Christmas? What happened to Halloween?

Seeing as though Halloween came and went without a (bilious or otherwise) post from me, thought I'd spread good cheer and a little horror at the same time.

Good cheer = won't mention the extraordinarily expensive Bugners Christmas commercial that, although somewhat lovely in places, largely looks like it was shot on a sound stage in Ardmore. Meeeouch! Hope it won't lead to orchard silences round the boardroom table! (Cue sound of world's smallest drum kit going badum-tish!)



(Also promise to refrain from comparing and contrasting how Bugners and their customers choose to piss their money away!)

Instead, the horror! Imagine working as a designer on poster art for blockbusters like Batman? Not only do the fab art directors have to fork out a new gem on an almost weekly basis, the net is littered with thousands of fanposters designed by - surprise, surprise - fans - some of whom have really turned their obsession into serious works of art. Try staying one step ahead of them! This is a real one - I believe - and hot of the presses. Nice work guys!
Nothing added but design ...

Merchandise of the Stars

The ugly sister of Advertising, Merchandising and celebrity endorsement is growing business. And what with the fantastic (apposite, to be ad-wanky) merchandising opportunity grabbed by Amy Winehouse below (no, really, it is her and they are actual products - seriously!) We thought we'd try to match a couple of celebs to the products with which they really should be associated.



So ... It's Britney, Beatch!


And Lindsey Lo-ham:-


What about Lionel's baby?


And finally, the queen of merchandising ...

Well, it's not like she isn't familiar with Mickey

SCIENTIFIC BREAKTHROUGH IN COPYWRITING

(GOITRES) Advertising is the latest in a long line of industries to benefit from great scientific advances. Mebolix International, one of the world’s most renowned Advertising Research companies, today announces the successful completion of a half-decades research into the most influential words in advertising.

Per Huhanson, Managing Director of Mebolix is quoted “We (Mebolix) commissioned Japanese firm Kimsui Independent Software Sciences to scan hundreds of thousands of ads from all over the world that have appeared within the last five years and correlated the ads with the impact on product purchase.”

Say goodbye to ‘New’, ‘Free’, ‘Latest’ and ‘Schlong’ and say hello to truly effective words like ‘Goose’, ‘Cantilever’ and ‘Alabaster’.

And now for the science: Essentially, the frequency of certain words in the most successful ads all owed them to create a list of the most powerful words in advertising.

Huhanson claims “Words lose their coinage over time and new words simply take over. Language is organic – and anything that’s organic just tastes better and is better for you, right? Although they tend to go off quicker - even in the fridge.”

Huhanson also says the application opportunities for this new research are endless. Mebolix are currently compiling ‘the least effective words in advertising’ shortlist (or should we say, mancini-list?).

Huhanson (currently single) says they are in advanced talks with the Japanese labs to create a new company K.I.S.S. Mebolix to look into ‘the most powerful pick-up lines’ for the multi-billion dollar dating industry.

THE MOST POWERFUL WORDS IN ADVERTISING

Curly
Alabaster
Patricide
Britney
Goose
Red
Pantywaist
Riboflavin
Schroon
Cantilever

Giving Something Back

We've noticed recently a disproportionately high number of comments (1) reflecting on perecived negativity in some of the posts on The Blog of Alan. In order to redress this and to give something back to our loyal blogiers, there follows Part One in our semi regular, partially flaccid Top Ten Tips for thriving in the once wonderfully wacky world of advertising ...

HOW TO GET A HEAD IN ADVERTISING

1.Inveigle your way onto the agency wig account.

(That's a lot of wig for just $7.95!)

2.Rehash old chestnuts for analgesic or sinus commercial.


3.Use phrenology as a core element in all layouts regardless of product.


4.Insist on your bonus being paid in cabbage or lettuce vouchers.


5.Cast only ex-Buffy-the-Vampire-Slayer-now-working-on-Little-Britain actors for all commercial and voiceover work.


6.Buy a “Realistic lifelike silicone doll mannequin head” on eBay.


7.Get a colleague to help you re-enact your favourite Sweeney Todd scene using the agency guillotine (Top Tip: make sure you’re playing the Demon Barber role).


8.Get creative with a balloon, strips of newspaper, pva glue and some Pentels (if you don’t know what they are, use Sharpies instead)


9.Go fiddle with your secondlife avatar (it’s not a sin if you don’t take pleasure in it.)


10.Choose your own tsantsas from Doc Bwana's House of Shrunken Heads website (google it yourself, I feel dirty just researching it).



NEXT TIME: HOW TO GET HOW TO GET AHEAD IN ADVERTISING

Guess Who?

What Irish cider manufacturer forked out nothing but millions on an Irish Production Company to hire a foreign DOP for a ten day shoot (that included a second unit made up of an Oscar Gold Hollywood-class Irish crew!!!)? Same crowd that apparently chopped down an orchard only to replant the trees on a barren hillside covered with fake snow. At least they shot this one in Ireland, I suppose!!! How many pint bottles of cider would you have to buy to import the DOP? More than weren’t sold this poxy summer, no doubt!!

Platform Screws

Here's three advertising platforms that have obvious flaws:

Tesco
Every Lidl helps

There’s always a better job on recruitireland.com
Unless you wax supermodels for a living ...

Where would you be without McDonald’s?
Burger King (but still fat, ignorant and spotty)



Didl logo with thanks to: currychips.com

Great Music Search Tool

Follow this link to a fantastic music tool that works both free and on a subscription basis that makes hunting for the right mood of music a doddle. Instructions? Just use the onscreen remote. Some of the suggestions are gas but it really does work. You can even purchase the track from within the website if you so wish.

http://www.musicovery.com/

Box Clever

From the day I scratched & sniffed my first impregnated reader as a child, the use of scent has fascinated me. The smell of chocolate from a book, the branding of hotels via specific notes, the selling of homes through virtually cooked bread and perked coffee … Proust had his Madeline, I have my scents.

Satsuma evokes Christmas Morning like nothing else; Fabreeze has evolved into vomit for me. Even a poor sewage system reminds me of holidays in hot countries.

So, what do I make of this genuine, real, 100% factual product? By God, I wish we handled the advertising!

According to David McWilliams, Ireland is production central for Viagra, Silicone Breast Implants and Botox. With any luck, some Irish chemical company will pick up on Vulva Original Vaginal Scent. The North-west, for instance, could do with an employment lift: maybe somewhere like ... Muff, County Donegal ..? Badum tish!

We suck at creative advertising. Yes, you do too.

There are many throries as to why advertising creativity is dying on its ass in Ireland these days. Perhaps it’s an over-emphasis on strategy; meeting every nook and cranny of the anally-retentive brief is stiffling subliminal levels of meaning that connect creative with consumer. Maybe, the foreign, acountant-driven super agencies are blandifying advertising so that they can easily compare one juristiction with another. It could be that during the eighties and early nineties, belt-tightening meant that a generation of loonies missed the opportuinty to come into advertising and that, since then, the straight-laced now control the HR wings of agencies. Can it be that a university degree is prized more highly than a portfolio? Or, its it the fact that, with the internet, we no longer have the excuse to slope off “refrence hunting” and spend the day getting schlitz-faced down the pub? Clients with more marketing experience/qualifications than agency executives may also be playing a part – gone are the days of the idiot son of the Managing Director being shoved into marketing where he couldn’t do any harm.
At best, we are a patchy lot. We measure our successes in award ceremonies run by lovvies who award a few exceptional pieces and retain the rest of the spoils for their clique. These ceremonies are really only an indication of how far ones nose has penetrated the rear of the organisers and have very little to do with genuine creativity. Last year, ICAD seems to have chosen it’s shortlist by reviewing the names on the entry forms rather than the work. I imagine the same will happen this year. That’s why there will be a mcflurry of radio awards going in certain directions and a few agencies will qm-pee themselves, believing that handing themselves awards makes up in some way for their part in murdering creativity.
Personally, I believe all of the above to be true. But the main fault lies squarely at my own door. Every ad I fork out with fifteen seconds of thought that gives the AE an easy sell and the client a no-brainer buy, helps kill creativity. Every ad that I’ve allowed be hacked to death by the ‘consumer is an idiot’ brigade, helps kill creativity. Every stupid defence I’ve made of of ego-inflated shoddy work, helps kill creativity. Perhaps the true purpose of Award Cermonies is to reward those who can be at ease with the dross they produce. For whom, the award is, in itself, the end goal. To whom ‘Creative’ is a job title like ‘Managing Director’ or ‘Spray Tanner’.
No amount of imported flash directors, no amount of awards, no expense account, no business trips abroad, no foreign shoots, no lickspittle praise from ones own posse can make up for a simple, clever idea designed to appeal to a target market and executed beautifully. Look around this year’s ICAD exhibition. You won’t find many ads that fit that bill there. If there was an advertising archive, that’s where you’d find them huddled together, old and alone.
Creative advertising is dead and gone, it’s with Sally O’Brien in the grave (with apology to Yeats).

Mock The Ad

One of the great radio campaigns over the last year or two is that for Dublin Pubs, voiced by Irish comic, Dara O'Briain. You'd wonder who was primarily responsible for the copy, the writer (I think Cawley Nea handle this) or O'Briain?

Anyway, the latest ad has curiously disappeared off the air, to be replaced by older copy. In the ad, themed loosely on the Rugby World Cup, O'Briain remarks something to the effect that you can watch Ireland on a Dublin pub's TV "not suck at a World Sports Event".

Oh dear.

Influence schminfluence

Ok, an oldie but a goodie: Just in case you didn't know just what is is you're doing for a living, Darren Brown explains all in a nutjob. I mean nutshell ...

Harp Supplemental: when is an ad just a research debrief?

Ah, sure there's no point ...
fish barrel etc.
Here's the one with the camel ...



At least they had the good grace to shoot it all on a beach in Ireland. What? You mean they couldn't even do that right! Ok, where was it: Portugal? South Africa?

The Pen is head & shoulders above the sword!

"Everyone knows a guy like Mickey"? What would have made this very mediocre commercial for the aptly named ‘Head’ & Shoulders far better is an ever so slight flick of the pen. It should read: “everyone knows guys like Mickey”. Carries the same meaning plus targets the pink pound. Opportunity lost? Or simply a double entrendre spotted by the AE or Client?

Dark Side of the Rainbow

This, at first, may seem to have nothing to do with advertising but … To those of you who haven’t heard of it, there is supposed to be a deep synchronicity between Pink Floyd’s (I can’t bring myself to use the word ‘seminal’ as it sounds like the punch line to a George Michael Urinal joke) Dark Side of the Moon and The Wizard of Oz. I won’t go into the details – you can find the science on: - Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_side_of_the_rainbow and the clips on youtube:



Suffice it to say, you watch Wiz whilst listening to DSOM and it seems to just work. That’s where we get back to advertising: sometimes, things just work. We’ve all seen a piece of crappy library music placed against a radio or tv ad that suddenly raises both the ad and the music to a new level. Or a prop or throw-a-way line in a commercial that becomes the hook everyone remembers. True, as often as synchronicity can work in our favour, it can work against – but it does work. Remember the monkeys on the typewriter thing? That they could write the complete works of Shakespeare? Yes, they could if given enough time but they would be producing the complete Words rather than Works. The true genius lies is recognising the synchronicities as we work and letting them live. Fighting for them, in fact, in the face of executive and client annihilation. ‘Why on earth are you using a monkey to sell right price tiles?’ Don’t know, it just works. ‘It Just Works’, once the core rationale for advertising is rapidly losing coin in this nut & bolts, wire and plastic packing, time and motion modern marketing melee. It’s up to us Creatives to hold on to the integrity of synchronicity, blind inspiration and happy accident. Don’t obey your thirst, obey your gut. It’s what got you into advertising in the first place. Now, fly my pretties …

Some other folk in our creative department have been pulling their hair out with a particularly obdurate client. I thought I'd send them this to cheer them up.

Noi is the winter of our in-content and the way it might look at you!

Screw the company you keep or actions you take. Similarly screw your word, your intentions and your deeds. Verily I sayeth unto thee: by your Brands shalt ye be known. Yes, the car you drive, the beer you drink, the clothes you wear, the brand of aftershave/perfume you wear are more telling than any other single thing about you (ok, we’re excluding over-production of sweat and voluminous body hair).

We have become a first impressions society – and those impressions count for 99% of how you’re perceived 100% of the time. Desmond Morris prattled on about it in the Eighties but now it is a reality.

Completely aside: wouldn’t it be great to remake 1984 and at the end, as Winston Smith is being led into Room 101 by Cyril Cusack to be reprogrammed/killed, Davina McCaul pops up to interview him and show him his best bits? ‘And here you are with the supposedly virginal Julia – what the Nation wants to know: did you shag her?’

Back to the point/pint: So wtf would anybody order a Harp?

Yes, Harp shares that special place in Irish Advertising. You know the one: ‘Northern’. It slots in there with Buttercrane centres and pit bull neutering, weather forecasts with a republican-challenged map of Ulster and the ever-effervescent Julian what’shisname. But please! I’m an insular knob, devoid of personality, taste or ambition – “I’ll have a Harp, please!”

High camp went out when the cops started going undercover at music festivals.

Next they’ll have a bunch of guys in pee yellow wetsuits swimming around in the stuff in time to some thumpy-thump piece of music.
Whatever about letting the client write the ads, letting the consumer ..?!

Verdict’s in on the new litter campaign: Rubbish!

The screen shot here is either from the new Department of the Environment anti litter campaign or this year’s Big Brother. Either way, it’s puerile, trashy and the usual case of government agency advertising by numbers. It does however smack somewhat nicely of Skins – the poshbrat follow-up to the scintillating Shameless. So, not entirely crap, then.
It is easy to knock this type of public cervix advertising (fish, barrel – am I stretching the metaphor?!) but this at least tries to look smart – at the same time as covered in shit, if you know what I mean?!Don’t like the song very much. Seems a tad twee. Could have done with injecting cajones via a pumping soundtrack. It all leaves me with the feeling of an acid flashback envisaged by someone whose experience of drug taking begins and ends with bonjella.

They don’t call it copywriting for nothing

Not entirely gratuitous pic of Holly


http://www.windmilllane.com/sharks/kinsale_brian_swords.mov

http://www.windmilllane.com/sharks/kinsale_ger_roe.mov

Watching these 'Future of Irish Advertising' ads is a little like spotting the cop with the speed camera in the distance on the N11. You know he’s seen you. You know he’s caught you. You know you’re going to get penalty points. But you still whack on the brakes in the feeble hope that somehow you bought a car whose paint is invisible to police radar.

Ok. Watching these ads is nothing like that. But I was think of Jessica Alba and Holly Valance and that paragraph helped to refocus me.

In fact, watching them is more like watching a poor person’s version of the Bergkamp cheesey Reebok ads.


Homage aside: I’m afraid the whole idea was as doomed as a subway viral. Advertising parodies – especially those perpetrated by advertisers – are, almost without exception, crap. In fact, 99.9% of all parodies are crap. Just trawl through youtube. You’ll see what I mean. Should have used professionals – comedians. They know funny.

It is nice to see advertising being advertised though. And on telly too.

Aside: Note to clients though: the barber with the worst haircut in town may well be the best haircutter. The same doesn’t apply to advertising.



Backside: ‘The Future of Advertising in Ireland?’ Going back to my cop analogy: slow down ahead. So stay in the pub down in Kinsale (fishing, my arse!) brush up on your interpersonal skills, lads. You may end up with that mop yet. Will come in handy when polishing all those awards, Ger.

Goodbye to the prawn sandwiches...

There was a time when McConnells were considered to be the Manchester United of the Irish ad scene: playing out of a vast concrete and glass stadium (Charlemont Place) they had a far larger squad of creatives than their rivals. The trophy Room was full of Sharks, Bells and other strangely-shaped sculptures.
And in John Fanning they had a manager as wily, if not as red-faced, as Alex Ferguson.

But in recent times, the ABM's have had a field day.
Major accounts have stormed out of the dressing room, and Jarlath Jennings (Carlos Queiroz?) has had mixed fortunes in reviving a thinning (Gerry Kennedy excepted) squad that may have seen better days.

Reflecting their new mid-table status in the Irish Advertising Premier League is a move away from the Theatre of Dreams (which, amazingly, they never owned) to a new and presumably more bijou premises in Barrow Street.

Check out the rather amusing viral they've released to mark the event.

http://www.mcconnells.ie/moving/email.html

McFlurrys in the Rare 'Oul Times

There was a time in the UK when you rarely heard a regional accent on the TV. By that I mean you never heard Scousers doing the weather. Or Brummies reading the news. And you never heard anything redolent of north of the Watford Gap on TV or radio ads.

Nowadays, all has changed. Regional accents have become part and parcel of the UK creative resource.

But over here in Ireland, the whole accent thing seems to be stuck in a time warp. Or should I say, a Dub-warp.

Take for instance the McFlurrys radio spot where a pair of "real" Dubs start singing to the tune of the Flake jingle.

At this point I should own up to being of rural origin, though living in the capital for many years. But I'm getting sand in my crack hearing grating phoney voice-over inner-city Dublin accents on ads. If you're a culchie like me, you simply can't relate.

And it's worth pointing out that most of the population do NOT live in the capital.

So in the interests of less predictable and lazy TV and radio, can we all start looking beyond the "loveable 'oul Dub" cliche.

Interesting fact of the day...

Fascinatingly, Birmingham City manager Steve Bruce is a cousin of the actor Neil Burgess who plays the character of Barry Scott on television adverts for the cleaning product Cillit Bang.

The science of creativity...

Came upon this amusing diagram on the blog of fellow-creative, Scamp: http://scampblog.blogspot.com/

If conducting this experiment in Ireland, add twice the amount of h2o in illust (b).

Remembering The Wilde Men of Advertysinge

Was listening to the radio in the office yesterday morning, and Ryan Tubridy had on a guy called Sam Delaney, flogging his book "Get Smashed", an account of the London ad scene in the 70's.
This, of course, was the Golden Age of Advertising, and spawned creatives of the callibre of Alan Parker, Ridley Scott, David Puttnam and Charles Saatchi.
What was as remarkable as the innovative work produced, were the hedonistic, alcohol-fuelled lifestyles. Much of the iconic advertising we regard today as "classic" was conceived in the pub.
Tubridy also had on Stuart Fogarty of AFA O'Meara, who made the point that since then, creative work has increasingly taken a back seat to commercial interests, Martin Sorrell of WPP starting the rot in the eighties.
If you're old enough you may well recall their (slightly less talented) Irish contemporaries. Guys like Ken Flynn and Cathal Sweeney, renowned for their quaffing prowess. Or have heard legendary tales, like the time Graham Stone threw his typewriter down the stairs. Others, such as Leo Cullen, who seemed to have moved office to the bar in O'Briens. And directors like Michael McGarry and John Devis, not noted for their abstemious lifestyles.
I fear, as Stuart suggests, those days may be gone forever. The accountants have taken over the asylum.

It's Dull Inside

http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=SrdJnerQ_uk

First couple of days back after ye olde two week holidaye.
You know the feeling. More sluggish than a slug with arthritis.
And the large pile of kappa board leaning against my desk signifies that the work that was so urgent over two weeks ago still hasn't been presented.
And no, we haven't heard anything back on that pitch we did a month ago.

So basically, sod all happened while I was away.

A desultory glance at Creative Ireland offers little of interest apart from a debate as to whether IIBBDO did the new Guinness ad "Music Machine" or not. I assume they did. I've only seen it a few times, and whilst it has all the production values you'd expect, and a reasonably interesting idea at its core, I find it a bit dull. Curiously, it brings to my mind a similar, much-derided Guinness ad from the late eighties (Arks) which also featured little yellow men.

Anyway, I'm off outside for a smoke.

Sublime in the Coke you nut

sub·lime
1.
elevated or lofty in thought, language, etc.: Paradise Lost is sublime poetry.
2.
impressing the mind with a sense of grandeur or power; inspiring awe, veneration, etc.: Switzerland has sublime scenery.

The definition might suck but the ad is 100% pure awe. Where can I get me a ringtone like that ..?

Duh-duh-duh duh-duh-duh duh-duh-duh duuuuh Duh-duh-duh duh-duh-duh duh-duh-duh duuuuh Duh-duh-duh duh-duh-duh duh-duh-duh duuuuh.

I'd like to teach the world to create advertising like this. Simple, heart-warming, high in heart-clogging, obesity inducing palm sugar and, best of all, delivers the brand promise - a smile.

Carlsberg + BOI = WTF?

Whadafuh?

Why-oh-why, or more importantly, how-oh-how did these abominations pass through sphincter after sphincter and onto our television screens?

'Leave 'em wanting more' is all very well but for god sake give us something in the first place! Sure, both have production values coming out of the wazoos and are superbly cast/shot/posted and whatever else. Both also are vacuous to the max.
I'm prepared to forgive BOI cuz they're bankers and really don't ever want to say anything in their ads in case it draws us little people's attention to how they actually make their money.

But Carlsberg? If you really want funny stories from a J1 trip to Boston - Ask me. I'm sure deep-regression hypnotherapy might dredge something up from that spectacular Hunter S. Thompson drunk fuelled romp. Even my socks were funnier.
The ad falls flatly into the same festering pool that gave us the thankfully banned puerile Budweiser 'girly scream' shite - although you could charitably argue that there was a concept in the Bud ad.

Here, Carlsberg ditch decades of smart heritage in favour of a lame one hit, one layered, onanistic flop.

I really don't even care to find out who made it, shot it or produced it. I can only presume it is so lacking in any redeeming features that it must have been some "rent-a-brit" "shit-hot" director helping us paddies "raise the bar" of Irish advertising.
Next time, Diageo: pick creative 'A' or Creative 'B'. Trust me, creative 'C' really does just stand for crap.
Worst Carlsberg ad ever?
Probably.

"I had a great idea for an advertisement..."

Don't you just hate it when a member of the great unwashed puts down his pint, and decides to share with you their fantastic idea for an ad.
In almost every case, it's bad. And would probably cost about 2 million euros.
And it's no less irritating when a fellow creative tries to come up with suggestions for a job that's none of their business.
It's the equivelant of unasked for assistance when you're doing a crossword.

Of course, this never stopped me from proffering unsolicited advice. So here's my tip to Young Euro RSCG for their next Bulmers (or Magners) orchardy thing.
The outrageously underrated XTC have a track on their 1986 album "Skylarking" called "Season Cycle" which I've always thought would be perfect for Bulmers.

Go on, Youngs, have a listen. It's only 99 cent.

Alan Who?

The problem with advertising in Ireland is that it's a small world.
The population of the entire island is slightly under 6 million, and most of the larger agencies are in Dublin.
Larger agencies in an Irish context means anywhere there's more than 35 employees.
And there's probably no more than eight or nine places that big. Though there are plenty of really good smaller outfits, doing good work.
Which means that it's a relatively incestuous business. Everyone knows everyone else.
And strangely enough, there aren't lot of Alans. In fact, off the top of our collective heads, we can only think of one.
So we would like to categorically state, this blog has nothing to do with Alan Kelly, CD in Cawley Nea.
Nor any other Alan. Or Alanis.

Ad of the day

In these days of incessant monsoon rain, this is a topical ad from Canada. Snow globes are a hoary old chestnut in the Art Director's drawer, but this has a decent twist.

That time of the year again...

To go or not to go, that is the question. To Kinsale, that is. Of course, this question doesn't apply if your agency isn't in the habit of sending people down (it's not inexpensive). Or perhaps it's not your turn this year.
We've just been asked if we want to go, and to be honest, we're a bit lukewarm about it. For a start we've nothing in - there's a limit to your enthusiasm for smilingly applauding other folk picking up awards.
But mainly its the gargantuan amount of alcohol consumed over the weekend. Generally speaking, physical recovery doesn't kick in until the following Thursday. And there's no point in saying you'll take it handy - you're merely deluding yourself.
Incidentally, the judges this year are:
Mal Stevenson, Creative Director, Irish International BBDO
Tony McTear, Creative Director, TBWA, London
Kieron J Walsh, Blinder Films, Dublin
Craig ‘Moose’ Moore, Clemenger BBDO, Sydney
Alexander Zelmanovics, Chief Creative Officer, Lowe GGK, Vienna

Btw, what the hell is a "Chief Creative Officer"?

The first faltering steps of an Irish Creative Blog...

Welcome to our humble blog.
As far as we know, this is the first Irish blog of an Irish advertising creative team, with subject matter loosely focussing on creative matters and the ad business in general.
We'e not really sure what we're going to post here, or how often. It'll probably be rambling and incoherent. And when work gets in the way, we'll presumably forget all about it.

So that's it, first post over and done with.

Btw, if you want to respond to our inane ranting, please feel welcome.