The most insanely addictive thing I’ve seen in quite some time

its’ a Christian rap video trying to encourage a new behaviour among the youngsters. You see, apparently Jesus doesn’t like “front huggin’”, so they are trying to popularize a less sexual and more Christian “side hug”. File under: Only in America. Wow. Just wow.

What advertising can do

The former account director on Budweiser when i worked on the brand at DDB, Marty Kohr, put this on youtube recently. It’s a highlight reel that demonstrates the impact our work had on the culture. This was the bit that fascinated me most. Winning awards is nice but it’s really just the icing on the cake. it’s not enough.

our campaign was explosively popular. I’d never seen anything like it. it was kind of scary really at times. but just really exhilarating most of the time.

As ADWEEK recently did its crowdsourced best-stuff-of-the-2000s thing, i proffer this as proof that we should win that contest. By virtue of its sheer popularity alone.

UPDATE: BUT THIS WAS MY FAVORITE BIT. FROM FIRST EPISODE OF “THE OFFICE”. I COULDN’T BELIEVE IT.

Oi! UK advertising, hire David Fitzsimons innit.

Recently I got an email from a talented young art director living in London. His name is David Fitzsimons. He wanted me to look at his work etc. And I did. And he’s really good.

Since graduating from college two years ago he has spent a year working at McLaren in Toronto and the past year doing the strange almost medieval “placement” thing at a variety of London agencies including BMB, M&C Saatchi. So clearly his work has appeal to his target market. He just needs to find the place where his face fits.

David is resourceful and dedicated and clearly can think. What more could you possibly want of an extremely well priced and energetic talent? OK, being hot can help too. winking smiley face.

But seriously, give David’s work a look a butchers and if you know of any jobs going in London (or anywhere really, internets!) send him an email ( davidfitzsimons@yahoo.com) Thanks.

You can see the rest of david’s work here.

Best ads of the 2000s

Adweek is hosting a “crowd-sourced” competition to find the best ads etc of the past decade. I’m happy to report that my Budweiser wassup! work is nominated twice (three times if you count Goodby’s shameless bandwagon-jumping parody). So get over there and vote in both “best superbowl ad of the decade” and “best campaign of the decade”. Look sharpish now! click here. thanks.

HOW MY SMART CAR BROUGHT ME CLOSER TO JESUS

A couple of years back we were pitching SMART CAR USA. So in order to get familiar with the brand we bought a SMART car. Which i subsequently drove around Chicago. I recently got rid of it in favor of a bitching Scion xB.

The radio in the SMART car was weird. It would only pick up one radio station clearly. 90.1 WMBI, an evangelical Christian radio station based here in Chicago. So consequently i ended up listening to something I would never ordinarily hear. It was fascinating to me to eavesdrop on this culture. Much like my idea of heaven is to overhear strangers’ conversations on trains and planes. The more mundane the better. I just love it.

Here’s what I learned about the evangelical Christians.

They are motivated and organized. They do not believe in separation of church and state. they feel it is their duty to represent and push for Christian teachings in the “public square” as they put it. They really believe the story of Genesis and it bothers them that evolution is taught in schools.

They are hardcore social conservatives. They believe homosexuality is a choice and a sin. They bitterly oppose abortion.

They believe the bible to be literally true. And that it is the word of god. As a Roman catholic i found it fascinating to hear them constantly analyzing the scriptures for meaning and guidance.

They like the idea that Christianity is “under attack” and the culture is hopelessly polluted by sin. What i mean is they, or at least this radio station anyway, would constantly cite random loony court cases and events as incontrovertible evidence that Christianity in the USA is on its last legs and the whole thing is about to go to hell in the proverbial handbasket. And only they can save it! This was a recurring theme.

Which perhaps is a result of their belief that the end is coming just as the book of Revelations predicted. And only those that have accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour will be assumed unto heaven in “the rapture”.

They are well funded. Evangelicals are generous towards their churches.

Their preachers all have “Dr.” in front of their name. And they sort of play the role of Jesus when preaching. Which I found kind of disturbing. They could be very dogmatic and stern. One of their biggest stars is a Scottish hellfire and brimstone preacher with a booming voice who i found very entertaining and compelling. Evangelical preachers put on quite a show.

All in all i found them to be a well-meaning and sincere bunch. And i’ve noticed that i find myself tuning in occasionally still. Maybe Jesus really does want me for a sunbeam.

I agree with Steve Henry 100%

The legendary Steve Henry gets it right as usual. A great reminder of what’s important. Damn, how come i never get any death threats? Click here for free enlightenment.

I did my bit for this slapnickgriffin.co.uk btw. I found it via Twitter and immediately gave mr. griffin about 70 slaps before forwarding it on to others. It was great fun and really well executed. You really got the feeling you were giving fascism a good hiding. But a couple of days later found it had been taken down. Now I know why.

Think we got our Cannes Cyber Grand Prix 2010 folks. A great and timely idea. Well done Albion.

“IT AIN’T LIKE IT USED TO BE. BUT IT’LL DO.”

(FYI: I have recently watched a succession of western films that were staged in the twilight of the wild west: UNFORGIVEN, THE SHOOTIST and THE WILD BUNCH)

Pretending that things will continue to be as they have been in living memory is very tempting for obvious reasons. It makes an already difficult thing, surviving, much more bearable. contemplating your own obsolescence is very hard. nobody wants to feel like yesterday’s news.

Recently i finally got around to watching the legendary Sam Peckinpah’s legendary film THE WILD BUNCH. And i couldn’t but be struck by the parallel’s between their story and that of the advertising industry.

Both once ruled a lawless terrains solely by their wits and energy. both were purely the products of their time. No wild west, no gunslinging outlaws. No mass market TV, no advertising industry.

And both cultures really fancied themselves and actively created their own legends. Buffalo Bill Cody had a lot in common with Buffalo Bill Bernbach. It took ego to be a gunslinger too. And both Bills actively cultivated their own legends.

In the gunslingers’ case, power came from the lawlessness of their environment. civilization spelt doom for outlaws. In the case of advertising it was our ability to do something very specialized: TV advertising. And the erosion of that audience automatically means that the role of advertising as a creative force in the culture will lessen more and more.

At the very end of The Wild Bunch, the old-timer you least expected to survive this splatter-fest says invites a former nemesis to team up with him for future hijinks. He says “It ain’t like it used to be, but it’ll do!”. And then he bursts out laughing. That’s the end of the movie. Kind of how i feel about advertising.

THE BLEEDING OBVIOUS. IT’S (ALMOST) ALWAYS THE BLEEDING OBVIOUS THAT WORKS BEST. BUT ONLY IN RETROSPECT.

One thing I’ve noticed over my long-ish career is that the things that work best in advertising are frequently, upon analysis, what was staring us in the face in the first place.

I’m going to mention Nike, so you can yawn now. YAAAAAWN!!! Anyhoo, Nike’s Just Do It idea is the ONLY thing worth saying in that category it turns out. A fact Adidas embraced wholeheartedly years later. And good for them. Just because another brand “owns” the only thing worth saying doesn’t mean you can’t say it too. You just have to, er, do it.

Personally i’ve also found this to be true too in my own work. My most successful ideas have been the ones that were pretty much staring me in the face to begin with. In retrospect. They were pretty much just common sense brought to life.

I remember years ago (1999), I found myself working on the Subway sandwich account. The agency was owned by the legendary Hal Riney (RIP) – an Irish-American writer from the old school. Hal had run the San Francisco office of Ogilvy and Mather in the 1970s. And he had a really distinctive style. It was like Disney meets Rockwell. Sincere American aspirational. And Americans lapped it up.

I had bizarrely and coincidentally met Hal years before in his Irish cousin John Riney’s Irish bar in New York one Christmas Eve. Hal had skipped out of his NY agency outpost’s rather dreary Xmas party to steep himself in Irishness — and whiskey — at his cousin John’s annual Christmas party for his regulars. The party went on all night. It was a lock-in as they say in the UK. And Hal could really drink his whiskey. I remember being introduced to Hal. That’s about all I remember of that night.

Anyway, I found myself working on the Subway account at Hal’s agency a decade later. And i hated their campaign. Which featured Hal’s voiceover. Hal had a seductive and reassuring masculine whiskey-soaked voice. Imagine John Wayne meets Garrison Keillor (VO of Honda UK ads). But clients came to Hal for his voice. Both his creative voice and his actual voice. And Hal cannily sold them on both. And he scored millions of dollars in TV and radio residuals in the process. Hal lived in a cavernous firehouse in San Francisco and owned a few islands in Belize. Hal was famous for, among other things, helping re-elect Ronald Reagan in 1983 with a series of ads that only Hal could have written (and voiced). I liked Hal! He understood what made America tick. And i wanted to know what that was.

The Subway campaign that i was asked to work on featured Hal cooing effusively about the wonderful sandwiches at Subway and the, ahem, “sandwich artists” that created them. I thought they were complete and utter shite. Hal was the only one making money off this campaign!

I went to Subway to research the brand and found that my “sandwich artist” was usually a very recent immigrant from India with a tiny English vocabulary limited to the various ingredients of Subway sandwiches. Hal was romancing something that just didn’t live up to his Americana shtick.

While researching i noticed that on the napkins at the Subway restaurants i noticed they had printed facts that compared how little fat their sandwiches compared to a Big Mac and BK Whopper and other popular fast food choices. This excited me greatly. Americans are obsessed with losing weight. And the idea of eating your way to being thin could only resonate positively. I knew I had struck gold.

So my idea was to bring this napkin to life. To show how much more working out you would have to do to work off a Big Mac or a Whopper. We had nutritionists and bio-mechanists work this out precisely and we shot ads that demonstrated just that. We had the TAE-BO exercise creator Billy Blanks lead a class out of his studio to a Subway for lunch. Punching and kicking the air as they went. It was crude but effective. It actively claimed the territory that they had already staked out on their napkins. It had literally stared me in the face.

A couple of months later I was in LA. I got a call from a producer from that agency, which I had since left. She told me that she was producing a spot with a guy who had seen my work and written a letter to Subway about how he had lost weight by eating only at Subway. His name was Jared. I can’t claim credit for that ad. But I will take credit for seeing what right in front of my and Jared’s (and everyone else’s) face. They’re still running that campaign.

PLEASE TELL ME THAT AN AD AGENCY WASN’T PAID TO “CREATE” THIS.

And please tell me that not a single dime was wasted “researching” this. And please tell me that no better ideas (such as NOT running this) were discarded in favor of telling me that it is now possible to purchase Miller Lite in a wide-mouth aluminum container (100% recyclable variety).

This is the very opposite of good beer advertising. It has zero appetite appeal. It has zero charm. It has zero humanity. Zero fun.

Good beer advertising understands that consumers’ beer choice is not a rational decision. Beer is fun. It really is that simple. And to pretend otherwise is to go in precisely the wrong direction.

The rational thing to do is NOT to drink beer. So beer advertising has to serve as the license to have fun. So, logically, the ads should serve as the slightly devilish friend winking and elbowing you in the ribs. Cajoling you into going to the pub till you say “F**k it! Why not?”. The best current example of this approach is the Dos Equis ad campaign: The Most Interesting Man in The World. I have found myself drinking Dos Equis (instead of Modelo Especiale) PURELY as a result of liking the ads.

I understand why Miller put that wretchedly awful billboard up though. Being fun and exciting is hard. It takes skill and finesse. But most of all it takes caring about the other person. In this case the passerby. And caring about what people actually think of you (your product, your brand, your beer, your billboard) complicates your life.

It’s much easier to pretend that people in the real world really give a shite about your “wide mouth” (sounds icky, doesn’t it) 100% recyclable aluminum can. And that putting up ugly ads that look sound and feel like a slide from a powerpoint presentation will actually bring people closer to your brand.

What a waste. If only they’d just used common sense.

UPDATE: UK ad legend dave trott just provided me with the UK equivalent of the above ad. it looks nicer, as you might exppect. I’m sure this tested through the roof too. Yawn. It’s beer people. it’s not that complicated. unless you haven’t the slightest idea what you’re doing in the first place.

CLIFF FREEMAN AND PARTNERS. RIP. SNIFF!

Legendary New York agency Cliff Freeman and partners just shuttered its doors. And anyone in creative advertising of a certain age shed a quiet tear.

Cliff ruled American advertising like a giant in the 1990s. The 90s wasn’t our best decade. It was full of shite, to put it bluntly. What set Cliff apart was his unrelenting love of overtly selling stuff while all around him pondered Gen X’s teenage brooding.

Cliff was of course, the man who penned “Where’s the Beef?” for Wendy’s hamburgers, which went through the culture like a dose of salts. He then went on to pioneer, and specialize in, a new form of retail advertising: really, really, really funny ads that stuck in your head. He realized that if you’re going to be funny, be really funny. that’s the only thing worth going for.

Starting out in NYC in the early 90s, working for Cliff Freeman was a shortcut to fame and awards glory. It was Shangri La. And a lot of his employees went on to become industry titans. Because they had had such an affirming experience. Being rewarded for just being themselves. you can’t beat that. i knew the guys that did this at CFP. bastards!

I met Cliff once at an ad awards do in New York. It was the History Channel’s top ten ads of all time thing. we both had catchphrase based ads in the top ten. we chatted about the recent superbowl. we’d both had ads in it. cliff was much more psyched about being in the superbowl than i was. i found that strange.
Having catchphrase fame in common i asked him for advice. He said he didn’t want to be “that guy who did that one famous thing”. that stuck with me. neither did i.

Cliff clearly had the most fun anyone ever had in advertising. I’m sure that will be a consolation to him.

Just one example of many, many great CFP ads.

Viva Carl Ally!

Carl Ally sounds like a made-up figure. Originally from Detroit, he was a decorated fighter pilot in WW2. And he claimed he was the basis for the Yossarian character in Joseph Heller’s legendary novel Catch 22. A claim the author disputed. Either way, it demonstrated an instinct for thinking big. And recklessness. He started an ad agency bearing his name in the 1960s and created some of the most powerful advertising of the time. If I were to cast the role of Carly Ally (who i never met btw) in his biopic, I would have cast Walther Matthau. That’s my second-hand image of him.

I can vividly remember the first time I encountered Carl Ally’s work. I was eagerly devouring the advertising annuals in the Pratt Institute’s Brooklyn library on a hot summer Saturday afternoon. They had a complete set of every ad annual ever published. I was in heaven. I wasn’t actually a student of the Pratt Institute. I would sneak in pretending to be a student. I would just greet the librarians with familiar enthusiasm as I walked in. My day job was driving tourists around Central Park in a horse and carriage. This was the early 1990s.

I was working my way chronologically from their earliest annuals from the 1900s to the present day. I wanted to absorb EVERYTHING. And I was surprisingly disciplined about it. I knew enough to know that the 1960s would be the most exciting decade. But knowing that would make finally getting to read those annuals all the sweeter.

So when i finally hit the late 1950s i was really excited. Expecting to be entranced by the wonderful DDB work. Which I was. But I was even more entranced by the work of Carl Ally Inc. These guys leapt off the page, grabbed you by the collar, slapped you in the face and you thanked them for it. I was blown away.

DDB were the artful persuaders. Carl Ally put a gun to your head and made you feel like an idiot if you didn’t buy what they were selling. They were hardcore sellers. You couldn’t argue with their ads. They had thought everything through. Their strategies were made of solid steel. And their executions were viscerally powerful. Effectiveness was clearly everything to Carl Ally. And I loved it. I felt an immediate kinship. I wanted to be back in the 1960s.

Alas, Carl Ally had retired by 1990. I recall being majorly bummed out by this news. But one of his former proteges, whose work i dug for similar reasons, was still working. And he was arguably as good as Carl ever was. If not better. He would have to do.

He ended up hiring me. It was my first job. I felt like i’d finally connected with the Carl Ally “force”. I was home.

A smattering of ad campaigns Carl Ally Inc. (later Ally and Gargano) created:

1. Volvo. Carl established the template of Volvo as a reliable car.

2. FedEx. Carl’s agency launched the brand. Arguably the most successful brand launch ever. You can still hear echoes of Carl Ally in their ads today.

3. Dunkin Donuts. The “time to make the donuts” baker campaign.

4. Carl Ally’s Hertz campaign effectively destroyed the much more lauded “we try harder” campaign DDB created for Avis by counter-punching with such beauties as “We have a competitor that says it’s only number two. That’s pretty hard to argue with.”…and… “For years Avis has been telling you Hertz is No. 1. Now we’re going to tell you why.”

Viva Carl Ally! Dos!

OK, I found this Carl Ally gem online. It’s part of a great series of interviews that the Wall Street Journal did with creative advertising gurus. Carl’s was easily the best. Here it is. Walter Matthau could totally have played him based on the headshot.

We did a TV show

Actually we did two TV shows. It was called “Schooled”. We created it with client OfficeMax for the back to school season. The thinking was: back to school is as big as Christmas in kids’ lives but there’s no explicit back to school programming. So…let’s do a TV show! Easier said than done.

The Escape Pod’s wunderkind managing director, Norm Bilow, somehow made it happen. That entailed dealing with networks, record labels, google, youtube…me.

The idea was a good one. Prank a whole school into thinking that if they don’t do X, very bad Y will happen to them. And then pay the whole thing off with a private concert, just for those kids, by a major rock star in their school gym. That necessitated getting the agreement of a high school and the parents of all the kids and, most crucially, it entailed all concerned keeping their mouths shut so none of the kids have any clue. otherwise our show is busted and all our production money effectively goes down the drain. in front of our eyes.

the good thing is this only really hit me when it much too late to do anything other than bite into my sleeve in agony and silently scream Ari Gold style.

rather than bore you with the executional details you can simply watch the bite-sized version below. It’s a good laugh. Basically it was PUNK’D set in a high school. and we knew it. hence the name. but remember, hidden camera wasn’t invented by Ashton Kutcher. Or Dom Joly. it was invented by Allen Funt. 50 years ago. it’s a technique not an idea.

Now, if you’ve never done a TV show before, you’re probably thinking “I could have done that!”. And you very well might. But one thing that we only discovered by actually doing it twice is that doing a TV show punifies any TV commercial ever done in terms of sheer scale and audacity and complexity. And we here at the escape pod have done some ambitious things in our time but this was different. Very, very different.

A commercial lasts 30 seconds. A TV show lasts 50 minutes. Or 3000 seconds.

In commercials you control everything. here we controlled maybe 20% of things.

In commercials you overshoot. here we shot what we could in the time.

In commercials you know what you’ll end up with. here we had absolutely no idea.

In commercials you edit for a week with one editor. and that’s a leisurely pace. We edited round the clock for three weeks plus using five editors. Racing all the way.

In commercials you have to get the approval of the the network to run your spot. here we were expected to perform well in the ratings. the weight of the network itself was on our shoulders.

In commercials you get your commercial sandwiched between programming. we actually had commercials for sandwiches sandwiched between our programming.

There’s a 15 minute just-for-youtube version here. Check it out. The prank really worked out well. The kids totally bought it So it’s real good viewin’…

PS: the principal Eric Sheninger has since gone on to have another reality show. Not surprised. He was great. Thanks Eric! I mean, Mr. Sheninger!

How to have a creative idea.

People who aren’t regularly and explicitly creative in their everyday lives (ie, normal people with real jobs) can sometimes have a distorted idea of what being creative entails. I know I once did. I used to equate creativity exclusively with the “arts” – painting, music, film-making, etc. And that’s wrong.

The Latin root of the word “creative” is the verb creo/creere, which means to think. Not to draw or play. Being creative simply means having ideas. Thinking about things.

There are creative plumbers, creative parents, creative accountants. Creativity is about problem-solving.

Richard Branson is one of the most creative people in business. He looks at existing categories -airlines, the music industry, etc, sees what they’re doing wrong and then thinks of an idea to make it better. That’s creativity. He then goes and cancels out all this creativity by being a stupid git who won’t stay out of hot air balloons. Kidding.

So how do you have a creative idea? First you define the real problem you’re trying to solve. It isn’t always obvious. And it can take a while to figure out. Making sure you’re trying to solve the correct problem is the most important part. For obvious reasons. But lots of people blow right by it. Or accept someone else’s definition of the problem without thinking. Then, you soak up all the information and stuff that is relevant to the problem. And then, and only then, you start thinking of ideas. Because now you know what you have to do. It’s a simple three stage process.

The mistake most people make is rushing to the final stage — execution, the glamorous bit — without doing the boring but necessary first two bits. They immediately start frantically searching for something that they wouldn’t recognize if it bit them on the face: the right idea. Because they’re not looking for solutions, they’re just desperately trying to think an idea. Any idea! But they’re not yet in a position to judge their own ideas. So they go around in circles. Like puppies. Labrador puppies.

A good analogy is to think of creativity in terms of firing a gun. Ready, aim, fire. Think of how much time you devote to each of the stages. Ready and Aim (should) take a lot more time than Fire, which takes just an instant. Yet the impulse is to go right to Fire. The fun bit.

Ready is the problem definition stage. What’s the real problem? What effect are you trying to achieve?

Aim is the thinking about it stage. What are all the factors at work here?

Fire is merely the having an idea stage. The final bit.

The first two stages should be done with a very open mind (uncritical, unanalytical ) with no thought to the execution stage. The reason is that focusing on execution can cause paralysis of the brain. The terror that you’ll never have the right idea. So don’t do that. Instead focus on what you want to achieve and load up your mind with the raw materials for ideas: the boring facts, think about the dynamics that surround the problem you’re trying to solve. And the effect you want to have. This way you keep yourself busy and you’re not worrying about the idea stage. Because it’s too early.

The great part about this approach is that, though you might not know it, your subconscious mind is doing all the work for you.

Because the dirty little secret about creativity is that great ideas don’t come from racking your conscious mind and anxiously chewing pens and pacing around a room. Like they do in the movies. Or from so-called”brainstorming”. Great ideas come effortlessly. They bubble up from the subconscious mind. But first you have to tell your subconscious that you need an idea and feed it the necessary data.

And that’s really all there is to it.

The best headline I ever wrote*

When i was trying to break into advertising in New York in the early ’90s I had a bunch of random jobs. I did everything from driving a horse and carriage around Central Park to corporate moving. While working in the latter job I worked with a Puerto-Rican guy named Hector. Hector was a recently paroled car thief. His cousin was the crew chief. Hector needed a job to comply with the terms of his parole. I found all this out in a pretty spectacular manner one lunchtime

Hector and I were standing outside a deli on east 23rd Street eating knishes and swigging back Snapple. Suddenly a guy pulled up in front of us in a Mercedes convertible and leapt over the car door, Rock Hudson playboy style, and jogged into the deli. He had left the keys in the ignition with the engine running. Suddenly Hector began to look agitated, looking around nervously. Then suddenly he handed me his lunch and told me he’d back in 15 minutes and started walking towards the idling Merc. Just then though, the idiot owner came bouncing out of the deli, got into his car and drove off.

I asked Hector what he was up to. He told me he’d planned on stealing the car. I was dumbstruck. I asked him how the hell he planned on being back in 15 minutes. He pointed to a parking garage up the street. He said he would simply have parked the car on the top floor and come right back to me. He would then retrieve the Mercedes later that night and sell it to a chop shop.

Always on the look out for a good ad for my portfolio, I asked Hector what he drove (a souped up Corolla, Hector was a racer) and what if any theft protection device he used to prevent someone like him stealing his car.

He replied that he used a Club-like steering wheel lock called the NIGHTSTICK. I asked him why he used that particular one. His reply became the headline for the best ad in my portfolio, for the NIGHTSTICK…

“MAN, YOUR ASS BE IN THE JOINT BY THE TIME
YOU CUT THROUGH THAT S**T!”

- Hector Cordon, car thief, South Bronx

*OK, i merely transcribed it. It still makes me laugh though.

Our philosophy on philosophies

Here at The Escape Pod we don’t have a “philosophy” about marketing or advertising. Other than that advertising should sell stuff. In fact, we find the whole idea of an advertising agency claiming to have a philosophy a bit laughable. Which is why you won’t find one on our website

It used to be fashionable for advertising agencies to pretend they had some proprietary wisdom that was exclusive to them and them alone. 360 degree thinking etc. This was done in an attempt to differentiate themselves from their almost identical competitors.

And some agencies still feel the need to engage in marketing voodoo. And to an extent it can work. For the agency. Regardless of what you think of Saatchi’s Kevin Roberts “Lovemarks” malarkey, it has led to some success for his agency. I guess the reason it worked is that there must be some clients out there who need to feel they are buying a sure thing. A process that will effortlessly lead to success. But the truth is there is no sure thing. In reality, there’s just gut judgement and sweat. And worrying a lot helps too.

By all means have an approach and an attitude towards the industry and marketing in general. That is absolutely necessary. But please, don’t call it a philosophy.

Your chance to own a piece of history. Our chance to get rid of our Obama plates.

Back in August we, along with five other Chicago agencies, were challenged by our local ad columnist, Lewis Lazare, to come up with an ad for a Presidential candidate. And we did. The escape pod’s idea was to create something that would raise money for the Obama campaign. Alas, the Sun-times never saw fit to publish any of our ads as they’d promised. and so our efforts were largely for naught. we even created a website and all. we actually did sell some plates. and the money did go to the obama campaign. thank you adpulp.com and adfreak.com!

net-net: we at the escape pod have some funny plates we need to get rid of. get one for the republican with a sense of humor in your life! Or, it’s the ideal holiday stocking stuffer for the long-suffering democrat in your life! Or, you just urgently need a plate!

anyhoo, we’re giving these babies away as holiday gifts. from us to you. simply leave your name and address in the comments section and we’ll ship one off to you. why? because we love you. that’s why.

Hard-hitting advertising is back!!! And it’s 50% cheaper than before!!!

we love hard-hitting advertising. not everyone in advertising does. which i’ve always found odd. the best ads are ALWAYS the ones that hit hardest. the ones that don’t beat about the bush. yet a lot of advertising folks think it’s uncool to overtly sell something. and so waste billions of dollars beating around bushes.

the best recent example of hard-hitting advertising is the current Apple campaign. It’s hardcore competitive. And it mercilessly takes advantage of the PC’s glaring problems. it’s interesting that the “cool one” (apple) is getting the last laugh on the nerds: microsoft and dell. because at the end of the day, presentation matters. how your product looks and feels is trumping mere code and widgets. and the apple advertising is brilliant. it takes advantage of everything that’s gone before it and how we all feel about apple right now.

and one of the reasons it’s brilliant is that it’s not hiding behind anything. it’s not the usual gag with tag. it is selling hard from second one of each commercial.

we at the escape pod dig it. advertising shouldn’t be embarrassed about selling things. TV advertising sort of kinked advertising into being almost too precious about entertaining people rather than selliing to them. entertainment took precedent over selling. and that was wrong.

the best advertising doesn’t beg for your attention. it confidently assumes it.

My brushes with Fame – volume two. Quentin Crisp.

OK, i’m struggling to connect this story to advertising. But it has to be told. Maybe it’s about being true to one’s brand. Or something.

My recent posts related to this era of my life jogged this funny memory. Back when i was starting out in new york and working random jobs as I worked on my advertising portfolio, i had one job that involved moving corporate files. these days you could move them all on one terabyte drive. and carry it in your bag. but not back then, thankfully.

we took files from one building in lower mid-town manhattan and delivered them to another, newer, building in the lower west side. the fastest route took us through the west village. the gay capital of manhattan.

one afternoon, as we sped in our van to the lower west side in the pouring summer rain, we came to a red light. And there, right in front of us, was the legendarily flamboyant English gay writer Quentin Crisp. He was dressed as you’d expect and a small japanese assistant held an umbrella over his hatted head as he inched his way across the street.

I couldn’t help but spew out his name in sheer surprise. ‘That’s Quentin Crisp!” i said to my puzzled co-workers. They looked at me like I was Quentin Crisp. A) How did i know who this foppish effeminate-looking old white guy was? and B) Who the f**k was he?

So i did my best to explain. Instantly regretting ever uttering his name. It was the longest and gayest red light of my life.

Finally it looked liked Mr. Crisp had cleared the walkway and the light was about to turn green. When suddenly Ronnie, the driver, rolled down his window and screamed “YO, QUENTIN CRIPS, YOU F**KIN’ FA**OT!!!”.

I was mortified. And immediately felt sorry for this elderly literary icon who’d been the subject of homophobic abuse his entire life. But the funny part was that Quentin Crisp not only wasn’t offended, he positively beamed back at us. He was delighted. He looked genuinely happy at being recognized by this uncouth denizen of the South Bronx. He still had it! He was still famous. By god, being Quentin Crisp still meant something in this godforsaken town.

We’d accidentally made his day. And then we sped off. I sighed a deep sigh of relief. Only in New York.

Smoking is way down. Take a bow Pete Favat and Alex Bogusky!

I read recently somewhere that for the very first time, LESS THAN twenty per cent of Americans smoke tobacco products. Now some of this,I think, can be attributed to smoking becoming unacceptable to the majority of Americans.

Let’s see, it’s addictive but doesn’t get you high and it causes a slow painful death. You’d think it would have lost its appeal long ago. But it didn’t.

And let’s face it, advertising played a big role in recruiting new smokers. Thank you Marlboro Man for associating poisoning oneself with rugged outdoorsmanship….whaaaat???

But on the flipside, advertising played a not insignificant role in making smoking uncool. The long-running Truth campaign, created by my onetime boss Pete Favat at Houston Herstek Favat (later Arnold) and later brilliantly augmented by Crispin Porter Bogusky, has surely saved countless lives.

Advertising gets a lot of flack, some of it justified. But this is a clear case of advertising doing well.

The best ad for Fosters lager I’ve ever seen in the USA

Ricky Gervais swigging from a 25 oz oil can during his HBO special.

The Internet: great for advertising Irish bagpipes!

There seems to be an assumption among many in the ad community that somehow all the money currently being spent on TV ads will somehow effortlessly migrate to “online” eventually. And that our industry will just all morph into Crispins, Porters, and Boguskies eventually. But why should that be?

it’s forgetting that the business of creating advertising ideas exists as a by-product of something much more important: gathering a mass audience. Nobody wants to spend millions of dollars on TV advertising. Never did. They did so because the opportunity to talk to a huge chunk of the population at one time was simply irresistible to mass marketers. How could they not do it?

The internet is a completely different proposition. Unlike all previous mass media it does not have a symbiotic relationship with advertising.

But increasingly it does allow mass marketers to access a mass audience. Thank you Google. And that’s something mass marketers need. But think about the real estate the internet offers you.

You want to be front and center? Sorry. You’ve been moved to the periphery. Something that’s seen out of the corner of the eye. Maybe. You want the ability to tell your story? Hmmm…That’s going to be tough. A lot tougher than it used to be on TV. It’s still doable. But it requires A LOT more effort than it did in the past.

The internet was a boon for the sole trader. The guy who handcrafts Irish bagpipes. For him it’s been a great leveller. For mass marketers too it has been a great leveller. Only, that’s the last thing they wanted or needed. I remember ten years ago hearing the horror film director George A. Romero compare the internet to the $2 betting window at the horse racing track. He was right. That’s what it is.

So what’s the answer? There isn’t an answer anymore. There are lots of answers. Things have gotten immeasurably complicated. Deal with it. But don’t delude yourself that there’s an easy answer. Or that somehow, someone will figure it all out for you. They won’t. We all have to put on our thinking caps, unfortunately.

It makes us laugh here at The Escape Pod when we hear people, especially purported new media gurus, crowing about how the internet is the best thing to happen to advertising.

Yeah, if you’re advertising Irish bagpipes it is.

Barbara Lippert. A woman of impeccably good judgement.

Adweek just turned thirty. It can’t be easy covering an industry as bitchy and as full of aggressive self-promoters as ours is. I’ve seen what it’s like.

Anyhoo, Adweek’s Barbara Lippert has just written a piece recalling three ad campaigns that were “game-changers” over the past three decades.

You can read it here. It’s a three page article. Nike was on page one. Our Bud work was on page two. And to be honest, I never got to page three. Page two just wore me out.

One thing that struck me about all three campaigns she selected (update: page three has something about CPB and BK) is that all three were the product of great clients. I know you’re saying “duh!”. but we have had the great fortune to be the beneficiary of several truly great clients. and in case you haven’t, here’s how it works. if you’ve never worked with a great client, you might imagine them to be unquestioning but enlightened figures who are somehow in your thrall. and that would be a very wrong image. very far from the truth.

great clients are way ahead of their agenices. if you have a great client, you are along for the ride. great clients have a vision of what they want to have happen. and they challenge you to use the freedom they give you to the maximum. and if you’ve never had complete creative freedom in your life, you might not know this, but it’s kind of scary. the universe is a big place, suddenly. you become, potentially, the weakest link in the chain. now you have to deliver. what you got?

it’s a lot easier to complain about how everyone is an idiot and you’re not. but suddenly that’s not an option anymore. you’re getting a clear shot at doing something great.

And the best clients know this. so now the pressure is on YOU. you have nothing to hide behind.

I always use a similar psychology when dealing with directors and other creative vendors. i just pass on the creative freedom i have to them. make them happy. i don’t want to be a director. i make it apparent that the success or failure of the job is entirely in their hands and on their shoulders. I keep an eye on things but so long as it’s going the right way i keep my mouth shut. let them have fun for once. be the good client! they work ten times harder as a result. they get to have the same feeling i do. seems only fair.

and it works like a charm every time. everybody loves freedom and fun!

Burger King gives McDonalds a digital whoppin’

For several years now Burger King, once one of the worst accounts in advertising, has been exemplary in its use and exploitation of new media. Or as we call it: media.

In partnership with agency Crispin Porter Bogusky, Burger King has dived deep, doing everything from branded content to (truly) viral efforts as well as some brilliant advertising for the Whopper. If you’ve eaten their fries lately you’ll have noticed that they, quite rightly, even treat the fry box as a medium. Giving the diner information and matey chat. Everyone could learn a lot from what these guys have done.

We were talking about this recently with someone whose opinion we value highly who happens to work at Google. And he made the point that BK’s experience in the digital area qualifies as a legitimate asset at this point. It’s worth money and is a competitive edge. And conversely McDonalds’ much more tentative steps in the digital arena will someday bite it on the rear end.

Similarly, agencies that have been hesitant about embracing the possibilities of digital/online will, and are, having a rude awakening. Because actual experience is golden here. You can read all the blogs and Malcolm Gladwell and Seth Godin books in the world and go to all the conferences but nothing subsitutes for doing something. And the great thing is that, unlike traditional advertising, it doesn’t necessarily cost a fortune to try something in digital land.

If you look at the BK work, a traditional TV mass marketer might criticize it as being “all over the place”. And it is. CPB is constantly launching new initiatives and ideas whose commonality is often merely tone. They are having fun. And they know from experience that the best way to approach the online world is to try a lot of things and see what sticks. Because nobody, not even CPB, can be sure of that. It’s a bit like the record industry model. Throw out a bunch of stuff and something will hit.

It’s a much more free-form approach. And one that understandably would make some marketers nervous. Not BK. What’s the biblical quotation? As ye sow so shall ye reap. Yup.

Unboxing a great ad

Not sure if you’re familiar with the youtube phenomenon of unboxing. it’s where people film themselves opening products they’ve just bought and savoring the contents as they see them for the very first time. it’s a bit odd. It’s usually done with newly arrived electronic items, but i’ve seen unboxing videos of people “unboxing” new candy bars and describing the taste to an imagined audience.

This commercial/video for a Samsung phone is the first (and probably only) ad that references unboxing. And whoever did it, did a great job.

Integrated advertising is nothing new

My old boss – who created many classic integrated campaigns – used to say “great ideas go everywhere and bad ideas go nowhere”. And that’s what integration means. Big ideas have life to them. They have energy. and because they have life and energy they effortlessly seep onto every platform and into all media. and ideally into real life and the public consciousness as well.

bad ideas don’t have any life. so you have to pay a lot of money to force them in front of people. who then ignore them and don’t react in any way really to the ideas. because there was never anything to react to to begin with.

If you read the advertising and marketing press these days you might think “integrated” is something new. there’s now an “Integrated” Cannes grand prix. which seems redundant. also, there seems to be some confusion that integration is somehow connected to the internet in some vague way. and it isn’t.

integration simply means that your idea easily and effortlessly migrates to all media. the best test of a big idea is the ease with which other people can build on your idea. it’s literally inspiring in some way.

in the 1980s, UK ad agency BBH created a campaign for Levis that made a huge dent in the culture. It featured cinematic commercials backed by old American R&B tracks from the 1960s. The commercials were so successful that all the songs were re-released and immediately went to number one on the music charts. And there on the packaging of the singles was a Levis logo. Now that’s integration! That’s the ideal.

We had a similar thing happen in our career. At the height of the whassup! thing there were two singles in the UK pop charts in december of 2000 that used the sounds of our commercials as the basis for, ahem, music. hey, it made the charts. have any of your ads pierced the UK singles charts?

Can you afford to be boring?

Being boring is fine if you can afford it. Example: Wal-Mart churns out a half a billion dollars worth of not very exciting advertising each year. Their ads are invariably deal-based low-production value things that make little or no effort to engage the viewer/listener. But the ads probably work. why? because you can’t escape them. they’re everywhere. you will see their message. because Wal-Mart pumps $500 million of this stuff out.

Do you have $500 million? No? Bummer. Looks like you have no option but to be really interesting and, ideally, exciting. Sorry.

Is this the best commercial ever made? Yup.

It involves both cream and…oh…what is it? Oh yeah, berries.

Jeff Goodby. A man of impeccably good judgement.

Adweek, celebrating its 30th birthday, asked some ad icons to select their favorite work from the past three decades. And i just read that Jeff Goodby of Goodby Silverstein fame selected our Budweiser work as his favorite campaign of the 1990s. Which is interesting because the campaign just about made it into the 90s. The first spot aired on Christmas day 1999 in an NBA game. So thank you Jeff. And might we reciprocate by saying how much we admired your work over the years on the brand. Frank and Louie will live forever.

in his article, Jeff repeats a myth about the campaign that i’ve seen in print several times  and  isn’t actually true – that the campaign only really took off when one of the spots aired on the Superbowl in February 2000. We did air a spot on the big game but it was by no means the hit of the game. It was actually ranked 22nd in the USA TODAY ad popularity poll.  Not a disaster.  but  by Budweiser Superbowl standards it was an abject failure.  But ultimately it didn’t matter. the genie was out of the bottle at that point.

How to write a Superbowl ad

It’s superbowl time.  All across the land, the top commercial film directors are turning up their noses and/or taking their pick of the sixty odd scripts currently in production in anticipation of the big game.  the viceroy hotel in santa monica is about to get very busy.

the thing about the superbowl is that the viewing situation is unique.  EVERYONE is watching. and it’s the one time of the year that everyone actually looks forward to watching commercials.  so the pressure is on. you’d better be good.

obviously there can be no rules in creativity so these are just things we’ve learned over the years creating superbowl ads. being on “the big game” is exciting. knowing that a hundred million people will see your work is a great incentive to get it right.

so here goes…

1.   Spots that hinge on a reveal or a rugpull can be dangerous. because only one moment of the ad will be funny. Unless the reveal involves something can’t-miss.  like a t-shirt wearing chimp dancing on a garbage can…for a bank.  that’s good times.  Otherwise you ideally need something that starts big and gets bigger.

2. So, be funny or really compelling in some way all the way through. the reason banking on a single gag is a risk is that you’re essentially asking people to judge your humor. you’re asking them to ask themselves if what they just saw was funny. and that invites potential failure. ideally you just confidently overwhelm the audience. tickle them. be fresh but familiar. but don’t beg them to laugh.

3.  Animals work. Dogs work especially.  Not my preference creatively, but spots that have dogs in them score higher in the USA Today popularity poll.  Kittens work too. but not badgers i’m guessing. yet skunks are a slapstick comedy goldmine. and of course our mini-us friends the apes are hairy hilarities. solidly reliable. and they can be trained to do whatever your idea needs.

4.  The superbowl is lowest common denominator time.   Just a statistical fact.  Grandma and your girlfriend/boyfriend and your teenage male cousin are watching.  What will all of them like? The best superbowl spots have universal appeal.

5.  Go with the flow.  Don’t listen to the “hey, everyone else is being funny, let’s not be” voice in your head.  people are watching the superbowl to have a good time.  not to be bummed out or made think too hard.

here’s something we did a few years back. this was the toughest superbowl ad i ever did. we had to discourage beer drinking on the superbowl. for a client that sold beer. our solution was to create a commercial that discouraged drinking and driving but felt like a beer spot. trust me, that wasn’t easy.

a german intern came up with the original germ of this idea. and the spot was, to my great surprise, the thirteenth most popular spot of the game. this spot suffers from several executional flaws which still make me cringe. so i hesitate to show it to you. it’s more to illustrate the point. and hey, it was #13 on the USA Today poll. So it was a hit!

6. Use the unique viewing environment. People gather in crowds to watch the game. so ideally your spot will literally be a crowd-pleaser. and will unite viewers in agreement that “yeah, that was funny!”.

7. The audience will have had a few beers, it’s good to assume. so their ability to process information and follow plotlines might be impaired. So don’t have too many gear changes in your commercial.

8. Where your spot runs in the game matters. you probably have no control over that. and if the game is a blow out and your spot runs in the fourth quarter it will be an uphill battle to get the viewers’ attention. the upside is if your spot is really great it won’t have to compete with a dramatic game. and so it can really stand out.

9. Keep it simple. Commercials that consist of just one thing are easier to process and follow and remember. The USA Today poll winners tend to be texture-free and almost childishly simple. Again, not our personal creative preference. But a fact nonetheless. maybe that’s why we never scored higher than #4 on the poll…. boohoohoo!

10. The USA Today superbowl ad popularity poll works like this. A random sample of the population (every race, gender and age) is gathered to watch the game. they are given clickers that they click as they watch the spots that run in the game. the more they like what they see the more they click. i think that’s one reason for the preponderance of animal spots. everyone likes cute dogs. so granny and young man click furiously from the opening frame when they see the cute animal behaving like a human. they don’t click furiously when they just see a human acting like a human. regardless of what you may think of the USA today poll, i can guarantee your client will care about how well their spot fares in it.

11. Be cool. i know there’s a lot at stake and most people are lucky if they get to write one superbowl spot in their careers but the mood on set and in the edit suite will show up on screen. if fun isn’t had in the process the commercial itself will suffer. my personal favorite superbowl ad that i wrote was done in an almost casual manner. it was a slender idea made great by performance, direction and editing more than writing. the dialogue actually came from the first words the actor playing the texan said to me upon meeting. he really was like that. so i figured that would be funnier than anything i could think of. and the director had the idea of just “doing the three thing”. repeating something three times till it becomes absurd.

plus, we had a lot of creative freedom. the finished spot differed wildly from the original script. which never made me laugh. so we changed it. people really seemed to like this one. they would smile when remembering it. it was just silly fun. great fun to shoot. i was kind of pleasantly surprised by how well it played in the game. we had the good fortune to have this spot be the first ad to run after U2 had just killed it in the half-time show. so everyone was in a good mood. and the game was still wide open. see point 8 above. you can’t beat good timing.

and it was the seventh most popular spot in the game according to the aforementioned USA Today poll. not that anyone cared about that. oh yes they did!

12. Don’t forget to write a good ad for the product you’re advertising. A lot of superbowl ads seem to be over-anxious to entertain. and forget to pack the sell. but remember that part of what consumers judge as a good ad is how relevant to the brand it is. how well does it sell what’s being advertised? chances are your brand already has a place in people’s heads. so they can intuitively recognize what constitutes a good ad based on previous knowledge.

just showing dancing animals won’t distinguish you. Budweiser and Pepsi can do that because they really don’t have anything to say. if anything they’re over-familiar to viewers. the overarching characteristic of the superbowl is the bigness of it. so be big. but that doesn’t necessarily mean being funny. you can be entertaining without simply being funny. masterlock built their brand running this brilliant spot every year on the game. all their media budget, gone in thirty seconds. but a great use of it.

NB: the above are just guidelines based on experience. there will always be brilliant exceptions. in fact the best ones ignore the guidelines. but they’re trickier to sell. if i had my way every superbowl spot would be wall-to-wall kittens. nothing but kittens. kittens everywhere!

The end of digital innocence

Whenever a new medium comes along there is an understandable degree of suspicion and fear on behalf of those whose livelihoods was predicated on the older media.  Silent movie matinee stars with great faces but squeaky high-pitched voices must have cursed the day sound was added to films.   Not everyone made the transition to the new improved film medium.   Directors who had  only directed action now had to contend with dialogue and having to record it.   Sets now had to be quiet.   Cinema organists were suddenly rendered obsolete.  And nobody saw it coming.  Nobody ever sees it coming.

Thirty years later the radio industry was rocked by the arrival of TV.  And fifty odd years later the arrival of the internet has complicated life for lots of industries – the record industry, newspapers, retail, television and television advertising. We’ve all spent the last ten years watching the internet evolve.  And our relationship with it continues to evolve.   And as always there are winners and losers.

But it’s fair to say that even if nobody has a clue where  the internet is ultimately headed and what it will ultimately evolve into, we have at least come to grips with the idea of continuing evolution and permanent change as part of our lives.

The Internet is  no longer the daunting mysterious “thing” once was.    We are all working out what works online and what doesn’t.  Patterns have emerged and they continue to emerge. And one important thing to remember though is that while our little lives have changed drastically, humanity hasn’t changed that much over the past ten years.   People still care about the things they’ve always cared about:  themselves and the ones they love.  And, ideally, have a bit of fun along the way.  All this is reflected in what’s favored online, just as it has always been reflected in the dominant media of the day.  Ultimately humanity will win out.

Adding sound to films made them better.  TV was a huge improvement on radio.  And the internet democratized media and empowered people.  They’re no longer passive consumers of what “the man” dictates they consume.

Look at me.  Having the temerity to presume that someone out there thinks that what i have to say about advertising is as important as what Barbara Lippert or Bob Garfield has to say about advertising.

Who the hell do I think I am?

Too hot for TV! Vol. 1

Over the course of our years spent working on Budweiser we inevitably produced some commercials that never saw the light of day for one reason or another. Usually because they were “too” something. Too outrageous. Too weird. Too…not right.

It was a natural by-product of producing a lot of ads. Plus, Anheuser-Busch did things the right way. They knew their business and they knew their brands. So they could tell a good spot instantly. And they let us produce the work in the manner we wanted to. They trusted us. There was no testing of ideas. If they liked it, we did it. They would test finished spots for likeability and laugh value to help determine what would run on the Superbowl. And in which order they would run. A-B usually had five minutes to fill. That’s potentially ten :30 spots. But they would produce a lot more than that and those that didn’t make the game would air later that year. Or not all sometimes. Usually because the finished commercial didn’t square with their vision of it. But it wasn’t considered a big deal if a spot never ran. That, in essence, is why the whole world loved their advertising. They understood that the “risk” would yield huge rewards. And they were right. Again and again and again. They were pretty chilled-out about the whole thing, considering.

Their biggest competitor Miller, by contrast, tested everything and never had a hit. They spent all their money talking about the things that nobody really cares about: telling you how great their beers tasted etc.

We now present for the very first time, a selection of our favorites. The ones that got away!

The first one was a spot in the “Jersey Guys” campaign. The idea was one of the guys was getting married and all his pals would come up and greet him and his bride. But because they were from New Jersey they would playfully slap and poke their friend. I recall my former partner (and NJ native) Justin Reardon had the idea for this spot. I loved it. And still do. It was directed by Allen Coulter of Station films. Allen directed a lot of the first season of a little TV show called The Sopranos. You may recall it. And he was an inspiration to work with. A real director! He shot the ads like a TV show. The production was designed by the legendary Bob Shaw who also worked on the Sopranos. He currently is responsible for making sure that Mad Men looks impeccable. And seems to be doing a great job. I remember we all (cast and crew and production company) went for a nice Italian meal after shooting this.

FUN FACT: We shot it in an Italian wedding banquet hall in Brooklyn. The Oriental Banquet hall. The was the real deal! You’ll notice there’s a quick shot of a wedding cake with an actual fountain on it at the beginning of the spot. That was surprisingly easy to find. This place would be where the GoodFellas got married. For real.

Too hot for TV! Volume 2

This was yet another Whassup! exploration. This time we turned our sights on Hollywood culture. I think we did this one for the Oscars. And it would have been perfect. We ended up running something else on the Oscars. This one stung because it would have been perfect. It would still be perfect. We nailed Hollywood. Once again,  this spot was helmed by esteemed sopranos, sex and the city and Rome helmer:  Allen Coulter. Mike Colletta edited.

FUN FACT: Look for the guy with the white hair and toothy grin at the end. He was actually one of the producers of “The Player”, where he made a brief cameo role as a movie producer in his own movie. Here he once again played himself. He did it as a favor to the director.  

What’s the problem with Whopper virgins?

Look, i know you could be forgiven for thinking this blog is actually CPB’s most brilliant pr idea ever, but really, what is the fuss about whopper virgins about?

Let me lay down the facts.  cpb went to remoter parts of the world and asked people who had never tasted a whopper their opinion of it was.   that is a great idea.  get undeniably honest reactions from unimpeachably independent sources.

i’m being slightly facetious of course.  i know what the problem is.  the ads upset some people by showing the truth that the vast majority of the world lives in abject not-ready-for-primetime poverty.  and juxtaposing this poverty with what could be construed as a symbol of american consumerist excess: the  BK whopper.

that’s how they see it.  they feel sympathy for people being treated to free burgers.

but you know who isn’t complaining?  the whopper virgins.  because the cold reality is that the whopper is a fine burger in any language.  foreign peasants  have taste buds too.  and it was probably a fun day when the funny americans came to their village and asked their opinion of the strange food.   they’ll be talking about that for years.

you know who the complainers should be worried about?  the people in the developing world that didn’t get a whopper.  and will never get a whopper.  and who will have very short and very hard whopper-free lives and probably needlessly die from malaria or some other easily treatable ailment.  and leave hungry and scared orphans behind them.

i can guarantee there’ll be no online chatter or outcry about that though.

Brian Williams calls it

NBC news anchor  Brian Williams deftly  punctured a few over-inflated digital balloons recently in a speech given to the Ad Council in New York.    You can watch it here.

He points out how insanely tech-obsessed we as an industry (and as a culture) have become.   Endlessly chasing digital holy grails.  And constantly designing new digital clothes for the Emperor to wear.

The truth is though of course, that in digital-land like in everything else, 95% of everything is worthless.

It’s kind of reminiscent of the bombastic prog-rock noodling of the 1970s in a way.  Obsession with technical detail and craft can lead to a loss of ability to see the big picture and a detachment from real life. Which is why punk happened basically.   Punk was big-picture thinking.  Punk was a very necessary return to real life.

And real life is back folks.  The current world climate has served to wake people up to what’s important and what really matters.   And what really works.

We at The Escape Pod long ago tired of the digital witch doctors and their potions.  It was one of the reasons we started up.   We’d had it up to here with endless utopian talk of the glittering digital future.  Usually spouted by self-appointed “experts” whose command of gibberish was matched only by their lack of actual experience and accomplishments.   You know who you are! Winking smiley face.

We wanted to live and work in the uncomfortable and messy present.  And deal with the thorny media issues in a real world way.  And find out what works and what doesn’t.   You know, do things.

Common sense. It just makes sense.

Dave Trott recently posted on the notion of radical common sense. As always, his thoughts are well worth reading.

It has often occurred to me over the years that what are frequently held up as “breakthoughs” and “game-changers” in advertising and marketing are little more than the triumph of pure common sense.

Nike. Just do it. Of course. You sell athletic wear, motivate athletes and would-be athletes.

Got milk? Milk and cookies go really well together. Who could disagree?

Target. Affordable design for all. who doesn’t want nice stuff that’s well made and costs less?

Of course the problem is that sometimes people resist doing what is subsequently revealed to be the obviously smart thing for various reasons. You can well imagine the California milk board wanting a campaign that touted the health benefits of milk (noble but not exciting). a slightly higher road than acknowledging the reality that milk is really comfort food. or the ideal partner to many comfort foods.

and it’s easy to imagine nike just touting the various wonderful features of their shoes and clothing. and i’m sure it made a lot of people at Target’s lives more difficult now that they had to go out and find ever cooler stuff to put on their shelves. “can we just sell the cheapest stuff?”

it’s a lot easier to delude yourself that consumers are rational calculating machines that will respond to the “correct” stimuli, than to deal with the messy gooey reality that is humanity. yes, people use the calcium of milk to give themselves permission to gorge on cookies and milk. but that’s not the real motivating factor. just as nobody drinks beer purely for refreshment. or because of the hops used to brew it. they drink it to relax with friends. that’s the real motivating factor.

When you deal with the realities of things and are brutally honest about what motivates your customers, common sense solutions are the only solutions. but it’s a mistake to confuse common sense exclusively with rationality…if that makes sense.

Seth Godin tells it like it is

once again, we are in complete agreement with the great domed one.

not every medium is suited to advertising. and anyone who has any experience of actually * trying to harness the internet for advertising purposes knows that while it has created exciting new opportunities, it does not rely on advertising for its existence.

and anyone who has worked in the traditional media knows that, creatively, not all media are equal. TV for example is a much better medium than radio. you can show and demonstrate things. you can create exciting little films.

so while facebook attracts a huge crowd, there isn’t much opportunity to create a meaningful brand experience. how many of banner ads on facebook have you clicked on? exactly. does anyone get excited about the prospect of creating a banner ad for facebook? exactly.

now we are not ruling out someone potentially conquering the world via a facebook app or banner ad, and ideally it would be us! but we aren’t holding our breath for it.

check out Seth’s brilliant post.

*as opposed to just blogging about it. winking smiley face.

How to be exciting

Being exciting is easy.  you simply have to do exciting things.  that’s all.  people are attracted to exciting things and exciting people.  Being exciting means you don’t have to work so hard to meet new people.

celebrities are exciting.  if you’ve ever seen a celebrity, you know what i mean. the actor  peter o’toole once knocked on the door of my home in Ireland when i was a teenager.  i nearly died of shock.  of excitement.  so the ideal then would be for your brand to be exciting.  there are two routes to this: one is to create an exciting product.  have you ever used a FLIP video camera?  i have.  now that’s an exciting product.   but chances are your product might not be one of those ideas.  therefore the things you do have to create excitement. your packaging, your advertising, the things that are in your control that  you can make exciting.  and of course not everything will create a tsunami of excitement every time.  but if being exciting is not a consistent and explicit goal every time and at every opportunity, it will NEVER happen to your brand.

you know all those stories of famous actors and models who were “accidentally discovered” when they were “dragged along” to auditions by friends? never happened. complete horseshit. it takes a will of steel to succeed in the hyper-competitive entertainment industry. everybody who gets the spotlight fought hard to get it. usually by being exciting in some way.

If being exciting is a consistent goal, when lightning finally  does strike, and people are genuinely excited about your brand,  your reaction won’t be: “Oh my god, how did this happen?”.  It will be “Thank god.  It finally happened!”.

why do we buy?

I have always been fascinated by the psychology and micro-psychology of purchase decisions and processes. It really helps keep your advertising honest if you’re true to the way your product is actually purchased and the real role the product plays has in people’s real lives. and i find it fun to dissect various purchase decisions. and i realize that doing so makes me a pathetic ad geek.

beer, for example is a surprisingly complex purchase decision. what you drink socially says something about you. so a lot more thought goes into it than might appear. are you a cosmo gal? are you a Bud man? the implication for me about this was that the advertising should create a halo of fun and likeability around the brand. because the beer you drink is your friend. you only associate it with good social times. so demonstrating those qualities that everyone seeks in friends could only be a good thing. because the beer you drink is, by definition, not a rational choice. the rational thing is to stay home and read a book.

so anyway, i was in the local dvd rental store looking for the new Star Wars Clone Wars for my son. not intending to rent anything for myself . when i saw a promo for MAN ON WIRE playing in the store. it’s a documentary about the tightrope walker who walked between the twin towers in New York in the 1970s. and i was hooked. i had to see it! so i rented it. it looks real good. that was yer classic “impulse” purchase. Low stakes. low cost. looked like fun. little downside. should be great viewing. a great example of the power of point of purchase. how many times has your wine choice been swayed by a little shelf talker recounting a positive review in Wine Spectator? Sometimes it really is that simple. People are usually open to suggestion and sometimes haven’t really thought about the purchase decision.  And that’s a good thing to remember.  Help them make the decision.

because if your advertising is in tune with how people really buy and consume your brand it has a much greater chance of being welcomed into your customer’s hearts and lives. you might think this would be obvious but there are a lot of insensitive oaf brands out there who clearly don’t get this. i am constantly surprised!

He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother

For some reason this beer ad popped into my head the other day. I guess on some level i will always have beer on my mind to some extent. It’s in my blood. No, literally. It’s in my blood right now as i type. Mmm…beer!

It was done for Miller Lite in the late 80s in the UK. the 80s were a great decade for beer advertising in the UK. The campaigns were seriously innovative. I had the good fortune to grow up watching them as a teenager in Ireland. From Dave Trott’s (And Steve Henry’s) hilarious work for Holsten Pils to The Carling Black Label greatness, and this little gem from the tail end of the 80s. This was different. The lessons of BBH’s Levis TV work had not been lost on whoever did this. What blew me away about this ad was the design and texture of the band scenes. They worked on a visceral level.

They’re basically showing an English dude going to the pub. Hardly a notable event, to say the least.

The song was perfect too. Anyone know who did this? As an ad geek i should know and want to know. The Courage sign on the pub at the end means BMP did it i’m guessing.

Enjoy!

UPDATE: Man on Wire = brilliant!

so i watched the movie i impulsively rented based solely on seeing the promo trailer at the dvd store.  it’s an account of the French highwire walker, Philippe Petit, who fulfilled a lifetime dream of walking between the twin towers of the world trade center in new york in 1974.

having been up to the viewing deck of the World Tradc Center years ago, i’d seen lots of framed b/w shots of his escapade there, and assumed -  not unreasonably i thought – that this somehow was a WTC sanctioned publicity stunt.   it clearly wasn’t.  the whole thing was illegal as hell and was meticulously planned like a 70s bank heist movie.  an appropriately motley crew of new yorkers (including, hilariously, a jewish stoner)  and frenchmen somehow pulled off the wirewalk of the century.  this was art.  Philippe Petit makes Christo look like a  flower arranger.

it’s a great story.  and it’s really well told here.  and, coincidentally, it was edited by the inestimable Jinx Godfrey, who we at The Escape Pod have had the pleasure of working with in the past.  i actually checked to see who edited it and was happy see Jinx did it.   she’s just a master of her craft.  and this movie is yet more undeniable proof of that.  good on ya Jinx!

It’s inspiring for all us creative dreamers because Monsieur Petit himself was, and remains, a creative dreamer who wouldn’t let anything — self-preservation, impossible odds — come between him and his dream.   He did it!

Finally, some art for the walls of The Escape Pod

We at the Escape Pod have long been fans of Hugh Mcleod.  Hugh is Scottish.  Hugh is a true artist. Hugh is a great cartoonist.  Hugh is a great marketing thinker.  Hugh is a digital pioneer.   Hugh is arguably the world’s foremost blogger.  Hugh is restless.  Hugh used to live in Chicago.  Then he moved to the Scottish border region.   Then he moved to London.  And now he lives in Alpine Texas.   He is about to, finally, publish a book.   And it will be a big hit.  Because Hugh has put in the hard work over the last decade to amass an audience of devoted fans, myself included.  Hugh is quite simply a breath of fresh air.  He’s a bit of Quixotic figure in a way.  Taking on Microsoft and Dell and helping clue them in on the web hugh.0

It is one of the biggest regrets of our professional lives that a project we hoped to collaborate with Hugh on never came to fruition.   we pride ourselves on  knowing a good thing when we see it and hugh is the real deal.

So were delighted to be able to purchase a signed limited edition print of the above “cartoon” by Hugh today.  It’s one of our favorites of his many cartoons.  A print out of it  used to adorn our office wall in a previous life.  And now it will adorn our office walls once more in a more fitting manner.

Rock on Hugh!

Happy holidays from The Escape Pod!

We did this a few years back. I say “we”. I really mean Bent animation in Portland. They did an amazing job. took bloody ages to do this one. stop-motion animation is not for those with short attention spans to say the least.

The best posts of the year

based on the number of clicks received, not our opinion. the hard facts jack!

1. Our idea for Obama. still have some plates if you want one.

2. A post inspired by our back to school effort for client OfficeMax. we like this one too.

3. A post about our new favorite ad blog written by UK ad legend Dave Trott. free wisdom, you can’t beat that.

INTERESTING FACT: A surprising/depressing amount of visitors to our blog seem to come from Poland and are using google image search to find pictures of Mike Tyson. Oh well.

Sole prediction for 2009

Predicting the future is a mug’s game. Nobody predicted Google, or youtube. they may have felt the need for the service they provide but nobody saw them coming.

interesting tale: we at the escape pod once had the pleasure of meeting and hanging out with Google’s first salesman, david scacco. he was the guy whose job it was to visit ad agencies back in 1998 and sell advertising agencies on the merits of using google. in 1998! can you imagine a tougher sell? He showed us his foamcore backed presentation boards that he used to use in his original presentation. surely they’re in the google museum by now. they were very funny. stuff like “over 125,000 daily users!” and “search over 2 million web pages!”.

even if he’d presented Google, the idea of google, to me back in 1998, i’m pretty sure i would not have recognized its future potential. so no future predictions from The Escape Pod.

OK, just one. It’s this. 2009 will mark a return to the basics of advertising in a big way. and i don’t just mean in a there’s-a-recession-we-have-to-sell-stuff way. I mean a refocusing on what advertising is supposed to do as opposed to “ooh look there’s a new digital thingy let’s obsess about that for ages”. we see a return to big ideas. big ideas that can effortlessly be incarnated in any medium or platform or whatever. big ideas have, and always had, power. they are infectious and usually elemental. they have intrinsic value. they are WORTH something.   they can make  a brand.  my first boss was the guy who came up with the big ideas that made Perdue Chicken (the best)  Volvo (well engineered safety)  and Maxell Tapes (worth it) what they were.  his ideas (and the ideas of his clients) created a magic.  he defined brands.  he said  he “helped brands realize their destinies”.  which i always thought was as neat a definition of advertising as i’ve ever heard.

i recently had to buy tires for my minivan and one image kept swirling around in head. the baby sitting on the Michelin tire with the line “Michelin. Because so much is riding on your tires”. That’s what i mean by a big idea. have they even run that ad in the past ten years?  didn’t matter.  there it was, still haunting my consciousness.  still being the decisive factor in the purchase process of a product that everybody feels is important but nobody really has a clue about.

i think at this point we have all digested the idea of the internet and had enough experience of it that we’re not in its thrall anymore. we get it. it has its uses. but it’s not the only tool available to us. so let’s apply big ideas to to it.

have we entered the “post-internet” age?

[update:  is it just me or does the baby in the michelin ad look like an irish-american tavern owner?]

When did Billy Mays take over TV advertising?

i don’t watch a lot of TV. Mostly because i have daughters and cannot endure the excruciating embarrassment of having to watch endless ads for erectile dysfunction drugs.  Plus i simply don’t have a lot of time so i tend to watch what i perceive to be quality shows via video- on-demand.    But over the holidays i had the opportunity to watch a lot of TV.  and one thing struck me loud and clear:  billy mays now owns cable TV.

for the benefit of our foreign reader, billy mays is an aggressive pitchman who tends to shill for products that are directly marketed and not available in stores.  he has been doing this for years but lately he seems to have become an unstoppable force of nature.  he is everywhere.  he has even spawned an imitator.   i’m not quite sure i see his appeal.  but apparently he has magical powers.  behold just some of his recent efforts.

The Escape Pod created a new filmic promotional element

We had fun doing this one.  It’s currently running in cinemas nationwide. no online component, widget, facebook app.  no ARG.  Just a beautiful film and nice music.  old timey style.  FYI:  the actress’ wardrobe was custom designed just for her.  First time we ever did that.   And yes, we let her keep it.  we hope you like it.  the commercial that is.  not her dress.

Client:  OfficeMax

Production Company: Brand New School

Director:  Ben Go

Music:  At the Edge of The Ocean.  Artist: Ivy.  Music search performed by Comma Music/Chicago

INTERESTING FACT:  We shot this on a sound stage in  the Universal studio lot in Hollywood.  Next door Clint Eastwood was directing Angelina Jolie in “The Changeling”.  Angelina and Maddox once drove past us in a golf cart.  We were going in the opposite direction.   You could tell she was dying to talk to us.  But we were too busy.

How do you advertise brands created on TV in an Internet age?

If you’ve ever really dealt with big brand  advertising from a media perspective you know it’s hard to advertise low interest brands on the Internet. a lot harder than advertising than on TV.   it’s hard because most of the big consumer brands were forged in the TV medium.  they were probably low interest but very  necessary products.  And  TV gave them the perfect opportunity to carpet bomb consumers’ consciousness and “brand” their brand directly onto the cerebral cortex of the nation.  all it took was money.  easy!

so perhaps not unsurprisingly,  a lot of these brands now find themselves in a bit of a technological pickle.   TV, their ice floe, is melting.  And the Internet — the medium that doesn’t require advertising for its existence thank you very much — doesn’t love them.  Because they’ve never really had to care if people loved them or not.  they just cared about market share.  they cared about themselves.  which was perfectly reasonable.  the system was what it was.  TV facilitated their rise.  TV wasn’t interactive.  and selling things is hard enough without having to factor love and other intangibles into the equation.

these times require a different skill set for both advertisers and agencies.  things have gotten a lot more complicated.  and  these brands suddenly have to reinvent themselves in lots of new ways.   looking back it was so easy:   approve one-sided messaging, ad agency creates it, run it, sit back and practice your golf swing/ tennis serve.

TV was the perfect system for creating big brands in a big country.  It’s still very much with us (the superbowl.  beat that Internet!  snap.) and will be for a very long time.  but its no longer the decisive force it once was in our culture.  and to an extent its worth to advertisers was based on the insanely broad reach it had.  but increasingly no longer has.

Change is good!*

*if by good you really mean a pain in the ass that eventually yields a positive result and is therefore totally worth it.

The Escape Pod is number two!

According to Chicago Sun-Times ad guru Lewis Lazare, our Penny Pranks campaign was the second best work to come out of the Midwest last year.   Yay!

And because we’re only number two, we will try harder this year.  So look out Barrie D’Rozario et al!

Ads that were great in 2008

ADVERTISING | Giving kudos to sunny side of the business

January 12, 2009 | BY LEWIS LAZARE

http://www.suntimes.com/business/lazare/1372520,CST-FIN-lew12.article

Just a week ago, we were talking about our concerns that 2009 might prove to be at least as difficult a year for the Chicago ad industry as 2008 was. Who knew that just hours later, a federal lawsuit would be unsealed alleging Leo Burnett/Chicago had inflated billing on the huge U.S. Army account over several years? It was a stunning revelation that Burnett quickly tried to put a damper on by announcing it had agreed to settle with the federal government and two whistleblower plaintiffs to the tune of more than $15 million. What a way to kick off the new year, eh?

But this column isn’t about 2009. It’s all about acknowledging a few ads from Chicago-based ad agencies and companies that brightened our days over the course of 2008. Granted, it has become more difficult in recent years to find work coming out of Chicago that was better than merely acceptable. Clients nowadays are all about using advertising for short-term gains, so the big idea that used to be at the core of the ad business has all but vanished. And outstanding creativity along with it, we hasten to add.

Still, we looked back over the 2008 local ad output in all manner of advertising formats and pieced together our annual list of the five best ads:

1. “Sea Orchestra.” (Barrie, D’Rozario Murphy) Ad biz insiders will immediately know that this exquisitely detailed TV commercial didn’t come from a Chicago agency, but rather a boutique in Minneapolis. But it was executed on behalf of a longtime Chicago-based company, United Airlines. This is by no means the first time a United spot has topped our annual list of the year’s best ads, but when we first saw this commercial featuring a vast group of sea creatures performing United’s signature musical theme “Rhapsody in Blue,” we knew it would be tough to beat in 2008. In fact, we don’t recall seeing anything anywhere in the last year that came remotely close to matching the creative genius exhibited in this lush spot that brilliantly burnishes the United brand.

2. “Used Car.” (The Escape Pod) Creative honcho Vinny Warren, who had a productive career at DDB/Chicago, left that shop several years ago to open the Escape Pod. Freed from the corporate shackles of a declining DDB, Warren’s creativity seems to have flourished ever more impressively. A series of spots done for OfficeMax last summer include some of Warren’s best work. Shot on location in New York, each commercial showed what happened when attempts were made to purchase merchandise with only pennies. A spot featuring a car salesman with hysterically oily mannerisms was perhaps the best of a very good batch of work.

3. “Egg” (Leo Burnett) As if it didn’t have enough to deal with already, Burnett now has to grapple with the fallout from an internal billing scandal. But despite all the agency’s problems, there are a few creatives toiling at the shop who have demonstrated some creative savvy via outdoor work for longtime client McDonald’s. This big egg sign went up at a McDonald’s near Wrigley Field last summer and was cleverly designed to crack open each morning and then close up again as the lunch hour approached — all to remind passersby that breakfast was being served fresh and hot beneath those iconic golden arches. Nifty.

4. “Blue” (Euro RSCG) There’s no shortage of fashion advertising out there. But we find most of it to be cut — as it were — from the same cloth. Not to mention rather snooty and forgettable. Which is why we rather like Euro RSCG’s chicly unpretentious yet subtly amusing set of print ads for Brigid’s Bags, a local boutique vintage bag business run by Brigid Murphy, also known in show biz circles for her Milly’s Orchid Show. With a few deft copywriting strokes, this simple, uncluttered ad for a refurbished blue bowling bag suggests how the bag was of the moment more than 30 years ago in decidedly unchic Sheboygan and could be again today in Manhattan, where fashion is taken quite seriously in certain circles.

5. “Trust Fund Baby” (Cramer-Krasselt) In today’s ad world, the would-be humorists in too many creative departments tend to equate being funny with being crass and stupid. We long ago got our fill of that kind of stuff. So we are always eager to applaud work that comes at humor from a slightly more civilized angle. That is certainly how Cramer-Krasselt approached a campaign for Sealy mattresses that broke last year. A series of television commercials successfully poked fun at some very spoiled souls in our society who, because of their good fortune, never have to worry about getting enough sleep. The trust fund baby execution was our favorite, but the art direction on all of the commercials, coupled with some great voiceover work, made this very focused campaign pop.

[update: We just realized that it would be unsportsmanlike and churlish not to offer congratulations to Barrie D"Rozario Murphy. However begrudging they might be. So here it is. Congratulations Barrie D'Rozario Murphy. Happy now? Good]

Twitter not a huge money maker shock!

Just learned, via twitter ironically (Hugh McLeod specifically),  that twitter isn’t making money.  Neither is Digg or Facebook.  And i think I know why.  Well I’m going to hazard a not too-deeply-researched guess why.  I’m an advertising creative, research is, like, a pain dude.

As long as the Internet (the “i” is capitalized you know) has been around and thriving, the cry of the overfunded startup has been ‘Oh, relax, the money will eventually come from advertising!”.  Really?   And what form will this advertising take?   Google ads or something.   Banner ads!  Yeah.  That’s it.

If only these would-be vendors of advertising had bothered to ask adfolks like us what we thought about the advertising opportunities they proposed to sell to – presumably – adfolks like us.  Because if they did, they might realize that what they’re selling just isn’t that exciting.   Sotto voce text whispers do not an exciting experience make.  And advertising, to be successful, has to get people excited in some manner.  It has to be motivating. It has to be exciting.

I’m not qualified to get into the mathematics of online advertising.  But I really think that the online advertising game has been won.  And Google won it.  If i want to reach (note i say “reach” not “excite”) people i’m giving Google a call.

There will doubtless be great uses of Facebook (whopper sacrifice) and Twitter eventually i’m sure.  But to hear the chatter about these alleged hot advertising properties reminds me of this scenario.

You walk into the foyer of the a grand French hotel.  It looks beautiful.  you’re paying a fortune to stay there.  the manager greets you effusively.  “Welcome to the Hotel Royale!”   He then informs you that you will be sleeping on the window ledge on the fifth floor.   You are understandably underwhelmed. He is perplexed. Is this not the most beautiful hotel in all of France???

I am an experienced expert. Do not try this at home!

That’s me (Vinny Warren) rubbing the head of a mountain lion. It was early morning and i was on a Budweiser shoot in California and slightly hung over. Still a bit giggly from the previous night, i noticed that the animal wrangler on the shoot (the spot featured a dog) had brought along three mountain lions which he’d chained up in the back yard of the rather luxurious house we were shooting at in the mountains outside LA. To my still slightly inebriated eyes, they looked very cute and placid.

I assumed, incorrectly, that these mountain lions were the nice, cuddly and domesticated variety of mountain lion. You know, THE TYPE THAT DOESN’T EXIST! So i foolishly got on the ground next to them and cuddled with them, putting my arms around their necks and generally treating them like huge puddy tats! Only then did i suddenly notice how HUGE their paws and jaws were. And i became a bit concerned. So i asked the animal wrangler why he’d brought them. his response soon sobered me up. “Oh, i just bought them and i thought bringing them here would help them get used to being around people!”. In other words, I was the first human these man-eating felines had  contact with.  Ever!  The blood drained from my face as I slooooowly got up and walked out of paw’s reach.

I should note that this is only one of a series of photos i had taken that day. this was the smallest of the three mountain lions i cavorted with that day.   i will try and find the others.

Too hot for TV vol. 3

Over the course of our careers, we have produced a lot of work.   Inevitably, we produced some work that we liked but that never aired for various reasons.  this is the third in that series. you can see the other two here.  and here.

This is one of my favorite unaired pieces. it was the very last Whassup spot starring , as they had become known, the Whassup guys. at this point they had been on the road doing personal appearances on behalf of Budweiser for a long time. more than a year. they’d toured the world sticking out their tongues and shouting “Whassup!!” They were tired.  And it showed.  i remember thinking how much things had changed when i heard them complaining about a planned personal appearance in Hawaii.

That Charles Stone didn’t direct this also made it less authentically whassup. This was the end of the line. I loved this idea though. My former partner Scott F. Smith had the idea for it. It was the reaction of the whassup! guys angry lower neighbor in the apartment building they presumably lived in. he’s been driven insane by all their incessant whassuping over the years. and has had enough. and decided to call them up and give them a piece of his mind, egged on by his broom-wielding wife. they were intended to be a metaphor for a whassup-ed out America. metaphors in beer ads…hmmm maybe that’s why it didn’t air. winking smiley face.

it still makes me laugh though. the husband and wife actors were an actual husband and wife team btw. boy did they work hard. Mr and Mrs Paik, if you’re reading this, sorry your spot never aired! You were great. Thanks.
FUN FACT: The only whassup spot shot outside of NYC. We shot this on a sound stage in Chicago. damn i should have bought that couch!

Too hot for TV! Volume 4

This was a McDonalds spot. And why this one never aired is a mystery to me. It’s a charming thing if you’re a new parent. And it was based on my own experience.

When my eldest was just a toddler starting to speak she would call out every Dunkin Donuts sign we approached it because she’d been there once and knew that it was the place where the donuts came from. “DONUT PWACE!!! DONUT PWACE!!!” DONUT PWACE!!!”" she would scream every time. And because she had perfect eyesight and not much else to do she would sometimes see one way in the distance and piercingly scream “Donut Pwace!!!” in my ear as i drove. i would slowly realize what she was on about only as we drew closer to the Dunkin Donuts sign.

so that situation was the germ for this spot.

FUN FACTS: It cost $2500 to have that teddy bear stitched by hand. one of a kind. still have it. The Dad actor appeared in Sex and The City. At a crucial moment in the shooting of the commercial the little girl fell fast asleep in her car seat. So we broke for lunch.

Plane lands in the Hudson River. Everyone survives. Which airline do you trust now?

I watched this live today. A USAIR pilot was forced to land in the Hudson river. This was a triumph of experience and expertise.

Captain “Sully” Sullenberger had at least 30 years of experience flying with the airline. He is now the official brand icon of USAIR. My new favorite airlline. He is a star. His courage and judgement gave New York a very much needed happy ending to an airplane-based drama.

Here’s my idea. We go to the pilots’ union and offer them more based on how much experience they have. seriously, i would pay a premium to fly only with experienced pilots.

The Escape Pod on NPR

NPR’s Marketplace program did a story about client OfficeMax’ new female oriented marketing and product strategy. Bob Thacker and I were intervied. I managed to get two sentences into the interview. But I don’t sound nearly as nervous as i imagined i’d sound. so that’s good. you can hear it here.

if you’ve never been interviewed (by phone usually) on the radio, you probably imagine it as i once did, that it’s just like chatting on the phone. it’s not. and this only hits you right before you go on the air.

i have been interviewed on the radio several times and each time i’m surprised. the first times i was interviewed were based on my budweiser work which was receiving a ton of publicity. so i got interviewed a lot. but mostly by US media outlets (Newsweek, People, The New York Times, you name it). which would have been fine but for the fact that my family in ireland never saw any of this. so after a while, i realized my power and requested that the agency PR machine get me something in ireland. and by “something” i meant getting something into the local paper. just to annoy the haters really. but how was our PR maven to know what i meant? she just heard “get me something in ireland”.

but what happened next was way out of proportion to my wishes. I get a phone call while shooting in LA.

Our PR person rattles off a list of Irish radio DJs that will be calling me later that night (ireland is 8 hours ahead of LA). So i go to dinner and come back to the hotel and don’t sleep a wink. and then at two a.m. ireland’s national radio network calls my room. i pick up the phone and only then do i realize that i’m actually quite nervous. and only then do i imagine all the haters back in ireland laughing at my pathetic performance on national radio. and ireland is a big radio country – we love to chat. and i freeze up. literally. i can’t breathe, much less talk or think.

and so the irish radio producer is telling me exactly when i will be live on the air and what to expect. and i’m kind of grunting replies. it’s terrible. i’m on the verge of just hanging up and running away when i have an idea. i walk over to the minibar and open one of those tiny bottles of cognac. and swig it all back. it burns my throat and induces involuntary breathing. i’m finally breathing! next step talking! and my blood is flowing again. and i somehow make it through the interview. a second tiny bottle of cognac might have been opened and consumed.

my family back in Ireland loved the interview. and i collapsed in a heap on the bed. radio is hell!

Too hot for TV! Vol. 5

This is the fifth, and perhaps final in our series of unaired commercials. They kind of go downhill a bit after this one. winking smiley face.

You can see the others here, here, here, and here.

This one was weird.

Shortly after the first Wassup! spots started airing it became apparent that there was an appetite for online parodies. So we figured who better than us to do a parody of our own thing. After talking things over with the director Charles Stone, we settled on a few that we knew would be hard for the general public to pull off, ie they involved real production expertise. The obvious and smart thing was to go “What’s 180 degrees away from young African-Americans yelling into phones?”.

I remember we rejected the idea of country club white guys doing it as being unnecessarily racially divisive. Goodby Silverstein apparently didn’t think so. They jumped on the bandwagon with exactly this idea a year later. And won a gold Clio with it. I will forever hate them with the intensity of a thousand suns for doing that. I’m kidding Jeff! Seriously, I’m kidding.

But one idea that we all liked was the idea of having Old Ladies watching a game show having a Bud. The elderly ladies in the spot were blissfully unaware of the Wassup! phenomenon. Which made it even funnier. They had absolutely no idea what they were doing. I vividly recall nearly dying laughing when we shot the scene in the garden as the elderly actress screamed urban slang into her phone. “Wassup money grips???” etc. It was the first time we did something that mirrored or echoed the original wassup template. It would not be the last. That kind of became our job. Doing new variations on that one thing. Over and over. we got real good at it too!

The reason it didn’t air was that there was just something off-putting about grandmas drinking beer in the middle of the day in an ad for budweiser. it just felt wrong to the clients. and that was cool.

but the funny part was that the very next month…this wassup parody swept the internet! the exact same idea. it was like clockwork. and it was kind of eerie. but the good part though was that the spot we produced — much better execution IMHO — was eligible to be included in our Grand Prix-winning entry to the Cannes advertising festival. and it was a big hit en France. so in a sense it did actually air. but only in the palais at Cannes. and it did its damage there. so thank you old ladies. Merci!

FUN FACT: The New Jersey house where we shot our spot was the same house used to shoot Hesh’s home scenes in The Sopranos.

Advertising awards shows have officially become a pain in the bottom.

Let me get this straight. I love winning awards. I am very shallow. I am in advertising. This should be shocking to absolutely no one.

And i’m always suspicious of ad people who say they don’t care about awards. And i’m even more suspicious of people who win awards and then act like they don’t care about them. Claiming that they use their Oscar as a door stop etc. Oscars belong on mantle pieces and behind glass cabinets. Just so you know. I’ll come round and polish yours for you next time I’m in LA if you want. Respect! Please.

So anyway, we’re wading through the ever-more-complicated ad awards entry requirements. It’s that time of year again.

Here’s a typical request. “Please submit a film (no longer than five minutes) outlining the idea”. A FIVE MINUTE FILM! dude, just so you know, now you have me evaluating your request just to bloody ENTER your award show and weighing it against the worth of your award. and i have to say, i know from experience that most awards are simply not worth that type of time expenditure. and don’t even get me started on the entry fees. a separate issue entirely.

what most awards shows kind of fail to realize is that their roots lie in the pre-Internet days. when they served a valuable service: collating and presenting a very necessary once-a-year peek at the state of the world of creativity. that is no longer the case. i’ve already seen anything worth seeing online. except for the Asian scam ads that never ran anywhere anyway. yet the awards shows are still stuck in that era. Still producing dead tree “annuals”. and because they are so behind the times, their entry categories have become laughable. Online is no longer just INTERACTIVE, got that kids?

So here i am, an admitted ad awards groupie, actively considering whether or not it’s worth entering ad awards shows. that can’t be a good sign for the awards shows.

News Alert! LOOK AROUND YOU debuted on Adult Swim last night!

The first season of the insanely brilliant Look Around You, an impossible-to-describe UK tv show that Simpsons creator Matt Groening called “The funniest TV show I have ever seen” debuted on Adult Swim on The Cartoon Network last night. Last night they aired the first “module”. But you can find lots of others on youtube. Peter Serafinowicz is a genius. As is Robert Popper. And the guy who does the voiceover is priceless too.

Enjoy this little sample.

How to crack an alien culture. Part 1

How do you create advertising for a culture you know nothing about? easy. you devote your entire being to suddenly finding out everything you can about that culture. You immerse yourself in it. You think of nothing but it. You learn to love that culture. Regardless of your personal preferences and prejudices. That’s how.

I know this because to succeed in advertising in the USA i had to leave behind my European origins and start from scratch, culturally speaking. My pop culture references were useless over here. So i made a conscious decision to wholeheartedly dive into my adopted country’s culture. To love it. And never again complain about how difficult it is to find a decent cup of tea over here. To become culturally elastic. which most people, by virtue of never having changed cultures, never learn to do. why would you if you didn’t have to?

So when i was faced with proposition of doing NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr’s first ever Budweiser commercial i was slightly scared. NASCAR is a huge cultural force in the USA. Like F1 is in Europe. But even bigger. And if NASCAR was Rock n Roll, then Dale Jr. as he’s known, is the son of Elvis – the NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt Sr.

Basically i knew nothing about NASCAR beyond what everyone knew about NASCAR, ie that is hugely popular. So i dived in. I read books and watched races etc. And I realized that doing Dale Jr’s first ad was a big deal. So it had to be good. It couldn’t be the view of an outsider making the same superficial observations that every NASCAR advertiser makes…it’s fast! they go round in circles! etc.

So i read a ton of Dale Jr’s media interviews. And in a Rolling Stone interview he was asked if he could improve NASCAR, what would it be? And his answer was “I would put music in the cars”. And that gave me the idea for the spot. Because Dale Jr loves his music. Everybody knew that. He hung out with rock stars like Dave Grohl. He played in a band. Dale is cool. He even looks fast!

Interesting fact. Dale Jr. showed the script for this idea to his dad a month before Dale Sr. tragically hit the wall at Daytona and died. And it was actually his dad who came up with the idea for the ending. Which makes complete sense if you know anything about The Intimidator. So Dale Earnhardt Sr. actually helped me write this spot. It was voted best NASCAR TV ad of the year by more than 300,000 NASCAR fans at nascar.com. And i more proud of that award than almost any other I’ve won. It proved that i’d cracked it! I’d cracked Dale Earnhardt Jr. I’d cracked NASCAR. And it was a very conscious effort to do so.

A great ad for a great cause

I saw this poster recently. It’s advertising “amber alerts” a mobile phone based network of regular folks who are texted a message whenever a child disappears in their part of the country so they can form a digital posse, if you will, to help find the missing child. It’s a great use of technology for a great cause. And this ad does it justice.

I signed up for the amber alerts program based on seeing this ad alone. i can’t think of higher praise. whoever did this knows exactly what they’re doing. well done.

100 MILLION PEOPLE PAYING CLOSE ATTENTION TO EVERYTHING YOU SAY. WHAT DO YOU THINK THAT IS WORTH?

It has become fashionable in some quarters ( I mean you digital hater who has no experience creating TV commercials) to diss, poo-poo and generally malign TV as an advertising medium.

But the inconvenient truth is that doomsday predictions about the end of TV advertising are resoundingly not coming to pass. For much the same reasons that TV did not kill radio I’m guessing. Yes, radio lost its pre-eminent place as a decisive cultural force but that didn’t mean that it just faded away either. It adapted to the changing times and found a new place in the culture. TV is in the throes of of a similar transitionary period. In some ways TV has actually gotten a lot better recently. TV dramas have gotten exponentially better IMHO. And the erosion of the primetime audience has led to the rise of “addictive TV” – American Idol, dancing with the stars etc. Clearly TV is not giving up without a fight.

Sunday’s Super Bowl will serve as a potent reminder of the power of TV to unite the culture in a way that the Internet never will. And that really is its point of difference from an advertising perspective. I remember having a very spirited discussion about this very topic a few years ago with….NAME DROP ALERT!…..Sir John Hegarty. And he was right and I was wrong. I was in the TV hater camp at that point. Never fight with a knight!

I have been fortunate enough to experience the power of the Super Bowl first hand quite a few times. And it’s amazing the impact it allows you to have on the culture.

How much does a Super Bowl ad cost these days? $100,000 a second? Worth every cent in my estimation. And I would be so bold as to posit that anyone who disagrees simply doesn’t know what they are talking about. They don’t know the value of attention.

Grow up P.E.T.A.

PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) has produced yet another embarrassingly stupid ad. This time they’ve decided that, in 2009, it’s OK to objectify women to produce a “controversial” ad that, shock horror, was refused placement on the Super Bowl. Wow. Like that idea hasn’t been tiresomely done year after year by Godaddy.com and other clueless and unimaginative marketers.

Let me be clear. I love animals. I have a dog, a rabbit (and i’m allergic to rabbits), a guinea pig and a parakeet. I am PETA’s natural constituency. Who doesn’t love animals? Yet PETA continues to produce ads that are amateurish, tone-deaf, insensitive, and alienating. And now we can add puerile and sexist to that list. And what if NBC actually had allowed their stupid ad to run? Oh, that’s right, my young daughters and I would have been embarrassed while watching the game. Nice one guys.

Listen up PETA. Your attempts at self-promotion are just woeful. Please stop wasting money and embarrassing yourself and animal lovers everywhere. It’s having the opposite effect to what you think.

I can help you PETA. I am an experienced ad professional. I have done famous work that people liked. I could make America love you in a matter of months. Call me on my cell. (630) 606-0567.

The Escape Pod in Adweek

Adweek.com has been charitable enough to publish our ramblings on the upcoming Bowl (Super-sized edition). You can read it here. As usual i’m rooting for Bud to win the game. I hear they went heavy on the horsey ideas this year. Lots of Clydesdales spots. All shot by the inestimable Joseph P. Pytka & Sons.

SUPERBOWL XLIII post-mortem

Great game. And some good ads. And one or two really good ads. It always pains me when people complain about the standard of the ads. yes, some years are better than others, but generally speaking there are only a few good ads per Super Bowl. it’s like SNL. mostly awful.

Vinny Warren’s faves:

1. Careerbuilder “Annoying job”

2. Bud Light “Conan”

3. Cars.com “Best guy ever”

4. Dennys “Mobsters”

5. Coke “Bees”

Other Escape Podders will add their top fives later.

Stephen Fry now has 100,000 zombie twitter slaves eager to do his bidding

Veteran English TV, screen, radio and stage actor and comedian Stephen Fry has more than 100,000 twitter followers, including myself.

I got onto twitter more out of curiosity more than anything else. I actually don’t have that many real-world friends on twitter (or in the real world come to think of it) so i started following witty celebrities. Their lives are just so much more interesting!

What i didn’t know about Mr. Fry is that in addition to being one of the finest comic talents of his generation he is also an uber-geek. Hence his precocious and prodigious twittage. In fact his tech and gadget opinions hold quite some sway in his native UK.

So now i’m hooked on his frequent twitter updates. something i never dreamt would happen. It’s like some kind of bite sized text and pic-based celebrity reality show in which i play a tiny role. And i have to say i find it utterly fascinating.

So here’s to you Stephen Fry! Happy 100,000th.

Suck on that Hugh Laurie!

The Escape Pod on the radio (again!)

This time a radio station in LA asked our opinion of last night’s super bowl ads. So opine we did!  You can listen below.

The power of music

found this on robert popper’s blog. he’s an english comedy genius who i follow on twitter.

“So the story goes that this guy used to work at a place where they’d transfer old 8mm home movies onto VHS, and then add a music background onto the tape for them. Anyway, one time – by mistake – they dumped some classical music, that they hadn’t listened to beforehand, onto the people’s footage. The results are beyond staggering.

I want to believe this is true. Please be true. Please be bloody true”

Twitter for non-twits

If you’re like me you probably look on twitter — as i once did — as the ultimate waste of time exercise in navel-gazing. And you may be right.

But I always figure that if something is that popular there HAS to be something of value there. And maybe they’re right and I’m wrong kind of thing.

So I’ve stuck it out with the twitter and here’s what I’ve found.

1. There is something cathartic in getting thoughts out of your head. And that is probably the biggest reason for its popularity. It’s like shouting on the side of a mountain and hearing an echo. Cathartic in that way. Catharsis sells!

2. Because you’re micro-broadcasting your message it does sharpen the mind. In the same way that blogging does. You’re conscious that others (however few) are listening.

3. It’s yet another way of having a new kind of relationship with people that you don’t necessarily know in the traditional sense. I follow some UK-based comedy professionals, and have experienced twitter-only comedy that simply cannot be explained to a non-twitterer. The infamous Stephen Fry “lift” incident so memorably spoofed by Graham Linehan. You have no idea what i’m talking about, do you?

Zuma Jay shreds L.A.

We recently did a national radio campaign for client OfficeMax. The premise of the campaign, which targets small businesses, is that OfficeMax gives small business all the perks it gives big businesses.

So we had improv actors call up random small businesses around the country and offer them their very own free national radio commercial, courtesy of OfficeMax. One of the businesses we called was Zuma Jay’s surf shop in Malibu CA. Perhaps not unsurprisingly, Zuma Jay is one cool dude. He was great on the radio. And to thank us for choosing his business to be in the campaign, he sent us this nice note AND some kickass tee shirts and stickers. Thank you Zuma Jay. You can listen to his commercial here.

The letter reads: “Dear OfficeMax dudes, thanks for choosing our store for your ad! All the old friends from all over called to say they heard the ad. I hope it helps sales. Enjoy the t-shirts. Hope they fit. If we could afford advertising we would use your agency. Thanks again. Zuma Jay.”

Seth Godin dislikes the Super Bowl.

I am a huge fan of the Seth Godin. I love anyone who talks sense and isn’t dogmatic. And Seth is, usually, the embodiment of just that. Usually.

But then i read this on his blog. he was blogging about the superbowl ads. i selectively clipped this:
>>>>>The Super Bowl hype is blissfully long gone, and lazy media outlets can no longer reprint press releases and dissect multi-million dollar wastes of time and money.

The lesson of these ads is simple. Putting on a show is expensive, time-consuming and quite fun. And it rarely works.

The Gatorade commercial, or the guy clipping his toenails or someone throwing a rock through a vending machine… it’s all show biz, it’s not marketing.>>>

And i was going to tear his irrational dislike, nay contempt, of the super bowl apart. but instead i’ve decided to do a Seth Godin impersonation.

it’s called…

WE DISCOUNT THAT WHICH WE ARE NO GOOD AT

What are you no good at? What do you hate? That’s the very thing you need to pay attention to. The thing that you hate. The thing you’re no good at. That thing that doesn’t keep you up all night. Because you hate it. And you’re no good at it. So you discount it.

Because it doesn’t fit with your view of the world.

Chances are it makes you uncomfortable. Because you are no good at it. And don’t have any experience of it.

But you’d be a fool to discount it. Just because you suck at it and have no real experience of it. Wouldn’t you?

(comments are closed for this post. in honor of Seth Godin)

How to crack an alien culture. Part 2

(This is part 2 of an ongoing series. You can read part one here)

You could argue that the German culture is the opposite of the Irish culture. We both like a beer or twelve but there the similarities pretty much end. Oh and we both share an historical animosity towards the English (the Germans’ cousins btw. Anglo-SAXONS…innit).

So when my partner and I got an assignment to create a Volkswagen ad to run in Germany, i felt nervous. The good part was we got to party in Berlin in the middle of summer for two weeks. The Berlin office of the international ad agency we worked for, headed by inestimable Amir Kassaei, felt that bringing in outsider perspectives would be a good thing. So an “American” team (us) and a crazy good Dutch team (Bart Kooij and Nico Akkerman) worked together. Well it started out as work and quickly degenerated into play. Berlin in the summer is a great place. After a briefing at the agency and a trip to the really cool VW factory in Wolfsburg we settled into a routine of going to bars and cafes and drinking beer and chatting and coming up with ideas. 15 hours a day! The Dutch clearly are prone to dehydration.

i soon emerged as the killjoy wet blanket who felt the need to do something culturally apt. Our Dutch counterparts worked on the Volkswagen business and knew the client well. so the conditions were good.

and then i went and did something so spectacularly stupid and awful that i cannot repeat it in this blog. but it had the effect of me falling in love with Germany and Germans in an instant. if you really need to know what it was i will be happy to email you. but the memory of it still pains me. it is not for public consumption.

the net/net effect was that i was suddenly really motivated to make Germany feel good. that was the silver lining. anyway the commercial below was the idea of ours that was chosen by the client. And i have to say Amir and company did a great job with the execution. I remember being emailed the final spot, which i wasn’t even aware had been shot, and being prepared to wince. And was actually pleasantly surprised. The director Sebastian Strasser did a great job. And i would like to apologize to Sebastian’s production company for the infamous “Felix Glauner Incident” at the Berlin Art Directors awards show dinner one year later. I will also be happy to email you the excruciating details of that one if you really must know. Again, too painful to recount here.

Turns out I have a knack for annoying Germans. But they like my ads. This commercial was a big hit in Germany. And then ran all over over Europe. It was the fifth most awarded commercial in the world in 2005. I like this one because i consider it the cultural equivalent of a German guy working on a Guinness ad for Ireland. And somehow it all worked. I was surprised, put it that way.

‘

My brushes with fame – part three. Ludacris (the rapper)

(This is part three of a series. You can find part one here, and part two here)
At my former employer, one of my co-workers was the guy who came up with the most awarded radio campaign ever. yeah, that one! Now i have won my share of ad awards but this guy has had an insufferable run. so much so that he sometimes needed people to cover for him at awards shows. so after he and his partner bowed out of attending a somewhat prestigious radio awards show for the umpteenth time, he kindly nominated me to show up in his stead. it entailed a potentially fun night in new york so i agreed. i like new york. i used to live there. it was summer. what the hell!

so i go there. and spend the first hour explaining to attendees that i am NOT in fact the guy they’d hoped to meet. more wine was consumed and i kind of stopped doing that. i happily pretended that i was who they’d hoped i was. they had come all the way from paraguay! what was i supposed to do? disappoint them?

So the awards show gets underway.  It was one of those awards shows where they serve dinner as they dish out the gongs.  i made many fake acceptances.    And the guy sitting next to me is a young Jamaican-Londoner. He hears me tell somone at the table that i used to live in NYC. But what he doesn’t realize is that it had been 7 years since i lived there. everything changes in New York every three years. all my former hangouts were long gone. i tried to communicate this to him but it fell on deaf ears. he thought i was his ticket to New york excitement baby!  ouch. so not the case.  i am a middle-aged white guy with three kids  who lives in the Chicago  suburbs.

After the awards show, i was laden with a shedfull of  gold and silver awards.  so  i suggest going back to my hotel bar for a drink.  so we’re back at my hotel in the bar and my pal starts nudging me in the ribs.

“LOOK WHO IT IS!! IT’S LUDA BOY!!”

He pointed towards an African-American guy with corn rows seated next to hot girl. An enormous bodyguard type sat in front of them.  there was nobody seated near them.  And sure enough, it was Ludacris himself. Even I knew who who he was. My London pal suggested we go over and introduce ourselves. I dismissed the idea. Ludacris looked like he wanted privacy. But it turned out that  he didn’t.

We both went and sat down at a table far from Luda boy. I facing in the general direction of Ludacris.  Then suddenly i noticed Ludacris was gesturing to me to come over to him. doing that index finger “i mean you” thing. I was convinced i’d somehow insulted him and that this was surely the end for me. So I reluctantly creep over. He’d clearly noticed my friend’s excitement at seeing him.  So he  invited me and my new found friend to join him and his girl for a drink. I agreed. I was not a fanatical fan but i appreciated his coolness. I went back to Londoner and told him. he nearly died of ecstatic transport. i did have magic new york powers!

So he bent Ludacris’ ear about music etc. I told Ludacris of some ads i’d done. He liked them. Luda likes Irish people! I mostly chatted with his girlfriend and bodyguard. his girl suggested i get my picture with Ludacris and i foolishly declined. citing my sudden and strident inebriated desire not to intrude on his privacy, i stupidly refused.   Ludacris was somewhat surprised by that too.

i remember buying a bottle of expensive champagne for us all – hey, i was partying with a famous rapper! Ludacris’ girl drank some blue stuff out of what looked like a test tube. Hpnotiq i think. I had some of that too.

we had a great night. Ludacris was cool. simple as that. but of course i have no digital photographic record of any of it. doh!  i got an email from my london cohort the next day featuring some of the hundreds of cameraphone shots he’d taken with Ludacris.

This incident prompted me to, somewhat weirdly, have Sir John Hegarty sign my D&AD Art Directors book when we met in NYC a month later. i wasn’t letting this one get away!  Asking someone to sign something immediately places you in pathetic geek fanboy zone. but i didn’t care.  it was true.  and  i had a feeling we would never meet again. So far i’ve been right.  So I’m glad i did.

The end of an era. Bob Lachky leaves Anheuser-Busch.

You know all those Budweiser and Bud Light ads you’ve loved over the years?  Well the man largely responsible for overseeing the creation of all of them – Bob Lachky – has left the brewery.

It is no exaggeration to say that I, and many other ad folks, owe our careers to Bob’s good judgment and steady nerves over the years.  If Bob liked your ad it very probably got done the way you wanted it to get done.   There were no nervous, interfering clients on Budweiser shoots.  They trusted us to get it done.  It wasn’t unusual to have no client at all present on a shoot.  I actually didn’t like that because I would end up trying to play client and annoy everyone in the process.

Ad geeks might be surprised to know that Bob started out as an account guy on Bud Light at DDB.   And was later hired by August Busch III to supervise the various A-B ad agencies output.  Bob’s somewhat senatorial demeanor could be misleading to the uninitiated.  He had surprisingly great creative and executional instincts.  I hesitate to tell the following story because it makes me look slightly bad, but here goes.

At the pre-production meeting the day before we shot the original Wassup! Ads, Bob asked me why the tagline at the end of the scripts read “This Bud’s for you”, their tagline at the time.  I uncertainly replied: because…it’s…your…tagline…Bob.

The short film we based the ads on was called “TRUE”.  And that word fluttered briefly on the screen at the end.  Bob, correctly, felt the ads in our campaign should end with that title too.  So we did that.  And I’m glad we did. It just felt right. I didn’t think it made that much difference at the time but it did as the campaign took off and ultimately became known as the TRUE campaign.

I’m not sure what Bob’s plans are.  I think he should write a book. I told him that the last time we met.  Write a book Bob!  There.  That should do it.

And so l hoist a beer-clean pilsner glass of Bud (poured down the middle to release the carbonation, natch) in his honor.   Here’s to you Mr. Great Beer Commercial Getter on the Air Guy.

Good luck Bob, and swing by The  Escape Pod next time you’re in Chicago.

A genius idea!

The above letter was mailed out exclusively to people named JOHNSON as a promo for a TV show whose main character is named Johnson. How come I never heard about this idea until now? (and don’t say “Because your name isn’t Johnson”) This is a brilliant idea. Direct mail to promote a TV show? I am insanely jealous of this idea. so much so that i have decided that the creators will shortly become the inaugural recipients of this blog’s prestigious sporadically given out award: The Escape Pod’s SCREW YOU! award.

Anyone know who did it? If so please let me know.

HUMANITY AND SOUL. A RECIPE FOR SUCCESS!

It has often struck me that, especially in the technology sector, humanity and soul is ultimately winning out. 20 years ago it was all Dell and Microsoft. They were the king geeks. They were the engineers. They wrote the code and made the boxes that housed the code and we all supposed to be happy they had engineered and cost-controlled things till they were so affordable to corporate america.

And, let’s face it, it was dull. Something was missing. And we all knew it. We just didn’t know how to articulate it. But a certain Steven P. Jobs knew how.

Microsoft and Dell had something else in common too. In the gold rush to computer-based productivity, things like humanity and soul understandably got ignored. Dell and Microsoft sold all the shovels and the dynamite. They had virtual monopolies. They didn’t feel the need to be human and caring and worry about annoying and girly things like aesthetic appeal and product design and brand “feel”.

But that was then.

Cut to now. Apple’s stunningly brilliant products and brilliant store execution is trumping dull and soulless boxes. Anyone who has an iPhone knows what I mean.

I recently purchased a new Mac book. I was giddy as a child as I walked into the Mac store. Here’s what happened. I was accosted by a smiling young Apple employee who offered to help me. He listened and then directed me to the computer I needed. And he advised me of what peripherals I might need. And I didn’t have to wait in line, even though the store was packed (as it always is). I left with my new mac smiling. Then I get back to the office, anxious to take it for a test drive. All is going really good. And then I have a bad experience. Nothing to do with Apple though. No, it was loading the unavoidable Microsoft word software. It was torturous and needlessly complicated. The product of geeky boneheaded design that was more concerned about software piracy than my experience of the brand. Quelle surprise! Another mediocre Microsoft experience.

If you look at pretty much any consumer brand that is held up as exemplary (Whole Foods, Virgin Atlantic, Nike) you’ll notice that they all exhibit sensitivity to their customers. They are obsessed with creating the best possible experience. Can you imagine what a Dell store might be like? Yes you can. And it would, in all probability, suck. Based on precedent.

So, clearly, the recipe for success is very simple. Create a great product experience and build a culture that is based on anticipating very basic human wants and needs of your customers. Apparently, this is a very, very, very hard thing to do.

Fearless Escape Podder tames ferocious mountain lion

I posted previously about an incident where i enountered some mountain lions on a shoot. You can read it here.

Certain parties of Dutch origin (a nation not noted for their courage around the man-eating cats, i think you’ll agree) had the temerity to belittle my heroism, saying that the mountain lion pictured in my post was no bigger than a house cat. I pointed out that the mountain pictured in that post was indeed the smallest of three that I wrestled with that day. And that I would try to find a more redeeming picture.

Well here it is. Photographic evidence that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that i am indeed a fearless idiot. Look at the size of those paws!

Dave Trott, we got your book right here!

We are huge fans of the legendary UK adman Dave Trott here at The Escape Pod. We’ve blogged about his blog before. And now we’re blogging about a book of his blog posts: an unauthorized collection of his wisdom that Allan Stevenson, a Welsh Escape Podder, received as a gift from his Catalan girlfriend for Valentine’s Day. And they say romance is dead.

That’s a picture of it below. Lovingly hand-crafted by the incredible Maite Canto, it’s like the Book of Kells of ad blogs. Only one exists. And no, you can’t have it.

If Dave was looking for a sign that maybe there might be a market for a collection of his wisdom, surely this is it.

Audience. Audience. Audience.

I started in media. I used to sell airtime on the UK’s commercial TV network ITV in London. I wasn’t particularly good at the selling of it. but I was really good at predicting what the ratings for a particular show on a particular night might be. This was, I think, partly due to the fact that I watched so much TV. I was in tune with the market. I would watch anything and could appreciate anything. I wasn’t a snob. And I still miss watching Coronation Street. And savouring the ratings of its reliably juicy centre break. 45+ Households/Housewives! Every episode! Phenomenal. Is Ken Barlow still on it?

So when I switched to being a creative I brought with me the knowledge that, despite what creatives might say, it’s not really all about the idea. The audience is arguably more important. If nobody sees your idea it can’t have an effect, can it?

More people have seen my ads than have seen Van Gogh’s paintings and Scorsese’s films, I’m guessing. Which is a scary thought but quite probably true.

I have retained this interest in “the numbers” all through my career. Even when it didn’t really matter, I was always keen to know what the ratings for the Super Bowl that my ad was appearing in were. And what the trend year-on-year was etc… Once you get bitten by the audience bug you can’t shake it. “How many people showed up at the party?” is basically what it is.

My media fascination largely lay dormant for some of my creative ad career. And then the internet happened. And then I had what was arguably the biggest viral hit ever. And I loooooved it. Why? Because it was quantifiable. I could feel the hundreds of millions of clicks running through my fingers like sand. There is an ebb and flow to online popularity just like there was with TV ratings. It was like I had my own hit show on my hands. And i was determined to keep up the ratings, was how i looked at it.

I still approach advertising like this. I love a hit show. Or a hit ad. And I’m not particularly bothered how i achieve it.

The Oscars

Who hasn’t fantasized about winning an Oscar? Answer: nobody. It’s the magical award. Which i think accounts for the popularity of the ceremony as a TV event. It’s been called the Super Bowl for women but, like the Super Bowl, it attracts all sorts. And it’s more of a global event than the NFL, ahem, world championship.

It’s got glamour and star power. It’s Hollywood baby!

I had the distinction of creating the very first beer ad to air on the Oscars. You might not know this but “the academy” has to vet all commercials that air in the Oscar-cast. And for years the academy snubbed beer ads. Which was a bit rich coming from the film industry IMHO. So when they finally relented, Budweiser was first in line. And they chose to air one of my ads. It’s the one below.

Interestingly, Gregory Peck was on the executive board of the Academy at the time. And was one of the people who had to approve my ad for broadcast. At that point Mr. Peck was advanced in years and understandably not in tune with popular culture.
I heard that he was a bit confused by my ad and it’s apparent lack of obvious connection to beer and sanity in general. But he went with the majority. And it aired. Much to my delight. The spot was a big hit too. Breathing much needed new life into a campaign that really needed it at that point. We really relied on the talents of Allen “Helmer” Coulter for this one. His casting choices and shooting prowess saved the day. The idea of “doing Jersey” came from my then partner Justin Reardon who is from Jersey. We didn’t set out to parody the Sopranos. We set out to do an homage to the New Jersey culture.

PS: Good luck to Escape Pod collaborator, editor Jinx Godfrey. Her insanely brilliant “Man On Wire” is nominated for best documentary. Fingers crossed. It deserves to win.

Man On Wire wins Oscar!

Congratulations to uber-editor Jinx Godfrey who edited this year’s best documentary feature. We had the pleasure of working with Jinx a couple of years ago. She’s in a different league. if you haven’t yet see Man On Wire, do so. it’s an amazing story and Jinx really brought it to life. the champagne is popping in Peckham tonight. and rightly so.

48 Hours in Seattle

I just got back from judging the Seattle Addy awards show over the weekend My first time in that city. And I loved it. It’s a great town and has its own immediately discernible culture and a very relaxed vibe.

My fellow judges included McDonalds’ CD Mark Carlson, RGA’s Jeff Greenspan, Matt Ferrrahah from FCB Chicago, and the remarkably spry Tom Dooley, founder and CD of TDA Advertising. For a man of his greatly advanced years, Tom is in great shape. Crispin Porter stole his idea of living in Colorado. He preceded them by decades.

Thanks to Kalie everyone who made my stay in the northwest so enjoyable. It was a blast. And a model of great organization. The work was great too. And for once there was real harmony among the judges. A great experience was had by all.

Randall Rothenberg is right

Everyone in marketing and advertising should read this

HULU. TV BITES BACK.

The TV industry, like the advertising industry, is a hard business that has dealt with a lot of change – laser disks. Video rental. Cable. DVDs. Satellite. And it has survived all of them.

So when the internet came along it didn’t take a genius to figure out that it too posed a potential threat to the TV industry.

Whenever a new medium comes along there is a tendency to focus on what makes it different. And the internet was no exception. The internet came to equal “interactive”, since that was its most obvious point of differentiation. And enormous effort went into exploiting this aspect of it initially.

But people are people. And people love stories. Let me rephrase that. People love being told stories. In much the same way that though everyone can tell a joke, but we’d all much rather listen to Chris Rock than the guy from accounting. And video is still the most satisfactory way to tell a story. So video quickly became the currency of the internet. And then YouTube came along. And functioned as a clearing house for all this new video content. But even YouTube has its weaknesses. Principal among those being the lack of professionally produced video.

Because, as anyone who’s ever produced actually funny video content on a consistent basis knows: it’s hard. Every time. Creating great video is a lot like cooking a great meal. In theory we can all do it, but in reality only a comparative handful can do it reliably.

So the surprise success of Hulu perhaps lies in how long it took to get it off the ground. Getting cut-throat competitors to play along would never be easy. And earlier attempts at TV-on-the-internet like Joost failed for technical reasons(download software? NO!) and the fact that the studios and networks didn’t want to let others monetize content that cost them hundreds of millions of dollars to produce. Content may want to be free. But content’s lawyers and accountants clearly feel strongly to the contrary. It will be interesting to see how Hulu evolves.

Is the Internet over?

Apparently it is. The brief golden age of consumer-controlled media would appear to be finished. So it’s time to stop all this blogging and twittering nonsense and once again stare passively and vacantly at whatever The Man deems appropriate.

As it should be. Know your place, consumer!

The Escape Pod in Las Vegas

Several Escape Podders are heading to Las Vegas for the Retail Advertising awards tomorrow. So no blogging for a few days. I’m sure you’ll manage somehow

Messrs. M. Denton Esq. and D. Dye Esq. take a bow

i just got my copy of the British Creative Circle ad annual. And I am very impressed. Sorry about the pic below. I took it with my iPhone. But you get the gist. It’s an an advertising awards annual with a sense of humour! Blasphemy, I know. You might want to sit down and have a stiff brandy.

Done in retro English comics style, it’s very funny to read and provides a very un-po-faced context in which to view the work. And some of the work could frankly have used an infusion of denton and dye’s humanity, vitality and wit.

Top job chaps! And thank you Angie for shipping it all the way to Chicago. You made a sad ad geek very happy.

Vegas. Wow.

Just spent the past 24 hours in America’s Sin City – las vegas. My first visit here. What a strange place. Huge gambling factories filled with Americans (and foreigners) of every hue and tongue. But my favorite casino has to be “Paris France”. A Gallic-themed monstrosity straddled by a huge replica of the Eiffel Tower. Pictured below.

Going to the Retail Advertising awards tonight. Very excited. Meeting Faris Yakob for a drink later. A Googler told me he gave a great talk on social media yesterday.

We won big in Vegas

At the Retail advertising awards the other night, The Escape Pod and client OfficeMax took home a gold and the best of show award for our penny pranks campaign.

Interestingly the awards were decided on the night by the audience at the show itself. Each of us was given a little electronic remote control device which we used to cast our vote. Which added a little more drama to the proceedings. The results were intstantly tabulated and displayed on screens for all to see.

Happily our penny pranks was the clear crowd favorite on the night, garnering 80% of the votes to take the best of show award.
Needless to say a punishing amount of refreshments were consumed immediately thereafter. A great night was had by all.

The best burger and fries in the world

while in vegas several podders noticed the above sign from the window of our hotel. if you’ve ever been LA, locals will urge you to check out the legendary in-n-out burger. telling you in no uncertain terms that it is without doubt the best burger and fries you will ever eat. and they are right. In-n-out burgers and fries taste amazing in a way that’s difficult to communicate without sounding like a fast food ad. the potatoes used to make fries, for example, are only cut when you order your fries. live in front of your eyes. the staff are super-switched on and enthusiastic about what they do.

i knew in-n-out was a southern california chain, so was bit surprised to see they had ventured as far east as las vegas. feeling a tad hung over i recruited some compadres to go for some much needed grease. as usual, it was packed out, as they always are.

as i always do when i visit their restaurants, i pondered what it is that separates In-n-out from their many competitors. And my conclusion is the same as it always is. and it’s not exciting but it’s very probably true. its’ that In-n-out is truly committed to excellence. now i know that sounds like corporate poo, but in this case it’s the truth. they don’t have a secret formula other than caring A LOT about how their food tastes. they don’t just have a collection of fast-food outlets, they have a cult. it’s well worth checking out.

mmm…

Don’t throw away that old VCR!

An instructional YouTube film that shows you clever ways to recycle your VHS friend.

A powerful road safety ad from Ireland

I saw this a while back and loved it. recently came across it again. great job by whoever directed this. apparently it’s based on a true story, ie that really happened as depicted.
UPDATE: The ad was directed by Syd McCartney (well done Syd!) for the Lyle Baillie ad agency in Belfast.

Advertising in a recession

Ad people always advise advertising during a recession. But then they would, wouldn’t they. It does make logical sense – assuming you have the cash to do so. Wal-Mart is advertising a lot now!

Another thing that makes undeniable good sense is a reversal to the hard sell. It’s easy to get people to buy anything in good times. But in bad times the hard sell is the only way.

What is the hard sell? The hard sell is the ad that instantly makes you want what’s being advertised. You’d think this would be the permanent orientation of advertising ALL THE TIME. But it isn’t. People can get a bit lax in good economic times. And forget their real job. Recession makes you keener. We’re all watching our spending a lot more closely.

The hard sell is where advertising craft comes into play. It separates the wheat from the chaff. I love the hard sell. You know those infomercials that you watch and instantly make you want what’s being sold? I love them. Because they very obviously work. And great advertising very obviously works. Always. We can all feel it. We just want what’s being advertised. We’re not judging the advertising based on its entertainment value or production values or how we “feel” about it.

Advertising is salesmanship. Pure and simple. We sometimes forget that. Those times are usually the best economic times. Those times are gone.

This is my favorite hard sell ad. What’s yours?

You are not going to believe it but i could not find a single image online of the famous Boddingtons Cream of Manchester ice cream cone poster. It’s not like it was done in Elizabethan England! Oh wait, it kind of was.

But you get my point. Once i scan it at work I will put the image up here. but if you’ve ever seen the ad, my merely mentioning it will instantly make you want a pint of creamy Boddingtons ale right now. it’s that good of an ad. it complete overwhelms you and hits your “buy it now” button real hard.

What is your favorite hard sell ad, imaginary reader? Don’t be shy. Now is a good time to reacquaint ourselves with the hard sell.

UPDATE: scanned the image below from D&AD 1995. A very good year btw. I always say, any ad that makes you want to lick the product being advertised = success!

This guy has uploaded 6,300 videos of himself smoking pipes to YouTube!

that’s dedication!

One of Dave Trott’s favorite hard-sell ads:

I asked readers to submit their favorite hard-selling ads. This is one Dave Trott sent in. It’s a classic. Ran for years here in the USA. You’ll see why. it was shot in 1959. slickly shot it is not. but the core idea will always work.

What’s your favorite hard-sell, can’t-argue-with-it, instantly-makes-you-want-to-buy-the-product ad? mine is the Cream of Manchester Ice Cream Cone ad for Boddingtons. I should see if i can buy a poster of that one actually. They looked amazing.

More Hard Sell!

Hard-selling advertising has gotten a bit of a bad name IMHO. To some it connotes uncreative direct marketing. It is direct selling. Very direct. Disarmingly so. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be the most creative thing you’ve ever seen. In fact i would argue that all great advertising is very direct and blatant.

Check this out. A brilliant strategy that completely works on a very visceral level. Viscerality is a hallmark of the hard-selling ad. They are usually moving in some manner. They aim to overwhelm.

Soft sell or Hard Sell?

i remember seeing this at The One Club in Manhattan in the mid-90s. it was part of that year’s D&AD show. I never thought i could actually be made to “want” a washing-up detergent. this ad achieved that in an instant. again, it appeals to the senses. this time the visual beauty of the photo coupled with the smell and taste sensual appeals of dishes mentioned.

a lot of the hardest selling ads seem to bypass the “rational” analytical side of the brain. Boddingtons didn’t rattle on about the hops they use to brew their beer. a good thing, because i know from experience that beer drinkers couldn’t give a flying fig about tiresome ingredients and brewing processes. yet many brewers waste their time and money talking about just that. if only life were so simple!

I’m guessing real-life actual hard-selling salesmen and saleswomen don’t want their prospects “thinking about” the proposition. they just want them to sign on the proverbial dotted line. so the best ads just mimic that. makes sense innit!

My best hard-sell piece so far.

I did this years ago with a very talented guy named Jeff de Chaussee. Jeff is a director now. And if he brings ten per cent of the passion he brought to advertising to his work in film, he’ll do very well. Jeff gets it done!

We were trying to think of a print ad campaign for Bottomless Closet, a Chicago charity that was the very first to have this brilliant idea: solicit business clothes from female execs (only the good stuff) and redistribute them to women on welfare so they could attend job interviews with confidence. they even had a full-on store staffed with professional volunteers who sold clothes at Macys and Saks by day. it was executed really well. it was just like a real clothing boutique. complete with jewlery display counters and store fixtures. and it was good stuff too. Top designers etc. it was just a brilliant idea really well executed. And once we found all this out the idea of doing some vaguely award show intended fluff went away. we really wanted to genuinely help these people. their work was invaluable.

so we thought of the idea of giving clothes hangers with printed messages on them to dry cleaners in well to do city neighborhoods with lots of female execs. which i loved because when they discovered there was a message soliciting spare clothes printed on the hangers, they were conveniently looking at all the spare clothes they had in their closets. and the hangers lived on further because the women would hang on to them and use them to tell their friends about this wonderful idea.

any ad creative worth their salt is critical of their work. so you naturally look for ways in which the concept or the execution could be improved. i could never find a flaw in this idea.

Jeff actually found out that the guy who printed all the hangers with dry cleaner’s names was based in chicago. and he printed 20,000 hangers for us for just a couple of hundred dollars. we did three messages but this is the most hard sell. so i like it most.

The U2 marketing machine comes to life once again

i dimly remember being in Dublin as an eleven year old pigeon fancier. i had come to Dublin to buy racing pigeons. And i had gotten them. they were securely in shoe boxes under my arms. i was anxious to get on the train back to galway with my birds.

But my friends and i had some time to kill so we wandered around Dublin on a Saturday afternoon. We came upon a somewhat bohemian open air market selling random stuff. It was in a disused building of some sort. There was a band playing to apparently nobody in one corner of the market. That band was U2. I knew because a friend’s older brother had a copy of their debut single and he somehow knew what they looked like. “Lousy band name!” was my first reaction. Flux of Pink Indians…now that’s a good band name! We watched them play for a few minutes and then wandered off.

The second time i saw U2 they were third on the bill at a show that cost 50 cents to get into. And the third time it cost a pound to see them playing their own gig. A few years later i saw them play to a couple of thousand people. That cost about ten pounds.

The fifth time i saw U2 was 23 years later in Chicago on their last tour. They played the local indoor sports arena. This time the ticket cost $150. My, how they’d changed!

I grew up with U2. They’re the last surviving band from my youth with any sort of commercial clout. They have worked very hard for a very long time. But it’s difficult to truly appreciate exactly how big and enduring U2 are until you see how big they are here in the USA.

Like all great bands, U2 has a great manager in Paul McGuinness. He’s the account guy behind the agency if you will. And Paul McGuinness recognized early on the importance of cracking the American market. U2 largely ignored the UK market early in their career. Heresy at the time. But U2 always thought big. And they cannily used the then-nascent US college radio scene to break U2 to their natural audience: brooding college students. Brooding college students who then went on to become brooding adults. And Bono and co. became familar soulful friends. Lifelong friends.

U2’s music sounds real good on the car radio when you’re speeding down the highway in the USA. Tonight i found myself doing just that. They are promoting their new album and tour here. And U2 had control of the radio airwaves in three US cities – New York, Chicago and Boston. They were interviewed live by Shirley Manson from Garbage. This is the second night they have done so. Last night New York. Tomorrow they move onto Boston. And last week they played an unprecedented 5 consecutive nights on the David Letterman show. It all threatens to become a bit too much. But U2 are charming. Their performance rescues it. They have delivered for a very long time. Still a woefully bad band name choice though. A US spy plane from the 1960s? Tsk, tsk, tsk. Echo and the Bunnymen, now that’s a name.

I can remember when i was the generation that was supposed to be immune to advertising.

i love the recurring notion that any particular generation will “the one” that’s immune to advertising. yet it’s a myth that will not die. I can remember when i was the generation that was too savvy to fall for advertising’s tricks and gimmicks. And look what happened to me!

And now the “Internet generation” has been anointed as the ones who will finally put all of us in the ad game out of business. Apparently they shall grow up devoid of insecurities and will live in some sort of egalitarian Maoist consumer paradise where all purchases are made with ice-cold rationality. No room in their lives then for attending promises of betterment and cooler stuff. Not on your life! Contentment shall come from within.

Suuuuuuure.

Everyone needs to see this now

Israeli musician Kutiman has great fun with youtube. see them all here

My secret fantasy realized: i got to do an adhesive ad.

There was some great ads for glue done in the 80s in the UK. Superglue was new. The category was sex-ay! Believe it or not. They would do really cool demonstrations of how well their glues stuck. So i always fancied doing one.

And then i finally got the chance to do one. we were looking for a good demonstration idea (because that’s what sells glue) and the account person showed us the video that they used to sell the glue to hardware stores et al. it consisted of two bricks stuck to the wall at the same time with different glues. ours stuck instantly. the competitor’s brick fell instantly. it was a pretty powerful selling tool. so i just recreated that that demonstration and added a little theater to it.

It should be noted that this was not digitally enhanced in any way. this is exactly how it happened. and this was actually the only take we got of this believe it or not. it worked first time. looking back i’m amazed we didn’t at least try to get another take for safety. youthful confidence for you!

in fact if you watch closely you’ll even notice that “our” brick slipped just a little bit. but it stayed up. little bit of verite.

they ran this ad for ages. my original idea was to have a little live kitten in a basket under our glue and a stuffed toy kitten under the competitor’s glue.

The end of another era. Goodby and Budweiser split.

Just read that Anheuser-Busch has dropped agency Goodby Silverstein. In 1994, when i first started working on the Budweiser brands, Goodby Silverstein were added to the roster of Anheuser-Busch ad agencies. A-B kind of pioneered the idea of using multiple agencies on a brand. Which made sense. The stakes were huge. Too huge to be at the mercy of whoever controls the creative work at one agency. Because that’s the reality of the ad game. No matter how big the agency is, there is ultimately one person approving the work that you, the client, sees. And what if they suck? Problem!

I recall initially feeling slightly panicked at the news that I now had to compete with Goodby. But after a while we got the sense at what they were good at and what we were good at. As did the client. So the Goodby relationship endured. They were the west coast perspective. Which is good to have if you’re as a big a brand as Bud.

So it worked out good. They even made a nice contribution to my Wassup! campaign. Ironically, a year after one of their crew had anonymously bad-mouthed the campaign in New York magazine. It constantly amazed me that advertising people thought I had somehow “cheated” by adapting a short film into an ad.

So it kind of felt good to have an agency as auspicious as Goodby forced to adopt an “if you can’t beat em, join em” mentality. This was their idea. An idea that we (charles stone and i) had thought of but rejected months before as being unnecessarily racially divisive. Funny thing was, everyone thought i did it anyway.

The soon-to-be King of Twitter: Mr. Steve Buscemi

As  i blogged before, i largely use twitter to get access to minds that are more creative and ideally funnier than i am.  and it’s a great source of free entertainment.   I was a stephen fry follower when you were still thinking about getting AOL.   But i now have an instant new favorite:  Steve Buscemi.. I would like to state for the record that i started following him earlier today when he had a mere 500 odd followers. Yeah, that early. Chris Roe Esq. put me on to him. And i’m sure he’ll be a huge hit on twitter.

And i love the fact that he follows nobody on twitter. zero. as it should be. he should never change that. Steve Buscemi doesn’t need you, you need Steve Buscemi.

Trees Lounge was a masterpiece btw. See it today!

There’s only one strategy.

It has never ceased to amaze us over our careers how people try to complicate what we do. Advertising is selling. Clients hire us to help sell their stuff. It’s very simple. So therefore the only strategy worth doing: sell more stuff. Obviously there will be exceptions to this rule. but that’s what they will be: exceptional.

But if you were to read the trade magazines and the marketing books (and i strongly recommend that you don’t read the vast majority of them) you’d think advertising was some kind of mysterious thing. it’s not. it’s very simple. create something that will encourage demand for the product being advertised. that’s all there is.

The legends of our industry intuitively understand this. and have always done so. My old boss, one of the legends, said it best: “To me all advertising that is truly great reeks of honest humanity. Between every word you can smell the hot breath of the writer. Whether as a result of wit ,intelligence, insight or artfulness, great advertising invariably transmits itself to the receiver on a fragile human frequency.”

Note he didn’t use the word “strategy” once.

Steve Buscemi sent us a message

Sensing that there might be a possible media feeding frenzy over twitter newbie Steve Buscemi, we were keen to do our part. So we blogged about how much we love Steve Buscemi and sent him a link via twitter to said post yesterday. and lo and behold he saw fit to respond. here’s what he sent:

Steve Buscemi via Twitter
to vinnywarren

show details 3:55 PM (5 hours ago)

Reply

it’s bloggers like you that allow me to go from 400 to 2,000 followers in just a few days. i wholeheartedly appreciate your help. cheers.

Steve Buscemi / Steve_Buscemi

Awards shows drift ever further away from reality: BBH wins Grandy for Oasis thingy

As we’ve blogged before, we at the The Pod feel more and more disconnected from advertising awards shows lately. Mostly because we feel they are out of touch with what’s going on and simply have not kept pace with the rate of change in the industry. And then when you add the felonious fees and byzantine entry processes you’re left scratching your head as to why you cared in the first place. The old cost/benefit analysis isn’t really working in their favor.

The other day the Andy awards awarded its grand prize “The Grandy” (which we at the escape pod were lucky enough to win a few years back. it comes with a $50K check!) to a “campaign” from BBH to promote Oasis’ latest CD. What they did was teach the tunes from the new album to street musicians in New York City who would then play them on the street. with films of them uploaded to myspace and youtube. Something like that.

Now we loves us some Oasis. Their first two albums will, erm, live forever. And BBH is one of the finest creative agencies in the world. But what the hell does this have to do with advertising? That’s a record company promotion. And not an especially exciting one. Let’s face it, you could have put the actual Gallagher brothers themselves playing the songs in the NYC subway and not a single new yorker would have batted an eyelid.

Hey, maybe the Rolling Stones should have entered their “playing on a truck around Manhattan” tour promo thing into the One Show in the OUT OF HOME category. No, they didn’t. Because it wouldn’t have made any bloody sense.

Nobody is more keenly aware than us at The Escape Pod that “advertising has changed”. But maybe one way in which it’s changed is that awards shows are no longer necessary. And their self-conscious attempts to prove their relevance only serve to illuminate this further.

Excuse me now while i go sell my car to pay for our Cannes entries.

Oy.

The Escape Pod on CNN

CNN aired a piece about client OfficeMax female-oriented strategy and they played our commercial for it. You can see it here.

Tropicana could learn a lot from my kids

My kids (13,9,7 years old) love drinking juice. Not soda. A good thing for which i have my superb wife to thank.
So recently i noticed that the cardboard Tropicana pulp-free orange juice had been replaced in our fridge by the brand pictured above. that’s a plastic bottle btw not glass. I also noticed that OJ consumption in our household had shot up. Turned out my wife had gotten a bottle of Simply Juice randomly one day and the kids loved it so she got more. it’s now “our” family brand. I also noticed that i’m drinking more orange juice. And the reason, i think, is simply the packaging.

every time i open the fridge i can see the delicious citrus juice swimming around in the bottle, beckoning me to dive in. And of course i do. because i am weak and cannot resist temptation.

And that of course is SIMPLY JUICE’s edge. And Tropicana et al’s achilles heel. A waxy cardboard box adorned with anodyne-looking corporate graphics on it simply isn’t as appetitizing or motivating as seeing the juice itself.

So rather than spend untold millions changing their OJ packaging, getting it spectacularly wrong apparently, and then launching an expensive ad campaign to publicize their mistake, Tropicana should have simply copied SIMPLY JUICE genius packaging. Why? Because sometimes there’s only one good idea in a category. Shorter-lasting batteries? Boo! Longer-lasting batteries? Yesss!

tropicana thought this was a good idea? oy. and vey. and a very deep sigh.

[UPDATE] Sales of Tropicana have plummeted 20% post redesign. How can you get something as simple as orange juice that wrong? And the worst part is that this was no impulsive decision. Countless man hours were devoted (wasted) to undoing what little brand equity and interest Tropicana had. Just quit guys. Seriously. Try organic farming or something. This clearly isn’t the field for you.

wefollow.com. Now twitter makes sense!

Clearly different people use twitter in different ways. As it should be. I can only speak from my own experience of it. As with all social media there is an element of micro-celebrity built into it. E.g. “You only have 187 friends/followers, I have 1,087!” etc. And it also makes sense that those who work the medium hardest have the most “success”. We are human. We will always want to rub others’ noses in it. That’s how God made us.

My experience of Twitter went something like this.

1. I don’t want to be on twitter. it’s a load of old narcissistic wank.
2. It may well be a load of old narcissistic wank. but how can you know for sure if you don’t try it?
3. Im on it. It’s not exciting, but hey Stephen Fry is on it! And the creator of Father Ted! And Steve Buscemi! Actually interesting people!

So i’ve used twitter as a source of entertainment. And, as a pathetic celebrity whore, it’s really exciting to follow people i admire and get into their heads a bit. this could not have happened without twitter. So i’m netting out on the side of twitter is a good thing. because celebrities are better than us. that’s why. and nobody cares about how you like your morning bagel. unless you’re larry david.

new media tends to follow the path of least resistance. The internet 1994: a possibly world-changing tool that will facilitate cross-cultural dialogue on an unprecedented scale, OR, will it become a porn and gambling facilitator. and we all know how that went. twitter may have hit gold with celebs connecting to fans. a constant electronic flow of love from adoring fans – yeah that’ll work.

imagine if sean penn, who probably should never twitter, twittered for a month on behalf of a charity. and you had to pay ten bucks to follow him. i would do that!

So last week i had an idea for twitter. and today i found out it has been done. it’s this:
http://wefollow.com/

It connects “twitterees” (us tedious plebs) with “twitterers” (actually interesting celeb folk).

A brilliant idea.

The Viral Factory does it with sheep!

An ovine oeuvre worthy of ovation. and you think you’ve had tough shoots. (via Bart Kooij)

NOBODY WANTS TO READ THIS BLOG. NOBODY WANTS TO GO TO YOUR WEBSITE. NOBODY WANTS TO DO ANYTHING. EVER.

When I was starting out in advertising, and desperately trying to get my portfolio together between spasms of employment in menial jobs, I hit upon a great test for evaluating my spec print ads. I was tired of listening to other people’s opinions. I wanted a job, fast.

The test was this: pretend you are a door-to-door salesman for this product. But you do not have the power of speech. But if you hold up this piece of paper, the person answering the door will not shut the door in your face. In fact they will ask you to come inside. That was the test. Crazy, perhaps, but it yielded some good stuff. I still use it.

Because the assumption that nobody cares is always a good one to make. Even if the product you are selling is interesting. Because you’re always fighting for attention. And that’s what great advertising gets you. People actually listen to what you have to say because you’re really interesting.

To truly get attention, you just have to be truly interesting. Not fake-pretend-advertising-interesting. Really, actually interesting.

BEAT BOXING DOLLS

Tucker Loosbrock, former student of my viral video class created this little masterpiece on behalf of hot New York agency Anomaly for client Converse. I think it’s hilarious. You’re on your way Tucker.

Prepare to laugh.

A Heineken ad we like

I used to have this self-imposed rule when i worked on beer: no grown men acting like excited children over beer in my ads. It just bothered me. This ad violates that rule but works nonetheless. Think the ad, like the beer, was produced in Holland. 3.6 million youtube views! so it must be working.

The best thing ever. So far this week.

A throwback to simpler times. (via Chris Roe). Drum set for your keyboard. Love it.

Cannes Ad Festival to honor Steve Ballmer. Good times!

Nobody actually goes to the official events at the Palais during the Cannes ad festival. For two reasons. one, they are held during daylight (sleeping) hours. and two, there isn’t a constant stream of free booze at them. i didn’t go to a single thing the year i went to cannes. and i was there the entire week. and there were some pretty interesting speakers.

So based on my experience of cannes, i predict a skimpy turnout for Steve Ballmer’s thingy. He’s the CEO of Microsoft and manages to be even more boring and focused than bill gates. he might as well be in charge of General Tire Corporation as far as the hard-partying adfolk in the sunny south of france will be concerned ..

The Escape Pod gets really big award.

Our Retail Advertising Best of Show award that we won recently arrived the other day. It’s monstrous!

That’s it on the left below next to a Cannes Grand Prix and a One Show pencil to give you some perspective. it barely fits on our awards cabinet shelf. With only minor modifications, it could handily be repurposed as a showjumping or archery trophy if necessary. So we’re covered there.

We just got this for our conference room

Fresh from the framing store, it’s one of just 85 signed Hugh McLeod prints from the first in a series of limited edition prints he’s doing. This was always my favorite cartoon of his. I used to have a b/w printout of it on my office wall. It pretty much sums up how I feel generally. And I love the wildly optimistic yet utterly truthful tone. The text reads: THE MARKET FOR SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN IS INFINITE.

Hugh McLeod is a force of nature. I first came across his website back in 2000 and have read his blog for years now and have gotten to know him fairly well. He has a book coming out this year. And I predict it will be a smash hit. You will buy a copy at the airport one day. I promise you that. Hugh has single-handedly created a culture around his art and his ideas. And it’s about to pay off.

And apparently Hugh is available for interesting poster-making opportunities I found out recently. Contact him if you have an idea you’d like to see brought to life in his truly inimitable style.

Advertising needs a little punk rock

I am frequently struck by the similarities between the techy element of advertising and the progessive (prog) rock music of the mid 1970s. Though not old enough to remember that period, i was always fascinated by historical accounts of the musical excesses of the time . This was truly the era of Spinal Tap. Rick Wakeman, keyboardist for Yes, once staged a lumbering King Arthur keyboard-based rock opera epic live, on ice! complete with ice skating characters in appropriate period attire. no one could see the show because of all the dry ice they pumped out. and then the real ice melted. it was a complete fiasco.

The famous spinal tap “stonehenge” stage prop misunderstanding actually happened to black sabbath. but in reverse! their stonehenge was way too big for the stage. not that sabbath were prog rock. they probably were low-maintenance compared the prog rockers with their 12 minute epics about elves and goblins.

now obviously i am generalizing here but this is my impression of how the new media “thought leaders” talk and how much it reminds me of the halcyon days of tight-fitting flared trousers.

Prog Rock was a case of losing the plot. The result of too much freedom. Too much indulgence. Not enough conflict to keep it sharp. Web 2.9 ad folks exhibit similar symptoms.

Another problem with prog rock, and with online, is that “anything goes”. if peter gabriel wanted one side of a genesis album to consist of just the tolling of a church bell, he probably would have gotten his way. and prog fans would have eaten it up. no limits man! don’t you try to impose your structures on me man! Skittles new website IS exciting and innovative! regardless of reality or your opinion of it old man.

there is a similar discouragement of analysis with respect to the internet and advertising. and i fear a lot of it is based on the fact that a lot of the “experts” haven’t actually done a whole heck of a lot of actually selling things on the internet. and so don’t really know what they’re talking about. and are understandably paranoid that they will be revealed as the charlatans that they are.

Prog rock was utopian. it lived in fantasy. both thematically and in terms of the bands’ lives. bombast and excess sold records. so that was encouraged.

A lot of online ad talk is similarly utopian…one day all products and companies will be amazing! why don’t the stupid marketers just hurry up and only invent stuff that’s amazing cool and awesome where the marketing is “baked in”? what’s the hold-up?

prog rock lacked humanity. it was inward-looking noodling. these guys weren’t trying to move you. you didn’t really matter. they committed the cardinal sin of rock and roll. they forgot to rock.

online new media ad chatter is similarly unconcerned with selling stuff. and so commits the cardinal sin of advertising. instead you’re supposed to be building community and surrendering control of your brand. or something like that.

Therefore, the logical next step then is a punk revolution where woolly thinking is replaced by short, sharp jolts.

My brushes with fame vol. 5. Chris Rock.

i was in LA shooting bud light commercials in around 1996. staying at the mondrian hotel on sunset strip in hollywood. it was the hottest hotel in LA back then. so staying there was fun. lots of celebrity sightings.

one night after a day shooting we all ended up in the bar at the mondrian. one of my colleagues had invited a friend from Wisconsin – who didn’t work in advertising – to meet him at the bar. This guy was completely star struck. he thought what we did for a living was cool and glamorous. he couldn’t believe the amount of celebrities staying and hanging out at the hotel. neither could i to be honest. this was the mondrian’s heyday.

so anyway, we all have many beers and then we decide to head to our rooms. we get into the elevator. there is a very short and slight african-american gentleman who looks just like Chris Rock already in the elevator. It’s Chris Rock. and he is mad! i’m not sure why he was mad. but he was. he was cursing under his breath. making fists. staring directly ahead at the wall. this was when he was still on Saturaday Night Live. He was famous but not huge as he became. The elevator door closes. Our Wisconsin friend was very drunk it turned out. I see him looking at Chris Rock with a dumb grin on his face. I could tell he was going to say something to Chris Rock. And I was justifiably concerned that he might say something monumentally stupid.

He did not disappoint. He said….

“HEY! HEEEEY! HEEEEEEEEEEEEY!!! I KNOW YOU!!! YOU’RE THAT GUY!!! YOU’RE THAT GUY FROM THAT TV SHOW!!!!!!!

i thought chris rock would literally explode. i am not exaggerating. i thought he would shatter from sheer anger.

Not sure about the logic of this one

Saw this walking to work today. Charles Schwab (investment brokerage) telling people that the way to make up the money they lost in the stock market is…to invest in the stock market. they might want to chill for a while.

Meet “The Bish”

The man pictured above, Val “The Bish” Cismoski, first formulated Tear Mender fabric glue back in 1932. He originally intended it to be used to repair canvas drive belts on steam-powered farm machinery. Today it is used to repair jeans, leather jackets etc. He got the nickname “The Bish” because his friends and family thought he looked like a bishop.

Tear Mender recently became a client of The Escape Pod. Today the company is still owned by the Cismoski family. The brand has a great story which we are telling on every contact point. We started with the packaging.

This is the “before” picture:

And this is the “after” picture. An amazing job done by Escape Pod designer and future film director Brad DeMarea.

We also revamped their website. Or should i say “our” website. Because The Escape Pod owns an equity stake in Tear Mender glue. our interests and the interest of our client are perfectly in sync. we are about to start promoting the brand in earnest. it’s a fascinating and educational experience directly controlling and impacting a brand at the cellular level. we want to do more of this. it’s a new kind of fun and it gives you an invaluable new perspective on branding and marketing. and the role of design and advertising in both.

Buy some Tear Mender glue. It pays for itself you know.

winking smiley face.

The best thing ever. So far this week!

TV news in the USA has largely turned into a parody of itself over the past 30 years for various reasons. Most notably the pressure to get bigger ratings, to make money. The days of Edward R. Murrow are long gone. Yet some newsmen attempt to keep up the pretense that what they do is serious. Usually by doing the sonorous news anchor voice and having a full head of hair.

anyhoo, on with the comedy. this would-be walter cronkite gets thoroughly disregarded by the owner of a costume store. shameful treatment! don’t you know who he is? Oh, you don’t care.

Enjoy!

The Escape Pod is a finalist in the ad:tech awards

Just found out that our penny pranks campaign for OfficeMax has been named a finalist in the ad:tech awards. i like these awards because they don’t have the baggage of the old school ad awards. they’re not trying to be anything other than what they are: new and of the times we live in.

…and if that doesn’t sway the judges i don’t know what will

But the real reason i like them is the award itself. i just really want one of these babies:

Tropicana back to square one

so i took the picture below at my local supermarket last night. tropicana is replacing their “new improved” packaging with their old unimproved but better packaging. as we blogged before we couldn’t believe they spent all that money (and time and effort) undoing the few things the brand had going for it. we clearly weren’t alone.

but it really makes you wonder about tropicana and their decision processes. their advertising is as bland as bland could be, ie it’s invisible generic corporate blah. so really, the most important thing they had going was their packaging. which had that picture of the orange with a straw in it. which is a great image: fresh orange juice. even if it isn’t entirely truthful. tropicana clearly isn’t fresh squeezed juice. it’s in a box.

and their big idea was to blandify the ONLY thing that consumers associated with their brand?

look below. which brand, i mean packaging, do you prefer? Exactly. Next case!

The Clios to honor Barry Manilow. But of course!

The Clio organization is honoring Barry Manilow and internet billionaire Mark Cuban next May at the Clio awards ceremony in Las Vegas. If anyone has any idea why on earth they are doing this please tell us. We work in advertising. Have done for a long time. We actually love it. And we are extremely knowledgeable about its history and lore. But are frankly at a loss as to why Mr. Manilow is being lauded.

So please excuse us if we think that the Clio organization HAS LOST ITS MIND!!!

Back at ya Barry!

I have travelled back in time. And I loved it.

When i was starting out in advertising in the early 90s I always fancied myself as an old-school hard sell print ad guy from a bygone era. But alas was born in the wrong decade. Ultimately I got diverted into doing mostly TV advertising and online stuff and branded content. I moved with the times I guess. A good thing. But part of me still wishes I was marketing a classic product directly.

And recently I got the opportunity to do just that. Escape Pod client Tear Mender glue approached us about creating print ads that will appear in all of things, PARADE magazine! This is real old timey. but it gets better.

A friend of our client owns a company that produces metal polish and they have been running very successful advertorial ads in PARADE. Very wordy long copy story type ads, like from the 1970s. They even still ask you to mail a check (via THE MAIL!) in to get your product. And it works like gangbusters. I told you this was old timey. The readership of PARADE is getting on in years. So ordering online isn’t part of their experience. But they are the generation that reads. The print generation. They still like to pay with checks. And mail things.

So Tear Mender wanted to try a similar approach. A direct marketing approach.

I could barely suppress my glee. Time to finally get out the old Remington typewriter, spark up a Lucky Strike and bash out out a few paragraphs of hard-working copy before heading to Sam’s for a 3-martini lunch.

Obviously we couldn’t argue with success. So we did produce a wordy you-have-to-read-it-to-get-it long copy advertorial. but we also did the opposite of that. and produced a very simple pure value message ad. and we shall run both so see which approach works better. I feel like David Ogilvy here! i should bust out a briar pipe.

bearing in mind the age of the readership of PARADE magazine, I honestly have no idea which ad will perform better. which is part of the excitement. i initially thought the value ad would win by virtue of it’s comparative ease of processing and comprehension. but now i like the long copy ad because it’s intriguing and it’s a true story.

which ad do you think will work best?

OR…

The Internet doesn’t like advertising

I suffer from having seen advertising at its most potent. the end of the golden age of TV advertising. When TV ruled the land and tens of millions of people reliably and punctually plopped their asses on the couch to watch whatever Hollywood deemed appropriate. And advertising was an inextricable part of the whole deal. the ads paid for the shows that entertained you. advertising was a necessary part of the system.

The Internet poked a big whole in the TV world. TV networks sold the attention of the viewers to advertisers. But nobody owns the Internet. And therein lies the problem. Nobody owns it so nobody can sell it. It’s literally anarchy compared to TV’s dictatorship. And as online consumes more and more of people’s attention, the need for the Internet to be “solved” for marketers grows more urgent. Of course Google cracked a huge piece of that puzzle. By recognizing that interruptive advertising doesn’t really belong on the Internet. But helpful and timely suggestions whispered sotto voce might not be despised by users.

It’s the Foghorn Leghorn tone-deaf tactics of advertisers and agencies that get us into trouble. Old habits die hard etc. But the real problem for advertisers, and it’s one that won’t go away just because it’s becoming more difficult, is that the opportunity to excite people about brands – which TV could do like no other medium – is shrinking. Of course video is still the shortest route to people’s hearts. But getting people to watch it is the key (that’s what the tv networks really did for us)

I think that this is the essence of what Crispin Porter Bogusky does really well – achieving the effect of TV advertising by using all the tools currently available to us, including TV advertising. It’s the “do whatever it takes, try anything” approach. It acknowledges our lack of control of the media. But it doesn’t wimp out just because nobody likes advertising. nobody ever liked advertising. that’s always been the biggest hurdle we have to overcome. and always will be.

I say, i say…WHAT’S THE BIG IDEA BOY!

The Escape Pod wins ad:tech gold award

we blogged recently that we had been nominated for an ad:tech award and pathetically groveled in no uncertain terms to anyone who was reading that we’d really, really like to win one of their funky awards.

Well, it looks like it worked.

We just found out that our penny pranks campaign for client OfficeMax was awarded a gold in the best online brand campaign category. I was actually being serious when I said the good thing about this awards show is that it is of the moment and doesn’t carry the baggage of the established ad awards shows. Our work was perfectly at home in this show. It belonged there. It frankly doesn’t belong in an awards show that also has a P.O.P. poster category. Those days are gone.

Congratulations to client OfficeMax who keep pushing us to do better work. And to our fearless flame-haired improv genius Matt McCarthy. And of course a tip of the chapeau has to go to Smuggler director Henry-Alex Rubin, Oscar nominee and all around top chap.

Why Facebook is here to stay

Here’s why Facebook will be THE ONE. my sisters and cousins in ireland recently joined. so now it has an international family component for me too. i believe that is a tipping point. i only need one of these.

The geeks have truly inherited the earth

Pictured above are Facebooks specs for banner ads that appear on their site. There is no wiggle room. your headline can be no longer than 25 characters (including spaces) and the body copy can be no longer than 135 characters (including spaces). No slang can be used. no writing “ur” instead of “your”. no excessive use of exclamation marks. No using ALL CAPS. No smoking. No swearin’. No spittin’. No cussin’.

Doubtless some ad idiot who has never actually written one of these damned things will wax lyrical in Adweek about the wonderful creative possibilities that surely result from such tight constraints. Let me fill you in. It’s a pain in the bum and dangerously limiting to advertisers. Some 28 year old geek probably came up with these constraints. Now i understand that Facebook has some skanky advertisers (and by skanky I mean American Apparel) but it’s a mistake to limit expression to this degree.

When you rely on advertising for your income and you make writing the ads harder than doing the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle, you might be in trouble. And i am really good at doing the NYT crossword puzzle. And advertising. I like to think.

The Escape Pod to take part in Porfolio Night 7

On June 11, I will be taking part in the seventh annual Portfolio Night organized by Canadian creative website ihaveanidea.org. It’s been organized by Otis Gibson, founder of Gertrude Inc. here in Chicago. Should be good. It’s always interesting to see what the next generation of creative talent. And it’s nice to be considered “cheekily comedic”.

The Escape Pod to present Bob Saget at Cannes 2009!

Taking a cue from our colleagues Y&R and DDB, who for reasons known only to themselves, are presenting Roger Daltrey and David Plouffe at this year’s advertising bacchanal, The Escape Pod has decided to add TV’s Bob Saget to the mix.

Star of legendary sitcom Full House, host of America’s Funniest Home Videos, friend and confidant of Dave Coulier, we feel Bob Saget is just the guy to hold forth on new media and whatnot to an audience of jetlagged, hungover and disinterested ad folks. Let’s face it, he practically invented youtube (AFHV was Youtube on your TV) and Full House was, undeniably, the template for Facebook.

We predict a “full house” for this exciting event.

Seth Godin hasn’t made a lot of videos

From a recent post (i subscribe to his email list) it’s obvious that the Great Domed One hasn’t shot a lot of film. Not that this stops him from telling people how to do it. I love that about internet ad guru types. Never let not actually having experience of doing something hold you back from holding forth on it.

Let me tell you how to create viral video. First, spend years studying what people like and don’t like and what works. Then spend years shooting a TON of all sorts of things to learn the art of film-making. Because film is a very executional medium. It’s art. And art is hard.

There is no short cut to great content. Unless you happen to have a lion somewhere that you raised as a cub and that’s just dying to be reunited with you years later. like now. or you happen to have a sneezing panda in your basement.

There’s an old cowboy saying: never mistake a clear view for a short distance. just because you’ve watched a lot of video doesn’t mean you’ll be any good at creating it.

Here’s my tip: hire someone who actually knows what they’re doing.

A really good print ad

I saw this ad in the new york times sunday edition. it’s the best print ad i’ve seen in ages. i have an 8 year old son. this ad is aimed at me. and it worked instantly.

bill bernbach once said something to the effect that with print ads you get an instant before the reader comprehends your ad and in that instant a vibration is transmitted by the design and tone of the ad and if that vibration is not the correct one it’s an uphill battle. this ad does everything right. and by everything i mean the photography. it’s charming. and what he’s wearing looks cool. it would look great on my son. i am going to their site asap.

nicely done whoever did this. i will try to find out.

[UPDATE] Thanks to the sleuthing skills of Ciaran McCabe i have ascertained that the ad was created by J CREW inhouse creative director Jenna Lyons and overseen by Marketing SVP, Margot Fooshee. Still trying to find out the name of the photographer. And the kid in the shot ideally. You know he’s cool.

It’s here!

My advance galley copy of Hugh McLeod’s first book “Ignore Everybody”. Hugh was kind enough to offer me the chance to preview his soon-to-be-bestseller. I have been waiting for this for a long time. I’ll let you know what i think.

Hugh McLeod, come on down!

As i recently posted I was given an advance preview copy of Hugh’s first book, IGNORE EVERYBODY. Because I’m special. winking smiley face.

Very little of the book came as a surprise to me but i guess i’m not the real audience. I had read most of it before via his blog and his legendary download HOW TO BE CREATIVE.

i’d hoped hugh would produce a book for the C-suite types and he has. but the difference between hugh’s book and the countless cookie cutter cook book style business books out there is that hugh’s wisdom is hard earned. and he earned it by living it. not by theorizing and bullshitting. and that’s what gives the book its edge. hugh is a true digital pioneer. it’s no coincidence he’s ended up living in west texas.

if you are creative or want to be creative or just need something that will shake you up and challenge your assumptions, buy this book.

My favorite line in the book has to be: WANTING TO CHANGE THE WORLD IS NOT A NOBLE CALLING. IT IS A PRIMAL CALLING.

Turn that one into a poster Hugh. I’d buy it!

Is Budweiser about to get emotional? *********sniff!*********

In a recent Ad Age article it is reported that Budweiser is considering a return to what is termed “emotional” advertising. Usually in the context of beer and esp. Budweiser, “emotional” means doing something reminiscent of the classic 1980s beer ads where beer was portrayed as a reward for a hard day’s work. Steel mill workers wiping their sweaty brows and having that first sip of beer. And that is completely valid. In our culture beer is the agreed upon means of letting off a little steam and relaxing.

But a lot has changed since the 1980s. Blue collar workers and blue collar jobs no longer dominate the culture. “After a hard day’s code-writin’, nothin’ beats a Bud” just doesn’t have the same ring to it. And “emotional” beer advertising is a lot harder to sell and execute do than comedic beer advertising. A belly laugh is a lot easier to gauge than a lump in the throat.

The problem with purely comedic beer ads is they can lack texture. You see them, you laugh, it’s over. Nothing sticks with you.The problem with purely emotional beer ads is that they can be too gooey for guys. “Come on dude, it’s only beer!”.

Part of the problem lies in the beer purchase decision process itself. It’s a lot more tricky than it might seem. The beer you drink says something about you. You drink Pabst Blue Ribbon? Then you live in Williamsburgh Brooklyn you’re 25 and wear Threadless t-shirts and ironically intended trucker hats. And it’s 2004…winking smiley face. You drink Budweiser? Then you…live in Ohio, you’re an average American. You probably like stuff…that’s cool. etc. I remember a great Bud print ad that read “What drinking one says about you is that you don’t care what drinking one says about you”. Which neatly sums up Bud’s place in the culture. It’s THE BEER in the USA. Like Guinness is in Ireland. It’s hard to both special and THE BEER in your culture. Budweiser is “special” in other countries where American beer is seen as exotic and cool much as Guinness is outside of Ireland.

One thing that I always found very telling and maddening about Budweiser in America was this. Young Bud drinkers would sometimes switch to Heineken when in a public social situation like a night club, ie when their image mattered. The glowing green bottle was considered smoover despite the fact that its contents had taken six months to get into your hand and so frankly couldn’t taste as good as Budweiser. But that just reinforces my point that with beer, it’s all in your head.

It’s easy to play laptop quarterback and tell Budweiser what they should and shouldn’t be doing. When I worked on the Budweiser business there was no shortage of people coming up to me and telling me what we should and shouldn’t do. Everyone is very familiar with both beer and tv commercials. But that doesn’t equate to experience of actually brewing and marketing beer in this country at this time. It’s a very big ship that moves very slowly.

Budweiser’s big problem hasn’t been brand image. Its problem is that for 25 years there has been a generational shift in taste preference away from light lager (Budweiser) to ever lighter and lighter lagers (Bud Light, Mich Ultra). So while on the one hand it (A-B) was losing share on Budweiser it was picking it up on Bud Light and Mich Ultra.

So will a more “emotional” approach work for Bud? Yeah, sure it could. At its core, a beer brand is your friend. Ideally your best friend. When you think about it, young beer drinkers ONLY associate their beer brand with fun and good times. Nobody ever cried tears of pain while drinking beer. That’s what whiskey is for!

So anything that works to “make friends” for the brand is a good thing. It’s all in the execution. And that’s why Budweiser, frankly, needs The Escape Pod. It’s not simply a matter of understanding the beer category or the Bud brand, it’s a matter of putting something on the TV that works like magic. And that’s the really tricky part.

Emotional beer advertising. Easy to parody, hard to create.

Steve Jobs: promote Katie who works at the genius bar in the Michigan Avenue Apple Store

Steve,

I hope you don’t mind me calling you Steve. And i hope you’re in good health. Here’s the deal. Yesterday I went to the Apple store on Michigan Avenue (chicago) because my macbook pro appeared to be acting up for some reason. so off i trudge to the apple store. turned out i had stupidly gotten moisture into it somehow. all my fault. stupid, stupid, stupid. so anyway there i sat. my enchantment with the apple brand ebbing away. katie, the apple genius, did all she could to console me as she tried in vain to enter my job into her system. it just wasn’t working. i was in no real hurry but Katie was apologetic and actually seemed to care. you don’t see too much of that these days.

After a while Katie just gave up trying and, apologizing profusely, informed me that there would be no charge for the repair to my computer due to the length of time i had been there. i couldn’t believe it. i could think of worse places to hang out than the apple store.

The interesting thing was that she had the power to make this decision without a bunch of BS. She made the call. And instantly restored my faith in the apple brand. i came back from the store an evangelist. telling anyone who would listen about my experience. this is why apple is one of the best brands in the world. and why microsoft can bleat on and on and on about what a ripoff an apple computer is and it won’t make the slightest bit of difference.

humanity, not technology, is the killer app.

So Steve, promote Katie pronto. she kicks ass.

Drug company ads: drop dead, please!

I have three children (two daughters). And on the rare occasions that we watch something on TV i am appalled and embarrassed at the crassness and stupidity and sheer number of drug ads for various ailments that afflict aging baby boomers – guys who can’t urinate, guys who urinate too much, guys who can’t get it up, guys who can get it up but want more to get up etc. what if all this brainpower was turned on curing something useful, like cancer?

here’s the effect this pharma-bombing is having on my tv viewing: it has completely stopped. why on earth would anyone want to endure that crap? it used to be that the tv advertising environment was only mildly poisoned by idea-free dumbness for clothes detergents. now it has become completely toxic. if the TV networks had a shred of concern for their viewing audience they would tell these advertisers to jump in the lake. or at least take in a dunk in one of the two (what?) Cialis bath tubs that overlook the lake. the money they make is more than offset by the viewers lost.

now if i like a show i buy the dvd, watch it online or video-on-demand. life is simply too short.

My brushes with fame – Vol. 7. Tim Burton

I have previously described my encounters with celebs as random as ad legend David Abbott, Ludacris, Quentin Crisp, and Chris Rock.

This one wasn’t so much a meeting as an embarrassing series of near-meetings with the famed goth director. I was staying at legendary ad hangout Shutters by the sea in Santa Monica. A lovely hotel that never disappoints and gets its fair share of legitimate celebrities. As i was walking into my room for the first time, the door next to mine opened. and who should step out but Scissorhands himself. I didn’t recognize him immediately but offered a friendly “hey!” greeting which received a muted “hey” in return. as he walked past our eyes met and i’m sure he saw the flicker of recognition in my eyes. now i like some of his movies but that’s about it. i’m hardly a devotee.

Later that night i was leaving my room and who should also be leaving his room but Tim Burton. again. we shared an awkward elevator ride to the lobby. he is clearly uncomfortable with the whole fame thing. and i was in no way intruding. so far so good.

Then as i returned to my room much later that night who should be also returning but, you guessed it, Tim Burton. Again we shared awkward greetings.

And then the next morning as i left my room there he was again. It was starting to look suspicious. Tim Burton is stalking me! no, wait, in this scenario i’m the stalker because i’m not famous. but i wasn’t stalking him! and to prove it i let him take the elevator and i took the stairs.
it was starting to get ridiculous. i had taken to trying to guesstimate the times when TB was “least likely” to be coming and going and timing my entry and exits accordingly. which was frankly absurd.

and i am not kidding you, but nine times of out ten there HE was as i fumbled with electronic key card. i was on the verge of accosting him and saying “Look Tim, i know it looks like i’m stalking you but i swear i am not!”. which would have probably led to my immediate ejection from the hotel.

then finally, i was having a drink on the patio of the hotel, when unbeknownst to me Sarah Bonham-Carter – Tim Burton’s girlfriend – sat down in the chair behind me. a colleague pointed out that she was sitting behind me and i turned around. and just as i turned around…yes, there he was. just in time for him to catch me leering at his girlfriend. No doubt about it now. I was stalking him! Perhaps not uncoincidentally this was the last time we nearly met.

Anatomy of a popular catchphrase

I had the great good luck to have a beer campaign that featured a catchphrase that was incredibly popular. Popular beyond my wildest dreams in fact. And my wildest dreams were pretty wild.

Looking back, I was uniquely positioned to create a beer campaign with a catchphrase. I had grown up watching the infectiously populist UK beer campaigns of the 1980s (“i bet he drinks carling black label!”, “Gertcha!”) which were brilliantly executed and great fun to watch. Those were the ads that made me want to be in advertising.

So when i finally got the chance to work on a beer (Bud Light) in the mid 90s I was ready. Bud Light had a history of creating catchphrases that seeped into the popular culture. And when I first worked on it there was a very successful campaign that featured a catchphrase.
The catchphrase was “I LOVE YOU MAN!”. This was the commercial from whence it came.

When i told people that i wrote TV commercials for Bud Light, they would invariably ask if i did THAT commercial. And i would sigh and lugubriously reply that, no, i didn’t do THAT one. Consequently i had a lot of time to analyze why “I love you man!” was successful. And the biggest reason i could see was that it gave drunken college guys license to tell their male friends that they loved them, man. but in a way that was acceptably heterosexual and humorous.

In other words, it served a function. It was useful in everyday life. it was prefab comedy. say it in a bar and you would get a laugh. it was social currency.

when i came across the film that became the basis for the Wassup! campaign I noticed that everyone who I showed the film to couldn’t help but adopt the phrase as their greeting to me. this excited me greatly. I knew we had something that had the potential to be huge. for a couple of reasons: what’s up? is American for hello. imagine if your beer catchphrase had the opportunity to be said by everyone many times per day! another thing about it that i liked was the fact that the cast of the film happened to African-American. and our audience happened to be the generation of Americans that had swallowed hip-hop culture whole. they were color blind. and so they had no problem adopting the phrase as their own. i’m not sure the campaign would have been nearly as successful ten years previously.

But ultimately the reason the phrase caught on to the extent it did, i think, was that saying it made you feel a little better than not saying it. A little bit of nervous energy left your body when you said it. I think the sayings of Borat had a similarly cathartic quality and so were irresistible for a similar reason.

I don’t think you can consciously create popular catchphrases. But you can develop an ear for them. And study the classics. Then you’ll know it when you hear it. You won’t be able to stop saying it. That’s the test.

IS NICE!!!

THE COGNITIVE SURPLUS

Hugh McLeod makes an excellent point in his latest blog post. He has been on fire of late btw, i’m sure the imminent book launch has to be sharpening him up even more. You have to read it.
He references Clay Shirky’s excellent theory of The Cognitive Surplus. An idea that excited me greatly when i first read about it on hugh’s blog last year i think.

The Cognitive Surplus theory maintains that the past sixty years we all spent gorging ourselves watching TV will be looked back on as anomalous. In the same way that the gin drinking epidemic of pre-Industrial England was. He singles out Wikipedia as a product of this surplus of attention and energy. A surplus that was masked by TV turning the masses into glazed over couch potatoes. Which makes a lot of sense. basically it means that now people aren’t passively glued to the telly anymore 24/7, and they’re all “actively” online instead, where does all this energy go and what can it do?

I shudder when i think back at how much telly i watched growing up. I once, in all seriousness, decided to not study for my yearly college exams and instead watch every single moment of the world snooker championships whose timing clashed with my exams. i decided that watching something on TV was more important than what was arguably the most important event of my life so far. The world snooker championship itself lasted almost a month. And every stroke of the cue was televised live. And I watched every single one! sheer and utter insanity looking back on it. I thought david vine was a member of my family.

Now that TVs chokehold on the attention of the masses has been loosened, all this attention and energy is available to be potentially harnessed by enterprises like Wikipedia. It will be interesting to see how it is used. it is tempting to imagine it will be all used positively and for the greater good, like wikipedia. but you know it will also be used for baser and evil intents too. humanity, you can’t beat it!

the good news was that i happened to have picked the most exciting world snooker championship ever to watch. this was how it all ended. 32 players whittled down to just 2 over three weeks. The final was played over two full days. It was all decided on the very last possible ball at two in the morning. truly one of the great moments in sport. and nobody in advertising ever gave a rat’s ass how i did in my college exams anyway. funny how things worked out.

How to shoot a hidden camera thingy

We at the Escape Pod have done more than our share of funny hidden camera films for client OfficeMax. It’s great fun to do. But it is costly on the nerves when you’re shooting it. you have no control over the situation. i’m telling you that now, but trust me you will have no idea what “you have no control over the situation” means until the morning of your first hidden camera shoot. it’s d-day!

there is no guide to doing it other than getting a great director you trust. it is a bit like shooting a documentary since it really all happens in the edit. and documentary directors get this like nobody else.

shoot in a place you KNOW you’ll get great reactions. pranks depend on great reaction shots. big cities are better for that. people are in a hurry there. they’ll tell you what’s on their mind fast. stunned bovine stares don’t make for great tv. you need fireworks.

People appreciate complexity and insanity in prank films. Trigger happy tv proved that. the further out you go the more the viewers love it.

It is the best fun. you have no idea of how things will go. it’s a gamble. always. if you shoot hidden camera you don’t need to gamble. i was in vegas recently and i didn’t even put a quarter in a slot machine. i didn’t feel the need.

this is a classic.

Buckminster Fuller. Visionary, Genius, Hustla!

I recently attended a most splendid exhibit of Buckminster Fuller’s ideas and models at the Museumm of Contemporary Art here in Chicago. The guy clearly loved himself some dome. He could see problems only he could see and so came up with solutions only he could appreciate. Your classic genius dilemma. They had screens playing a documentary about him. and every time i looked at the screen there was Bucky selling the crap out of his latest idea for the cameras and crowds.

Bucky understood the key to creativity: getting your ideas executed is the key. anyone can have a great idea. getting it done right is the key part. and so he understood that he would have to sell people on his ideas. one of the reasons he was so successful was because he knew how to present and sell an idea. his models were amazing. he would go on national tours presenting his visions of the future. He was a brand. it’s no wonder he was a huge draw on the college lecture circuit for years. he was entertaining.

it also didn’t hurt that he was slightly insane. in the 1940s, a friend wrote him from mexico asking if Bucky understood Einstein’s theory of relativity. Bucky promptly explained it all to him in a single telegram, semi-pictured below.

Bucky would have loved email!

Finally, an award that matches our office decor

We just got our ad:tech gold award yesterday. it really fits right in here at The Escape Pod as you can see. i like this award because people like us care about this award. i look at who’s entering and i go “yeah, that’s who i want to compete with” in a way that i simply don’t with other awards shows. and i know it sounds like i would say that regardless, but i wouldn’t. i felt this was the show that would best understand what we’re trying to do here at The Escape Pod. and i was right. thank you ad:techers!

Not sure quite why i like this one…

Oh yeah, now i know, it’s because i’m in it. in a manner of speaking. though i do think it’s funny that they take sixty seconds on to sell the virtues of being on tv for thirty seconds. not that anyone will notice or care.

For some reason i can’t embed the video. it’s in pounds sterling i believe. but you can see it below. watch carefully now! and see if you can spot why i love it so.

http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/news/bulletin/creativebulletin/article/908846/?DCMP=EMC-28May2008

Seth Godin commented on our blog

You can find it here. And of course the spam filter rejected his comment like a jaded nightclub bouncer in a 1950s movie. “Sure you’re Seth Godin, and I’m Victor Mature. Beat it pal!” So I only just found it yesterday by chance.

Seth commented in reference to a post i did about a post that he did on his blog. Let me be clear. I am a huge Seth fan. bought the books. heard him speak. the man talks a torrent of common sense. and common sense is always in short supply. I subscribe to his email list. which is how i came across this post. in it seth disses the very notion of somebody being able create a viral sensation. which, to me, is like discounting the possibility of having a string of hit movies. in other words, it’s not easy but that isn’t to say that it can’t be done. and i took issue with that in my counter-point blog post to his blog post.

telling a creative person that they can’t do something was bound to get my dander up. but as long as i’ve been in advertising i’ve been creating videos that seem to tickle the public’s fancy. i think mostly because that is exactly my goal at all times. and i have put enormous energy into doing it. and one thing i’ve noticed over the years is that there is a tendency out there among some to disbelieve that that I, and quite a few others, can in fact summon up a hit commercial at will. simply because they cannot imagine it, it must not be possible. I have actually had people tell me flat out to my face that it’s not possible and it’s all a fluke and…you get the drift.

i will now share with you Seth’s original post, my rebuttal, his comment and my reply.
And leave it to you to decide if i was being snarky or not.

(seth’s original post)
Making commercials for the web

TV advertisers are finally discovering that YouTube + viral imagination = free media.

The good news for you is that money is not a barrier, which means that marketers of any size can play. But the rules are different, as they always are online.

Because media is free but attention is not (this is flipped from TV world) you need to make a different sort of ad for a different sort of audience.

1. Assume that the viewer has the attention span of an espresso-crazed fruitfly. That means slapstick, quick cuts and velocity.

2. Find a word or phrase that you can own in Google, that fits in an email, and that comes up in discussion at the cafeteria table or in the playground.

Castrol gets both rules right in this inane commercial.

3. Length doesn’t matter. 10 seconds is fine and so is five minutes. Media is free, remember?

4. Challenge the status quo, be provocative, touch a social nerve or create some other sort of interesting conversation. In other words, a commercial worth watching.

Dove does both in this now-famous commercial.

Because of the power of free media, I expect to see a whole host of commercials that would never be deemed effective enough to spend big media money on, but that generate huge views online. Look for plenty of irrelevant slogans and catch phrases and off strategy content… anything for an eyeball.

Also, understand that this is out of your control. Once launched, what happens, happens. One commercial I know of caught fire and ended up with millions of views. The client then called the producer, screaming in anger. He wanted to be able to turn it off, to decide how it got used, who talked about it, etc. You can’t. Once it spreads, it belongs to the community, not to you.

The biggest shift is going to be that organizations that could never have afforded a national campaign will suddenly have one. The same way that there’s very little correlation between popular websites and big companies, we’ll see that the most popular commercials get done by little shops that have nothing to lose.

(my counter-blog post)
Seth Godin hasn’t made a lot of videos
April 28, 2009 · 6 Comments

From a recent post (i subscribe to his email list) it’s obvious that the Great Domed One hasn’t shot a lot of film. Not that this stops him from telling people how to do it. I love that about internet ad guru types. Never let not actually having experience of doing something hold you back from holding forth on it.

Let me tell you how to create viral video. First, spend years studying what people like and don’t like and what works. Then spend years shooting a TON of all sorts of things to learn the art of film-making. Because film is a very executional medium. It’s art. And art is hard.

There is no short cut to great content. Unless you happen to have a lion somewhere that you raised as a cub and that’s just dying to be reunited with you years later. like now. or you happen to have a sneezing panda in your basement.

There’s an old cowboy saying: never mistake a clear view for a short distance. just because you’ve watched a lot of video doesn’t mean you’ll be any good at creating it.

Here’s my tip: hire someone who actually knows what they’re doing.

(seth’s comment on my post)

6 responses so far ↓

*

Seth Godin // April 28, 2009 at 7:50 pm | Reply (edit)

That was a pretty snarky post, I think, and undeserved. Of course it’s important to hire people who know what they’re doing. And tell them what, precisely? Tell them to shoot you a TV commercial? No, that won’t work. Tell them to make you a commercial just like Numa Numa? Won’t work… it’s been done.

Being a client is just as difficult as being a creative or a director. Lousy executive producers ruin as many movies as lousy directors, right?

Be well. Sorry that I annoyed you.

(and, finally, my reply to his comment)

Seth,

your comment got snagged in my spam filter for some reason. it couldn’t believe it was actually you i guess. sorry about that.

i don’t think my post was snarky. irate perhaps.

i remember your post rubbed me the wrong way because i know what you’re saying to be untrue.
you’re saying something isn’t possible just because you can’t imagine it to be so.

“Tell them to make you a commercial just like Numa Numa? Won’t work… it’s been done.”

You mean it’s been tried and been a miserable failure a million times? Yeah it has. So what? that doesn’t mean it CAN’T be done. and i would argue strongly that experience is invaluable here. but of course if you have no concept of success in this area i can see how you might have difficulty imagining it.

but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

(end of comments)

So, you tell me. who’s being snarky and who is right? as much as i respect seth i respect actual experience of what you’re talking about more.

Testing doesn’t work. And i can quantifiably prove that!

A few years ago the agency i worked at got into a pitch for a chewing gum account. astute chicagoans can probably guess which chewing gum company it was. anyway, as part of the pitch the work had to be tested among consumers for likeability and memorability.

That was the thing that stuck out to us. the testing part. my partner and i worked on Budweiser. and budweiser didn’t test anything. if they liked the idea you shot it. your way. they did things the right way.

so to us, the idea of testing actually had fun appeal. so rather than bitch about it we embraced it in a tight hug. we were all over it. we slavishly adhered to the demands dictated by the testing procedures. which were insane. but that made everything even more insane! it was all insane and weird. and fun to us. normally testing grinds down and dilutes ideas because it is a weird and unnatural process that has little to do with real life. testing accounts for a lot those weird and unnatural ads you see on tv. but our idea was purely to beat the testing system. so there was no idea to dilute!

so we went and shot a very odd and funny series of test ads that were then “zapped” to viewers homes in commercial breaks ( who signs up for that???) and the ads were tested for memorability etc.

And guess what? our ads scored RECORD high numbers on all the important things. and guess what happened then? the client was suspicious of the numbers and went with the idea that scored next highest scoring idea. which went on to become the biggest bomb in chewing gum history. the client saw it once on tv and immediately demande it be yanked. it was a comedy of errors that could have been avoided had someone done their job and simply approved the idea they liked, based on their experience selling chewing gum for years. How hard could it be?

As my old boss used to say “If testing worked, everything would be a hit!” and he was right. Testing gives the insecure the illusion of security.

The oddest thing i ever shot

i was thinking about this the other day. it was arguably the most insane thing i’ve ever shot. the script consisted of the same word – the name Jerry – repeated over and over and over. and over. it was part of a series of commercials directed by Sopranos director Allen Coulter we did as the follow up to the insanely popular wassup ads. we leveraged the public’s then fascination with all things mob and jersey. i had seen enough people jumping on our bandwagon. i figured we could meld the two hits into one. and it worked. the original idea of “doing Jersey” came from my art director partner (and jersey native) justin reardon.

a huge part of the idea was getting the right director. and we got lucky there. in the wrong hands these would have been awful. we did a bunch of these. and we came to rely heavily on the incredible skills of allen and the great actors he cast. the main character in this was easily the best actor i ever worked with. his name is ned eisenberg. he went on to play Sal in clint eastwood’s “million dollar baby”. he is a new york theater actor the director knew. a real stradivarius of a performer. keen sopranos fans will recognize him as the orthodox jewish guy from the first season. he was the one who refused to relinquish his claim on a motel despite tony and crew’s best efforts.

i remember the morning of the shoot (in an italian restaurant in Brooklyn) i had a crisis of comedy. believe it or not, the script was originally titled “Joey, Joey, Joey” but that just wasn’t funny when we shot the first scene. and i justifiably panicked. when your script is just one word repeated infinitely, you kind of have to. i remember almost fainting. it was funny when i presented it. but not so much in reality. ouch!
so i changed it to Jerry, Jerry,Jerry and that, for some reason, sounded funny. i vowed to go back to shooting commercials where stuff actually happened after this. this felt wrong! but great acting. great direction. and art direction. we were also blessed with the talents of Bob Shaw. the guy who made sopranos look like real new jersey and more recently made Mad Men look like, well, Mad Men.

Agency websites. Who cares?

Charlotte agency BooneOakley is generating a bit of buzz in the ad community for its unorthodox website which is housed exclusively on YouTube. You can see it here. And only there!

It’s an interesting innovation and clearly was done with one eye on generating PR. and deservedly so. they are trying something different. good for them.

When we started The Escape Pod back in 2006 i gave this matter A LOT of consideration. i checked out every agency website. and of course patterns emerged. there’s the “hey we’re the folksy ad agency!” we have a chief “fun” officer. and then you click on the link and there’s a picture of the agency lab retriever. i kid you not.

and after checking out ALL the websites i decided to just rip off 72 and sunny’s minimalist, nothing to distract you other than what they want to communicate, website. it felt like the least work for the user. and white space is always pleasing to the eye. the path of least resistance. that isn’t always a bad thing.

the plan b idea was actually borne from all my research of agency websites. the idea here was when you went to our website homepage you would be asked a question in huge type with flashing lights. like vegas. WHAT KIND OF ADVERTISING AGENCY DO YOU WANT?

and then there was a pop up menu that listed the following options. each option took you to a different site.

1. A FOLKSY AD AGENCY (a parody of the chief fun officer type agency site. guitar strumming under. way too many boring personal details about staffers. this agency actually thinks you care about them. there are a LOT of these sites. it’s the default.)
2. A TOO COOL FOR SCHOOL AD AGENCY (self explanatory. you needed to download a level of Flash not yet invented to view this site. you could not access it.)
3. AN UNDERWATER AD AGENCY ( a traditional generic agency site but it appears to be underwater. everythings blurry. and everyone who worked at the agency was amphibious. a fact they were really proud of.)
4. A BLOATED INTERNATIONAL NETWORK AD AGENCY (this was going to be a parody of Saatchi’s Kevin “Lovemarks” Roberts site and blog. the CEO this pretend agency was a demented South African ex-commando, Max Torquist, who lived life to the max. he’d come up with a theory of branding called “LoveTouch”. His pitch: “You’ve given your consumer reasons to like you. Now give them a reason to love you. Give them a LoveTouch!” (followed by lewd hip thrusting motion) we would have shot an accompanying video interview with Max Torquist himself pitching his “LoveTouch” book. it would have taken forever. but it would have been fun!
5. AN AD AGENCY THAT TOTALLY APPRECIATES AND IS AT HOME IN THE CURRENT MEDIA LANDSCAPE AND WHOSE CREATIVE IDEAS HAVE DONE BIG THINGS FOR BIG BRANDS (that option took you to our real Escape Pod site)

Ultimately time and cost considerations led us to do the site we did. our thinking was that agency sites are like menus at a restaurant. do i want a “fun” menu or do i just want to find out quickly what my food options are?

as it happens, we at the escape pod are in the midst of revamping our site. does anyone have any ideas or suggestions? feel free. i am completely open to all opinions and ideas.

i still think easy and quick is the best way. the reason i liked my plan b idea because although it would have been kind of crazy it was ultimately very related to the agency purchase decision “what are you looking for?”. and it would have been very obvious which option was ours. so really you were just a click away from getting to our site and finding out what you wanted to know. an agency website is a purchase decision facilitator. that’s what it’s for. hmmm…

The extent to which using twitter has influenced my purchasing behavior so far

I bought the dvd pictured below because i follow this guy. he’s an Irish comedy writer and twitter pioneer. his name is graham linehan. he is very funny and the tv show is a winner. it’s in season 3 in the UK but thus far only season 1 is available in this region of the world.

and can i just say how moronic it is that there are different “regions” for dvds? to prevent piracy i guess. well let me just say that the only thing it has ever prevented me from doing is legally purchasing dvds and instead forces to watch things online for free that i would happily have paid for.

The Italian mob strikes again!

Recently MillerCoors (and its agency draftfcb) got into trouble for airing a commercial starring Frank Vincent (he played Johnny Leotardo in the final series of the Sopranos). the Italian American Human Relations Foundation of Chicago complained about the portrayal of Italian Americans as gangsters. Which is fair enough. If I were an Italian-American i could imagine how that would get old. I remember getting a bit fed up with the constant portrayal of Irish people as terrorists in movies in the 90s. there was a rash of action flicks where a crazed former IRA member was the bad guy. but the truth is that terrorism was one of the things people associated with Ireland. and we spoke english so we were good and easy casting! and nobody really took it seriously anyway. it was only in the movies.

Funnily enough i felt the wrath of the Italian American Human Relations Foundation a few years back for this commercial which ran during the Oscars. It had the distinction of being the first beer ad to ever air in the oscar-cast. Yay!

We thought it was funny that the Italian American Human Relations Foundation got on our case for a couple of reasons. number one, we weren’t parodying gangster movies, we were parodying New Jersey culture. an important if subtle difference. number two, most of the cast weren’t Italian, they were Jewish! Number three, nothing happened in the commercial. so how they could interpret the ad as a negative portrayal of Italian Americans was interesting to me.

it didn’t matter. not only did the spot continue to run it was very popular. and we ended up doing a lot more spots that teased the New Jersey stereotype and its possible association with the mafia. perhaps. not sayin’ anything!

What the hell happened to beer advertising in the USA?

Beer advertising should be fun because the product itself is the very embodiment of fun. Beer advertising is how beer brands make new friends. So why are all the beer ads so excruciatingly dull all of a sudden? Miller Lite, Coors and Bud Light now all seem to think that beer is a rational purchase. Beer is not a rational purchase. And thinking it is makes for painfully boring and stilted communications. Instead of a joke and a wink from the class funny guy, we are getting science lectures from geeks about boring stuff like bottle caps. Stop it!

[i was going to embed some examples of these commercials. but then i thought why would i do that?]

Execution is everyth ng

If you haven’t created a lot of video content you might think the idea is everything, that your script as written is the key. and you’d be wrong. shooting films is very executional. it’s very collaborative. the talent that touches your idea is as important as the idea itself.

in fact sometimes your idea can seem wafer thin and yet still work wonderfully when finally produced. if you get the elements right the result can be magical. or, you can get everything completely wrong yet still create a little gem despite yourself. as in the example below.

the, ahem, song was created in 1973 by someone who clearly thought America was headed for hell in the proverbial handbasket and wanted to express that thought. i think he used to be a radio dj – Shad O’Shea – and you can tell he loooves the sound of his own voice. believe it or not, Shad has a fan who put crude visuals to Shad’s shiddy song. thus creating an uprecedented tsunami of craptacularity.

and somehow magic happened! enjoy.

The best promotional idea for Stella Artois wasn’t an ad

It was serving it in this beautiful glass. I mean, just look at it. As I have previously posted the appeal of, and justification for, drinking a particular alcoholic drink brand lies largely in the head of the holder of that drink. You convince yourself your choice makes the most sense. It’s what YOU think that matters. So going for the jugular of appetite appeal is genius.

It looks like dessert!

Craigslist is doing fine

A recent report in adweek points out that craigslist is on track to make a lousy hundred million dollars this year. not even a billion dollars. how boring!

of course most of this revenue (presumably) came at the expense of the classified ads in newspapers. cue the worlds only sub-atomic violin orchestra.

one of the admirable things about craigslist is how under the radar they have been. they don’t try to constantly get their faces on the cover of FAST COMPANY and they don’t view it as a tragedy that they aren’t a hundred bazillion dollar company. they had a great idea, it’s working brilliantly, and it will probably continue to do so. and they seem happy. as they should be.

i raise a glass of discount sparkling organic apple juice in their honor!

UPDATE: Which ad worked better? Neither.

OR…

we tested the two direct print ads for client Tear Mender fabric glue pictured above. which approach do you think worked better?

Well the answer is it was a draw. The ads ran in Sunday newspaper supplement USA WEEKEND. And both elicited roughly the same reactions in terms of sales. But additionally, and most importantly, neither was a roaring success. Disappointing. But we are going to keep going until we crack this one. That’s the whole point. If it turns out that running an ad in Arabic is the key, then that is what we shall do. We are committed to cracking the code on this one.

And we think we now know why neither was a hit. Fabric glue is a novel idea to a lot of people – so we have to physically demonstrate the idea – so anything that didn’t do that wasn’t going to be a hit. we need to sell the idea of using glue to repair fabrics. and neither ad did that.

So next up will be two ads that explore varying degrees of demonstrating the product.

does anyone have any thoughts or ideas on how we might do this better? let us know. thanks.

There’s no consumer demand for advertising. Never was.

One thing people tend to forget about advertising is that it has always been a leech on the back of something more interesting than itself. TV shows, magazines, music on the radio. It kind of sneaked its way into your attention. So really, ads didn’t have to be as interesting as us ad folks used to plead it should be. Consequently advertising is having a bit of trouble handling the transition from paid-for-bums-on-seats world of big TV to the much more chaotic world of consumers watching/reading/doing whatever the hell they like. and chances are none of those things offer an opportunity for a meaningful interaction with a brand. That’s the biggest problem for us. People are editing us out of their lives. BIG PROBLEM!

The solution of course is to be really, actually, interesting. Something advertising has never really had to do before, when you think about it.

How do you make a kick in the balls more poignant? You hone in on it.

as long as i’ve been in advertising i’ve noticed that several phrases get mis-used over and over by ad and marketing folks. “we honed in on this idea” should be ” we homed in on this idea”. not that makes particular sense either. to hone is to sharpen something. pigeons home in on things. usually their home. that’s pretty much all they do actually.

another word that regularly takes a beating is “poignant”. Poignant means emotionally affecting in some way. POIGNANT: 1. keenly distressing to the feelings: poignant regret.
2. keen or strong in mental appeal: a subject of poignant interest.
3. affecting or moving the emotions: a poignant scene.
4. pungent to the smell: poignant cooking odors.

Yet i have heard it used to mean “heighten effect of” innumerous times. I actually once heard someone say in reference to a slaptsick beer commercial edit “It would make the kick in the balls more poignant if…”

Glad i got that off my chest. I feel much better now!

The power of celebrity

The deaths of Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson, both white hot celebrities in this culture in their day, serve as a POIGNANT reminder of the insanity that is celebrity. Being famous is clearly a lot harder than it looks.

RIP Michael
RIP Farrah.

The Escape Pod shortlisted at Cannes

Just found out that the two “internet films” below have been shortlisted at the Cannes Lions ad festival in the Internet film category (scroll down to section B01). Not too shabby. Better than a poke in the eye etc. Kudos to fearless client OfficeMax.

[UPDATE: while The Escape Pod did not score any metal this year we were honestly pleased to be on the shortlist. And, perhaps frighteningly, tied Leo Burnett Chicago for the most entries of any Chicago agency on the shortlist with two each.]

We quite like this

a brilliant banner ad for Pringles potato slivers. You can see it here.

[UPDATE: via @kentcarmicheal. this was created by BRIDGE WORLDWIDE from Cincinnati (home of @cheronis and a great city). well done guys. you are now eligible for an Escape Pod Bottleofscotchy award!]

anybody got any idea what’s going on in this hammock?

a coke ad i saw at the train station. i immediately thought “two double amputees sharing a nice Coke moment in a hammock”. i am not kidding. how could that be comfortable?

With apologies to Brandrepublic.com and Dave Trott

(i am “re-blogging”Dave Trott’s excellent new post over at the CAMPAIGN site. it’s great. but members only i think. Subscribe to CAMPAIGN, it’s great! that should keep their lawyers off my back)

Upstream media thinking
by Dave Trott, Jun 29 2009, 12:36 PM

A few years back there was a train crash at Paddington. This meant all the trains had to terminate a few stops before Paddington, at Ealing.

The trouble was Ealing is only a little station, and they couldn’t handle all the extra traffic.

One day we were down there waiting for a train to a client. The little station was absolutely packed. Like everyone else we were watching the information on the huge TV screens on the platform.

The passengers were giving the staff a hard time because all the TV screens were showing inaccurate information. I overheard one of the staff walk over to the station manager and say, “Everyone’s getting really upset because the trains aren’t coming in or departing at the time shown on the screens. What’ll we do?”

The station manager said, “I’ll fix it.” He got a broom and, using the handle, reached up and turned all the screens off one-by-one. Then he said, “There, problem gone.”

I thought, what an interesting approach. Don’t spend ages trying to get the screens to show the correct times. Just turn ‘em off. A great example of upstream media thinking.

Another example was BBH’s work for Boddingtons beer. Boddingtons is a Manchester beer and they wanted to make it fashionable in London. So the obvious media was Time Out, the London listings mag.

But the really clever thinking was they didn’t place the ads inside Time Out. They placed them on the outside of the back cover. Just the place no one else wanted. Because no one reading a magazine reads the back cover.

But BBH reasoned that most people read Time Out on the tube. And if you put the ad inside you only got one person. But if you put the ad outside you got everyone else in the carriage. Like a little poster.

This thinking then dictated the creative. Being little posters the ads couldn’t be fussy with lots of copy. They had to be simple, powerful graphic executions. Another great campaign that started in the media department.

I always found that’s where a lot of the real creativity came from. When the SDP was first formed, GGT had them as a client. But the real star of our campaign wasn’t the creative work, it was the media department.

Obviously you want opinion formers to see political advertising. And in an election most of those opinion formers are either in Parliament or in the news media. So how do you get to them?

You couldn’t buy poster sites anywhere near the Houses of Parliament, or Fleet Street, where the newspapers were. So Mike Gold thought, if Mohammed won’t come to the mountain bring the mountain to Mohammed.

He hired a lorry and pasted our posters on the side. Then he had the lorry drive between Parliament Square and Fleet Street. Coincidentally the lorry would get a ‘puncture’ in both places, and have to change the wheel. This meant it would be jacked-up and stationary for about thirty minutes at each end of its trip.

Which meant we had poster sites in Parliament Square and Fleet Street, for half an hour, several times a day. Great idea.

It wasn’t me that said it, but it’s true. If you’ve got a creative media department, the medium is the message.

WORKING IN A PUB IN LONDON FREQUENTED BY SIKH GANGTERS THAT HAD BEEN BURNED DOWN IN A SKINHEAD RIOT

On the somewhat circuitous career route that led me to advertising i had some very strange jobs indeed. one very weird one was working in a bar in an extremely Asian part of London. i was new to London and needed a job fast and they needed a bartender fast. at the interview i noticed that this pub looked a lot newer than most london pubs. it was a lot newer.

it turned out that the pub — The Hambrough Tavern — had been the focal point for a race riot in 1981, just nine years earlier. and had been burned to the ground. It was in Southall, an overwhelmingly indian and pakistani neighborhood in west london. yet some idiot decided that bringing in neo-nazi skinhead bands to play in the pub was a good idea. it wasn’t a good idea. and the arriving skinhead fans soon clashed with the locals. who then set fire to the pub as the bands played.

i found out all this much later. i thought i had found myself a cushy number in a new-smelling pub. i was wrong.

after a while i noticed that the clientele of the pub was somewhat limited. it consisted solely of punjabis (sikhs) who didn’t seem to have jobs yet had plenty of cash. this was their home pub. they were gangsters. the gang was called the Holy Smokes. their rival gang was called something in punjabi that sounded like TOOTENANS to my ears. these boys could drink too. we got on well.

Punjabis are the turban wearing dudes with the beards. they come from the punjab province of india. they are NOT muslims as a lot of people assume. Sikhism is a separate religion. these guys didn’t wear the turbans or have beards. they were second-generation and all had thick london accents. they were fond of saying that they were “Indo-Europeans”.

one gang associate was an ambulance driver who wore a ton of gold jewelry. he was a really good pool player and general jack the lad. his name was Afi.

there never was any violence in the pub. mostly because all the locals were afraid of the Holy Smokes. so they had the pub to themselves. although one night one of the gangsters, Ranjit, a very tall and well-built gangster unfortunately, was tripping on acid and started throwing pool balls at some imaginary monster. he did a lot of damage.

another night, a very drunk member of the rival gang walked into the pub and started disrespecting the patrons. one of whom pulled out an alarmingly long knife and stabbed him in arse. stabbing someone in the bum was a sign of additional disrespect apparently. now if you’ve never seen someone get stabbed in the arse let me describe it to you: a fountain of blood squirting out of your bottom. the gang leader gestured to me not to call the cops or ambulance until the stabber made a getaway. so i didn’t. the rival gang member staggered out the door of the pub, squirting blood as he went.

but here was the funny part. when the ambulance arrived, and it took a while, guess who was driving it? That’s right – Afi! And Afi was in no hurry to get the emergency room either. he smoked a leisurely fag with me and had a drink as they loaded the wounded hero onto the ambulance. Afi joked about how slow the ride to the hospital would be. I laughed. the whole thing was crazy.

this youtube video gives you some idea of what i was dealing with. hilarious.

Media can be creative. Creative can be media.

(This post was written by Escape Pod media guru Matt Johnson)

We at The Escape Pod recently attended the Chicago CMO Summit. The idea behind the event was to gather CMOs and other marketing executives from leading companies across the Midwest, and allow them to share best practices and discuss the pertinent issues they face. The day featured a smattering of keynote speakers and panel discussions all centered on what we all can be doing betters as marketers.
As is always the case with this type of event, some topics were more interesting than others, broad swipes at safe topics. In other words, nothing particularly earth shattering or cringe worthy….that is until the day’s final keynote address.
The final presentation was entitled “How and Where to Spend Your Marketing Dollars”, by Don Schultz – Professor Emeritus-in-Service of Integrated Marketing Communications, Medill School of Journalism Northwestern University.
Professor Schultz made some very good points about how many of the models/tools we use when developing media plans are antiquated and were developed in a time when the media market place was much less cluttered/complicated, and not based in the modern world where multiple media platforms are often consumed simultaneously. This is all very spot on – times have changed and, obviously, our approach needs to account for this.
The Professor then unveiled new research he had helped develop, that addresses this brave new world of media consumption, and when applied should lead us all to smarter, more effective communications plans. Using the Auto Industry as an example, he then showed us that his model would drastically change the media mix used by automakers – way less television and way more internet – leading to greater influence and (implied) sales.
Now I am a media guy, so I find this quest to build the ultimate planning tool fascinating. And in 17+ years in the business, I have seen a lot of them – from basic reach/frequency ROI models to consumers placed in MRI machines to see how their brain reacts to various media platforms. But what bothers me about all of this testing is that the most important factor is always missing – THE CREATIVE.
As Professor Shultz when on about how more banner impression and fewer television impressions would generate more car sales, I found myself asking “but what if the idea doesn’t lend itself to banner ads, or what if the agency has an amazing outdoor concept?”. So at during the Q&A portion, I raised my hand and asked the Professor “where does the creative factor in when determining the mix”. His response? “Let me guess, you’re from a creative agency? It doesn’t factor in, this is about media.”
As I said, I am a media guy. So I get the importance of understanding the target and making sure we place our messaging in relevant places at an efficient price. But to pretend that the creative plays no role in determining how we approach the consumer is just plain naïve.
The worst thing to happen to our industry was the decision to split media off from the creative agency in the name of profit but under the guise of gaining clout in the market place (a myth I will address another day), because this is the result: Media teams that are developing communications plans in a vacuum, and Creative teams that are either forced to abandon what might be fertile creative ground, or working on ideas that won’t see the light of day, regardless of how break-through it might be, because it’s “not in the plan”. Our tools and research should be directional, not absolute. And as long as holding companies continue to tell clients that media and creative are mutually exclusive, our industry will suffer.
One last thought on media mix, creative and the auto industry. Does anyone think that it was a media modeling tool that led Mini Cooper to launch their brand in the U.S. with outdoor?

Vinny – thanks for the use of your soapbox. I hope I have done it justice.

This is our 200th blog post! Bow down before us in admiration!

I was in on the blog scene early on. way back when. I was an original gapingvoider. and an early and enthusiastic Adpulper. So finally writing my own blog should have come easy to me. but it didn’t.

the reason was that although i am technically a writer, i hadn’t really written a lot of prose. or ad copy. or sentences. i had spent an inordinate amount of time dreaming up and shooting beer commercials. big difference. that’s film school. not writing school. i had been trained by one of advertising’s greatest writers but those skills largely lay fallow for years.

so the notion of actually writing words was kind of intimidating. but i’m glad i did. I am a much better writer as a result. even i can tell that. i have a prose voice now. i am not a big reader but i now know what good writing is.

writing a blog also helps sharpen your thinking. if you do a great post people will react. if you suck, nobody reacts. it’s just like advertising!

another great thing about being a blogger is the people you meet. i have met some great and very cool people. Hugh Mcleod at Gapingvoid. David Burn at Adpulp. Alan Wolk at Tangerinetoad. Dave Trott.
ifthisisablogthenwhatschristmas. I am drawn to blogs that are written by people who are as fascinated by the process of selling stuff as i am. it’s an obsession. it has to be.

Off shooting in NYC next week

Consequently will be blogging lightly for the next week or so. I know, a crushing blow. You’ll manage somehow. hard liquor will help.

we are about to shoot some more penny pranks. but this time we have upped the stakes considerably. It will be interesting, that’s for sure. wish us luck. hidden camera is hard on the nerves. maybe blogging will help soothe the nerves! if so, forget what i just said.

i really like the Liberty Mutual Insurance ad campaign

it’s nice to see an ad campaign that has the brains and courage to decide what constitutes a good position for the brand and then go after it relentlessly. given the financial nature of the product and the region from whence it hails (new england) it’s hard not to see and feel echoes of the legendary John Hancock campaign penned by Bill Heater (my old boss btw) years ago. it unabashedly plucks your heart strings. and it succeeds. as my wife said of it “It’s been ages since anyone has been sincere in an ad”.

Damn. why didn’t i think of that? sincerity! it was staring me in the face.

so kudos to both client and agency. i shall update this post with examples of work and credits.

Upon losing your horse and carriage in Manhattan in rush hour traffic

Being in New York has jogged some memories from when i used to live here back in the early 90s. my first job upon arriving was driving tourists in a horse and carriage around Central Park at night.

This was back when New York was scary. Mayor Giuliani, to his credit, fixed all that. but back then it really was a scary place. there were no lights in Times Square for example. it was dark! only prostitutes (some clad only in lingerie) and drug dealers (and their clienteles) would venture there.

I remember one night driving a couple through the park on a romantic ride and out of the corner of my eye i saw a guy wearing combat fatigues emerge from behind a tree and aim a crossbow in our direction. i recall feeling not all that threatened. how bad could a crossbow bolt really be? was my immediate thought. and that was only if he managed hit me. he was a good twenty yards away. so the chances seemed pretty slim. this is how you think if you live in New York for too long.

But one night i had a pretty dire emergency that needed no calculation whatsoever. I lost my frigging horse!

How did you lose your horse Vinny? here’s how. i turned around to get a light for my cigarette and when i looked back my horse (and carriage) had decided that he had had enough for the day and went clip-clopping home. without me.

now horses don’t know a hell of a lot. but one thing they do know is the way home. unfortunately for me, the way home for my horse took him through Times Square. at 7.00 pm.

I had heard horror stories about the carnage that ensued when a horse would randomly get free and inevitably freak out. their tiny little brains were ill-equipped to deal with pretty much anything other than eating and pulling the carriages. horses are dumb animals. it’s the rare one that has any spark of intelligence.

So as i watched my horse run along Central Park South headed west towards Seventh avenue, without me, i understandably felt a bit faint. i had a fight or flight moment. and i decided to fight. i ran after my horse. as fast i have ever ran. and i almost caught up with it. almost.

alas it heard my voice and rather than slowing, it accelerated. and i ran out of breath and watched, hands on knees as it turned the corner on seventh avenue going faster and faster (small brain unable to make any decision other than “RUUUUN!!!!”). i watched in despair as the carriage it was pulling went up on two wheels as it turned the corner. disaster was imminent and i knew it. i could see it.

horses don’t stop at red lights on their own. and we were just two blocks from 57th street. a very busy two way street with a long red light. and by that time my horse would have achieved fatal velocity. there is a noticeable and appreciable downward incline from central park to times square. at the end of the night we would frequently stage chariot races through a deserted Times Square at 3 a.m. in a race to our stables. the loser paid for the drinks. i never lost. my horse was like a rocket.

so i knew what to expect when i finally reached the top of seventh avenue and central park south: japanese tourists trampled to death…my horse eating the mayor’s face…blood everywhere!

instead, to my eternal relief i saw a New York City cop holding my horse by the bridle (the correct way) and smiling outside PJ CARNEYS pub. i will never forget it. and i couldn’t believe it. my horse hadn’t killed anybody.

so i ran up to the cops, who were taking the whole thing very well, and thanked them profusely. and slobberingly. and then i finally asked them how in the name of Jesus did they catch my horse???

their answer was amazing.

they had been stationed in central park in a van looking motorists to break the light on central park and sixth avenue (where i lost my horse). they noticed that my horse seemed to be “sans rider”. this struck them as odd and noteworthy. these are nyc cops. not country boys. but they noticed me running after my horse. and put two and two together and realized there was perhaps a problem. and they set off in pursuit of my errant equine. their first idea was to try to grab the horse by the bridle by sidling next to him but this only agitated him and made him run even faster. so, thinking quickly, they decided to speed up and go ahead of the horse and break the traffic lights so the horse could run through. they then slowly cut him off till he was trapped between their van and the parked cars. one of them then jumped out and held him by the bridle. which is the scene i found when i ran down seventh avenue, completely out of breath.

luckily for me, the cops found the whole thing very amusing. I like new york cops.

Dog day afternoon. New York City. July 11 2009.

Snapped this little dude on 5th avenue this afternoon. His name is Fritz. he is cool.

What we were up to in New York City

Add a little creativity, get a lot more money

love this video via George Patterson/Y&R Australia. it demonstrates on a micro-level what we do on a macro level. have a good weekend y’all. (via @dionhughes)

Editing film

we’re editing our latest penny pranks stuff. just started actually. i have shot a lot ( a real lot) of film on behalf of clients. well i don’t actually direct them myself but i write and supervise the production of them. there’s a saying in film that is true. you write film three times. once when you write it, once when you shoot it and again when you edit it. it’s very true. editing is writing. it’s revealing the best story.

and writing something three times in a row can take a lot of energy and concentration. but it’s all worth it in the end.

How to cope when one’s horse mounts a Honda Civic

one last NYC-based horsey tale.

one night i was dropping a couple to an italian restaurant on third avenue on the lower east side of Manhattan. after dropping the couple off I took an westbound one-way street bordering Gramercy Park back to the nearest northerly pointing avenue that would take me back to Central Park.

i noticed when we (the horse and I) were about halfway up the street that the street lights were out and there was a mechanical backhoe digger (JCB) next to them. it was only then that i noticed my horse was acting skittish and seemed nervous about passing the backhoe, which in all honesty did look like a bit like a dragon in the poor light.

when horses are nervous about something their instinct is to run away from it. so my horse stopped and started backing up. unfortunately it was tethered to my carriage and it was a one way street down which we had already progressed around two thirds of the way. there was no going back.

i started to appreciate the extent of my horses fear of mechanical diggers only when its legs made contact with a New Jersey registered red Honda Civic. to my great surprise my horse mounted the front (hood here, bonnet in UK) of the car with its front hooves. at that point i kind of lost it. and jumped onto the front of the car and grabbed my horse’s bridle and started shouting at it in a voice that clearly communicated that i was pissed off, to any species. I pulled the horse off the car and steadied her nerves. I realized she was scared shitless of the digger in the dark.
but also knew she had to be driven past it too.

i looked back down the street. it was completely empty. not a single new yorker had witnessed my horse jumping on a car. phew! then i saw that in the process one of the rubber rims on the rear carriage wheels had come loose in the altercation. problem! big problem.

just then what can only be described as yer classic 1940s movie drunk come wobbling and staggering down the street. he sees me and the horse and without missing a beat slurs: “Hey mister, i think your horse needs some water!”. i desperately handed him a tire iron and asked if he could put the rubber rim back on the wheel. to my eternal surprise he did it like it was second nature. perhaps BECAUSE he was so drunk. in seconds it was back on.

i thanked the movie drunk profusely and stood up in the front of the carriage and drew the long flailing whip which was mostly for decoration but in occasions like these could prove invaluable. and waited for a green light. I then cracked the whip in the air like i’d never cracked it before. i’d like to point out to you PETA types that i didn’t actually whip the horse. just the air around the horse. it’s the CRACK! sound that gets them going. not the contact of the whip on their flesh.

my horse took off like a rocket shying away from the mechanical digger as it went past it.

i have often wondered about the bewildered reaction of the New Jersey Honda driver who returned back to his parked car to find actual hoof-prints on his hood.

sorry dude! it was my horse, not the reincarnation of the dark lord.

The Harry Potter Generation

My kids (girl:13, girl:9, boy :8) all have one thing thing they all have in common: a complete and thorough knowledge of the works of JK Rowling. I remember back in 1997 first being asked to buy a Harry Potter book. i thought nothing of it.

This afternoon we all went to see THE HALF BLOOD PRINCE (part one) movie at the local luxuryplex. Even the most minor deviations from the sacred text were lambasted by my highly literate and knowledgable crew. “The Weasleys house never burned down in the book!” etc.

i have often wondered what the long-term impact of the Harry Potter books on this generation will be. I’m guessing it will be like Star Wars was on mine. an impact like a comet that will reverberate for a very long time.

firstly there is the very act of actually completing all seven or eight books. one more detailed than the other — my eight year old son recently read all eight in a few months. it encourages and demands voracious reading. and like the old saying says, once your mind is stretched it never goes back to its original shape. very true.

consequently my kids are world champion readers thanks to JK Rowling. they read and write incessantly. which runs counter to the millenial stereotype of short attention spans and texting as language. these kids are a throwback to the 1930s. they make my generation look like the tubers that we were.

they have a real good grasp of what they’re interested in. and it’s a very balanced mix. they are not wowed or enamored of any particular medium. unlike their internet crazed elders. i largely have my splendid wife to thank for all this goodness and I also realize that my kids aren’t representative of anything but my kids. but the success of the HP books has been about as big anything since the beatles.

books. who ever would have thought that? reading! kids today etc…

We’re in a book!

A couple of years ago i went to the Miami Ad School to give a little talk to the students. while there i met a woman named Margo Berman. Margo asked if she could interview me for a book she was writing. I received a copy of the book recently.

It’s an educational textbook designed to give an overview of advertising and the creative process. It’s a great read for anyone interested in advertising and marketing.

of course the pages where i’m quoted will have extra appeal!

Upon being set upon by the Brooklyn Mafia

this is another horsey tale. sorry, but it’s a good one.

one night as i and my fellow night carriage drivers headed in cabs towards Queens (where we all lived) from Manhattan, at dawn, we noticed a fellow carriage driver involved in an apparent altercation with a limousine driver.

there was a lot of bad blood between limo drivers and carriage drivers. we were frequently competing for the same tourism/fun in the city budget. and limo drivers would take great pleasure in telling their tourist clients to watch out for being ripped off by us.

So when we saw our compatriot in distress we were keen to help out. we were also a bit drunk. so we stopped our cabs and ran over to assist our pal. numerical superiority is a great aid to courage. suffice to say that the limo’s headlights suffered damage. antennae may have been bent. a mirror or two were perhaps wantonly removed. all in good sport! the limo driver was vanquished. we won. we got a cab home and forgot all about it. the limo driver didn’t though. and the limo driver was a member of the teamsters union. the teamsters union is a transportation workers union with close ties to the new york mafia. we didn’t know this.

Cut to say five days later. we are all standing around on Central park south chatting and drinking coffee. when out of the corner of my eye i see an italian looking guy giving me a very fixed stare. i look around and there’s another italian guy covering the other side. he had a baseball bat. standing next to him was the limo driver from earlier in the week. in an instant i sort of instinctively knew what kind of trouble i was in. these guys were muscle sent to extract revenge in its purest form.

the mobsters pointed to each of us individually and asked the limo driver if any of us were “the guys who fucked with you”. i remember feeling slightly faint. i was sure he would recognize me. thank god he didn’t. just then, as luck would have it, the carriage driver who he actually had been fighting with drove past. the limo driver immediately recognized him and the mobsters all set off in hot pursuit of him. a carriage driver was dispatched to warn our colleague that the brooklyn mob was after him. luckily our guy got there first. just in time.

the carriage driver home advantage. he ran into the Plaza hotel. the one made famous by the Eloise children’s books. we all were very familiar with the somewhat labyrinthine geography of the Plaza hotel because we frequently used its bathrooms. the brooklyn mobsters gave chase but got quickly lost the scent of their intended victim in the unfamiliar maze of the hotel.

be nice to new york limo drivers. or else!

penny pranks 2009

we shot this for the 8,000 plus subscribers to our youtube pennypranks channel. coming soon.

Is outdoor advertising the future of advertising?

Over dinner in new york recently i got into a fascinating discussion with my old colleague and all around good and wise egg Arun Nemali about the future (and present) of advertising. In a rapidfire discussion about the universe and everything we concluded that the future of advertising might well lie in out-of-home advertising. Not just billboards but everything that can be encountered in the real world. because, at some point, even the most wired of the wired have to go out and get some toilet paper and cheetos. and occasionally occasionally avert their gaze from their mobile device.

i loved this campaign

from about a decade ago. via BBH London. for BIFI, a beef jerky snack. it was set in a generic fictitious factory (ZOMTEC) and featured an ensemble cast of random folks. it never got the attention, i felt, it deserved. and this was the only spot i could find online. it felt more like a TV show than an ad campaign.

Seventh funniest commercial of all time?

Just found out FORBES magazine (my go-to resource for all things comedic) assembled a panel of ad experts and hooked them up to truth machines. or something. anyhoo, the upshot was that an ad with my name on it was voted seventh funniest ad of all time. which i must admit has added a certain frisson of tingle to anotherwise ho-hum Friday afternoon.

the ad was inspired by my art director partner Justin Reardon’s voracious appetite for sushi. the guy could put away some raw fish. he was and remains a big guy. a former linebacker for the University of Miami in Ohio football team. Sushi chefs all over Los Angeles live for the day when Justin finally walks through their door. Can they be the one to at last satisfy his appetite and claim the crown?

what happened in the commercial was pretty much based on Justin’s real life. i think he actually did what happened in the commercial: shout Wasabi! as a toast at Japanese sushi chefs and get them toasting back. he was funny. the ad was funny. it was a nice play on the whole Wassup! thing and added needed dimension to the campaign at a time when it was white hot. i recall not being entirely convinced that the idea would work when we shot it. but having faith that it would somehow. we had made comedy out of editing in the first Wassup! spots. we did so again here.

boy did that raw fish stink under the lights! the waiter was a real sushi waiter, from the NY restaurant that we shot in. not an actor. the kick under the table by Dookie’s girlfriend at the end was my idea. we got one take of that. but thank god we got it. it was a quick ending. and we needed it.

this ad was hugely popular and just what the campaign needed at the time. it was a crazy and fun time.

OFFICEMAX BACK TO SCHOOL CAMPAIGN. PENNY PRANKS 2009.

Last year we had a very timely message for an economy that seemed headed for bad times: every penny counts.

We hired a very talented improv actor and standup comedian, Matt McCarthy and we roamed the streets of Manhattan trying to pay for stuff with pennies. And secretly filming the transactions. It was a lot of fun (and extremely nerve-racking) to shoot. You can rely on New Yorkers to have great reactions. They DO NOT keep it all in.

This year we revisited this theme. it’s even more applicable this summer. This past year has been a complete disaster on the economic front.

So this time we stepped it up a notch. One thing we learned from last year was that the stories were more interesting when there was something at stake. And the person selling was involved emotionally in what they were doing. Torturing New York deli owners usually results in just swearing. And that’s not good viewing.

We went back to the bottomless creative well that is Matt McCarthy and gave him a lavishly opulent setting: a huge mansion on the upper west side of Manhattan. A breath-takingly big place. It is owned by the guy who wrote the computer software that enabled the selling of shares electronically. And he’s as rich as you imagine he is. But a cool guy too.

We also gave Matt a straight man. An amazing ten year old actor named Nicholas Sireci. On two separate days they posed as Scottish royalty (Crown Prince Nicholas, 16th Earl of Doonamara, Lord Protector of the Outer Isles) and a Texas oil billionaire heir. We put a Scrooge McDuck type vault (thank you Scott Smith!) in one of the basement rooms and filled it with gleaming pennies where there should have been gold coins.

A veddy English butler (played impeccably by Noble Shropshire, his real name!) and a big-lunged bagpiper named Jonathan Baker rounded out our cast.

The campaign was orchestrated (and that’s the correct term) by Anonymous Content director Justin Reardon. The funny bits were his ideas. Editorial was handled by our cousins over The White House/Chicago. Matt Walsh and Meg Kubicka, we love you. And you too Carrie! All sound sculpting was done by the scrupulous Peter Erazmus at APG.

We hope the fun we had doing these comes through. Kudos too to amazingly brilliant and awesome client OfficeMax once again.

Scottish prince buys spectacularly ugly painting

texas oil baron buys a rare book based entirely on how it smells

new yorks premier boutonnier takes pennies. and jerky!

radio executions feature our flame-haired penny prankster get into a froth over the humble penny.

Highly targeted rich media banners lie at the heart of this campaign. so they have to be appealing. Design by The Escape Pod’s amazing Dana Krzysztofiak with back-end execution by the supercool cats at Sabertooth Interactive. you can see them here.

If FORTUNE magazine says so, it must be true.

Continuing the spate of Budweiser Whassup! iconic ad status news articles comes this piece from Fortune/CNN.com. I knew we had something special when we did these ads years ago. I didn’t know it would go down as one of the great ads. But I’m glad it did. We had so much fun creating the ads and lapping up the media attention that came with it.

This was how crazy it was. One March night, after a long day’s shooting in New York we (my partner and producer and i) were standing in the lobby of our hotel wondering where to eat that night. It was a Saturday night. We were bone-tired and cranky. Suddenly all our phones started to ring simultaneously. It was our spouses/friends excitedly calling from Chicago. American TV comedy institution Saturday Night Live had decided to open that week’s show with a parody of our ad. which was about three months old at the time. i remember we all tried hard to pretend we were excited by this news but really we weren’t. we’d already had plenty of exciting news about this campaign. i felt kind of shocked and guilty that i wasn’t more amped by the news. but i just wasn’t. i was just hungry and in need of a beer.

On vacation

Taking this week off. You’ll have to read other things. A drag I know.

The best deal i ever got in my life so far.

it happened today. as i drove my family home from Michigan through Indiana, we stopped for lunch at a Steak N Shake. It’s a chain of 50s diner style restaurants that specializes, as you might imagine, in burgers and milkshakes. It has a wait staff. it’s semi fast food. but it’s really really good.

we noticed there was a sign in the window as we walked in. KIDS EAT FOR FREE ON THE WEEKENDS! it was the weekend. i had three hungry kids who looove their milkshakes with me. i figured there HAD to be some catch. there wasn’t. when our waitress gave us the the check, she cheerily informed us that we wouldn’t be charged for the kids meals and to ignore those charges on our bill. i was stunned. my 13 year old daughter was stunned. like me, she figured there had to be an “asterisk” as she put it. there wasn’t. we were kind of stunned. Steak N Shake is really, really, really good fast food. i felt slightly guilty as i paid. what a great emotion to have towards a burger chain. “i owe you steak n shake, and we’ll never forget this kindness!”. i might even blog about it.

i am impressed.

Tropicana takes Escape Pod advice. Apparently.

I have three kids. consequently we drink A LOT of orange juice chez nous. and Tropicana was our family’s preferred OJ. All was well.

And then for some reason Tropicana changed their packaging radically. And in the wrong direction. They dropped their saliva-inducing orange-with-a-straw-stuck-in-it icon for bizarrely anodyne and bland-looking new packaging that threw us – and a lot of other people – for the proverbial loop. it was boring and unappealing.

(OLD BUT GOOD PACKAGING)

(NEW MEH PACKAGING)

so much so that i noticed my wife had started buying this orange juice instead.
It’s called Simply Juice. And that’s what it is. it was so much more appealing to look at than Tropicana’s new and decidedly unimproved packaging. and therefore it won at retail. for very obvious reasons.

Tropicana’s mistake was the best thing to ever happen to Simply Juice. this previous blog post recounted that event. and I severely admonished Tropicana for what was a very basic and fundamental error. you had something good – something with appetite appeal. all you had to do was not do anything. and you couldn’t even do that. not only that but you went off in the opposite direction of good. tsk, and frankly, tsk!

So recently while on vacation, i picked up what i thought was Simply Juice.

But closer inspection revealed it to be a Tropicana clone!

Clearly someone (or someones) at Tropicana clearly reads this blog. you devils! We really should start charging you guys for this advice.

Confusing beer ad of the day.

I snapped this ad for Newcastle Brown Ale at a bus shelter on the way to work this morning. It’s been up for ages. Can you tell me what the hell are they trying to say? I am not being facetious here.

Background: Newcastle Brown Ale is a very drinkable ale from, you guessed it, Newcastle in the northeast of England. it’s not as bitter as your typical English pub ale which probably accounts for its relative global popularity. And certainly accounts for its popularity here in the United States where beer preferences tend to lighter lagers. it’s a bit like Guinness in this market. the ale for beer drinkers who aren’t snobbish about what they drink. it also has great distribution.

you might think that playing up its Englishness might be a good idea. Newcastle is exotic. if you’ve never been there! Or the fact that it’s more accessible than you might think. It’s not bitter etc.

But instead we have this puzzler. Hmmm…

Confusing beer ad of the day (part deux)

OK, I snapped this beauty near the agency offices today. It’s for Heineken Light. Let me try and decode it for you. The headline reads THINK INFINITY POOL VS INFLATABLE POOL. And the tagline reads GIVE YOURSELF A GOOD NAME.

OK, now I may be wrong but I’m guessing a good portion of the receptive audience for this beer ad (under 25) have no idea what an infinity pool is. And consequently will be in a poor position to compare it to an inflatable pool. And even if they did know, they are being asked to compare it to an inflatable pool. Which is laughable. That’s no contest! Infinity pool every time. Those things are awesome! Inflatable pools are for little kids.

So presumably Heineken Light is the infinity pool and all other light lagers are inflatable pools. Now that’s a strange thing to say. What a weird thing to say. Imagine if someone walked up to you on the street holding a bottle of Heineken Light, pointed at it and uttered the words “THINK INFINITY POOL VS INFLATABLE POOL!” And then said “Give yourself a good name.” And walked away. You would think they were crazy. Charles Manson crazy.

Confusing beer ad of the day. Numero Tre

It would appear Chicago is beset by an attack of enigmatic and baffling and let’s face it, boring beer ads. Perhaps it’s a stealth move by the spirits industry to create a state of stultification among beer drinkers and curb demand for beer. who knows.

today’s entrant is for Peroni, a very pleasant light lager from Italy that is gaining traction over here. In Chicago at least. It appears to be riding Stella Artois’ coat tails to an extent. the future looks bright for this beer IMHO. so what the hell is going on in this ad? a wee ribbon on the label is spun out so it collides/melds with a dominatrix-looking stiletto heeled boot. i have seen other iterations of this campaign. where the wee ribbon attaches itself to vaguely italian things. on the upside it’s more graphic than the previous perplexers. but it’s very far from exciting the viewer into a froth of thirst.

as i’ve previously posted, selling beer is about creating the right vibe. and furthermore with booze, it’s all in your head! so how about creating advertising that has a chance of getting into beer drinker’s heads?

Confusing Newcastle Brown Ale ad of the day

I saw another one today.

so as far as i can gather, the ad campaign for Newcastle Brown Ale in the USA – biggest beer market in the world btw – consists of an enormous pint of beer “standing” in front of a white brick wall (or the bricks are really tiny and the pint is normal size. whatever) and adding robotic sounding almost communistic propoganda slogans. this couldn’t possibly be any more devoid of humanity. very strange.

Uncle Seth is right.

Huge fan of The Seth Godin. Read his blog daily. He’s an idea machine. I also love thinking about media and society. and the interplay between the two. he likes thinking about that too.

As he points out in this post, ye olde post-TV cognitive surplus is a bear that has been roused from its slumber. it’s a powerful beast whose behavior is still developing. and one that hasn’t been kind to the post-war forged-by-TV-ads brands whose enjoyed a very symbiotic relationship with the TV and Cable Networks. The Green Giant ain’t so jolly about the internet.

TV really was like a mild sedative on the masses. The hippies were right in that respect! But it wasn’t a grand conspiracy. it was just a unique opportunity to create the biggest audience ever. And profit from the creation of it. TV was where it was at for a very long time. and old habits die hard.

the internet is a very different kettle of fish. it is resoundingly not dependent on advertising for its existence. and in fact it is kind of allergic to advertising. advertising doesn’t really belong there. we have to force our way in.

most brands aren’t cool. they’re functional. nobody cares about them. nobody talks about them. and quite often they come from cultures who may be stuck in the past organizationally too. in a sense the whole operation is predicated upon carpet-bombing their brand into the public consciousness via TV ads. these are the ones that are most adversely affected by the diversion of consumers’ attention away from the TV screen. they’re in a bit of a bind. their cultures quite often militate against doing the right thing in the current media landscape. they are bound by what worked in the very different recent past. but that’s OK! everyone over the age of 15 is in transition mode to some extent. the rate of change has been crazy. let’s not forget that.

Like we have pointed out, the internet is great for selling Irish bagpipes. Seth similarly uses the example of the Best Made Axe company. ultra-niche brands who can now talk to the whole world. they win online. meanwhile nobody cares a fig about the poor not so Jolly Green Giant online. he was a TV creation.

i have worked in the media/ad biz for 20 years now. and i’ve been lucky enough to have been in the eye of the storm for a lot of those years. i worked on big brands with big media budgets. and i got the opportunity to innovate. and i like to think that i took chances whenever i could.

and here’s what it all feels like to me. it feels like i was floating down the mississippi for years and suddenly the river started to get narrower and narrower. and narrower. how many people will read this? maybe 300 in one day. that’s about 80 million less than watches the superbowl. advertising is only as good as the audience that sees it.

I have no media bias except this one. The bigger the audience the better i like it. This post was brought to you by OfficeMax who urge you to check out their great back-to-school deals and unequalled product selection. Thank you!

Coming soon: purely theoretical beer!

I snapped these this morning. I remember when A-B introduced Michelob Ultra Light a few years back. it was the first ultra-light beer. they wisely chose Michelob instead of Bud to do this line extension. We at the agency used to refer to it as “wet air”. it was spectacularly lacking in substance. I wasn’t a fan of the taste. but it was surprisingly successful. especially among the over 40 crowd. it started a trend. or rather continued an existing trend.

the trend among american beer drinkers has been towards ever lighter beers (lagers) since the early 1980s. the revival of craft brewing here being perhaps a reaction to this. Samuel Adams certainly made hay by being the anti-big brewery. I won’t even go into their, ahem, questionable brewing practices. That train has sailed baby!

now i know there are those out there (European visitors especially!) who make fun of American beer. And some of that is justified. But tastes are what they are. You can’t fight that.

Although, at a certain point, it’s no longer beer anymore. it’s beer flavored water. And you certainly could argue that we may have reached that point. Like now!

(we’re the least beer you can drink!)

(no, we are!)
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We are number seven on Ad Age’s Viral Video Chart!

at least we are as of now. that’s cool. does this mean we’re a “digital” agency? Maybe we are!

The night i inadvertently caused an Irish gypsy riot

Irish gypsies are a mystery. Literally. Nobody’s quite sure where or when they came from. Some think they started roaming during the Famine days of the 1840s. I disagree with that. Others say they got their start during the wars of the 1600s. i disagree with that too.

Irish gypsies aren’t related the European gypsies (The Roma). Although they do tend to have darker black hair and kind of look a bit different. I can spot an irish gypsy a mile off. They even have their own language. or is it a dialect? either way they can be very hard to understand. i grew up in the part of Ireland with the biggest concentration of gypsies. i had childhood friends who were gypsies. one of my fondest early memories is being in a gypsy cart driven by a macho teenage irish gypsy who courageously stood up as he raced his shallow two-wheeled cart around my neighborhood.

BTW, Brad Pitt did an awesome job of impersonating an irish gypsy in the movie SNATCH. i was blown away by his dead-on accent. I know the accent well but would never attempt doing it. it’s too hard. and brad pitt, a southern boy from Columbia Missouri, nailed it.

So anyway. I was seventeen and working in a bar in Galway. And one day at lunchtime two gypsies came in. I gave them two pints of guinness. and then two more. and two more. the owner of the bar spotted them and was angry with me for serving them. he went over and explained that it was bar policy not to serve gypsies. blatant discrimination, in other words. but they were used to this. they did seem a bit surprised I served them. but i was kind of outraged at this policy. but i also knew the gypsies didn’t exactly help their image by getting pissed drunk daily in the town square. and fighting each other.

but i knew a few and so was sympathetic. but this bias against serving them in pubs was pretty widespread. so it wasn’t really a problem. they all drank together.

two years later i was working at the same bar in the afternoon in the midweek. my gypsy friend Sean Ward, who i had attended high school with, came in for a pint with his brother Eamon. it was about four in the afternoon. Sean was really a good boxer. his family had given up the road and so lived in permanent housing. Like in the movie Snatch, boxing is big in the gypsy community. But Sean boxed with gloves and in a ring and that. totally legit!

There was no way in hell i was telling Sean and Eamon they couldn’t have a pint because they were “travellers” as we daintily put it. i actually gave them a free pint each before my shift ended at six pm. my relief bartender was a very happy go lucky Gaelic speaker also named Sean. I bid all the Seans good night. As i left the bar i noticed that Sean and Eamonn’s cousins had joined them at the bar. This troubled me for some reason.

At this point, I should point out that the bar i worked in was very 1980s-modern lounge bar. lots of comfortable banquette style couches and carpet on the floor. and mirrors on all the walls. mirrors everywhere! this was no quaint irish pub. it was a booze dispensing machine.

Well when i came in the next day all the mirrors were broken. Apparently a long-simmering feud within the Ward clan had come to a head a couple of hours after I left the bar. with more and more members of the clan meeting at the bar. and we had these very durable, very heavy glass ash trays which had been deployed as missiles in the fracas that ensued. hence all the broken mirrors.

My boss was furious. what idiot had served these gypsies??? i just shook my head and tsk-tsked. who indeed!

Video everywhere, all the time

Throughout my career i have tried really hard to create advertising that has a legitimate shot of being seen out of choice by consumers. And that legitimately competes with the very best of what’s vying for consumers’ attention at any given time.

That is hard. And has always been hard. It’s hard to create things that really interesting. The path from idea to finished execution can be a tricky one. Ask the Weinstein Brothers!

And there is always a ton of new content to compete with. BUT…the good news is that 99% of it will be uninteresting dreck. So really you’re only competing with 1% of the new content. (I’m making the numbers up obviously, but you get the picture).

And of course the Internet is simultaneously the best thing and worst thing to ever happen to someone who traffics in attention. Lots of new ways for you to engage people. Lots of new ways for them to tune you out.

So it’s kind of sobering to read these statistics… (The audience for online video reached new heights last month, as over 158 million Americans streamed a total of 21.4 billion videos in July according to comScore — both new records for the medium)

I remember ad agencies being vilified in the early years of this decade for trying too hard to use old tricks (video) in the new and interactive medium of the internet. Well, guess what. Turns out video is still the most compelling and fastest way to tell a story. you just have to compete with 21.4 billion other videos.

time to get yourself one of them sneezin’ pandas!

HEY ADVERTISING STUDENTS, READ THIS!

(I emailed this story to UK advertising legend and fellow twitterer and blogger Dave Trott. It’s about a man whose work we both admire a lot and was my first boss in advertising. His name is Ed McCabe. It’s the story of how I got hired by him. Dave said it would make a good blog post for advertising students. Dave is right. As usual..)

I was living in London at the tail end of 1989 and attending a D&AD creative workshop. By day I sold airtime on ITV, the UK commercial TV network. I wasn’t that good at it. And I urgently felt the need to do something I loved doing. And creative advertising was and remains it. I was smitten. I had just gotten a US green card in a visa lottery and was headed to New York in the New Year. The last stop on the workshop was BBH. The brilliant Martin Galton and Will Awdry taught it. In the pub afterwards I asked them who they recommended working for the USA. They asked me who I’d like to work for in the UK and I said “Dave Trott”. They gave it a bit of a think and replied “Ed McCabe”.

So off to NYC I went with one name in my head: Ed McCabe. After a while I began spending Saturdays in the library of the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn perusing their vast ad annual collection. Pretending that I was a student there. Seeing Ed’s work through the years confirmed that this was the guy for me. His work was so arresting and direct and strategically sound. He created the campaigns that made Perdue Chicken, Maxell Tape and Volvo – to name but three – household names and premium brands. He was a true advertising genius. The only one I’ve ever encountered in advertising. He was also a bit mad. But in a good way. Someone once described Ed as having adrenaline instead of blood. And dynamite instead of adrenaline. I’d say that was pretty accurate, if difficult to imagine perhaps.

The only problem was he had left Scali McCabe Sloves a few years previous and was off doing the Paris-Dakar rally and other fun things. But then he came back to New York and started a new agency. Unfortunately for me, only had a handful of creative’s working. So the chances of getting hired by him looked slim. Someone had to get fired or die. I would find out later that working for Ed increased the risk of both of these possibilities immensely.

But I was dead set on achieving my goal. I decided to create a book of ads targeted purely at Ed. And the best way to do this would be to stalk him. Literally. I knew where he lived and I knew where he worked. And I also knew he frequently took the subway to the office. So I followed him around observing the products he used. I read somewhere in an interview that he drank Fernet Branca and sparkling mineral water at lunch while he spoke to the journalist. I knew from experience this was a hangover cure so I created a campaign for that. I knew he hated then-upstart New York agency Kirshenbaum and Bond, so I submitted a really bad book of ads to their recruiter just so I could get a rejection letter from them. I put this letter at the front of my book with the headline DEAR ED McCABE, I HOPE YOUR IDEA OF GREAT ADVERTISING ISN’T THE SAME AS MESSRS KIRSHENBAUM AND BOND’S. It worked. I was hired. Only took me two years!

Bill Bernbach? Who’s he?

OK, my blog has now degenerated into a request show. Dutch creative @nicoakkerman recently prodded me to blog about this story. which is illustrative of something. he had a good point. it’s that geekiness and nerdiness can be a trap.

This was the setting for this story. I and my partner Justin Reardon were in Cannes talking to the media press. The Budweiser Wassup! campaign was hotly tipped to win the TV and Film grand prix at Cannes. The world advertising championships. And coincidentally our campaign had gone global thanks to the Internet. So our silly catchphrase was even being shouted by Cannes natives. Great timing!

our employer DDB had put on a big press conference on the beach in Cannes. and we talked all bloody day. we were extremely hungover. but we soldiered on. being the focus of attention is energizing. DDB stands for Doyle Dane Bernbach. Bill bernbach was the creative engine that started the agency back in the 1950s. a real big deal.

seated at our table was the CCO of ddb chicago bob scarpelli, the chairman of ddb worldwide Keith Reinhardt, and us basically.

Keith was a chicago ad guy who was instrumental in creating omnicom. Bob was the head of ddb chicago.

My partner Justin was then a young guy in his mid-late 20s who didn’t give a shit about advertising. He wanted to be a director. And now is one. If not two.

Keith was real evangelical about Bill Bernbach and his legacy to both DDB and the ad industry. A smart move. Every new DDB employee got little hard cover book called “Bill Bernbach Said”. It was filled with pithy and frankly brilliant quotes by Chairman Bill. This guy really got the big picture. As an ad geek i lapped it all up. Justin probably tossed his copy of the book right in the trash on day one.

So, cut back to us all on the beach. Worldwide Creative Chairman Keith Reinhardt invokes Bill Bernbach’s name to us. We all nod. Except Justin doesn’t. He says “Bill who?”. Keith Reinhardt nearly has a seizure. A DDB employee who doesn’t even know who Bill Bernbach is!!!!!!! I alone was in a unique position to see how badly this was going to go. So i stepped right in assuring keith, who knew my passion for ad history, and reminded him of my Catholic adoration of Bill and encyclopedic knowledge of all things DDB.

It was too late. Keith was pissed off. He was too political to display his anger in front of journalists. So while we stayed chatting with the editor of Portuguese Ad Week, out of the corner of my eye i could see keith prodding his index finger at Bob’s chest. And i knew why. Justin with his “who is bill bernbach?” comment.

but what keith found reprehensible about justin is what made me like him. one ad geek per team is plenty. his “ignorance” was more than compensated by my ad nerdiness. my problem was i knew too much. justin’s problem was he didn’t know or care. perfect!

Advertising awards shows. What are they good for for?

Ad people are obsessed with awards. Obsessed with winning them or obsessed with pointing out what a waste of time winning them is. And what really matters is sales. And advertising is trivial and shouldn’t nurses get awards? Etc…etc…and frankly…etc.

The recent scandal over the DDB Brazil 9/11 ad (above) has revived the debate once more. And now it’s getting attention outside of the little ad world. Apparently, the mildly shocking ad never actually ran. despite winning an award in The One Show, a premier US ad award show. Both DDB Brasil and The One Show have quickly distanced themselves from having anything to do with it. As only ad people can! winking smiley face.

I have a love/indifference relationship with awards. I love when i win them. I’m not too bothered when i don’t.

I think some ad folks have a distorted view of the importance of awards. especially the ones who have never won them. I was fortunate enough to win most of the advertising awards in the world a couple of times over. And to be honest my life didn’t change that much.

There is a perception that somehow winning awards automatically leads to more money and better jobs. and while that may have once been true in the pre-holding company days, it’s no longer the case here in the USA anyway.

Awards are a good night out and maybe some PR but that’s about it.

So i find desperate attempts at getting famous in our little world a bit odd. There is a formula for winning awards: do something achingly “clever” that is devoid of humanity aimed purely at other ad people. For some reason agencies in South America and Asia have been the biggest producers of so called SCAM ads. And they invariably involve something that is moderately shocking and/or mildly amusing. But they are deformed mutants. not real ads. real good ads are the product of healthy debate and are produced for the real world. Scam ads are like lab experiments that go nowhere and effect nothing. So what’s the point? Fame, i guess.

But like i said, what is that fame worth these days?

Bob Garfield vs Jeff Goodby

Recently Ad Age columnist Bob Garfield published CHAOS THEORY, an apparently dystopian view of the future of the advertising industry. I haven’t read it yet. I don’t particularly feel an urgent need to either. I live and breathe this game. I will be very surprised if it contains anything i haven’t heard before. I intend to read it. But based on the hype, and that’s kind of what advertising is, it feels like it’s casting a much wider net than advertising creatives. I’m sure his publishers are shooting for the Malcolm Gladwell/Naomi Klein kind of numbers. And let’s face it dystopia sells books. Again, based purely on the hype, Bob’s book feels about three years to late to interest me.

Jeff Goodby (whose taste is impeccable, let us not forget) took Bob to task in this article. Without getting into the issues and claims and counterclaims — and i can’t because i haven’t read the book yet — i would like to make a prediction here. and it’s that Jeff Goodby is right and Bob Garfield is wrong. Why? because Jeff Goodby is doing it day in and day out. While Bob Garfield is merely theorizing about doing it. And i for one, have had just about enough of laptop quarterbacks telling me how to do my job without ever once actually having it done it themselves. Things are changing? No shit. Let me get a pen and paper. Pray, continue…

We in the ad biz understand that people don’t like advertising. Believe it or not we get that bit. We also understand that the internet has fundamentally changed commerce and communications permanently. Everybody gets that. But to suggest the advertising industry will just go away is patently absurd.

Advertising will no more disappear than prostitution will. Prostitution isn’t the oldest profession in the world. advertising is. the world’s first hooker had to first engage in some kind of promotional activity. Purring “Hey Ugg, you want some of this?” while slowly and salaciously raising the hem of her bearskin dress.

The free market is competition. And advertising (hype) can make or break a product. or a book. So the smarter ones will use this to their advantage. the less smart ones will just spend billions of dollars annoying people. it was ever thus.

Advertising was and is just a means to an end: increase sales. it will shape shift into whatever means of communication exist at any given time. it has always done so.

and to pretend otherwise is just silly. advertising isn’t the record industry. we just sound and look a lot like them. and do as much coke as them. (no we don’t. that’s an outdated image. i was joking. i swear!)

Virals that sell

Having been involved in creating ads that will hopefully be lovingly embraced by the public for years now i have learned a thing or two from experience. i have been fortunate enough to have worked with great clients and so had a lot of creative and executional freedom. and thank god for that.

When something is popular it’s a hit. when a hit is irresistible, it’s a a viral hit.

but just being extremely popular isn’t enough if your goal is to sell things. it also has to sell the product being advertised. but a lot of advertising viral videos are so desperate to get noticed that they merely shock or entertain. and have bugger all to do with the actual product.

advertising has always been a parasite on something more interesting than itself. so creating your audience, which is what viral hits do, is hard for ad folks. it’s hard for anyone. look at hollywood. you have to try a lot of stuff to get a hit. Anheuser-Busch used that approach too. do a bunch of things you really like and surely others will like them too. it worked time and again for them.

So, for reasons i will disclose later, i am compiling a list of viral videos that i think also were really good ads. if you have any ideas please tell me. i want a list of about ten.

first one is from 72andsunny in amsterdam. guy ritchie directed. feel what it’s like to become a pro soccer star. lovely.

next one also from amsterdam. it’s a heineken that feels like a classic American Bud Light ad given a metrosexual sheen.

this next one is from Wales. it was shot for 10K by a local authority to stop teens from texting and driving. big hit worldwide.

this one is too old for my purposes but think this was brilliant and amazing. i literally leapt out of my chair when i watched it. perfect for the product being advertising. the tag reads YOU AWAKE NOW? in english.

anyone have other suggestions?

UPDATE: Dan suggested two good ones.

BERRIES AND CREAM! A delightfully daft and insidiously catchy commercial that went nuts online.

and Bud Light Swear Jar. This one was actually originally intended purely to run online (for obvious reasons). Won an Emmy for best TV ad of the year.

The Escape Pod wins best of show in Chicago Ad awards

last night we found out we won best of show in our local award show. We had a blast and are moving a bit slow today. we won for our penny pranks campaign for wonderful client OfficeMax. this is a big award. no seriously. it’s a monster. it’s the stanley cup of ad awards.

this is the third time this decade i have been lucky enough to win best of show in Chicago. my first win with The Escape Pod. It never gets old! congratulations to all at OfficeMax and everyone at The Escape Pod. and of course une grand merci! to director Henry Alex Rubin of Smuggler and thanks also to our flame-haired penny defender Matt McCarthy. It feels good to beat the big boys. Don’t mean that in a vindictive way, just in terms of the accomplishment.

And speaking of that, best of luck to my old comrades at DDB Chicago who are nominated (twice) for an Emmy for best ad this weekend. Both Budweiser and Bud Light got nods. If by horrid chance you don’t win guys, here’s my suggestion. Leave immediately. don’t waste your time fake congratulating the winner. Head to Chez Jays in Santa Monica and get royally plastered in the privacy of the back room. It did the trick for me.

THINK SETH GODIN JUST FOUND HIS NEW BOOK

(We are big fans of the writings of Seth Godin. We don’t always agree, but generally speaking Seth’s mind is a well-oiled machine whose output is common sense and smart thinking. Today he posted something that we felt compelled to re-blog simply because we are in complete agreement with everything he says. In fact, we kind of hit upon a similar theme a while back in reference to creativity. And no Seth, we are not accusing you of plagiarism. We will leave that up to our lawyers. We’re kidding! Kidding.)

The hierarchy of success

I think it looks like this:

1. Attitude
2. Approach
3. Goals
4. Strategy
5. Tactics
6. Execution

We spend all our time on execution. Use this word instead of that one. This web host. That color. This material or that frequency of mailing.

Big news: No one ever succeeded because of execution tactics learned from a Dummies book.

Tactics tell you what to execute. They’re important, but dwarfed by strategy. Strategy determines which tactics might work.

But what’s the point of a strategy if your goals aren’t clear, or contradict?

Which leads the first two, the two we almost never hear about.

Approach determines how you look at the project (or your career). Do you read a lot of books? Ask a lot of questions? Use science and testing or go with your hunches? Are you imperious? A lifehacker? When was the last time you admitted an error and made a dramatic course correction? Most everyone has a style, and if you pick the wrong one, then all the strategy, tactics and execution in the world won’t work nearly as well.

As far as I’m concerned, the most important of all, the top of the hierarchy is attitude. Why are you doing this at all? What’s your bias in dealing with people and problems?

Some more questions:

* How do you deal with failure?
* When will you quit?
* How do you treat competitors?
* What personality are you looking for in the people you hire?
* What’s it like to work for you? Why? Is that a deliberate choice?
* What sort of decisions do you make when no one is looking?

Sure, you can start at the bottom by focusing on execution and credentials. Reading a typical blog (or going to a typical school for 16 years), it seems like that’s what you’re supposed to do. What a waste.

Isn’t it odd that these six questions are so important and yet we almost never talk or write about them?

If the top of the hierarchy is messed up, no amount of brilliant tactics or execution is going to help you at all.

(PS: Put your email in the wee box on Seth’s blog and get his posts sent directly to your mobile device. for free!)

PERSPECTIVE

So this will give you some idea of just how big our recently acquired Best of Chicago Show award is.

On the left is the award. In the middle is a Cannes Grand Prix. On the right is a One Show pencil.

I just talked to Rich Fulcher

Fans of the mighty boosh will understand how significant this event was. Rich is from Chicago originally and somehow ended up on Telly in the UK. Rich is a singular talent. He has a book coming out in the UK on October 8. It’s called TINY ACTS OF REBELLION.

I am not usually star-struck but i was talking to Rich on the phone. Turns out he has no connection to the world of zoology! Zero. Pffft!

My brushes with fame. Vol. 9. Morrissey

actually it was more like fame’s brushes with me in this instance. I was a devoted 17 year old metal fan living in the west coast of ireland. where it rains a whole lot, trust me. So one night i was in the pub with my more musically progressive friends. Pissing rain outside. Raging fire in fireplace of pub. My pals are trying to get me to go to a gig by an up and coming band called The Smiths who are playing not a hundred yards from the pub.

I object on several grounds. It’s pissing rain and windy cold outside. The Smiths are not metal, big problem. And thirdly, they have a crap name. The Smiths! Really?

Ultimately i get dragged along. We easily make our way to the front row of the gig. The audience was a bunch of easily intimidated college students. this was morrissey’s hearing aid and glasses AND daffodils in arse pocket phase. he was trying it all out.

And they started to play and it was pure magic. I was blown away. I couldn’t believe what i was hearing and seeing. I saw The Smiths at their best. purely by chance. Morrissey even threw me his sweaty plaid shirt at the end of the gig. which i stupidly gave away the next day.

BUT, the funny part was that for the encore, Morrissey came out and swung a bush, a shrubbery, a limb of a tree..something… over his head as he sang. Not realizing that every time he swung it he was whipping the faces of the front row. We were all bleeding profusely. And we couldn’t move. And Morrissey was clearly oblivious. So we just covered our faces with our hands. And endured a good whipping from Morrissey. Of course we all thought it was hysterically funny.

Cadburys chocolate goes to Africa. Hooray!

Just read about this one. It’s an ad for Cadburys Milk Chocolate produced in Ghana. And featuring a Ghanaian rap star Tinny. It’s a fantastic piece of film. Literally. And defies explanation or rationale. it doesn’t need one. but it does have a real point to make. That the cocoa used to make Cadbury’s chocolate is Fair Trade. Which i think is a very smart thing to publicize. The post-consumerist generation cares a lot about this sort of thing. I know i do care a lot about this sort of thing. You see…I’VE BEEN TO AFRICA.

Being irish and involved in the media, i was obliged to take up the cause of world hunger. it’s the law apparently. so i somehow found myself in Ethiopia documenting hunger on behalf of an irish famine relief charity: Concern. Concern’s mission is to help the poorest of the poor, the neediest of the neediest. And that’s exactly what they do. It’s an amazing organization.

So I ended up travelling all around Ethiopia with a London-Jewish fashion photographer from New York and a Northern Irish famine relief expert who been everywhere and seen it all.

one of the things that strikes you about africa once you’re there is what a raw deal the entire continent has gotten for the last three hundred years. First it was raped and plundered by imperialist European countries and hacked into nations that made no ethnic sense. And then it was left to sink or swim in the 18th century developmentally in a lot ways. Meanwhile a lot of the developed world wonders why Africa doesn’t just jolly well get its act together. Pull up its boots and just suddenly be in the 21st century. what’s wrong with them???

The Fair trade movement is a real way to acknowledge the reality of agricultural africa, still by far the biggest industry. just like it was europe in the 18th century. and to pay the farmers a fair price for engaging in what is a very precarious living in the first place. Africans don’t want to live in poverty any more than you or i do. and it’s not inevitable that they do.

i remember visting the hut of a subsistence level farmer in a very remote part of southern ethiopia. we were greeted a grandmother and her son and his six children, all living in this classic African hut. Out back was the recently dug grave of the mother of the children who had just died. She had perished at age 27 from AIDS contracted from her philandering husband. it was only a matter of time until he too succumbed. leaving grandma to support six young children who would have very hard lives indeed. it was a heartbreaking scene. i was sorely tempted to slip them money but this was rightly frowned upon by the charity. you can’t play god.

these are the people who benefit from Fair Trade products. it can only be a good thing. So bravo Cadburys!

(this is a picture i took of the Ethiopian family)

HAPPY 250th BIRTHDAY GUINNESS!

Arthur Guinnesss and Co. have been brewing stout at their brewery in St. James’s Gate Dublin for 250 years. It has since become synonymous with stout. ‘And is truly a global brand. It’s the official drink of Ireland, where I grew up.

It makes sense that it would be the official beer of Ireland. Relentless lashing rain and driving cold wind is the usual weather trend, at least on the Atlantic coast where I grew up. So stout beer just feels right. Beer is food and Guinness is even more so. Guinness provides just the right nourishment in those conditions.

I worked in a bar in Ireland while in high school and College. It was very very busy pub. I think I must have easily poured over 100,000 pints of Guinness in my time. But interestingly, never once tasted it myself. I actually had my first pint of Guinness in a pub in New York years later. I liked it!

Guinness is a bit odd. It’s not effervescent. It’s black and white. And requires nitrogen gas (not CO2) for the miraculous transformation that happens when a pint of it is poured. It is also notoriously temperamental. They say it doesn’t travel well. And the quality of the brew can vary noticeably from pub to pub. I recall there were two contradictory theories as to what resulted in the best pint of Guinness. Theory one said the more regularly you cleaned the draft beer lines in your bar the better the pint. Theory two stated the exact opposite. That the more Guinness bacteria adhered to the lines (ie, the less often you cleaned the pipes) the better the pint. And I think the latter theory was true. Certainly, the best Guinness in my home town came from an old-school pub that pretty much just served Guinness and whiskey to old men and didn’t bother with newfangled line cleaning technology. A steadyflow of Guinness is required to achieve anything like a decent pint. I’ve had Guinness in NYC and Boston that was as good as anything I ever had in Ireland. When you get “good” Guinness it’s a remarkable experience. A beer that looks like it should be heavy and filling is suddenly the lightest, frothiest beer you’ll ever taste.

One thing I’ve noticed among American beer drinkers is that they almost hold Guinness up as some kind of icon of what real beer should be. As if lager is somehow inferior to the sacrament of Guinness. Which is complete nonsense. It’s just beer!

This is one of my all time favorite beer ads. Done by Guinness in the 80s in Ireland. Nigh on perfect. Enjoy.

The power of the Internet

everyone needs to watch this. proof that anything’s possible with a dream. and the web…

The Escape Pod wins Jay Chiat Planning Award

This was a nice surprise. we won a Jay Chiat planning award. i’ve always considered what is termed “planning” to be my job as a creative. To me that’s the fun part of advertising. The “what the hell should we do” part. It’s all downhill for me once we’ve cracked that bit. And i don’t mean that to as a diss to planners. It’s just that i LOOOVE doing it.

Nice trophy too!

Working with Rich Fulcher

Rich Fulcher is a UK-based comedic actor originally from Chicago. He is a star of what is the UK’s freshest comedy in years – The Mighty Boosh. Rich has a book coming out soon. And via our mutual friend Dave Gassman, we have ended up helping Rich promote his book in an indirect way that i am not at liberty to discuss yet. It’s all rather naughty and exciting!

It has been a pure labo(u)r of love. Welsh Escape Pod Art Director Allan Stevenson and I are huge boosh fans and love rich’s characters. rich is a true one-off. his comedy plays on its own unique frequency.

kudos also to Dutch PR whiz Nico Akkerman for his many ideas.

it’s been great fun to work on. we will share the fruits of our labors with you soon. very rude stuff. tsk, tsk, tsk!

IS YOUR BRAND TURNING PURPLE?

A lot of the brands we use everyday were born via the medium of mass TV advertising. In other words they enjoyed the complete attention of the populace and could lay on them any message they wanted for years and years and years. And of course they did. Wow. Imagine that! It wasn’t that long ago kids.

But now they find themselves on a shrinking ice-floe. Viewership of TV commercials is headed south. And the reality of the online environment is that is just isn’t hospitable to messaging from, say Progreso soups. Like TV was.

Bit of a quandary that, when you think about it. For big brands, mass attention is like oxygen. They owe their whole existence to it really. And now that it’s getting harder to get, they can only be having asthmatic symptoms! And I know of what I speak. I have had asthmatic attacks.

And here’s how it goes. You start out breathing a little harder than usual. But you discount that. Hey it could be anything! No reason to panic. And this continues a while. And then you notice that breathing has become an effort. A real effort! It’s starting to take all the energy you have just to breathe. And that’s worrying But by now it’s too late. Unless you get medication really soon you will die from lack of oxygen. And you know it. I have had asthmatic attacks where the prospect of dying seriously crossed my mind. It creeps up on you.

I don’t have a neat wrap up for this blog post. Sorry!

WE DID SOMETHING A BIT RUDE. BUT RICH FULCHER MADE US DO IT!

Recently we at The Escape Pod came into contact with the American star of tw of the UK’s most unusual TV comedies, The Mighty Boosh and Snuff Box. Rich has a book coming out on Oct. 7 in the UK. It’s called Tiny Acts of Rebellion. In it, Rich suggests a myriad of ways in which we can all stick it to the man in small but satisfying ways.

To promote the book Rich had the idea of doing a flashmob. But instead of dancing around a trainstation, Rich wants to assemble an army of Tiny Rebels in front of enormous London clock Big Ben and tell it to fuck off. And he wanted to enlist our help in creating a recruitment website, doing a press ad, creating a logo for the event etc.

Two of us here at The Escape Pod, myself and Welsh art director Allan Stevenson, are ardent fans of The Boosh and so dove right in. WE WERE WORKING WITH RICH FULCHER!!! It was a true labor of love. And Rich, it turns out, is a very smart and nice guy. Insane Mighty Boosh Zoo owner Bob Fossil is purely a creation, I was relieved to find out.

We came into contact with Rich via Facebook of all places. I posted a video of Rich doing one of his most famous bits and pointed out to my mostly Chicago facebook friends that Rich is a Chicago native and is famous in the UK. A facebook friend, Dave Gassman, said that Rich was actually a friend of his (in real life!) and that Rich had a book coming out and would I be interested in helping out.

And that’s why I don’t like cricket!

Anyway, here is the website we created. And this is the logo we created.
And here is the print ad.

We also created this logo/twitter avatar.

Good luck with flashmob Rich. If you’re in London on Oct. 7 please go along and tell that smug clock what you really think of it.

Everyone needs to see this right now

It was done by a dutch animation/puppetry collective. They decided to take on the events of 9/11 no less. And they succeeded mightily.

You can watch it here. Choose “FILM” option. And then “History of The World Part XI”. It is truly awesome and amazing.

It’s coming up on the tenth anniversary of this campaign. Mother of God, how times flies!

The Wassup! Campaign for Budweiser kicked ass even beyond my wildest dreams. And my wildest dreams were pretty wild.

I remember meeting Cliff “Where’s the Beef?” Freeman at an industry “top ten best ads of all time” party in New York in 2003. We both had ads in the top 10. Both were famous catch-phrase based ads. He said something that resonated with me. He explained “I didn’t want to be ‘the guy did that one thing’ ”. I can relate. Wassup! is a bit of a bête noire as they say in Belgium. But a great one!

At the time some ad people doubted my claim that I had a vision for this. and that vision was pretty much what happened: America screaming “Wasssuuup!”. I never understood that. Why is that so inconceivable? Is it that unimaginable that someone might actually know what they’re doing in advertising.? If only I had, oh I don’t know, some proof that I did. Well it turns out that I do actually.

Recently I unearthed this document. My partner Chuck Taylor (real name) and I put it together late in 1999. We were a bit bothered and worried that although the Budweiser client had nominally bought the Wassup! idea, there was comparatively less action on our idea than other ideas bought at the same time. We were still waiting for the money to be released.

I feared they’d had second thoughts. And I feared that those second thoughts were based on the racial makeup of the proposed cast. I was wrong about that.

So I suggested we create something that implied that the train was rolling. And present them with the idea again. Real professional like!

So we created this presentation. Note the date. A month and a half before the first spot aired. I was close to despair!

And here was my impassioned plea to resell the idea. I meant every word. And it pretty much came to pass. Phew!

And here was Charles Stone’s treatment. The “RAY” he refers to was the role he ultimately ended up playing so wonderfully himself. At this point I figured acting and directing might be too much pressure for him. I was wrong. He was perfect. He was a star.

I was so desperate to get the campaign done that I erroneously assumed that there was no way Budweiser would run ads featuring an all African-American cast. Their previous campaign featured cute and funny frogs and lizards. Call me crazy! So here I dangled the possibility of a multi-ethnic cast. Because I knew we would have to do at least some casting anyway. Turned out it was very hard to say ‘wassup!” correctly. We ended up with the original cast of Charles’ friends. Plus two new friends of his. Chemistry!

And this was the first script that I wrote to sell the idea. Has there ever been a less interesting sounding commercial script? I recall being really bored just typing it out.

You can see the short film the campaign was based on here.

And this is the finished product. If you compare the two you’ll see how faithful we were to the spirit of the original short. We Just sped it up and added beer really.

Culture clash leads to better ideas

As an immigrant, i am never fully at home in my adopted land. America never runs out of surprises. And being an outsider has been a decided advantage to me in my career. I can look at the American culture objectively in a way a native simply can’t. That’s a big leg up when you’re trying to affect a culture.

Consciously or not, at The Escape Pod we have quite a mix given our size. Irish, Polish, Welsh, Korean-American, Finnish-Italian-American, Jewish-American. Native-American-American. And of course, regular American. Got to have a few of those too!

Every culture has its unique set of foibles and ideas. This means you automatically have a different point of view. Without even trying. So if you mix them up, you automatically get something interesting! It’s a fun and lazy way of effortlessly being different. Try it!

Direct communication. Irish style

A friend from Ireland recently sent me this. It needs no explanation.

Balloon Boy, Twitter, and the Online News Eclipse

i am a big fan and user of twitter. for a creative person it’s great mental chewing gum and generally keeps your pulse active. and, increasingly it’s serving as a news service, albeit an unfiltered and not always reliable one.

So when the Balloon Boy story hit twitter i was on it. Of course I was completely 100% suckered and totally believed that there was a six year old boy floating above Colorado. I had no reason to believe otherwise. I have an eight year old son myself and could readily imagine how such a thing might happen.

The Ballloon Boy story was the perfect example of an ONLINE NEWS ECLIPSE. I just coined that term btw, so all royalties this way please. An online news eclipse is what happens when a story like Balloon Boy (great human interest, bizarre, happening “live”) instantly monpolizes the attention of everyone , blotting out (or eclipsing!) all the traditional news outlets. It was an instant viral hit literally within minutes of first being reported. How we feel about the story can overwhelm what’s actually happening. Or not happening in this case. I was freaking out at the thought of a little six year old in almost certain mortal terror. As was any parent.

Turns out the whole thing was a fake. There was no balloon boy. Just another wannabe who wanted to get his face on TV at any cost. Well he got his wish. Thought not in the way he wanted. 15 years ago this would have been a blip on the news at ten. Now it can dominate our attention for hours. LIVE!

I get the feeling we are going to see a lot more of this. It’s inevitable. We’re all so connected and inter-connected on such a granular level that we no longer have time to think. We just react.

The whole episode reminded me of a quote about the future of media i saw years ago that had a huge influence on me professionally. It went something like…IN THE FUTURE PEOPLE WILL NO LONGER THINK AND READ. THEY WILL MERELY WATCH AND FEEL.

Kind of feels like we’re at that point. And I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing. Or, most probably, a good thing and a bad thing.

I got a new sticker for my Mac! (Am I running out of material?)

Sorry but some things are just too good not to comment on. I think this is one of them. Lots of folks got apple mac computers that they would just love to personalize, but dread marring what is a pretty sweet design. so creating apple logo centric things is a very smart way to go. it enhances what’s already there. and kind of pays homage to it too.

i got this doozy via Vinylville on etsy.com. It’s called “Snow White’s Revenge”. Snow White…apple…etc. don’t ask me what the mask is about. that’s why it’s art!!! Only 15 bucks.

i just know i will spend a lot of time explaining where i got this from. so i figured i might as well start now.

Here we go…

IS THE “BIG IDEA” DEAD?

Lately there has been some discussion over whether the big idea in advertising is dead. I should point out that, in my opinion, most of the proponents of this idea tend to come from people who work exclusively in the digital realm on the production side. And so arguably have a vested interest in the big campaign idea being dead. After all if the big idea is dead, there will be a demand for lots of little ideas. Presumably. It is true that the big — in terms of media spend — campaign idea makes less sense in the Internet age. Being responsive and tuned into the culture and the media just makes sense now in a way it wouldn’t have ten years ago.

Let me describe my notion of what constitutes a BIG IDEA. A big idea is one that is pregnant with meaning for lots of people. The very idea of it is exciting. The idea of Volvo as a safe car was a big idea. And an enduring one. Do you care about your child’s safety? Drive a Volvo. Nike’s glorification of the sweating athlete is a big idea. Big ideas tend to be elemental. That is, they speak to something fundamental in humanity.

Big ideas also make everyone’s life easier. We have all had brilliant ideas for Nike based on the UST DO IT idea. Oh sure, now it’s easy. Big ideas are participatory. Everyone can add to a big idea. If it’s a struggle to that, you don’t have a big idea. That’s the best test really.

My old boss (the guy who had the big idea for Volvo and others) used to say that big ideas go everywhere. Small ideas go nowhere.

There’s a big difference between a campaign idea and a big idea. A campaign idea can contain a big idea. But usually they don’t. Usually they’re just what the client wants you to hear. They are one sided. Big ideas have room for communication and adoption and resonance in the culture.

A big idea can be a campaign idea but it doesn’t necessarily have to be one.

So if the big idea isn’t dead, is the campaign idea dead? Not if it’s a big idea!

Video. The past and the future of advertising.

i’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. And here’s my conclusion. What does everyone love? a funny video. and if that funny video happens to be an ad it doesn’t really matter. so long as it’s hilarious. if you are truly compelling, you can get away with murder. being exciting works! ask anheuser-busch. and it’s great fun.

So ironically, after all that hand-wringing about microsites and widgets and social media, my conclusion is to create an involving video. if you have a better idea, let me know. but it seems to me, from experience, that video is still the shortest distance from A to B. why? because it’s effortless.

Let’s face it, reading stuff is kind of a pain in the ass. and interacting with stuff is even more of a pain in the ass. Watching stuff is comparatively easier. therefore video wins. and will always win.

U2 LIVE ON YOUTUBE. A GOOD IDEA.

Last Sunday night U2 played the Rose Bowl in California to a crowd of 80,000 fans. The gig was broadcast live in HiDef on YouTube. As you would expect from U2, the production values were impeccable – great camera work and staging. Watching it full screen on my new iMac with Bose speakers it felt like something new. Obviously I’ve seen U2 on screens before but this was special. It elevated the YouTube experience and the brand. U2 will probably sell a lot of records because of this broadcast, which was watched by over 7 million people. But arguably YouTube is the one that will benefit most from this. It was a great showcase for a technology that though hugely popular, is dogged by a somewhat inaccurate rep of just having low-brow, amateurish content. I can now readily imagine the Superbowl being broadcast live on YouTube. Why not?

Increasingly YouTube is forging relationships with movie studios and other producers of high end content.

Orson Welles famously said that the tragedy of film makers is that they are the artists that cannot afford their own tools. And it’s true. Despite technological advances, it still takes a small village to shoot film/video correctly. But equally importantly, it still takes talent and drive and vision to create great content. Look at U2.

A smart idea

i came across this in the newspaper this morning. it’s a neat little idea to promote the upcoming release of a kids’ movie. Alvin and the Chipmunks 2: the squeakquel!

my son and his friends LOOOOOVED the first incarnation of this, which was a big hit. It featured the legendary David Cross getting paid and doing a great turn as a record company bad guy out to exploit the falsetto singing chipmunks. innocent fun for innocent kids.

the movie comes out around christmas. and someone had the smart idea of doing a print ad that featured a chipmunk stencil pattern that kids (ie: their dads) can carve onto halloween pumpkins.

A nice idea that makes sense and is involving and adds to peoples’ lives. yes advertising can be more than empty hype. But only if you try!

ANVIL! THE STORY OF ANVIL. SEE IT TODAY.

at the urging of twitter’s own @johnpatricwoods i netflixed ANVIL! a documentary about a Canadian metal band. it was simply amazing. inspiring, funny, sad, immersive. It has everything. Anvil almost shook the hand of fame and fortune in the early 80s. i recall seeing them once in support of AC/DC (or was it Motorhead?). They were a really good and influential band but they just never got the breaks. Yet they plodded on. Never giving up hope.

And then one day they got a call from a longtime fan, Sacha Gervasi, an English Anvil fan who is now a successful hollywood screenwriter (and rumored to be the basis for Toby Young’s successful nemesis in the hilarious “how to lose friends and alienate people”). Sacha tracked them down and chronicled a year in their lives. He got lucky. Thirty years on the Jewish-Canadian rockers were weary but still unreasonably hopeful of success. It’s touching to see their faith in themselves and their music. And the film itself is really deftly handled. Which in doc terms means they got a great editor! Coz that’s where documentaries come together. In fact i am tempted to do a doc myself now. Look out world. I have a hi-def camera.

I highly recommend watching ANVIL! I haven’t been this psyched in a while.

Persistence pays

I have seen plenty of evidence that this is true in my own life. It is true. Reasonable people just give up after a certain point. thank god!

Although, like Groucho Marx said: If at first you don’t succeed, try, try,try again. Then quit. No point in making an idiot of yourself.

I had a very good example of how persistence can pay off from personal experience. In the late ’80s i went to an Irish music festival in london. i was just yet another young irish immigrant in the big smoke. The pogues, elvis costello etc were playing. it was a lot of fun. it was also very heavily policed and watched. choppers overhead etc. at the time the IRA were still exploding bombs in London. so understandably the cops paid extra attention to this event.

Between acts this middle-aged mother came out onto the stage. and in a quivering voice announced that her son had been imprisoned for 16 years for IRA pub bombings of which he and his three co-defendants were completely innocent of. It was incredibly moving. This poor woman had been doing this for years. Trying in vain to get her son, Gerry Conlon, out of prison. Her husband had died in prison a few years before. Their story was made into a movie called IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, starring Daniel Day Lewis.

They were known as The Guilford Four. They were young Irish immigrants who had been tortured and made sign confessions admitting they had planted these bombs. Dodgy scientific evidence was the “proof” that they were the bombers. Like pretty much every nation that has to deal with terrorism, the UK had suspended normal justice procedures to deal with this threat. Under the Prevention of Terrorism Act 1972, terrorism suspects could be held, without access to a lawyer for seven days. Well guess what happened. The cops, under severe pressure to get convictions for what were outrageous crimes, did whatever they had to do to get those convictions.

Anyway, seeing this poor woman made me determined to help in some way. So i started attending meetings of the organization to get these guys out of jail. I expected i would be part of a huge crowd. I wasn’t. It was a tiny group of mostly family members and was led by sympathetic English civil servants. i felt bad for them. there was clearly not a lot of hope of ever getting The Guilford four out of jail. They had been in jail for sixteen years at this point.

At their sentencing, the judge (who in the course of the trial had to have the concept of the T-shirt explained to him), said that his only regret was that the death penalty had been recently abolished for they would surely have merited it. instead they got 25 consecutive life sentences. Gerry Conlon was 18 years old.

The IRA itself had issued formal statements that they, not the people in jail, had committed the bombings. but to no avail. Both the BBC and ITV had done stellar investigative journalistic pieces that cast grave doubt on the convictions. all to no avail. it looked bleak. really bleak. they had exhausted their legal appeals and the story was old news.

Yet they never gave up. They kept chiselling away. Luckily they had an absolutely brilliant English lawyer in Gareth Pierce. She just kept hammering away for years. And then finally she found a key piece of evidence that had “gone missing”. Just like in the movie that was made about the case. it really happened like that. It was that dramatic.

And, just like in the movie, Gerry Conlon insisted on coming out the front door of the Old Bailey Courthouse. The other three had opted to be driven out the back door as the police advised. I remember because i was there. I had gotten the tip off from the family that maybe this was really it. And it was. We were surrounded by i would say, with no exaggeration, at least 2,000 english cops. After the dismissal of his conviction, Gerry strode out the front door to us (and the news media) and gave his famous protestation of his and the Birmingham 6’s innocence. Again, just like in the movie. It was incredibly moving. And it was the result of PURE persistence and faith. Nothing else. There was no way in hell these guys were EVER getting out.

It instantly became a huge news story in the UK and abroad. It was wild just to be even tangentially involved.

Funny follow up story that nobody knows. Three days after being released, a still-celebrating Gerry Conlon was in a car stopped by English cops on the motorway. There were drugs found in the car. The cop recognized Gerry and radioed HQ for further instructions. HQ said “Let them go!”.

Listen to Steve Henry

(if you don’t know who UK ad legend Steve Henry is, leave now! You are clearly not worthy.)

Recently Steve wrote this for his blog over at campaign magazine. Wise words.

MULTIPLE IDEAS

The best advice I can give you about pitching is this – brush your tongue as well as your teeth. Because 75% of the microbes which cause bad breath are on the tongue.

And 75% of pitches are about personal chemistry, not about ideas.

I remember when we used to get the intermediaries in to HHCL to talk about pitching. One of them told a very funny story about how a senior female client had said that she fancied “everyone in the room” of the agency which (surprise, surprise) went on to win the pitch.

It was a very funny story for lots of people – but not unfortunately for us, because we’d lost that particular pitch.

Again, I wonder if I’d spent more time in Savile Row and less time in Milletts, how different history might have been.

But as I said last week, if you want sexual chemistry, why not go to a speed-dating event ?

(Although in the case of some people I know, the dating would have to take place at the speed of light for them to pick up any positive responses.)

Pitches should be about ideas.

But don’t just take my word for it. Alex Bogusky is saying the same thing when he says agencies should be factories, rather than thinking they’re in the service industry.

And then, you have to look at one very important question.

Do you present one idea in the pitch, or several ?

Years ago, I remember writing a column where I criticised Saatchis for winning the Toyota pitch by using spectacular pitch theatre.

Basically, they’d somehow managed to get a Toyota into their Reception area, (by removing the glass from their windows, as I understood it) to create an impressive first impression.

I wrote rather huffily that surely strategic thinking was more important than knowing the phone number of a good glazier.

But the fact is that Simon Dicketts had come up with one of the best lines ever created for a pitch – “The car in front is a Toyota” – so it wasn’t empty theatre.

So, that’s one way of going about it – find a great idea and get 100% behind it.

And, if you’re pitching for Anusol, stick a giant arsehole in Reception.

(You’ve probably got one quite near there already.)

But look at the other option.

Because you could show a whole bunch of ideas – as long as all of them are provocative.

And then you could say – let’s make a few of these, and see what happens.

This is where it gets exciting. And this is what I think agencies should be advocating now.

Because creativity has changed fundamentally.

In bad, traditional agencies, 99% of the planning happens before the work breaks.

You get one script that takes 6 months to get through research, and it’s then put out there for a year or more, gathering dust and boring the pants off people.

In good agencies, at least 50% of the planning happens after the work breaks. Because half the skill of it is in developing and evolving it.

It has to be reactive, adaptive.

And that means being less precious about it all.

A very bright planner called Jon Leach who worked at HHCL was once working on a positioning statement for the agency – and he came up with the phrase “Strong opinions, lightly held”.

At the time I thought – that’s b*llocks, we’re about strong opinions, strongly held. But a minute later I thought – no, he’s right.

Rather proving him right, as it happened.

Because the agency loved to explore radical positions for clients, but we’d very rarely die on a sword for anything.

And I think we’d stumbled onto something very valuable about running work.

By being less precious about it, you can maybe create more value.

Present several ideas. Make several ideas. As I pointed out much later to the Whiskas client, there’s more than one way to skin a cat.

And all I care about is that the client does do something radical – rather than the invisible garbage which makes up 95% of our industry’s output.

When we first developed this multiple-idea approach all those years ago, we had to use research to help us pick the best idea out of several.

But that’s far from ideal – because research is tricky.

In fact, research is like sex.

Good research is very good, but bad research is the worst thing in the world.

It’s also like sex in that it involves one-way mirrors, cheap wine, M&S sausage rolls and some bored-looking women wondering if this is really the best use of their evening.

But these days you can push out several ideas and see which one gets talked about most on the internet – thus involving consumers directly and saving yourself the expense of using conventional research.

Because the one thing we know about conventional research is that it doesn’t work.

All new business launches use conventional research, but about 80% of them fail.

(That’s worse odds than avoiding halitosis.)

Charles Saatchi has a new book out

I just read famously reclusive ad legend Charles Saatchi’s new book: My name is Charles Saatchi and I am an artoholic. It’s basically the interview he never gave. He talks mostly about his legendary modern art collection. And a little bit about his advertising career.

Saatchi and Saatchi had an enormous impact on the ad industry and the UK culture. They famously helped elect Margaret Thatcher in 1979 with their LABOUR ISN’T WORKING poster, which captured the zeitgeist of the time. Britain was in bad shape and Maggie was the cure.

Charles was the creative guy, his bespectacled brother Maurice (now Lord Saatchi) was the business guy. Their mantra was “nothing is impossible” and they lived really lived up to it. They had boundless ambition and chutzpah, buying and selling agencies all over the world like they were second hand cars.

Charles is now mostly retired from the ad game. But in his day he was really good. He had a disarmingly direct but artful style.

I read something he said once that had a huge impact on me. It went something like this: in order to create something great you have to have an attitude about it. In other words you have to have thought about it from every angle and be 100% confident that you are right. Not just have vague feelings and lightly held opinions.

Having an attitude about something gives you and your work energy. And the energetic tends to displace the passive. So even if you’re wrong you may well prevail over those who aren’t quite as intense and focused as you are. Because chances are you’ll win all the arguments.

The new Levis campaign from Wieden & Kennedy

Over the summer i was shooting in boiling New York and found myself in urgent need of a clean T-shirt, so i wandered into a nearby Levis store. The store itself was a shrine to what i subsequently found out is their new ad campaign by the frequently great Wieden and Kennedy. I mean it was EVERYWHERE. Beautifully shot posters and banners. They were even selling t-shirts (lots of them) festooned with slogans from the new campaign. i have since found out that they even commissioned a new typeface that was hand-carved from wood. I love that. Can i have the uppercase “V” and the “W”? I can? great. thanks guys!

Whoever bought this campaign clearly loves it and is going all in on it. And good for them. I think it’s working. This enigmatic TV spot is currently all over the airwaves here. That’s an actual recording of poet Walt Whitman’s voice on an early wax cylinder recording from the 19th century. talk about texture.

I just read today that Levis’ earnings last year were down precipitously. Let’s hope that this campaign helps reverse that trend. Because regardless of what you might think of the ads (and i personally like them) it’s nice to see a marketer really lean into an idea and run with it. Good luck to all concerned. Go Levis!

A GRAPHIC EXAMPLE OF BREAKING ALL THE RULES

My 8 year old son Liam is an original. For Halloween this year he wanted to be a sheep. Couldn’t be talked out of it. We hoped he’d change his mind and want to be Darth Vader, but no. A sheep or nothing. So my wife painstakingly constructed the costume using a lot of cotton balls and glue.

Recently he entered a poetry competition. He decided he wanted to write a haiku on the the theme “Beauty is…” where the entrants had to creatively define their idea of beauty in some way. Could be art, photo, dance whatever.

Liam decided that beauty was birds. Specifically sparrows. I was relieved to see his final piece wasn’t too sparrow-centric.

When he showed us his final work it was apparent that he hadn’t exactly stuck to the rigid haiku structure. He loved it so much he kept that haiku structure going some more!

Because Liam doesn’t know that the haiku structure is rigid. To him it’s more of a rough guide. Because he hasn’t been told otherwise.

And guess what, Liam’s new improved haiku works too.