This is what life in a Norwich advertising agency is really like. From Viz Comic, Account Executive Dickie Beasley gets to grips with the bath time problem. Click to see it big:

Here’s that Vodofone ad featuring Yoda. You’ve all seen it by now so I’ll refrain from mentioning how terrible it is. But it is terrible isn’t it? I think what I like least is the fact that, even given the rubbish idea of having Yoda in their ad, it’s just so lacklustre. It gives up about halfway through – the characters may as well just sit there staring at each other. If you’re going to do a Star Wars ad, at least have fun with it.

As Woolworths did below. Great set up, great use of Darth Vader and a great punchline. They even manage to get over what was good about Woolworths. But obviously not well enough…

A selection of odd, politically incorrect Tory campaign posters. “Chinaman no likee eat sick pig…”. Warning: clicking the link takes you through to the Daily Mail:

A cavalcade of ghosts advertising light bulbs in Thailand:

“I smoke ‘em, he smokes ‘em.” New Testament Cigarettes and the ultimate in celebrity endorsement, courtesy of the big man in the sky.

And Woody Allen’s Bananas.

(Embedding is disabled on this video so you have to click the picture to go through to YouTube and then press play and… )

A great little film about what life in an advertising agency is really like. Funnier than you might think.

With the presidential race about to get racy, here’s a reminder of Barack Obama’s first televison ad from way back in 2006.

The second of our advertising book recommendations:James Webb Young – A Technique For Producing Ideas

One of the best things about A Technique For Producing Ideas is that it’s only around 50 (very small) pages long. It can be read in less than an hour. So if you’re one of those advertising people who doesn’t like to read books, this is an excellent way to dip your illiterate toe into the vast, thrilling waters of discovery and knowledge.

Written by legendary ad man James Webb Young, and first published in the 1940s, the book delivers an almost foolproof method for generating ideas. When I first read it I was hoping to discover some kind of magical creative formula. There is a magical formula but, as it turned out, it was almost exactly the same formula I had always relied on – whether that was for advertising or the other creative thingies I’ve been involved in. What I mainly took from the book was that it was absolutely fine for me to have that (long) moment of putting things completely out of my mind and waiting for the idea to just miraculously appear. I’d always thought that was just my own combination of arrogance, laziness and wishful thinking.

The technique basically consists of the following five stages:

1. Do your research.

2. Absorb the material you’ve gathered.

3. Forget about it.

4. Experience the aha! moment.

5. Work on your idea.

Of course, if it were as easy as that you wouldn’t need to read the book. Which is just as well because it’s in the actual reading that the magic really happens. Quite simply, Young was a beautiful – and beautifully clear – writer. His words go in and they stay in.

The blurb on the back cover says: ‘Young’s unique insights will help you look inside yourself to find that big, elusive idea – and once and for all lift the mystery from the creative process.’ Well, it certainly does that. But there is a caveat – this formula won’t work if you’re not a creative person. As far as Young’s concerned (taking his cue from the theories of the Italian sociologist Pareto) there are two types of people: speculators and stockholders. So if you’re in the latter camp, you’d probably be wasting your time reading the book.

Available here – brand spanking new. If you get nothing else from it, you’ll at least discover whether you’re a speculator or a stockholder.

I like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. But not enough to weep like a baby – as many of my grown men on Twitter contemporaries did – when I heard that Honda had updated it for an ad.

But then I saw the ad.

If you’re going to reference one of the most iconic, best-loved films of the eighties it’s probably a good idea to attempt to capture some its charm, energy and humour. Something this ad singularly fails to do. Broderick seems tired, slow and embarrassed. But then, maybe that’s the point: you reach fifty and… well, the Honda CR-V is the best you can hope for.

Fifty though. He doesn’t look fifty, does he?

From, I think, 1969, Salvador Dali sells the benefits of flying with Braniff: “When you got it, flaunt it.” Ah, if only Norwich advertising was as glamorous.

There are also a number of Dali ads and TV spots listed here on the excellent UBUWEB.

Always insightful, always beautifully written and always very entertaining – the human side of advertising and marketing. Click the pic to visit:

Trading on the old Blues myth of doing a deal with the devil at the Crossroads, the Godfather of Soul attempts to re-negotiate his contract. Which is, of course, exactly what you’d expect to happen in a BMW commercial.

This slick and noisy production makes good use of its stars: Gary Oldman is superb as the devil, Clive Owen is unflappably cool as Mr Brown’s driver, the silly Marilyn Manson pulls off a neat comic turn and James Brown is, quite simply, James Brown.

The best thing about the film is that it’s basically a loving homage to a genuine cultural giant. It’s quite poignant in places, with Brown himself acknowledging the downside of growing old. Overall though, it’s just great seeing him enjoy himself.

The only sour note is that, when all’s said and done, it’s a commercial for a car. And if anyone should have been beyond hawking his talents in ads, it should have been James Brown.

Oh, and it’s directed by Tony Scott.

The best way to judge the potential success of a new product that’s been carefully created using the talent, experience and knowledge of seasoned professionals who really know their business?

Show it to a load of random people in the street and ask them what they think.

I have a few problems with focus groups. My biggest is with business people who are willing to take guidance from them. It’s as if they’ve no confidence in their own judgment and abilities.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not opposed to research and testing. That is, proper research and testing: intelligent, targeted and capable of yielding credible results.

No, my problem is with focus groups that involve a load of strange people sitting in a room desperately trying to think of something interesting and valid to say about something they don’t give a stuff about.

And I use the word strange because I have to ask: what kind of people agree to take part in such exercises? Normal people have got much better things to do with their time.

In my industry – advertising – focus groups play a major role. They’re used by twitchy marketing managers and cowardly creative directors as insurance against the failure of ad campaigns: “Well, the focus group told us that was the way to go so it’s not our fault it all went wrong.”

What agencies should do is more forcefully present themselves to their clients as the experts they are: “This is what we do and we’re very good at it. And no, it’s not just a matter of opinion – because our opinion on what makes a good campaign is much more valid than the opinion of some bod in the street. Or the girl who does your photocopying.”

This kind of thinking, of course, should also apply to anyone launching a new product, service or idea. Why take on board the opinions of people put together in a totally false environment over a bowl of crisps, when you’ve got people who really know a thing or two at your disposal?

I’d like to see a bit more courage out there. More risk-taking. A few more of what we used to call men (and women) of vision. People who know their minds, who know how to make decisions and who know how to stick to them.

So next time you’re about to launch something, why not go with what you think is right? Or with what the experts you employ think is right. Don’t insult yourself, or them, by taking on board the views of people you wouldn’t normally trust to tie your shoes. You should also avoid, by the way, soliciting the opinions of your wife, husband, friend, eight-year-old daughter or the thirty-eight colleagues you share an office with.

And you could do worse than taking something from what Henry Ford had to say on the matter: “If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, I’d have built a faster horse.”

Jukebox, Marketing Agency, Norwich, UK

The great Harlan Ellison talks – well, rants (brilliantly) – about not getting paid. Something that will be familiar to anyone who’s worked in the creative side of the advertising industry:

The aptly titled ‘The Book Cover Archive’ is a repository of cool, contemporary design. So if you’re a designer, why not go there and steal some ide… get some inspiration?

The Book Cover Archive

A great interview about advertising with the great David Ogilvy. Make sure you’re comfortable though because it’s almost an hour long.

A good creative should be happy to be involved in the entire process of an advertising campaign. They should be there at the start, taking the brief from the client, and they should most certainly be involved in the preparation of the agency brief. Being a creative isn’t just about shuffling pretty pictures and coming up with snappy headlines – it should also be about the marketing strategy, and the thinking and the planning. In short, a good creative should be a fully-rounded marketing professional.

Perfect Pitch, the first of our advertising book recommendations, is written by Jon Steel, one of the world’s best-known account planners. Planners, for those who don’t know, are usually employed by big advertising agencies who need to throw away more money on salaries. In smaller agencies, planners are there to make up for the quality of the creatives. That is, they do a kind of bridging job between account handlers and those creatives who believe that all that pesky strategy stuff is nothing to do with them and is somehow not related to the task of creating an advertising campaign.

Jon Steel is – or, rather, was – an extremely good planner. And also a very creative planner, involved in some fantastic campaigns. (Actually, rather than bang on about his experience here, I’ll refer you instead to his excellent book Truth, Lies and Advertising – a must-read for anyone in the ad industry.)

Perfect Pitch is subtitled ‘The Art of Selling Ideas and Winning New Business’. Over the course of a number of individual chapters and case studies, Steel tells us, first of all, what’s wrong with most presentations and how they could be vastly improved. One of the easiest, and best, ways to do this is to stop using PowerPoint. Not just because it’s often full of dopey graphics and spelling mistakes, but because it makes both the presenter and the audience lazy and creates a real barrier between them. On their own, Steel’s funny, and entirely correct, rants about PowerPoint more than justify the price of the book.

Covering every aspect of the pitch process, Steel shares what is often, but often forgotten, commonsense advice on how to deliver good ideas in the best, and most creative, way possible. This includes things like the value of listening, the importance of research, on using presenters who are confident and, more importantly, likeable. The overall message of the book is basically that the purpose of a pitch is to win, not necessarily to be right.

To illustrate this Steel provides numerous examples of great pitches, such as: Johnny Cochrane’s masterful demolition of the prosecution in the OJ Simpson trial, Bill Clinton’s presidential debates, Winston Churchill and Martin Luther King’s speeches and even the calling cards of a London prostitute. All highly entertaining and illuminating.

Right from the start of the book we know we’re being led to the final chapter which is about how the British Olympic team won the bid, against all the odds, to host the 2012 games in London. It was, as Steel makes plain, quite simply the perfect pitch – that is, they got absolutely everything right. As well as being inspiring and thrilling, the story, thanks in large part to Steel’s interpretation, is also incredibly moving. It’s the perfect way to end the book.

Perfect Pitch isn’t just for advertising people. It can be a manual for anyone who, at any time, needs to sell their ideas. So if you’re pitching a film, a game or even presenting your plans for the forthcoming WI Xmas party, this book will help you to do it properly. In fact, Steel illustrates this nicely by writing – again, quite movingly – about how he successfully proposed to his wife.

But if you don’t fancy going to the trouble of actually reading the book, you can vastly improve your own pitch successes by doing one simple thing: getting rid of the PowerPoint.

Perfect Pitch is available here, in hardback, for only £13.19.

For too long, agencies and clients have been messing about with things that are entirely irrelevant to what they’re supposed to be doing. Such as playing around with high faluting ‘brand/marketing strategy’ nonsense that, really, we all suspected was nonsense all along. If there’s going to be one good thing about this recession, it’s that we start to focus on things that really matter. Such as developing good products and services, doing good advertising and getting people to buy stuff (which, of course, is the real way to build a brand).

It’s this simple: If you want people to use your service, buy your product or visit your attraction, make sure your product, service or attraction is good. And then make sure you do good advertising to tell those people that your product, service or attraction is good. Not only will you make money, you’ll also build your brand – and build it properly. And if you don’t think it’s that simple, think for a moment about how the great brands out there got to be great brands.

But one of the things that annoys me most about the ‘brand/marketing strategy’ guff is its slippery pseudo-intellectual veneer. It’s an old trick, often played by academics, that’s designed to keep its practitioners in and everyone else out. By using obfuscating, intimidating language it protects itself from being called out as the rubbish it really is – because those that call bullshit are simply waved away with a patronising shake of the head and a suggestion that they’re too stupid to understand. This kind of thing has, of course, been a key tactic of the charlatan since the dawn of time.

Anyway, all of the above is really a way of linking to a fantastic piece of online software called the ‘Marketing Bullshit Generator’. Click the button and you’ll be instantly rewarded with a phrase that sounds exactly like the kind of thing you had to listen to during one of those meetings with one of those kinds of brand and marketing ‘experts’. Fun and empowering.

THE MARKETING BULLSHIT GENERATOR

I was going to write a 3000 word treatise on the current state of advertising. But then I thought: nah.

Instead, here’s the greatest ever tourism video. Every city should have a promotional film like this: