I'm an occasional freelance copywriter, but mostly a student at the School of Communication Arts in London. Previously an Account Manager at a small design agency, where I started writing copy and thinking up headlines and slogans. In fact, I've been writing all my life, but it never occurred to me I could make a living from it this way. So now I'm giving it a go.
Exhibit 1: a Wimbledon promotion for Jacob's Creek, in the Metro newspaper (click for full size)...
"Has partnered with... to bring alive the brand's philosophy"??? Did they just copy this directly from the Account Manager's email? Did the writer know they would be talking to ordinary humans?
Exhibit 2: Taiwan Excellence...
With the best will in the world, I can hardly take seriously an advert that suggests Taiwan is the only country using innovation in product design, R&D, quality and marketing. What IS unique is their description of this as "innovalue". Perhaps that's what they were trying to say.
Yes, it's the Olympics, and nakedly sexual admiration for the scantily-clad, fat-free, streamlined human body is going to be the nation's top hobby for a month or so. With that in mind, here is the BBC's trail by RKCR/Y&R.
Go fullscreen and HD for full effect:
I mention quivering muscles for a reason - it's actually just one beautiful piece of attention to detail (look at the gymnast on the rings at 0:34) in an animation full of them. A crew of dozens put this together, and no wonder - even though the characters are distorted, it's still one of the finest artificial representations of human movement I've ever seen.
Does it mean much? Not really, apart from a vague aspiration to include the entire country and not just the capital in the Games. It's mostly just an appetite-whetter for an event we know about already. But as a piece of craft, it's hard to beat.
I've made a habit on this blog of mentioning projects that my friends mention on social media. And this one is especially satisfying as so many were taken in by it. I'm talking, of course, of Dare's "graffitied" Go Compare billboards that have been appearing round the place.
Here's one friend who was taken in even though he studies advertising...
...and another one who fell for it on Facebook.
As luck would have it, Dare CD Laura Jordan-Bambach was in the School mentoring yesterday and gave us some useful insight into the lengths they went to in order to hoodwink people.
Firstly, they made sure that only one poster in a certain area would appear to be vandalised, to increase the likelihood of someone seeing an unspoiled one. Secondly, they printed the "graffiti" parts at a much higher resolution than the rest of the poster, to make it look more realistic.
It's a useful little lesson into craft and attention to detail - if the campaign hadn't fooled anyone it could have backfired badly.
I've been neglecting this blog a great deal lately, but with good reason. I've had a very busy couple of weeks, on placement at AMV BBDO. More of that later, but big news first.
Olly and I won a D&AD student award for our "EA Peace Day" idea in the Open Brief category. And then we won the award for D&AD Students Of The Year! Here we are with 50% of our awards...
Needless to say we're over the moon, but of course it's as much about the opportunities it opens up as the actual awards. So we're very much hoping to get placements as good as the one we just had, because AMV's system should really be the benchmark.
First of all, they have a system in place - you're looked after by someone outside the Creative department, which actually works wonders. This means that you're not constantly hassling busy creatives for briefs or help - instead, you're making phone calls to Account Managers, Planners, Project Managers - all of whom are invariably happy to help.
There are the little things, too, like the fact that they create an email address for you, and put you on the agency-wide and creative mailing groups. This means that from day one, you actually get emails - and even if they're just telling you that some left an iPhone in the 3rd floor ladies', they still make you feel part of the organisation.
Oh, and they pay placement teams, and there's free porridge before 9am. What more could you want?
Who the fuck are these people? Why have they been invited to play at a national football match?
If by some weird chance they are a famous enough band to play at a major event, why are they travelling in a small, cheap car?
Why are they bringing along the instruments with them in a car, rather having them safely transported with the rest of the equipment in professional flight cases?
Why, if they're playing a massive gig at a football stadium, do they need to practice the song on the way there, and get it wrong to boot? Why aren't they better prepared?
When they're singing in the car, whose is the second female voice harmonising with the girl in front? If it's one of the men singing falsetto, why are none of them moving their lips?
Why are they playing a cover instead of one of their own songs?
What has playing a song about being secretly gay or bisexual got to do with small cars or major football events?
Why do they need to drive the car onto the pitch?
I'm sure there's a reasonable explanation for it all.
Just like yesterday, I was on a quest to ward off boredom, so set off out again. First up, some place near Borough was having an open gardens day so I met up with some friends, taking in a statue of King Alfred and a nice spiky flower:
There was also a book stall. I assume this isn't the book on which Mike Leigh's film was based.
And then to the London Transport Museum. Almost too much to blog about - possibly the most lingering memory will be a weirdly unsettling incident where a little girl asked me to help her find her Mother. Which sounds fairly normal, but she was literally dragging me by the hand to get me to take her to another bit of the museum. In the end I found a member of staff to take care of it, but it was very very odd.
Anyway, the highlights included a nice reminder that some things never change, some old school copywriting, and one of the best bits of art direction / illustration I've seen in a while:
And lastly, the chap at the desk said they didn't have any free maps of the place - I either had to buy one or take one of those they give kids as a challenge to keep them occupied.
Well, I've never been one to turn down a challenge.
Mrs Cutcopywrite is away at a festival this weekend so I decided not to mope around the flat for 2 days, and headed off to the Imperial War Museum.
Before I got there, I was wandering past a dance school, and noticed there was a free art exhibition on. So I looked at it, my attempts to understand it soundtracked by muffled thumping from the rehearsal rooms above.
I liked this one, entitled "Film Poster" (click to see full size and read it):
When I got into the IWM, there was a young toddler screaming. Later on, I was looking at a display on the Blitz and it was still screaming. At first it was annoying, but then it occurred to me that it was perhaps displaying the most appropriate response to the horrors and stories on display. More appropriate, certainly, than the 3 young men wandering through the Holocaust Exhibit, chatting about their favourite comedy programmes.
Having suffered the Holocaust, as it were, I decided to give the Crime Against Humanity film a miss, though I was intrigued by the warning at the entrance:
I'd like to think the disturbances are caused by distress, but I suspect that most are protests from those with a pathological blindness to the atrocities committed by their state of origin. Of course, it's the same mental myopia that means we have Holocaust Exhibitions in the first place.
And if that seems a sobering thought to end on, then fear not - I'm just about to watch some football, make a rich carbonara, and start on my second Corona.
I was delighted to see that someone else had picked up on one of my favourite quotations, from Alan Bennett's The History Boys.
“The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - that you’d thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you’ve never met, maybe even someone long dead. And it’s as if a hand has come out and taken yours.”
Even out of context, it's immensely powerful. But Ran posed a further question, which is why we like a particular piece of advertising. And although it may seem insufferably pretentious to compare an advert to an Alan Bennett play, it's actually for a not wholly unconnected reason.
A good advert should feel like an undiluted message from the writer to the reader (or viewer). It shouldn't appear to be filtered and approved and altered and tweaked, it should feel like they wrote that headline on a piece of paper and passed it to you across a table. It should feel human.
I don't believe a great ad can be written by a copywriter whose first thought was "is this on brand?", or who was sticking to a brief or watching their tone of voice. I think most were written after the second whiskey, at 3am on a sleepless night, or perhaps in a contemplative moment on the toilet.
Inspiration doesn't always strike. Sometimes an advert has to be forced out through a convoluted haze of logic, lists, and Roget's. But you're never going to reach out and touch someone with work like that.
Have a look at this advert for Goodyear. Not sure who produced it, but it's a fairly typical example of economics (will need to work in several different languages) trumping creativity. Then ask yourself if there's anything familiar about the slogan.
That's right. "100% better prepared for the unexpected". Nothing at all like Tony Kaye's classic 1993 ad for Dunlop, with it's "Tested for the Unexpected" line. I mean, it's not like they're both ads for a similar product or anything.
Of course, when it comes down to it, it's not the plagiarism that offends - it's that they take the same idea and offer up such a weak travesty of an ad.
I wasn't paying attention to the adverts just now; I was sitting at my laptop idly looking through Twitter. And for whatever reason - Twitter, the ironing, an unexpected sexual favour - we have to face the fact that this is how a lot of us watch (or don't watch) television advertising.
But then an advert came on that got my attention from sound alone. Not with words, but pure sound - and in this case, the simple aural effect of taking repeating a short clip and making it go faster and faster.
I sincerely hope this is intentional on the part of the agency (Brother and Sisters) - because it really works.
Watch it. Just WATCH IT. It's by Forever Beta (no, me neither).
So here's the interesting thing. I was at a talk the other day for a book launch (this one), and Steve Henry was talking about how "weird shit" starts conversations. It's always the weird, wonderful, and woeful that we talk about.
So I wondered, could this utterly shit piece of work actually be more successful than a competent but not exceptional advert? As it happens, I blogged about that exact thing a while ago - an ad for McVitie's Quirks.
YouTube video for the Quirks ad - uploaded 4 months ago / 6,800 views
YouTube video for the Hit Biscuits ad - uploaded 30 days ago / 55,757 views
I can also state that I've seen the Hit Biscuits ad shared at least 3 times on my Social Networks, and I've personally shown it to number of people.
Just worth bearing in mind next time you produce an ad and think "well it won't win any awards, but it's decent enough".
Dave Trott recently had some harsh words to say about an aspiring creative who had come to interview him, and rather unwisely fell into a large bear-trap.
His first mistake was to utter the word "story-telling", which was already on the man's mind. His second was to be unable to articulate any convincing definition of the term. As a result, Mr Trott was moved to ask 2 questions:
1. What’s good about [storytelling]? What’s new about it?
Well there's a lot good about it, and some of it is new - though by no means all.
The simplest explanation I can muster is that having a narrative tends to be more memorable than just presenting information. It's why Jesus didn't just say "being good to people is more important than where you come from"; he told the story of the Good Samaritan instead.
So it certainly isn't a new invention, inside or outside advertising. But I think there has been a trend towards integrated campaigns that tell a story - sometimes one that requires active engagement across several forms of media to fully understand. The "Why So Serious?" campaign for The Dark Knight is probably the benchmark for such efforts.
And this is probably the reason for the vague response. No-one's quite sure whether they mean the general principle of memorable narratives, or the specific technique of telling a story across multiple media.
2. How come we are using words and phrases and expressions that we don’t know the meaning of?
Because there's an immense pressure upon students these days to impress their industry elders. Here I am, doing it in this blog, though hopefully with marginally more success than the sacrificial lamb in Mr Trott's office. In fact, much of this blog is my attempt to make sense of the half-formed thoughts and learnings bouncing around my head any given week.
We're constantly told that we need to stand out. That there's so much competition for every placement. That we need to know about the industry before we get into it. What are your favourite ads? What ads don't you like? Which agency made them? What kind of work do you want to produce? And the result is, a generation of students all talking confidently and knowingly about agencies they've never even seen the front door of.
In fact, the more I see of agencies, as I go around getting my beloved book looked at, the more I realise that the less I know. I've nearly finished my advertising course, but that's only a fraction of my learning.
All that matters is having a great book and the gumption to show it to the right people. The rest is just listening and learning. And if more students were taught that, the future of advertising might feel a little more secure.
So A+E have just been bought by Omnicom for £60 million and merged with DDB. I'm not a businessman, but I assume that's a result they're pretty happy with. Not to mention the outstanding creative work and crowded trophy cabinet they've assembled in such a short time.
But what were people saying when they started out?
I chanced upon this blog from 2008, mentioning that the then youthful agency were looking for placement teams. There was quite a response in the comments section - here are some of the highlights...
"A&E, clues in the name." "I'd be very wary about taking a job at Adam and Eve. They're undoubtedly going to be the new (less creative) CHI" "Look at the work to come out of rainey's during ben dave and james tenure. utter pile of crap. doubt A&E will be any different." "All these up-and-coming startups make me laugh" "Do not, whatever you do, go work for Ben Priest. He can't be trusted, nor can his creative judgement." "But without a CD or planning director with the gravitas and talent to serve as a counterbalance, A&E will only ever be a first-rate account shop."
To be fair, the blog in general seems to be a bit of a bridge for embittered creatives and wannabe creatives to lurk under, but it's interesting nonetheless.
What I take from it is not to automatically trust the received wisdom on any particular agency. Sure, I'd love to work for a great agency. But I'd equally like to help one that isn't currently making many waves to achieve greatness.
For instance, my team has attracted some interest from an agency with a strong DM background, which is neither my strongest suit nor my greatest interest. But I understand that they are hoping to become a more integrated shop - so perhaps there's an opportunity there to help blaze that trail.
After all, who would you rather be: a White House intern ferrying around coffee and documents, or the guy who interned for Obama back in Illinois and now works in an office 2 doors from the oval one?
I don't care about new inventions and new websites and apps and social media platforms, either.
I tried. I subscribed to Mashable, I followed industry gurus on Twitter. I read articles about nanotechnology and robots and Pinterest and clouds.
And in the end, I just gave up. But with good reason.
First of all, there's always going to be someone who knows more about it than you. Just like however big your record collection is, John Peel's was bigger. And in an ad agency, I'll probably be surrounded by sharp young and not-so-young things who embrace every new fad 6 months before anyone else.
But that's the point. I'm not interested in technology, I'm interested in people. I'll get curious about something 6 months down the line when my brother and my friends and the guy in Accounts show some sign of understanding it. I got into advertising to communicate with people; to better understand what drives them to choose one thing over another.
People get paid a lot of money to spot trends and predict the future. That's fine. But it's not what I want to do. I want to make adverts and tell stories that millions of people can relate to and actually enjoy. That's all.
There's nothing wrong with a pun if you (a) make it funny, and (b) make it relevant to the campaign - or in this case, the topical event in question.
So all hail "Ma'amite" - a genius piece of opportunism by DDB.
It's worth noting the attention to detail too. There are the corgis who love it or hate it. The copy (including another pun in "toasting"). The Union Jack. The crown made from a toast rack.
I love a little alliteration. Assonance has a certain resonance, too. But it can easily be taken too far - either by just coming across too student-y, or sacrificing meaning for artistry.
Take this ad for Nurofen as an example. The text tells you it gets to work in 10 minutes.
But travelling from Heathrow to Regent's Park via tube (where the advert is being placed) takes nearly an hour. In their desperation to find Hs and Rs, they've completely obscured the point of the advert. If I took nurofen at Heathrow and was only getting relief by Regent's Park, I'd be pretty disappointed in the product.
I eat Kit-Kats quite a lot. Not in a "I only eat baked beans and Wotsits for dinner" way, just that if I fancy a chocolate biscuit, it'll most likely be a Kit-Kat.
Occasionally, you'll find that one finger, or even both, is missing its wafer and is basically all chocolate. And when that happens, I'm delighted. But why?
If I prefer "all chocolate" over "chocolate and wafer biscuit", why did I buy a Kit-Kat in the first place? Why didn't I buy a Dairy Milk or a Yorkie?
It's interesting, what we can convince ourselves is a bonus. Would they sell more if they said that 1 in every 1000 fingers had no wafer?
Companies so often get the ads in the corridors of Oxford Circus station so badly wrong. They always fail to realise that customers just sweep past them close by, propelled in a near-stampede of rushing bodies. Yet some of these brands put extensive text on their ads, irregardless of the hold up and possible assault caused by anyone actually stopping to read them.
The exceptions are the clothes brands whose shops greet you when you reach the surface - H&M, Top Shop, Gap, Uniqlo - who use simple branding and large, attractive pictures to say "make sure you visit US". Here's a typical example (it's from Berlin, but the art direction is the same):
So it was nice today to see Evian using the space intelligently and deliberately aping the clothes stores' style to attract attention. The disconnect between the art direction and the product, in this particular position, created enough cognitive dissonance to make me think consciously about the advert - which is a good deal more than half the challenge in these situations.
Of course, I'll just buy whatever bottled water is cheapest and then fill that bottle up with tap water until I need to buy a new one. I'm not a fucking moron. But it's a good try.
Well my partner Olly and I have been taking our book to a fair few people lately, and although it hardly makes me an expert, it does mean that the experience is extremely fresh in my mind. So, based on our efforts, and stealing a little advice from others, here are my top tips for getting the most out of portfolio crits (and getting them in the first place).
Any communication medium can be used to arrange a crit - one of ours was arranged via Instagram.
Don't be discouraged when Creatives and Creative Directors don't reply to your emails. They're busy. Chase up politely after a while, but you can't win them all.
Be prepared to be flexible and adjust to their schedule - expect last-minute changes.
Don't just approach the Creative Directors. Junior Creative teams can be the most helpful of all, especially when you're just getting started. They have more recent experience of the application process, and they're more likely to have quality time to spend with you than the CD.
Keep a spreadsheet with "campaigns" along the top, and "crits" along the side. Then colour the squares green for "loved it", orange for "needs some work", and red for "lose it". Then, you can see at a glance how your projects are going down. You can also use the space to make a note of specific comments or suggestions.
Never ever go back for a second crit without making significant changes to the portfolio. Push the work further, add in new projects. What they want to see is progress.
Have something in your book that tells the reader something about you. They're not just hiring the work, they're hiring the people.
Be aware of the agency you're going to before deciding what projects to put in. AMV BBDO may like to see plausible above the line campaigns for major consumer brands, whereas Mother might appreciate a more slanted, warped approach.
BUT have the courage of your convictions, too. We met a team who were told by Nick Gill at BBH to drop one of their campaigns. They came back to see him and stuck to their guns, and still got the placement. And then a job.
And don't try to be all things to all men. (a) You'll never achieve it, and (b) it'll make your book look bland and directionless.
Remember to end every crit by asking to come and see them again.
And just remember, as the old saying goes: opinions are like arseholes; fun to explore and rewarding to probe.
On Wednesday night, Olly and I went down to this event, and damn it, if it wasn't the most worthwhile decision we've made so far in our careers. At the end of the day we came away with several business cards, a handful of invitations to visit agencies, and an immediate offer of a placement.
The first half of the night consisted of a "Creative Stand-Up" session, with each of the 20 teams being given 2 minutes on stage to do - well, whatever they liked. It's fair to say the results were mixed; those teams who went went for a funny approach tended to either triumphed or bombed. Still, at least they gave it a go - the teams that just showed some work didn't really impress anyone.
We ploughed a middle course, talking about our 3 golden rules of advertising, and plugging our portfolio at every opportunity without actually showing the work. And it seemed to do the trick - we had plenty of industry guys coming over to look at the what we'd previewed, and luckily none of them seemed to think we were all mouth and no skinny jeans, so we just about pulled it off.
My only regret is that because we were so busy manning our corner, we didn't really get chance to network with other students or check out their work - but the atmosphere seemed to be one of friendly rivalry, and I think YCC can take a great deal of credit for the good-humoured nature of the evening. Overall they're just a fantastic organisation and I can't recommend getting involved with them highly enough.
Well that was an inexcusably long gap since posting my last entry, so I'll try to make up for it this week. We've got a book crit tomorrow at AMV and we're competing at the Young Creative Council's Unite V event, so I'm sure there'll be plenty to talk about.
For now, I'll just get something quickly off my chest. I like advice. I particularly like advice about how to produce good work. Very often I can store that in my head and apply it to whatever it is I'm working on.
But what I can never understand is when short, pithy quotes are offered as advice on how to live your life. Our modus operandi is so fixed by the time we're adult that it takes more than a clever aphorism to change it.
So when someone quotes Steve Jobs saying, for example, "Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life", they're actually rather ironically wasting their own time as well as mine. It's a great aspiration but not great advice.
You can turn your life around, but you don't just decide to do it without any significant stimulus. Look at Ricky Gervais. Before The Office he never really tried his best at anything - and I don't believe for a moment that this remarkable change was inspired by a quote he read. No, it was inspired by having something to work hard for.
I know this because the exact same process is happening for me - academic excellence followed by complacency followed by a career rut followed by opportunity. All it takes is the right opportunity, and you can grasp it, with or without the words of Steve Jobs ringing in your head.
I should start this post with an apology, because lately I've been relentlessly spamming the social networks with news of mine and Olly's D&AD Student Award nomination for our Peace One Day project. I think one has to be a fairly shameless self-promoter when getting into this industry, but the downside is that those who know you well can get a bit sick of it all. So to those people, sorry.
I also feel sorry for a team from Sunderland, who had almost exactly the same idea as us - you can view it here - but didn't win a nomination (though they're going to the BBH Barn shortly, so their story has a happy ending).
I wanted to work out why our version of the idea won out - not to gloat, but to understand, so the success can be repeated. I think the answer is simply that we worked harder at ours. We tested our thinking and our strategy at every stage, and we pushed our ideas as far as they could go, asking advice at every turn.
As a result, you find the little differences. Our method for getting people to play football is probably more technically realistic, as we found out that simply switching to a sports simulation engine within Battlefield 3 would have been extraordinarily difficult to code. The person who told me this also suggested using Electronic Arts, as they produced major videogames in both war and football - a fact which led us to the "pEAce day" logo, a useful stroke of luck.
Our research also led us to develop a realistic user journey, that took into account likely scepticism on the part of gamers, and therefore harnessed in-game advertising opportunities and created incentives for them to participate. Throughout, we were determined that the idea would fit into peoples' lives and habits, rather than expect them to take a leap into the unknown.
And that's it, really. It turns out that hard work counts as much as a good idea. And on that bombshell, I'm going to bed.
Just a quick word about Prometheus, the new Ridley Scott film, which featured heavily in the ad breaks for "Homeland" this evening, and featured a TV first - viewers' tweets about one ad being featured in the second ad a break later.
Though I was mostly trying my best to calm my shattered nerves (that program makes you feel like you're actually holding explosives in your hands), I just about held it together to make the following observation:
This seems like the classic example of technology for technology's sake. Was there really anyone in the educated, tech-savvy Channel 4 audience who felt MORE persuaded to see the film because some people said nice things on Twitter? And are they really too stupid to realise that these people may well have said nice things entirely in the hope that they might achieve fleeting fame?
It's all very well being clever with media. But there's got to be a purpose for the cleverness. Just like the Old Spice "ad invasions" backed up their power angle, and the Virgin Media "buffering" ads neatly demonstrated a product feature.
What did this do? If they'd just booked the space, found some tweets, and made them into an advert, what actual difference would there have been?
At what stage in the creative process did someone say "you know, I'm not sure that the words 'you'll think' adequately convey the fictional nature of the experience - we'd better provide extra reassurance"? And who said it?
It's from Discover Ireland, and seen on the tube - but no agency seems to be clearly responsible.
This one, by Ogilvy in Buenos Aires, is all about remembering the product you're selling. Just like the TNT experiential I mentioned a few days ago, it's really simple and consistently relevant - a particularly good idea when kids are your target market.
Just take what's fun about the drink (shaking it up) and dial it up a few notches. And make sure the brand name is in the foreground of your video just about non-stop.
...at least, not by their own high standards*, I thought I'd talk about a much better piece of work they did during the "Smell Is Power" campaign (but one I missed out on as it never got shown in the UK).
It's worth mentioning because it covers similar territory to the recent Virgin Media ads, which showed ads for other products being interrupted by streaming video style buffering. In this case, the interruption is somewhat more dramatic - although as both products are Proctor & Gamble, it probably wasn't that hard to set up.
But just like the Virgin ads, it does a great job of making people pay attention to, and more importantly remember, a commercial.
*It's ok, but there's nothing laugh-out-loud funny, the line is contrived rather than inspired, and the horse racing scene was weak (and a little too reminiscent of that Weetabix advert).
"D&AD winners never sell anything". That's the most common complaint about awards like these, and in some cases, it's fair comment. But on the other hand, these are the Design & Art Direction awards, and for those more interested in success, there's always the IPA Effectiveness Awards.
So, here are a couple of stunning pieces of craft. First of all, in the packaging category, the Shanghai 1910 special edition Johnnie Walker bottles by Love Creative. It's not rocket science why these won - yes, they're on brand, but any two-bit agency can make something look a bit Chinese. Not everyone can make it look as sumptuous and classy as this though - the perfect representation of a masterful, premium brand (click to enlarge).
Then, in the music videos, is "Simple Math" by Manchester Orchestra (who are American and not an orchestra) and directed by The Daniels. It won a yellow pencil for special effects, but for me the video was so full of depth and emotional weight that it deserved to take a bigger prize.
Other nominated videos, like this fun one for Is Tropical, may have a more memorable central concept. But as a marriage of music and images, it's just about unbeatable.
It's in the way you instantly know you're looking at the singer as a child and his Father. It's in the great acting job by all 4 main characters. It's in the way that you can watch the video 5 times and still see a new symbol tying together each strand of the plot. And it's in the way the editing is exactly in time with the music - not just in a simplistic "dramatic thing happens on big chord" way, but in subtle changes of pace and energy.
A little while ago, I tore into the new Google+ advert for being a little bit emotion-by-numbers. And as I saw it again recently, an idea occurred to me.
Why don't advertisers for Social Media take on death head-on? The Google+ advert tiptoed around the subject, but it's a fascinating one, and could give a platform an interesting edge, especially among an older audience. Imagine if, at the end of the commercial, a dying "Tom" had handed his now grown-up son a piece of paper with a password written on it - and the son had gone onto Google+ to find a circle with "funeral invites" written on it. Then there might have been a bit of pathos in there.
Anyway, I hope someone picks up on the idea, because it won't be all that long before old age overtakes accidents and untimely illnesses as the most common cause of death for Facebook members. In the meantime, here's a few adverts with a little death...
"Creativity is not a talent - it is a way of operating".
This talk by John Cleese, at some anonymous event, is pretty essential viewing for budding or wannabe creatives. 36 minutes, but well worth it.
If you don't have the time for the whole thing, I'd urge you to consider the following wonderful advice.
If you need to solve a problem, set yourself a time to start being creative, and set yourself a time to stop.
Why? The instinctive response is to say it seems overly regimented; that it goes against the free-wheeling nature of creativity.
But as Cleese says, applying a deadline makes it easier to seal yourself off from the demands of the uncreative world. If you don't know when your creative period ends, it's harder to push these thoughts ("should I email this person", "maybe I should clear my room") to the back of your mind. With a deadline, you can just think "I can worry about that at 3".
Which fits in very neatly with the conversation I was having with a fellow SCA student about musicians and writers who stick to a regular working pattern. Nick Cave, for example, famously went to write songs in an "office" somewhere around Brighton and Hove, just like any other commuter, starting at nine, and closing the piano lid at five.
It's also worth mentioning this final thought:
"It's easier to start little things we know we can do, than to start on big things we're not so sure about".
Bob Hoffman, on his Ad Contrarian blog, expressed disgust recently at agencies' dishonest use of "branding" to wriggle out of the responsibility of actually selling a product. He also accused agencies of doing the same in the online arena, using "engagement" - a word you can interpret just about any way you like - to disguise the failure of their adverts to achieve anything more than minimal click-through rates.
Doubtless this is true. It's human nature to look for excuses, or retrofit a problem to your preferred solution. But I would be in favour of never counting click-through rates in the first place.
Of course they're going to have such low click-through rates you can barely measure them. If I'm reading a story about Rwanda, or the budget, or Fernando Torres on the Guardian site, I'm not going to break off to find out about budget airlines or slimline laptops. I just want to read the article.
How many people read a newspaper and immediately react when they see an advert, leaping straight to the computer or heading to the shop to find out more? It would be a ridiculous expectation, and barely any less silly online.
Online ads should be treated the same way as print - it's a chance to get your brand seen, and get a message across. The only meaningful metric is to ask how many people visit the page - and then make it as simple, eye-catching, and memorable as possible.
I saw this over the holidays and instantly loved it. It's been a huge hit on YouTube too (20 million views in 5 days), which is, of course, the real point of these things.
There's much to praise - the simple but effective use of the button device, the slick choreography, and the reactions of the unknowing (?) participants. But the most important thing is how they kept it simple and, even more importantly, relevant.
It's a TV channel - so show customers the drama; simple as that. So much better than hidden camera stunts like T-Mobile's execrable traffic wardens stunt, which had only the most contrived, tortuous link to the product.
Produced by Duval Guillaume Modem, an Antwerp agency who know a thing or two about stunts.
I'm back. What a nice relaxing Easter break it's been - I've celebrated several birthdays and tried to think about anything other than advertising for a week.
However, with term starting tomorrow, it's back in the saddle time. For my birthday, I received "The Black Swan" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. I don't intend to critique it, or at least not yet, because I'm only a third of the way through, and I'm not 100% convinced that I fully understand everything I've read.
But roughly speaking, the book is about how our minds lead us to seek out patterns, and twist facts to fit our theories, when in actual fact these patterns and theories are constantly broken by unexpected events - the Black Swans of the title. But when these Black Swans occur, we act afterwards as if we should have expected them all along, and formulate a new theory to explain them.
One symptom of this mindset is the prevalence of "confirmation bias" - the tendency to seek out information to fits rather than challenges our views. It's part of the reason the opposing sides both inside and outside the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are so entrenched in their positions, wilfully ignoring the flaws and demons in their own team.
So let's apply this to an idea evaluation technique we're taught at the school - Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats.
When you're analysing an idea, the hardest hat to put on is the black one - the one that searches for flaws. The other hats you may barely need to don - you're so caught up in the brilliance of your idea, the immediate response is to look for reasons that it works.
We spend all our time trying to prove ourselves right, when such a thing is nearly impossible. Proving something wrong is much easier. For example, to prove I am the perfect lover, I would have to give a faultless sexual performance at every single opportunity for the rest of my life. But I know that I'm not - and all it takes to prove it is just one ropey night in the sack*.
So the main message I'm taking from Taleb is simply, for the moment - don't ignore the Black Hat. But at the same time, I won't be forgetting the Black Swan either. Just because an idea doesn't fit established rules doesn't mean it will definitely fail.
School starts tomorrow, let's throw a few curveballs this term.
Well, not really much of a launch. Certainly, considering what a massive acquisition the client was, and the way they pinched it from under the nose of DDB, it was released with relatively little fanfare - certainly compared to the Guardian launch.
Perhaps it's because it's an advert made for purpose rather than to win awards and plaudits. And in fact it's so similar to the Mark Warren adverts produced by the previous agency, you'd barely be aware that the whole change had been made. It's another famous face and another product demo.
Apparently the DDB advert had the TiVo boxes flying off the shelves, so why change a winning formula? But you have to wonder what it does for BBH's reputation - and the extent to which the client is calling the shots in this relationship.
A little change of pace - we're back to behavioural economics, and a quick look at how we use frames to make sense of raw information. They can either be provided to us, for example by employing a trustworthy voice to give the information, or applied by us - if raw data is too complicated to fully understand, we use rules of thumb to make an educated guess.
And I think there's an opportunity being missed in weather forecasts - particularly the morning one, the one we pay most attention to - to frame the information and make it more meaningful.
Let's face it, judging what clothes to wear or take out with us can be tricky. A distinctly chilly spring morning may turn into a fine balmy afternoon. And the weather forecast is only of limited help when making that decision. OK, if it says 4 degrees, you're going to take a coat. If it says 20, you'll be fine in a tshirt. But somewhere in between is that terrible grey area. Is a coat needed? A jacket? A jumper? Both, and swap them if necessary? Who really knows how warm 13 degrees C is?
So the simple solution? Systematically show or refer to yesterday's temperature. We can all remember how warm it was, and what we wore, and whether it was too much or too little.
So at a glance, instead of hearing "temperatures will start around 7-8 then pick up to highs of 14 by mid-afternoon", you'll hear "it will be a little bit warmer than yesterday in the morning, but a little bit cooler than yesterday during the afternoon". And that's a frame we can all work with.
Currently sweeping the awards ceremonies with THAT John Lewis ad, Adam and Eve must be on a bit of a roll - and this weekend they brought the first UK Google+ TV ad to our screens.
It launched in primetime, during Britain's Got Talent. A lot is resting on it. But I think it's a massive misjudgement. Have a look if you haven't seen already, then I'll do my best to explain.
First of all, the criticism has already been made that it's ridiculous that the social network's user interface will look exactly the same when the subject is an elderly man as it does when his child is born. But the bigger problem is that it is pitched both too high and too low.
Too high, because Benedict Cumberbatch reading Shakespeare, is, let's face it, going to go over the heads of a large proportion of the ITV audience. It's like the kid from the Thomson's Holidays multiplied by a hundred. Not to mention how chattering-class it all is; it was like watching the life of Nigel Slater's straight twin brother.
And too low, because anyone who does know As You Like It will be aware that the speech does not end with old age, it ends with senility and death - "sans eyes, sans teeth, sans taste, sans everything". But the advert cops out (it edits out a lot of the rest of the speech, too).
If it had gone on to the bitter end, it might have had more emotional resonance, because as it currently stands, it leaves me completely cold. And again, its problem is in falling between two stools.
Take BBH's work for Google Chrome. It hits us on an emotional level because we know that Jamal Edwards and Dan Savage are real people, embarking on journeys which we know are authentic, and have affected real lives. Whereas "Tom" is clearly a character, a tool created for a purpose.
But a fictional character can be equally affecting, as Adam and Eve have shown - like the child from The Long Wait, or more pertinently, the life portrayed in "Always A Woman". So what's the difference?
We never learn their names. It's as simple as that. Unlike Tom, with his football refereeing and his mountain climbing and his rock band, we're not really given any detail about their "lives". Because those ads are not about a little boy waiting for Christmas, or about a woman's life from birth to old age. They're about us.
Whereas this Google+ advert is about some guy called Tom.
Sometimes, life at the School of Communication Arts can settle into a bit of a routine. That doesn't mean it's dull, just that it follows certain patterns.
So yesterday, despite the early start, was a welcome change. 14 of us dropped in on IPA Training's campaign planning conference, to act as creative guinea-pigs for the participants. They'd been working for two days on a brief to extend Tetley's brand appeal to middle and lower-middle class women in the south, who currently saw Tetley's as northern, irrelevant, out-of-touch, and outdated.
They'd split up into 7 strategy teams, so each one was assigned a team of 2 creatives. The brief Olly and I were given was to reposition Tetley "as a reassuring partner to support the ups and downs in everyday life" and make it a brand that "lets you embrace the unknown inherent to everyday life". The Tetley Tea Folk were to be killed and unceremoniously disposed of.
We developed 3 creative strategies for them in the morning session - a fairly weak one that met the brief, a strong one that met the brief but also took it into new pastures, and a third one that ignored the brief and found a way to keep the Tetley Tea Folk whilst appealing to a new set of customers. After much discussion, they plumped for number 2 - which had taken their strategy but substituted the word "extraordinary" for "unknown".
So the plan was to show that everyday life had changed since the timewarp-stuck cliches of the Tea Folk, and that behind the simple details of our life lie great talents, strange hobbies, unexpected friendships, and genuine suffering. And Tetley would position itself as a modern brand, providing a constant in these strange, disjointed lives we lead.
In the afternoon and after dinner, we got our ideas down on paper, and made revisions after discussion with the team. In the end we managed to churn out 4 characters, 4 TV ad synopses (including a twist that could extend the concept into a second campaign), 2 single page press ads, 2 double page press ads, a rough packaging design, and an online / experiential idea. Not bad for an afternoon's work (there's a photo at the bottom) - and it could even be something that makes its way into our portfolio.
The planning team pitched today in our absence to Tetley's marketing people - we're waiting to find out if we / they won. But even if not, the day was immensely valuable...
I learned that the brief you get from the planner can be very tight, and very focused. But I also learned that this could be inspiring.
This may not go for all planners, but I learned that challenging a brief, or at least pushing the boundaries, is always worth a try.
I learned that the more options you offer, the better the chance of getting one through.
I learned that if you knuckle down, you can produce a lot in an afternoon.
I learned that being able to articulate your creative strategy is as important as being able to produce it.
And finally, I learned that planners and account managers are absolutely lovely people, hard-working, enthusiastic, and as passionate as any of us about seeing great creative work hit the public. Or at least, the young ones are.
Funny, how things turn out. In 2007, a lady called Laney Griner took a photo of her baby son playing on a beach. It was one of those amusing photos that 10 years ago would certainly have remained in her drawer - or at least on her computer.
But the internet has moved on, and like many others, she found that once you put something out there, it doesn't really belong to you anymore. And somehow her snap had become a recurring internet meme known as "Success Kid", like this:
I suppose one might find this annoying, although Ms Griner appears to be relaxed about the attention - as her son is now 4, it's not like he's going to get recognised.
But she also got her just reward in the end, as Virgin Media have now paid to use her image on their latest outdoor campaign.
I'm not actually sure if this was done before or after the great DDB-BBH handover, but whichever, it shows the value of being immersed in culture of any sort. Anyone who's in on the joke will love it and remember it, and if you're not, it's an amusing photo all by itself.
Just saw 2 ads in as many ad breaks with basically the same concept - that the client's standard service is so good, the customer will assume they are being given special treatment. Not a hugely original idea, but it makes a valid selling point, so let's see how they compare.
First up is Staples, with a script that has "first draft" and "will this do" and "I really haven't made any progress since I left college, have I?" written all over it. Clunky exposition and a total absence of wit are the chief ingredients. This ad *might* have been produced by McCann Erickson, but I can't be sure. Once again, the duds seem to find their way onto the internet as poor orphans, unwanted and unloved.
Meanwhile, DDB London produced this spot for Kwik Fit, and stands up reasonably well to the client's imposing heritage in the ad world. The take on the concept is believable and the voice over explains the story in a way that is far less contrived than the tortured dialogue and Staples. The acting and editing, too, are a class above.
Getting a child to play an adult role can be a bit of a fallback technique in TV adverts. At its best, it can be done with charm and wit, as Vauxhall did not so long ago, in one of my favourite ever adverts:
Lately, there's been a little rash of them. Here's Tesco with a Mother's Day themed ad by the Red Brick Road, including a boy doing a disconcertingly good impression of Mrs Overall's voice:
JWT pitch in with this slot promoting Harvester restaurants:
And lastly, this BBH slot for Waitrose. It's not quite the same theme as the others, but close enough:
All of them pretty decent ads, though I think the Harvester one stands out. The Heston one seems just a little rushed, like it's the 6th in a series of 10. The Tesco one seems to be going for "kids acting adult and posh", but the overall impression the boys give is, well, pretty much one of inevitable homosexuality. Nothing wrong with that, but a bit distracting. The Harvester ad, in the meantime, feels like just a little more effort has gone into it, and keeps the tone fresh and down to earth.
My usual procedure when analysing ads goes something like this:
See ad / respond with delight or revulsion / find ad on YouTube to post / find information from Campaign or other site to see which agency made it / post blog.
But for this Lynx advert, I seem to have drawn a blank. No-one's owning up to it. I'm going to be nice to BBH again and assume they didn't make this. Partly because if they did make it, it would be credited somewhere, and also, it would be quite possibly the worst work ever to emerge from the agency. My guess is that it's in-house, but I'd be interested to see if anyone knows.
Unfunny, badly acted, inappropriate music, a jarring pack shot with no relation to the ad, it's a mess all round. It's like the client told the agency "we want synergy with The Lynx Effect brand, but we need to differentiate too. So make it like it, but shit".
Yesterday, I blogged about an advert for Dulux that I erroneously credited to Glue Isobar - turns out they're actually just handling the digital, and the TV ad was produced by BBH.
Which is nice as it redresses the balance after I was so critical of their Guardian ad, and gives me the opportunity to say that I think BBH are a great agency who have produced and are still producing absolutely inspirational work. They just drop the ball occasionally.
I do rather like this ad, made by Glue Isobar [EDIT - actually made by BBH, see here for more]. It shows perfectly how advertising can demonstrate how their product fits, practically and emotionally, into ordinary people's lives.
The editing is great too - the change of pace when the door opens and closes is beautifully done, and adds just a little hook that makes the ad more attention-grabbing. And the story arc is neatly bookmarked by the painting red over white at the start and painting white over red at the end, as childish concerns obliterates marital lust.
First off, an apology. This blog was required of me by my school, so I apologise if it comes across like one of those awful student blogs that is clearly a mandatory requirement of passing the course, complete with a clunking "what I learned" section at the end.
Last week was the deadline for the D&AD student awards. I managed to get an entry away before the deadline - with my partner Olly we've entered the "Peace One Day" brief, which asked us to find ways to raise awareness of International Peace Day, which is on September 21st. Look, I'm raising awareness even now.
The first thing that I learned is that D&AD operate with a level of control and paranoia I haven't experienced since I had a call from the Disney trademark infringement department a few years back. To be fair, their staff are lovely, but their rules and regulations are remarkably stringent. For example, you can't use any copyrighted images without permission except those of the sponsor - and as ours involved suggesting a corporate tie-in, this meant half our time was spent on the phone begging them to let us use their logo.
My belief in the strength of creative partnerships was reinforced considerably. More than any other project we've worked on, where very often the idea has been mostly down to one of us, this was one that we could never have produced without each other. The strategy - finding ways in which the themes of peace and conflict can be found in our everyday life - was mine. This then inspired Olly to have an idea - which I then researched and suggested an improvement to, including the name. And then we pushed the idea forward together.
You have to learn to be careful when asking for advice, because you can easily lose sight of the objective - winning the award. We spoke to a very helpful industry insider and used many of his technical hints, whereas the creative advice suggested was more appropriate for a business pitch rather than an awards entry.
And lastly, I learned that Olly Wood is the most talented, dedicated, and reliable Art Director in the known universe.
Thanks. I'll be gushing or sarcastic about another advert tomorrow.
On Friday I posted about a particularly aggravating ad from O2 that had polluted my consciousness.
The thing is, in bringing it to your attention, I wanted to find a clip, so I searched for it on YouTube. Then I wanted to find out the agency so I did a search on Google. Finally, I posted it here on Blogger, which is linked to my Google account.
It may be that only one of these was picked up by the ad servers. Maybe it was all 3. But the result was, the fucking ad kept following me around over the weekend, every time I tried to watch a YouTube video. I started making screenshots after a while...
I did so much skipping I felt like an 8 year old girl by Sunday night.
Well sometimes I analyse ads on their business strategy, sometimes on their execution, or the acting, or the overall creative strategy. Other times I might take an amateurish look at the behavioural economics employed.
I'd like to give this advert, by VCCP, the same courtesy. But I can't get beyond the first 10 seconds without the single thought "oh God please just make her shut the fuck up" overriding all others in my mind, and blindly reaching for the mute button like an asthmatic for their inhaler.
This may be one of those occasions where I'm on my own. But is there really anyone who would hear the winsome trilling about "ticky-tacky boxes" and think to themselves "ooh, this is an advert I'm going to pay attention to right until the end"?
This, like much that comes out of Japan, is frankly weird. But it's also wonderful - and it appears to be the work of an advertising agency alone, made for no other purpose than to sell merchandise.
Mameshiba, produced by Dentsu, are a series of animated beans - with dog faces - that somehow prevent themselves from being eaten by sharing unusual trivia. Here they are...
And here's what they do...
We're currently working on a brief for Sherbet Fountain so the emphasis is on finding something to entertain kids and adults alike. I'm not sure something this surreal would quite work for the British market, but I'll be pleased to create something with half its charm.
