You know those times you buy a shirt or a pair of trainers, then when you get them back home you wonder what you were thinking and never wear them again? That happens in more expensive situations, too.
For some reason I’ve recently heard of quite a few situations where a huge amount of money has been dropped on a Tv commercial, or even a campaign, only for the result to be deemed not quite right then shelved.
I think it happens more to American ads because the annual budgets are larger, so one poor move is more easily consumed by the big pile of cash, but I’ve certainly heard of many UK ads that haven’t quite turned out right for whoever makes the decision to run them. Interesting how close you can get to the finish line of having your ad on TV before having your hopes, dreams and creativity dashed on the rocks of subjective taste.
Then again, you never really know exactly how an ad is going to turn out before it’s finished. Who among you hasn’t been surprised by the end result being better or worse, or just different to what seemed to be promised by the script, or even the director’s treatment? I know I have, and I didn’t have the luxury of choosing to bin whatever didn’t match my taste.
Funnily enough, I also noticed a glaring example of such an event happening in the world of movies. Imagine if you put a director who had made a recent Best Foreign Language film-winner with two of the hottest stars on the planet at their absolute peak. Would you expect the end result to be quietly shopped around then left to die in the toilet? Probably not. More likely you’d be expecting further Academy recognition. Alas, none would be forthcoming (and it doesn’t even look that bad):
In the music business it’s even worse, with everyone from Prince to The Beatles binning finished work.
So I wonder if you’ve experienced this, and, if so, to what extent?
(By the way, tomorrow I embark on a month-long trip to various parts of Asia. Maybe I’ll blog more sporadically as a consequence. Maybe I’ll treat you to some thoughts about Jakarta or Seoul. Lucky you!)
Jennifer Lawrence again? Oy!
Me and the missus bought a BMW sporty thing. We even felt like twats driving it out the garage.
Luckily it got stolen after 6 weeks and we bought a rubbish Honda. We’re much happier.
We played out a very big ad last year only to have it pulled and hour later, reshot and the end result looking almost the same but shitter. You know the difference.
Then a month later an ‘internal client spat’ had 18 idents pulled because one client thought he’d been stepped over so started throwing his weight about.
That’s two campaigns in 3 months.
The one ad we’ve ever done that I’m absolutely convinced had a genuine chance of winning a pencil (sound design, if you’re asking – and yes, it still would’ve been worth having – a pencil’s a pencil you cynics) was pulled the day before playing out because of an internal client political issue. It haunts me to this day.
not quite on target but one time half of the film (the actual film)for a Super Bowl ad i was doing got shredded in the machine. so we had half a spot. of course we had insurance that covered this sort of thing. but having shot the spot once, we all kind of looked at each other and went “do we really want to shoot this again?”. the answer was “no”.
Happened to me twice. Both on global clients.
Wasn’t Gorilla on the shelf for a while before being leaked onto Youtube?