Last ever post on this blog

Hi.

Well. This blog is now obsolete. I no longer write letters and the term DM seems a million years old. It's all chaning.

I'm going to up sticks and move to another blog...here:

www.robbierae.wordpress.com

It will be a more standard blog. Sometimes about work. But sometimes about other stuff too.

Thanks for reading.

We all stand together (sung in a frog chorus style)

I wish agencies would form some kind of union.

A charter, if you will, and only agencies who have signed up to the behaviors agreed in the charter are invited to awards and are mentioned in the trade press etc. etc.

And then agencies could stand strong against clients who treat agencies, consitently, like shit.

I don't know how it would work. But the idea that a client can fuck agencies over simply because another agency will do it for less, or quicker or whatever seems wrong.

Agencies should be prouder. Plumbers are more proud than agencies.

I guess, I'm back on this again: http://http://i-write-letters.blogspot.com/2008/07/following-client-servicing-through-to.html

If a client wants an agency, they should be bound by conduct. Or they should do their work themselves.

One example, if a client asks agencies to pitch and doesn't give the business to any of them. But takes an idea from one of the presentatiosn...BOOM!...blackballed. No agency should touch them. Fuck off. Learn some manners.

This might be a bollocks idea. But I'd like to hear the argument against.

Dave Trott

I love Dave Trott. I think he's one of the industry greats

He has a blog on his agency's website.

I think it should be on the curriculum for everyone vaguely connected with any business.

Here, he talks of planners:

http://cstadvertising.com/blog/2008/10/10/what-went-wrong/

And I agree with him. It's a good blog though. Definitely worth a daily view. It will give you a competivive edge

(Sorry for the lack of posts lately. I've been on the 70 hour week train_)

Yammer is good

If you are too involved with your work and, no matter how hard you try, struggle to live a life like a normal half-assed human being

http://www.yammer.com/

also, if we're recommening shit

http://www.blip.fm/

is the fucking mutts nutts if you are sat at your desk doing nothing.

Sporting Metaphors

I would love to write something here about how shite sporting metaphors are.

How you get some big hitting CSDs or CEOs who draw a footballing comparison to everything they do. And how fucking lame it is.

Someone once even told me that they were "like Roy Keane." True story.

Yeah, man! The Roy Keane of Marketing.

I wonder if Roy Keane likens himself to a Head of Data Planning?

The problem is that I can't slag sporting metaphors because it would make me a hypocrite. You see, I use them all the time. I know it makes me a complete bell-end. But it's really my favourite frame of reference.

And this morning, as I awoke with that familiar autumnal chill, I remembered that it's soon time for the NFL. Which, though I am loathe to admit it, is probably my third favourite sport, as I am something of a yankophile.

And I always find the old gridiron a good place for a DM analogy.

Currently, I'm mulling over the QB and his offensive line. For the four of you out there who read this blog and who might be unfamiliar with the concepts, a quarterback is the person who executes a play, and the offensive line are the fat cunts who get in the way of the defence, whose sole purpose is to knock the living fuck out of the poor old quarterback.

It's a natural analogy: quarterback = creative work/creative person. offensive line = client services and planners (ostensibly). defence = the forces of darkness that conspire to decapitate your concept. Or "clients" as they are sometimes known. ;-)

Creative work can only be executed correctly if it is protected by those around it. If not it will be trampelled all over. For a loss.

I imagine that, historically at least, the offensive line was strong in above-the-line agencies. That's why the work was so good.

In DM agencies it's been historically weak. Partly because the offensive line held the QB with contempt and rather enjoyed seeing him getting a stamp on the testes. But, you know, they'd give it a bit of a go.

But lately, it seems to be getting even worse. Lately, it seems that the offensive line are joining in with the defense. The minute the ball is snapped, the offensive line turn round and stamp all over the QB along with the defence.

Now I don't know much, but I know that even Joe Montana would have struggled to do anything brilliant in those conditions.

Work needs defended. Because there will always be people who would happily do a dance on its head. And those fat cunts aren't in the team because they make good quarterbacks. They are in the team to be fat cunts.

Where am I going with this? I don't know.

Does this post even make any sense?

I need a drink.

Pass me that bottle.

DM Portraits: Two

Owner of a small DM agency in Bath. Or somewhere.

Oxford educated. Wears a suit jacket, open shirt and jeans. Bald head. Thick glasses. Tall.

Understands the theory of marketing entirely. Has no instinct for it at all. He reads the books, and the trade press, and says the things that people who are in the know are supposed to say. He just wanted to do something that would impress his uni friends. And his Dad. Advertising and Graphic Design sounded just right. Luckily enough, he had the money to start a company.

Calls himself a 'planner', but in reality he's no such thing. In reality, he's an entrepeneur.

He respects creatives. He likes meetings. I mean, he really likes meetings. He likes to own the meetings. If he could, he'd actually marry a meeting.

He is all over clients like a rash. Pushy, elbowy, yuppie, shithouse.

He leans back in his chair at meetings and puts his hands behind his head. He nods a lot. his nodding is louder than the person speaking.

He has fucking dinner parties every weekend. He values money and status - he drives a sports car. One of Thatcher's children, he loves his life.

His agency is shite.

Doesn't say "strategy," he says "sdradegy." Doesn't say "creative," he says "creadive."

Have you seen this man?

He probably shagged a female client of yours for a slice of business.

The twat.

Another anti-client vid.

Seen a few of these in my time.

This is the latest one doing the rounds.

I don't know why they make my heart sink but they do. This will soon be shown in every client meeting as a 'break the ice' type joke, I'm sure. Ho ho ho. Aren't we so unreasonable. Everything is shit. Ha ha!

Great.

But this one can be viewed a little differently. This vid doesn't just show what twats clients can be. It also shows what twats creatives can be.



http://view.break.com/542649 - Watch more free videos


That ball-less creative doesn't once argue. If he gave a shit about his work he would have fought for it. That's part of the job. That's the stomach ulcer bit: the fighting. That's what makes us good or bad. It's no good looking exasperated and beating your wife up when you get home. The word "no" is allowed.

This video is not a good example of how annoying clients are. It's a good example of why it's important that creatives fight for their work.

That video is a good example of why clients should want their creatives to be difficult. It's our responsibility to defend our work in order to give the client what they need.

NB

Where were the suits in that video?

Dear Pices.

Has anyone ever split the data according to astrology?

You know, mail scorpios with credit cards. Mail aquarians with charity asks. That kind of thing.

I know it's a load of old bollocks. But there may be some merit in it. After all, a large percentage of the world have collected a lot of data for us to use in this regard.

And while it is all categorically bullshit, you'll probably find your creative department all have birthdays in February and October: Aquarians and Librans.

The reason I ask this, is surely it would be as scientific a process as getting those twatty consultants to come in with a new model of how you can best categorise mankind.

They usually have stupid terms like: Generous Submitters, Egocentric Analysts, Horse Rapists and Flatulent First Timers. They slip into the agency parlance for about a fortnight.

Companies spend millions on testing this shit. Then it fails. Then three years later, another failed businessman has another theory about how to deconstruct mankind (yeah, cos it would be that easy) and sells it to companies.

My point is simple. If we are going to spend money on segmenting personality types, why not spend it on an ancient form based on the planetary motions? Cos if we're talking bullshit. Let's start at the beginning.



*PS - the feed on the right says that Craik Jones is merging with Proximity. That's a shame. A great agency in its day.

DM portraits: number one

Just an idea for a series of posts. I'm going to draw a kind of planner-like pen protrait of the kind of people you meet in integrated agencies. None of them are real people. But a kind of type that you can encounter on a regular basis.

Type one.

She's a female copywriter around 40. Old fashioned DM copywriter. Into the words, not the ideas. Her biggest hate is music in the office. "SHE JUST CAN'T CONCENTRATE". So you all have to sit in silence while the miserable bitch takes 3 days to write a piss easy letter for some financial institution.

Probably into The Cure as a young girl. Ill once a month. Complains constantly about things. Doesn't understand the young. Prefers female suits to male ones. Holidays all booked and organised on the first day of the new year.

Very particular about the food she eats. Never actually written a novel, but would like to write one, and that's good enough for her. Types letters in courier.

Needs a cock up her arse.



Have you seen this woman?

"Call to action"

Every now and then, some the terms we use make me laugh.

Today it's "call to action."

When you analyse that, it's a pretty lofty term.

"And now the call to action....where I assemble the masses under my rallying cry and send them inspired towards the telephone or internet."

Mark Antony. Now he was a man who could execute a call to action, at least according to Willy the Bard.

Henry V too.

Does Fat Bob the Freelancer join these illustrious demagogues when he writes "so don't delay call this fucking number now. Or, if you prefer, visit our website, at twat.com"?

Hardly.

"Call to action."

God, we take ourselves so seriously.

Propositions

Go on then.

Propositions.

Are they actually fucking pointless or are they, as planners will tell you, "the most important thing in the whole process"?

I've seen about three exciting propositions in my life. Sometimes they are planners writing headlines. Sometimes they are suits writing novels.

I think the problem is the form. A proposition has to be this that or the other. I'm going to hear Steve Harrison talk about what he reckons they are soon. I'll report back when I find out.

Why can't a proposition be one word?

Cheaper....Freedom....Together....Finite....Faster....Convenient.

I could work with that.

The problem is the planners would then take two weeks trying to find a way to make EVERYTHING one word. It would need a rigid structure.

"We've got 'long-term' here as the proposition. But that's not one word is it? Do hyphens count?"

It doesn't matter. I know what you mean.

Fuck form. We once ran a proposition for the NSPCC that was a picture of a baby crying. The resulting DRTV ad was a huge success. Mad proposition. But it worked.

All this form "you've got 10 seconds to convince them" "what's the one big thing" "what's the inspirational truth"

all fancy ways of saying "what's the proposition" that never actually work. They make non creative people have to submit ideas into form. And that's not fair.

The worst proposition of all, however, is when a planner has tried to write a really good proposition. They often read like this...

"Feed your speed" or "Because Soap Matters" or "Spec-tacular glasses"

I'm pretty sure Just do it and Beanz Meanz Heinz were not propositions. Nowadays they would be. But if Beanz Meanz Heinz was a proposition that campaign would never have run. The creatives aren't going to use the propositions as ideas. The proposition for that campaign was probably "Heinz should be your choice when deciding to buy baked beans."

Something that simple would probably be beyond your standard planner. It has to be BRILLIANT. Look at this brief!!

Why? No-one else in the world will.

Brilliance is the job of the creatives. And it's fucking difficult to become a creative. It's not right that Oxbridge grads come and hijack our job through the back door. Planners are a lineman, not a quarterback. Planners are a radar operator not pilots. It's not right that they should steal the glory and try and limit the idea through a greedy brief.

We score the goals. Planners set them up. That's how it should be.

Propositions are not that important. Creative work is important. Consumers actually get to see that.

What is your agency proposition structure? What the shittest one you've seen?

Following client servicing through to its natural conclusion

We've all worked with some bad suits.

We've all worked with some really good ones too. But for some reason it's the bad ones that stick with you.

I think the thing I've always been most annoyed with is the idea of "giving the client what they want."

Don't get me wrong, I love keeping the client happy. I take great pride if a client gets promoted because of my work. I love presenting. Shit, my DAD was a client. I like them. I criticise them, yes. But I like them.

But I despair of the attitude that we exist to give clients what they want.

That's not what I exist for. I doubt it's what you exist for, either.

We especially do not exist to give a snotty juniour product manager what they want.

We exist, as the old cliché goes, to give the client what they need. The difference is enormous. Perhaps we need to exert a lot of energy in persuading the client that what they need is perhaps not what they want, but that is the job.

There is a "client is king" mentality that you normally hear in mid size agencies just as they are about to expand into a large agency. You know the type, the agency that's just about to win British Telecom or Lloyds TSB. The business just about ready to sell out to Globalcorp.

Client is king. I've never heard a good small agency utter this maxim. I suspect this is because nobody is driven to start a creative business simply to give someone else an easier life. I suspect you start an agency because you believe you have a way of doing things. You have a theory about our industry and you can sell this theory to clients who can pay for it and who will, ultimately, reap the benefits of doing so.

Giving the client what they want is necessarily an impediment to doing what the agency wants. And you work for the agency, not the client. Client is not king. Agency is king.

I've known many client services people who might as well work for the client. They are like spies, fucking the agency over at every point in order to be popular and have friendships with the client.

But the truth is, if we follow the ethos of client servicing through to its natural conclusion, then we do all of our work for free.

The client doesn't want to pay us for our work, not ideally. So if we give the client what they want, then we should wake up every morning and make big corporate companies rich and accept nothing in return.

Very happy client. (They'd still fuck with the work though).

That, to my mind, would be the definition of a futile existence: making the rich richer out of the goodness of your heart.

Bollocks to it. A waste of a life.

I haven't got anything to say right now

So I'm just keeping quiet.

Cheers.

Spend the afternoon with a genius

I was going to post about the Government trying to stop companies getting access to the electoral register and how it will lead to more unsolicited mail rather than less.

I was going to question why people give such a fuck about unsolicited mail.

I was going to say how the BBC using pejorative terms such as "junk mail" is against their ethos of unbiased reportage. I do not pay my license fee to have my livelihood criticised.

And then I realised that I was guilty of the cardinal sin: namely, TAKING DM SERIOUSLY.

So instead, if you're quiet at work, why not enjoy one of the greatest geniuses of the last century talking about his life and his pursuit of ideas. This is a man who on the one hand had equity in the destruction of Hiroshima but, on the other ,helped us make more (or less) sense of the universe we live in.

Ladies and gentlemen, let us bask in the presence of a genius - a real one (not one of those M&C Saatchi pretend ones). For once let us ignore the daily banalities that put food on our table and celebrate the capabilities of mankind.

Richard Feynman:

"When you doubt and ask, it gets a little harder to believe"



Part 2



Part 3



Part 4



Part 5



Intelligent stuff.

Nearly as clever as that fucking fuzzy felt mailing.

Burn Your Bridges

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Mailing bills.

I'm never paying a bill again.

I'm going to claim that I thought it was junk mail and threw it in the bin. And that I had no way of telling that it was something I had to open. Readers' Digest tell me they have "important information" enclosed. Therefore, everyone who mails me can get to fuck. I refuse to open the envelopes. It may be Oxfam...it may be Council Tax. I have no way of telling.

Would this land me in trouble?

Are we legally obliged to open all of our mail?

Has anyone ever used this excuse to the authorities before?

Falling in love again.

I've been spending most of my time working on websites of late.

I'm finding it infinitely more fun than mail. So much more of a challenge. So much more opportunity to actually earn your money.

There's the rich media components - which are the equivalent of tv ads with their scripts, directors, concepts, and shoots etc.

There's the HTML stuff. Which is your standard (copy)writing job. Information well told and made accessible.

There's the SEO stuff. Which is where your flogging skills and wordsmithery come to the fore.

And then there's the design. Which, while not the copywriter's job, is so closely related to your work that it reminds me of the the wonderful interplay between words and pics that you used to get in press and poster ads.

It's all the things I like about work rolled into one.

It's also good to know that words are a crucial component of most interfaces, so to be a copywriter has a professional relevance again. If a website has to be 'built', then we are the plasters and the decorators.

Websites are fucking boss.

And you can't throw them in the bin.

The wisdom of Brian Clough

"Football is a simple game made to look complicated by idiots"

***

Thus spake the legend that was Brian Clough. Now if ever there was a quote that drew parallels with what we do, then there it is.

The Creative Insinct

I'm a big believer in the creative instinct.

That invisible element that underlies our talent, or lack thereof.

The creative instinct is only found in the good creatives. And if it doesn't exist in someone, all the writing and art directing skills in the world amount to piss in the wind. The creative instinct, in my view, is the element that separates artists from admen.

It's that thing that makes you say "trust me, it will work".

I'd back the instinct of one brilliant creative to beat all the research, learnings, graphs and charts in the world.

This instinct is often hated, because you can't learn it. You've got it or you haven't. That annoys ambitious people who don't have it. So they try to kill it and ridicule it to level the playing field. they create their false gods of planning and formulas etc.

That doesn't change the fact that it remains the killer element that gives an agency a competitive edge. ATL example: Cabral at Fallon.

You can see the creative instinct at work wherever you look. One of my favourite examples is the product name "I can't believe it's not butter." I can picture someone coming up with that idea, and every other person saying that it was a shit idea and that the product should be called "Fat-lo" or something like it. I can also imagine the response: "Look, I know it sounds weird, but trust me, I just think it will stick in people's minds and resonate with them."

Good non-marketing examples are Noel Edmunds and Paul McCartney. A pair of cunts, I grant you, but that's beside the point. They have the creative instinct in abundance.

Imagine Noel Edmunds sitting at the dinner table with Mrs Edmunds.

Noel - "I've had a brilliant, idea, darling"
Mrs Edmunds - "Another one, darling?"
Noel - "Yes, darling. Tell me what you think....It's a great big blobby man. Covered in big pink blobs. All he ever says is "blobby blobby blobby". And his name is Mr Blobby! Good eh?"
Mrs Edmunds - "Darling, I'm phoning the nurse now...."
Noel - "I'm telling you, they'll love it. He'll even get a Christmas number 1."

Old Tidy Beard knew what he was doing. Same with Paul McCartney when he wrote Mull of Kintyre and We All Stand Together. Both charted at number 1....WTF?

These were all, ostensibly, shite ideas. But the creators knew their market. They understood their audience. They knew that what seemed risky was actually the safest thing in the world.

The problem we face in creative departments is that people want certainty, not hunches. And people who don't have hunches don't trust them. They want graphs and plans and damage limitation. They want to be as important as you. More so, even. They don't trust your instinct like you do.

But the creative instinct isn't a shot in the dark. It's developed through years of exploration and sensitivity. It's developed through conversations with old men in pubs. Talking to the woman behind the counter in Tesco. Making jokes at bus shelters. Summers spent working on building sites. It's developed through nights in prison. Getting beaten up. Getting your heart broken. Breaking someone else's....

The creative instinct is real. The problem is that we never took notes when we were developing it. So no-one trusts it.

It's like Einstein arriving at a conference and saying "E=MC2" and expecting everyone to understand it. "But it's the theory of relativity" he'd say. "It's one of the greatest scientific discoveries of all time."

He would have been told, point blank, to fuck right off.

It's only when he showed the workings that people believed him. But the fact that he showed the workings to people didn't make E=MC2 less true. It just justified it.

There is no justification for the creative instinct. We're just right. We forgot to take notes when perfecting our understanding of humanity.

Trust us.

Or get rid.

It's just a strapline

I'm always amused by the idea that time is commensurate with volume.

If something is simple. Then it shouldn't take very long.

Not long ago I had someone trying to book in a half hour of my time to come up with a strapline for a new client.

They said "It's just a strapline."

Just a strapline.

Like 'Just do it'. Or 'Never Knowingly Undersold'. Or 'Every little helps.'

Just a strapline.

Those are only three words in each of those examples. So I can't imagine they took very long at all.

I think we should apply this volume- to-time-spent ratio to other aspects of life.

For example, your child's name. It's only a word. So it should take you, what, five minutes to come up with?

James. There we go. Job done.

All these months people spend thinking about their child's name ... the name their child will live with for the rest of their life ... is just inefficient.

Results and ideas

The difference between results and ideas to me underpins a lot of the complications a dm-er (whatever that means these days) faces.

For me, if you're going to be judged by results, hard-and-fast results, then that should be your priority.

Some creatives will sneer at this. But fuck them. Getting results is not easy. Beating controls is not easy. People will turn their noses up at a 1% response rate and say why not get nearer 90%. Well, my challenge to those creatives would be...try it. Without changing the mailing list, go and get a 90% response rate. You won't succeed. So shut the fuck up.

Beating controls is not easy. It's like beating a proven champion.

There are two ways of going about it - the first is just to guess, the second is to calculate. Personally, when it comes to beating controls, I like to employ the second approach.

I like to look at the control, question the little fucker, analyse it...and then try to outwit it. Is it a creative process? Well, I suppose not. Not conventionally, at least. It's more akin to a bearded labcoat with test tubes bubbling away.

It's more a test of intelligence than creativity.

There is definitely a case for coming up with a cracking idea and just seeing what happens. But most times, that doesn't work. To me, it's an admission of inability. It's guess-work. And while that's often very creative, it also results in failure most of the time.

Beating controls is difficult. And a different process from the kind of Watford college approach to DM. And to be honest, I find it a more rewarding process. Because when your hypothesis is proven right you get a sense of satisfaction. Even if you create the most creative mailpack in the world. It's still only a fucking mailpack. No-one cares.

Ideas, however, are different.

It's a different kind of fun. You can attack it with your imagination and creative flair. Here, with TV ads, press ads and websites, you can really express yourself creatively and show off to your friends. I love this too. This is the stuff you can put in your book and will win you awards.

But I'm not sure I'm fond of the meeting of the twain. And I think understanding the difference will only become more important as we get more interactive. Are we selling? Or are we wowing?

Results are results. Something cool is something cool.

The two shouldn't really be mixed up. Otherwise you end up an uncool failure.

And we've got enough suits already.

Enthusiasm: part two

There's a lot of enthusiasm in our business.

That would be a good thing, if it was all genuine.

But it seems that enthusiasm is a often a kind of confidence trick. It's used to hide deficiencies. It's another level of dishonesty.

Where else do people answer "absolutely" instead of "yes"?

"You got that project covered?"

"Absolutely!"

How very affirmative and can-do!

But that's tip of the iceberg stuff. The enthusiasm I can't stand is the shithouse enthusiasm that promises the impossible to clients. You know, that kind of enthusiasm politicians employ that makes them unable to talk in terms of reality?

I've been in many meetings, I'm sure you have too, where everyone is getting all enthusiastic about stuff. Maybe it's a good thing, I don't know. But there's just something I don't trust about it. I imagine it's how Haig and Robertson addressed their military strategies in the Great War.

"How about we just walk over the top?!!"

"Fucking wicked idea!"

"I know!!"

I think sometimes, when people don't know what they are talking about, they decide to get really enthusiastic about it.

Wasn't it only the clever people who would put their hand up at school if they didn't understand?The idiots just nodded. Not knowing.

The real problem I have with mindless enthusiasm is that the people who carry it out rarely have to deliver on it. It's quite possible for a creative director, planner or account person to promise the impossible and then blame the creative team for not delivering. Where instead, it is the duty of the people in these jobs to interrogate the possibilities, and return to the creatives with something that can be built upon. Not doing so is yellow and political.

"But that's the creative challenge!"

"I'm sorry. Let me get this right. You want something that is white and only white. But at the same time black and not at all white? Is that right?"

"You're the creative guy!"

Creativity can take place in the real world. We don't have to lie to ourselves all the time.

I swear, if a creative was in a car with a planner, a creative director and an account man, and they were driving towards a cliff, and the creative was to say that continuing in this way would result in everyone's certain death, the creative would be fired for cynicism ten seconds before he died.

The face of deduction usually wears a furrowed brow.

I'm not sure why a results based business like ours should be any different.

Enthusiasm: Part One

Been a while.

But I figure I should keep going as the world of DM is becoming rather more interesting of late. A post on that another time, though.

For now, I just want to comment on 'enthusiasm.' It's a big old subject, and a passion of mine (I hate enthusiasm; enthusiasm starts wars and encourages idiots to do stupid things. )

But this is just about enthusiasm for the product.

It's the usual self-opinionated twaddle. But indulge me.

I reckon enthusiasm for the product is the client's business. And, eventually, the creative team's.

Enthusiasm for the product in the mind of the planner, however, is a recipe for DM disaster. If you are enthusiastic about a product, everything is a benefit.

"But it's BLUE!"

"But you really CAN save money"

As a creative, I prefer sceptical planners. That way, when the USP (if we're being old fashioned), the insight (if we're talking shite), or the emotional reason to do something crops up, it will be irrefutable.

A good brief should be self-evident: sceptic proof.

Enthusiasm for the product - by the fact of the product alone - perpetuates not only shit products, but ineffective work.

I'm not a planner, though. So this might be a load of old bollocks.

(Which, ironically, would probably set me in good stead for a job in planning. Ho ho.)

Adios.

This blog is boring

So I'm not posting for a while

Too much cynicism eats at the soul

Reflections on the teacher's strike

Today the teachers are on strike.

Last night was a leaving do for our ECD.

These two events conspired to have me lying in bed all morning listening people talking about the teaching profession on the radio while I nursed a hangover.

It seems that the perception remains that teachers don't live in the 'real world'. Caller after caller rang in saying the same thing. "They should try living in the real world"

As a DM copywriter, I find this amusing.

Teaching is one of the few professions where you are exposed to all of society's perceived ills. You get a unique insight into families. You are affected directly by government policy. And you are responsible for the education of the next generation.

Today. This DM copywriter strolled into work at midday with a hangover. Made some amends on some website copy. Watched Marvin Hagler on YouTube. And will no doubt go home and watch some TV if he can keep out of the pub.

I earn perhaps twice as much money as a teacher.

And never once has someone accused me of 'not living in the real world'.

A few weeks ago I wrote a letter from a Dog called Scruffy.

Everything in this world - everything - is fucked up.

What are you doing with that mailpack?

You watch a DRTV ad.

This would indicate that the visual element is the most important part of it. It should be visually engaging. An art-director's medium.

You listen to a Radio ad.

This would indicate (obviously) that how it sounds is key.

You read a long copy ad.

This would indicate that the words are most important. A copywriter's medium.

So what do you do with a mailpack?













Apart from throw it in the bin?

DM awards.

"My vodafone mailing got a Gold in the low-volume business to business category. Wicked!"

Some people in DM take awards very, very seriously.

Some people in DM say they hate awards and are passionately against them.

The first group have no soul.

The second group have no awards.

I'm not quite sure where I stand.

I've won a few awards (and I could have won more if my name had been on the motherfucking forms, but I'm not bitter). And I think it's quite a pleasant thing. You get a trip to New York, or a dinner at the Grosvenor. And you can get pissed and have a free meal. Your peers all speak well of you and your agency gives you a blow job.

All very enjoyable.

But I'm not sure that I can take these awards all that seriously. Above-the-line, I can just about understand. Who made the best film? Let's all judge. It's fairly straightforward and is a benchmark of excellence.

But when you throw results into the mix, the whole thing tends to get a bit fucked up. When you work in response, you don't really need a benchmark of excellence. You've already got one...the results.

Juding creativity in a results based industry is a funny one. Imagine a football comparison. Everton beat Man City 2-0, but Man City win because they played the nicest football. It's utterly absurd. Yet in DM it seems acceptable.

To compound the absurdity, it seems that most award winning creative mailpacks aren't even real. We won a Cannes Silver for a deskdrop a while back - that is, something that has never actually left the agency. You see awards for Hairdressing Salons or Dry Cleaners - those staple DM industries (!). So most of the time we are judging an industry that doesn't really exist.

Perhaps we are showcasing which agencies have the most talent. Or rather, who WOULD have the most talent if the kind of work they are doing ACTUALLY EXISTED IN THE REAL WORLD.

A nice code to live by, I suppose. But one which much render one's life more or less meaningless when you finally meet your maker.

Last year's DMA best of show was a mailing with Fuzzy Felt in it. Which strikes me as a bit retarded. A nice mailing sure. But I work in a job that considers fuzzy felt the height of our powers? Really? Okay. Just keep paying me and I'll keep my mouth shut.

All I'm trying to do here is raise the questions. I have no opinion. Sometimes award winning stuff has been brilliantly successful, in which case it does deserve the adoration.

But even then. How seriously do we take it?

I remember the DMA's 2001. Stephen Fry was presenting. He more or less called us a bunch of cunts and said we should be ashamed of what we do never mind award it. Stephen Fry is usually respected as a man of common sense. Was he so far out this time? Or does he just not understand the degree to which we struggle for our art?

Does it come back to this frustrated above-the-line mentality? We see that they have big awards ceremonies and we want them too?

Once on a train I saw a sign that said "Great North Eastern Trains - Gold Award for Sandwiches - British Train Awards 2003" or something. And it made me laugh. What a meaningless thing to award.

But then it struck me that it is no less absurd than winning "Best press insert" at the PM awards.

But for all of the stupidity of awards, I think they DO matter. Not because they have any merit in themselves. But more because they have the illusion of merit.

And percpetion, as we all know, is reality.

Awards mean MONEY. And money matters. Both to us as individuals and for our agencies.

It also gives a little glory to us creatives. Which is not forthcoming enough on a day-to-day basis.

They are also a fantastic way to see which agencies or countries are pushing the boundaries and what is possible.

So there is some merit in taking awards seriously. At least at face value.

But I think anyone who goes to sleep at night thinking they are hot shit because they have a DM gong is a fucking whopper with no soul.

Where do you stand?

Following on from our existing customers:

This is one that used to annoy my old art director.

SEND NO MONEY NOW

A masterclass in abstraction.

Here's one for our existing customers.

"As an existing customer, we'd like to offer you blah"

You're ahead of me already, I'm sure.

An existing customer?

Remember the law of reverse inanity?

[posted in feb. fucking hyperlink malfunction in my brain]

Now I don't want to step on the toes of Heidegger or Sartre here...but...

Who are our non existing customers?

Santa?

Bigfoot?

Bah humbug.

David Ogilvy once said...

..."you cannot bore the customer into buying your product"


Well, the last 15 years of DM certainly put an end to that fallacy, didn't it.

One of my fave bottom drawer ideas.

It would never run due to copyright issues. And, besides, it's too out of date now. But it was for Carling Live. A website that offered you the chance to "get closer to the music." We presented it to the client. But, alas, no dice. Carling branded letter and outer envelope. Nothing else but the letter.

Mr A.B Sample
1 Sample Road
Sample Town
Sample Shire
SS1 1SS

Dear Mr Sample

I meant to write you sooner but I just been busy. You said your girlfriend's pregnant now, how far along is she?

Look, I'm really flattered you would call your daughter that and here's an autograph for your brother - I wrote it on the Starter cap.

I'm sorry I didn't see you at the show, I musta missed you. Don't think I did that shit intentionally just to diss you. But what's this shit you said about you like to cut your wrists too? I say that shit just clowning dog, c'mon - how fucked up is you?

You got some issues Mr Sample, I think you need some counseling to help your ass from bouncing off the walls when you get down some.

And what's this shit about us meant to be together? That type of shit'll make me not want us to meet each other.

I really think you and your girlfriend need each other, or maybe you just need to treat her better. I hope you get to read this letter, I just hope it reaches you in time before you hurt yourself.

I think that you'll be doin just fine if you relax a little, I'm glad I inspire you but, Mr Sample, why are you so mad? Try to understand, that I do want you as a fan. I just don't want you to do some crazy shit.

I seen this one shit on the news a couple weeks ago that made me sick. Some dude was drunk and drove his car over a bridge and had his girlfriend in the trunk, and she was pregnant with his kid and in the car they found a tape, but they didn't say who it was to.

Come to think about, his name was.. it was you

Damn!

[signature]

Name
Position

PS - Get closer to the music at www.carlinglive.com.

Beware the arrogant DM creative

Despite what the ATL nobheads say, there are talented, creative people in DM.

Okay, so you might not notice it from all the work they do. Some of it will be shit - that, sadly, is the nature of the beast. But some stuff is brilliant. And some of the pitch work is incredible.

These talented, creative people, however, tend to be quiet. Or are lazy. Or lack confidence. Or are ugly. Or are immature. Or are Northern. Or their mum is dead. Or they had some illness when they were kids.

The above traits aren't very helpful in the world of above-the-line advertising. So they end up in DM. Where they can make a good living and do a version of what they are good at. In the bitchy, image conscious, "dress creative" world of ATL, these people have targets on their backs. Targets that good looking, loud, confident - dare I say, wealthy - people with enormous support networks do not.

I'm not criticising that. It's been that way since Madison Avenue in the 1950s. ATL is a second tier glamour profession. Game on. Fair enough. It's the way it should be.

But I digress. This post is not to criticise the flash ATL creative. Or to praise the talented-but-meek DM person. It's more to question the flash DM creative.

If someone has all the trappings of a archetypal advertising creative - the attitude, the clothes, the looks, the arrogance, the swagger, the wealthy two parent family - what the fuck are they doing below-the-line?

Would it be too sweeping a statement to assume it is a lack of talent?

That would be the only thing stopping them going above the line, surely? No-one loves DM that much that they would eschew the glamour and gold of the soho boutiques in favour of it.

Looking and acting creative in DM advertises a lack of something in the character to me. Nasty cunts don't belong in our business.

DM should be full of people who are as good as above-the-line creatives, but not as cool. And who ultimately, weren't quite pushy enough to prove it.

That's my policy anyway.

Beware the arrogant DM creative.

The chances are they are shit, as well as poisonous.

Snow Crash

One of my previous posts was talking about how I wanted to branch out into digital marketing. Partly because of the bandwagon and partly because it fascinates me entirely. And there is nothing as rewarding as learning something new. (I've also been allocated some accounts at work that will need a lot of websites built, so its slowly starting to happen).

But one of the problems for a DM bandit is getting up-to-speed. For me, this has involved learning about the history of the internet and the web, getting a bit more familiar with dreamweaver, and writing this shitty little blog.

But to go one step further, to get under the skin of the people who live and breathe this stuff, I've been trying to submerge myself in spod culture too. And one aspect of this is the book Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. It's a sci-fi wank off. And is about as far away from the things I normally read as humanly possible. But for a book written in 1992, it has certainly seen many of its ideas come to light. Albeit in rudimentary form.

The Brave New World of our generation, perhaps.

Does anyone know to what degree this book has influenced the web as we know it today? It clearly has huge parallels with Second Life and World of Warcraft. But who copied whom?

Good read though, I recommend it to any DM creatives who are looking at making the switch.

I appreciate your concern.

This is one borrowed from a colleague of mine.

She hates it when a Client Services Person comes over to you and says:

"I'm just concerned about a few things."

Concerned.

You're concerned about this piece of work?

What is your concern, exactly? If you don't mind me asking?

It's just that, when I'm concerned, it's usually about leaving the iron on and all my neighbours getting burned to death as a result of my stupidity.

Or I get concerned about a child who is smelly and cowers when somebody makes a noise.

I'm sometimes concerned about the standards of education in schools or the cleanliness of hospitals.

Inner city destitution, the mental health of the developing world, the concept of "black crime", the usurpation of the labour party by nobheads, sex-traffiking, fat cats, ice caps, tigers going extinct, richard littlejohn...

Not trying to get on the old moral high horse, mate. But these are the things that concern me.

But you're concerned about ... my copy?

You're concerned that - what? - the client, who is paying for it, might have an opinion on the work? Like they always do anyway?

I'm concerned that you've wasted your whole fucking life missing the point of everything.

Overheard

A freelance copywriter having a fight with a suit...

A real ding dong...

In a blind rage, the copywriter shouts "don't you ever question my professionality!!"

1-0 Client Services.

Bitter bitter bitter.

Can anyone lay claim to having a bigger inferiority complex than me:

A Scottish, Everton supporting, DM copywriter?

I'm going to track down an English, Liverpool supporting, above-the-line copywriter ... and shag his wife.

That should redress the balance.

Paraphrasing Mark Twain

The difference between the right word and nearly the right word is the difference between a kick up the arse and a dick up the arse.


I think I'll be using that update of Twain's old quote with one with the suits tomorrow.

Stealing Your Own Work

Haha

This is class:

http://www.glodark.co.uk/nspcc.htm

The footer at the bottom of this letter says

Updated September 22, 2007
This file may be downloaded for private and personal use but NO part of it may be published in any form without the prior permission of the author.

The thing is... I am the fucking author!!

That's my letter.

It reminds me of the inlay card of Radiohead's OK Computer. "Lyrics reproduced by kind permission, even though we wrote them"

I don't understand or care anyway. I'm a copywriter not a copyrighter.

The company we keep

My mate Dave, an art director in Australia, said something in an email to me which I found both poignant and indicative.

On the subject of the agency he works for:

"The thing is mate, I really fucking love this job and this industry, but I work with lots of people who don't seem to give a flying fuck about it."

Is this uncommon?

Have the marketing grads grudgingly joined the industry because they couldn't think of anything better to do?

I certainly fell into the job by accident rather than by design. But I think that's healthy for a creative - for a copywriter in particular. Is it the case that there are a lot of people in client services departments that can't be arsed with the work we do, can't be arsed with the work they do and, worse still, can't be arsed with the work their client does?

If I ever start my own agency I'm going to insist that we never employ anyone with a marketing degree. It's the new media studies. And it's fucking things up.

Lift Chat

Our creative department is two floors up in the lift.

You've heard about the 'elevator pitch' for Hollywood movies? When people with an idea for a movie had about two floors to get the point across to the cigar-smoking movie mogul who they had managed to harangue? "Shark kills people on beach. Three men go out to face shark and find themselves facing their true nature." That kind of thing

Well two floors in our agency is enough to have the "elevator conversation"

It seems that the only chat that can take place in this limited environment is about the days of the week. It goes something like this - depending on what day it is.

"How are you?"
"Terrible. Can't believe it's Monday again"

"How are you?"
"Oh you know. Not bad for a Tuesday"

"How are you?"
"It's Wednesday! Nearly half way there. The hump of the week and all that"

"How are you?"
"Great. It's nearly Friday."

"How are you?"
"Phew. Glad it's Friday."


And so go perfectly good lives down the plughole as people wish the best years of their lives away.

Inspiring.

Little bit of politics (ad related)

This ad makes me feel a bit sick.

I imagine the Samoan guy - or whatever he is - is shouting "Please! Leave my island alone! We are a simple folk! We never asked for this war. Can you bullies please get the fuck off my island and go back home to whichever part of hell you crawled out from. Look! Those are palm trees. They should be a clue that you are not defending your country, you are attacking mine! Leave! Please leave my friends and my children alone. We mean you no harm"

Our hero follows him and shoots him in the back.

God Save The Queen.

What's it Bill Hicks said? The bullies of the world?

Good copywriting

I'm curious

Is there any other profession where a client will pay so much for a service that they really don't want?

Answers on a bangtail to the usual address.

Old Skool

This is something the IDM used to teach suits. I don't know if they
still do:

The most important thing in a mailing is who you are talking to
Half as important as that is the timing of the mailing (thanks hayes)
Half as important as that is what you are offering
Half as important as that is the format you use
And half as important as that.... is the idea you come up with.

Yeah.

So how come it's always our fault when a pack goes tits up?

Gobshites.

DMA mailings

Are the DMA taking the piss?

Seriously?

Do you get those mailings too? The ones they send out advertising their shitty conferences?

This lot - the self-proclaimed voice of the industry - don't half send out rank mailings. You'd think, as the voice of the industry, they would send us stuff that made creatives green with jealously; which made us awestruck of the possibilities of our profession.

Instead they send out the worst puns and visual metaphors imaginable - sharpen up your skills (picture of a pencil sharpener), mobile marketing conference (picture of a child's mobile), be the best you can be (picture of George Best's rotting corpse), that kind of thing.

And I think the designers get bonuses for Johnson boxes too.

There is absolutely no need for them being this shit. They are their own client, after all. So the only logical conclusion is that the self-proclaimed voice of the industry is actually TAKING THE PISS out of people working in creative departments.

"Here Mr Copywriter, this is the kind of shit YOU do!"

"Hello Mr Art Director, we think you are a CUNT!"

Honestly. Put a bit of effort in it. Your mailings fucking blow and you're embarrasing us.

Madness

A good site which expresses much of the absurdity of our profession:

Not been updated in a while though...

http://adverbatims.blogspot.com/

The Big Quest10n

Can junk mail dorks do digital?

Big question these days.

My opinion is 'why not?' I never got into DM because I loved it. I got into DM simply because a country boy like me struggled to be as confident as the Esher and inner city sect. I simply wasn't cool enough for 'advertising' so i got into the less pretentious response business.

It certainly wasn't because I thought DM was where my skill set lay. What expertise I have now has been learned on the job. I'd say this goes for most of us. Most DMers are talented creative people. Most are nice people. Business demand sent us into response, we never chased it.

So why then can we not do digital?

Everyone is saying how digital is response. So we should be able to function pretty well in this arena. Copywriters in particular.

I'm sure digital people are sceptical of this. They don't want DMers getting in on the thing they built, and I'll wager they relish the prospect of the ATL nobheads getting involved even less. "This is our house" they will cry. "Leave us alone."

And, to be perfectly honest, I can't blame them.

We are jumping on the bandwagon. I used the internet to piss around on when I should have been working. I never had a great enthusiasm for it as a marketing tool. In fact, I quite liked the freedom from work that such an approach offered. It's a downright cheek that I have designs on a copywriters chair simply because that is where the money is going. But there we go.

Since my own agency has become increasingly digital and as many of my friends have started to make the jump into spodsville, I've been more exposed to this world than ever before.

And I like what I see.

Sure, I'll never know as much about the technology as the pioneers and founders. But I don't know how lasering works either - and that didn't hold me back in glorious old DM.

Like most DMers looking over the fence at our digital friends, I am confident I can learn the skills needed on the job.

But the most important thing about this whole palaver is that I feel like a junior again. I am learning again. DM is easy. I can do it in my sleep. This digital marketing thing (how long before we drop that prefix altogether?) has got me doing homework again, and asking questions.

I sincerely hope I am able to make the transaction.

I also hope DMers, if given the chance, are able to assert themselves and use this medium to show just how clever they are given the chance.

Sorry digibots. But I want to come and sit in your living room. I hope you'll make me welcome.

Let's Face It: You're A Weapon

Rant day.

Anyone who starts a letter, an ad or any piece of communication (except a weblog, of course) with the words "let's face it" is a fucking whopper.

This is scientific fact.

Seriously. The words "let's face it" are horrible and should be used on pain of death.

"Let's face it. We all get a little tired now and then"

That kind of thing. The obvious ... preceded with "let's face it". I fucking hate it.

Shall we face it? Oh let us! Let us face this fact which is little more than a bridge to your first product benefit! I've never had the courage to face it before. But with your sage guidance and leadership I might just somehow be able to accept this elusive truth!

The other times you see "let's face it" are in financial marketing or B2B "listen to me I'm a hard-ball-playing straight-talking apprentice-winning pisshole" type shit.

"Let's face it: your bottom-line is your priority in life".

Let's face it: You're a cunt.

And I'd like to stab you in the face.

Now here's Tom with the weather...

Thankless

Sometimes, in the busy times, this job can feel a bit like performing Hamlet in front of a huge audience - and play it brilliantly - only for the audience to sit there at the end, ashen faced and in silence.

Clap, you cunts, clap.

You are in the presence of talent.

Give us our glory.

Briefs: Piss easy. Made difficult.

This a really good article about brief writing.

I was once in New York talking with some american creatives about briefs. We all thought it was reassuring that something so simple was misunderstood over the entire world.

Writing briefs is easy. But no-one can do it.

Here's a really nice article from adliterate. I'd write my own spiel. But I'm busy. So there.

********
It is one of the least edifying characteristics of planning directors that they spend alot of time creating a new briefing format for the agency or network. It is what my old boss Jim Kelly would call "displacement activity".

I don't know about you but I have never liked briefing formats and forms. The theory goes that if you fill out all the boxes on the funky new template that someone has spent the last six months of the agency's time putting together then you will miraculously end up with a brilliant brief. If only it was that easy.

I have always believed that filling out boxes on a brief reduces the process to something more akin to applying for a credit card and thus regarded the whole briefing form approach with utter derision. But some agencies seem to like it.

Fortunately neither of the places I have spent most of my career (AMV - the UK's largest agency - and HHCL - for a long time the UK's most interesting), had a briefing form. Both places felt that planners should write the right brief for the task in hand.

Lets face it we are all grown ups here and we can all write a brief without the help of some ridiculous form. I tend to write mine using a decidedly simple, decidedly old fashioned structure which I am minded to call the naked brief.

It is naked because the structure is so spare that it directs one's attention to the quality of the thinking and away from the quality of the form.

And this is how it goes:

1. The role for communications. Look mum, no background. Background is usually an excuse to dump a load of stuff that is not important enough to get in the body of the brief but somehow seems like it might be relevant. My advice is to bin the background and get straight into the effect the activity is intended to create. The role should get to the absolute heart of the problem. And when you have nailed it it is still worth asking yourself 'why' a couple more times simply to get to right to the root of the task.

2. Target audience. This is the stuff about the audience that is absolutely relevant to the task. And don't write it in a "Timothy and Samantha are both aged 24 and like to go out a lot, watch DVDs at home and have a very experimental attitude towards sex" unless you have actually met these people and you aren't just making up some ghastly advertising targeting confection. This sort of trite story is the 21st century equivalent of telling the creative team that the audience are ABC1, Men and Women aged 25-44 - the square root of fuck all use.

3. Proposition. Call it what you will but this is what you are trying to communicate about the brand. Propositions work with the role for communications. The role for communications sets the challenge the work must meet and the proposition is the idea that we want to land about the brand.

4. Support. The stuff that convinces you that the thinking can be supported, will convince the creatives and ultimately will convince the consumer. This is not the repository of all knowable information on earth but the stuff that makes the thinking compelling.

5. Tone. Only if it makes the difference and you can elevate yourself above the cesspit of statements like "businesslike but not formal". On Tango briefs I used to write that if the work wasn't so funny that it made you piss blood then the work wasn't right.

6. Requirements. What do we know we have to do. If it is prescriptive then tell the team what the media agency has already bought. If this is a campaign that can achieve its aims by any means necessary then keep it open.

7. Mandatories. This is not the place on the brief to get creative. It is the place to communicate the stuff that is non-negotiable.

8. Creative starters. Use this to road test your thinking and to open up the ambition of the brief. Ensure that a couple are media starters, and if the requirements are open guide the team about the nature of potential solutions - digital applications, events, promotional ideas - whatever it takes.

It's as boring as hell but that is the point. Minimum time spent designing a funky new creative brief and maximum time spent on the thought or thinking that goes into them.


*******

Hope the lad who wrote it doesn't mind me stealing it. Mind you, he's an above-the-liner, so theft probably isn't a massive concern. He'll probably hail my creativity in applying his work in this manner. ;-)

Original linky:

http://www.adliterate.com/archives/2008/02/naked_briefs_1.html

Pick a salesman, any salesman.

Signatories.

To industry dullards: the name and job title at the bottom of a letter.

To people with imagination: an opportunity to choose your salesman.

I'll never understand why Sue Smith, Direct Marketing Manager, is the person we think has most influence over the public.

In reality, Sue Smith, Direct Marketing Manager is probably the least influential person you'll ever meet. Even if she WAS hugely influential, the public wouldn't care.

We're missing out on some fun here.

Some people experiment with signatories. You'll occasionally get a celebrity - like Ewan McGregor or Carol Vorderman - but surely it can go further.

The dog's trust pioneered the idea of animals writing to you. Insane, but brilliant. And it worked for them. The readers bought into the concept. And getting people to buy into your concept is surely the primary purpose of being creative.

I've yet to see Napoleon Bonaparte writing letters.

"When I was alive, I never settled for anything other than success. Which is why, if I was alive today, I would invest with Jupiter."

Sometimes the product itself should write the letter.

"As far as loans go, I like to consider myself something a little bit special"

The truth is, the benefits sell the product, not the signatory. And if the signatory can get the reader engaged with the benefits, then surely it will only increase response if executed well.

It would allow us to be creative in our copy. And might make people look forward to the shit we send to them.

It's hard to sell in.

But anything good is hard to sell in.


Yours sincerely










Robert Plant
Singer, Led Zepellin.

Non marketing equivalents:

Okay. So what we do is not art. But who are our peers outside of the marketing perimeters? How glam can we go?


Above The Line creatives = Film makers: Speilberg, Reiner, Cohens and Cronenberg.


Digital creatives = The pioneers on B3TA.com: Joel Vietch, Tomsk, Weebl, and Monkeon.


DM copywriters = les philosphes: The Men of Letters: Diderot, Voltaire, Montesquieu and Rousseau.


A resounding victory for the children of The Enlightenment, I'd say.

Intrigue on Envelopes

Which of the following headlines would make you open an envelope:

Save money now

or

Here's something that will put hair on your chest.


If the latter, why do we persist with the former?


If the former, someone pass me a gun.

Get on your caps lock: it's FREE

Today is bugbear day.

And the bugbear in question is the capitalisation of the word FREE.

It's not enough just to write it. It has to be capitalised. Even on the briefs you get. Even on internal documents.

Why? Because people just LOVE getting something for FREE.

Forget the fact that Google give me an email address, access to documents, a personalised home page, access to their satellite photography and don't charge me a penny for it.

Forget Skype not charging me for calls.

Forget the fact that computer games that used to cost a bomb are now on the internet for me to play as when I want without costing a bean.

Forget the fact that I don't need to pay for DVDs or music or comedy as I can just have a look on Youtube in my leisure at no cost.

Forget all of that.

Free is a huge novelty to me. Free is so rare and exciting that it's not enough to write the word. I need to shout about it. It's FREE! People are that fucking tight.

No-one can resist something that's FREE.

Lester Wunderman said so.

Don't question it. Just get your heads down and perpetuate the habit dogmatically. It's easier that way.

Tone of Voice

Zeitgeist time!

Tone of voice and brands that are too big for their boots: the enemy of the humble junk mail scumbag.

No word of a lie, I have just seen a Tone of Voice (that's TOV to all you acronym lovers out there) guideline with a graph telling you how to write copy.

Now, we all knew this would happen one day. But I didn't think it would come so soon.

I shit you not. This is at the end of a document telling me the usual shit about "being adult-to-adult" "employing intelligent wit" and "exuding just the right level of confidence."

Without giving too much of this magical artistic formula away, the horizontal axis refers to the purpose of the tone-of-voice at that time (introducing yourself, giving product details, etc) while the vertical axis tells you what degree of previously stated tonal qualities one should employ.

First of all, how is a writer going to be able to apply this graph: we're writers, not mathematicians. Secondly, and more importantly....WHAT THE FUCK?!

As far as marketing bullshit goes, it is a work of unparalleled genius.

Tone of voice was probably once a good idea. But does all this BRAND shit seem a little like the biggest lie ever told? It exudes phoniness from its head down to its toes. I hanker for the days when Watson or Bird could employ their craft and sell stuff. Now everything has to conform to come kind of big brother ideal of perfection. It's the enemy of creativity, and I don't think consumers buy it for a moment.

Here's something adult-to-adult

"Fuck off and die"

The client said what? Number 3

A famous childcare charity:

When talking about a man with a drink problem who came home, drunk, and murdered his 2 year old girl:

Said we couldn't refer to the man as an "abusive alcoholic"

As it was too judgemental.

The Law Of Reverse Inanity

Now this is fun!

The law of reverse inanity.

Take something your client/planner/brief says and sense check it by instead applying the antonym. Does it still stand up?

We want something original.

No ideas that someone has already done.

We want something relevant.

No irrelevant ideas.

We want something compelling

No really boring ideas.

We want to talk confidently.

You mean I've perfected that nervous tone of voice for nothing.

We want to be inspirational.

Nothing that provokes no reactions.

We want simplicity

No complicated ideas? Okay then.

Feel free to add your own...

The client said what? Number 2

A well known energy company complains that they don't like the colour green on a pack that a creative team has made for them.

The creative team, asks why.

The client responds that their school uniform was green and that they didn't like school very much. The client asks if it can be changed to blue instead.

The copywriter, quick as a flash, replies that blue would be a problem too as that was the colour of her school uniform.

Client doesn't pick up on the irony.

The world keeps on turning.

Who'd be a Creative Director?

Every year they come...

The eagle-eyed youths straight out of Bucks desperately looking for a job. The advertising overspill. The ones without the estuary accents, expensive clothes and fancy haircuts. The DM creatives of the future. Personable kids who, for some reason or another, have wanted to do this shit since they left school.

These are people who will work for 6 months on an HSBC brief for absolutely no pay whatsoever. Who will commute from Bournemouth so that they may one day earn the privelege of making a mailpack for less money than your Mum makes at Tesco.

Every year they come and sit among us. Working their twats off.

I love them. Because they are following a dream. These kids are full of talent and they don't want to become investment bankers. They want to think and have fun.

They don't want to wear suits, be bossed around or work a strict 9-to-5. They don't want to be divorced from their labour, suck cock or become the kind of general corporate fucktard that so defines the southern middle class.

And good luck to them.

But ... I bet 90% of them harbour some desire to eventually become a Creative Director.

Why is it that we go through hell to try and avoid getting a real job only to give up all the priveleges as soon as the prospect of a fancy title comes along?

No sooner do we finally get our feet under a desk where we can enjoy ourselves, free from responsibility, accountable to nothing other than our work, than we give it all up.

We run towards a world of meetings, and dinners, and being nice to people we hate. A world of costs and profitability and management and taking terms like "time famine" seriously. A world where we have no choice but to take marketing seriously, or learn to lie like a pro.

We lose our cynicism priveleges. We start to BELIEVE THE HYPE.

Why the U-Turn in our lives?

The obvious answer, I suppose is "money". But considering you can earn a good whack as a senior creative, it can't be the be all and end all. I suppose you get to call yourself a Creative Director. But of what? A Creative Director of DM?

Okay. No problem.

Being a Creative Director is a great opportunity to develop talent and stand up for work. If you do it right, you can be held in high regard by the people you led for the rest of your life. I'm not really knocking the job. It's very credible and very difficult.

But that's not the point of this post

The question remains. If we wanted all the money, meetings, bullshit and arse-kissing - why did we not go in for a more corporate job to start with? Why are there not more senior creatives doing the work and then going home to learn how to play the sitar or something?

Are we hypocrites? Or is it just human nature to want to climb the mountain?

I predict a riot

Nicked from above-the-line blog "scamp". This is a guide for Creative Directors as to what they should be paying their people.

Food for thought.

Taking DM too seriously

One of the big questions one faces when taking a job as a DM creative is how seriously should you take yourself?

There's a good chance you'll tell your relatives you work in advertising (you do, don't let anyone tell you different) but this can lead them to asking you if you've done anything famous. In most cases, this leaves you at something of a loss. Your mouth has written a cheque that your job can't cash.

You can't say "I did this really nice mailpack for Skoda". Because you'll get the response "Mailpack?" And then of course you're going to have to explain how marketing works and you'll be exposed as a pretentious nobhead. A pretender. A bullshitter.

I used to have a boss who could have said "I am a Creative Director of one of Europe's largest advertising networks" but instead opted for the more humble "I design junk mail". He of course sold himself short: but it tells you something about the man. He was not a twat.

How seriously should we take DM?

I consider myself an intelligent person, and were it not for considerable upheavals in my youth I would probably have entered one of the 'professions' and made a pretty good, respectable living. Instead I opted for booze, music and rejection of society. When I needed a job, I fell into DM.

So it could be argued that I am in a job that is beneath me intellectually. And I have known many copywriting collegues to whom this could equally apply.

So what does one do? Does one knuckle down and really try to revolutionise the industry? Or does one become a well-paid alcoholic who is depressed and unfulfilled?

I have personally traversed between the two. I have tried to convince people that junk mail is an unhelpful, pejorative term; that we are instead disseminating necessary and relevant communications. On the other hand, I've watched Bill Hicks, got pissed, and lamented every single soul involved in our business and hoped that they all die painfully.

But there is a third option which has struck me recently:

We don't have to take this shit so fucking seriously!

Why don't people smile in Campaign? We are not doctors or lawyers. We are not investment bankers or actuaries. Nothing in our business gets better by taking it seriously.

Another boss of mine used to tell me "you get paid to muck about".I love that sentiment.

DM is not as glam as above-the-line advertising; it's not as intellectual as pshychiatry; it's not as popular as being a nurse. What it is, however, is a fucking riot.

We are not making the world a better place - sorry, charity copywriters. We are not creating high art - sorry, automotive art-directors. We are just doing a meaningless job which pays well and allows us the privelege of being surronded by interesting creative people.

The fact that we create shit - and be in no doubt about this, it is shit - is neither here nor there. It is difficult to do well and allows creative people to make good money simply for being talented.

Why justify what we do when we can simply enjoy it?

Any passionate DMers care to disagree?

Integrating with ATL agencies

Integrating with ATL agencies is a fucking nightmare.

Have you ever been handed an idea from them that you can work with?

Every time it's the same. One word. Let's call it "bounce". We'll apply a client later. Whomever wants to buy it.

Then comes a shit hot idea for a film. One that relies wholly on the medium of film - one that depends on time and movement.

So for 'bounce' it would be people on spacehoppers bouncing all over the world. Or the floor would be springy and it would propel people, dogs and cars up in the air in a dreamy, bouncy-castle way.

And everyone will be excited, because it sounds like fun.

And then come the press ads.

The press ads are important when you are a DM nobhead - if the idea flows into the press ads, then it is likely it will be easy to translate into mail.

But the press ads are always shit.

Usually, it will be a product benefit in a headline only ad - written in a jewish 1980s Madison avenue style. It won't actually integrate at all. Except that it will have the word, bounce, underneath the logo.

That's right, you junk mail fool. You're not getting near the idea. You have to flog the product benefits. And maybe stick a picture of a spacehopper on your shitty letter.

It's not a big idea. It's a big film. The ATL get an award. And you get 18 months of misery trying to inject some personailty into an idea that simply doesn't translate into your medium.

I'm not complaining, really. There are winners and losers and this life.

The ATL flyboys are simply the winners.

For now....

The client said what? Number 1

A well known animal charity.

It likes to write letters from the animals themselves.

The writer is told his copy is "too anthropomorphic"

Their last letter was from a horse.

Go figure.