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.