If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

Someone’s definitely been watching Wes Anderson movies, but in this case that’s a good thing.

Read the article here.

Interesting theory that throws up a couple of interesting questions:

Does Sir John believe his own agency’s creative output has deteriorated in recent years?

If there’s been a problem with advertising getting to grips with new technology, how come truly great TV work was still being a produced a long way into the digital revolution? How come advertising has suffered most in the last five years and not the ten before that?

Why did the person who wrote the article think that BBH produced the Pregnant Man ad?

And ‘…one of the other problems I have today is people have retreated to the edges of advertising. You know, they’re happy to do some small little campaign somewhere or they’re doing something on the net that hardly anybody sees and they’re getting awards for it and everybody’s cheering. But they’re not changing the way people feel or think.’

Amen.

It’s another amusing Amazon review (thanks, J).

Brilliantly defaced textbooks (thanks, A).

Teddy has an operation (rather wonderful. Thanks, G):

Kaleidopope (thanks, V).

The Nicolas Cage matrix (thanks, G).

The creepiest things kids have ever said (thanks, someone I’ve forgotten).

Tonight, Leslie, I’m going to be Gary Glitter (thanks, J):

How to play chess properly (thanks, G):

Please help me, Ja Rule (thanks, J).

Soderbergh on the state of cinema:

Stop frame atoms (thanks, M):

Film posters with the original titles of the books on which they were based (thanks, G).

And some hand-painted bootleg Ghanaian movie posters (thanks, G).

Ever since I’ve worked in advertising I’ve thought that art directors have one massive advantage over copywriters: they can make their job seem to be a series of arcane, impenetrable mysteries in a way that copywriters cannot.

‘I think the greens look a little cold over there.’

‘The balance of the composition just isn’t strong enough.’

‘I think we need to revisit the contrast on that shot.’

Of course, those are entirely reasonable things for an AD to say, and they might well need the suggested attention, but whether they are right or wrong, they will undoubtedly make all the non-ADs in the room shut the fuck up for fear of seeming stupid or tasteless.

Whereas the poor copywriters have to contend with every man and his dog mentally waving that GCSE English Grade B in the face of any line that vaguely troubles them. It’s far easier for them to say, ‘Does that have to be a semi colon?’ than ‘Shouldn’t we up the cyan on that image?’. Unless they’re a professional AD they’re going to be pretty concerned about hearing the response, ‘The cyan? There is no cyan. That’s entirely magenta. Did you mean magenta?’ But place some English in front of anyone and they’ll be able to reach back to those ten great emails they wrote, their teenage diary or a tasty keynote presentation from 2008, and offer a verbal adjustment.

That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re wrong (or right); English often comes down to taste and opinion (particularly advertising English, which regularly sacrifices correctness for accessibility) and that vagueness can lead to a wider range of arguments. Many’s the time I’ve had a chat about whether or not we should end a sentence with a full stop, trade a highfalutin’ colon for a run-of-the-mill comma, or use bullet points instead of proper sentences. There is a correct answer, but it can make people uncomfortable enough to change it. They have enough confidence to say what is right or wrong but not enough to believe in the answer which is not their own.

If this sounds copywriter-whingey, it’s not intended to be. I’m just trying to point out that whatever you arm someone with, they will be inclined to use. In art direction most people couldn’t punch their way out of a wet paper bag, but in writing many people at least have a baseball bat.

Coincidentally, it often feels as if that is the very tool they are using.