The Spanish Revolution (and what it means for advertising)

I just won another 20 bucks from a colleague after Spain won the Euro 2008. It's my third in a row on the Spanish. I knew they were going to win straight from the off. If you could bet online over here in the states I would have cleaned up even more. Conventional wisdom had it that the Spanish can never win anything, they bottle it etc etc, that's why loads of people put money on Russia and especially Germany. To me that's just incredibly lazy thinking.

Bookies don't normally get things wrong. Why? Because they take emotion and conventional wisdom out of the equation. They look at the cold hard facts. So Spain were among the pre-tournament favourites - rightly so. Yet when it came to the final loads of people, especially English people, were betting on Germany. Why? Because that's how its always been. And there is a pithy little quote from Gary Lineker about Germany always winning that's just so funny, and 'oh, how true?, don't you just love Gary Lineker?' No. Bollocks.

Anyone capable of seeing things clearly should have been able to see that Spain have not lost a game in 20. This is a new generation who don't give a jot about previous failings. Also those failings are grossly overegged to sell more newspapers. England were very lucky to beat Spain in Euro 96 and how South Korea managed to pay off the referee in the 2000 World Cup and get away with it remains one of sports great mysteries. In fact Spain have been incredibly unlucky over the past 10 years or so. So forgetting all the media hype and sentamentality about Spain and our old foes the Germans it was a no-brainer.

It seems to me that it's the same in our business at the moment. It's easier to think and act as if everything is still the same. That the stereotypes will naturally prevail. In other words TV should lead, digital people don't really have ideas (not proper ideas!), clients are incapable of creativity, creative awards are everything, you get paid by the hour, blah blah blah - the Germans win - that's how it is. Like I said, Lazy Thinking. Slowly but surely pieces of work like Nike+, Uniqclock, Subservient Chicken, Lynx Feather etc and innovative practices like marketing that make money for clients and agencies or entrepreneurial deals will leave Gary Lineker and his traditional agency friends who can write clever little headlines behind once and for good. Like Jay Z giving Noel Gallagher the finger at Glastonbury, things changes, move on. Viva Espana!

 
(PS. Right at the start of this blog, a yeah and half ago, I wrote a post about how I had seen Gordon Brown speak at a conference many years ago and thought he was awful. I couldn't see how he was going to make a good PM as he had no charisma. That post had the most comments I had ever received - probably from all these, die hard Labour supporters who had a pop at me saying that I knew nothing about politics and I should stick to advertising etc etc.

You don't need to know anything about actual policies and the intricacies of real politics to know that someone personally is a dud. It's just a feeling that you get. The best people in our business are able to make snap decisions that usually play out to be correct - one idea is better than another etc etc. But again, just look at the facts. It's incredibly lazy thinking to merely assume that because Gordon was a good Chancellor and he was the new Labour PM that he would be any good. I'm sure loads of people wanted him to be good, to rally behind him but, for me, it was never going to happen.)
 

Swapping the French Riviera for a muddy field in Tennessee

About this time last year I was, frankly, having a whale of a time in a swimming pool in a villa in the south of France, pretending to go the Cannes advertising festival. As all my old chums set off for Cannes I have just returned from a wet field in Manchester, Tennesee and you know what, I couldn't be happier.

Ok, I get these emails inviting me to lunch at Cannes and texts from people on boats and all that la-di-dah and I would be lying if I said I didn't want to be there. Who wouldn't, it's a gas. But having traded a semi high profile job in Advertising for a job at a place that continually needs to remind people that we don't do advertising, where are the perks goddamnit?

Well, I just got back from a most incredible weekend out in Tennesee. We are working with the guys that put on the Bonnaroo music festival. For those of you in the UK, Bonnaroo is like Glastonbury, but bigger - and I am not exaggerating - a zillion times better. We are trying to help them become more of a media entity that exists longer than four glorious days in June.

Brands were relatively inconspicuous at the event. Of course there were sponsorships. Fuse TV had a pretty cool barn where you could charge up phones, use the net, cool off (it's hot, damned hot there) ride a bucking bronco etc. Fruictus had a good tent with hundreds of girls queuing in the morning to get their hair washed while other girls sang karaoke. There was a Nokia tent but it looked so boring we never went in it. Gibson guitars had a great idea - they set up 10 amazing guitars and bose headphones and allowed people to jam to themselves for as long as they liked. I'm not a guitar freak but I would imagine they were pretty pricey. The headphones themselves were worth 200 quid. There was no lock on them or anything. At Glastonbury some scouser would have had them away before a hippy could play the first few chords of 'Stairway...'

So this is of course the challenge. How do you create a meaningful experience that resonates with many without being in your face. I'm nowhere near working that out, especially having left half my brain at the Sigur Ros gig, but it seems simple in theory: be useful and don't be a ***. We'll see next year if we can pull something off for our partners.

Another thing that I noticed was that out of 90,000 people we were the only English people there. This is the first time I have experienced this in the states. You can usually hear or spot some pasty Brit like me lurking in the corner. John Hegarty made the point when he was at BBH NY that to crack the US you had to get out of New York. I think he's right. I assumed there would be loads of New Yorkers on our flight to and from Nashville. Not so. On our return flight we did bump into Sean Avery  (the Ice Hockey equivalent of Theirry Henry) who is very into his music and was also quietly digging Sigur Ros with us. Nice to see an uber celebrity just chilling and genuinely liking great music.

For those of you who are also into music the highlights were The Raconteurs - Jack White and friends on fire. B.B.King, still rocking at 82 years old. My Morning Jacket, a band I had not heard of before getting to the States but who played a five hour set from 12 to 5 in the morning. Bonkers video clip here. And Sigur Ros; where I was lucky enough to be backstage to witness, by all accounts, one of the most impressive festival performances in recent history.

All good stuff. All good stuff I never would have seen had I been packing my bags for Cannes. There's a whole world out there folks.