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.