If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozhj6miqBvc

Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm…

Looks great.

Otherwise, not sure.

So there’s something pretty cool and photogenic that happens in Florence that you might not be aware of. If you like to see interesting things and photograph them, pop over to this gladiator football thing and snap away.

OK.

I just don’t quite feel the thrill that would get me booking a plane to Florence or buying a Canon camera (can I be the annoying wanker who asks why I can’t record this event on a Nikon or an iPhone?). I understand that immediate purchase is probably an ask too far, but it’s that thrill – the visceral, tangible, shareable excitement – that I’m not getting here.

Maybe it’s the music. I don’t think The Flight of the Bumblebee Sabre Dance elevates what I’m seeing. I guess it needed a lighthearted counterpoint to all the brutal violence, but I wonder if it made it too thin. I wonder what would have happened if a more stirring piece (like the track from Guinness Surfer for a lazy example) had been laid beneath something that really got me going. The visual material is there, it’s just that tonally it’s a bit like the next Sony ‘Colour Like No Other’ ad (with a more subdued grade).

How old do you have to be to write an ad? Or be a CD? Or start your own agency?

When I was at Watford the average age of people on the course was 24. Nearly all were post-grads, but some had tried an alternative career and found it not to their liking. That meant that we had sufficient experience of ‘life’ to have a go at briefs and hopefully answer them with a simple human truth. Could an 18-year-old have done that? Probably, but I think they might have found it harder or hit the bullseye less often.

I think the industry shows us that, like many skills, a person’s ability to create ads increases along with the number of times they have to do it. You get to a point where you know what to do, what not to do, what’s been done and what constitutes ‘good’, and when you combine all those it’s bound to trump naivety more often than not.

In the middle of writing this post I started reading this interview with David Cronenberg. He touches on the increase of ability that comes with age:

“You have power and potency at this age. There’s the mythology of age, the bearded elder, the wise old man. In some cultures advanced age is very much revered, the Chinese culture, Confucius and so on: you are supposed to gain in wisdom and experience and therefore be quite a valuable member of society who should be honoured and listened to.

“I can say that the novel I wrote now, I really expected to have written when I was 21 instead of 71, but it couldn’t have been the same novel and I doubt that it would have been as good.”

Reading the above, you might then wonder why you see so few older people in advertising agencies. Well, it’s an industry built on a misguided neophilia, as well as a tightfistedness that lets go of some of its better practitioners because they have risen to a position where their salary is high enough to be questioned, no matter what their contribution.

And what do we lose because of that? Those of you who read the wisdom of Jeremy Bullmore, The Ad Contrarian or Dave Trott will appreciate just how much the less young have to offer. How many others are out there could contribute to the strength of the industry in a similar way?

We’ll never know because those two kids who have just graduated from St Martins know who Deadmau5 is and will only cost £20k each.

Dad makes funny faces to baby crying (thanks, J):

Funny (keep watching; thanks, J):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wnsdc7cTPuU

Great David Chase interview (thanks, J).

Shitting fuck. Imagine the show ‘Superstars’, but with music stars, including Michael Jackson and Rod Stewart (thanks, N):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8ZjwBcN5IA#t=124

Kubrick Timedoors:

Bowie, Eno, Visconti – via Buxton (thanks, R):

Original treatment for Raiders Of The Lost Ark.

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.)