Here Be Monsters|blog

The camera never lies, but advertising might

I'm loving this site. even though I know it's nothing new, Mother Jones have been doing this for years.

And I'm not really sure where I stand on this either, isn't it the job of advertisers to present the best possible case for their clients? And isn't that what good food photography does? Is it anymore misleading than a girl wearing make-up to present her best self Or retouching a model? Or lighting someone in a flattering way? Or even placing a product in a certain situation and/or location?  That said the difference between the adversions and the reality is impressively wide.

A little more on ideas

Just wanted to add this from The Before and After blog to the debate on ideas.

Quoting Voltaire, Good is the enemy of great.

Oh so true.

rejection

Had an interesting conversation with a client this morning, all about being a creative. And he was surprised to hear me say that being a creative is mostly about rejection. Well, if you care about what you do it is.

You reject your ideas. If you're still working in a team, your partner rejects your ideas. Your boss rejects your ideas. Planners, account people, research groups and clients reject your ideas.

So, if you're going to work as a creative, and you should it's brilliant fun at times, then you should grow a thick skin, quickly and embrace rejection.

Reminds me of something someone said to me about sportsmen and women. The best lose more than the rest.

there's more than one funny

I was watching TV on Sunday night, Channel 4, all about the 100 best stand ups, it was okay, just like all those of other 100 best programmes, but what did strike me was that there is an awful lot of different comedy out there. I mean, a massive variety in comedy tone. And a lot of it is very funny. Maybe all of it.

Then it occurred to me that in ads, with very few exceptions, there's only one type of humour, spruced up in different clothing for different markets, but it's still only the one type of humour - the sliced white loaf of humour. At best it's funny at worse (most radio ads) it's awful, but it's all from the same vein. Even when comedians are used to appear in ads or voice them, they're very seldom do 'their humour'.

I wonder if there's a comedian's version of Groucho House Club, and if there is I wonder what they say about the ad jobs they're doing?

It's what you need, not what you want

Been traveling and giving talks again, this time it was Finland and Sweden. This time minus my camera as it broke.  (Just ordered my third Ixus today which is interesting in itself - although two have already broken on me, I'm still loyal to the product and haven't even considered the option of something else.)

Anyway, stuck in Stockholm with 5 hours spare I had a nice lunch before setting off to see the VasaMuseet. The Vasa, was a 17th century warship that sunk 200 meters into its maiden journey.

Hugely impressive sight it was too, and should you find yourself in Stockholm I can recommend it whole-heartedly.

What I wanted to post about is why the Vasa sunk, not least because of a particulalry tough time we've just come through with a client.

The story goes that the Vasa was never going to be sea worthy because while the plans had been signed off by the King of Sweden by the time the building was underway the King went about modifying the spec - adding another deck, adding more guns, adding even more guns. And insisting the same deadlines be met.

As a result of these tighter deadlines but much more importantly, because of  the fear of displeasing the King, the answer to every change was yes, of course, no problem. Even when it became apparent to one or two people that the ship was now top heavy, its hull too narrow and the the ballast too light, the project continued.

Even when one brave individual demonstrated to his bosses the problem by getting 30 sailors to run from one side of the ship to the other a couple of times causing it to sway dangerously, the project continued because no one wanted to tell the King he was wrong.

Sometimes what clients want and what they need are two different things and by not saying something outloud leads to disaster for the project.

WHY COULD THIS ONLY BE AMERICAN? | 3

Some time ago I posted about the Apple ads being quintessentially American, and doubted that we English could get the balance right. Well, now they've gone and recreated them with English comedians so, you can judge for yourself here.  Personally, I think they confirm my argument. The charm, the rhythm, the gaps in dialogue, even the slight of performance and gentleness of delivery have all been lost.

Here's one of the originals that has been copied. I'd love to know what you think.

LDN | A WINTER WONDERLAND

It snowed in London last night and so we all woke up to a winter wonderland. I still find it exciting. Partly it's the surprise of it all. Unlike storms and floods and tornadoes you get no warning with snow. The first time you know is when you look out the window and bam! there it is.

END OF THE ORIGINAL POST

I then looked around my corner of the blogsphere and discovered these. Oh, how we Londoners love a bit of snow.

why I love consumer power

I've just been made aware of the exceptional reviews on Amazon for the above album. Thank you Anna. Thank you.

And then there's the video.

IN Praise of Hard work

Okay, so you work long hours, but does that mean you're working hard? Because, "long" and "hard" are now two different things. In the old days, we could measure how much grain someone harvested or how many pieces of steel he made. Hard work meant more work. But the past doesn't lead to the future. The future is not about time at all. The future is about work that's really and truly hard, not time-consuming. It's about the kind of work that requires us to push ourselves, not just punch the clock. Hard work is where our job security, our financial profit, and our future joy lie.

It's hard work to make difficult emotional decisions, such as quitting a job and setting out on your own. It's hard work to invent a new system, service, or process that's remarkable. It's hard work to tell your boss that he's being intellectually and emotionally lazy. It's easier to stand by and watch the company fade into oblivion. It's hard work to tell senior management to abandon something that it has been doing for a long time in favor of a new and apparently risky alternative. It's hard work to make good decisions with less than all of the data.

Today, working hard is about taking apparent risk. Not a crazy risk like betting the entire company on an untested product. No, an apparent risk: something that the competition (and your coworkers) believe is unsafe but that you realize is far more conservative than sticking with the status quo.

Richard Branson doesn't work more hours than you do. Neither does Steve Jobs or Alan Sugar or Julian Richer.

None of the people who are racking up amazing success stories and creating cool stuff are doing it just by working more hours than you are. And I hate to say it, but they're not smarter than you either. They're succeeding by doing hard work.

As the economy plods along, many of us are choosing to take the easy way out. We're going to work for a big company, letting him do the hard work while we work the long hours. We're going back to the future, to a definition of work that embraces the grindstone.

Hard work is about risk. It begins when you deal with the things that you'd rather not deal with: fear of failure, fear of standing out, fear of rejection. Hard work is about training yourself to leap over this barrier, tunnel under that barrier, drive through the other barrier. And, after you've done that, to do it again the next day.

The big insight: The riskier your (smart) coworker's hard work appears to be, the safer it really is. It's the people having difficult conversations, inventing remarkable products, and pushing the envelope (and, perhaps, still going home at 5 PM) who are building a recession-proof future for themselves.

Author Seth Godin.

I share it because it sums up perfectly what we're forever banging on about alot at Here Be Monsters, the constant need to be smart in what we do.

WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM TV?

I've lifted this from an interview Creative Generalist did with Steve Callaghan, writer and producer of the Family Guy cartoon series. Here is how he describes the process of developing and writing a script.

"Well, as you might imagine, it is a highly collaborative endeavor. There are about 100 people or so who are in some way or another involved in putting together an episode. The process begins, of course, with the writing staff. My fellow writers and I will come up with a concept for an episode and discuss the general storyline that it would contain. The episode is then assigned to a particular writer who will write the first draft of the script. The whole writing staff then takes that first draft and, as a group, rewrites it -- improves jokes that might need some help, fixes any story issues, etc. -- before the show gets recorded by all of our voice actors. Once the audio has been recorded, then our animation team takes the baton, creating an animatic, which is a rough, pencil-sketch version of the show. Once we all screen the animatic, the writers take another pass at the script to address any remaining writing issues. A while later, the show comes back in color. We then do one more, smaller rewrite on the script before the finishing touches (music cues, sound effects, etc.) are added and then you've got yourself an episode of "Family Guy."

Now, compare that with how the typical creative team in the typical ad agency creates their script.

Account person and/or planner explain brief to creative team. They leave. Creative team spend anything from a day to a few weeks sweating it out. They present their ideas to the CD, who says yes, no, maybe, perhaps etc. What is very unlikely is that he will spend any time working with the team beyond this verbal input. Not through laziness, but because the script 'belongs' to the team. Work is then presented back to the account person-planner combo,  who are allowed to comment on it, but only within the confines of their job title remit. God help them if they mis judge this and over step into the creatives' domaine. Conversations between planner and account person, account person and client, planner and creative director, planner and client all take place in a isolation to one another. As a result nothing much changes in the script until a director is selected. Now the creative team will listen and make changes, because a) the director is also a 'creative' and  b) the team really want to be him.

I've been fortunate enought to have been a part of both processes and I know which one delivers the better work.