Friday Poll - INeffectiveness

A post at Adliterate urged planners to speak out if they felt the work wasn't right.

Because "account handlers get fired if the work doesn’t happen, creatives get fired if the work is no good and planners get fired (or should get fired) if the work doesn’t work."

I applaud his encouragement of 'speaking out'.

But should the planners really be the whipping-people for when a campaign doesn't perform?

Or is it those award-chasing clients? Or the creatives, with their endless insistence on 'budgets' and 'brand guidelines'?

Who do YOU think is most commonly responsible for ineffective advertising?

Vote now, in the top right hand corner of your screen.


Previous poll results:

Friday Poll No.14 - Your Personal Success Record
Friday Poll No.13 - Which Department Is The Most Insane?
Friday Poll No.12 - What Music Do You Listen To While Working?
Friday Poll No.11 - What Time Do You Get In?
Friday Poll No.10 - Who Drinks The Most?
Friday Poll No.9 - Press v Online
Friday Poll No.8 - Success Or Glory?
Friday Poll No.7 - Is Reading Blogs A Waste Of Time?
Friday Poll No.6 - Job Satisfaction
Friday Poll No.5 - Festive Greetings
Friday Poll No.4 - Ad Of The Year 2006
Friday Poll No.3 - What's Your Favourite Medium To Work In?
Friday Poll No.2 - Agency Of The Year
Friday Poll No.1 - Which Department Is The Most Overpaid?

Here Is Your Appraisal

>Russell writes quite movingly in Campaign today about how wounded he was by an appraisal.

The problem seems to be that it was very detailed. So instead of general comments about 'areas to improve on', he was told specific things like that he was "an arse" (joke I'm sure). Worse still, he was able to work out who had said what.

Shortly after this appraisal, he quit.

Now, Russell would be the first to admit he is a gentle, sensitive soul.

But even in the dog-eats-other-dog-for-lunch-on-expenses world of advertising, I don't think he's alone.

An account handler of my acquaintance was in tears after her appraisal. Although it was 95% positive, she found herself focusing exclusively on those one or two negative comments. Maybe that's human nature.

But it leads me to wonder... are appraisals a good thing, or are they actually the work of the devil?

Are they ever inspiring, or are they always demotivating?

Is it better for managers to drop little comments here and there throughout the year, rather than deploy the 'shock and awe' of an annual 360?

And is it better to live in ignorance? In other words, if you are an arse, is it better to be unaware of that fact? After all, arse-itude is probably something that you can't change anyway.

There Are Apparently Only 12 Types Of Adverts In The World

My friend Doc Rogers points me in the direction of a piece of research by Donald Gunn, he of the Gunn Report, who has determined that all ads fall into one of 12 categories - or "master formats," in his words.

This slide show presents some recent ads exemplifying each of Gunn's 12 basic categories.

Does Gunn have a point? Or are his categories meaningless? Well, even he admits they are pretty arbitrary, in as much as several of them blend into each other.

And if he does have a point, could his system be useful in any way? It feels more like a system for classifying ads after they've been written, rather than a technique that could help in coming up with them.

The very idea that there could be a "system" for creating adverts is laughable wishful thinking, isn't it?

And yet... maybe as a series of starters they could be useful, for when you're stuck for inspiration.

John Webster apparently used to pop down to WHSmiths and flick through the greetings card section, when he wanted to get his brain working. Nowadays, I suppose there's YouTube.

So I may just take one or two things from Gunn's list.

We all need 'starters' sometimes.

The Ad Blog Charts For July 2007

Here are the world's most popular ad blogs, as measured by traffic rankings from Alexa.

Top 25 Ad Blogs		(world
		ranking)
1     (2)	AdRants	23,518	↓
2     (3)	Advertising/Design Goodness	44,404	↓
3     (4)	Adverbox	61,895
4     (6)	Adverblog	70,418
5     (3)	AdFreak	71,648
6     (9)	Duncan's TV Ad Land	90,986	↑
7     (7)	Logic + Emotion	105,680	↓
8     (8)	Coloribus	113,056
9    (11)	Ad Punch	135,534
10   (10)	Adland	142,577	↓
11  (13)	AdPulp	151,195	↑
12   (14)	Copyranter	175,872
13   (12)	Jaffe Juice	202,546	↓
14   (15)	Twenty Four	263,549	↓
15   (16)	How Advertising Spoiled Me	290,008
16   (18)	AdScam	332,305
17   (21)	Make The Logo Bigger	392,140
18   (19)	AdArena	395,206	↓
19   (re-)	BrandFlakes for Breakfast	399,518
20   (16)	Experience Curve	410,578	↓
21   (20)	Beyond Madison Avenue	420,758	↓
22   (25)	American Copywriter	424,300
23   (23)	Hee-Haw Marketing	435,440
24   (22)	Welcome To Optimism	465,353	↓
25   (re-)	FishNChimps	469,995

Big shock this month.

The reigning No.1 - Houtlust - has ceased publishing. Not sure why. But he promises to return at some future date.

An ↑ means a blog's traffic has gone up by 15% or more in the past month, and a ↓ means it's gone down 15%.

Top 10 UK Ad Blogs		(world
		ranking)
1   (1)	Welcome To Optimism	465,353	↓
2   (2)	FishNChimps	469,995
3   (3)	Scamp	560,088
4   (4)	Adliterate	692,070
5  (new)	Crackunit	836,311
6   (6)	Faris	840,035	↑
7   (7)	Northern Planner	1.1m	↑
8   (5)	Living Brands	1.4m	↓
9   (new)	Dan Germain	1.6m
10  (new)	TV's Worst Adverts	1.7m

A well-established blog but new to this chart is Iain Tait's Crackunit, a veritable beacon of quality content.

New in at No.9 this month is Dan Germain's blog, with the tagline "creative stuff, milky baby breath and some other rubbish". As you would expect from the man behind much of the wonderful stuff produced by Innocent Drinks, Dan's blog is warm, witty, creative, and shot-through with childlike wonder.

And new at No.10 is the blog that bites the hand that feeds us, TV's Worst Adverts.

UK means UK-based. Ad blog means ad blogs not marketing blogs, so that excludes Gapingvoid. Paul Colman doesn't class Life In The Middle as an ad blog and Russell Davies insists he no longer blogs about advertising. Also, I'm only counting English language blogs.

If I've missed anyone out, please tell me and I'll put them in next month.

Ad-Man Crawls

Me and a few other people from BBH are doing a sponsored crawl to raise money for Barnardo's, the charity that helps vulnerable children get a better start in life.

Simply click this link to make a donation.

Donations are secure and sent electronically to Barnardo's. If you are a UK taxpayer, Justgiving will automatically reclaim 28% Gift Aid on your behalf.

It's an excellent cause and I've bought kneepads and everything, so I'd really appreciate your support, dear blog-reader.

A tenner is fine.

Go on. Click the link.

Scamp's Couch

Today I received this e-mail:

Yo Uncle Simon. I have a question for you: We have the worst client here ever! He won't even listen and eats up a constant conveyor belt of Account people. What should I do when I really want a client to get a fucking grip and stop being an arsehole? What I really mean I guess is, how far can one push it? Do you have any advice? You can stick this on Scamp if you want, but don't mention my name! Yours, Mr Angry/ Mr Coward.

My answer was this:

Being rude or angry to clients doesn't work - they just get defensive. The only way to get them to "get a fucking grip" by which I assume you mean "buy your work" is to explain, explain, explain. Explain your idea a thousand different ways. Get reference. Lots of reference. Make them see it. Show it in situ. Show them what their consumers are really like. That kind of thing. All the best.

Any better suggestions?

Did The Vauxhall Corsa Puppets Hire A Prostitute?

TV's Worst Adverts seems to think so.

In a post entitled C'Mon Out Of Bed he explains his interpretation of the latest Vauxhall commercial.

One of the C’Mons (the red one) has hired a prostitute for the *band* to enjoy. While he’s showering himself down after the event, the prostitute decides that the 20 quid she got for doing the dirty with a band of puppets wasn’t enough, so she steals their Corsa as a tip. This goes down particularly badly with the Red puppet who has to wake the rest of the band enjoying a post-orgy nap (in the same bed) to chase after her.

Do you agree with his view? Or is there some other explanation that fits the advert?

Tuesday Tip No. 21 - Don't Behave

Returning after a hiatus caused by running out of ideas, here is another in my long-running yet doubtfully useful series of Tips For Young Creatives.

What I want to talk about today is being well-behaved, and why you shouldn't be.

First of all, I must make clear that I'm not advocating 'bad' behaviour, like turning up late for meetings, being rude to people, not listening, being untidy or uncouth, and generally walking around thinking that you're the shit. All of that is not on.

What I am advocating when I say 'Don't Behave' is - don't do things just because that's the way they're always done, or to make things easier for other people, at the expense of the work.

Five examples to explain what I mean.

1. Behaving means spending 90% of your day on that retail radio brief you've been given, with almost no time left over on the big TV brief that's floating around the department.

2. Behaving means saying yes when the account team ask you to write an alternative 'safe' version of your script, which they promise they will only present as a fall-back.

3. Behaving means always coming back with ideas for the media specified on the brief.

4. Behaving means agreeing with your creative director even when you think he's wrong and is going to mess up the ad.

5. Behaving means doing an average job on a dull brief for a difficult client, aka "you're really helping us out here".

In short, DON'T BEHAVE.

It won't get you anywhere. And it's so much less fun.

Tip No.20 - How To Discuss Ideas
Tip No.19 - Read Hugh's Tips
Tip No.18 - How To Get A Job In Advertising Part IV - How To Turn A Placement Into A Job
Tip No.17 - How To Get A Job In Advertising Part III - How To Approach Agencies (re-print of Tip No. 7)
Tip No.16 - How To Get A Job In Advertising Part II - How To Put A Book Together
Tip No. 15 - How To Get A Job In Advertising Part I - FAQ
Tip No. 14 - Make Friends With Traffic
Tip No. 13 - Get Reference
Tip No. 12 - Don't Stop Too Soon
Tip No.11 - Be Very
Tip No.10 - Breaking Up
Tip No.9 - Working Well With Your Partner
Tip No.8 - Finding The Right Partner
Tip No.7 - How To Approach Agencies
Tip No.6 - Never-Seen-Before Footage
Tip No.5 - Dicketts' Finger
Tip No.4 - Two Blokes In The Pub
Tip No.3 - Play Family Fortunes
Tip No.2 - Should You Take A Bad Job?
Tip No.1 - Don't Overpolish

Creative Generalism Rears Its Head Once Again

There's a post today over at Serendipity Book asking "Is creative generalism the answer?"

Well, let me answer that question.

It isn't.

In fact the idea enrages me so much that every time it pops up I feel the need to reach for a hammer, like I'm playing a blogging version of whack-a-mole.

If you want to know more about this accursed theory - which is godless, anti-capitalist, and contrary to all good sense - then Rusell Davies has written about it here and here. There's even a whole website dedicated to its evil.

Here's my Top 5 reasons why Specialism is better than Generalism.

1. You go ahead and try to staff an agency with generalists. There just aren't enough of them out there. Think of it like football. How many players can defend, create goals, and score goals? Not many. Johann Cruyff maybe, but that's about it.

2. Great advertising requires different skills - creative, strategic, inter-personal. How often do you find lots of all of these in the same person? Not often. For example, who is creative and organised? Not me. I've just basically made the same point twice in a row.

3. You need different personality types too. Take the Enterprise. They had Spock, Bones, Kirk and Scotty. Ah, now that would be quite an agency line-up, wouldn't it?

4. The advantages of specialisation are well known. It's been over 200 years now since Adam Smith showed how "the main cause of prosperity... is increasing division of labor." Don't these people ever learn?

5. Let's get hypothetical. Here's my team of specialists - Johnny Hornby (CEO), Paul Feldwick (Head of Planning), Richard Flintham (ECD). Could anyone put up a team of three generalists, that would make a better agency than HFF? I doubt it.

Read A Book! Read A Book!

If all public service advertising were this funny, it would be a whole lot more effective.

The swearing is good too.

Swearing is the most funniest thing. Fact. And puppets.

Who Knew That Hitler Was A Sheffield United Fan?

Every other year, we suffer a summer without football.

Maybe it's that keenly-felt lack which makes this YouTube mash-up so amusing.



Once again via the excellent Nitmesh.

p.s. I'm Jewish so please don't tell me I can't enjoy jokes involving Hitler. I can.

W&K Still Quite Good

Wayne Rooney hits the target.



The whole 'is it real or is it fake' debate has actually become a positive now, in my opinion, as I reckon people show these things to their mates and ask them what they think.

Here's a superb tactical ad on the same theme, a poster that has just gone up in Liverpool (who recently signed Fernando Torres to be their new No.9)


Full story here.

Blogs Galore

Maybe I'm lazy, just posting about other people's blogs.

I'm certainly slow, because these two have been around, like, for ages.

Still... better late than never.

My friend Nitmesh points me in the direction of two truly spectacular blogs - crackunit by Iain Tait, who is the planning partner at super-funky web/ content / experience agency Poke, and rubbishcorp by Nathan Cooper, formerly of Poke, now ECD at RGA London.

Both of these blogs are much better than mine.

You should certainly add them to your 'blogs I check regularly' list.

Here's a few reasons why.

From crackunit, 'Daft Hands':



"You have to give it a minute or so before it gets going", writes Iain, "but have patience, it’s worth it. It’s just really simple and charming, but a great bit of technique and something someone’s obviously put a lot of work into."

I quite agree. Very nickable too, if you're a creative. Whoops, I didn't say that.


From rubbishcorp, this 'Second Life in the real world' film:



I do like rubbishcorp. Even his logo is cool.

Great New Agency Blog

Most agency blogs start out stupendously dull. And then quickly die. Of boredom.

But today I became aware of a cracker - Lunar BBDO.

It's not the kind of content you see on the W&K blog, like how we won the Nokia pitch, it's more left-field and eclectic, with opinion on matters ranging from Live Earth to Big Brother.

Up at the moment is this incredible Danish viral which you must watch immediately.

In Need Of Some Serendipity

A bit down today, because Raining Time didn't get such a great write-up in Private View.

But this funny T-shirt cheered me up.


It's from Serendipity Book, a new (to me) blog written by Lee McEwan, who is Head of Research at Leo Burnett in London.

Lee's blog is well worth checking out because he has an excellent sense of humour.

And if we stop laughing, it means the terrorists have won. (Irony).

Another Baby. Literally.

The guys over at Incredible Flying Car put every ad they produce up on their blog. I like their candour, it's inspired me to do the same.

Here's my latest.


I'm not saying it's the greatest ever ad in the history of the world ever. But I do quite like the misdirect (albeit brief) that Barclaycard are introducing a credit card for babies.

God-Botherers Where Are You?

Just started The God Delusion, really enjoying it.

In fact I'm now desperate to run into a 'faith-head' so I can have a good argument with them.

Problem is, I don't know any. Maybe there aren't any in our accursed industry...

Lasers Or Cats?

The new Sony Blu-Ray ad is rather impressive. I love muscle-cars, I love riot police, and I love blue lasers. So I like the ad. Who wouldn't? via Nitmesh.


But it's a bit on the serious side. Portentous even. So I only like it, I don't love it.

I do, however, love the current crop of YouTube films featuring talking cats.





via Incredible Flying Car.

Awful, isn't it? You spend £1 million making an astounding visual extravaganza, and some bloke in his bedroom makes something much more engaging putting subtitles on a cat.

Welcome to Web 2.0...

Sin Of Omission - Now Rectified

In my run-through of the very fine creative directors we have here at BBH, I forgot to include Alex & Adrian, which is very bad.

However, this now gives me an excuse to post their Lynx 'Billions' ad, which is very good.



p.s. Marc Hatfield and Pete Bradly are great too.

As are Steve & Ian, Paul & Adrian, Brad & Dan, Dale & Hamish, Chris & Gary, Wes & Gary, Steve & Justin, Ben & Nadine, Richard & Graham, Claudia & Verity, Jim & Toby, Matt & Dave, Vic & Will, Mark Reddy, Richard & Andy, Chalu & Glenn.

And all the Planners and Account Handlers.

And Project Management.

And TV.

And everybody else.

Absolutely everybody in the building, with no one missed out.

That should do it...

Boss Off

Russell Ramsay, the Executive Creative Director here, is leaving to take up the same role at JWT.

We only arrived at BBH recently-ish, so we haven't spent that much time with Russell - one curry and a couple of creative reviews - but after 5 minutes with the guy you realise he's a great bloke, and a great CD. He'll be missed here, and do well there. No doubt about it.

However, we do have lots of other talented creative directors...

Like Rosie Arnold...


...Nick Gill...


...and Mick Mahoney.


Then there's the small matter of Campaign's creative director of the year for the last two years, John O'Keeffe.

And someone called, oh... can't remember his name... it's Sir something. He's not bad either.

So you know what? I think we'll be OK.

3 New Planning Blogs

A commenter on yesterday's chart introduces me to three new planning blogs.

You may well ask - 'Does the world need another planning blog?'

Well, apparently the answer is yes, because all three of these are quite popular.

Neil Perkin is a big strategic cheese at magazine group IPC, and his thought-provoking blog Only Dead Fish (short for 'only dead fish swim with the water') offers "Thoughts on media, communications, planning, magazines and life". Today he features a rather nifty chart of webtrends.

Planning For Fun, from agency planner Graeme Douglas, is a nicely personal planning blog. A recent project for Cravendale gave Graeme the excuse to post the famous 'Accrington Stanley' milk ad, which I guess gives me an excuse to post it as well.

Charles Frith's Punk Planning is not nearly as nihilistic as the name might suggest, but consists instead of an intelligently-written take on current events in the world of communications and the world in general. A recent post asks 'Is Blogging The New Tamagotchi?' Check him out.

The Ad Blog Charts For June 2007

Here are the world's most popular ad blogs, as measured by traffic rankings from Alexa.

Top 25 Ad Blogs		(world
		ranking)
1     (new)	Houtlust	2,769
2     (1)	AdRants	18,173
3     (2)	Advertising/Design Goodness	36,164
4     (5)	Adverbox	61,129
5     (3)	AdFreak	63,841	↓
6     (4)	Adverblog	64,913
7     (6)	Logic + Emotion	90,542
8     (8)	Coloribus	99,458
9     (new)	Duncan's TV Ad Land	109,208
10   (7)	Adland	130,410	↓
11   (9)	Ad Punch	141,768
12   (10)	Jaffe Juice	160,892
13   (11)	AdPulp	170,412
14   (13)	Copyranter	193,799
15   (12)	Twenty Four	213,048
16   (14)	Experience Curve	269,124	↓
17   (16)	How Advertising Spoiled Me	293,153
18   (18)	AdScam	300,520	↑
19   (new)	AdArena	303,179
20   (15)	Beyond Madison Avenue	336,889	↓
21   (19)	Make The Logo Bigger	360,726
22   (21)	Welcome To Optimism	394,562
23   (17)	Hee-Haw Marketing	414,128
24   (20)	Advertising For Peanuts	421,817
25   (22)	American Copywriter	455,291

Three new blogs this month.

In with a bullet at No.1 is Houtlust, a site I've only just become aware of but which is massively popular - even bigger than Adrants. It covers communications for not-for-profit advertisers. Must be a highly valuable resource for people in that sector I would say.

In at No.9 is Duncan's TV Ad Land. Duncan Macleod is an advertising enthusiast who lives in Australia. He keeps a very detailed record of what he considers to be the best new work, with commentary too. For a while I wasn't sure whether to class it as a blog or not, but he does post every day, so why not?

Coming in at No.19 is the fast-rising AdArena, from Radovan Grezo and his team in Slovakia, again covering 'best of new work', with a specific emphasis on new media, guerrilla and viral campaigns. Radovan sent me a wonderfully complimentary e-mail about Raining Time, so I'm happy to welcome him to the chart.

So three blogs drop out of the chart - Scamp, Hidden Persuader and BrandFlakes for Breakfast.

An ↑ means a blog's traffic has gone up by 15% or more in the past month, and a ↓ means it's gone down 15%.

Top 10 UK Ad Blogs		(world
		ranking)
1   (2)	Welcome To Optimism	394,562
2   (4)	FishNChimps	516,586
3   (3)	Scamp	536,700
4   (5)	Adliterate	749,555
5   (6)	Living Brands	799,790
6   (8)	Faris	987,096	↑
7   (9)	Northern Planner	1.3m	↑
8   (new)	Meme Huffer	2.4m
9  (10)	What If...	2.7m	↓
10  (7)	Beeker	3.7m	↓

I've removed AdScam from the UK chart, as I've belatedly realised that George Parker is based in the US, so he doesn't count. Fun blog though.

New in at No.8 this month is Meme Huffer by Jason Lonsdale, a Kiwi planner transplanted to London. He keeps an enjoyable and eclectic blog, with the tagline "a deep breath of ideas, culture & stuff".

UK means UK-based. Ad blog means ad blogs not marketing blogs, so that excludes Gapingvoid. Paul Colman doesn't class Life In The Middle as an ad blog and Russell Davies claims he no longer blogs about advertising, though the odd observation about our benighted industry does creep in. Also, I'm only counting English language blogs.

If I've missed anyone out, please tell me and I'll put them in next month.

So Who Deserved The Grand Prix And Who Didn't?

Outdoor


I love the idea of a solar-powered billboard providing electricity to the local community. Incredibly original, and truly altruistic. However, the line doesn't work at all. Since when did any bank claim to give power to the people anyway? Would have worked much better for a political party, or a power company.

Scamp Score - 5/10


Print


Not a vintage year for print. These ads are good, but not great. The fact that they're from Procter & Gamble is probably the most impressive thing about them.

Scamp Score - 7/10


Radio

The winning ad is an original idea, with rather witty writing. However, at 2 minutes it's a bit self-indulgent as an ad. Yes, the length would make it stand out. But unfortunately, it did start to drag somewhat. Also, I couldn't hear all the words clearly. I only got all the jokes when I downloaded a copy of the script (it's at the same link).

Scamp Score - 7/10


Promo



Bonded by Blood is complete genius. Playing rugby means being ready to spill blood for your brothers, so it fits the sport perfectly. There's even a sniff of Maori racial pride in there, which is wonderful. And the way it connects fans to the poster, by literally letting them have their heroes' DNA on their bedroom wall... phenomenal.

Scamp Score - 10/10


Titanium


The young people, they love burgers. And they love video games. Putting creepy icon The King into his own series of X-Box games is a perfect marriage of the two. Apparently the games were even quite good. They made a shedload of money for BK. And one of them became the 3rd highest selling X-Box game ever. You just can't argue with that. Watch the film here.

Scamp Score - 10/10


Film



Who were all these idiots saying this was a weak year for film? Dove Evolution is an absolutely incredible piece of communication. Subtle, beautiful, and powerful... I'm willing to bet this had a huge effect on the Dove brand, and what's more, on the psyches of of women worldwide.

Scamp Score - 10/10


Overall: some witty ideas, a lot of originality - albeit occasionally for its own sake, perhaps - and one piece of work (Dove Evolution) that will still be remembered in 30 years' time. Not a bad year at all.

Gems From Cannes

Been looking through the Cannes winners.

And what gives me the most pleasure - aside of course from the schadenfreude of seeing friends do less well than expected - is the Bronze winners.

They're often ads you haven't seen before, things that are maybe a bit more quirky and not totally immediate, like a Gold winner has to be.

Here are some of my favourite bronze-hued gems.

Just click on the image if you need to make any of them bigger

The UK: Are We Crap?

Grim news from Cannes, chaps.

British agencies are winning hardly any gongs at all.

Harvey Nichols 'Catfight' (above) is the only ATL gold so far.

We are on course for our worst-ever performance.

Does this list make you feel any better?

Winston Churchill, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Charles Darwin, William Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, John Lennon, Horatio Nelson, Oliver Cromwell, Ernest Shackleton, Captain James Cook, The Duke of Wellington, Paul McCartney, Alexander Fleming, Alan Turing, Michael Faraday, Stephen Hawking, Emmeline Pankhurst, William Wilberforce, David Bowie, David Beckham, Thomas Paine, Bodicea, William Blake, Charles Dickens, Sir Frank Whittle, John Peel, John Logie Baird, Aneurin Bevan, Francis Drake, Florence Nightingale, T. E. Lawrence, Alexander Graham Bell, Freddie Mercury, Edward Elgar, David Attenborough, George Stephenson, Charlie Chaplin, William Caxton, Bobby Moore, Jane Austen, Charles Babbage, Geoffrey Chaucer, James Watt, David Hume, Walter Raleigh, Barnes Wallis, Richard Burton, Tony Benn, David Livingstone, Tim Berners-Lee, Marie Stopes.

From the BBC poll of 100 Greatest Britons. N.B. I didn't put them all in, just the ones I like. For example, I left out Enoch Powell. And Elton John. Not that there's anything wrong with Elton - I just don't think he should have made the Top 100.

Man Gets Post-Natal Depression

The Vodafone campaign has been such a big part of my working life. Now it's gone out into the world I feel, well, a bit bereft. Does anyone else get this? How do you deal with it?


This is what Picasso would have painted, if given the brief 'Scamp was feeling a bit blue.'

Taken from a fun art mash-up competition.

Here's another entry.

My Babies

I've slagged-off plenty of ads here in the past.

Well, now you can slag off mine if you want.

Here are four press/poster executions, and a TV ad, all for the launch of Vodafone's mobile internet service.










Director: Simon Ratigan at HLA

Man Gives Birth

The campaign I've been working on for six months breaks tonight.

I'm 50% excited, 50% relieved it's over, and 100% too close to the whole thing to know if it's any good...

Swearing Is Funny. Puppets Are Funny. And So Are Big Flapping Willies

Oh man, I laughed so much. AND I'M A REALLY SOUR HUMAN BEING.

Go immediately to Fish 'n' Chimps to see this hilarious perversion of the Free Hugs campaign.

Voiceovers - Is It Better If They're Famous?

Sorry, still got voiceovers on the brain.

But this time I'm thinking not about what to say, but who says it.

Is it better to get a famous person? After all, I like the Tesco ads a bit more because I recognise the voices of people I like on them - Terry Wogan, Ronnie Corbett, Cilla Black.

Or is it only important to get a great performance? Louis Mellis and Garrison Keillor were unknown (in the UK) before they lent their voices to Guinness and Honda, arguably the two best VOs of recent years.

The only thing I'm sure of is there's no point using somebody famous if their voice isn't recognisable.

Here's an example of what I mean. It's the most recent Nike running ad.



Could you tell the VO is by Edward Norton? I doubt it. Great read. But... much money spent, and no star-power added.

How Long Should A Voiceover Be?

Currently finalising the voiceover on this commercial I've been working on for six months.

My initial instinct - make it as short as possible. Aren't voiceovers just some burbling sound that goes on in the background, completely ignored by one and all?

The Skoda 'Baking Of' ad doesn't have one at all. Nor does the new Sony ad. (Yes, I know some of you hate it. Screw you! Heavy-metal poodles rule!)

However.

A very influential person here at BBH thinks the public is now bored of what he calls "57+3", by which he means a 60-second ad that consists of a 57-second visual metaphor followed by a 3-second super at the end which explains it.

Also in the 'voiceovers are good' camp you might find the wonderful new Golf ad and, going back a bit, Guinness "Surfer".

(Although you could argue these are 'soundscapes' not genuine voiceovers.)

So what to do? Well, the fact is that our ad does need at least some explanatory voiceover (it's a relatively new product we're selling).

And given a certain groundswell here against "57+3", and a wholly understandable desire at the client end to say some impressive things about their product, it looks like the voiceover is going to be fairly long.

At first I was gutted. But then I realised that, if I could make the words interesting enough, maybe it can work.

To paraphrase Claude Hopkins: "People don't listen to voiceovers. They listen to words they find interesting."

So, fingers crossed. (When they're not typing the 100th draft of my VO...)

Better Than Balls

I can't believe I'm saying this, but in my opinion, the new Sony ad is even better than Balls.

Balls was beautiful and impressive, of course, but I always found it a little po-faced.

This new epic, however, has even more visual daring, but adds a delicious sense of humour - in fact it's camper than a priest in a disco. You can't beat a poodle getting his car washed to an Iron Maiden soundtrack, can you? Didn't think so.

Agency: Fallon London; Director: Pleix; Production Company: Blink

Incredible Flying Car

I've found a wonderful new specimen of that rare beast, the Creative Blog...

It's called Incredible Flying Car and is by Smollensky & Blake, a creative team at Y&R London.

Here's two examples of their consistently innovative and amusing content:

Homeboy or Homeless?


Jiffy Bag Disco


Keep up the good work, guys.

What A Smoke-Out!

I can't help it, I'm addicted to The Apprentice.

Last night's episode was classic TV drama. Sirallan first of all offered Katie a place in the final. Then more or less asked her to swear on her kids' lives that she really wanted it. Result? She pulled out. The man is a master.

And this story proves him right. Seems Katie was planning a media career all along.

One thought: any half-decent Account Man could win The Apprentice, couldn't they?

Looking For Music

As I've mentioned before, looking for music is the hardest thing in the world.

Why? Well, with your edit, you have a limited number of shots to choose from - you can more or less try every combination. But there are literally millions of music tracks in existence. Although I think we've found the perfect track now, you can never be 100% sure.

So although listening to loads of music is fun, it is also frustrating.

Especially with music sites as knowledgeable as the one above. Gratifying to see the search only took 0.334 seconds though...

Olympic Update

Here's the best comment going around about the new logo...



Thanks to Anna Tozer for the tip.

Worst Logo Ever?

This is the new logo for the 2012 London Olympics (by Wolff Olins), released today.

A sad day for our advertising/ graphic design industry, I feel.

Read Seb Coe's justification here.

Apparently, it comes in a series of shades of pink, blue, green and orange (euurrrgh) and will "evolve" in the run-up to the Games. Perhaps it evolves into a logo that's actually good...

Thanks to Paul Silburn for the tip

UPDATE: There's an unintentionally hilarious video that goes with it.

Digital And The Emperor's New Clothes

"handed out like candy bars in online"

I've been wanting to write a reaction to last week's D&AD awards.

Now someone else has done it for me.

Here's a wonderfully thought-provoking guest post, by award-winning DDB London creative Rob Messeter.

I know it's the future and everything, and everyone seems to be wetting themselves with excitement over it (particularly marketing people) but, is it me, or is most online advertising really pony.

I’m not just talking about the big shouty garish banners, or the annoying pop up things, I'm actually thinking of the supposedly award-winning stuff.

For instance the Virgin Casino campaign that last week picked up a silver Pencil in the online advertising category. Let me refresh your memory, you click on the word 'Spin' and a chap dressed like a croupier, wait for it, spins around. In another execution, you click on the word ‘Stand’, and a man stands up. Genius. If I presented anything so woeful to my creative director he'd laugh me out of the room.

Have a look for yourself.

Of course this is just one isolated example, so lets look at another. Another pencil winner in the same category. The Mercedes GL Banner. It’s a shocker. Car drives around bumpy terrain, and glass of water doesn’t get spilt. Ford made a TV ad like this almost a decade ago.

But, these campaigns are over a year old, and things move quickly in digital. Lets look at something current. A recent campaign from the same agency that created the Virgin Casino work.

This time the work is for COI/Anti-Smoking, 'There's never been more ways to get rid of cigarettes.' Now, lets skip the 10 word endline and move straight to the series of 'games' a term used very loosely as in fact they weren't games at all. One of the ways to get rid of cigarettes is apparently to drop an elephant on them, or lower them into a vat of acid. The hottest campaign from the hottest digital agency in town? Hmmm. A strategy that will never make a smoker stop smoking wrapped up in a series of 'games' that would only engage/ challenge/ interrupt a 3 year old.

I think we need to get some perspective. Digital is still relatively in its infancy. As time goes on I’m sure we will begin to see more maturity in the work. But for the moment, everyone please calm down. Clients, throwing all your money mindlessly into digital might not always be the best answer to your business problem. And awards juries, please try and be a bit more critical. In a year when the brilliant Nike St.Wayne poster didn’t get a look in at D&AD, pencils were being handed out like candy bars in online.

There’s something not right there.

That Richard Burton Fella Can Act A Bit

Lovely new Golf ad, from my former muckers at DDB London.

Great insight about the pleasure of driving at night, beautifully shot, and most of all, it's cool, which is exactly what the Golf brand needs.

But what really stands out for me is that voiceover.

It's just mesmeric, isn't it?

New Nike Ad

This latest blockbuster is well-directed, with a lot of nice narrative touches - even a half-decent performance from Ronaldinho - but... I just feel like I've seen it before.

In fact it leads me to ask a question that until recently was unthinkable.

Is Nike still cool?

Three Truths About Editing

1. As soon as you go to the toilet, someone will take your favourite shot out.

2. The person with the most power in an edit suite... is the person physically sitting nearest the editor.

3. The more different restaurants the group decides to order from, the longer the food takes to come. You all need to agree on one restaurant, and order from there. How hard can it be?

Editing

Six men. One room in Soho.

Yes, it gets smelly.

But at least they bring you cups of tea. And sushi.

And it's quite good fun really. We're all being friendly, and collaborating.

And the ad is looking better and better.

I will post some more interesting thoughts about editing when my brain starts to recover...

The Ad Blog Charts For May 2007

Here are the world's most popular ad blogs, as measured by traffic rankings from Alexa.

Top 25 Ad Blogs		(world
		ranking)
1     (1)	AdRants	16,074
2     (2)	Advertising/Design Goodness	36,267
3     (3)	AdFreak	44,620
4     (4)	Adverblog	63,593
5     (5)	Adverbox	71,754
6     (6)	Logic + Emotion	89,238
7     (7)	Adland	106,962	↓
8     (8)	Coloribus	108,639	↑
9     (new)	Ad Punch	149,038
10   (9)	Jaffe Juice	155,737
11   (10)	AdPulp	174,787
12   (11)	Twenty Four	202,869
13   (13)	Copyranter	210,381
14   (12)	Experience Curve	220,807
15   (14)	Beyond Madison Avenue	266,374
16   (15)	How Advertising Spoiled Me	278,297
17   (16)	Hee-Haw Marketing	368,560	↓
18   (18)	AdScam	369,664
19   (21)	Make The Logo Bigger	377,108	↑
20   (17)	Advertising For Peanuts	407,265
21   (19)	Welcome To Optimism	428,001
22   (22)	American Copywriter	488,016
23   (24)	Scamp	518,520
24   (20)	Hidden Persuader	535,251
25   (25)	BrandFlakes for Breakfast	562,043

The Top 8 are unchanged. There's a new entry at 9, the slick 'see the latest good work' site Ad Punch. (N.B. it's not a new site, but it was new to me).
An ↑ means a blog's traffic has gone up by 15% or more in the past month, and a ↓ means it's gone down 15%.

Top 10 UK Ad Blogs		(world
		ranking)
1   (1)	AdScam	369,664
2   (2)	Welcome To Optimism	428,001
3   (3)	Scamp	518,520
4   (4)	FishNChimps	556,598	↑
5   (5)	Adliterate	823,330
6   (6)	Living Brands	908,210
7   (7)	Beeker	1.27m
8   (9)	Faris	1.30m	↑
9   (10)	Northern Planner	1.82m	↑
10  (8)	What If...	2.19m	↓

The entire UK Top 7 is unchanged. FishNChimps is up more than 15% this month, after going down more than 20% last month. He's all over the place, like a mad woman's piss! Nice blog though.

UK means UK-based. Ad blog means ad blogs not marketing blogs, so that excludes Gapingvoid. Paul Colman doesn't class Life In The Middle as an ad blog and Russell Davies has announced he will no longer blog about advertising. Also, I'm only counting English language blogs.

If I've missed anyone out, please tell me and I'll put them in next month.

Doc Rogers - The Blog

My friend Doc Rogers has an amazing ability to find the coolest stuff on the web, including the amusing 'random ransom note generator' you see above. Visit his site for more.

And How Not To Do It

Above is a commercial for the new Alfa Romeo 159.

This bejewelled turd consists of a series of generic driving shots voiceovered with a list of utterly banal product benefits (self-ventilating disc brakes? wowzer!) held together with a flimsy, cliched, smug and meaningless premise. (The reason you bought this new Alfa? Because it's an Alfa).

I only mention it because I couldn't help noticing that the brief for this sucker must have been exactly the same as the brief for the totally brilliant Skoda commercial I featured yesterday.

So to me, it's an excellent demonstration of what makes a good TV ad versus what makes a bad TV ad.

Good - emotional sell; Bad - rational sell

Bad - laundry list of product features; Good - say one thing and say it well

Good - highly creative visual treatment; Bad - highly familiar visual treatment

More contributions welcome.

Interestingly, although I now know every feature of the new Alfa 159, I don't have any interest in it. And whereas the Skoda doesn't tell me any of its features at all, merely making a whimsical claim to be "full of lovely stuff" - I'm far more interested to find out what those features actually might be.

My guess is I'm totally preaching to the converted here - nothing wrong with letting-off steam, helps keep me sane - but if there was one individual out there, maybe the Alfa client or someone from the agency, who would step forward and take me on, argue that this ad is better than the Skoda ad, I would love it, just love it...

New Skoda Ad - The Baking Of

Really nice ad, this, which shows a team of bakers whipping up a Skoda Fabia from dough, berries, golden syrup and the like. Lovely tone to it.

My favourite shot is of the chap struggling to fit the rear stop-light... which is made out of jelly (see above).

Enjoy.

What Does Everyone Do?

Well, I'm back.

A seven-day shoot.

Completely knackered. Watching a film crew lift heavy pieces of equipment can really tire a man out.

As I haven't really written that much on my blog about the actual shooting of adverts, maybe now is an appropriate time to start.

And where better to begin than with the Director?


Creatives obsess about directors. I think that's because we know it's the director who has the biggest influence on the final ad. And whereas we can't choose our account team, client, or creative director... we do get to choose our director.

It's partly fear too. A script - like architects' plans and mathematical formulae - is perfect, in the way that no finished artefact can be. When you hand your script to a director, you are handing it to the man who turns your perfect Euclidean construct into rough-and-tumble reality. Of course, sometimes they'll make it better than the blueprint. But the fear that they'll cock it up is always there.

Over the years I've noticed that it doesn't really matter if you and the director have wildly divergent personalities. As long as you have the same vision for the ad, you'll probably get on well.

If you do fight a lot then A) you probably picked the wrong director and B) you probably won't end up with a good ad.

It's a strange relationship though. The director has ultimate power on the set. 50 or so people jump to their commands. And yet if the creative says "can we try it this other way...?" then they kind of have to listen. But you feel guilty. It's like giving orders to an emperor.

There's a lot of mystique around directors. Who's on the way up, who's on the way down. Who flies a runner from Iceland down to Soho to bring back a certain coffee bean for him. Who's shagging who, who's earning how much, who's moving production companies, who can't get work any more, who's getting 50 scripts a week.

Most of it's hearsay. I once thought of setting up a website - Ratemydirector.com - where creatives could log in to give anonymous feedback on the man behind the camera.

Until then, I'm happy to give this feedback in public:

Simon Ratigan of HLA has done a great job for us so far.

You'll Never Guess What...

That's Right, Still On Shoot

Oh Lordy This Is One Long, Long Shoot

Still Shooting And I'm Not Going To Say What It Is

Still Shooting

My Partner's Birthday Dinner Last Night

Happy XXth, Nick!

On a shoot

The New Honda Ad

Only one possible blog topic - the new Honda ad, which broke yesterday.

And only one question to ask - is it as good as Cog, Grrr, and Impossible Dream?

In short - no, it isn't.

Having said that, it is a very, very good ad.

It's brilliantly directed (by promo king Mark Romanek), with a really unique look, great atmosphere, and a couple of awesome shots - I absolutely love the scientist vaulting the barrel, which I take to be a sly reference to Donkey Kong.

However, when all is said and done, we've seen engineers in ads before. And the notion that "having ideas is hard" is not a new one (especially to us creatives, right guys 'n gals?); it's certainly not as original as "hate something, change something".

I hope I'm not being too critical here, but you know what? It's Wieden & Kennedy's own fault, for setting the bar so high with their previous ads...

Friday Dilemma

Your creative director asks you to recommend him a team. Do you suggest someone really good... who'll be a competitive threat when they come? Or do you suggest someone not so good - it will call your judgement into question when they don't do very well. Or do you just ring your mates?

Inside Her Pretty Little Head

I've been reading an interesting new book about marketing to women.

I used to work with the authors, who as well as being super-smart, are super-hot chicks.

Oh dear, I probably shouldn't have said that last bit...

Anyway, despite the complete lack of pictures (come on, girls, let's sex it up a bit for the second edition!) there's some great stuff in here.

Their answer to why creative departments are full of men? Because creatives have to fight uncompromisingly for their work, and "Boys always think what they have done is brilliant".

They also have a great bit on women putting down men in advertising:

There are a number of commercials in which some hapless bloke... is the butt of the joke for his partner and her bitchy mate. We think this is an attempt to make the women in the audience feel that the brand is on-side with them... the truth is that... observing a woman humiliating a man in front of other people in an aggressive way does not feel good to the female audience.

It's embarrassing, seems cruel and is not empathetic. We're not saying that women don't sometimes complain about men or their partners, but they usually feel guilty afterwards, and they certainly don't want it played out to the rest of the population in the middle of a prime-time TV show.

And a final point to ponder:

A masculine bias is evidenced not just in the worst work that the industry produces but in the best work too. When you look at awards lists, it is inevitably male brands that are picking up the accolates for the best work.

In fact, analysing the Cannes Gold Lion winners for the last seven years, they find it splits out like this: Male Categories: 82 Lions, Neutral: 43, Female: a paltry 9.

Time to steal that shampoo brief?

isobel Needs A Team

London-based ad agency isobel, creators of the print ad you see above, need a new creative team, and have asked me to put the word out, which I am very happy to do.

In their words, they are looking for "a quality middleweight team. Not the kind of middleweight team who’s always been a middleweight team, but the kind that go from junior to senior and barely even set foot in middleweight."

You can email dave@isobel.com or rob@isobel.com with CV’s, or drop your book into isobel, 4th Floor, 91 New Cavendish Street, London W1.

Dave and Rob are stand-up guys.

If you fit the bill, give it a go.

Awards Shows And Silos - A Comparison

The One Show finalists are out.

Not too much UK stuff is in. The Harvey Nichols and Marmite campaigns are. Plus the brilliant Billions from my own agency. (Bias? Hmm, probably. But it was done before I arrived, honest).

However, my point today is this.

Why oh why, in these days of 360 degree media, is there no award for best idea? Everything is siloed into press, poster, TV etc.

I guess Campaign organise their awards by medium so they can get the Poster awards (for example) sponsored by the poster contractors etc, but what excuse do D&AD and The One Show have?

Cannes used to award their Titanium Lion to the best integrated campaign, but last year they changed the rules and gave it to what they considered 'the best idea in any medium', which turned out to be designs for customised barcodes.

So therefore every awards show in the world is now rewarding 'best idea in this medium' and 'best idea in that medium' and no one is awarding 'best idea across multiple media'.

Can that be right?

David Mamet To Direct Ford Ads

Fascinating story a few days ago about the genius behind Glengary Glen Ross, House Of Games, and The Spanish Prisoner directing ads for Ford.

Can't wait to see how they turn out.

One other feature of the story I found interesting was just how much more intelligently they seem to write about advertising in North America.

Within a few short lines, there's a lucid description of the merits and demerits of comparative advertising, and an explanation of the exact division of responsibilities between Mamet and the agency copywriters.

I don't want to turn this into a let's-slag-off-Campaign post, but... would you get that in Campaign?

UPDATE

I found one of the ads on YouTube.



It's not that great.

Funny, that. Most ads by great directors aren't.