One other thing about D &AD digital winners

I don't think its a coincidence that all the pencils won for sites were done by non-UK agencies and all the pencils won for banners were by UK agencies.

There is a wee bit of an obsession with advertising (banners) in this fair land of ours over 'other things'. Clearly advertising is incredibly important and we wouldn't have anything to talk about without it but I do think we (as in digital agencies) are going to have to be able to do more than banners - to the same standard as our US / Japanese / Swedish friends - or we are going to find life very difficult.

The normal response to this by the UK scene is 'but, we don't have the budget, it's not fair'. Well, two of the sites that won pencils were not blockbusters at all - Weave Toshi from Japan and Shaveverywhere from NY - they were just really interesting from a usability and humour standpoint.

So if it aint the budget then it must be the idea.  Doing cool banners to win awards is all well and good (and certainly cheaper and easier than doing sites) but we need to think bigger and get clients to buy bigger ideas if we are to progress.

That was vaguely serious there. Did you notice?

D&AD. And the winner is....the internet

Doh! The groans from the TV posse last night at D&AD's ceremony were pretty much uniform when instead of awarding a commercials director or adland Creative Director the lifetime achievement award went to the Internet.

Sir Tim Berners Lee, inventor of the WWW got his first ever creative award. My how things have changed. 

The other big winner was nike+. No surprise there. I was going to do a long and supremely intellectual post about D&AD for the first time truly rewarding a creative business idea rather than something that just looked pretty but I'm too hungover.

You get the drift though don't you? Things that are useful, innovative and all that jazz are much more interesting than things that just look nice. And it's going to stay that way for the forseeable future. (Until it becomes fashionale to do the opposite).

The Power of Pictures

Shamelessly stolen from the adfreak blog, but check out Steve Job's introducing his '1984' ad and how wild the crowd go.

I suppose at the time it was a big deal. A huge deal. It seems werid watching it now. What would be today's equivalent I wonder? Something that creates such a instant round of applause at a conference? 

A new Google algorhythm? A new release of windows? A new web site? The new i-Pod? I don't know, that's the point, it would have to be something new, something seismic. But what I reckon I do know is that it wouldn't be a 60 second TV ad.

Which is genuinely a shame.

She did what?

Not much..according to google. Funny little google search return about how women have never invented anything.

If you want to do something about it - you should go along to the next 'She Says' event on May 31st. 

She Says is a pioneering little group of women in the digital industry trying to help other women navigate the slippery path to digital nirvana. Open to one and all.

Is now the right time to start up a digital agency?

Of course the short answer is yes. But the long answer is a little different.

The long answer is hell yes.

The market is chronically under supplied. There are a handful of agencies who actually know what they are doing and have been doing it long enough to produce work of any meaning (that's not necessarily the same as winning awards) but a raft of big blue chip clients who haven't really got started in digital yet and need agencies.

The talent shortage may be a problem for an agency that wants to grow beyond 50 or so people but not for a start up. I would be very surprised if there are not a few people out there in existing good digital agencies and more traditional shops who wouldn't be lured by the excitement of joining a start up - the fact is if it doesn't work out they can always get another job later.

Will the traditional agencies getting their digital acts together mean it's harder for digital specialists to make a buck? Of course, but it will take time and it's still a market that favours specialits and, as I have said, there is room for one more. There's actually room for 4-5 more. How many banks are there? How many car manufacturers?

So for me it's no surprise to see Martin leaving Republic to do his own thing. Whether he does or doesn't do it with team Sandoz/Griffith we'll have to wait and see.

Either way as soon as a digtial agency with experienced and talented people at the helm starts up expect to see it fly.

If you can't beat em, join em?

I was watching TV at the weekend ( I was down in Devon, there really was NOTHING else to do ) and came to the conclusion that the two TV ads I like most at the moment both take their influences from the web.

It used to be that TV ads would get ideas from artists, Hollywood, sitcoms, current events, etc but now it's the Internet I reckon.

Two spots which are currently doing it for me are CHI's Big Yellow Storage and Weiden's Cravendale. The big yellow ad is a stop frame animation fest. Stop frame is massively time consuming but not that difficult to have a punt at, so you get oodles of it on You Tube. Hence it's had a bit of a renaissance.

Cravendale is also stop frame animation but done in a slightly different way. You'll also see a few things like that on the web. It's a lot of fun and feels spot on for a generation bought up on the web.

Does the fact that mainstream brands like these (we are talking FMCG and storage here, not Nike or Converse) are using techniques like this mean that the web - and more specifically amateur film makers on you tube -have become mainstream culture? As the dude at the start on Hong Kong Phooey said , 'Could be!'.

TV and Stuff

Wowsers, it's been so full on week that at 16.49 on a friday its not even over yet. One more client meeting. No posts for a while and to be honest my brain is dead. So I just thought I'd post a DRTV ad we have done for Vodafone. For no other reason than the fact that I like it. And the people that worked on it deserve some love.

I'm not going to get into the whole can digital agencies do TV debate because it's pointless. Suffice to say we were asked to do a 30 second DRTV ad by our client so we did. It was lot of fun, we learnt a lot and, who knows, maybe we'll be back for me. Early results suggest it has worked 30% better than the last ad they ran too. So, that's nice.

Big up to Gavin, Amy, Luke and Dangerous. To see it and get full background and credits and all that kind of jazz go here.

Look, all content is going to be free. Deal with it.

All this fuss over people suing YouTube and Google about Intellectual Property is a load of hot air.

In the future mass produced content will be free. Thats just how it will be. A whole generation of people will be used to not paying for stuff and will continue to subvert the system until they find a way of not paying.

This doesn't mean Viacom et al will go under, far from it, they just need to find a different way of making money. Like more performances, limited edition artwork on cd / dvd cases, one offs etc etc.

I'm sure all this legal do-dah is just a stalling tactic while they figure that out.

Thanks to Flo for this point of view.

The Power of Words

Every now and then you see an idea that has the power to move you in ways you thought quite impossible.

I was in a foul mood the other day before I saw this..

Now you can debate whether this is an 'idea' or not but that would be churlish. It's certainly one of the more creative peices of writing I've seen for a while.

Why does it work so brillianty for me? It's got all the stuff that makes it a great story, heroes, villains, puns. But specifically being an Arsenal fan has not been much fun lately. So I was happy to see Chelsea go out of the Champions League, and or course United. But what of Liverpool. They are through to the final again. But oh, yeah, Liverpool is full of theiving scousers. Fact.

All smiles again. Thanks Mr Sun headline writer.

10 Years of New....blah..blah..blah (Part 3)

In 1997 the Tories were unelectable, there were no digital ad agencies and the agency everyone would kill to work for was Howell Henry. How times change.

As I said on Monday in 1997 I left Watford, bright eyed and bushy tailed. Howell Henry had just completed the wonderful blackcurrent Tango ad and it was the hottest place in town. Closely followed by St Lukes.

Now HHCL via Red Cell and United is no more. I'm not sure how it went from being Agency of the Decade to this sad state of affairs but I guess it has to do with the two H's, the C and the L all leaving. I've always found Steve Henry to be a bit spiky and I know he rubs people up the wrong way - but 9 times out of 10 he's right. And Axel Chaldecott was the nicest man ever not to offer me a job. (Well he did, but my partner at the time didn't fancy it. I know. Bonkers. But don't worry about it. I'm over it. Really.) Don't know the others but I would imagine they were good eggs too.

The other hot agency was St Lukes. Clearly they are still around but with all due respect they are a million miles away from where their potential suggested they could be. At the time the two CDs were Kate Stanners and Tim Hearn. Kate was an anomaly - a female creative director who was....cool. And Tim was also cool in an uncool, go down the pub drink beer and talk about dubious music kind of way. I would have loved to work there then too.

One person who did, for 10 years, was Alistair Campbell who rose to become Creative Director but recently left to join Agency Republic.

Obviously it would be too easy and predictable for me to say that the rise of digital over 10 years has meant that some of these great agencies have suffered. Sure we are hungry for talent and some of the smart people have recognised that there may well be a different way to do things but there are scores of 'traditional' agencies that have flourished in that period too and continue to do so.

However, if you look stateside at someone like Goodby they have done nothing less than a complete turnaround - rather like the Tories have done by electing David Cameron as leader. Five years ago the San Fran agency partners sat down and told the agency that they would be fundamentally changing and anyone who wasn't up for that should leave. Sure enough 60% of their work now is digital. This from an agency that had the most wonderful TV reel from the 90's and could have, more than most, rested on their laurels.

Just goes to show if you really want to effect change you have to go large. 10 years later the Tories are magically electable again but did they go large enough? It will be fascinating to watch. Just like this whole digital thang.

Bon weekend and all that jazz.

"What does the internet look like Mummy?"

One of the barriers to clients getting involved in the web is that they find it hard to picture where sites and movements live, how they connect and relate to other digital phenomenons. With the aid of this nifty little diagram all will be explained.

I've had a few people send this round. I reckon the reason people like it is because it's so manifestly un-digital.

10 years of New Labour - 10 years of New Media (Part 2)

The dot com boom has been the single most important thing for our industry in the last 50 years let alone Tony Blairs decade. What did it mean to someone who started their career the same time New Labour started theirs?

I was just finishing the copywriting and art direction course at Watford in May 97. Just for the record I don't think I even passed. I didn't have a book you could speak of the end but, under Tony Cullingham's brilliant tutelage I did have a pretty good idea of how to get a job in a creative department.

Of course back then it was all about TV and posters. Some will say that it's still all about TV and posters and to some extent they are right - but that's another post.  My year had some pretty good people on it. Teams that have gone on to do very well indeed: Matt and Pete at DDB, Rob and Andy at Mother and so on. I was the only one on the course to have an email address. I think I may have been the only one to have a mobile, but they were certainly still pretty rare in studentsville. I also remember always bringing in copies of Wired (UK edition - cool) and no one being interested in them. Everyone read Loaded. I read Loaded too, but also Wired. I think that was the point. I never thought, I'll do digital instead of TV it just sort of happened.

In those days agencies didn't have email systems either. I honestly remember a very precocius new AD sending round a photocopied memo to everyone of a an uninteresting newspaper article - just to show she had arrived. I don't think it was until I got to Ogilvy in 1999 that offices really relied on email. That seems pretty strange now.

The bubble meant that the whole digital thing was kicking off. I had always had a nascent interest in the web, primarily through music (and a wee bit of football) so I just sort of went along for the ride. I ended up working for a company that went from 30 to 220 and back to 50 in the space of two years. I vividly remember  reading articles from the States about people being laid off in their hundreds while we took more people on. At the time we laughed thinking we were immune. Now I keep a very beady eye on what happens over there becuase it's an inescapable truth that our industry will replicate theirs.

So everyone went along for the ride. I can't help feeling that the labour government did the same thing. Gordon Brown and Tony Blair have been credited with sorting out the UK economy but I honestly believe the dot com boom / bust / boom did all the main work for them. It's been a relatively minor tweak for them compared to what the global economy has been doing. Harsh? Probably, but not one said politics was easy.

In part 3 I am going to look at how agencies have changed in the 10 year period. It's nothing short of radical!