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The British Television Advertising Awards were as you would expect: excellent. The work was so compelling that, even though I was desperately hung over, I was bolt upright in my chair and focused the entire time.
If you can lay your hands on the reel or, better yet, watch a showing in a theater (because you’ll be in a crowd and can see just how much they like certain spots) I highly recommend it.
The Sony Bravia spot by Fallon London won Best in Show:
The Daily (Ad) Biz award for Best in Show goes to this spot for IRN BRU by The Leith Agency:
In addition to it being devilishly funny, the animation is fantastic, the song is original and haunting and the spot is extremely memorable.
Well done (and more to be said on this subject on my return from vacation).
This vacation thing I am on is more busy than I had expected. And, though I will be attending a viewing of the British Advertising Award Winners at the Walker Art Gallery here in Minneapolis, I will not be posting today.
Maurice Levy, chairman of Publicis, always seems to pop up with a quote or two that catches my attention, and today is no different. AdPulp is on scene with the usual juice on a Fast Company story that profiles Levy’s efforts to merge the targeted world of “marketing” with the creative world of “advertising.”
Of course, the thing that stuck out to me was Levy’s reason for getting into the ad business: “to chase skirt.”
He pulled that off with Gallic flair, I am sure.
What Levy is really saying, of course, is that advertising has a certain allure that sets it apart from other professions. It is a line of work that people think is glamorous, desirable and, to use an industry-ism, aspirational. He is not the only one to have wanted to be a part of the ad game because it seemed like it would get more envious glances than other careers. Why?
The 30-second TV spot.
Even a so-so spot these days, like Goodby’s for Sprint, is well-shot has high production values and slick editing:
As Tangerine Toad notes, shooting a commercial like this means a chance to go Hollywood and a chance to vicariously experience the glamor of the film industry. It means the Four Seasons and kicking around a film set. It means fancy dinners and drinks and a chance to see a movie star or two.
It is happening less often as TV is replaced by other tactics, specifically interactive, that entail less glamorous production.
And then what do you do to attract the top talent into advertising?
Perhaps interactive, specifically web videos, will demand the same type of production as your typical TV spot, and that will inject some of the old time glamor back into the business. Perhaps advertising will hold its own as MBAs become like undergraduate degrees and creative-types get methodologied and processed out of other fields. Perhaps the next great wave of creative thinking will change the industry as we know it and attract top talent because there is so much opportunity.
But I think that it is going to come down to salary.
You get what you pay for and, for a while now, advertising hasn’t been able to pay top dollar and has gotten on based on its reputation. But with Googles of the world now have a reputation of their own, and they pay a lot more, so the thought of scratching along in Manhattan trying to make it on a Madison Avenue devoid of swanky TV shoots when you could be doing well in sunny California at a hot, young, creative company just isn’t that appealing.
When I go to Google and do a search, it is clear to me which links are sponsored and which are most relevant (or best at optimizing their content for search engines). I like that because it is transparent what is advertising and what isn’t and I can choose for myself if one is more relevant than the other.
And sometimes the sponsored link is the most relevant. Happy days.
Google is a search engine, a corporation, and the fact that they have sponsored links is fine with me because they have to make money and anyway they are transparent about it.
Social media, like StumbleUpon and Digg, social media sites combining social bookmarking, blogging, and syndication with democratic editorial control that feature news articles, blog posts, and websites that are nominated by users and then promoted to the front page through user ranking and votes, are supposed to be entirely democratic. Nominations and rankings are supposed to come from “the people.”
Which is a nice idea and all…but easily open to tampering with.
Subvert and Profit allows advertisers to “buy” votes in an effort to get their website or product page featured on the front page of StumbleUpon or Digg. Advertisers can buy as money votes as they can afford at $1 a vote and Subvert and Profit will then pay $.50 a vote to each of their “voters” who vote for all of the sites and articles they are told to vote for.
There are harder ways to make money.
Of course, both StumbleUpon and Digg frown on this sort of activity and there is the chance that users who attempt to subvert and profit will be shown the door, though Subvert and Profit has strategies to “minimize the risk.”
Is this wrong or even immoral, as the blog Erica de Wolf asks? It is wrong insofar as the social media sites don’t allow it, but immoral? No.
It is going to endanger the social media model because, if I find out that corporations are just buying the top ranking instead of it being this great democratic choice, then those sites are of no use to me. I feel disgusted at how I have been sold.
There is a way out, however. Just post “sponsored” links that advertisers can buy next to the ones that have been democratically chosen, crack down hard on operations like Subvert and Profit, and keep it transparent.
I am traveling tomorrow, heading back home to the frozen tundra that is Minneapolis for another vacation, time with the family, a Christmas celebration, etc and so on. Luckily, I make up for all the days off by working eighteen hour days when I am in the office.
Can’t wait to get on that plane. Like Tangerine Toad, I am over this flying thing and expect the worst every time I have to fly because airlines always seem to deliver just that. Northwest, with your skint charging for aisle seats, and American, I haven’t forgiven you for that time you kept your plane on the runway in Dallas for two hours without air conditioning, are the worst offenders as far as I am concerned. AirTran gets a pass because their employees, especially in Atlanta, actually seem happy to help you. Weird, right?
Anyway, I will be posting through the holidays but just in case I go a little crazy with the egg nog, I wanted to send out Christmas wishes to all of my readers.
Merry Christmas.
Now get back to work, agency slaves – it’s not Christmas until Tuesday!
I was reading AdPulp this morning, as is my wont, and I came across a post by David Burn on the need for marketers, and agencies in particular, to pick up the pace:
“Agencies and their clients need to speed up their creative development processes. Six months is a joke today, at least when it comes to digital. Six days is more like it.”
Far be it from me to say that speeding things up is a bad idea…but having spent yet another night in the office until 3am, I am fully convinced that there are things that just take some time and that, with good planning and insights, relevant and breakthrough campaigns can be created without the need to push the agency and its people to the wall.
Which is what happens these days.
Quick reactions are great and all, but brand building is still something that is a craft. And crafts really need to be crafted.
I like when fast food restaurants, especially the traditional burger guys, just tell it like it really is and stop tip-toeing around the fact that their burgers are big, greasy, unhealthy and totally indulgent. They are not something that you should have every day, but doesn’t that make the times that you do have them better?
At least until you’re in the bathroom and hour later.
DDB Stockholm took that strategy and ran with it for the new McDonald’s Big N’ Juicy burger launch where they created this fantastic outdoor piece:
It made me laugh, is pretty creative and it definitely makes me think that the Big N’ Juicy is exactly what the name says…even though I am pretty sure that it’s not.
Agency Spy, that central hub of industry gossip dogged by a very un-user friendly new site, has taken the traditional end of the year list gimmick and given it a new twist by inviting “a bunch of big deal advertising shop owners, ECDs and a-plus bloggers to answer a series of questions” and then posting their answers without attribution…just in case things got a little, um, off the record.
I am not a-plus enough to have gotten the questions sent my way, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t be answering them.
Please feel free to email me (dailybizblog, yahoo, you know the drill) or leave a comment if you too have the inclination to make your own end of year list. And who doesn’t really? These things are always interesting, at least in passing.
1. What was the worst campaign of the year?
Without a doubt, it is the new Subway campaign featuring Peter Griffin from Family Guy. Not only is this campaign the only possible way to make Peter Griffin unfunny, but it takes a brand that is perfectly positioned to take advantage of that whole wellness trend thing and goes off into irrelevance:
2. What was your favorite campaign of the year?
This is sadly unoriginal, but Mac vs PC is the best campaign of the year. From the casting to writing to the art direction, everything about it is perfectly tuned to build the Apple brand while pulling a strangely pleasant hit job on PCs. Usually comparison ads like this do not result in a brand halo and goodwill for the attacker, but when they are done this well they are.
3. Which client is the worst to work on (can be one yours, was one of yours or someone else’s)?
4. Which CMO deserves being whacked for his work this year?
It has got to be the CMO of Ford. Finally, the marque is building cars of (and above) Japanese-quality, their designs are contemporary and appealing and I have actually overheard people who are surprised to learn that the car they saw was a Ford and yet a huge swathe of consumers, especially younger consumers, has no interest in purchasing a Ford simply because it is a Ford. That is a branding issue. While it is an issue for all of the Big Three, this year Ford actually had the products to change perceptions, but kept rolling out the usual dreck. That has gotta change.
5. Which ECD has the biggest ego of the year?
Though I considered David Lubars because I am convinced that he keeps Googling his name, he at least has the work to back up his ego where as Bozo the Clown, lead CD at the House of Biz does not. Yet he still thinks that he is David Droga or something. Gotta have the work first, douche.
6. Which brand should fire their ad agency pronto and why?
BMW. I know that the new CMO wanted his own guys and all that, but the dichotomy between the quality of the work from Fallon and the mediocrity from new agency GSD&M is embarrassing. It’s time to bring in someone who can get it done.
7. Which advertising agency should consider firing its top level management?
Y&R. That agency is just a random assortment of accounts housed under one roof. There is nothing that sets them apart, nothing that makes something “Y&R work” and no real reason for them to be around.
8. Which agency is likely to suffer (losses, employees jumping ship, revenue slides) the most next year?
9. What shop has done the best work in 2007 (other than your own of course)?
If “best work” means best new breakthrough idea and not most advertising that matches the style and tone that I like, then clearly the winner is Droga5. Sure, I panned their Honeyshed idea, but nobody had yet thought to bring QVC online just like nobody thought about selling books online before Amazon. The idea is simple, but if it works it is a completely out-of-the-box idea for an ad agency, and if it works like Amazon’s did then some people are gonna get rich.
Honorable mention goes to Anomaly for their new look at agency compensation. Gotta get paid.
10. Which broadcast spot made you want to hurl?
Burger King’s “Sponge Bob No Pants” spot. Let me get this straight…to sell food, you are going to show a shirtless man wearing a sponge on his head talking about how he has no pants on?
11. What was your favorite spot (that your shop did not create)?
Dr Pepper’s “Cherry Chocolate Rain” viral video. It’s a viral video that actually went viral using a guy, Tay Zonday, who is really funny and Y&R must be red in the face because their client is more creative than they are. Win, win, win.
You know how lawyers really like lawyer jokes because secretly they know how skeezy their profession is and they are rich enough to laugh at themselves (disclosure: my brother is an attorney and all of the above is true)? Advertising it like that, only without the rich part.
It’s the time of year in the ad industry…when every single project goes to the wire, industry rats rarely see home and Christmas can’t come soon enough. There is just too much to do before the holidays and too few clients around to approve it.
At least that is my excuse.
And I am not the only one. The office here was positively hopping last night at 10:30 with a good half of all staff still at their desks working away like little underpaid, over-hip worker bees (worker bees who complain about ordering sushi for dinner again…you know what, if you want something different, sort it out yourself). It’s not just crazy here at the House of Biz, either.
