Peacock of the Walk

I sometimes hear women complain about how males age so much better than females.

About how it's unfair that many men keep their looks longer, about how a white haired gentleman is viewed as distinguished and experienced and sexy, while a white haired woman is viewed as... old.

Why do men age better than women?

Simple. Men age better than women because women don't like to have sex with ugly dudes.

Calm down. You know it's true.

For the most part, a woman can have sex anytime she wants to. She just has to let it be known that she's into it and she'll pretty easily find some takers. But a man can only have sex when a woman wants to. So unless he's Brad Pitt he's really got to put some effort into it, put himself out there, and still face rejection more often than not.

So the good Lord gave men a little helping hand in the genetics department. Take a look at the tawny mane of the male lion, the lustrous cape of the silverback gorilla, the ornate antlers of a big male elk, or the riotously colorful tail of the male peacock. These ornaments exist to make these animals more attractive to the ladies. So they can get it on.

Bronx Zoo, about 3 weeks ago. While I was waiting for my wife and daughter to emerge from Madagascar, I witnessed this impressive display.



Come on, baby.

This poor guy is working his ass off. He's dancing and shaking it and getting his feathers just right and she won't even look at him. Just turns up her nose and walks away. Now this is a pretty good looking peacock. Hell, I'd do him. But he can't even get the time of day from this disinterested peahen. I guess she went off to look for a bigger dude with a more impressive fan.

So, rejected, he will continue to try to woo this peahen, and if not her then another, and if not her, then maybe one of those pigeons strutting around on the roof.

Women, do you see how hard we have to work just to be with you? If this fine specimen of manhood can't get laid, what hope do any of us have?

So please, grant us this one little advantage.

And that is why men age better than women.

Execution... eh. Concept... total dunkslam!

You'll see what I mean.

I am working on introducing "Dunkslam" into the vernacular... it's so lame that it is actually very cool.

I love this next spot. It's getting a lot of write ups and it's very funny. The casting is spot on. Who knows what this guy does... sales rep, construction, manufacturing, whatever, it doesn't really matter. What does matter is that he's pissed, like an angry red pimple about to pop!

Funny, yes. Will it air? No. This is an agency or directors cut. It has to be... it's 43 seconds long. Who airs a :43?

Agency and directors cuts are the lazy way out. It's easy to take all the best bits from your shoot and put them into a spot that can never air because it's an odd length, or so edgy that the client will never buy it. The real challenge to all of us, writers, art directors, producers, account people, is to make the on air cut and the agency cut one and the same. A cut so good that the agency is proud of it and the client loves it. Otherwise what's the point?

It's doubtful this spot could ever air. Despite all the careful bleeping, it's completely clear what this guy is saying and I don't know what network, cable or otherwise, is going to air a spot in which the main character says, "I will rip off their fucking heads... I will shit down their fucking throats." It's funny, don't get me wrong. I just won't be looking for it on the air any time soon.

Maybe this :43 is for the internet. That would take time and content constraints off the table. However, there is a :30 of this spot somewhere... haven't seen it yet, but if it's for broadcast it's probably a bit different.

No matter, it's still f*%king funny (see how I bleeped myself but you still knew what I was saying).

And I loooooove those sideburns!

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

I always find it interesting when this happens.

Last summer Capital One Bank ran a big spfx spot featuring gigantic push pins which fall from the sky and impale various items on the earth (a cab, the sidewalk, a fire hydrant).

It's treated in a offhand manner, the people on the street don't seem to mind too much that school bus sized death spikes are hurtling from the heavens causing huge property damage and a threat to human life. A guy walking down the sidewalk even bumps his head on one while he's texting (so cute!) Actually, I do that sometimes too, and I don't even have huge skewers falling from outer space in my neighborhood.



The big, behemoth push pins tie in with the cute little push pins on the map to show the myriad locations of Capital One banks.


Cut to a year later, and the Governor's Highway Safety Office of Tennessee has released this spot.



"This summer if you're speeding, driving under the influence, or driving without a seatbelt, you're gonna get nailed."

Then big, giant nails fall from the sky, impaling the hoods of the offending vehicles and stopping them dead in their tracks. Get it? You're gonna get nailed.

There's not a lot of people in this ad, but from the way it's shot and the effects are handled, it's pretty clear that there are serious consequences for the drivers of these vehicles, especially when the window rolls down at the end and we meet the Tennessee State Trooper. This alone is plenty of incentive for me not to speed, drive under the influence, or not buckle up. I simply do not want to meet this guy.

If you haven't noticed, the basic premise in each of these spots is strikingly similar. Maybe the creatives on the "Nailed" spot saw the Capital One spot. It was hard to miss, it was all over the air last year. Maybe they didn't and came up with this on their own. It doesn't really matter.

The question is, which spot is better? And make no mistake, one is better than the other.

Do you like the one with the cutesy visuals which powerfully illustrate that there's a bank on almost every corner?

Or do you like the one with the lame pun which powerfully illustrates that if you speed in Tennessee you will get fucked up?

You don't have to be Tom Kuntz to direct a good Skittles commercial

See?

Although I have to admit, "Pinata" and "Touch" are truly great... I might go so far as to say brilliant. The casting, the direction, the characters that are developed in short span of the spot...

OK maybe you do have to be Tom Kuntz to direct a good Skittles commercial.

One square acre = 4840 square yards

I looked that up because of a post I read recently about something that took place 67 years ago.

In 1942 fear ran high that America's west coast might be attacked by the Japanese, particularly airplane manufacturing facilities like the Lockheed plant in Burbank, California. So the Army Corp of Engineers, with the help of scenic designers, painters, art directors, landscape artists, carpenters, lighting experts and prop men from MGM, Disney, 20th Century Fox, Paramount and Universal did something about it.

They made Lockheed disappear.

Well, it didn't disappear from the earth, but it did disappear when viewed from the air, where Japanese bombers would have been looking from. The entire plant was camouflaged to look like farmland and a rural housing subdivision. Now remember, an airplane manufacturing plant is not one simple factory building. It's a complex consisting of many buildings. There are buildings for fabricating parts and assembly, huge hangers for aircraft, offices for designers and support staff, runways, and parking lots for the thousands who work there. It's spread out over acres and acres. Lockheed was at least 25 acres. So this was a huge undertaking.

Which brings me back to the title of this post... if one square acre = 4840 square yards, then twenty five acres equals...

wait for it...

121,000 square yards.

One hundred and twenty one thousand square yards of camouflage, rolled out and tented over every building, parking lot, runway and road in the place. By hand. And painted to look like haystacks, barns and split level ranch houses.

This is stunning, completely stunning in its simplicity. I can hear the briefing now...

"Colonel, how are we going to do this?"

"Well General, we'll get a hundred thousand yards of fabric, and paint it to look like a bunch of houses and farms. Then we'll roll it out over everything and hold it up with a bunch of sticks"

"Sounds good Colonel. Dismissed!"

It sounds crazy, but you know what? It worked. It worked brilliantly. Look at the pictures.

This is before...


And this after... almost the same angle as the before picture. Where did Lockheed go?








Lockheed was under all that stuff... see?








So simple in execution, yet so effective. This was the cutting edge technology of the time. Chicken wire, glue, wood, nails, some paint, and hard work. I don't guess this would hold up today, but in 1942 it was perfect.

Could you tell the difference from the air?

Couldn't have said it better myself

Check out this post by Dave Tutin about the current state of automobile advertising.

Dave is a creative director I had the pleasure of working with at Grey for several years. He is smart and talented and a bit of a Renaissance man, so when faced with the choice to stay in the ad biz or get the hell out, he chose the latter. He now lives in a beautiful house in Santa Fe with his lovely wife, and writes songs all day (as near as I can tell!)

I agree with Dave's POV about the gratuitous use of violence and speeding in car ads, and the message that these ads are sending.

I'll go one further, though. In the Mercedes spot that Dave writes about, the car is the character, you don't see the driver. There is no person to identify with and the experience is not personalized. It could almost be the video game fantasy that Dave refers to.

But what about when you do see the driver? Take a look at this Lexus commercial for their 2010 IS line of cars:



These cars are speeding through city streets... looks like Los Angeles to me. In New York, the local speed limit on most city streets is 30mph, and I don't think Los Angeles is much different.

These cars are going a lot faster than 30mph. Even if in actual fact they are not, they have been filmed to appear as if they are, which is essentially the same thing. The tires are spinning, leaving rubber, the back ends fishtailing as the drivers round corners at excessive speeds.

It's not like this city is deserted. You can easily see people on the sidewalk. And the drivers are screaming, screaming with the orgasmic thrill of piloting their vehicles dangerously and recklessly through the intersections and crosswalks.

Here now, are actual drivers, real people that the viewer can identify with. "Hmmm, they're having fun. Maybe I should buy a Lexus."

Here's another brilliant ad:



In this one, a Mustang GT peels out and leaves rubber, just like the start of a drag race. The car comes to a halt, we cut to the interior where a father turns to his son and sternly lays down the law "Now that's what I'm talking about," he says. "This is not a toy."

Great, here's a dad teaching his kid about responsible driving. The kid nods seriously.

Then the dad smiles conspiratorially and says "Wanna go again?" And off they go in a cloud of smoke and rubber, leaving all that responsibility and common sense in the dust. And a big bold graphic and voice over tell us about bold moves that happen everyday.

This is bold? Noooo, this is stupid. Anyone who buys this car for his kid has got to know that at one time or another, the kid is going to drive exactly like this. This dad goes so far as to teach his kid how to do it, then tell him not to, then wink and let him know that it's really OK.

"Oh, but they're in a deserted parking lot," you say. "There's no one around. No one will get hurt." Doesn't matter. The lesson is the same. The lesson is that it's cool to drive like this. And as soon as the father gets out of the car, the kid is going to pick up a bunch of his buddies and head down to the local strip to show off his new toy.

Oooh, maybe they'll pick up some beers on the way.

Up On The Roof

I don't get out to as many parties as I used to... I guess I'm getting old, or maybe rushing home for the chance to see my kids before they go to bed holds a greater appeal for me these days. But every once in a while I like to show up somewhere for a couple of drinks and to see who's out and about.

So a few weeks ago I stopped by a little soiree at an edit/post company. Ran into some people I knew, had a few drinks and saw this out the window:



I don't know who this girl is, or how she got out there, or if she was even a guest at the party. But it had just begun to rain, and as I watched this unfold I was sure that she was going to slip off this roof and go straight down into the street. It was a bit like watching an ABC After School Special, where the good kid who's trying to fit in at the new school gets high on "the pot" and has a "bad trip". "Look at me Mom, I can fly, I can fly!!!"

Splat.

This would have been unfortunate for her, but would have made the party a very much talked about event. Eventually she climbed down, I suppose, because no police or paramedics ever showed up.

Remember kids, drugs kill. Stay off the pot.

Soylent Green factory in Greenpoint, Brooklyn

The locals say it's a sewage treatment plant but we know better...


I'm pretty sure the egg shaped chambers are where the magic happens.


The people are fed in from the top, processed, and extruded from the pipes at the bottom.


Then the extrusion is rolled out into chips and dried in the flat moisture removal ovens in the foreground.


Trucks roll in and out every once in a while.

You know what I'm talking about.

What's the deal with the soup spoon?

When did the soup spoon become the de facto spoon at the deli?

Soup spoons are great for one thing... eating soup. Well, three things if you also count that picnic race where you have to transport an egg from one place to another in a spoon, and tunneling your way out of prison.

But for spoon borne foods that are not soup, the soup spoon is an awful choice. It is meant to be held to the lips and drunk from, not inserted entirely into the mouth. It's simply too wide and deep and round for that. If you've ever eaten a yogurt or oatmeal with a soup spoon you know it's almost impossible to get all the food out of it without turning it over and licking the inside with your tongue. And who wants to do that?

The humble teaspoon is my hero spoon. It's shallow and tapered and fits easily into the mouth. It's not so deep that your lips can't wrap around it and pull off the food. And the tapered shape makes it easy to scoop out that last bit of yogurt or pudding from the bottom of the cup.

So why is it that every time I buy a yogurt or an oatmeal at the deli, they throw a soup spoon in the bag? They might as well put a spork in there for all the good it does me.



I think it's a convenience thing. Like whoever orders the plastic cutlery only has to order one kind of spoon, not two. Maybe they think they'll save some money that way. I guess the reasoning is "a spoon is a spoon, let's just get the one that does everything."

But I think they've got it wrong. The teaspoon is the more versatile spoon. The one that does it all. I'd rather eat soup with a teaspoon than anything else with a soup spoon any day.