Here Be Monsters|blog

A breath of Fresh Air

Above is a freebie magazine from Vice. It's for students and while I most certainly can't claim to be one of them I dis pick it up and had a read. And I'm so glad I did.

Not since the first time I picked up an Innocent bottle have I been so impressed by the writing - no lazy adspeak here, no lame jokes, no pandering to the lowest common denominator. No siree, this was a joy; original, funny and risk-taking.

And before you start, well of course, it's for students, it's a niche brand, they can get away with murder  blah blah blah- that's simply bollocks and I'll produce any number of student, niche brand marketing material to prove it.

Sure it's not a tone that's suitable or desirable for a lot of brands (although it is one that's exactly right for them and their audience). But that's not what I was excited by. It was the freshness of picking something up and actually being engaged enough to read more.

Vice writers. I salute you.

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.

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.

WELCOME TO WRITE CLUB

I've been spending more  time with clients discussing the craft of writing than at any other time in my career. Not that surprising really, more of them are writing more themselves. Several are doing company blog's or undating their websites themselves and another is handing their own newsletters.

In fact I'm going to go as far as say the craft of writing has never been so important in the communication mix in recent times as it is right now.

So, I thought I'd start Write Club, an occasional series on writing.

I got this email sent to me before Christmas, interesting enough proposition tucked away at the bottom - 'unusual gift no effort', but for Conde Nast that really wasn't the hook. They'd rather tell you how they feel rather what they can do for you, as a result they lost me with the subject line. Because frankly, it's for me to decide whether or not it's a generous offer.

I mention this not to pick fault (or a fight) with someone's work but to highlight a very common problem and that is clients and their agencies writing from their perspective (i.e. I'm sure Patrick thinks he's being incredibly generous). But in doing so he has completely removed me any connection I might have. It's like having a conversation with a chat show host or someone on cocaine.

(Possibly the finest example of this was when a senior exec at a agnecy I was at sent an email to clients notify them he was leaving with the subject title: Great News. Great news for who? The rest of the email was equally self-congratulatory.)

So, the First Rule of Write Club is;

Understand the perspective of the reader. And remember what interests you about your business probably doesn't interest them.

As my main man Howard Gossage once said; People don't read ads, they read what interests them and sometimes it happens to be an ad.

why could this only be American? | 2

Roger was kind enough to let me know that there are Japanese versions of the Apple ads I've been taking about and so I clicked over to YouTube to see them. (Isn't that brilliant. I can now, in a matter of seconds, find material that was referenced in a post to me. Every now and then I get an overwhelming sense of the enormity of the change that the Internet brings. And when it does, I find myself loving life that little bit more. My son on the other hand will only know a world connected to wide web, in the same way I've only ever known a world with flying, I wonder what huge changes he'll experience?) Anyway I digress.

Putting to one side the cultural and language differences. Doesn't it seem altogether less authentic to you?  The wardrobe, the casting, their performances - all seem to lack the comfortable, lived-in feel of the original. And so lose charm, the very essence of what makes them appealing. The PC character in particular seems completely fake, lacking any of the appeal/authenticity of the original character.

I thought the Japanese version helped make my point - that the skill sets and sensitivities required to make these particular ads work in such a familiar/intimate way could only come from Americans. Not unlike the writing of Sopranos, WestWing and The Simpsons, now I come to thing of it.

Why could this only be American?

I'm a big fan of this campaign. Partly I'm sure because I'm a big fan of all things Apple - seldom do they get things wrong, everything from the packaging to the stores to the products to the customer service is an articulation of the brand. But mainly I'm a big fan of these ads because they're so, well, charming.

Imagine the script; Open on an empty set. Two men stand side by side talking directly to camera. Hmm, doesn't sound that interesting. But when you watch them they ooze charm. The music, casting, wardrobe and performance, the rhythm of the language, the direction - all make the whole thing very watchable. But also very American.

No other country could have made this, like this. Could it be that as inventors of the modern language of film it just feels right by association and familiarity? Is it that culturally they have more respect for film and a better ear for dialogue because they haven't been brought up in the shadow of a theatre culture?  Or is it simply that because of its size, they have a larger pool of talent to draw on than other countries? I've heard arguments supporting each of these, all of which were compelling, none of which were wholly convincing though.

the blog as soap or sitcom

Spent a fascinating time yesterday working with a client on different ways in which to use blogs. We had this thought that a blog could be treated in much a similar way as you would a soap opera or sitcom - a drama that's played out in regular episodes (posts). The more we looked at this and the more we looked at the structure of storytelling within the confines of a soaps and sitcoms, the more we thought we were onto something, so we're going to experiment around this and see what develops. If blogs can be streams of consciousness, diaries or gossip columns, then why can't they also be given a strong narrative structure? The big challenge as we see it will be to adapt the everyday events into story lines that will be both engaging and entertaining while still remaining true to the spirit and honesty of blogging.

So this weekend I'm going to be re-reading  Jospeh Campbell's The Hero With A Thousand Faces

why?

Saw this on the tube last night and it really bothered me. What is it doing?  Who is it communiticating with? What does it mean, Yum/Young, Free and Single? I read the copy and it's about free puddings being given away, somewhere, sometime, but I can't remember where, but that's not what the line says. How did someone present this?

At least half a dozen people with the power to stop it must have seen this and not one of them did.  Why?  Was it really the best thing on the table?  I have no desire to belittle or insult people, I know how hard it is to create work, but while this ad obviously recieved a little tlc along the way, the idea didn't.  And I really want to understand why?  I got off the tube confused and depressed.

COMEDY AND COPYWRITING

The ads I hate the most are the ones that try and be funny. And the worst of them are radio ads. A shit ad you can ignore, but one where the team involved believe they've crafted something good, something worth listening to is the worst.

In fact I've long harboured a secret ambition to make a sketch show out of the sketches played out in radio ads. I hope that if creatives could see them out of context they would actually notice that what they've written is shite.

It's as if there is a comedy level in advertising that is way below the acceptable comedy level for comedians. As if ads don't have to exist in the real world. (Maybe there's some clue here as to why people have been falling out of love with them.)

As a result we get ads that are no more than weak sketches loaded with punchlines and puns. it's as if these creatives aspire to be of this world

It's as if they haven't notice that comedy, like everything else has changed and moved on. It's long become one of observational humour, of anger and social statement.  Today's face of popular comedy is

So why aren't creatives writing like them?  Could it be a lack of talent perhaps? 

QUOTES | A WRITER'S CRAFT

Saw this quote over at Ben's blog this morning and have decided we should stick it on our powerpoint presentations from now on.  Apparently, it came from those smart guys at base camp

Maybe it's because I'm a copywriter, but I love quotes. If for no other reason than, they are a fantastic reminder that even in today's 'visual world' well-crafted words still have the power to resonate in a profound way.

So it used to concern me that when I met today's student teams and asked them what they were you got the same reply from both, we're creatives.  Ask them how that works and who's going to write any words that are needed and you usually get something along the lines of; both of us, whoever's less busy, or the all encompassing, dunno haven't thought about it.

Digging a little deeper I discovered that all the major ad courses; St.Martins, Bucks etc. don't teach writing or art direction as a skill. They teach the creation of ideas.

All of which used to deeply trouble me. A lot.

But it doesn't anymore, because I was wrong and they are right (well, up to a point, it's the industry that's creative, not a person nor a department, but that's for another time.)

I was being lazy in my thinking.  Why are we asking people to articulate an idea in a particular medium and then once they have, expect those very same people to craft it all the way through?  The answer is, for no other reason than because that's how it's always been done. And that's no answer at all.

At Here Be Monsters, we're experimenting with a whole new structure, one that plays to individuals strengths and is loosely based on my experience of writing for Hollywood, where someone has an idea, another person writes it, another rewrites the funny bits, yet another rewrites the female voice etc. and it's all done under the watchful eye of someone (usually a producer) who has a very clear vision of what they want to achieve at the end of it.

And so if the solution to our client's problem requires written words we employ dedicated writers, people who feel the need to write; TV writers, comedy writers, script writers, copywriters, novelist and journalists to write them for us.

As I'm forever saying, now is the time for us to experiment.