If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

When I started in advertising I remember a Campaign editorial saying that if a creative team made a TV ad and press campaign in year they were doing well.

At the time I was at Y&R and that seemed about par for the course, but when I got to AMV I discovered that it was possible to find yourself making much more work than that. Many more briefs went through AMV, but the situation was also far more positive – if you answered your brief well the ad invariably got made. Clients came to the 1998 version of AMV because it was one of the best agencies in the world, so when work was presented to those clients on the understanding that it had gone through AMV’s rigorous internal standards process, then it was surely worth running.

Then, obviously, clients became less in thrall to that halo of brilliance and started to get pickier, but even then I made way more ads there than I did at Y&R.

Which leads me to a comment left on the blog a couple of weeks ago. When I put my first ad up for your delectation and asked for yours in return, an anonymous person suggested that many readers of this blog may not yet have made their first TV ad. Initially I thought that was because my readership is full of youngsters, still hacking their way through the jungles of college/junior life (I should point out that I have pretty much no idea of the readership of this blog. I used to check the stats every day, but then, around five years ago, I got to about 2000-3000 daily readers and it didn’t seem to fluctuate enough for me to keep going back to see if one Wednesday was bigger than another. Maybe there’s only a few of you left; maybe I now rival the viewership of Pornhub. I kind of like not knowing. It feels like the motives for the writing are a little purer as I’m not chasing eyeballs, the number of which doesn’t matter anyway), then I thought again and wondered if the average 2014 creative (or at least the ones who read this blog) is getting much made.

I’d guess that more stuff gets made these days, what with the proliferation of media channels, but are more TV ads happening? More print? Maybe I should categorise traditional media thus: are more ads getting made that are ‘tell-your-mum-worthy’, or are people making more things that are a bit boring to explain to her (‘But the KPIs are through the roof!’)? Or are you making fuck-all and wondering how long you can keep doing that before you get sacked or feel an overwhelming urge to give it all up and become a private detective?

I know quantity ultimately trumps quantity, but then again, practice makes perfect. Fewer opportunities means fewer chances to hone your skills and a slower progression to the next level. So is the current somewhat un-purple patch of advertising anything to do with a reduction in chances to improve, or is that reduction in chances a consequence of clients wanting less of what they might think of as un-purple patch work?

Who knows? No one, but one thing you do know (if you’re an advertising creative) is how much stuff you generally make. So TELL ME HOW MUCH IT IS by using the comments section.

Thanks.

Coldplay are awful:

Funny/unfortunate photos (thanks, P).

Spurious correlations (thanks, J).

Gordon Willis, cinematographer of The Godfather, died this week.

Dylan’s ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ done in a way I can’t be arsed to describe but is really good (thanks, W).

Danny Dyer tweets as motivational quotes.

Neanderthal voice thing that is funny:

Brilliant animation (thanks, S):

All the great commencement speeches, from Kermit to JFK, all in one handy place (thanks, S).

Hunter S. Thompson on finding your purpose (thanks, W).

Rap T-shirts for white people (thanks, A).

The world’s best lavs (thanks, G).

Guy surprises his dad many times (thanks, J):

*In retrospect, the lyrics of this massive number one single are somewhat creepy.

Or at least booked a last minute break…?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOn45wNdoXw

Here’s a little primer on his life and work. It’s really just the tip of a quite colossal iceberg, but I hope it gives you a small idea of what he left behind.

One Club Hall of Fame.

Mike Dempsey blog.

David’s guide to good copywriting.

David on what it takes to attract talent.

Dave Dye’s blog.

Lurzer’s Archive interview.

And a tribute from down under (thanks, D&D):

As you know, I love a good side project.

I also love Kickstarter, so imagine my delight when Glenn Paton wrote to me about the short film he’s trying to get off the ground with the help of the aforementioned kick-based commencement organisation.

The film – written by Paton – is called H Positive and follows the progress of Mark, a wealthy man used to being in control of his life who is forced to face up to terminal illness. Determined to go out on his own terms, he plans to construct a rollercoaster that will bring about his demise at a time of his choosing and in an entirely euphoric fashion.

I wish Glenn all the best.

Please bung him a few grand.

For six wonderful months David Abbott was my boss.

He was just coming up to his retirement and had already handed the day-to-day reins of AMV’s creative department to Peter Souter. But there he still was, sitting in his beautifully tasteful office (the one at the back of the agency, by the way; not one of the big ones overlooking Marylebone Road), sifting through our so-so attempts at continuing his classic Economist campaign.

Although he was never anything but lovely, it was hard not to be intimidated by the reputation, the body of work and the Godlike crown of white hair. I sometimes found myself in the lift with him, or queueing behind him at breakfast, or plucking up the courage to approach him at the Summer Party. On those occasions I was always tongue-tied, feeling some kind of pressure to speak only brilliant words to this legendary genius. Twice I started conversations with him only to have someone else pop over and briefly interrupt us. I would then lose my nerve and dash off, thinking that David would much prefer to spend his time with this other person. However, watching hidden from across the room, I would then see David finish his conversation then look around for me, puzzled at my disappearance.

I can’t adequately convey the contribution David made to the industry (but I’ll quickly mention his refusal to take on tobacco or toy advertising), so instead I’ll point out that he also wrote a brilliant novel. I enjoyed it very much, and wrote to David to tell him. A couple of days later my phone rang; it was David inviting me round to his Chelsea office for a chat, novelist to novelist. Twelve years after leaving AMV he was just as kind and warm, if a little less intimidating. We talked about how we went about our writing then he asked to read my book and wrote soon afterwards to tell me how much he liked it (although I’m fairly certain it wasn’t exactly his cup of tea).

Bye-bye, David, and thanks for making me, and the rest of the world, a little better than we would have been without you.

(Older posts including a David interview here, and his remarkable leaving speech here.)

Stupid Mail Online headlines made normal (thanks, G).

Gene Wilder on the truth (thanks, N):

Screenwriting tips from One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.

25 pubs you ought to visit (or not bother visiting) before you die (thanks, W).

West Wing roundtable.

Stock shots no one will ever use (thanks, A).

Social media bullshit 101 (thanks, D).

Guy who photographs the testicles of Greek statues (thanks, J).

Fun ad:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJW5_iZNdFY&noredirect=1

…and the making of:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdPzW8oUJCY

The Ben Affleck sad Batman meme.

R.I.P.H.R. Giger (thanks, B).

Dog Shit Selfies (thanks, V).

I’m sure I put this up earlier in the year.

Then someone (thanks, S!) pointed something out that makes it fairly clear that this has been created entirely for the purpose of entering awards.

Aside from the clearly set-up scenarios of people ‘using’ the posters (the girl taking her luggage up the ramp looking at the poster is particularly contrived) there’s one obvious pointer to the fact that these did not run with the intention of persuading the majority of people of walked past them to give a shit about IBM.

Shame the D&AD jurors didn’t spot it.

Can you?

http://youtu.be/I-zo12V81oU

(Scrub to 3:08)

I confess to feeling a little uncomfortable watching that; after all, it’s a bit shit.

Then again, it was a different time, and my first ad.

As I played it my wife quoted all the words, while I muttered ‘what was I thinking?’

Anyway, enjoy, and if you watch it you have to put up a link to your own first ad, otherwise your children will die in agony (I don’t make up the rules).

I haven’t seen Paul Blart: Mall Cop; I haven’t even seen its trailer. In my imagination it’s an utterly dreadful film.

Let’s see if I’m right:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UX51lmL6sk

Yeah, looks pretty shit.

Anyway, that film took over $146m at the 2009 US box office, beating Inglourious Basterds, District 9 and Up In The Air.

‘Quality’-wise it managed a fairly poor 33% on Rotten Tomatoes and gained reviews such as, ‘It’s not hard to see why the studio dumped this suckfest in January,’ and ‘The last name Blart may be the funniest thing in the movie’.

So lots of people went to see a shit film. So far, so unremarkable. But when a piece of crap like this succeeds it makes many people question what they’re doing. They think that if Paul Blart: Mall Cop can take in a ton of cash then maybe the search for success should end in pisspoor pratfalls and dismal, derivative plotting. Of course, some people are trying to make Django Unchained or American Hustle, but for the others out there who just want to be rich and famous, a glance in the direction of PBMC would suggest that there’s an S-Class Mercedes awaiting anyone bovine enough to string a few unimaginative gags together.

I think it’s the same when anything succeeds that makes people scratch their heads and go ‘really?’. People start to wonder if they’ve got it wrong, if the path they were on was somehow deluded or misguided. Creativity takes confidence, the kind of self-belief that can build a brick wall to protect against naysayers and internal doubts, and all sorts of things can chip away at that confidence. So when something you think of as awful streaks ahead on the outside it can make sane people question themselves just a little bit more. Sure, PBMC looks woefully unfunny, but it obviously made millions of people very happy indeed (not least its financial backers), and what’s so bad about that? The magazine covers, swanky lunches and all-round adulation that would have resulted from the success of PBMC are the goals of many, many talented people. Is it wrong to go down whatever route takes you to the land of milk and honey?

These are rhetorical questions, of course. Most people are incapable of creating that success because its actually very difficult; otherwise they’d make 50 of those a year and retire as billionaires (although I should point out that Adam Sandler’s production company is behind PBMC and he does seem intent on shit-movie-ing himself into enough cash to choke a hippo).

Have you ever seen a shit ad win loads of awards and wondered if your taste is out of whack? Or written a script and thought ‘If such-and-such crappy ad can win a Gold at Cannes then why can’t this?’? But for your own sanity, for the preservation of whatever you think your soul is, you have to keep those thoughts at bay. What you consider to be good or bad is a true a reflection of yourself as anything. For all intents and purposes it defines your every creative action. It may be hard to keep your compass pointing to true north, but at the end of the day that’s all you’ve got.

So treasure it as you crawl into that cardboard box under Waterloo Bridge, smug in the knowledge you never inflicted Paul Blart fucking Mall Cop on the world.