Blinking Flip, People Must Actually Be Buying It

If you have, thank you.

Copywriters Who Write (Not counting the dead or retired)

My book is published today. Woop!

Some authors might celebrate with a glass of sherry, but not me.

I'm making a chart. I have a fondness for lists and rankings, so I am treating myself by doing a chart of the UK’s most popular books written by advertising creatives (currently active creatives only, not retired or dead ones), as measured by their sales ranking on Amazon.

Here it is.

	Top 20 Books By UK Advertising Creatives	Ranking
1	E, by Matt Beaumont	3,030
2	Creative Mischief, by Dave Trott	3,761
3	How To Do Better Creative Work, by Steve Harrison	6,207
4	E Squared, by Matt Beaumont	6,733
5	How To Make It As An Advertising Creative, by Simon Veksner	13,204
6	Small World, by Matt Beaumont	14,794
7	Staying Alive, by Matt Beaumont	33,572
8	Where There’s A Will, by Matt Beaumont	94,854
9	Father Frank, by Paul Burke	138,178
10	The Man Who Fell In Love With His Wife, by Paul Burke	216,822
11	The Poison Tree, by Tony Strong	230,558
12	One-Track Mind, by Tony Davidson	240,022
13	The Book, The Film, The T-Shirt, by Matt Beaumont	244,906
14	The Life Of Reilly, by Paul Burke	249,844
15	How To Write Great Copy, by Dominic Gettins	253,218
16	The Decoy, by Tony Strong	313,338
17	Step On It, Cupid, by Lorelei Mathias	345,717
18	Lost For Words, by Lorelei Mathias	355,465
19	Untorn Tickets, by Paul Burke	397,084
20	Instinct, by Ben Kay	480,914

Obviously, this chart is completely ridiculous.

For one thing, I’m mixing fiction and non-fiction.

And for another thing, the Amazon sales data is all over the place like a mad woman’s piss. It varies wildly depending on what time of day you check it.

But what the hell. It’s just for fun.

Examining the chart, we see that Britain’s two most successful authors - at least, in the select category of authors who are also current advertising creatives - are Matt Beaumont and Paul Burke.

Matt Beaumont, who I believe is a creative director at M&C Saatchi’s luxury goods division, has an incredible six titles on the chart. What a fast typist he must be. I have read ‘e’ and it is pretty hilarious. I haven’t read any of the others, but E Squared is on my shopping list, and I will get round to it when I have cleared my current backlog of unread books.

Paul Burke is probably the UK’s pre-eminent radio advertising creative, a lovely bloke, and former colleague of mine at DDB London. I have read Father Frank and The Man Who Fell In Love With His Wife, and thoroughly enjoyed them.

The next most prominent writers, with two entries each, are Tony Strong and Lorelei Mathias. Tony Strong works at AMV (I think). I once heard that he does a 4-day week there, in order to give himself some time to write. Good on him. He writes thrillers. I haven’t read any, because books about people being murdered are not my cup of tea. But he’s had four published, so respect is due to the man.

Lorelei Mathias has also been (briefly) a colleague of mine at BBH. She now works at Glue. Her books have chick-lit style covers, but knowing Lorelei a little, as I do, I am sure they are highly superior examples of the genre.

Other notables on the chart – great to see Dave Trott in there at No.2. Fabulous stuff from the east London ad guru.

Another ECD to make the chart is W&K's Tony Davidson, whose 'One-Track Mind' photography collection is described by comedian Jenny Eclair as "a lovely book of boob-like things." All profits go to charity. So that's good.

And I expect my friend Ben Kay’s book to shoot up to No.1 on this list, maybe even to No.1 on the real bestsellers list, when it is actually published. Penguin have high hopes for Ben’s book, and will no doubt crush London under the wheels of their marketing juggernaut.

UK means UK-based. Advertising creative means current advertising creative, not retired ones like David Abbott, Indra Sinha, Salman Rushdie etc.

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

Three Days To Publication Date

And my publishers, Laurence King, have unleashed a Facebook marketing campaign. See it here.

Also, if you're the kind of ponce who - like me - enjoys books about art, design, architecture, graphic design, street art, and trainers, then you might be interested in becoming a 'fan' of Laurence King (same link), in order to get information about their books, and discounts and whatnot.

Commander Denton To The Rescue

Announcing some progress on plans to promote my book.

I have lunched the legendary Mark Denton - view his showreel here - and he has agreed to shoot a viral film for me, in return for me helping him with some ads he needs writing, and because he likes the idea.

The idea is: what kind of ad does a creative make when, rather than promoting someone else's product, he is selling his own?

I guess the inspiration was me thinking back to times when I have argued not to put a phone number on a car ad. Though when I was selling my own car, of course I put the phone number in the ad... and a massive pack-shot...

We are working on the script at the moment, but nothing has been locked-down yet, so you are very welcome to contribute.

Do you think the idea could work? Would YOU answer a brief differently, if it was your own product you were advertising?

The Bookseller

Apparently most authors dread the marketing process.

Not me. As an advertising guy, I'm thinking it will be a fun challenge for me to sell my own product for a change, as opposed to other people's.

So how do you promote a book? Obviously, good reviews are the best tool. So I'm getting copies sent out to all the trade mags and ad blogs, and begging them to say nice things.

In terms of above-the-line advertising, the book world seems unsophisticated. Media appears to consist almost solely of adverts on the underground (because people read books there?) and creative is normally limited to just a picture of the book, with perhaps a short quote alongside it (e.g. "An utter delight" - Stephen Fry).

No doubt because of budgetary constraints, you very rarely see an advert for a book on TV. And when you do, they are piss-poor. This is an ad for a new book by James Patterson. It's from New Zealand. There's actually an even worse one for the same book on British telly at the moment, where two women talk in a horribly stilted manner about how hooked they are on Patterson. But, mercifully perhaps, I couldn't find it.



Why do they always say "The new bestseller from XYZ" ...how do they know it's a bestseller if it has only just been published?

Anyway, here is my media and strategic thinking. Very happy to get feedback on it:

I reckon that most buyers of my book will be students, young creatives, and experienced creatives who are still interested in reading stuff about advertising. And the best way to reach this target? I think it's the ad blogs.

Now, I'm already asking the ad blogs to mention that my book is coming out. Hopefully they will. But I'm thinking that if I can provide them with a fun piece of content around it - a witty ad, let's say - they'll be more likely to feature the book, and it will get more attention.

I don't think it makes much difference whether the ad is a piece of film, a poster, an ambient idea or a stunt. The key thing is that it's good enough that the ad bloggers will want to cover it.

So... that's my plan. Unless a succession of commenters tell me it's rubbish.

Hello Again

How's things?

I hope all's good. Me, I am pretty well.

In fact I'm rather excited - my book is coming out!


They've made David Droga's name more prominent than mine on the cover, which is an absolute scandal, but other than that, I do like the design.

The book is launching on May 25th, but is available for pre-order now at your local Amazon.

It is published by Laurence King, who publish various creative and arty books. Have a look at their website. There's some nice stuff there.

Quite a few blogs are becoming books nowadays, such as Stuff White People Like and E-mails From An Asshole, and like those other guys, I've shamefully neglected my blog once I got the book deal. In my defence, let me explain the difficulty. The publisher doesn't want the entire book to consist of material that's already available for free on the internet. And I just don't have enough interesting things to say to fill both a blog and a book. (I'd guess it's netted-out that the book is around 75% new content).

There are of course already lots of books about advertising out there, but the 'angle' of my one is that there is nothing in it about what makes a good ad, or how to write good ads. Instead, it's all about what you need to know to be a successful creative, above and beyond being good at writing ads. So it's not about craft, it's about guile. It's about how to get the best out of directors, how to find the right partner, and how to sell more of your ideas to your CD.

I really had a lot of fun writing it. In addition to my possibly dubious advice for young creatives, there are also interviews with proper people like Trevor Beattie, Jeremy Craigen, Paul Silburn, Flo Heiss, Jeff Benjamin (interactive ECD at Crispin Porter), Amir Kassaei (chief creative officer of DDB Germany) and Aussie creative entrepreneur Siimon Reynolds, as well as the foreword by David Droga.

If you'll forgive me, I'm not going to start Scamp up again like before, but I will use this space to talk about the book, and the marketing of the book.

Because of course, there will have to be an ad campaign...

More later.

The Last Post

After 3 years and 707 posts, I've decided to discontinue Scamp.

Reasons? Partly a desire to free myself from the daily commitment of having to entertain one of the world's most demanding audiences - time-wasting creatives. And partly a decision to redeploy my spare time into something else. (Yes, I'm writing a novel. NOT set in an advertising agency).

I've learned so much doing this. That there's no such thing as unanimity of opinion in our industry. That creatives are majorly riled by work that takes its inspiration from another source (much more than Shakespeare or Picasso were!) And that HTML is bloody fiddly.

I've also learned new words, such as 'low-involvement processing', 'blogroll', and 'meh'.

There have been many highs. The tons of amazing comments and contributions from my readers. Getting a book commissioned, based on my Tuesday Tips, which comes out next year. And perhaps best of all - getting to meet so many wonderful people in the real world, through the blog.

I won't put up a list of my favourite posts, but the Top 20 that you lot seemed to enjoy the most (or be most vexed by) were:

The Top 3 Advertising Cliches - 105 comments
Mr Strings - 116
Dancing Eyebrows - 135
Grandmaster Flashmob - 108
Virgin 25th Anniversary Ad - 100
A Terrifying Counter-Theory - 103
Advertising For Atheism - 105
A Ballad For David (Ogilvy Athens video) - 138
Tuesday Tip No. 60 - What Would Dave Trott Do? - 118
HSBC Lumberjack - 117
Tuesday Tip No.58 - Beat The Finger - 112
Job Opportunity In Paradise - 122
Fallon's Print Work - 151
Goodbye Lenny - 107
Dave Trott Live - 246
Fallon's Budweiser Campaign - 232
CHI Pay - 103
Cadbury's Trucks - 136
Top Ten Creatives, Directors and Agencies - 103
Dothetestgate - 229

Future internet historians picking their way through this digital ghost-town will find my Tuesday Tips of dubious use to young creatives here and the Polls here.

There are too many people who deserve my thanks for me to be able to name them all. But I will just single out Scowling A.D. Thanks for putting up with it, Nick.

Friends, readers, commenters - I wish you all the very best.

Goodbye.

Scamp Is Taking A Break

Comments

So I'm continuing to document, at possibly tedious length, the actual process of making a TV commercial.

Today the subject is "comments."

When you are working on an edit, here are some of the people who will make comments on it: the Client, your Creative Director, the Account Team, Planner, TV Producer, Production Assistant, the Editor, other Creatives, and sometimes even consumers - yes, some ads are researched as rough cuts nowadays.

It can happen that there are so many rounds of comments, from so many different people, that you lose sight of your original vision, and possibly even your will to live.

This is a very important part of the process though. And the ability to satisfy people's comments without ruining either the ad or your relationship with them is quite a skill.

Some comments will make an ad better and you're happy to get them. Others make it worse, and you begin to wonder whether you can ignore them.

There is actually a complicated invisible hierarchy of how much each person's comments matter; it determines which individuals, or combinations of individuals, get their way:

Here it is:

Client	48 points
CD	15 points
Director	10 points
You	6 points
Your partner	6 points
Editor	4 points
Account team	3 points
TV Producer	3 points
TV PA	1 point
Planner	1 point

So, for example, if absolutely everyone (49 points) disagrees with the Client (48 points) on something, the Client doesn't get his way. But all it takes is one Planner or TV Producer to side with the Client, and they win.

If you and your partner (12 points) disagree with the Director and Editor (14 points) then they will win, unless you have the TV Producer (3 points) as well.

Similarly, the CD (15 points) can overrule you and your partner (12 points) unless you have the Account Team (3 points) and a Planner (1 point) or TV Producer (3 points) too.

Let me know if you think the system needs tweaking. I think it's pretty good.

Grading

Soft voices. Low lighting. Comfy armchairs. A full belly of burger and chipz zz zzzzzzzz mmffpgh uur uh humph. Oh, sorry... where was I?

Grading.

(For those who don't know what that means, as indeed I didn't for at least the first two years of my so-called career, grading is a process that happens in a high-tech post-production suite, in which your ad is adjusted for colour, contrast etc)

I actually love the concept of grading - applying a 'look' to your film, that enhances the creative idea. It's just the process of doing it that I find unutterably tedious. Do you agree? Or am I just being a copywriter?

P.S. One thing I hate is the 'gratuitous grade', by which I mean a very extreme colour treatment that bears no relation to the creative treatment. A few years ago there was an inexplicable fad for green-hued adverts. And after that, brown. Currently, the fashion seems to be for ads to look washed-out. Why? Please stop it.

Editing Starts Today

Editing is actually my favourite part of the ad-making process. I've even read books on it. Possibly a copywriter thing? Do copywriters enjoy editing because it's a kind of narrative exercise?

Or perhaps it's just because I'm super-anal, and I really enjoy seeing what difference it makes to take 2 frames off the front of a shot, or the end.

In any case, the creative possibilities - and scope to improve the ad - are endless. And I'm always sorry when it's over, and I don't get to eat bento boxes any more.

The only bit that's tricky is the dynamic of seeing the first cut. The director and editor will have been working on it intensely for some time, and think it's perfect as it is. All they want you to do after watching their edit is to clap like a seal and say "fucking hell that's brilliant, I don't want you to change a thing."

This never happens.

So let's talk about editing. Do you enjoy being cooped up in a tiny room with five guys and some sushi? Or do you hate it?

Reflections on Shooting in Prague

1. I have put on half a kilo (shoot food)
2. The crews all look like roadies for a death-metal band
3. When you go into overtime in Prague, the production company producer begins a gentle nervous tapping of the foot, whereas in the UK, his head flies off
4. The average person in Prague is extremely dour. The only time I saw a local crack a smile was when the woman at airport security found a bottle of shampoo in my hand luggage. "No liquids!" she shouted, and really blammed it into the bin
5. When you watch nothing but CNN for a week, you see lots of very strange ads. Many are advertising entire countries. "Corporate tax of only 10%, personal tax only 10%, and average wages just 500 Euros a month. Invest in Macedonia." That is if you haven't already been seduced by "the wild beauty of Montenegro."
6. On-set wi-fi saved my life
7. Having an account man there with a fanatical attention to all the client & legal issues initially feels like having your bollocks in a fur-lined vice. But after a while, it becomes a liberation, and you're glad to have him with you
8. Everyone in Prague smokes. Quite weird to be sitting in a restaurant, and someone lights up, right next to you - I'd forgotten what that was like. Between cigarettes, they smoke cigars
9. Embarrassingly, I only learned approximately five words of Czech, and one of them was 'dezerty'. In case you hadn't guessed, it means 'desserts'
10. Very happy with the shoot, and very glad to be back in Soho

The Internet Is Now Graffiti

Here's a fine example of the traditional art of graffiti, as photographed on the back of a toilet door in Prague this morning.



But on the very same door... there was also this.


Is the internet now a valid form of graffiti?

Scamp is not responsible for the content of external internet sites

Do You Enjoy Shooting?

The Czech Republic (as seen from the minibus ferrying me between the hotel and the studio)


Another view of this beautiful country

Could you concentrate with this sitting in front of you all day?
Shoots, especially foreign shoots, are supposed to be the 'glamour side' of our job.

Are they?

I Have No Idea What This Means

But I like the typography.

It's good morning from Prague, where Scowling A.D. and I are filming some ads.

I won't be blogging about the actual shoot because of client confidentiality, but I would love to hear any tips you may have about shooting in Prague in general.

It seems that, due to the quality of the studios and crews, and various cost and currency differentials, every man and his dog has shot here. Have you? What was it like? Where should I go for dinner tonight? And what can I do that will be more fun than staying in my tiny and slightly too-warm hotel room watching CNN?

Ladies And Gentlemen, We Are Floating In Space

If you enjoy visual stimulation, and want to keep up with current visual trends, but you’re faaaaaaaaaaaaaar too lazy to actually look at lots of different websites to do so, I can recommend a weirdly compelling thing called 27Letters.



It’s basically an app that you download, and then it displays the 27 images that are being most widely talked about, referenced, and reproduced across the internet this month.

It claims to cover everything from “advertising to art, through to politics and celebrity.” And as it’s put together by image behemoths Getty Images, I’m guessing that if an image has made their Top 27, it’s there by rights. There’s also a facebook group.

Each image gets a short and actually not-badly-written piece of text, although why they’ve made navigating the site feel like you’re floating in space, I don't know. Have a play yourself, and let me know how it was for you.

Is This The Best Coke Ad Ever?

Being a cynical hard-bitten atheist pedant, I don't like happiness, optimism, twinkly Santas, or people coming together to teach the world to sing.

However, I do like weird scruffy magicians who have suitcases that unfold into organs played by monsters. And this ad has that in spades.

I happen to know that the creative team are French - congrats on a fine ad, D&T - and is it just me, or is there something a bit French about this ad? A bit Daft Punk, perhaps?

So here's my All-Time Top 3 Coke Ads:

1= This One
1= The Grand Theft Auto one
3 Polar Bears

Agree?

You've Got To Have A Philosophy. Fallon's Is Generosity, Apparently.

A geezer called John King, "director of brand innovation" for Fallon, reckons that "brands have evolved past the baseline of trust and awareness; now they must learn how to give."

If you want to read the whole schtick, it's in this article, for AdAge.

I couldn't make it right to the end, due to the fact that my attention-span is shot to shit nowadays, but I did like this bit:

A planner friend of mine had this great line about a year ago: "I'm so over messages," she said. Aren't we all; aren't we all.

Director of the Month: Siri Bunford

I got a request last month to feature a female director.

Trouble is, there aren't many. It seems possession of a penis is almost mandatory before an individual is allowed to shout 'Cut' or 'Action'. And not just in commercials - it's the same in the world of feature films.

Why this should be, I don't know. If you have a theory, write it up as a comment. The best answer I can give is that you need to be part megalomaniac to want to direct, and just as history's foremost dictators have been men, so have the best directors.

But there is one very interesting director around right now who also happens to be female - Siri Bunford. Her 'Kubrick Season' promo has just been nominated for a D&AD pencil.

You've almost certainly seen it, and it is the best thing on her reel. If you like that, do watch the rest; it's in a similar vein. I met Siri in the flesh once, when she pitched for a Guardian ad when I was at DDB. Can't remember which one. But she had the same luminous intelligence in the flesh as comes across in her work.

Her sensibility is perfect for Channel 4, and arguably harder to apply to the rough-and-tumble world of product advertising. But if you have something that needs a bit of elegance and intelligence... I reckon you could do a lot worse than put Siri on it.

I Will Care About 30% Of The Time

Thanks to those who've congratulated Scowling A.D. and myself on our two D&AD nominations.

I shan't try to be cool about it. I'm thrilled.

As regular readers will know, I do care about awards. (Yes, even when I'm not up for any. Perhaps especially then). I care about awards because they denote excellence and I care about excellence. We all do, don't we? Sure, the jury system may not be a perfect way to determine who should get them, but we live in a democracy, and some kind of voting has got to be the way to go.

So I will be caring deeply on the night of June 11. But... not the whole night. Because while of course I care about categories like Art Direction, Online Advertising and TV & Cinema advertising, there are other categories (like Book Design, Environmental Design, and Digital Installations) that I either don't care about, or only pretend to care about.

After a quick squizz at the nominations, I calculated that I care about just under 30% of them. What about you?