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.