Adam + Eve's journey

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?

Adam and Eve drop the ball on Google+

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.

D&AD Awards / Creative Circle Awards

Today Molly (just about) finished our entry for the D&AD student awards. We're feeling pretty good about it, we've had some great feedback from mentors at the school, and we've tweaked just about as much as anything will take being tweaked.

Due to D&AD rules, I'm not a liberty to show you the idea until we know whether it's won or not. But it was interesting to note that the advice was either given, or had to be taken, in two ways. Firstly, in terms of what you would do if actually approaching the client, and secondly, how you would convince an awards judge to put you through.

Which raises the question of what extent I might end up doing that as a creative professional. I'm not the first person to ask it, but it's a timely one, as the Creative Circle Awards are descending into booze-soaked chaos at the Roundhouse as we speak.

I haven't had chance to check through all their winners, largely due to their website's flashy but frustrating (ok, just plain fucking stupid) interface, but the Gold of Golds for John Lewis (by Adam&Eve) is fully deserved. And you can bet that the creatives' focus was aimed fully at the needs of the client.

But then there's work like BMB's ad for Thomson's Holidays, which won a Gold. I've critiqued it before, and the disconnect between the well-spoken, precociously articulate boy and his well-dressed family, the luxurious locations, and the instagram-y filtering on one hand, and the type of low-cost mass-market holidays that Thomsons sell on the other, still persists.

It feels like an advert the agency made for themselves, not for their client and certainly not for the audience (unless the creatives genuinely thought families watching the X-Factor were going to be captivated by a bit of cod philosophy over a piano re-working of The Pixies, in which case, can I have their jobs please?).

I have no problem winning awards. I just hope never to win an award and be ashamed of it.

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.