EXECUTION IS EVERYTHING PART XVIIIIIIIIIII

My idea for Mitt Romney.

I have become fascinated by the Republican party presidential race.

What started out as potential reality TV show has turned into an actual reality TV show.

We know too much about these guys already.

And we all know what familiarity leads to.

We kind of all realize that Mitt Romney is the only electable one of the them.

But he persists in attending debates where he is repeatedly flayed by his opponents and loses because nobody warms to him.

Nobody instinctively likes Mitt Romney.

Nobody.

Big problem.

And it’s compounded by the fact that bombs keep bombing all around his campaign. He is being criticized by his GOP opponents for being too successful an entrepreneur. What?

Nobody could have predicted this. His campaign has turned into a media circus that doesn’t favor him at all.

So my idea is: stop doing it Mitt.

Do something that favors you. And something that flows in your favor media wise.

You’ve already got some experience in reality TV, why not create your own reality TV show. NOW!!!

If i was an advisor to Mitt Romney, i would strongly urge him to do this.

Drop out.

Pick a struggling large employer in a small town in the south and spend the next year reviving it. maybe invest ten million dollars in it.

Create the Mitt Romney Creating Jobs reality TV show. Bring the media to you on your terms.

And show up for the debates fresh from creating jobs in Tennessee. shirt sleeves rolled up. out of breath from creatin’ all them jobs that you’re actually creatin’.

instantly he would diminish Newt et al by doing something only he can do.

And it would feel modern and real and effortlessly yield all his campaign ads.

MITT GETS THE JOB DONE!

(Finally,a Big Daddy Kane reference on my blog)

Check this monster out

It’s the Heaven’s Gate of pop culture reference.

A colossus of rights clearance conundrums.

It’s for the new NIKE Fuelband.

Wow.

Disclosure: i know one of the creators of this, Mike Warzin. And he told me it was better when they had Andy Kauffman in it.

Ye olde targette markette

I hate it when marketers talk about their “target market”, or “target” if you’re in a hurry.

It just feels like the wrong term.

It’s too militaristic for my liking.

Aren’t we trying to be friends?

And creatively speaking it’s of little use.

Personally speaking, I always create everything i create for everyone. All the time.

You can’t parse humanity, as my old boss use to say.

That’s why i loved working on the super bowl.

Everyone and their dog and their grandma, watched the super bowl.

Everybody had to love your ad or you were sunk. The “target” was America.

And the brands that everybody loved, Pepsi and Bud Light etc, were the ones that scored highest year in and year out.

Because they already had a lot of practice at being loved by everybody all the time.

This blog post in protest at SOPA/PIPA

Looks like the old US government is finding out the power of the internet to inform and organize.

Personally i have to admit i don’t know a whole lot about this proposed legislation.

But what I do know sounds terrible.

One of the great things about the internet is its statelessness and the way it polices itself. and the fact that if the power goes out, there is no internet. good to remember too.

Any attempt to control it, much less at the behest of large media companies, just seems ill advised to say the least.

So a hearty BOO! to SOPA and PIPA.

But of course SOAP and PIPPA are still cool.

You’ve come a long way Ricky!

Love how far Ricky Gervais has come in the USA culture.

Not sure his countrymen realize how big he is over here.

Americans looove them some Ricky Gervais.

That’s why he hosts the Golden Globes. The yanks love Ricky.

It just about blew my mind when he put this on the first episode of The Office years ago.

I loved how his character was the perfect example of what killed the popularity of the Budweiser Wassup! campaign. The annoying guy in the office does it. It’s over.

You live by the sword you die by the sword etc.

But I thought this little tidbit of association might someday entitle me to go to THE OFFICE fan conventions of 2020 and sell autographed WASSUP! tongues in the lobby.

Advertising’s, ahem, process.

As long as I’ve been in advertising and in every agency i worked at as a creative, this has been the “process”

PERSON 1: We need some advertising ideas about this in two weeks time.

ME: Cool!

And then we would go away and think about it and come back with some ideas in less than two weeks.

That’s all there is folks!

There isn’t any more.

And it’s the same thing at every advertising agency in the world, no matter how much they try to convince you otherwise.

I used to laugh at ad agencies that pretended they had a unique “process”. Like Ogilvy’s famous 360 degree thing. What does that mean, you say. Well, that’s Ogilvy’s hook. “Let’s talk about it!” says the Ogilvy new biz person.

It’s basically an attempt by bigger ad agencies to pretend that it’s not all voodoo when you hire this agency.

Oh no, here they have successfully harnessed the voodoo to work for you! No more guesswork, no more intuition, no more mystery. These guys have solved it for you!

I guess it’s an effort to soothe nervous/impressionable clients willing/wishing to believe that “process” alone will yield great advertising.

And if you examine this “processed” advertising you’ll find it to be a rather bland and unsatisfying dish.

The truth is creativity and creative execution is voodoo and always has been and always will be. Look at Hollywood.

So be sure you hire the best voodoo practitioner you can find.

Because all those smiling advertising people selling you on their surefire “process” are lying to you.

A word of advice for my foreign reader Gustav in Serbia

I live in America and have had the great good luck to have had my pick of directors over the years at various points.

And because i live in America i get to shoot my video with Hollywood’s best. It’s a real advantage

I was reminded of how lucky i am when i met with some UK creatives recently who had never shot outside the UK. The very idea of that made me shudder.

I told them to take full advantage of Hollywood.

Hollywood is a well oiled machine. Anything you can dream of they can make real.

It’s amazing.

If i was from Europe and looking to differentiate myself I would dive into Hollywood.

but the great thing about working in America is the breadth of directorial talent you can hire.
Because Hollywood is an industry town, the film talent flocks there. And even they need to pay the bills.

So we are kind of spoiled for choice.

The ad guy turned director. Lots of them now. can be great if they’re real artists.

The currently hot director. usually has an identifiable flavor. use him! use her! use them!

The famous movie director. you pretend you aren’t intimidated but you really are. so you don’t tell them to f**k off. and regret it later.

The random choice director. you found them and you’re taking a chance. you feel maternal about these guys.

I would like to add a new category to this list.

The guy who’s shot multiple HBO shows. Sopranos, Rome, Game of Thrones. And you’re worried if he can shoot your embarrassingly paltry story?

I was watching Game of Thrones and saw i’d worked with the director of one of my favorite episodes. He also did episodes of the Sopranos.

And the great thing about this tribe of HBO sanctioned directors is that they are pros of the first order. No ego. And they work fast.

And your ad will look like HBO!

David Mamet and I agree on this

A few years back i saw a film called GALAXY QUEST.

It was basically a parody of Star Trek and the fan culture that grew up around that TV show over the years.

But it was also more than that. Much more.

You’ll see what I mean if you watch it.

So for years, I’ve been telling everyone and anyone to see this gem of a film.

Because that’s what it is: a gem.

There’s something deeply satisfying about this film in terms of its story and structure.

At least that’s what I thought.

And until today I thought that maybe i was the only one.

But I’m not the only. Oh no.

Today i found out that no less than legendary American playwright David “Glengarry Glen Ross” Mamet considers it to be “a perfect film”.

Yesss!

Oh NOW you’ll watch it. Suuure.

Writing funny TV ads

Two years into my ad career i found myself working on Bud Light.

Bud Light was one of the biggest TV advertisers in America. And their advertising was really good. The brand grew at a breakneck speed for years, so the brand guys were pretty chilled out about the advertising.

And there was a constant need for new funny ads.

It was ideal from a career point of view.

I loved beer and i loved TV and i was young.

I had never done any TV before.

But I have always been able to wring laughs out of people.

I grew up working in a bar in Ireland. I think that helped.

But more importantly i had a good handle on what makes America laugh.

I had studied the culture intensely. Thank you Nick at Night in the 90s!

Americans love slapstick. So i figured that might work. And it did.

My first beer ad was voted best beer spot of the year by Ad Age magazine.

If you’re not a naturally funny person, you’re going to have difficulty writing funny ads.

Just as I’m not suddenly going to run the 100 meters in less than 10 seconds just because i’d really like to.

Really comedy is mechanical. It’s about beats and timings and tone. It’s musical.

It sometimes helps me is to pretend that my idea is not funny and is actually really serious. And treat the execution of it really seriously.

This has the effect of giving it a unique executional tone. It also distracts me from worrying.

Most funny ads just try to look and feel funny. And thus can be texture-free. Texture is what makes your ad stick in the mind.

Simply giving your comedy a nice cool look can really help.

What works best for me is comedy where the viewer has to work just a little bit to make sense of what’s going on. This way they get more involved in your story and laugh harder when they get it.

The biggest compliment anyone ever paid my work came from !!!NAMEDROP ALERT!!! Sir John Hegarty.

He told me that I instinctively understood the screenwriting maxim of enter late/leave early.

I had never heard of this maxim but it sure sounds good. Speed matters.

And if the viewer has to struggle just a little bit to make sense of your ad, they will be that much more involved from the outset.

So, for example, if your ad is set in a bar you don’t need an establishing shot of the exterior of the bar. It’s a bar, we get it! Get on with your story.

But the biggest secret to having funny ideas is this.

Get your funny ideas down to their simplest form. And then ask people what they think of them.
Pitch your friends, your spouse etc. Are they laughing?

The reason this is important is that it establishes you as Mr Funny Guy. Your ideas are on the line. Your ego is at stake. It takes courage to be funny.

And this is a real audience with useful feedback, so use it. You’ll find that you sharpen your ideas up a lot when you care about the reaction of your audience.

And the ideas that everyone likes and instantly laughs involuntarily at (watch their eyes!) are the funny ones. Keep those! And only those.

It really is that simple.