Advertisers Anonymous

Anonymous sends this

2010-12-24T11:09:00.001Z

Hadn't logged in to the advertanon account forever, but when I did I found this, pertaining to be from 4Chan, home of angry geeks worldwide. It does bare the stamp of their distinctive love of ugliness.

up there

2010-04-27T23:37:00.000+01:00

MTV Móvel

2010-04-06T21:28:00.000+01:00

"MTV Móvel" for MTV Brazil
http://vimeo.com/9948655

dove

2010-03-21T15:45:00.000Z

What do you think of this ad? I can't help but feel inadequate next to this smug prick.

Creatives not cunts?

2010-02-19T11:49:00.003Z

I have to disagree with my angry friend below.

I don't think that all creatives are necessarily cunts. I think some of them are ok, but I think that circumstances force them to act like cunts.

Most people become creatives for personal reasons, not connected to their aptitude for the job.

Basically, they'd like to get laid a lot more. More than most people, male or female. Not because they're all raging horn-dogs, although some of them undoubtedly are (or like to think they, even though many of them are too tired after a day spent writing ads for catfood to do any actual fucking), but because having a lot of sex is the easiest way of telling yourself that you're well liked by the people around you.

One way of drawing attention to yourself, so you can do more fucking, is being creative in public.

Look at Prince. Very creative. Does a lot of fucking. But which came first? Would he have spent so much of his life, pumping away, like a priapic performing dwarf in the retinue of a decadent emperor, if he'd not written Raspberry Beret? Did he write Raspberry Beret for that reason? Or Little Red Corvette? Both songs about being picked up by dominant women whilst doing two-bit low-paid jobs?

But back to creatives.

Basically, they want the acclaim (and the hot cock or poon) that comes from being creative in public, but they don't have the stamina that will see them through to the creation of a really excellent album or novel or film. Or even a low-charting novelty grime record.

And the reason that they don't have the stamina to do that, is that they are all massive egotists. Hence the infantile need for physical love. The problem with being a huge egotist, is that it makes it very hard to do anything that you're not immediately good at. And doing something like learning to be a concert pianist or a playwright or a novelist means not being good at it for a really long time.

If you write a really good ad, it takes seconds. Ok, ages of sitting about, reading blogs, but then one moment of insight and bam - the whole production mechanism kicks in and the huge golden hand drops out of the ceiling to pat you on the head.

All the baubles and production company lunches and business class flights are just part of this mechanism.

Well, you might say, advertising creatives have a tough time because people mess with their ads.

Poor diddums. But we, I mean they, do not have to go more than a couple of weeks alone with their project, with just their self-belief to drive them on, ever really. And that is the bit of making real art that drives real artists howling fucking mad.

The wonderful thing about capitalism is that there is a niche for exactly this type of personality, in a creative department of an ad agency.

So in my opinion, they're not cunts. They're merely terrified, priapic, egotistical pseudo artists.

But then, what's another word for a priapic, egotistical pseudo artist?

Creatives are cunts?

2010-02-17T20:00:00.006Z

Aren't you?

All of you.

You're lazy, rude, sexist, surly, dismissive of those who don't come up to your own questionable standards, hypocritical thieves.

Go on. Admit it. If you weren't you you'd think you were a cunt.

Stealing other people's ideas, pretending you're more of an artist than a corporate whore just because you wear baggy, overpriced jeans and get your hair cut for £65. You are nothing but a puppet for a bunch of braying pricksleeves at the top of the chain who laugh their overpaid arses off at the fact that you'll stay late doing an ad just because it's got half a sniff of a Creative Circle Bronze.

And how you cling to those shiny baubles like they're a true validation of your existence on planet earth, when, ironically, they're the exact opposite. 'They spinnin'! Lookit, they spinnin!'

You are a sad bastard wage slave willing to work evening and weekends to make a fat fucker in charge of a holding company a little bit richer

And going to little art shows in Shoreditch doesn't make you better than an account bloke.

It makes you worse.

At least they know they're cunts.

Classy bit of banner advertising on CampaignLive

2010-02-17T17:25:00.003Z

I wonder if they're going to start running those 'Make Love Longer' ads just to raise the tone.

What's wrong with your face?

2010-02-16T11:38:00.001Z

This has to be the most idiotic advertising strategy in history.

Yeah, get plastic surgery. Why not? 32% of you are already considering it.

Well I've considered breaking into your house in the night with a pair of pliers and roll of cellophane, but that doesn't make it a great idea.

But yeah, why not?

Well, for one, you might end up looking like the male lead from a mid-budget Europorno like this fellow.

You'd also be undertaking an invasive medical procedure, all in the name of vanity.

And whatever the benefits, it's not like you could pretend that you hadn't had plastic surgery. So having plastic surgery constitutes a public announcement that you're an unhappy person whose only deep belief is in appearances. Unless you planned to dump all your friends and get new ones, to go with your new face. Maybe they'd like you for who you really are.

Could you trust a bloke who came in after Christmas with a new face? I ask you?

The Harley Medical Group can fuck off. Not just because they're plastic surgeons, but because they have a history of making insulting advertising. Remember this campaign:

Oh look, it got stickered by feminists because it was spreading hate.

This is how you advertise surgery:

Fallon - agency of gibberish

2010-02-10T10:19:00.002Z

Hey look, Fallon have won French Connection without a pitch. How did they do this?

Maybe they wanted to buck the trend. Clients are mainly leaving Fallon at the moment, big clients like Sony and Asda. And you've gotta wonder whether Kraft are going to want to spend quite as much money on whimsy as the Quakers of York (who are reportedly out of their minds on Miaow Miaow the majority of the time).

In the past French Connection sold bland clothes to violent men who use hair gel and women who get drunk and vomit on their own shoes using Trevor Beattie's show-stopping typo: FCUK. This was so successful that it became ubiquitous on the beer guts and cantilevered breasts of the above group and they basically hate themselves and so they started to hate the brand.

Some of the Fallon FCUK stuff seems basically ok. Can't argue with this for instance:

That definitely is the woman in that picture yes. And ok, it's rather boring, but it's a bit like the Fred and Farid Wrangler stuff, or the new Levis America stuff in trying to make a strong statement. In fact, fashion brands have always done this, only using photography, rather than headlines or strap lines. So, for instance, Paul Smith's styling has always been 'classic with a twist', but no one ever wrote, 'CLASSIC WITH A TWIST' on one of his ads. The Wrangler ads without the end line sort of say 'WE ARE ANIMALS' or 'WE ARE MAKING A STUDENT FILM'. So with out the headline this ad is just a picture of some bird in a mac. But I digress...

Ok, right so now you're saying something about the qualities of masculinity you're going for. Beard, rabbit ears, t-shirt, the man doesn't give a shit right? Ok. Sort of. But then I'm passing French Connection in Covent Garden the other day and I see this:

Now what they're clearly trying to do is develop a new, thrusting tone of voice for FCUK. What they've actually done is to write gibberish. This is interesting because for me Fallon have always had a strange relationship with language and meaning. When you think about it, the defining characteristic of most of their advertising is that it literally doesn't make any sense.

And that has a place in advertising, because when people are constantly sent meaningful messages sending them some meaningless ones looks sort of whimsical and interesting and exuberant. In fact the only thing Fallon seem to guarantee their clients is that nothing they do will make any sense. Or maybe it will sort of make sense. Or maybe the agitating thing is the extent to which is doesn't make sense.

Anyway, why pay an ad agency to write your headlines when you could just go through the subject lines in your SPAM file and pick out whatever gibberish you find there and give 2 million quid to charity and then PR the whole the thing for kudos? Ask you I do.

(Yorkshire)

2010-02-04T18:54:00.000Z

At Amsterdam Schiphol. Yorkshire has hills but in my experience is a bit rubbish.

!

2010-01-26T23:42:00.000Z

Seerrpriiiiiize.

Sexy Pizza

2010-01-26T19:35:00.004Z

Found this on my doormat. One of the many, miscellaneous, take-away leaflets i receive weekly but the first to feature sexy girls. Ok, so they're not that sexy but they are eating a pizza and somebody, perhaps even a professional, took this photo. Was it shot just for this leaflet? Is it a stock image? Have you seen it elsewhere?

The girls bring to mind those late night ads for Text/Chat/Flirt with Girls Girls Girls near you. They have that look of being scouted in provincial pubs or branches of Primark.

Work.Shit. Die

2010-01-26T17:49:00.003Z

"Do you dream about doing something worthwhile and creative with your life? Best you forget all about it and stick money in a pension plan which will end up being worth fuck all, further increasing your misery - that's the strategy, what do you think?"

What? Really?

2010-01-25T20:47:00.003Z

I'm planning to charter a microlight so I can leaflet drop a primary school with photocopies of my genitalia.

Rapey ads

2010-01-22T11:26:00.005Z

This woman has difficulty talking to her friends about rape. But she has no problem wearing a t-shirt that says 'Wake up to rape' in gold caps, in an advert, on the capital's mass transit system.

This campaign is merely a low-rent version of the breast cancer awareness women in t-shirts meme.

I think you know your headline has misfired, if can be misread by early morning rapists as an encouragement. I suppose you can't argue with the stats: most men have committed two rapes by the time they get to work.

Rape is a thorny issue. Its treatment requires sensitivity. Advertising grabs your attention through a total insentivity to your situation. Advertising and rape have always had an uneasy relationship for this reason. Both are non-consensual. In the 70s you could write a headline that said 'Which of these men would be best at rape' and they'd give you a pencil.

This isn't the only rape-ad on the underground at the moment. There's the 'Please no no oh god no please stop taking illegal minicabs ad', which manages to be both harrowing and smug.

Unless the copywriter was being forcibly sodomised by his creative director until he came up with a line I find it insulting to a) all men b) all rape victims. Much better than TBWA's classic 'If you want to know the true cost of an illegal minicab, ask a rape victim'. Which demanded the question, haven't they suffered enough?

Editor's note: We first heard the adjective 'rapey' used by Canadian stand-up Tony Law in 2004. Since then it has been sucked up by the zeitgeist to such a degree that it was even used in tawdry imbecile comedy The Hangover.

GOLD

2010-01-21T23:36:00.005Z

In my day job as a miserable, lazy, prick, I catch a fair few hours of mid morning TV. These ads conquer the breaks between chapters of trisha, leaving only a couple of slots for debt consolidation and injury claims solicitors.

I don't own any gold but I quite want to buy some just so I can receive an envelope full of cash in the post.

CashMyGold. I love the name of this company. It sounds so dirty, like you know what you're doing is wrong but you can't help yourself. You can't resist the thought of dale cashing you up.

This one has pretty high production values for a cash/gold ad - plus a lady I'd quite like to penetrate

My personal fave. Gold + testimonials + handfuls of cash + freaky bald man.

apologies for the post.

Data.gov

2010-01-21T13:41:00.000Z

Launches today. Ideal for all your mortality stats needs.

Is this normal?

2010-01-20T15:25:00.006Z

Think of the stuff you do when you're on your own. Picking your ear, adjusting your testicles, or, if you're a lady, scratching your Vincent Gallo.

Doing it public is weird. No one wants to see it.

Advertising that is not made by advertising agencies is private. That's why it's so weird.

Advertising agencies make your weird ideas acceptable to the committees they serve. That is their purpose.

This advert which we saw on the back of a bus in Cardiff isn't intensely bad, it's just private.

I really need a handjob

2010-01-19T20:47:00.003Z

Apologies for the long break. Other fish have been fried.

Check out the Handjob. As you can see, it's a piece of rubberised material branded with the word Handjob! It's no better than any other grippy piece of cloth for opening jam jars. But it's got this stupid advert. And that's interesting because the advert has become the added value. It's a free gag for bloggers.

It's like the Chia Obama.

Buy the product and you can participate in the joke, which is the advert. Be a part of the Chia Obama phenomenon.

This is a very pure form of advertising. Any brief you work on is a less honest version of these ads. This is what we do.

I'm not ashamed of that.

Nokia mounts a fightback

2009-11-19T00:18:00.003Z

That's what the Finnish electronics giant needs, a bit of cockney pluck.

What happened to the 0 tolerance pun policy at Wiedens?

What would you do with free internet for life?

2009-11-08T15:21:00.009Z

I would continue using the internet as normal, then I would hit Josh in the face with a piece of rusting pipe until he agreed that I had been right to do so.

Seen in Las Vegas

2009-11-06T13:28:00.002Z

They're up all over town with headlines like 'milk yourself silly' or 'beast yourself into a coma', 'go at it with a BB gun' (ok I made that one up) - seems like advertising is much much easier in America.

wicked wicked creative nice

2009-10-31T15:27:00.002Z

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

2009-10-31T09:03:00.005Z

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?

2009-10-14T11:29:00.003+01:00

do you? do you really?

2009-10-08T10:02:00.002+01:00

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

2009-10-07T22:21:00.001+01:00

Hasn't he though?

A mood reel that should have NEVER been put on TV

2009-10-05T11:00:00.002+01:00

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

2009-10-03T22:10:00.000+01:00

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

2009-10-02T18:12:00.000+01:00

EXPERIMENTS IN ADVERTISING

2009-10-02T11:45:00.000+01:00

From the SHOWstudio project on Erwin Blumenfeld.

I wish they'd give me a job.

The first post on Britain's last advertising blog

2009-10-01T23:03:00.000+01:00

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.