Huh?

iPint Lawsuit

Trevor Beattie is God, in my opinion. But he's having an interesting week.

First was the announcement that TBWA is not going to take over his BMB outfit after all. (Which incidentally means the position of ECD at TBWA London is up for grabs again.)

And now Creativity reports that the Silver Lion-winning iPint application for Carling by BMB - which has been downloaded 6 million times - is the subject of a $12.5 million lawsuit by the developer of the iBeer application.

There have been several cases (notably when director Mehdi Norowzian sued the agency that created the Guinness Dancing Man ad) that touch on the question of copyright infringement in a piece of film.

What the law will decide when it comes to an iPhone app, we shall soon find out...

Tuesday Tip No.65 - What Would Howell Henry Do?

It's impossible to reduce the output of HHCL - Britain's 'Agency of the 90s' to a single technique.

Certainly some of their work, like Fuji and First Direct, was avant-garde... but they also employed many time-honoured advertising methods such as adapting a pop promo (the commercials for Maxell cassettes using misheard lyrics were based on the video for Subterranean Homesick Blues by Bob Dylan).

And straightforward (but brilliant) metaphor ads like the fat slapping orange Tango man.

But there's one particular technique that they executed with great panache, which I think is an arrow definitely worth having in your quiver.

First example is one of their earliest ads, for Danepak Lean & Low bacon. This 30 second ad features fully 21 seconds of voiceover that is little more than a list of product benefits:

"We love... good food, like this Lean & Low bacon. And what's great about Lean & Low, this new product from Danepak, is that it's lower in fat, and salt. So it's better for our figures. Plus it doesn't spit so much fat everywhere. Danepak Lean & Low - the natural choice."



Of course, the fact that the Andersen family are naturists, their modesty preserved only by conveniently placed tablewear, makes the whole thing very amusing.

Next up, their famous ad for AA insurance. At the time, it was notorious for being the first ad to feature an Asian couple in a role that wasn't predicated on their ethnicity, and possibly the first ad to own up to the fact that couples argue.

The interest generated by these two factors enabled HHCL to smuggle in scads of product points about the AA's car insurance 'internet site.'

Finally, one of my favourite ads - Blackcurrant Tango.



Ray Gardner, with his flabby belly and disdain for French exchange students, must be one of the most memorable brand spokespeople of all time. In fact, he was so entertaining, we didn't mind that he fed us quite a few sales points about Britvic's new carbonate - that it's "a charge for the tastebuds" and even that Tango have been "working on it for three years."

Perhaps unfairly, I summarise this technique as 'wacky person reads brief.' But used well, it's highly effective all-round. Awards juries are happy - it's a clever conceit. The client is happy - they get to hear all the reasons why their product is so great. And the consumer is happy - they get to watch naturists or whatever.

As a further bonus, the heavy product content makes this type of ad more-than-usually easy to sell.

Previous Tips

New W&K Nike Ad

Not everything out there can be low-key and credit-crunchy. There has to be room for a bit of chest-beating sometimes, no?

And I'm still just a sucker for those big Nike ads. This one's directed by David Fincher, and has a nice respect-for-one's-opponent spin on the machosity.

Friday Poll

The most popular answer to the question "What would you do if you weren't doing advertising?" was 'Other'.

I guess this includes some of the answers we had in the comments, which ranged from 'chef' to 'midwife' to 'Han Solo'.

I'm pretty sure the Copywriters among you were the ones picking Journalist as an alternative career, with the Art Directors leaning towards Illustration or Photography.

But who would have guessed that 'The Armed Forces' would be the 5th most popular choice? My explanation is there's a lot of frustration in our job, so the idea of being allowed to legally kill someone can seem quite attractive.

This week's poll is about how much you care. It's often said that advertising doesn't 'matter' - so maybe it's foolish to actually care about it. Then again, maybe the foolish person is the one who spends 50 hours a week doing something they don't care about. Vote now, in the right hand column of this blog, and I'd love to know your views, in the comments.

Previous Polls

Life After Advertising

Our New Business Director is leaving to become an acupuncturist.

He's a young guy, very highly-regarded... I guess he just wants to do something else.

It's always been a bit of a mystery to me what people do 'after' advertising.

I know a few former adfolk stop by here from time to time... would love to hear from you - I want to get the perspectives of some people who have left advertising to include in the final chapter of my book.

What are you doing now? Do you miss it? Or in retrospect does it all seem a bit silly? Please do leave a comment, or send an e-mail to simon dot veksner at bbh dot co dot uk.

Baz Luhrmann Ad For Tourism Australia

Unlike most film directors who make commercials, Baz Lurhmann did a good job with this. It actually makes sense. And carries some emotion. The strategy is maybe a bit cliched, but the cinematography carried me through. Interesting to read the comments about it on Aussie ad blog Creative Brief.

Tuesday Tip No.64 - Be A Person Of Integrity

Have you heard the rumour that Dave Trott got his first job in advertising with a book of ads he didn't write?

The story was that he used American ads he knew UK creative directors wouldn't be aware of, and re-presented them as if they were his own.

Amazingly, Dave has now confessed on his blog that this story is true.

So the man who wrote the pamphlet on How To Get A Job In Advertising, the pamphlet that was recently re-printed by Campaign, the pamphlet that hundreds of creatives have used as a guide to writing good ads, didn't do it that way. He did it a different way. He stole someone else's ads.

Now, we're Creatives, and we're supposed to be 'creative' and break the rules. But this isn't cool.

I'm not going to write a post that explains why you shouldn't lie and you shouldn't steal. What next? Why you shouldn't rape a receptionist?

All I'll say is that even if you're completely lacking in moral principles - the Patrick Bateman of advertising - it would still make sense to follow common-sense morality.

Why? Because when people find out you've lied or cheated, they get pissed as hell.

I've seen a senior team, hired on approx £75K, get fired for pretending the work in their book was joint work, when it was mostly done with other partners.

I know of Creatives who have been asked to leave agencies because of petty pilfering.

If you're utterly brilliant (e.g. Dave Trott) you can probably get away with this kind of thing. But 99% can't.

So my advice is to be a person of integrity.

And if you're not, act like one.

Previous Tips

Friday Poll

Last week's poll says only 5% of you specialise in Direct. The figure for pure Digital was about what I expected, at 26%, and maybe pure Above-The-Line was a bit less than I expected. A fairly high percentage of you in today's mixed-up world work in a wide mix of media. And why not.



Today's poll (vote now, in the right hand column of this blog) asks 'What would you do if you weren't working in advertising?' I've tried to include a broad spread, though obviously there wasn't room to put in every possible career like 'working at Foot Locker' and 'filling the Smarties tubes with Smarties'. If you have a view on what you could or should be doing, or think I've missed out a glaringly obvious option, let me know in the comments.

Previous Polls

Top Ten 'Lies Directors Tell'

We've explored the lies of creatives and of suits. Now the top 10 lies we hear from the coked-up ex-creative behind the camera.

1. I love the script
2. We can fix that in post
3. During the filming I want you right up with me by the camera
4. Yes, we can cover that off, no problem
5. We haven't got time to do that shot
6. Hotel? I think I'm in the same one as you
7. I'm getting lots of scripts, just not of the right quality
8. Doing features is great, but I'll always come back to commercials
9. When I'm not shooting? Well, I still come into the office every day
10. My first priority is to get the idea across

Thanks to R&A for the suggestion. Click on 'comments' below to add your own.

The Ad Blog Charts For Q3 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	9,561	↓
2     (2)	AdRants	20,122	↑
3     (4)	Adland	45,268
4     (6)	Adverbox	53,169
5     (new)	Creativity	55,077
6     (8)	AdFreak	61,570
7     (5)	Coloribus	61,751	↓
8     (7)	Advertising/Design Goodness	68,983
9     (9)	Adverblog	71,732
10   (10)	Bannerblog	78,281
11   (12)	Logic + Emotion	111,232
12   (11)	Copyranter	115,783	↓
13   (13)	AdPulp	123,110
14   (new)	Ad Forum	126,470
15   (3)	The Inspiration Room Daily	135,391	↓
16   (14)	ViralBlog	169,483
17   (new)	Best Ads On TV	181,003
18   (15)	Jaffe Juice	274,786	↓
19   (20)	Scamp	285,912
20   (18)	Crackunit	312,842
21   (24)	Behind The Buzz	324,282
22   (17)	AdScam	328,713	↓
23   (21)	Make The Logo Bigger	330,415
24   (23)	Experience Curve	378,548
25   (22)	BrandFlakes for Breakfast	384,844

Top 10 UK Ad Blogs		(world
		ranking)
1   (2)	Scamp	285,912
2   (1)	Crackunit	312,842
3   (3)	Behind The Buzz	324,282
4   (4)	Only Dead Fish	417,721
5   (6)	Spinning Around	422,405
6   (re-)	Rubbishcorp	442,513
7   (8)	Interactive Marketing Trends	528,482	↑
8   (7)	Welcome To Optimism	533,911
9   (5)	Adliterate	736,585	↓
10 (10)	TV's Worst Adverts	737,203

For those new to this chart, it’s based on rankings published by web metrics company Alexa, which measures visits by users who have the Alexa toolbar installed. As that’s mostly bloggers and techies, the chart is probably biased towards blogs which are popular with other bloggers, or tech-heads.

The definition of what is a blog as opposed to a website is becoming blurred. Some of the sites above are commercial ad archives, or the online versions of news-stand ad mags, which I'm now including for the first time. As long as the content is updated dailyish, and the blog portion of the site is separately measurable, I don't see why they shouldn't be in here.

Some people find the chart boring, others say it helps them discover new things. Me, I've just always loved charts. As a kid, I pored over the pop charts, and football league tables. That doesn't make me a geek, does it?

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'm only counting English language blogs.

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

Tuesday Tip No.63 - Read Jerome's Tips

Jerome Courtial, who writes the excellent Digicynic, has just left BBH for a fab new job to be a planner on Coke and Nike at W&K Amsterdam.

Sadly it means he won't have time to blog any more, hookers and blow being as time-consuming as they are.

But his parting gesture was an excellent set of tips on How To Have A Successful Career In Advertising, that are relevant to every discipline - planning, creative, account handling. Full of insight, his post reminds me just how much I'm going to miss him.

Read it immediately, if not sooner.

Previous Tips

Are You A Sociopath?

This handsome fellow is Tim Lindsay, president of TBWA London. I think he looks rather like Ian McShane, the actor who played sociopaths in Sexy Beast and Deadwood. Tim Lindsay, of course, is not a sociopath... but he does work with some. Us.

Explaining to The Guardian why people in advertising need 'diagonal thinking', he says that "most of all you need it to manage creative types - often borderline sociopaths who just don't play by the rules."

I do hope he was misquoted. Especially in the light of today's news...

Cream

Went to Cream last night.

In case you don’t know, it’s an event that showcases 'the cream' of student books.

87 teams entered, from the likes of Watford, St Martin’s, Bucks, and Miami Ad School.

20 were selected, by judges who included Nick Bell, Steve Henry, both Al Youngs, and even me. Hence my attendance.

It was much fun. Graham Fink was there, looking like a character from The Matrix, plus Trevor Beattie... and Agyness Deyn and Mark Ronson (they weren't at Cream, just there for a drink at the place it was held).

Stat fans may be interested to hear that 25% of Cream creatives were female, and fully 50% were non-UK.

I have to say that the quality of the books blew me away. Probably the worst ad in any of the books there was better than the best ad I had in my student book, fourteen years ago.

Rory Hill of The Talent Business (Rory did a tip-top job of organising the whole thing by the way) has an interesting theory on this. He reckons that the job market is very tough at the moment, which means young creative teams are taking longer to get jobs, and that’s why the quality of people without jobs is so high.

Scant consolation if you’re living on powdered baked beans I suppose, but there you go.

Here’s some of the ads that caught my eye:

“See God’s special effects. Visit Iceland.”







Pretty good, don’t you think?

Top Ten ‘Lies Creatives Tell’

Okay, just to even things up...

1. We worked all weekend on this

2. It just won’t make sense as a 30 - it has to be a 40, at least. A 60 would be best

3. I really wish I could squeeze it in, but we're swamped with work right now

4. I was stuck in traffic

5. I never got that e-mail

7. You'll have it by 3pm

8. Your brief is our No.1 priority

9. But it IS on brief

10. We tried the changes you suggested - it just didn't work

Again we thank Creative Beef.

If you're feeling confessional, add your own in the comments below...

Top Ten ‘Lies Account Handlers Tell’

1. The meeting went really, really well

2. This is the last change, I swear

3. The deadline is [time]

4. We’re not officially divorced, but it’s on the way

5. The client wants something edgy

6. Don’t worry about the budget

7. The client loves the idea

8. Rough layouts will be fine

9. It’s just a small change

10. We won't sell the safe option, but we need it there to show that our preferred route is better

P.S. I'm not talking about you, my friends the BBH account handlers! I'm talking about other account handlers.

Adapted from a post on Creative Beef, a US blog that's subtitled 'Horror Stories From The World Of Advertising'.

Add your own fave fibs below.

Galaxy Is Thrashing Dairy Milk - So Was 'Gorilla' A Failure?

A reader points us to an interesting and potentially worrying story from Brand Republic.

We've all been led to believe Gorilla was a resounding sales success. But it seems not:

Dairy Milk lags market as Galaxy steals share

by Nicola Clark Marketing 23-Sep-08, 08:30

LONDON - Cadbury's flagship Dairy Milk brand has lost market share to arch-rival Galaxy.

According to the annual Biggest Brands survey compiled exclusively for Marketing by TNS, Dairy Milk lost share in the take-home confectionery sector, posting growth below the 2% market rate to reach a sales value of about £200m. By contrast, Galaxy grew 12% year on year to about £80m.

Jan Jesenovec, confectionery analyst at TNS, said that Dairy Milk's loss of share may be due to a lack of NPD. 'Advertising will not significantly increase your sales,' he added. 'It simply reinforces the positions of big brands.'

Dairy Milk and Galaxy use very different marketing strategies, and Galaxy attributed its strong performance to its unique positioning, which targets women in 'indulgent moments'. The brand has also been boosted by several high-profile partnership deals, including ties with the Sex and the City movie and the British Book awards.

The majority of the brands surveyed experienced value growth due to price inflation. The take-home confectionery market as a whole grew 6% year on year to reach £2.48bn, and nine of the top 10 brands in the market increased their sales year on year.

This week, Cadbury shifted its global ad account out of Publicis and into Saat-chi & Saatchi Fallon group. A spokesman denied there had been a lack of innovation, adding that its latest data showed growth.

Tuesday Tip No. 62 - What To Do When No Ideas Are Coming

There are loads of books out there with advice on how to have ideas.

It's normally some old shit like "look out the window and write an ad about the first thing you see." Why there aren't more ads about pigeons, I don't know.

There's also a section on what to do when you're stuck, which will be things like "go for a walk" or "have a bath."

I have no bath in my office. And you can't go for a walk in Soho. It's like Frogger out there.

So I thought it might be interesting to make a list of the Top 10 things I actually do - not things one should do - but what I genuinely do, when I'm stuck.

Here they are.

1. Carry on and hope (N.B. this never works)
2. Coffee
3. Look at brief again
4. Go to toilet
5. Look through bottom drawer
6. YouTube (sorry...)
7. Use different pen
8. Try using different pad (switch from lined to plain or vice versa)
9. Call planner
10. Tell Scowling A.D. I can't think of anything

What do you do?

Previous Tips

I Don't Know What It Means But I Like It

New Ford Fiesta commercial through Ogilvy London.

YouTube Poll Result

The result of last week's poll shows that most of you think it's okay to adapt a film from YouTube into an ad.

Creatives have been 'adapting' for decades - I was wondering if the discussion would throw up anything different about adapting from YouTube. I guess the most interesting point was that it's now much easier for people to find your source material.

In the old days, there might have been gossip that a big ad was ripped from a Slovakian short film, but no one would have seen it. Today, everyone will.

So either be comfortable with that, or do more to disguise your sources.

This week's poll simply asks what type of advertising you're most involved in. Vote now, in the right hand column of this blog.