Skyscrapers...everything

And so the time has come to write my last post from these shores. I started this blog a year ago almost to the day and it's been enormous fun. I'll continue to blog when I start work in NY next year but for now a few thoughts on the digital scene, what's next and of course an update on my year of not buying clothes.

First up a little bit on why I am leaving. I think anyone that knows me even remotely well will know that I have had a desire to live and work in New York for some time. If circumstances had been different I would have loved to have gone with Dare but that wasn't to be - through no ones fault. And chances likes Another Anomaly don't come up that often so there we are. I have a destiny with doughnuts.

I will spare you my diatribe about how f**ked up London is as a city because most of you still have to live and work here!

I feel extremely fortunate to be have been part of what I consider will be a golden age of digital marketing. I know this sounds a little pompous but I really believe the last 3-4 years have been something special in the industry. Just in terms of new formats, experimentation, energy and buzz. I think the next few years will be all about consolidation in terms of agencies and formats. And it might not be so sparkly.

For example, I can't see banners really having any kind of creative credibility more than they have now. The next step is how all this shit really, truly, fits together and what that does for a client. Simply putting something fancy in a 468 x 68 pixeled box is not going cut it - however cool it might be.

I have a hunch search and film for the web are going to divide agencies. Film is what everyone wants to get into, it's sexy, fun and like 'advertising' - but it doesn't make any money for agencies. What does make money is search. But search is boring. Search is not advertising - not in the traditional sense. It is science rather than art - so the aritistic people the industry need won't touch it. Could an agency do both - I don't think so - but certainly a network could - witness AKQA buying up every search consultancy it possibly can. Smart.

I think it's the same for big web builds. Does a creative web agency want to get involved in huge back-end builds? Probably not. So what does that leave? Still lots actually - when you consider another facebook type thing will no doubt appear sometime soon and change everythnig. But lets talk about film for a moment. One of our clients had a board meeting about a piece of film we had made. They wanted to know why it had cost 10 times less than the film their TV agency made for them. Now obviously the TV ad was 'better' - but what does better mean (actually mean to a clients sales?) and could one really argue that having a proper director and catering unit makes it a whole ten times better? These are the realities agencies and clients are facing. I have always said that it will be easier for digital agencies to prepare for bigger budgets than TV agencies to eat a bit of humble pie and slash their budgets. I'm sticking to that.

So I think it will all get rather interesiting over the next 3 years. I will look from over the pond with great interest. As I said, I feel extremely lucky to have been part of two great agencies; Dare and Republic. Both are in rude health and well set to take advantage of whatever might happen. I wish you all luck, but you don't need it, because you rock.

Finally an update on my not buying clothes for a year. Apart from a few pressies from people, some socks and pants it has been a new clothes free year. And I have to say it was easy. (Apart from when I was slightly drunk in Paris). When you start packing up your house to move country you really realise how much shite you accumulate over the years. For my first month in NY I will be living out of a suitcase so may well be forced to do the odd bit of shopping in the Jan sales over there - the half price half price (did i mention how ridiculously expensive London is...?) sales! It will be hard, but I'll cope.

I start work at the end of January. Brand Republic have asked me to continue so if you want to hear how it's all going stay in touch.

Merry Chrimbo to you all - or Happy Holidays as I think I will need to get used to saying.

Toodle pip.

Top 10 ads / Agency of the Year / Stuff

The results are in from the end of year stuff. Well, actually the results were in more than 24 hours ago but give me a break - I'm not sure what exactly happened in the last 24 hours because I have been mostly drunk.

First up the top 10 digital ads of the year. I predicted that only one would come from a traditional agency and I was kind of right. AMV's hands got in there at no.5 but it seems that was actually done by iChameleon so we'll give that a 1/2 shall we? Our Malkovich work for Vaio got no.2 but that was obviously done in conjunction with Fallon, so a 1/2 point there too. The only piece of digital work done by a bone fide traditional agency was the 02 Cocoon Blog, so congrats to Steve and his team at VCCP.

Generally I don't think it was a great year. There is some nice work on the list but nothing that I feel wildly jealous about not doing  - which as a creative is always the real test. Actually, I lie, I would have loved to have done Poke's Spot the Bull site. I'm not sure anything will win a Pencil or Lion. But who knows? Probably Poke's work will come closest. Personally, getting beaten to the no.1 spot by the future Mrs Three Minute Happiness' facebook app for O2 was great for promoting harmony at the Cooper / Lariu household. Our cat is also hugely proud of us.

From a Dare point of view we had 3 of the top 10 last year and just one this year but we managed to do the Agency of the Year double picking up both Campaign and Marketing gongs. So consistency rather than individual brilliance has been the name of the game. And actually I am all for that. We are doing good work across all our clients, with whom we have extremely solid relationships. Therefore the blocks are in place so that when genius does strike we should be able to make the most of it.

On the Agency of the year stuff I think Poke did brilliantly to come second. Who doesn't like Poke? Iain and his blog seem to be the digital voice of (fun) reason and Wasserfall is just his brilliant old happy, bonkers, self. Congrats to them. I think Republic were a little bit hard done by not to be on the list. I know that consistency of senior management is a criteria for Campaign but I would have thought that the very fact that Martin, Paddy and Sandoz left and Republic still managed to put on business, churn out good work and win awards would have been worthy of note.

I should imagine I'll do another post or two before the end of the year and my end at Dare - including (just for Eduardo) a post about Another Anomaly and why I'm leaving. Until then, have a good Christmas and remember, Jesus is the reason for the season.

Have we lost the ability to, err, you know, like, write ads?

As I menitoned a few weeks ago it's that time when we all talk about ads of the year. Over on Scamp's blog there is a debate on which is the best TV ad of the year. All of the UK ads that are talked about have no dialogue in them. What's going on there?

It used to be that we were the kings of the one liners, the witty put downs, the demure voice over. No more my friends. It's gorillas, cakes, rainbows, bunnies balls dominos you name it just no talking - or even acting.

The only ad that I liked this year that I can think of with some acting or an attempt at a story is the Heineken lobster ad. I think that's well written and well directed.

So why is this? Money? It's certainly cheaper to do away with actors. Bu then how much was the guiness ad? Is it because having a one man creative team (usually an art director - Juan at Fallon etc) is cheaper? Can't be that much cheaper? From my point of view I think it's just that we are not cultivating writers anymore.

If you have a look at the comments on Scamp's blog you will see that a lot of US readers nominated ads. All of them had dialogue and acting in them. We know that there is a history of US TV dramas being fantastically written. The power and kudos of the 'writers room' being omnipotent in US dramas.

So we have a trend. All the good UK ads have no dialogue or acting in them and all the good US ads have great dialogue and acting.

I hope this reverses itself sometime.

Product Placement in Films and Gaming

In this fragmented world that we now seem to operate in everyone is desperately trying to find new ways of selling products to an increasingly suspicious audience. So perhaps product placement in movies is the way forward. David Lynch has some very wise words on the matter. Click here to see short clip.

Whist we are talking about movies. I have been to see two films recently; American Gangster and The Darjeeling Limited, both very good in their own ways. One thing I noticed was in the ads and trailers beforehand I could not tell the difference between an ad for a computer game and a trailer for a movie. Games have been the new movies for years now but it's interesting that the format of advertising a film  - ie introduce some characters, hint at a plot and show some exciting bits still carries huge cache. 

Will that change soon? Is there a more interesting way to advertise games? And what can we do to persuade david Lynch to make a game - imagine how dark that would be!

How far would you go for a job in advertising?

I was about to write a serious post about why 'The Recession' is good news for any alternative agency and some real life interactive user testing but then a live hamster was delivered to the office.

There have been lots of stories of placement teams pulling stunts to get hired at agencies and students doing silly things to get on the best courses (Tony at Watford told us about a guy who had scaled the wall outside his office, broken in the window and left a grave stone in there - the idea being that we would die if he didn't get on the course) and we have had our fair share of interesting job applications but I think Colin the hamster takes the biscuit so far.

We interviewed a team for a place at DareSchool 08 the other day and then this morning one unsuspecting planner found Colin in his nice ball in the ground floor toilets. There is probably a Richard Gere gag here somewhere but I'll spare Haymarket the libel suit. Flo took a movie of Colin here, along with the rest of the story.

I'm not part of the 08 selection process so I cant say whether this stands them in good stead or not but they have certainly ticked the first box of any communication: get noticed.

The other interesting thing that Flo pointed out is that this is the sort of thing that only used to happen at the hottest of ATL agencies.....