Dubiously Useful Labels

Okay. Ambient Week is finishing early, because I've run out of things to say on the subject.

So here's the wrapper of a Snickers bar I ate last night.

It has instructions on it.

That's right. Instructions, on how to open a bar of chocolate.

Well, it is a 2-pack I suppose, so maybe that makes it a tiny bit more complicated, but... come on.

Reminds me of the label once spotted on a mattress - 'Do not swallow'.

The Three Bugbears of Ambient

After attempting to celebrate the Ambient medium a little, it's time to list my three 'Bugbears of Ambient'.

Daddy Bugbear:

There's a nice book called Guerrilla Advertising by Gavin Lucas and Mike Dorrian that has a great selection of Ambient work. But you know what that book should really be called? "Photos Taken By Creatives". Too many Ambient ads are scams. They're not done for a real Client. They're whacked into place by the creative team, snap, then removed. There are plenty of award-winning Ambient pieces whose media lifespan was less than 2 minutes. Example:

(click if you need to make bigger)

Mummy Bugbear:

Too many Ambient pieces only work as a photo! They only work because the photo is taken from exactly the right angle. In real life, they wouldn't work. Unless you happened to be standing exactly where the photographer was.


Baby Bugbear:

Clients never buy it.

Readers' Ambient

Scamp readers submitted over 100 Ambient ideas, here are some of my favourites. Just click on the pic if you need to make any of them bigger.

Ouch. By Stefan & Mark



Nice twist. By Rick & Barney


On a more serious note. By Javier


Fran & Chris placed these stickers in cookware shops throughout London. They say. Anyway, nice first use of the baking pan as a medium.


I think I may have seen this before. And I'm not too sure of the ethics of promoting anti-cellulite products, given that they apparently don't work. But it's a clever idea. By Cat

Front
Back

This student stuck a cutout of himself against the glass front doors of ad agencies he wanted to work at. Good wheeze. By Matthew

So... whaddaya think?

Tuesday Tip No.70 - How To Do Ambient

Here's my Top Five tips. Feel free to add your own in the comments.

1. Avoid stuff that's been done. True of any medium, of course. But with Ambient - when you have the whole world for your canvas - it would be a shame to do an ad in washrooms, on coins, or on escalators... when these have already been used so many times.

2. Don't expect it to actually happen. You need an anti-rejection suit to survive in this business at the best of times. But with Ambient ideas, the attrition rate is even higher than for other media. TV spots are booked. Press schedules are booked. No one ever 'booked' an Ambient ad, therefore it doesn't need to happen... the Traffic people don't have to push for it to happen, and the Client doesn't have to sign off on anything they don't absolutely love. So manage your expectations accordingly.

3. Make the location fit the idea. An ad is not more exciting just because it's on a crane or a toilet. It's exciting if it's relevant.

4. How to judge them. My criterion is very simple - 'Would It Get In The Metro?' (London's free morning newspaper). Every morning, they run a couple of funny or weird pictures, and quite often these are advertising stunts. This is free PR for the brand, and gets seen by many more people than see the physical Ambient piece itself. If you think your idea is funny or weird enough to get in the Metro, draw it up. Otherwise, don't.

5. Do it yourself. As I already said in Point 2, Ambient ideas almost never happen. So why not do it yourself? You only need one location. You can often use cheap materials, and take the photo yourself. Then if nothing else, you'll have a nice piece for your book.

Previous Tips

What Makes A Good Ambient Ad?

This week is going to be Ambient Week on Scamp.

I hope it will be fun.

Let's start off by asking the most obvious question - what makes an Ambient ad good?

Mostly it's the same things that make any ad good: clever, funny, relevant, well-branded, powerful sales message etc.

But there are certain characteristics which the Ambient medium offers that no other medium can. And a truly great Ambient ad exploits them. I would suggest these characteristics are Disruption, Provocation, and Super-relevance.

Disruption. Much more so than a press ad, an Ambient ad can be right in your face. A Swedish coffee brand that had the tagline 'for unexpected visitors' built a submarine bursting out of the middle of a city square. And several religious organisations have used inflatable churches - if people won't go to church, let's stick the church by their office, or at the beach.





Provocation. The fact that an Ambient execution is 'real' - i.e. not just a picture of a thing, like on TV, but the actual thing itself - makes it more visceral. This means that Ambient work has a greater power to shock and awe. And at its best, it is wonderfully provocative.



And finally, Super-Relevance. Because an Ambient ad is situated in the real environment, it can be used in a location-specific way, thus giving it a kind of 'super-relevance' that other media can never quite achieve.

This was the first Ambient ad I ever came across - it was given to us as an example in college. And it's still one of my favourites.


The message is tied in perfectly to its physical location.

So those are three examples, I could have picked hundreds more. But do let me know what you think of them, and whether my criteria are the right ones, or if there are other criteria for judging Ambient you feel would be more appropriate.

And keep your own submissions coming in, to simon dot veksner at bbh dot co dot uk. They'll be featured soon.

Hello You. Now Please Die.

At last, definitive proof that there is no God. For if there was, he surely would not have allowed this commercial to be made.

P.S. Thanks to everyone who has sent me work for Ambient Week (see yesterday's post). Keep those Ambient ideas coming in to simon dot veksner at bbh dot co dot uk.

Taking The Ambient Temperature

Ambient used to be all the rage.

At one time, it was the world's sexiest medium... before the rise of Digital.

But is it still relevant today?

Mastercard's Valentine-themed Ambient piece, which I featured a couple of days ago, got a mixed reaction from readers.

Perhaps the medium's high point may turn out to have been Mother's wonderful Britart campaign - from 2002.

Last year, only 8 entries were accepted into the Ambient category by D&AD. And of those, only 2 were from the UK.

Can we still do Ambient? Do people care any more? Is it still something worth having in your student book?

I think so. I love Ambient. It's an opportunity to demonstrate pure creativity, unfettered by media restrictions.

So I'm making next week Ambient Week. Every day I am going to showcase the best of Ambient advertising. Feel free to suggest candidates.

And if you're a student and you have a cool Ambient ad in your book, I want you to send it to me, at simon dot veksner at bbh dot co dot uk, and I'll put those up too. (If you're looking for a job, it may showcase your work. Yes, some ECD's read this blog. Why they don't have better things to do, I don't know).

If you want to submit something and be anonymous, that's fine too. And if you're not a student but you just have a cool Ambient ad in your book that never got made, that would be great. Send it. I just think it would be fun for us to spend a whole week looking at Ambient.

For inspiration (or possibly criticism) here's a reminder of last year's Cannes Outdoor Grand Prix winner - HBO's Voyeur Project.

Tuesday Tip No.69 - The Truth Is Not Enough

If you're putting a book together to get your first job, you have to write your own strategies for campaigns, and I already wrote a tip about the importance of telling the truth, not for moral or ethical reasons, but because it leads to more powerful advertising.

I was reminded of this when a jobhunting team e-mailed me some strategies yesterday, which included:

Gola - Sporty, but not too sporty

Sky HD - Make the most of your sofa

In a sense, the team have done what I suggested - found an unusual and interesting truth about the product or target market. It is certainly true that Gola is for people who are sporty, but not too sporty. And if you get Sky HD, you will definitely spend more time on your sofa. These are good insights.

And teams gunning for that first job often have entire books of strategies like this. However, to actually get that first job, there's a level beyond this that you need to break through to.

Now, this may seem obvious, and it probably is obvious to even the most junior Planner, but it doesn't seem to be obvious to young Creatives, judging from the number of books I see which haven't yet grasped this principle, but... the truth is not enough.

When you come up with an interesting and unusual truth, you have to test it against whether it is also a good sell for the product. Good sell means makes it seem more interesting, desirable, better value etc.

So, taking the Gola strategy... I'm not sure that 'outing' me as someone who is sporty but not too sporty makes me want to buy these trainers. In fact it might put me off. It's like saying "Porsche - for rich guys who want to ensure everyone knows they're rich". A true statement, but not the way to get people to buy a Porsche. And for Sky HD, pointing out the fact that you'll be spending more time on the sofa may also come into the 'true, but a turn-off' category.

It's when you can find strategies where the insight is equally fresh and surprising, but which also does a job on making the product seem more desirable, that you've hit pay-dirt.

Previous Tips

Maybe I'm Getting Old

And soppy.

And sentimental.

But I liked this.

Bus Slogan Generator

My lovely colleague NT found this.

How it works: you type in a slogan, and it comes out in the style of the atheist bus ad.

Write one of your own in the comments, and if it's any good, I'll wack it up here as a pic. Can't promise to do them all though, as I am a bit hung-over.

Here's one, from 'Anonymous'



Here's three more. All from our old friend 'Anonymous'

You Can't Fake This Kind Of Madness

And if you don't know why it's good, I can't help you.

Tuesday Tip No.68 - What Hours Should You Be Working?

Our survey showed that the most popular time for Scamp readers to leave work is between 6.30pm and 7, having arrived, most commonly, before 9.

That's not a killingly long day, certainly compared to professions like banking or law.

I reckon there’s still a widespread belief that ‘a natural talent for it’ is the essential criterion for success in creative fields - like art, music and even advertising – far more so than in less creative fields like management consultancy, where it's believed that hard work is the key.

But are we Creatives really different?

In Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers he explains something he calls the “10,000 hour rule,” which states that to become expert at anything, one simply needs to put in 10,000 hours practicing it.

The 10,000 figure comes from the research of Anders Ericsson, who in the early 1990’s studied violinists at the Berlin Academy of Music.

“The curious thing about Ericsson’s study is that he and his colleagues couldn’t find any ‘naturals’ - musicians who could float effortlessly to the top while practising a fraction of the time that their peers did,” writes Gladwell. “Nor could they find ‘grinds’, people who worked harder than everyone else and yet just didn’t have what it takes to break into the top ranks. Their research suggested that once you have enough ability to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. That’s it. What’s more, the people at the very top don’t just work much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder.”

Some Creatives cling to the belief that success is down to luck – getting the right brief at the right time, from a Client who just happened to be looking for great work. But if that is your view, you’ll be in a minority.

The pop culture quote: “The harder I work, the luckier I get,” attributed variously to movie mogul Sam Goldwyn and golfer Gary Player, is gaining greater and greater acceptance.

So even if you're a Creative who believes in the primacy of natural talent, or luck, you should be aware that attitudes are changing.

Hard workers are believed to be intrinsically more valuable.

Therefore, when you start a new job, it’s vital you establish a reputation as a hard worker - arrive before your boss arrives, and don’t leave until after he leaves. There’s an old saying that goes: “The man who has a reputation as an early riser, can get up at whatever time he chooses.”

However, if you are naturally a hard worker, my advice is don’t work hard gratuitously. Take your full holiday entitlement, and take your weekends – unless there’s a screaming emergency – else you’ll either burn out, fall out of love with the business, or end up depriving yourself of essential external stimulation, and your work will suffer. It’s easy to get into the habit of always leaving the office late as a matter of course. Don’t do that. Keep an extra gear in reserve, so you can kick up your work-rate when there’s a major crisis, or a major opportunity.

But the question of how hard you should work is partly answered by the prevailing culture of the Agency you’re working at.

In some Agencies, everyone works hard. “If you don’t come in on Saturday, then don’t bother coming in on Sunday” – words supposedly said by Tim Delaney. Wieden & Kennedy has such a reputation for long hours that it has acquired the nickname ‘Weekend & Kennedy.’ If you don’t work hard in an Agency like this, you’ll have a double problem – not only will you not produce as much work as everyone else, but also, you won’t fit in.

There are plenty of Agencies where Creatives normally work normal office hours. If that feels like what you want to do – perhaps you have a family, or other interests, you’re just not that into advertising, or you’re mentally exhausted by six o’clock – then you’ll be a lot happier if you work at one of these places.

I personally don't spend long hours in the office. However, I do seem to do a lot of thinking outside office hours. When I’m working on a brief it gives me a kind of psychological eczema, that I find myself scratching in the shower, on the bus, and on the toilet. So maybe that makes up for it.

Previous Tips

Kill Your Speed Or Live With It

I'm jealous of this ad.

Not saying it's the best road safety commercial ever made, ever in the history of the world ever, but it's very hard to come up with new angles on this subject. They have.

I also liked an anti-drink drive campaign I saw the other day, that was about how if you get caught drink driving, you get processed just like any other criminal. No car crashes in that one either. Just the humdrum reality of getting interviewed by a desk sergeant, and giving a urine sample.

Reminds me of what Richard Huntington (now Head of Planning at Saatchi's) reckons is the main thing planning should do for Creatives: "Start you in an interesting place."

Ever Ranted With The Devil In The Pale Moonlight?

Have you heard Christian Bale's rant at a lighting cameraman? There's now a dance remix of it (above) which is pretty funny, and as a bonus, reminds you of some of his cool movie roles.

The Bale rant set Scamp reader RS to wondering about rants that we in advertising have been on the receiving end of.

I don't have many to report I'm afraid.

A production company producer once sounded off at me for about 3 minutes after I suggested a change to the edit, which included the line "in my 24 years in this business, that's the stupidest idea I've ever heard."

And a Creative Director once told me: "You think you're so fucking intellectually superior, with your university education and your long words" after I exposed his lack of understanding of the difference between 'surreal' and 'hyper-real'.

Oddly enough, following those blow-ups I became good mates with them both.

Come on then, spill it. What's the worst rant you've been hit with?

ComputerTan - Free Desktop Tanning App

I'm not going to tell you what this is, because that would spoil it.

It's good though.

After you've watched the film, the website is here.

Help Settle An Argument

Scowling A.D. has very kindly read the first draft of my book for me, but he disagrees with a bit I've done about the differing personalities of Art Directors and Copywriters.

I wrote that Copywriters tend to be the talkers, and the strategists, whereas Art Directors prefer to say less and do more (even if what they call 'doing' I call sitting in a photographer's studio reading the newspaper).

Scowling A.D. complains that "Art Directors aren't always strong silent types - just as likely to be stereotypically louder, more energetic, more colourful, harder-partying, more passionate than Copywriters."

Who is right? If you meet a team in the pub, can you always tell which is which? Or is there no real difference between the two breeds?

Revised Heat Chart

So I've revised last week's chart.

The biggest change is I've moved McCann's significantly to the right. Several people posted to say I'd been unfair on them; maybe they all work there, I don't know, but in any case I went to the website, looked at their output, and... you know what? It's really quite good. The Halo 3 campaign won a Grand Prix at Cannes.

When I was a nipper, the only certainties in life were that McCann and Grey were both big and both crap. No longer the case. We are all going to have to adjust to this new reality.

The other changes are fairly minor. One biggie is I've moved Langland way, way over. Their ECD pointed me in the direction of a TV ad they have done, warning people that medicines you buy on the internet can contain rat poison, where the guy pulls a rat out of his mouth - a fine ad. I also went to the Langland website. They are a healthcare-specialist agency, but I have to say much of their work is excellent, and it all looks fantastic.

I've also moved Big Communications over a bit, since I do rather like a couple of their WKD spots.

If you think the chart is still wrong, feel free to let me know in the comments, but I won't be revising it till next year now.

Note - the vertical axis represents income (not profitability), the horizontal axis represents creative heat (not new business success) and is based purely on my perception, not any awards tally, because that would take too long.

When Will Agencies Learn?

Stop making fucking wacky promo videos for YouTube.

It's not as cheesy as this, nor as tragic as the Ogilvy Athens one, and the girls are nowhere near as hot as the ladies of Provid Ukraine.

But it may just about be worth watching the first 60 seconds if you would like to see how bad the staff of Mindshare Paris are at dancing and lip-synching. Even walking backwards proves to be a struggle.

It was found by top digital planner and top chap ewarwoowar. Go to his blog for good bits like this:

As Jeremy "I-wish-he-was-my-grandad" Bullmore says: Preparation H is of limited interest to a bunch of twentysomething creatives, but it is of incredible interest to someone with piles. We should all give ourselves piles before we make judgements on the effectiveness of comms.

Is This Really The Best Press Ad Of Last Year?

Went to the ANNAs last night (national newspaper advertising awards).

I really like the do they put on. Superlux food drink & service, but in a nicely informal atmosphere.

The overall winner, however, was greeted with a resounding shuffling of the audience's feet.


Lovely campaign, and not a bad ad within that campaign... and yet... it took me a while to get, and that's a worry, since I'm a person who looks unusually closely at adverts.


I try to avoid bigging up work from my own agency, but heck it's not me doing it this time, it's the ANNAs. This is an ad from a really nice campaign by Brad Woolf and Dan Bailey, which won the 'Best Media Partnership' category. I think that means 'campaign that feels perfectly suited to the medium'. If so, that's very true.


Deserving winner in the 'Best Copywriting' category, from my main man Mr P McClelland.

So what do you think - did the best ad win?

Be Cervix Savvy

This ad was on a London bus.

It's not a good ad, but that's not the point. My question is - why oh why did they use a guy?

Does he look like the type of guy who just generally knows a lot about cervical health? Or is he the hot man that having a healthy cervix gives you the confidence to pull?

Tuesday Tip No.67 - VO or Super?

When it comes to finishing-up a TV advert, there always seems to be a big hoo-ha over whether to deliver the endline as a VO, a Super, or both. And Creatives spend endless hours sweating this.

Don't. It's really very straightforward.

'Super only' is the best thing to have, because it's the purest and the simplest.

The next best thing is VO and Super together.

The 'VO only' option? I can't recall a single ad that uses it. Reason being that the client will always want to see at least their logo on the ad. And why not?

This means there will always be a Super of some kind. Therefore, if you want your ad to be as pure and uncluttered as possible, you should focus your energies on trying to eliminate the VO. You will never eliminate the Super.

I don't think I've ever worked on an advert where we failed to try every possible combination of VO / Super / endline / brand name. So it may also be beneficial to simply stop worrying, and accept that you are going to end up having to try them all.

Most likely you will end up having to have both a Super and a VO. If this is the case, at least make sure they are saying exactly the same thing. There's nothing worse than an ad which is trying to have you read one set of words while they pour another set into your ear. It's like trying to rub your tummy and pat your head at the same time.

Previous Tips

Heat Chart

Here's the state of our industry in 2009, in the form of a Heat Chart, an idea I've borrowed from top Aussie ad blog Campaign Brief.

The vertical axis shows agency income, from the figures supplied by accountancy gurus Kingston Smith, and published in Campaign last week. Some might look a little off - for example, Y&R is at the top - but that's because these are group figures, so the Y&R figure might include things like their Direct and PR units. With that one caveat, this is an objective measure.

In contrast, the horizontal axis is entirely subjective. It's not based on any figures of awards won. It's purely my personal perception of how hot that agency is right now, creatively. (Not business performance, just quality of work).

I've excluded BBH from the chart, since it wouldn't be fair for me to sit in judgement on my homeboys and girls. But I think it's safe to say we would be somewhere in the top right quadrant - the 'big and good' area - or what you could call Powerhouses.

The bottom right hand corner - 'small and good' - shows today's Hotshops. There aren't many, are there? And BMB is growing so fast, it will surely soon be out of this niche.

In the north-west we have the Big Dumb Agencies. Again, quite sparsely populated. McCann has been on the uptick creatively, and Grey is improving dramatically, so the two bankers for this quadrant have let us down.

In the south-west we have the agencies which are small, and not currently setting the world on fire. If you work for one of these shops, I apologise. I admit that I have put you in the extreme cold, without actually knowing any of your work. On the other hand, the fact that I can't name a single one of your ads is not the best of signs. If you have done great work, please put me right.

That goes for every slot in the chart. If anyone thinks I've put an agency in the wrong place, feel free to say so in the comments. Back up your case with a couple of good examples and I'll be happy to admit I'm wrong, since that will give me an excuse to waste even more time mucking about moving these little boxes around.

Eyebrow Dancing

The new Cadburys ad is out, and like Gorilla before it, it's a Category Three advert.

What's a Category Three, I hear you ask?

Well, all ads can be divided into three categories.

Category One - shit.

Category Two - good. You are a bit upset, and want to hurt the team who made it.

Category Three - so good, you're not even jealous. You're actually happy. And the status of the industry you work in just went up a notch.

Do The Facts Matter?

Planners and Account Handlers seem to spend a lot of time gathering facts about the product, to put in the brief.

Personally, I don't really care about facts, and I'm sure the general public doesn't either.

Who gives a monkeys how beer is made? Or what type of metal is in a car? I just want products that are cool, fast, economical... etc.

In fact I can't think of one occasion where I've ever used a fact in an ad. And I find factory visits completely boring.

However, there was a brilliant post by Dave Trott yesterday, in which he describes how he visited the factory when he was working on Tower Pans (wonderfully '70s name, isn't it?) and discovered that whereas ordinary pans have a handle-stud welded to 95 psi, Towers are welded to 110 psi. So they're stronger. He then did a compelling magazine ad about an unfortunate woman who tips boiling water in her lap, when the handle of her inferior pan snaps off.

I love the fact that Dave didn't like the initial brief, so went out and found a better one - we Creatives are often viewed as the mavericks within an Agency but the truth is that we are saps, who rarely question the briefs we are given.

But to get back to the question of facts, does Dave's story mean that we should care about them? I still contend that no one cares about handle-stud welding.

But they do want strong pans. So maybe there is a use for facts after all. Not to actually use in adverts. But to make good briefs from.

What do you think about facts? Do they matter?

I Don't Normally Like Tactical Ads But I Do Like This One

Grandmaster Flashmob

No top international club DJ - not one with any credibility anyway - does requests. So it looks like I will never make it as a top international DJ, since all it took was a couple of people asking me to feature the new T-Mobile ad, and here it is.

In a way, what I think about it doesn't matter. In just four days, it has nearly 900,000 views on YouTube. It also has nearly 2,500 ratings - averaging the full five stars.

So it clearly works - people like it, and they're sharing it.

For the record, although I love to see agencies trying something different, I don't like this ad... purely because those improv everywhere / flashmob things give me the willies. It's just a personal thing. I also don't like horses or broccoli.

Midgets Are Funny. Fact.

This ad for the Shoreditch Short Film Festival made me smile.

Along with puppets, and talking animals, midgets are always funny.

This is my order:

1 Talking animals
2 Puppets*
3 Midgets

*Puppets No.1 if swearing. Like this.

What's your top 3 of "things that are always funny?"

How Much Can A Dog Know About Advertising?

There's an urban myth about a Creative Director who would critique students' books with a glove puppet. "Sooty likes this one," he would say, or "Oh dear, Sooty says he thinks he's seen that idea before."

This never happened to me. But I did once get a crit from a dog.

It was at Lowe in about 1994. My partner and I went to see a senior creative one afternoon... I'm not saying he'd been drinking, but he did smell of alcohol, shambled unsteadily around his office, and slurred his speech in the manner of someone who had been drinking. So if he wasn't drunk, he was a fine impressionist.

Anyway, after first telling us in a sinisterly over-effusive manner that our book was "completely brilliant" and that instead of looking for a placement, "you should go straight to setting up your own agency", he then proceeded to show our book to his dog.

Sadly, his dog was not so keen. "Oh dear," the senior creative informed us. "[Dog's name] doesn't like this campaign. Or this one. Sorry lads. I'm not going to be able to pass it on to our CD after all."

Well you know what? That dog didn't know shit. Because that exact same book got me a job at Saatchis a few weeks later.

So, that's the worst crit I ever had. What was yours?

The Chip Shop Awards

Regular readers will know my feelings about Cannes.

So I was delighted to be asked to judge the only awards scheme that admits all its entries are scam.


Entry into The Chip Shop Awards is only for work that has not been broadcast, printed or mailed. You do not even have to have the client. You just have to have a great idea. Rejected and rude work is fine too.

This was the ad that inspired the contest.


And here are some of last year's winners.





Please enter, and give me some decent shit to judge.

Real Men Write Long Copy

That's the title of an interesting new blog by a DM copywriter.

This chap (who so far, remains anonymous) "just got rid of my old, slightly broken art director" and has a new partner who is "competent, but rather demanding." As a result, he is beginning to miss his old art director. "The old one said embarrassing things, which at the time I felt reflected badly on me. But now I wonder if he made me look good?"

He also opines quite eloquently on the relationship between below- and above-the-line.

"It’s definitely true that we letter writers have an inferiority complex the size of Soho towards ATL-ers," he writes, before going on to point out that ATL-ers feel inferior to novelists, screenwriters etc.

Then he consoles himself with the thought that "presumably, there’s some group of professionals who feel inferior to us. Prison guards, perhaps. Or McDonald’s employees (the ones who do the rubbish and the toilets – maybe not the ones at the tills with five stars on their badge)."

Finally he concludes that "the reality is, there’s not that much difference. If you were magically transported into our department, then the creative department of WCRS downstairs, I’m not sure you’d be able to tell which one's which."

Good blog, this. I'll be keeping an eye on it.

Do you agree with the writer? If you work in DM, do you feel inferior to ATL, despite that fact that the creative departments (and salaries) are really not that different?

No Escape

Nice post from freelance team Ben & James about a flight on Icelandair.

"When I first stepped onto the plane and noticed that my headrest had been branded with a little message, I was quite charmed," says Ben (or perhaps James).


But by the time he gets his meal... and finds that even his napkin has been branded, he's had enough. And lays into them.


It seems like airlines are particularly overcommunicative. I recall coffee cups on Virgin telling me: "Watch out, I may be hot!" and sugar sachets announcing: "I'm sweet."

Shut up already.

Director of the Month: Dan Chase

From now on, I am going to review a director's reel once a month.

Partly it's because I feel like championing some new talent this year rather than just slagging everything off, and partly it's to get us talking about the craft of making ads, and not just reviewing the actual ads themselves.

First up is Dan Chase, at QI commercials.

As you probably guessed, Dan works at Film4, where he is in charge of what the TV promotions world calls "On-Air" - basically trailers and idents.

I'm always interested in directors who come from TV promotions. It gives them a chance to make hundreds of little ads before anyone really notices what they're doing. Valuable practice. And no less a personage than Jonathan Glazer himself came from a TV promo background.

Dan is by no means yet in that league, but I do think his reel shows a hell of a lot of promise. It's high-style stuff, and he shows a great filmic eye - for example in the ident where the bottles are being shot. Some interesting touches on sound too, which suggest to me a more rounded talent than for the purely visual.

In terms of content, the man seems to have a mild chair obsession, but there is plenty to enjoy here. I love the shot where the cars smash into the street in slow motion, and I could listen to Maggie Gyllenhaal say the words "a little jolt" all day long.

The challenge for Dan will be to move beyond his film niche. There is one non film-related piece on the reel, but I don't think it's his best work. However, his high-style aesthetic does, I believe, give him an excellent shot at cracking the ad world, where we often need to make stuff look great. I've lost count of the number of times I've seen a brilliant director's reel, but with an aesthetic so gritty that it's hard to imagine what one could use him for.

Please note I'm not being paid to big up this geezer, although I am mates with the people at QI, I'm mostly doing this Director of the Month malarkey as an experiment. Hope you like it. Feel free to share your own view of the reel, in the comments.

The New Creative Circle Annual Is Out

And it's brilliant. (Full disclosure: Mark Denton has invited me to be on next year's jury. And if anyone thinks I'm being too fulsome in my praise, feel free to assume he is also my secret gay lover).

The annual is lovingly crafted in the style of the Beano - its official title is 'The Bumper Book Of British Advertising'.

Why only British advertising?

In his President's Statement, Mark Denton succinctly explains the issue he has with the D&AD annual:





Anyway, there's tons of good work in the annual, and some lovely tributes to 'Hall of Heroes' inductee David Abbott. Peter Souter reveals that Abbott is a "car slut", "always said Ron Brown was the genius", and had "hair that never grew longer or moved in the wind."

I also like this cartoon.

It's All About The Meerkats

I like this ad. Talking animals are funny. FACT.

And they've put a lot of love into creating the spoof site - Comparethemeerkat.com - where you really can search for a meerkat, by size, hobby and location. The organisation boasts that "We search from vast database of meerkats" and "Your meerkat will be displayed in less than one minute." It also has a list of FAQ ("Fairly Annoying Questions").

Meanwhile, Aleksandr the Meerkat already has over 3,000 friends on facebook. Blimey.

Virgin 25th Anniversary Ad

It seems like this is the ad everyone wants to talk about at the moment, so in a way, that means it 'must' be good.

But personally, I'm conflicted. Although I love all things 80's, and can certainly appreciate an array of beautiful women, I'm less keen on sexism.

Does the fact that it's set in 1984 make it okay, in the same way that the sexism of Mad Men doesn't indicate a prejudiced writing staff, but rather a desire for authentic period detail?

Not really. Mad Men critiques sexism. This ad celebrates it.

The Most Fun You Can Have With Your Clothes On

That was the title of an enjoyably skewiff canter through the history of advertising, hosted by Robin Wight (the 'W' in WCRS) on Radio 4 last night (available for the next 7 days here).

If anyone is an expert on 'fun with clothes' then it is surely Robin Wight...


I already knew a lot of the stories from those days, through having read Get Smashed, but I did like the bit where Alan Parker described the decor of CDP in its golden era as "like a public lavatory, or a comprehensive school."

As usual, Robin and Alan ascribed much of CDP's success to the talents of their creative department (which also included the likes of Charles Saatchi, Paul Weiland and Tony Kaye) and its "insane" CD Colin Millward.

But they also touched on another factor. Today we think of the CDP work as 'classic' - we forget how radical their work often was for the time. CDP were the first Agency to cast commercials outside London. The first to run full-page newspaper ads. The first to run colour print ads.

That set me wondering whether we should be making more effort to find 'firsts' we could be doing today. I guess Mother are doing it, with their Pot Noodle musical, and Eurostar film. Are the rest of us?

Part 2 next Monday, 8pm.

One Or More Agencies Will Go Under. But Which Ones?

Little surprise in the news that WPP is to axe thousands of staff, and we've already discussed our fears that many of us could lose our jobs.

But is it possible that entire Agencies could disappear?

In the Guardian today, Lucy Barrett writes that in 2009 "there is a real chance that we will see the collapse of some famous agencies."

I suppose if famous retailing names can disappear from the High Street, there is no reason to believe that well-known firms in our own industry are immune, and we should expect that one or more Agencies will go under.

But which ones?

I don't know the answer to that. The person who might is Lorna Tilbian of Numis Securities. She is the City's most respected media analyst, having covered the sector for 22 years.

Obviously for City investors, it is crucial to know which firms might go bust. Lower profits are painful, but they can bounce back. A dead body can't.

Alas I have lost the link - perhaps someone could point me in the right direction - but Ms Tilbian had a great piece of analysis on this, which as a Creative I found hugely thrilling.

She found that Agencies which declined or went bust were ones which had stopped winning awards.

Okay, at first sight, I know that sounds unbelievable.

But think about it.

Awards are an indicator of good work. Not the only one, and by no means a perfect one, but an indicator nonetheless.

And in advertising, as in every other industry, producing a quality product is the surest path to success.

Of course there are many other factors that can bring an Agency down - such as financial mismanagement - but poor product will eventually lead to business failure, just as it did for Woolworths, MFI, and the American auto industry.

Remember, it's not me, a Creative, making a self-serving argument here. It's Lorna Tilbian, the City's most respected media analyst, suggesting a set of data (awards results) that hard-headed number-crunchers should use to determine which companies to invest in.

So hold your heads up high, my brothers & sisters, and let's remember that it's us, the Creatives, who have the power to get our Agencies through this recession.

Poll: Job Insecurity

Disturbingly, 4 in 10 Scamp readers are worried about losing their jobs in the forthcoming 'year of pain'.

And 13% of respondents already lost their jobs LAST year.

On the other hand, nearly half of you aren't worried in the slightest.

So here's a picture that can be interpreted as either bleak or smug, depending on your outlook.

From the ever-amazing PostSecret
Previous Polls

The Year That Was

The most fun I had on the blog this year (except for this) was probably this.

But I don't really like looking back.

So if you're a fan of cheesy Agency videos with hot women and enforced mass participation, here's another one, from a shop called Provid in Ukraine.

The Ad Blog Charts For Q4 2008

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

Top 25 Ad Blogs		(world
		ranking)
1     (1)	Ads Of The World	7,991	↓
2     (2)	AdRants	19,722
3     (new)	Creativity Online	26,784
4     (6)	Coloribus	50,034	↑
5     (3)	Adland	52,762	↓
6     (15)	The Inspiration Room Daily	53,171	↑
7     (4)	Adverbox	56,151
8     (8)	Advertising/Design Goodness	59,388
9     (7)	AdFreak	66,907
10   (10)	Bannerblog	75,342
11   (9)	Adverblog	75,556
12   (11)	Logic + Emotion	93,267	↑
13   (14)	Ad Forum	104,892	↑
14   (13)	AdPulp	113,075
15   (16)	ViralBlog	122,983	↑
16   (17)	Best Ads On TV	158,483
17   (18)	Jaffe Juice	231,092	↑
18   (19)	Scamp	232,781	↑
19   (new)	Campaign Brief	275,394
20   (21)	AdScam	303,522
21   (20)	Crackunit	304,943
22   (22)	Make The Logo Bigger	309,394
23   (25)	BrandFlakes for Breakfast	345,306
24   (new)	Only Dead Fish	366,553
25   (new)	Talent Imitates, Genius Steals	379,328

Four new entries on the world chart this quarter.

At No.3, I have decided to count the excellent Creativity Online in the chart. Formerly known as Ad Critic, this site is a lot more than an ad blog - it has a wealth of opinion, analysis and interviews. But since the line between a website and a blog continues to blur, and their content is updated daily, I'm including it.

The Australian ad site Campaign Brief makes its debut at No.19. If you have an interest in the land Down Under, or just like sparky ad blogs, I recommend it.

Only Dead Fish (Swim With The Water) is a highly insightful UK advertising/marketing/social media blog written by Neil Perkin of IPC Media, now in the chart at No.24. Neil's traffic has doubled in the last 12 months. Go visit and you will see why.

Finally, my friend Faris, who has previously featured in the UK Top 10 but is now based in New York (as McCann Erickson's 'Digital Ninja'), has busted into the world chart at No.24. His blog Talent Imitates, Genius Steals will make you just a little bit smarter every time you read it. Plus it's amusing.

Top 10 UK Ad Blogs		(world
		ranking)
1   (1)	Scamp	232,781	↑
2   (2)	Crackunit	304,943
3   (4)	Only Dead Fish	366,553
4   (8)	Welcome To Optimism	472,775
5   (5)	Spinning Around	478,768
6   (6)	Rubbishcorp	484,186
7   (7)	Interactive Marketing Trends	487,164	↑
8   (9)	Adliterate	603,607	↑
9   (re-)	Chimp Media Monitoring	889,993
10  (10)	TV's Worst Adverts	913,770	↓

For those new to this quarterly-published chart, I might just re-cap that it’s drawn from the rankings of web metrics company Alexa, who measure visits by users who have the Alexa toolbar installed. Since that means mostly bloggers and techies, the chart is somewhat biased towards blogs which are popular with other bloggers, or tech-heads.

Some people say the chart is extremely boring, others say it helps them discover new things. I just like doing charts. I also like maps, and statistics. So sue me.

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

UK means UK-based. Ad blog means ad blogs not marketing or PR blogs. I would love to be able to include Dave Trott’s brilliant blog, but there isn’t a way to count its visitors separately from those visiting the website of Dave’s agency, CST.

I'm only counting English language blogs.

If I've missed anyone out who should be here, please tell me and I'll put them in next time.

Happy Birthday, Jesus

Here at Scamp we're celebrating Christmas with another batch of atheist adverts, created by you, the readers.

(click image if you need to enlarge)


What do you think - do you like any of these?

Keep the ideas coming: send to simon dot veksner at bbh dot co dot uk (N.B. this is not a BBH project, I just don't have another e-mail address). Next year we are going to start actually running some ads, even if I have to pay for them myself. Which I probably will.

Merry Christmas to you all.

Do We Love For The Love Of Wispa?

It started with a Facebook group, which attracted 206,792 Wispa fans.

Then came some wonderfully fresh-looking bus sides, which declared "For the love of Wispa, we need cheerleaders" (or marching bands, etc).

The process was brilliantly stage-managed, and led up to the filming of the TV ad at the beginning of December, in Alexandra Palace, which features grannies, lasers, fireworks and a barbershop quartet.

I'm not going to say what I think of the actual ad, because it's the end of the year and I'm getting sick of how opinionated I am.

But what I wonder is this: have we arrived at a point where the way an ad was made has become more interesting than the ad itself?

Maybe nowadays, in the case of a 'big event' TV ad, the ad itself is just one piece of the engagement plan.

Compare with the life-cycle of a Hollywood movie. The movie truly begins with a tiny newspaper story about a big-name director deciding on his next script. Next, the papers fill up with a discussion of which stars might be in it. Next, gossip from the shoot. Then pre-release merchandising. Then the book of the film (comes out before the film). Then press previews of the film. Then the posters come out. Then media interviews with the stars and director. Then the premiere. THEN THE FILM ACTUALLY COMES OUT IN CINEMAS. Then people review it on iMDB. Then the DVD comes out. Then it runs on TV.

The film itself is just one small part of your 'experience of the film'.

Is our business going the same way? Are we now making ads where the true goal is to get people to watch the 'making-of' the ad, on the website?

Has The Ad Of The Year Snuck In Right At The End?

I'm talking about the new VW Golf commercial.

I heard the idea over 18 months ago, from mates who work at DDB, where everyone was convinced it could be great. So does it live up to expectations? No. It exceeds them, quite considerably.

From a rock-solid line and strategy, they've created a truly top-notch film. It's got tension, energy, excitement, and even moments of humour. Plus the music, which if I'm not mistaken is a 2 Many DJ's job, is just ace.

Well done to creative team Sam Oliver and Shish Patel, CD Jeremy Craigen, and director Ivan Zacharias. I hate you all.

Job Insecurity

Last week, I asked you to vote for your ad of the year.

The winner was this:


So congratulations to DDB London, creative team Rob Messeter & Mike Crowe.


This week, we're looking forward to next year.

And let's face it, the picture is gloomy. So I'm asking the ultimate question - do you think you will still have a job on December 31st 2009?

Vote now, in the right hand column of this blog.

And in the commments, let's talk about the recession. Will only shit people get fired, or is everyone at risk? Are we looking at a major shake-up next year? Are we all doomed? Let me know what you think.

Previous Polls

Boots Now Own Christmas

It's safe to say your line's a good 'un when even other advertisers start to use it.

Christmas YouTube Videos

Well, Scowling A.D. and I have exchanged presents... so despite the hang-over, I'm actually feeling pretty festive today.

Here's some Christmas videos for you.

Bleed The World


Christmas In A Box


Jingle Dings