A hurried video on Third World Debt

Marc at SCA gave us one day to research and produce a presentation on Third World Debt.

This is what Olly and I came up with - it's a bit rough and ready in both writing and art direction, but it's a fair representation of our research.

Bad Taste

Today's Town Hall was an especially inspirational one, offering us a live brief to really get our teeth into - naming a charity.

It feels good because the man setting the brief gave a distinct impression (Sandhurst, army, previous charitable experience) of being someone who Got Things Done. A man of integrity and honesty.

It stands in refreshing contrast to certain other briefs. That's all I'll say.

Except to mention that he told a story about saying an unfortunate idiom to an ex-serviceman with an arm and a leg missing. I just wonder what he would make of this?

A quick bit of genius to share

Found in an interview with Dave Trott; one of his favourite adverts:

It's so simple, but it actually takes a while for its genius to sink in fully. The "by tube" pun. The fact it ends at Pimlico (the station shown on the tube of paint). The immediate visual schemas for "art" and "London".

And if that isn't enough fun, you could try looking at where the Jubilee line ends and try to work out what year this might have been produced...

Planet of the Apes - Flip Reverse It

Dear me, a 5 day gap in posting. I need to get back into this, especially with the holiday coming up. There'll be fewer posts then, but I don't want it to lie entirely fallow.

Anyway, ads during the X-Factor final. Most had already been extensively scheduled, but one was new (to me at least) - the trailer for Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes on DVD and Blu-Ray.

The problem they had was that the cinematic release had already been heavily promoted on TV with action-packed trailers, and the audience could easily ignore another advert - especially if they'd already been to see the film.

So the advertisers (not sure if this was agency work or in-house) came up with 2 simple devices to get the viewer's attention and signal that this was something new. The first was to play the footage in reverse. The second was to have soothing music ("Sad Eyes" by Bat For Lashes) playing over it.

OK, so the second device was a bit cribbed from McCann SF's ace advert for Gears Of War (see second video), but it worked very well nonetheless.

Love it, but will they get it?

Just a quick post tonight - the rather amusing new ad for Cockburns from BETC London. Taps into a product truth in a "well everyone was thinking it, but no-one wants to say it" kind of way.

But I do wonder if everyone will actually get it...

Barnardos

I was going to blog on this advert at some point anyway, but it's particularly timely, so I'm pushing it forward.

Tonight I attended a seminar on creative education chaired by Sir John Hegarty. He was talking about the democratic nature of creativity - that anyone can have a good idea - and used this new BBH ad for Barnardo's as his example. Apparently, although they had the best production team working on it, the initial idea came for a junior creative team (jobless students just one year ago) in the BBH playpen - Melanie Lynch and Rory Hall.

That's going to take some beating on their showreel. Read more here.

A boring ad that probably works

An ad created for Red Letter Days by Quiet Storm, this is one big call to action - hence sticking the web address and clicky mouse upfront rather than waiting till the end (where they also have it).

It reminded me a little of the cheap radio ads played to us last week by Radioville Creative Director Tim Craig, which were just interested in getting people who were already thinking of buying such a product. It's the Christmas version of price comparison ads, and if it gets more competitive, they'll have to get a bit more creative than this...

Facilitation for the nation

Exciting times at the School of Communication Arts, as a halfcoachload of students were packed off to Newbury yesterday for the racing.

Oh, ok, it was for a Vodafone conference on privacy, where we had been assigned to lead Vodafone suits in sessions of creative brainstorming. We came out of it unscathed, but we learned a number of important lessons - the main one for me being that teaching is bloody hard. And teaching is what it was - leading a session and paying constant attention, processing everything given to you and never switching off, keeping your energy levels up and focusing your efforts on controlling the room.

I think I was lucky with my participants; although some were more vocal than others, no-one tried too hard to control the room or dominate the conversation - and conversely, no-one questioned my qualifications or the validity of the exercise. I understand that other groups weren't so lucky, and that Marc's techniques didn't always work as smoothly as we'd hoped.

Still, at least next time we have a better idea of what to expect - and will be a bit more prepared the first time the suits from Proctor & Gamble come to visit...

Where Out Of This World?

Like Muller before them, here's another client spunking what I can only imagine is a truckload of money on a massive big brand tie-in (though I note that they have to plug the new Star Wars DVD, too) - with little thought actually going in to creating a memorable ad.

It basically consists of "imagine if Darth Vader was the boss of PC World", and that's it. None of the ideas are especially amusing, from the crushed car to the boiling drink (note the obvious cutaway) to the haircut.

"Perhaps I can find new ways to motivate them" says Vader of his staff. The scriptwriters clearly couldn't think of any, so just said something about a laptop and left it at that. Surely someone at M&C Saatchi could do better?

I'd suggest how to improve it, but I've never seen Star Wars, so I'm not the best person to ask.

Simon Pegg has seen Star Wars though. This is what he thinks.

Smile For London poem

A little creative writing for once. It's done in a bit of a hurry, and it's possibly very bad, but I'm pleased with it under the circumstances.

The "brief" was to write a short poem for the Smile For London campaign, which puts up adverts in tube stations  to cheer up commuters - starting on the so-called saddest day of the year.

I'm waiting to hear if my poem is selected, and if so, what visuals they'll put with it. Anyway, here goes.

Find a London Victoria train
That passes over Coldharbour Lane.
Just at the apex of the track
Look left, and you'll be looking back
To own the parks, the homes, the streets
Where stories start and moments meet,
To declare your victory foursquare -
A second's term as London Mayor.

Miracles of the Future (from 1950)

Been a bit slow with blogging as very busy this week and internet connection in the School has been intermittent, so time to get back to it.

I just love this kind of thing - it's a bit of a truism how visions of the future are always more interesting for how they reflect the fashions and dreams of the present, but it's fascinating nonetheless.

Click here to read the article on Retronaut. They must be surprised to discover we're still using cream and razors to shave our hairy faces, and that disposable soluble plates are not the norm. My particular favourite is the method of cleaning rooms - hose everything down then dry it all with a blast of hot air.

Of course, being a 1950s vision of the future, the cleaning is all done by a "housewife".

And no one ever predicts the internet. It's like the Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy - in that book, roving researchers make entries for a galactic encyclopedia, but the book, though electronic, is not remotely updated - you have to go and buy the new one.

It just makes you wonder - what is it that we're not predicting?

Ad Breaks, Tweet Breaks, and Zeebox

Sometimes ideas are right under our noses.

I've been watching TV with a laptop on my lap for ages now. I get Guardian minute-by-minute or over-by-over commentary while watching sport. I even follow the X-Factor live blog while watching the programme. I follow #masterchef while it's on. For many, following the twitter debate is an essential part of BBC Question Time, though I find the most essential thing to do is turn it off.

It's called the "dual screen" experience. And a new app / site for laptop and iPad (and soon iPhone) called Zeebox aims to take advantage of that. It shows you the most popular TV programmes by social networking activity, then shows you a Twitter feed filtered by hashtags. With certain TVs you'll even be able to use the app a as the remote control.

You can comment at any time and it automatically adds a hashtag and posts it to your twitter feed - and you can also reply to tweets. However, somewhat weirdly, it connects with Facebook and only lets you connect and chat with Facebook friends - which in my case are quite a different set of people to those I interact with on Twitter.

Its founder, Anthony Rose, has noted that twitter activity spikes during ad breaks. We tweet while we watch and  watch while we tweet. He's got a team of former BBC iPlayer employees, and a deal struck with a charming new TV show called Desperate Scousewives.

But I don't think this is the tipping point for a Social TV revolution. Nothing that it offers is anything you can't fairly easily achieve yourself within Twitter - and, as in my examples above, it can't bring in liveblogs and comment from popular websites.

The extra features revolve around "zeetags" - the site explains: "when it picks up references to things on a show, like Tom Cruise, armadillos, Late Victorian sideboards or Usain Bolt, it puts them up as zeetags. Hit the zeetag and it brings you the lowdown, from Wikipedia, Google or anywhere else you want to go on the web." However, it doesn't yet offer more than you could get by, you know, searching on Wikipedia or Google, and Brand Republic suggests that the real purpose of these tags is to measure the immediate effectiveness of product placement by offering "buy now" links for goods mentioned onscreen.

More thoughts on dual screen coming soon...

Now I'm DEFINITELY in the festive mood...

...and it's all thanks to Euro RSCG London, who've produced a series of sponsorship idents for Christmas programming on UKTV and Dave.

Why? Because unlike the vast majority of idents - see the much complained about Aviva ads for Downton Abbey and the execrable Phones4U slots during Harry Hill - it's simple, unobtrusive, doesn't try too hard to be funny, and gently makes a point about the product each time.

God bless us, every one!

This will definitely help end poverty.

"Anti-poverty campaigners are parodying the life of George Osborne in an internet comedy series that follows the "bumbling" chancellor as he takes street-dance lessons and struggles with fad diets."

No.

No no no no no NO.

Hard to know where to start, but perhaps with the mild suggestion that they should have made it funny.

Secondly, I would gently venture to suggest that making puerile attacks on the Chancellor of the Exchequer isn't going to make him any more likely to do what you want - and will make a lot of people think that your campaign is simply a politically-motivated attack rather than a genuine attempt to alleviate poverty.

Lastly, there's barely any connection between the sketch and the message - so if you make it to the end, you just have to read the rather lengthy pay-off.

The film should be part of the solution. This just adds to the problem.

RKCR, you are really spoiling this product

Actually, I suspect what is going on here is a client problem. You can't just re-position a brand when it's, erm, ambassadorial image is so ingrained in the minds of the public. But someone somewhere decided that a 30-second ad slot could convert Ferrero Rocher from a kitsch gift to a sophisticated middle class party delicacy. It's actually more preposterous than the original.

It's also about 4 times more boring and 7 times less memorable than the old ads.

Can't we have a Christmas ad with some speed metal or really dubby dancehall, or something? I tire of these winsome ballads.

Sainsbury's Bags For Life

"Why do we have so many Bags For Life?", called Mrs Cutcopywrite from the kitchen.

We do have a lot. But if I collect enough, Sainsbury's will make me immortal.

Bags. For Life.

Live Well. For Ever.

The Future Of Advertising video

A video I made to promote Dave Birss' "The Future Of Advertising" podcast - which he is putting on hold until a new agency sponsors the School of Communication Arts.

It was just based around the simple premise that the industry needs to put energy and investment into self-renewal.

Lea and Perrins

The new worcester sauce print ads, by M&C Saatchi, are a little like Lurpak in terms of art direction, in that they make the food the hero, and go all out for appetising irresistibility.

What's great is that the copy reveals a truth about the product - you really do add it to your cooking to add a dash of flavour. It's pretty essential in Shepherds Pie, and I recently used it to liven up a rather uninspiring Chili Con Carne. In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the ad was aimed at people who already know this - either to drum in the habit, or nudge them to share the culinary tip with friends.

Also, putting my SCA student hat on, good visual mnemonics - colours, font, and decorative border all mean no need for a big logo or big product shot.

Oh Brothers (What The Shitting Fuck? #4)

This one is mental, in strategy, copy, and execution.

Firstly, toffee apple. No problem with that as a drink flavour, it's a nice idea. But it's surely one most associated with a specific event - Bonfire Night - and yet it's not even released until 25 November. If they'd made a spiced mulled cider that you heat up, I'd be listening.

Second, the line doesn't even make sense. Is winter - the season of Christmas and snow - really something that people hate that much? I think it has a certain romance to it. It's certainly not "odd" to get a taste for it.

Lastly, the copy says "winter", but the art direction says "night time". Not the same thing. And the bottom of the artwork in particular, with its sinister yellow silhouettes on black, looks more like a Neighbourhood Watch poster.

I've never heard of the agency, Skonka, before. I suspect we won't be hearing a lot more from them.

Lewis of John Lewis

I love The Smiths.

I love "Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want" (though I prefer the original).

And, unlike a number of Smiths fans, I love this ad.

A lovely, heartwarming twist, nicely paced, and held together by a genuinely great performance from a young lad called Lewis McGowan. I'm going to remember that name because he's a star.

"Inherent in the future is a fetishisation of the past. Discuss."

Note: this question arose from a discussion on Twitter following BBH Labs' "Tale Torrent" event, a collection of stories about the Internet which (I had noted) had involved a great deal of nostalgia. Thanks to Rishi Dastidar of Archibald Ingall Stretton for the challenge, which I will take on in a loose, disjointed way before I collapse in exhaustion.

What was the deadliest conflict in the history of the world? You'll probably think one of the World Wars, and in fact the Second World War, by any estimate, killed more people than any other in history.

But there's another way to slice the numbers, by factoring in historical levels of world population. Even at its highest estimation, the Second World War resulted in the deaths of 3.1% of the population. But although the An Lushan rebellion of 8th Century China was responsible for fewer deaths, it still took out a staggering 14-15.3% of the people then living on the planet. 5 centuries later, the Mongol conquests wiped out somewhere between 7 and 17%.

In fact, if you order armed conflicts by the percentage of the world's population killed, the 2 World Wars are only at 5 and 8 - and they're the only 20th Century conflicts to make the top 10.

We are, as Steven Pinker tells us, living in the most peaceful time in our species' existence. You'll also see figures from this video showing how rates of violent death in current hunter gatherer tribes far exceed those of western society - giving us an insight into death rates before records began.

So what does this tell us?

Clearly fetishisation of the past is prevalent, or else this information would not be surprising. Instead we are bombarded with messages of moral decline, educational decline, rising criminality, and economic armageddon. We're going to hell in a handcart, as we are regularly told by well-paid tabloid columnists, and we should go back to the way things were.

But is it inherent in the future? I'm going to alter that a little and say that it is certainly an inherent result of progress. We largely aspire to live comfortable lives, and breaks in our routines cause disharmony and chaos. Note the reaction every time Facebook makes a minor change to its layout. Because we fail to fully understand the new developments - and it will only ever be an elite few in this position - we worry that they threaten our habits and our way of life, whether it's where you click to get your messages, or whether your children will ever make real friends.

My old (in both senses of the word) boss used email every day, because he understood it and could relate it to the past - i.e. the simple act of writing a letter. But, however much I tried, he could never get his head around Twitter, which to him was irrelevant people saying irrelevant things all the time. What he couldn't grasp was that the past was just the same - if you could listen in to every telephone call made in the 80s, you would doubtless hear an awful lot of inconsequential nonsense. The difference is that technology now allows us to do just that, and we have to learn to apply our own filters.

But even that is actually the wrong way to approach it.

What we need to do is relate progress not to the past, but to people - to human needs and instincts. And these remain virtually unchanged over the centuries. The need to communicate. The need for artistic achievement. The desire to share creativity. Because if there was one thread that emerged from the "Internet stories" at Tale Torrent, it was that they almost all concerned relationships between people. From James witnessing his Mother finding long-distance love, to the imagination of Rachel's daughter, to J. Nicholas Geist seeing a friend come out of his shell thanks to World Of Warcraft, human relationships were at the heart of the matter throughout.

So my answer to the question is "probably, but it's up to us to change that". It's up to communicators and early adopters to take out the technology, and instead discover the human need it fulfils.

Right, I'll leave it at that. It's late and I have to present work on STDs in the morning. If I get chance, I might look at the psychological urges behind nostalgia, and what actually goes on when our brains are confronted with progress and novelty.

Memorable Quotations from last night's Creative Social

Attended a Creative Social event at LBi London last night entitled "Creative Looting", all about where ideas come from, and where the line between inspiration and stealing lies.

Some memorable phrases from the night, some very much paraphrased:

"Bet he could top cosmic boy!" - a perhaps unintentionally homoerotic frame from one of Tom  Eslinger's childhood comics.

"Put ideas into the client's head so they think that they thought of it" - Liz Sivell gets underhand inspiration from Derren Brown.

"[The] PC is the LSD of the 90s" - Timothy Leary, via Andy Sandoz.

"Keep digging" - Dave Bedwood on finding ideas. Which made Tool's "Stinkfist" run through my head for most of the rest of the evening.

I'll keep digging 'til I feel something...
Elbow deep inside the borderline
Show me that you love me and that we belong together


"The Apprentice is the ultimate MacGuffin" - me, while listening to Nathan Cooper go through the 7 types of story (tragedy, comedy, monster, voyage, quest, rags-to-riches, and rebirth). Think about it - no-one remotely gives a shit who gets to work with Lord Sugar, that's just a device on which to hang their grotesque personalities and ego struggles.

Last word for Dave Bedwood, I think.

"You just have to be good".

Thanks to LBi for the free beer!

Not the face! Not the face!

Spotted a quotation that resonated with me in one of Dave Trott's recent campaign blogs, from Mike Tyson:

“Everyone’s got a strategy, until they get hit."

It reminded me of Buddhist Ben, a Buddhist called Benjamin, who visited our School early on in the year to talk about "mindfulness". I was more interested in his martial arts titles, and his streetfighting past, and about the kind of mental state one needs to own or achieve in order to take a punch in the face without falling over, or at least falling to pieces.

It's easy for us to fantasise about it. Some nasty type squared up to me recently at a bus stop for accidentally getting in his way, and I've thought numerous times about knocking him out with one blow, or alternatively wrestling with him and pushing him into the road into the path of an oncoming vehicle.

Of course I just backed down and apologised straight away. I didn't even say what I wanted to say, let alone do what I wanted to do.

The best-laid plans of mice and men etc.

And that's why I find boxing so fascinating. I can't stand youtube videos of painful pratfalls and skateboarding spills, or people getting hit in the face. But I can watch Manny Pacquiao overcome an opponent with skill, speed, strength, bravery, and aggression with no revulsion and a great deal of pleasure.

And it's because they embody an ability we wish we had ourselves - to remain professional and keep to a plan under the most extreme pressure.

(disregarding ear-biting abberations, obviously)

You could say the same about football to an extent - it's not about playing the perfect pass, it's playing the perfect pass with big men running at you from all directions. But I don't think any sportsman comes under the kind of relentless, violent, pressure as a boxer (and, I suppose, other martial artists).

I'll never be like Mike Tyson. In so many ways.

But I can try to emulate that attitude - not aggression, but just a focused mindset that adapts and changes and reacts and defends, but never wavers from its single-minded purpose.

I'll just try to do it without raping a stripper or converting to Islam.

I have a terrible, terrible confession to make.

I just watched the first episode of Mad Men. Not just the first episode. My first episode.

I've got some serious watching to do to assuage my guilt.

The Flaming Tar Barrels of Ottery St. Mary

Most towns put on some kind of municipal celebration for Bonfire Night. They'll burn a few tires, let off a few fireworks in a field with some security and a burger van, then pop off to bed. To be fair, some towns make a fair effort - especially this year, when in Oban they accidentally let off 30 minutes of fireworks in 30 seconds. Which I think was probably far better than what they'd planned.

But still - it's not a patch on what they do in the small Devon town of Ottery St. Mary.

It's a tradition so old that no-one's quite sure why they do it, but every year, they take a number of barrels, which have been repeatedly painted on the inside with tar. Then they set them alight. Then they hoist them on their shoulders (wearing asbestos mittens, several layers of clothing, but no helmet or any other safety gear) and run round the town square or up and down the streets as spectators (numbering in their thousands) shrink / leap out of the way.

You have to be born in Ottery St. Mary to take part, and it's clearly a matter of huge pride to these men, who've been training for these days since childhood. There's a huge degree of pride and status involved in carrying the barrels, and these burly alpha-males revel in it.

I'd recommend it to anyone. It's basically a cross between a rugby club pub crawl and a Rammstein concert.

Collective inspiration with Steve Henry

Another week over, and I need to get my Friday blog out of the way. As is my wont, I have a couple of blog posts lined up, but I wanted to talk about the energy I felt this afternoon.

No point boring anyone with the exact details, but essentially, it was Steve Henry (creator of the Tango ads and the finest Pot Noodle ad ever), Marc the SCA 2.0 Dean, and a collection of advertising students talking about photography, washing powder, and banking. And the rate at which valuable ideas and thoughts were spilling from everyone's lips was like no conversation I'd been in before.

I came out of it thinking we could have seriously revolutionised banking. Maybe we haven't. Or maybe what we thought up could work, but no-one will be brave enough to hear us out and give it a go. But that isn't necessarily the point.

The point is that we were using our brains. We were feeding off each other - each idea was never one we'd stored in our heads and waiting to say, it was an expansion of the previous idea, or a lateral thought that took it somewhere new.

Because for all the talk of how creativity can be nurtured, and situations deliberately created to make it happen, I've remained just a little sceptical - especially as my best ideas have tended to be moments of solo inspiration. But today, for the first time, I really saw how it can work.

Choice FM - slowmo bullets

We had Paul Brazier, ECD of AMV BDDO, in the school today - and we got some incredibly valuable feedback on our work. In honour of this, here's a great AMV ad; a heart-stopping one minute spot for Choice FM's "Kill The Gun" campaign.

Rustins - perils of family branding

Just a quick post tonight, but I noticed this brand name on the paint for our new dining chairs.

As one might expect, it's a family name, and one with a proud history. But it could hardly be worse - it rhymes with dustbin, has "rust" and "tin" in it... I'm sure it doesn't do them any real harm, but if you put them next to Crown, Dulux, and Farrow & Ball in a list, it does seem a little lacking.

Thomsons indie holidays

Set to a gentle reworking of The Pixies "Where Is My Mind", this 90 second spot from Beattie McGuinness Bungay positions Thomson Holidays as a chance to rediscover the quality time you miss throughout the rest of the year. But...

...I find it a little ill-judged. Everything about the family suggests the upper (though possibly liberal) end of the middle class spectrum. It all reeks of expensive vintage shops, 4x4s, golden retrievers, and detached houses with long-haired toddlers running around being creative. The instagram-y filters at different points of the ad don't help either.

A child voiceover is fine if they're clearly too young to have written the words given. But this boy looks just old enough to at least understand what he's saying, and the final shot where he speaks the words to the camera break the illusion of a child reading an adult's words. He just comes across like a particularly precocious privately educated swot. The meaningful, knowing look to the camera at the start only exacerbates this.

It was suggested to me that perhaps they're pitching at that end of the market - but in that case, why was the ad launched during an X-Factor live show? And why, when I google "Thomson Holidays", does it immediately give me "cheap summer and winter package holidays"?

I'd really like to know the thinking behind this, because it's a big campaign, but at the moment, I just don't see it.

Freddie Flintoff for Morrisons

Right, back to an ad a day, this time a celebrity supermarket slot from DLKW Lowe

Well, as far as these things go, it's beautifully done. The message - Morrisons do a range of ready meals from different cuisines - is put across simply and effectively.

But Flintoff is the perfect find for so many reasons. Men want to be his mate, women want to be his mistress. He's charming and handsome, and has a populist appeal that a Michael Atherton or a David Gower could never possess.

But more to the point, he just nails it. There must have been some high-fives after the first screen test. He's down to earth, but he pitches in and learns the foreign phrases to each of the chefs. He's blokey, but not wooden. The sign-off "champion" works because it reflects both his image and the brand's image.

Richard Hammond, take note.

SCA 2.0 half term assignment pt.4

Well bloody hell, here it is, Sunday night, then once more unto the breach, dear friends.

I did have a listen to 3 albums that I normally wouldn't, although to be fair I wasn't always concentrating on them that much.

1. "Missundaztood" by Pink

Taken from Mrs Cutcopywrite's CD collection, I did already know a couple of tracks, like "Get the party starte" and "Just Like A Pill", but the rest was a mystery. Strangely, even the tracks I knew had a really dated, anaemic production, neither pop nor rock, that was all drums and vocals and nothing in between. We're used to big bass and ravey synths all over our music these days, and despite a spirited perfomance from the woman, I can't imagine, for example, ever using it in an advert. One of those things that sounds better in your memory.

2. "Happy Hardcore Top 100 Best Ever" by Various Artists

This was, er, fast. It brought back happy memories of Technohead's "I want to be a hippy", in which Top Of The Pops would censor the word "marijuana" but not the phrase "I want to get high". There were odd moments where I'd recognise a sample, or where a nifty rave riff would appear for a bit, but mostly it just highlighted how much dance music has moved on, and with genres like dubstep and artists like Major Lazer around, going faster and faster (happy hardcore runs at 160-180bpm) just seems silly.

It's fair to say that of the three, this is the CD that caused Mrs Cutcopywrite the most aggravation.

3. "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill", by Lauryn Hill

I enjoyed this. It's not my thing entirely, but sales and critical acclaim were so high that you can't help but take notice. I could have done without the strange educational spoken word parts, but otherwise, it was a great album lyrically and musically.

Right, now for a good night's sleep. Possibly.

SCA 2.0 half term assignment pt.3

Right, as promised, I started reading "Quest - Journey to the Centre of your Soul".

Then I stopped. Sorry, but I just couldn't take it any more. It's the usual New Age logic gap. Yes, there is probably great personal benefit from spending a day in silence, or camping out in nature on your own, or sitting in an empty room without distractions for a period of time. But you can see that benefit without linking it to Native American rituals, or attaching some kind of cosmic significance.

Time alone = time to think = time to reflect = a chance to make decisions and come to answers. It's as simple as that. But it gets surrounded by this self-important, meaningless "spiritual" bollocks.

Take room purifying, for instance. I will just about accept that the aroma created by burning sage may have some relaxing or calming properties. But I won't accept that it will "cleanse the energy", because energy is a complicated scientific concept and not something you can spray with Dettol, and neither will I accept that it is necessary to use a feather to waft the smoke around. Why not anything else? What difference does it make? If I wafted it around with a copy of Mein Kampf, and then invited her into the room to examine "the energy", would she be able to tell?

Furthermore, why do they always pick the acceptable parts of tribal rituals? She talks about how young adolescents from Native American tribes go on a Quest to reach adulthood, and prescribes it for her own children. But then, the coming of age rituals of boys in the Sambia tribe of Papua New Guinea would involve inserting sharpened sticks into their nostrils until blood gushed out, and encouraging them to fellate as many bachelors in the tribe as possible, and swallow as much semen as possible, over a period of 5 days. Perhaps Ms Linn would like to include this "Quest" in her next book?

Anyway, I feel a bit guilty for not getting through it all, so I'm going to listen to an album of Happy Hardcore to make a start on part 4.

SCA 2.0 half term assignment pt.2

Today, I developed a terrible, terrible cold. I also watched a film that I would never normally watch, a chick flick / romcom called Baby Mama, starrring Tina Fey.

It was actually quite enjoyable. I'd write a fuller review but I feel like crap. Luckily, the book I've chosen for part 3 of the assignment should help me out. It's called "Quest: Journey to the centre of your soul", by Denise and Meadow Linn. Sample sentence: "One of the fastest ways to tap into your Spirit Power is to drum". Can't wait!

A response to George Monbiot's balls

The writer used his Guardian column yesterday evening to pen an attack on the advertising industry as "a poison that demeans even love".

There's so much wrong with this is article it's difficult to know where to begin. It's certainly true that advertisers must face up to ethical responsibilities around targeting children and invading privacy. But at every stage, he takes the argument a step too far.

"Some adverts appear to promote intrinsic values, associating their products with family life and strong communities. But they also create the impression that these values can be purchased, which demeans and undermines them."

Do they? When was the last time anyone watched a family bouncing around happily on a DFS sofa and think "oh hey, if I buy DFS, maybe my family will be happy like theirs"?

The truth, of course, is far less sinister. DFS know that families are a major demographic target for their goods, so they put a family in the advert to indicate this. Just like left-wing parents take their kids on marches, even when they're too young understand the banners they're holding, in the full knowledge that they'll make an effective photo opportunity.

"As a report by the progressive thinktank Compass explains, the messages used by advertisers are designed to trigger emotional rather than rational responses"


Yes, and George Monbiot and other left-wing columnists never use emotive language to encourage us to see their side of the argument.


"Advertising claims to enhance our choice, but it offers us little choice about whether we see and hear it, and ever less choice about whether we respond to it."


Oh, balls. If this was true, we'd never stop spending money. I don't see an advert for EasyJet and leap for the laptop to make a booking. But if, for example, I fancied a holiday in Europe, then maybe I'd start thinking about where I could find hotels and flights and ideas for places to go, and remember the EasyJet ad.

I could equally well, of course, go to a flight comparison site, like thousands do every day, and decide for myself who I want to go with.

Which brings me to a wider point - that every advance in the sophistication of advertising is matched by the sophistication of consumers. The industry is getting cleverer because it has to. People are more aware of advertising and how it works than ever before. Consumer advice programmes, news, blogs, and social media make us more aware of product faults and unethical practices than ever before.

And finally, there's a massive sense of entitlement about all this. It's like those libertarians on the right who complain about taxes being too high then complain that the council services are poor and the NHS didn't treat them fast enough. Just how many websites do we use every day, of our own free choice, that charge us absolutely nothing to use their services? How many hours of TV (outside of the BBC) do we watch?

Then ask how many people do these websites and TV channels employ? How much equipment do they need to purchase and maintain in order for you to enjoy and use their product? And you think that this should all come for free?

Advertising, just like free-market capitalism, needs to come with ethics and it needs a safety net. But it is the sister of democracy, and unless you ditch that, you can't ditch advertising either.

I know which combination I'd choose.

SCA 2.0 half term assignment pt.1

Over half term this week, we have to do the following:

- watch a film we would never normally watch
- read 2 magazines we would never normally read
- read a book we would never normally read
- listen to 3 albums from a genre we would never normally listen to.

As of today, it's one down, three to go, having read my two magazines. Magazine number one: BBC Top Of The Pops.

From this, I learned that:
- Horoscopes in teen mags are basically behavioural engineering. A typical one runs "your parents are tired, so why not help them out with chores?" or "there's a new girl at school who's feeling left out, why not make friends with her?"
- The word "cringe" is now a noun as well as a verb, as in "I had a complete cringe in front of this boy I like"
- It is acceptable in such mags to describe the pre-pubescent mini-Bieber, Ronan Parke, with the word "yum"
- Teenage girls like One Direction. This cannot be overstated. They're on just about every page of it, including the page telling you what's in the magazine next issue.
- Slashfic* is the underlying psychological driver behind teen fandom. In this case it's a kind of platonic slash-lite, but it's notable how many of the questions asked of the various boys involve friendship, hugs, togetherness, and brotherhood. Typical enquiry to One Direction: "How much do you love each other out of 100 per cent?"**
- The free bottles of nail polish and stick on jewellery are harder to apply than they look; it's probably something to do with a group of friends at a sleepover. Here's my attempt, with The Wanted looking disapprovingly on:

* This is slashfic, if you weren't aware.
** As opposed to "out of 75 per cent", one assumes.

Magazine number two: Love It!

This really was a horrendous, downmarket, prurient, depressing piece of filth. On the one hand they have horror stories about cosmetic eye surgery, on the other they offer, with no apparent irony, breast reduction as a competition prize. We have a single Mum whose way of finding personal redemption from her disfiguring burn scar is to work nights in a strip club, private dances included. Apparently men jizzing in their pants as she rubbed her vagina against their trousers made her "feel good about [her]self". There's some half-arsed analysis of celebrity couples' body language, deciding from a single photo that Fearne Cotton's boyfriend has doubts about his relationship. The embarrassing photos sent in by readers are simply not funny or remarkable in any way, and the captions added by the subs added nothing witty or charming.

I could go on, but I won't. I know there's downmarket, but this is just hideous.

Tune in tomorrow when I'll be watching Tina Fey's 2008 film "Baby Mama". Apparently it's a comedy.

Half Term at SCA (and earphone scamps)

Or "no rest for the wicked", as it should be subtitled. We've still got a lot to do, and I've got a bit extra as I'm doing some freelance work producing web copy for one of our mentors. But there should still be time for a little rest, with a bit of luck.

In the latter part of the first half term we finally started producing ads. The first brief was a bit of an odd one, and a difficult one for me - we had to produce a government campaign to get people to turn down or take off their earphones, with posters on the tube and on buses. Difficult for me because I depend on them while travelling for my sanity, and because I know that they're well insulated and the sound doesn't leak to the outside world.

Anyway, working with the splendid Katie Harland, we came to the conclusion that lecturing people about health risks or antisocial behaviour would largely be ignored. Therefore we needed to engage and amuse, and get the message across to people with a little subtlety. We did this by suggesting weird and wonderful conversation snippets that you might overhear if you took your headphones out.

First example, which also gives an idea of the typography:

Next example as a scamp, with added pay-off line and the tagline ("Unplug Your Lugs") buried in the web address.

Final example, with some extra words to make it clearer that it's referring to what you might hear in the carriage. I think another team, who had basically the same idea as us, had a better solution, which was to give each quote a date, time, and tube line where it was supposedly (or actually) heard. I think ours was a little clumsy by comparison, though naturally I preferred our quotes...

I had a lovely idea for a hard-hitting poster based on the insight another team had about tinnitus sufferers being likely to commit suicide. It would feature earphones in the shape of a noose, and the words "Tinnitus leads many sufferers to suicide. So it's not just the other passengers you're driving mad. Turn it down". Unfortunately, the suicide thing is a complete myth, but it would have been nice.

Twinings - gets you back to you

One of a plethora of adverts to be released during an episode of X Factor (it's a fun game spotting the ones where the entire budget has clearly been spent on the timeslot and not the ad), this is the new effort for Twinings by the good folk at AMV BDDO. Stephen Fry is nowhere to be seen.

I find the song on the dreary side, but as Adele is currently Queen Of The Entire World, I suspect I am out of step with the times and it's a sensible choice. It certainly fits the mood. But it's a solid piece of positioning - aimed squarely at women who sometimes feel a bit run down and miserable, which is clearly all of them. I wonder if the woman embracing herself led some men to become momentarily excited about the thought of some  twin-on-twin action, but it's the only morsel to chew on.

The strapline - we've been talking about these a lot lately - of "gets you back to you" is weaker. It could be any tea or hot chocolate or anything comforting really - I hope they don't try to use it to define the entire brand.

Schemas

Things are getting busy at the School of Communication Arts 2.0 - in fact I've only got round to doing this blog after a busy day at school and an evening spent writing and recording a voiceover on the history of telecommunications advertising (a very potted one, mind you).

The morning session from Chris Hill was fascinating throughout, but one part stuck out, which chimed in with the book we're currently reading: Made To Stick, by Chip and Dan Heath. They've been talking about "schemas" - which are (and let's head over to Wikipedia now) "structures that organize our knowledge and assumptions about something and are used for interpreting and processing information".

In other words, when I say "X Factor", you might think "a singing competition on the television that loads of people watch and while entertaining is not perhaps the purest example of musical and artistic expression". You probably think a lot more. Just 2 words instantly bring up a whole range of facts, ideas, names, images, songs and more in your mind - and that makes them an incredibly powerful tool for expressing a complex idea in an easily digestible and easily remembered way.

So today, we had the old AA slogan, "to our members we're the 4th emergency service". And that's all you need - with that you know that you phone them to get help, they come to you, probably in a van, as fast as they can, and they'll fix whatever it is that's wrong. All that is expressed in 2 words - "emergency service".

Words, eh? Bloody hell.

Thoroughly decent Goodfellas ad (for balance)

This blog can't be all doom and gloom, so here's a good ad. It draws you in, it strongly pushes authenticity as a brand value, and there's a great pay-off. A big platonic Italian kiss to the uncredited Mother London copywriter who wrote the script.

However, now we supposedly have to listen to what Steve Henry and Dave Trott are saying, that you really have to start making your ads special, or else who remembers them? I don't think things are quite this black and white - because in this case, what they want to do is make you choose them at the freezer aisle above the other frozen pizzas.

You might not remember this ad when asked "tell me about some ads you saw yesterday", but to me that's a bit of an artificial challenge. Surely the test is to put some brands in front of someone then ask if they remember seeing any adverts for it, what they thought. And if this one springs to mind as they're hovering around that freezer aisle, it's only going to be a positive.

What The Shitting Fuck? #3 - Renault Koleos ad

And hot on the heels of the Range Rover Evoque comes yet another worthless car ad. Only one word needed to sum up why this is a complete abortion of creativity and imagination.

Meerkats???


Publicis Conseil, Paris, consider yourself spanked.

What The Shitting Fuck? #2 - Range Rover Evoque ad

OK, this is maybe a little unfair as it's not actively awful, but just last Friday we had Steve Henry come and talk to us, and he asked us what our families would say if we asked them "what advertising have you enjoyed recently?". Maybe they'd mention meerkats, or Cadbury's gorilla, or the Yeo Valley farmers - but they wouldn't mention very many ads at all.

In advertising we can exist in a bubble where we assume that everyone is as interested in the slot as you are, and thus the technically proficient becomes the enemy of the interesting. And this ad is a prime example. It's just so stylishly, imaginatively, grandiosely... empty. There's nothing there, just pretty images, none of which are going to make anyone break off their conversation and watch it.

I don't want to know who made this. I hope I don't ever make an ad like it.

Bitchin' Pitches

Today at SCA2 we had an all-day session on presentation techniques and public speaking. I've always regarded myself as fairly confident and a good speaker, but with a less-than-engaging voice - it's distressing how often I answer the phone in a perfect state of health to someone who immediately says "oh my, that's a shocking cold you've got".

In fact, it turned out to be the other way round. My voice was praised (apparently I use my "resonators", which although I've sung in the odd choir I've certainly never been trained to do), but I was picked up on for moving around, not gesturing enough, not making eye contact enough, saying "erm", looking at the floor, etc.

So I now have to just remember to GESTURE, to speak LOUDER, to speak SLOWER, to EMPHASISE each word, and remember to PAUSE.

Apologies for capitals, but I think they're semi-appropriate there. Anyway, I made a whole lot of progress today, and with the help of a Don Draper clip and a viewing orgy of Obama speeches under my belt this evening, I think I'm just about ready to pitch our agency name to Steve Henry tomorrow.

Pot Noodle Wag

A great new effort from Mother. The tagline - "why try harder?" - perfectly expresses the Pot's position - a piece of piss. After all, it's about the same effort as making a cup of tea. The whole advert screams - "it's junk, it's trash, it has no class, but it's fast and we don't care". It's gaudy and funny, and must have been a joy to make.

Changing Rooms

So we (me and Mrs CutCopyWrite) decorated our living room last weekend - or rather, we finished decorating it over a long period of curtain making (by his Mum), painting (by him), and arguing (both of us).

In fact, as I was reading about Eric Berne's theories of Transactional Analysis, it was a bit embarrassing how often we fitted into his roles (controlling parent, natural child, adaptive child, nurturing parent, and so on), and even more shaming how often I fitted into the natural child role.

Still, it works - this is what we ended up with. Note G-Plan dining chairs, feature walls, and original radiators.

Yoghurt WAR!!!

So, the first X-Factor live show, and the first big brand face-off sees a Dairy Derby in play. In the red corner (yes, we've moved from football to boxing) is BBH's new Yeo Valley spot:

It was probably never possible to improve on "big up your chest, represent the west", but it's a good try and very slickly done. Some nice touches too: the key change, the cheesy looks, serenading the cow, the fact that it's actually quite catchy, and so on. It isn't quite genius but it'll certainly go viral (#yeovalley was very quickly trending on Twitter during the show), and releasing it on iTunes will keep the publicity going and raise a little extra cash along the way. Also, early indications are that the farming foursome are fluttering the hearts of girl and gay alike.

In the blue corner, Muller yoghurts from TBWA, with a play for the nostalgia angle.

Props to the licensing and special effects departments on this one, they must have pulled a few late nights. It's certainly impressive, but you have to ask what part of it will stop people talking about Two Shoes' lipstick malfunction and actually sit still and watch it. It's certainly talked about less - "wunderful stuff" has only 117 results, and "Muller Yoghurt" only 887, compared to 22,500 for "yeovalley" (on a google search for results in the last 2 days), despite the agency's best efforts to start a rival trending topic.

A TKO, I think. Or 2-1. Something like that, anyway.

I want us to talk because I like the sound of your voice

Sod it, no ads today, I just wanted to find some writing that's just perfect, and The West Wing is always a good place to start.

The scene really doesn't need much context - it's all about the universal theme of fear - that is, fear of being in love and giving yourself to somebody completely, the feeling that you're surrendering yourself in some way.

Ultimately, it all boils down to that one simple line - "I just want to talk". It's that distillation of everything, that truth, that insight, that every copywriter is searching for.

SCA 2.0 work: G-Wiz brief

One of the purposes of this blog is to post work that I've been doing for my course at the School of Communication Arts - not just to show anyone interested, but actually to have a record of work completed for evaluation purposes. It's all a far cry from the exam papers and bound dissertations I'm used to, but what the hell, let's go with it.

To help us understand the process of writing a Creative Brief, we were... asked to write one, by Patrick Collister of Creative Matters. This is what my team produced.

Click here to download the document.

Peace Talks... but who's buying?

International Alert has created a short film, produced by HMDG, to mark International Peace Day. The message is pretty simple - words can stop bullets.

The production is pretty good but it feels like something is lacking. It just feels like the CGI isn't quite dramatic enough. Also, the story isn't right either: why does the peaceful man seem just as angry as the warmonger?

A missed opportunity.

Wartime Whores

Great pair of posters from World War II here, mostly aimed at American soldiers finding themselves in Britain amongst a lot of lonely ladies. The first one is the perfect short line of copy, with a kind of symmetry that puts "say" in the middle, then "know" and "no" rhyming either side, then "who" and "to" rhyming either side of that. It's got a great rhythm to it, too.

This one seems more old fashioned, like one of those old allegorical cartoons, or even a Hogarth drawing - whereas the previous one, disregarding the slight misogynistic overtones, could have been made now.

Original post at Retronaut with more images.

Christians do Good Copy

This weekend I went to see my nephew get christened and become his godfather. During the service, being an atheist, I was actually paying a lot of attention to the words of the prayers and hymns, and noticed that some of them are absolute masterclasses in rhetoric, using the same devices as politicians and orators have used for centuries.

I typed out one of the prayers and annotated it - click here to view the document in google docs (you don't need an account).

Alternatively, you can just watch this video of my nephew developing his neck muscle stamina.

The Madness of Carte D'Or

I was reading Alan Bennett's "Untold Stories" at bedtime last night and came across an entry from his diaries I'd forgotten about. Rather improbably, it features the great writer praising a TV commercial, for Carte D'Or ice cream. Here he is to explain:

And here is the advert itself:

I think the description is actually slightly better than the ad itself - I think the timing could have been tighter. But it's marvelously observed nonetheless.

Idea vs Execution

We had an intensely thought-provoking masterclass at SCA on creative briefs from Patrick Collister of Creative Matters. Too much to distill and discus here, but one message that stuck out was that there was a clear difference between "idea" (or "meaning") and "execution".

The example he gave was the Carlton Draught's "It's A Big Ad" TV slot. The idea is to take the piss out of advertising. The execution is to parody the "big event" adverts with giant overhead shots of huge crowds.

But it's not a simple concept, so I felt the need to apply it to other adverts to see if I can make it work myself. Here goes...

Match.com shop duet
Meaning: Find instant chemistry
Execution: 2 strangers improvising a duet

Carlsberg bikers in cinema
Meaning: Carlsberg is a reward
Execution: Film people being given Carlsberg for a brave or difficult task

T-Mobile flash mob
Meaning: Show people sharing fun together
Execution: Take a spontaneous YouTube phenomenon and recreate it with paid extras
(you may be getting the idea that I'm not overly keen on current T-mobile ads, if you've been paying attention to this blog)

Weetabix dancing teddies
Meaning: Weetabix gives you amazing energy
Execution: Show girl eating it and dancing in groovy/odd way with groovy/odd teddies

Yeo Valley rapping farmers
This HAS to be the odd one out. I'm sorry, but even if the Creative Director was in front of me now denying it, I would not deviate from my belief that the very first thing they thought of was the "Yeo Valley" / "Yo Valley" pun, and the idea grew from there. I refuse to believe the first insight was "wouldn't rapping farmers be amusing?". Note that the tagline is so utterly unmemorable (not sure? it's "live in harmony") because it doesn't have to be - the execution does all the work.

I hope I'm right, anyway.

To Fly, To Serve

An appropriate post, I think, as we popped into BBH London last week as part of our agency visits. Bit of a pilgrimage for me, as John Hegarty's book was one of the things that convinced me I was taking the right path. Anyway, here is their new "aviators" ad for British Airways.

There you go. It's obviously stirring, tells a story, beautifully shot and written - it's the kind of ad that BBH do best. But I think the most interesting thing is Easyjet's response.

It's easy (hah!) to see this as a shot across the bows, and it is certainly a little cheeky. But I suspect that it won't bother BA one bit. Anyone who is looking to save probably already knows that Ryanair and Easyjet will be cheaper. If anything it reinforces the message that for heritage and quality, you go to British Airways. Both brands stay in their respective places, and although Easyjet may get publicity out of it, I don't think it's at the expense of the older airline to any great degree.

You could compare it to the Dixons ads targeting John Lewis, but BA's advantage is in having only one position to defend, which Easyjet don't even try to attach. John Lewis made the mistake of saying "never knowingly undersold" on 3 things - quality, price, and service - meaning they have to fight wars on 3 fronts.

T-mobile's traffic wardens

Here is the latest effort from Saatchi and Saatchi.

Sorry, but I don't like this one bit. What is it saying? They're not even offering cashback, they're just illustrating some vague idea about surprises. There's no real connection between product and concept.

Not to mention the fact it plays up to the tabloid assumption that generosity is the reverse of what traffic wardens do and how they behave. What traffic wardens do is enforce the law, and for the majority of the time they behave perfectly reasonable.

Perhaps next they could have social workers threatening to take kids away from their families, then reveal they've won a holiday? Perhaps gypsies could park a car on someone's drive then reveal they've won a car?

The problem is that the advert thinks it's challenging assumptions, when actually all it does is reinforce them. I don't care if it works. No-one should be proud of this ad.

Though "Boom! Welcome to Brighton" is a good line, to be fair.

Pop-Punk Parallelism

Just a quick thought about how we can use copywriting tricks and techniques without thinking about it. I was reading this excellent guide, and in particular the section on parallelism. It describes it as "the deliberate repetition of a particular word, phrasing or sentence structure for effect". So, for a really simple example, "Don't just do it, B&Q it".

Then I was listening to a copy of the new album by Brit pop-punkers You Me At Six, and a rather emo breakup anthem called "This Is The First Thing". The chorus goes...

This is the first thing I thought
This is the last thing that I want
You were the first one I loved
You were the first love I lost

Really simple, but with different words, it wouldn't be half as catchy. Perhaps singer Josh Franchesci has an alternative career ahead of him.

Lurpak butter

Seen on Camberwell New Road on my walk home from class.

The main thing that needs to be praised is the art direction - it's a beautiful image. It makes me hungry. I urge you to take a look at the full size image.

I wasn't so sure about the headline "noble", but in context with the rest of the campaign, which is headed with words like "salvation", "heroics", and "empires", they deserve their space.

The stated aim is to "reinforce the brand’s position as the natural choice to enhance good food", and in a marketplace where there is no discernible quality or price difference, it's as good a way as I can think of to swing your decision. It is, let's face it, an appeal to the middle class foodie, the people who want simple homemade food with good quality ingredients, and are sceptical of packaged sandwiches and fast food. Yes, it's preaching to the converted, but it's beautifully done.

A thought from bedtime

I met a student from last year's intake at SCA briefly today. He had an American-ish accent and I asked where he was from. He said "Bermuda" and for some reason that threw me a little, and the conversation came to a fairly abrupt halt. I felt slightly uncomfortable about it afterwards.

Then as I was brushing my teeth, paying attention to the gums, it suddenly occurred to me what had been so disconcerting. It was that I automatically think of Bermuda as a place that people go to. It's never, never, ever a place that people come from.

Additional thought on storytelling

Yesterday I talked about a scene from Queer As Folk, and how by allowing the audience to work out the characters for themselves, they make the whole story more compelling.

It turns out there was another possible reason I found the scene so affecting, which came up during an improv workshop with Stella Duffy. The group had to stand in the circle, say their name, and a fact about themselves (and later, a lie). The point that came out of it was that the facts we remembered were the ones that had "specificity", i.e. the ones that provided an interesting nugget of information to hold on to.

So everyone remembered that Jaane had eaten hamburgers all week, or that Olesia like white clothes with red detail, or that the man I saw earlier that morning was Peruvian. So perhaps that's why I still remember the chunky kit kat line from Queer As Folk, even now.

Puns are for tabloid subs

...or so we're told. Sometimes, they might just work in an advert. And so here are the Vodafone freebees.

I actually love the concept, I just hate the art direction. Maybe it's just a personal thing, but those hyperreal illustrations and animations (see also British Gas) just creep me the hell out. I'm sure a simpler illustrative style would be more emotionally appealing.