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.
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.
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.
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".
Another one raised by a friend on social media, commenting "Hi Ad agencies. When putting together a campaign to go on the Tube, a variation on the tube map is a *fucking lame idea*".
He has a point. I wouldn't be so utterly opposed on principle to including tube map elements, it'd have to be done a whole lot better than this. It's pretty clear that no thinking went in to the message they wanted to get across, or the branding, just "let's use the tube map". And it doesn't work anyway, as a blocked nose is usually in the latter stages of a cold, after sore throat, sneezing, feeling ill, etc.
The strapline - "a fast way to unblock your nose" utterly betrays the lack of brand thought. How does that stop me buying Sterimar, Olbas Oil, Vicks, Sudafed, etc?
Saatchi and Saatchi Switzerland were apparently responsible for this mess. The sad thing is, I imagine them being quite proud of it.
Here's another entry in the "if a friend mentions it on social media, it must have done something to penetrate their consciousness, so I'd better blog about it" category.
It's Seat's latest slogan.
Needless to say, my friend was critical, and he's right. It works technically, and imparts a clear message, but it's too clever-clever. It's simply not how normal people talk or make jokes. It's... how can I put this... just advernnoying.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
OK, so the first in a series of occasional posts for ads that are just so bad as to be downright inexplicable.
Throughout the first half of England's 1-0 victory over Wales at Wembley, there was some kind of holographic image of a car parked behind the goalline. Then, during half time, this advert was shown:
OK, so it's a concept driven by the medium. Fair enough. But 2 problems:
Firstly, throughout the whole first half, I had barely noticed that there was a car there. So much crap gets projected onto screens, and hoardings are so interactive, that it just didn't register with me. Weirdly, if it had looked like a real car, I might have thought "that's parked a bit close to the touchline". But because it was obviously a bit of camera trickery, my mind's natural adblocker just filtered it out, so when the half time ad came on it made no sense.
Secondly, watch the ad again. If anyone can spot a single clever or witty line in it they must be looking very very hard. Why do they say "is that a steward on the pitch" when it's clearly a man in fancy dress? Even if the hypothetical commentators had thought it was a steward, why would they have mentioned it in such a surprised excitable tone? And if it's supposed to be quasi-real (which is why it says "advertisement"), why isn't he chased by stewards and instead left alone to do what he likes on the pitch?
It may seem like I'm taking the concept too seriously, but the point is, someone has to, or else these little flaws all work together as obstacles to the viewer's enjoyment. And in the script, nothing is relevant, nothing drives the advert forward or creates a story. I'm not sure how the advert is supposed to make me think or feel.
Attention to detail is paramount. But here, it's like the media guys had the idea and left the writing to the special effects guy.
I'm going to have to be political and vague in this post, as it involves a creative disagreement at work. I'm also going to change some details.
Let's say we were asked to produce an advert promoting train travel from Oxford to Cambridge to students at the university. My idea was to play on the university rivalry and have the headline...
wouldn't you rather be at Cambridge?
...just something to grab their attention with a little low-key fun-poking.
However, in production, this got changed to just...
rather be at Cambridge?
...which I felt completely ruined the mechanics of the line. Humour, even if it is of the lightest sort as in this case, is . A slight change of phrase can turn a hilarious one-liner into a dull dud, and so it is with copy.
In this case, the quest to make the shortest phrase possible does more than shorten the phrase, it changes its meaning. "Rather be at Cambridge" is an abbreviation of "would you rather be at Cambridge?", not "wouldn't". And that changes the whole tone - it becomes a neutral question rather than the challenging, teasing tone implied by "wouldn't you?". Also, starting the sentence with "wouldn't you" draws the eye because it challenges the reader and entices them into interacting with the advert. "Rather be" is a meaningless, unchallenging way to start a sentence, and in requiring the reader to fill in the words, is actually harder work than the longer version.
Had a bite to eat in Pret the other day, and was taken with the packaging of their own-brand food - clearly a lot of effort had gone into it. It's clear and makes its point concisely, but still adding those buzzwords: "lovingly", "fresh", "natural". "Made today, gone today" is a neat and elegant little phrase too.
In contrast, this - on a bag of low-fat popcorn from a different manufacturer - is just a mess. The first sentence is weak, utterly uninspiring. And the second paragraph aims for enthusiasm, but really - are they the first people to describe making food as an art form? If they'd just said "Making popcorn is an art form", I'd never have responded "well that just sounds ridiculous", I'd have thought "well, I suppose there's a lot you have to get right".
And then there's this pathological obsession with crisps, mentioned FOUR times on the packaging. It made me want to eat a bag of crisps, quite frankly. Oh, and what's the "hybrid stuff" when it's at home? What are the one thing and the other that sailing camp at Bosham aren't? What is any less "industrial" about mass-produced popcorn? It's not as though individual kernels taste different.
So, when I'm feeling peckish, I'll eat what the hell I like, thank you very much.
