wicked wicked creative nice

Has someone already posted this? Doesn't really matter whether or not they have. It is worth having a look at again, for its stinking familiarity. Creative! Safe!

Awkward associations

Companies want to associate themselves with stuff that is more interesting, sexy and worthy than they are. That is the mechanism of sponsorship and a lot of advertising, too. (Making an ad is increasingly akin to designing an event your client didn't know they wanted to sponsor.)

Anyway, we all know this is how brand ads work but that doesn't mean it's okay to be shameless about it. In this 48-sheet, Becks appears to be trying to associate itself with music, art AND the fight against racism. These are three cool kids to hang around near, but it's all too much and the result is a bit embarrassing.

Did you see this in the Evening Standard?

do you? do you really?

could somebody please walk into a Subway and explain that they've just been diagnosed with a particularly virulent strain of pancreatic cancer, then ask if they've got a fucking Sub for that.

Bjorn Borg has wet himself

Hasn't he though?

A mood reel that should have NEVER been put on TV

This reeks of being a "manifesto" film. Maybe they showed this at a big BMW conference. Even the VO by Patrick Stewart AKA Prof. X AKA Jean-Luc Picard cannot save it.

i just

looked up 'so fucking boring you want to kill yourself' in an online dictionary.

it gave me no more information beyond this solitary link.

Global advertising

EXPERIMENTS IN ADVERTISING

From the SHOWstudio project on Erwin Blumenfeld.

I wish they'd give me a job.

The first post on Britain's last advertising blog

Over the past three years advertising has become self-conscious. And, like a lonely child, it's started talking to itself. These conversations have been deeply enlightening.

If there's one thing that advertising blogging in the UK has revealed, it's that the industry is seething with self-doubt and resentment.

It hates itself.

It's cleaned up its act. It's given up the booze, the drugs but the truth has become impossible to ignore.

It's the advertising.

The advertising is the problem. It's wretched. So much of it is poorly thought out, stolen, scammed, half-arsed, irrelevant, stupid or badly made, is it any wonder that the people responsible for its conception and execution are, by-and-large, miserable and angry?

But just as it comes to this realisation, blogging has become more difficult. Honesty is sometimes ugly, and agencies have realised that ugliness scares the clients. So blogging, the single forum for advertising's self-examination and recovery is becoming a risky business. If you want your career to progress, then you're better off not blogging.

Advertisers' Anonymous is a safe place. You can be honest here, and you can be creative here without fear of reprisal.

Please join us.

It's going to be fun.