At HHCL, we were always accused of being different for the sake of being different.
I struggled with the accusation, because it was so obviously true. So I tried changing it to “different for the sake of being better” and that might have kept some people quiet for a bit, but essentially we were always just interested in being different for the sake of being different.
And I still think that’s a valid business strategy in our industry – in fact, now more than ever.
With this in mind, I scooted round the Saatchis’ New Directors Showcase channel on Youtube. And then went to look at the D&AD New Blood student show at Olympia.
The main thing to say about the first one is that (at last) you don’t have to go to Cannes to see it. God, I hate Cannes. You know that Oscar Wilde quote about foxhunting – “the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable” ? I’ve got my version for Cannes – “the drunk in pursuit of the useless”. To be fair, it doesn’t quite have Oscar’s assonance - and Oscar is famous for his assonance - but it’s pretty much true.
The Showcase is fantastic, though. Keith Loutit’s films have picked up a bit of PR in the newspapers but a photo in Metro doesn’t do justice to their unnerving poetry. Christopher Hutsul’s Nike film is almost exactly how advertising should be done – disarming, funny, compelling. Zhu Jin Jing’s film about Bruce Lee playing table tennis is wonderful and everybody who sees it will be mesmerised by it.
There’s a lot of experimentation, for its own sake. Then on Monday afternoon I went to Olympia and judged a section of New Blood, the D&AD student exhibition. I cycled there, while listening on my iPod to the Verve track “the drugs don’t work”. Somewhat unnervingly, at the first junction, I found that my brakes didn’t work.
And if there’s one thing worse than the drugs not working, it’s the brakes not working.
But I got there.
Some of the stuff was brilliant - like the Bucks College stand, which was worth the price of admission alone. But even though the price of admission is zero, some of the other advertising stands couldn’t live up to the same claim.
Walking round them was the equivalent of Proust ordering a large white tea and a packet of 10 madeleines. For some of these tutors, clearly nothing has changed in the last 20 years.
What are these people doing teaching students ?
I know what you’re thinking. They should be working in some of the bigger ad agencies in London.
But actually what they’re doing is no joke to the students involved. They’re failing to teach them to use the media which we still call “new” or “emerging” but which in about 18 months’ time, we’ll just call “the media”.
Look at the two Titanium films for Obama’s marketing and you’ll see how it should be done.
One of the Saatchis’ directors, Laurie Thinot, has a beautiful film for a fantastic track called “Stay the same” by Autokratz. The lyric says “we can always stay the same” but sometimes it sounds like “we can’t always stay the same.”
( I had an accountant who spoke like that once. “You cyan take the money out after one year.” “I can or I can’t ?” “You cyan”. )
Which lyric you prefer could say a lot about your attitude to advertising right now.
