If You're Going to Blackmail Somebody, Do it Properly

You... no you!

At my current company we use IBM Lotus Notes for email. If you've ever used it, you'll know that Lotus Notes does not like to be in the background. When you open it, first the startup window, then the log in window, then the home screen and finally the mailbox continue to pop up and jump in front of whatever it is you're working on until Notes is fully launched and happy.

It's like "LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME!"

Like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, it is not going to be ignored.

Donald Trump is a lot like Lotus Notes. Just when you've forgotten all about him, he jumps out of the woodwork with one ridiculous stunt or the other. LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME!

Donald, too, is not going to be ignored.

Now, I don't think Donald Trump is a stupid guy. I just think he does particularly stupid things, and today's pronouncement is no exception.

I don't think Barack Obama or anyone in his organization is going to take this seriously, or even address it. It's likely they'll ignore it, or laugh it off. In any event, in a week's time it will probably be forgotten.

This isn't really blackmail. It's more like coercion. But whatever you call it, if you're going to attempt to coerce somebody, you really have to think it through, from motivation all the way through accountability. And there's a gaping hole in this plan that even the Donald should have been sharp enough to catch.

The fatal flaw in this plan is that he's left the choice of the charities up to Barack Obama.

If Trump was smart, he would have promised the money to a specific charity when he threw down the gauntlet. There's no shortage of worthy causes, organizations that no American would take issue with. So unless Trump is a moron of the highest order, he could easily have picked one or two or five organizations to whom he would donate this $5 million dollars.

For arguments sake, let's say that Trump promised the money to the American Cancer Society. "If Barack Obama releases these records, I will give 5 million dollars to the American Cancer Society." Now, this is a sticky wicket for Barack. If he does nothing, in essence he's witholding 5 million dollars of funding from the ACS, preventing them from using this money to continue researching a cure for cancer. It's almost like he's saying, "Too bad all you people with cancer, anyone who might get cancer, and your families. I don't care enough about you to let you have this 5 million dollars."

This is an uncomfortable position to be in.

But by leaving the choice to Obama, it's not like anyone is really losing the money because Obama will never play the game. Maybe the American Cancer Society is losing it. Maybe it's AMFAR. Maybe the Red Cross. Who knows? Since the money is not promised to any specific organization, no one can get really upset when they don't receive it.

So in actuality, Trump has concocted this elaborate scheme designed to "out" the President, while at the same time handing Obama a huge "out" from the scheme itself.

What a putz.

My 4 Year Old Rhymes Better Than This

Regardless of whether you like this ad or not (meh, in my book), how is it possible to fuck this rhyme up so bad? 

Seamless Web, do you really think the general subway riding public is so stupid that:

a) we won't understand that this is supposed to be like the "Roses are red" nursery rhyme, and

b) we're so doltish that unless we see "have your cake and eat it too" written out exactly like that we won't understand that reference either?

No, it's much better to add a line in the middle that doesn't rhyme with anything and completely fucks up the meter of the original nursery rhyme.  Now you've almost guaranteed that half the people won't get the joke.

Try this on:

Landlines are dead,

the Hudson is blue,

order your cake online

and eat it too.

That wasn't so hard, was it?

Sears, Where Strippers Shop

I posted a link to an AdRants posting yesterday about a nipple slip in the "Exotic Apparel" section of the Sears website.  Made the requisite Mom jeans joke and got the expected Craftsman, etc. comments.

My curiosity piqued, I later went to Sears.com and typed "Exotic Apparel" into the search bar.

Holy crap.

There's 10 pages of this stuff.  Apparently, if you're a stripper, Sears is where you shop.

Middle America, get your freak on.

Now You Don't See Me, Now You Do?

Like Peeta Mellark camouflaged as a river rock, it seems the latest trend in broadcast advertising is hiding actors in plain sight against various architecture and terrain, then 'gasp' they step out of the background and reveal themselves.

I first noticed this device last year in this National Highway Traffic Safety Administration PSA about drunk driving.

This spot's been around for a while; the thing that struck me about it was the creepy mannequin-like stiffness of the police, and the fact that you can easily see them if you're looking. Which I suppose a drunk person wouldn't be doing. What bothers me though, is that even though the guy and girl are obviously drunk the cops let them get in the car and drive around for a while before pulling them over, just to make sure, I guess. Bad on you NHTSA. But overall, a good idea, I thought.

So people coming out of the woodwork, I get it. Then last week while on vacation in North Carolina, I caught these two spots in the same commercial break during some show or other. OK, OK, it was Real Housewives of NY (you know, the one where they go to St. Barts and LuAnn sleeps with that Tomas guy) but it was my wife watching, not me, I swear!

The IAVA spot addresses a real problem for returning veterans, letting them know that they're not alone, and they've got support. Kudos. But I can tell you, if I was sitting in a coffee shop minding my own business and saw this parade of painted zombies shambling toward me I'd probably assume I was having some sort of post traumatic stress hallucination, and get the hell out of there as fast as my Army boots could carry me.

The CTU ad depicts a dystopian future in which picking the wrong school dooms you to a either a job or a lecture hall that are both so stupefyingly boring that you    cannot      even      move.

Oh, and here's a Sprite spot this year out of BBH Singapore... same thing.

Well, not exactly the same; the Sprite spot features a hot girl in her underwear, which is never a terrible thing in a commercial if you ask me.

I'm thinking that all these spots, especially the CTU spot could have benefited from a hot girl in her underwear. It would certainly make that office and lecture hall more exciting. Certainly that soldier wouldn't be feeling so all alone if a mob of beautiful, lingerie clad women was closing in on him... but then that would be an Axe commercial. And I'm certain that guy in the NHTSA spot was drunk driving his girlfriend toward their own personal "underwear encounter" until he got pulled over by that cock blocking state trooper. Nice hat though. I'd like to get me one of those.

So four different agencies, four different directors*** and one overwhelmingly similar idea.

Advertising and entertainment and pop culture are all rolled up in one big ball of borrowed interest. We know this, and I've referred to it several times in this blog. But while commercials and ideas are often similar to one another, they are not usually exactly the same.

Yet these four spots feature the exact same execution.

Yes, one can argue that concept behind the ads is different in two of the four. IAVA is about not being alone, and NHTSA delivers an uncomfortable "Big Brother is watching" message. But that still leaves Sprite and CTU in which the idea, "don't blend in, stand out," is the same.

Regardless of the concept and the message though, it is the the execution that is my biggest issue here because is exactly the same. And it makes me wonder, with all the creative brainpower at these four ad shops, with all the skills that these four directors bring to the table, with all the knowledge of everything that has come before, could no one have figured out how to execute this idea even the teensy weensy littlest bit differently?

(I mean OK, Sprite, the underwear thing, points for that)

***NHTSA "Camouflage/Invisible Cops" directed by David Slade@Anonymous Content (2008), for The Tombras Group.  
       IAVA "Camouflage" directed by jacobsbriere@HELLO!(2009) for Saatchi NY
       CTU "Stand Out" directed by Steve Reeves@TWC (2012) for Ogilvy NY
       Sprite "Camouflage" directed by Peter Thwaites@Unit + Sofa(2012) for BBH&BBH/Shanghai

Finally, Mom's a dork

After years of enduring the doofus Dad in advertising, it is refreshing to finally see a commercial where Mom's the butt of the joke.

Granted, she's still a fantastic Mom because she makes sure the kids get a nutritious breakfast, but still...

me rite pritty won day

I read an article recently in the Wall Street Journal.

I like to open a posting that way because it makes me sound so erudite... didn't everyone read an article recently in the Wall Street Journal? Actually, it was the WSJ online, and I only read the article because somebody had posted it on Facebook. OK, a genius I'm not. But the point of the article, the demise of proper grammar and usage in the workplace, is one which is near to my heart.


I'll be the first to admit that I'm no expert on this topic. Although I was issued a Warriner's English Grammar and Composition textbook every year from grades 8 through 12, I don't recall opening any of them once, let alone actually doing an assignment or learning anything from them. I write run on sentences from time to time, and I know I'm guilty of rampant comma abuse.


So no, I'm not an expert.  Nevertheless I'm pretty certain that most of what I write passes the red face test when it comes to usage and grammar (I guess those who are so inclined can whip out their blue pencils right about now).


No, what really irks me is the complete and utter disregard of any attention to detail when it comes to spelling.


If you spend a good portion of your day sending emails to colleagues, clients, and vendors you should know how to spell. Period. End of story. This is non-negotiable. When I receive an email with multiple misspellings, it always plants a seed of doubt in my mind about the sender's intelligence, no matter how smart he or she appears to be.


So if you're not a good speller does it mean you're dumb? No.


Actually, yes.


Because no matter how smart you are, if you're too lazy or careless to check your work, to proofread an email or letter you're sending out, then that's dumb. It doesn't matter if it's going to your mom, your boss, or your entire team. "Peel" and "peal" are two different words. But they're both spelled correctly and spellcheck will give both the thumbs up. If you can't tell the difference between the two, you should be concerned.


There's an account person in my office, almost 30 years old. A nice guy, smart and personable. He's used the word "piecemeal" several times in email over the past few weeks with the following spellings:


pease meal
piece mail
peace meel


I know he's smart, but when I see something like this, I can't help but think he's dumb.


Every one of these "piecemeal" abominations contains words that are spelled correctly, but none of them add up to "piecemeal." And that's because he is a spellcheck abuser.


Spellcheck, originally intended to be an assistive tool to the writer has now become the most abused tool in the box because users simply assume that if they don't see any red squiggly lines in their email, it's good to go. So by correcting spelling, spellcheck actually promotes misspelling.  Which kind of defeats the purpose, if you ask me.


Predictive text and autocorrect aid and abet this epidemic of abysmal writing. Does it make for some funny text messages? Yes, absolutely. Appropriate for the office? No, not really.


The problem is not insurmountable. Proofread your work. Don't just scan it quickly. Really read it. Think about what the words mean. Do they make sense? Do you really want to "serve it up on a plait," or "raze the bar"?


Eye no if wee wood awl pay a tension weed beet offal spelling once and fore awl.

Research Proves That Olympic Athletes are Raised Only by Single Moms on the Brink of Poverty

 

P&G does their research. They tout that fact on their website. About how they were the first company to conduct deliberate, data based market research with consumers. And how they work hard to stay in touch with the people who use their products. They must spend millions, if not billions of dollars on research every year.  

So clearly P&G must have unshakeable proof that no dad has ever woken his future Olympic athlete early in the morning, given him or her breakfast, and taken that kid to an early morning practice, or to school.

No father of a future Olympian has ever gone to a gymnastics competition or a swim meet or a track and field event or a volleyball game.

No father of an Olympic hopeful has ever celebrated the wins, or comforted the losses.

For that matter, apparently no father of an Olympic athlete has ever done a load of laundry, cooked a meal, or washed a sink full of dirty dishes.

So if you're a dad, to P&G you do not exist and your contributions, if any, are too small to mention. You play no role whatsoever in this arena. Despite what you may think, you are not a purchaser, a nurturer or a decision maker. You are invisible.

Mom, you don't do much better here. This film reduces women in general and mothers in particular to nothing more than low grade charwomen, there only to cook meals and wash clothes and clean up the house. Procter & Gamble doesn't think you ever cut a conference call short or left work a little early to make sure Johnny or Susie got to a practice. No woman who works outside the home ever helped to raise an Olympian.

Really?

This film is made from a 50 year old script, a script where mom does all the housework and child rearing and dads are completely absent. Except 50 years ago the homes would have been sparkling and aspirational. Now they are dingy and poor and sad. Only the American mom lives in what looks to be a middle class home. The other families appear to be very low income, scrabbling out a meager existence assisted only by the value brands of P&G (yes, the product placements are in there although they are deftly done and mercifully short).

Look, I get it. Life is hard. Raising kids is hard. There are so many families with so little means, who have to work so hard to merely survive. Then add supporting the hopes and dreams of your children when money is tight, and there's no way you can afford the gymnastics training or the swim lessons. But you give them anyway, and you squeeze every dollar that much harder. And your kids don't notice that Mom's shoes have holes in them and and they never know Dad has been wearing the same suit for 7 years. 

In this daily struggle everyone makes sacrifices. Everyone. Not just moms. And not just moms raise kids. Families raise kids.

The thing is, I really like this film. It is beautifully shot and produced. It is artfully edited and the casting and performances are wonderful. The music is sad and inspirational at the same time. The more I watch it, the more I beautiful I find it to be.

P&G, in the past 15 years you've done a great job of moving your style of adverting and messaging forward into the modern era.  Please don't turn the clock back 50 years on all of us, especially not on such a grand stage.

Just throw a freaking dad or two in there, would you?

Brachial Acts of Kindness

I ran into an acquaintance last week, an Exec Producer for a bi-coastal production company. I won't name him here, but suffice it to say if you've been in the business for more than a few years, you know this guy.


Anyway, we got to talking about another mutual acquaintance, and my EP friend says something like, "Yeah, I got him his first job in advertising.  Funny story."  And he goes on to recount a tale that goes something like this...


Apparently, at the age of around 8 or so, my EP friend and his brother were roughhousing around the house, as young boys are wont to do. And at one point the roughhousing gets pretty rough and this future EP's arm goes through a plate glass window.


If you're a student of anatomy, you'll know that armpit is the home of the Brachial artery, which is the major blood vessel of the upper arm. And what's unusual about it is that it's relatively close to the surface of the skin.  So if you put your arm through a plate glass window there's a pretty good chance you could sever this artery.


Which is exactly what happened.


Now, even if you don't know anything about anatomy, you probably do know that "severed artery = very bad thing."  


So there's blood spraying everywhere, and the dad runs into the room. If you're a parent, this is pretty much your worst nightmare.  This isn't a tooth knocked out, or a broken bone or a concussion.  All of those things are terrible, but they're probably pretty common childhood injuries and they all have a large enough window of opportunity to call an ambulance or get to the hospital.  The window of opportunity on an 8 year old's life blood squirting out of a severed artery is very small.


Very, very small.


At the time this occurred, 911 hadn't even been invented yet.  But even if it had, EMT's would never have arrived in time.  


So now what?  


The dad runs to the next door neighbor's house.  The next door neighbor is a doctor, a cancer doctor.  I don't even know what that means.  An oncologist? A surgeon? It doesn't really matter because he's home.  And he comes running over to the house, I assume with his doctor's bag, because in my imagination that's exactly what Marcus Welby would do.  And he and the dad pick this kid up and put him on the kitchen table, and the doctor operates on him right there. In front of the Frigidaire and the Amana Radar Range, kitchen floor slick with blood, this man operates on this kid.


And he saves his life.


Years later, the kid grows up to be head of production at some agency or another, and one day a young man walks into his office and says, "My name is xxx xxxxxxx.  My father saved your life so you have to give me a job."  And of course he did.


Funny story indeed.


This narrative made me stop and take my own measure as a man, and as a father.  If this was one of my beautiful girls, what would I have done?  Could I have remained as calm and focused as this man's dad, to remember that a doctor lived next door and to fetch him so quickly?


Equally amazing is that the doctor was home and came immediately, without question, to make the ultimate house call.  With no discussion of liability or malpractice.  Simply to help, and to save a life.  


It was a simpler time, I think.  But I also know that people like this still exist.


Which is why I like this spot so much.  I saw this shortly after I heard that story, and it really made me feel that despite everything we hear, people are still basically good, and there are heroes everywhere, in big ways and small ways.  


I'd like to think that this is all actual security camera footage and that none of it is staged.  I really hope it is.  But even if it's not, it's still a wonderful spot.  Nice job, Coke.

Haven't I heard/seen you before?

Over the past three months, I've spent a great deal of time on the phone with Verizon.

Don't ask.

The point is, if you spend a great deal of time on the phone with Verizon, you become very familiar with their hold music.  You can whistle it, you can hum it, and it inserts itself into a teeny, tiny cubby in your brain attic, a place so small you don't even know it's there.

Until one day when a Shop-Rite commercial comes on and you're watching this thing and you're thinking, "what is it about this spot that's so freaking familiar," and it's driving you crazy and then you realize it's the Verizon hold music on the Shop-Rite commercial.

And that doesn't make it any better, but at least you know it's not going to drive you crazy every time you see the damn thing.

Which brings me to the point of this post, borrowed interest in advertising.  Really, copying and ripping off creative in advertising, but honestly, whats the difference?

If you were creating a commercial, and you decided to use an existing piece of music, wouldn't you check to see if that piece of music had been licensed for use in advertising before?  Especially for a product that is directly competitive to yours?

I would.

So it always drives me crazy when I see something like this:

This spot aired early last year.  Directed by Adrien Brody, it is a modern look at the golden era of motoring and automotive design, as seen through the lens of the Chrysler corporation.

Beautifully done.  Nice job, guys.

And how about that track?  Hauntingly beautiful, right?

Right.

And it was even more hauntingly beautiful the first time I heard it, in 2000, in this Volkswagen ad:

 

This Dante Ariola gem is one of my favorite commercials.  One line of dialogue, no AVO, pure storytelling.  It is the song (One Million Miles Away by J. Ralph) that makes this spot eminently watchable, for me anyway.   And although the Chrysler spot is a really nice piece of work, I'd pick this one over that one any day.

So what gives?  Did the Chrysler agency think we'd never seen the VW ad and thus wouldn't know?  Or that we wouldn't remember this extremely memorable track?  Perhaps they believe that the statute of limitations on our memory is only around 10 years or so.

This happens a lot.

In 2002, Lincoln started using a jazzy tune called Get a Move On in their Navigator spots.  The first time I saw one I thought  "...Isn't that the song from that Volvo ad, the one where the Dad is racing back and forth from the pool to the soccer field?  And didn't Sam Bayer direct that in 1995?"

And lo and behold, it was true.

 

 

Granted, probably ninety nine percent of the population who view these ads will never know that either song was ever used in another commercial at all, let alone one for a competitive product.  Only ad schmucks like me see a spot like this and know exactly where and when the borrowed interest comes from.

 

If I worked on Lincoln or Chrysler, it would always bother me that regardless of how old the original ads are, it wasn't our idea first to use those songs in a car spot, and that even with that knowledge, we still couldn't come up with music that worked just as well, or better.

But it's not just car ads.  Oh no.

In 2005 a man picks up a smooth stone on the beach... it's a Motorola phone.

Five years later, a man picks up a smooth stone on a beach... surprise, it's an HTC phone.

The HTC ad says

"Every idea we have begins with you." 

But what I think the copywriter meant to say was

"Most ideas we have begin with you, but some others begin with a Motorola commercial."

Man rides motorcycle down country road in Academy Award winning film:

I'm looking off to one side, wearing aviator glasses, with one hand on my knee.

Man rides motorcycle down country road in 2009 commercial:

No, I'm looking off to one side, wearing aviator glasses with one hand on my knee!

I wouldn't say I'm obsessed with this, but I think I do happen to notice it more than most others.

I think my friend Dave Tutin put it best:

"...when an industry gets rid of all its senior people - either by natural retirement or firings or promoting them away from the actual work, then the new wave of "leaders" are free to claim recycled ideas as their own because there's really nobody to challenge them. Well, there is but most just cannot be bothered."

I understand how difficult it is to come up with a truly original idea, and I know that this industry we work in is the stuff of borrowed interest anyway.  But for me, the "no one will know or remember" reasoning is lame.

Because some people do remember.

And somebody will always know.

Poor Pete Campbell

This is the best thing that's happened to me all day!


Pete Campbell is such a douchebag and to see him get laid out not once, but twice in the Mad Men season finale was profoundly satisfying to me.


Now I can enjoy it again and again and again and again...