agent is vastly different to the one that was published; if I were to read that early version now I would shudder with embarrassment and burn it for fear that someone might discover how badly I could write. And yet I thought that version was worth sending out – and it was. Go fig.

“When both my editors say ‘This is really bad, you need to change this,’ I ignore that at my peril.” – Robin Hobb

Yeah… When to give a shit about what other people say – that’s another toughie. Every piece of criticism comes loaded with what’s behind it. Who is saying it? A few harsh words will hurt more coming from a respected colleague/editor/ECD than your mouth-breathing cousin or some reviewer on Amazon who thinks his anus is somewhere between his wrist and his armpit. And how many people have said the same thing? As Robin suggests, consistent negative feedback deserves more attention than one-off barbs. And if you know the person and their taste they might well be grinding an axe about something they personally dislike rather than a universal issue. And then, at the bottom of all of that, it’s still up to you. I finished another novel a year ago and the response, although generally positive, has had enough negativity for me to sit up and notice. And yet… I really believe it’s actually fine and none of these comments are properly swaying me from my opinion that the whole thing works well. So I’m sitting between a rock and a hard place where the negativity is taking some of the wind out of my sails, but when it comes to attempting to address the concerns I don’t have the enthusiasm to change what I think it already good. It’s fun being a writer!

“I will sit there and say, don’t do that, don’t do that, you’re going to make this story three chapters longer, and of course he doesn’t listen.” – Robin Hobb on her main character, Fitz.

“It’s all very well to discuss some of these things in the outline, but when you sit down to write it, other plots occur to you, secondary characters come in, you think of an interesting subplot. Suddenly the stew is much richer, but it also takes more bowls to fill it up.” George R.R. Martin.

If you’ve written from the basis of a great character then you are, to a certain extent, at the mercy of what that character will do. I remember reading an interview about the early writing of Alan Partridge. One of the writers came up with a gag he thought would be funny, to which Patrick Marber responded with a terse ‘Alan wouldn’t do that’. We all know what Alan would or wouldn’t do, but the same goes for all your characters, and if it doesn’t you either don’t know them well enough or you haven’t written them well enough. And the same goes for what George says: you may have the A and Z of a story, but the other 24 letters will only reveal themselves as you explore: you cannot know the colour of every wall, the accent of every voice or the weather of every day when you start, but those changes will affect everything.

But in the end nothing comes closer to playing God than writing. So if that floats your monkey, go to it.