Campaign

The Comedy of Error Messages

We all make mistakes. Me (lol), I make them fairly often. But I do try and make up for them with a nicely worded apology of some sort.

Computers aren't quite so good at this. Every so often, when you have a computerfail, you get a really nice error messages - quirky even, with a dash of self-deprecation. But mostly, they're just aggressive, replete with angry bomb signs and intimidating, cryptic minus numbers that you're somehow meant to understand.  When it's the latter, it can be bloody annoying. Especially when you're usually already a bit on the stressed side/you've got a deadline/it JUST WON'T PRINT For no good reason. 'Error minus 42' used to be my pet hate in my old job. I never did work out what it meant.

But more often than not, error messages can be really, really funny. Either because they're downright rude, bizarrely hysterical, or just piss-poorly written.

With this in mind, our inner-geek has been diligently collecting screengrabs to share with you all. I think it's funny to see the spectrum - from hyper-aggressive to humble and friendly.

There are a couple of others to mention which aren't pictured here. Like, whenever I (lol) try and make a call on my mobile at home, the first two attempts will always be rejected, and I get a message flashing up saying 'NOT ALLOWED!!' Not, sorry there's a network problem, but a more of a frantic, finger-wagging reprimand that makes me feel like I'm at school and I've done something wrong. Another great one is, when you're trying to fast-forward a DVD and you get the angry error message that says 'This action is FORBIDDEN.'

Who writes these? Have they ever heard of tone of voice? Why not employ a copywriter of some sort? Surely this point in the "user journey," it's a good idea for the brand to try and keep the customer on side, rather than intimidate them with guarish technospeak?

Any thoughts on this, or other examples, please feel free to share...

The perils of working in The Tea Building

The lifts in the Tea Building are always, always broken. A shared grudge between all employees in this subzero-temperatured cathedral of Shoreditch shabby chic.


Recently though, someone thought it had gone too far and took it upon themselves to write a little note. We thought it was lovely and worth sharing, in a Nathan Barley-eat-your-heart-out kind of way.

Sporks and iBashing

We already know Charlie Brooker is basically God, but just wanted to flag his genius review of the new iPad:

"The iPad falls between two stools - not quite a laptop, not quite a smartphone. In other words, it's the spork of the electronic consumer goods world."

Well worth reading the whole article if you've not already. There was also a great piece by Tanya Gold the other day, about us luddites who dare to live an iPhone free existence:

'It's not the phone itself I object to, even though its name suggests that if you do not own one, you do not deserve the personal pronoun. It is its monstrous conjoined twin, the app. The word "app" - not so much a word as a flat, bored grunt... Customers, you see - cannot be bothered to say "Application". That is three syllables too many for the avatars. They have better things to do with their time - like having... an iMilk... it's the same, but it's milk. Except it isn't." etc, etc.

Tanya has invented even more funny pretend Apps like the iFart that reminded us of our iBaby app.  But the best comment of all was her last one, that 'the larger your iLife, the smaller your real one.' There's something in that - the way we all spend our lives documenting, commenting and recording our lives rather than living it. With that in mind, I'm going to stop writing this blog and do some actual... work.

The end of the line?

 
Really interesting article from Nick Gill in last week’s Campaign. Especially the bit about how the notion of fragmentation between digital agencies and so-called traditional ones is no longer a workable one. Of all his predictions for the year ahead for creativity, it was this one which struck us as the most interesting:

 
‘I hope that agencies labelled 'traditional' will get the opportunity to take more of their ideas into the digital space, and that digital agencies will get the opportunity to do the big idea and not just spend their time bringing another agency's brainchild to life.’

 
There's always been this perceived hierarchy between ATL and 'other' agencies. Traditionally, non ATL creative teams would ‘inherit’ an idea which they'd then asked to do something with in another media or format. So much so that the opportunity to originate a ‘Big Idea’ from scratch was a rare one.

As a result, there used to be a kind of snobbery about which side of the line you sat. Maybe there still is. Either way, in this sense, the 'big idea' is awarded such an elevated status that it's always reminded me - in darker, tangential moments - of Plato's Theory of of Ideas and his allegory of the Cave. Perhaps I'm wrong and philosophy has no business in Advertising, but it got me thinking. If you're not familiar with the Cave thing, here's a quick recap (with a little help from Wikipedia):

"The Cave is where Plato imagines a group of people who have lived in a cave all of their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall by things passing in front of the cave entrance, and begin to ascribe forms to these shadows. According to Plato, the shadows are as close as the prisoners get to seeing reality... The philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall are not constitutive of reality at all..."
 

The interesting thing about it is that the people in the cave only ever see a glimpse, or shadow of the great Ideas above in their 'true form'. Of course, in an 'ideal' world, an idea should be an idea, whatever the media. But, (Tongue firmly in cheek) this cave image could be an amusing way of looking at on this perceived difference between ATL and BTL. Of how it must feel to never be able to originate 'the big idea' – and to always have the much smaller budget, metaphorically scraping at the ‘shadows’ on the walls.


Do BTL creatives still feel like this? There was a lot of debate in an old Scamp entry that seemed to suggest there was some feelings of inferiority/superiority on either side. "It’s definitely true that we letter writers have an inferiority complex the size of Soho towards ATL-ers," wrote 'Real Men Write Long Copy' a while ago. 
 

But these days some might say that this perceived 'line' is now more of a dotted one. Not only are the major ATL agencies doing great digital work - AMV’s Take the knife, BBH's Break the Cycle, and VCCPs Meerkat online campaign to name a few. But the digital agencies are also winning major ATL work. Glue has 3 and The Green Party, while Anomoly swooping Sony off Fallon sent 'shockwaves' through the industry if the forums are anything to go by. 

Glue's recent work for The Sun has kind of broken the rules. The iPhone spoof viral ended up being so well received that the client asked for it to be put on TV. And coming in a few weeks there are some films for The Sun which were briefed as MPUs, but have now been booked for TV space. Both of which lead the creative director Seb Royce to coin the phrase, 'it's gone TV' (as opposed to viral, ba doom ching).

So maybe this whole line thing is dissolving. Maybe it's as archaic as Mr Plato himself, and the hierarchy is slowly levelling out? Either way, as Nick Gill puts it, 'whatever happens in 2010, the sun will continue to rise.’ (Or not, if this winter is anything to go by)
 

Embrace your inner trowser serpent

has got to be hands-down the BEST spam subject heading in the world.

Forgive the infantile nature of this blog but we thought it so funny and 'creative' that we needed to alert the industry. Nat just received it in her junkmail folder and it has prompted us to start a new collection of the most ludicrous viagra-fuelled spam copylines. My junkmail folder just received one with the comparatively more flaccid copy line of 'enlarge your male dignity'.

So, can anyone knock the serpent off top slot?

Airbrushed for change

Sorry for the long silence. We've not seen daylight for a while, having been submerged in writing party election broadcasts. So much so that our new favourite channel is the Parliament Channel. With this in mind we thought we'd share this brilliant and funny website.  What's even better than the site itself is that it's done by randoms, not by any of the opposing parties. Happy Photoshopping.

What's more shocking - sex in public or believing in God?

That's just one of the intriguing questions in Mark Vernon's quiz to find out your philosopher 'type'. I (lol) just stumbled across it on the School of Life website, having just read an amazing Alain de Botton book 'Essays in love' over the holidays. (can't recommend it enough by the way).

Sorry if we're slow to this but it's a really lovely website. And we thought worth pointing out to people in the Ideas business (whether in the platonic sense or the app sense). Haven't been to the School itself but it looks like a great place to go and 'expand your mind'.  There's some amazing looking breakfast classes, and there's also other treasures such as Bibliotherapy - where you can book in a session with someone to discuss your reading life and then be prescribed your perfect literary remedy.

Anyway, why not take the quiz - it might make a more enriching start to the year than the usual 'how chavvy are you' or 'what simpsons character are you' type of test. Happy New Year, either way.

A Verbal Remedy for your Hangover

'Tis the season of sleep deprivation and liver damage, so here's a little something to soothe your pain, from our favourite stand-up poet, Mr Matt Harvey.
 

TEA BAG- Matt Harvey
 
You are a four-cornered star, shining rustily in hot water
You are the perforated parachute that makes my morning
Landings soft when I crash in from dreamland
 
You are a savoury scented sandbag
As half-empty as it is half-full
Your permeable membrane an inverted flood-wall
 
You’re the force that through infusion drives my waking hour
A freshwater sponge, soaking up my power
To resist you, I insist you’re always welcome to muddy my waters
 
For when I am blue I brew you up and pour you out into my cup
And offered as soothing ointment to my oesophagus
You are not a disappointment
 
Although you are (a disappointment) as a Christmas decoration
And also as a duvet you’ve a very low tog rating
 
Produce of more than one country
You’re an intercontinental holistic missile
Yes I’ll always keep our mid-morning appointment
For the best of many heavens is
Elevenses
And when you’re hot for me
To be honest
Just one is
Enough per pot for me
 
Consolation prize, fowl-weather friend
Treasure at the rainbow’s end
Calm-inducer, tongue-loosener
Rescue-remedy, biscuit softener
You’re often a subtle social worker
Or community relations officer
 
Peace-broker, mediator
China-stainer, radiator
Nerve-soother, mood-changer
Don’t you ever be a stranger
 
My multi-tasking flask-filler
Waker-upper
Cuppa-maker
Throat-stroker
 
I’ll see you later…

Smoke and mirrors, war and peace

A bunch of us went to the Smoke and Mirrors 48 hour film party a few weeks ago. Here's a heinously belated round up of the best entries.

'Simon's Making a Film' - a little reminiscent of the orange cinema ads, and self-referential in a 'i think we're in a viral', breaking the fourth wall kind of a way:

'The Warrior' - Quirky, funny, filmed at DDB and stars my sister so I can't not put it up...

'A shot at love' using a clever VO technique:

One of our favourites was the 5 o clock.

but this was also ludicrously good and clever:

Must confess I'm not sure what the overall winner was? Very fun party though, with interesting garguantun pastie canapes. Speaking of which, it's the Glue christmas party tonight, and it's almost time to start getting ready. So bye for now and happy almost christmas.

The sequel to 'Cafaurant', and other portmanwoes

A previous post on the delectable or detestable (delete as applicable) use of the word Cafaurant in a quaint village of Lynton sparked up a healthy debate.

We thought that was the last word on the matter, until this.

"Withnail and I for the mentally ill"…

…was tempting enough a review to make me see the ‘madcap’ new brit flick 'Bunny and the Bull' last night.

That critic was right - this first feature from the director of 'The Mighty Boosh' does owe a lot to Bruce Robinson’s classic film.

But I'd go further than that. It’s more a case of "Withnail and I for the Mentally ill meets Michel Gondry on a mescaline trip through Narnia, with a Penelope Cruz style love affair thrown in for good measure." In other words, go and see it as soon as you can.

The friendship dynamic is similar to that of Withnail and Marwood. Bunny and Stephen are best friends (although it’s hard to see why). One character is charismatic yet selfish, while the other is more sweet and subdued. The pair go on a long journey together. There’s a scene with an angry bull. And there’s a scene near the end where Bunny asks Stephen if he’s got time for a drink, clutching a bottle of wine.

So there’s a considerable debt to Withnail. But ‘Bunny and the Bull’ is also very different. For a start, there's a whole romance story in it, which you don't get a whiff of in Withnail. The film starts out a bit like ‘Stranger than fiction’, where a voice narrates the main character's precise morning routine. Except then Stephen's rituals gets stranger and stranger. He’s deeply neurotic, as we see from his clinical hoarding of everything from fingernail clippings to 'drinking straws circa 1996' which he's been cataloguing with unbridled OCD. He’s also agoraphobic, not having left his flat in a year (we find out why later). So the actual geograpy in the film all takes place as meandering flashbacks into Stephen's own memory. And it's these flashbacks which provide the film's main delight - the astoundingly creative way in which it’s told.

The sets range from Paddington Bear style collage animation, to stop-frame to quirky photomontages. We step inside a snowdome, we drive along a motorway through cardboard Alps, we journey to the other side of his mind, all without physically going anywhere, but all through ingeniusly imaginative sets.

It's all totally enchanting, and in a way, this stuff takes over. The plot becomes secondary; incidental even. Some people might find this a problem, in that the performances and the depth of the story becomes over-shadowed. But it depends what you want from a film.

Another slight downside comes towards the end. The film seems to come to a conclusion, but then there's another twenty minutes, which feel like an unnecessary add-on. Almost like you’re watching the DVD extras of scenes that might have been cut with more savage editing.

But on the whole it’s exceptional, and amazing to think it was all done on a miniature Warp X budget. Other highlights include a very funny automated phone incident at the 'Crab Shack' restaurant, which is too surreal to try and explain here. There's a wonderful scene in the Shoe Museum where we meet 'Garth Merenghi''s Richard Ayoade as a hilarious tour guide zombie with pun-tourettes.

Oh and of course there are amazingly acted cameos, from Julian Barratt as the lunatic Russian vagrant and Noel Fielding as the Spanish Matador. Finally, there's the relative newcomer, Edward Hogg who plays Stephen. He has a mesmerisingly lovely screen quality about him that makes you think “he’s going to be huge”. Not sure how long this film will be out for - so go and see it while you can.

"Comedy is medicine. Not coloured sweeties to rot their teeth with"

A while ago I (lol) went to see the Trevor Griffiths' "The Comedians" at the Hammersmith Lyric Theatre. It's about a group of aspiring stand-ups in a comedy class in 1970's Lancashire.

Sounds like a laugh a minute, but it's really not. It's actually more of a serious meditation on the philosophy of comedy. It's full of little gems to make you think.

'A comedian draws pictures of the world. The closer you look, the better you'll draw...' And:

'It's not the jokes. it's not the jokes. it's what lies behind 'em. it's the attitude... '

Again, there are parallels with advertising.

Good comedy is all about finding a truth about the world, and dramatising it. 'Most comics feed prejudice and fear... but the best ones illuminate them, make them easier to deal with... We've got to make people laugh til they cry.'


Bad comedy is glib and superficial, and concerned with rehashing stereotypes for cheap entertainment. Good comedy really challenges the world, tries to change something.

'I want to be rich and famous,' says one of the budding comics.


'And good,' says Mr Waters, their tutor. 'You've got to be good first. You can't do that later.'


Watching the play made me remember Luke Sullivan's scorn of the successful but infuriating Mr Whipple ad campaign. As he puts it, 'As an idea, Whipple isn't good...' and (quoting Bernbach), 'a commercial needn't sacrifice wit, grace, or intelligence in order to increase sales.' (in 'Hey Whipple, Squeeze this', if you've not read it)


Anyway, I'm not sure if 'The Comedians' has finished its run or not, but I'd really recommend it - failing that, the play is worth reading. Its analysis of comedy still rings true today, even though it was written a while ago.


As a case in point, we went to see Dylan Moran recently and he was definitely on the side of this idea of 'laughing until you cry'.  His deadpan delivery was hilarious, but so much of his show was frighteningly real. It was honest, scathing, whiney... almost to the point of nihilism. He talks about how you suddenly wake up and realise your life is over, or that you're with the wrong person.. And there's his account of a man attempting to pull in a night club, and after failing over and over again, he goes to the fast food van, 'For a slice of deep fried never.' (probably the best line in the whole set).

The whole thing was hilarious, but also therapeutic, as it was so depressingly true. Laughing at the little absurdities of modern life, it could take you one of two ways. One, you feel better about how ridiculous things are. Or two, you think sod it, and book a one-way ticket to Beachyhead.

Go to Hell

Behold this heavenly work of god-like genius, from WK Portland

www.masswepray.com/

Creative Autopsy

This is just lovely.

Thanks to Elliot for discovering it. And Scott C for creating it.

"Can I cash in this cheque please?"

So last week we heard that we won the Campbell Lace Beta Comment Competition. Hooray. Thank you kindly if you voted for us. We thought James Mitchell's blog pastiche was awesome, and Matt Winn's Downfall parody had us in bits. But we're chuffed to have won. It literally could not have come at a better time finance-wise... So, thanks very much. We still no idea who this mysterious Danny Walsh is though???! Does anyone?

Anyway, last wednesday was the Beta party, where we were presented with our prize; our very own gargantuan oversized cheque.

But then we were given the choice between the cash or the men. It was a tough dilemma, but we chose the cash. No offense Hanzel and Sven. But keep drinking those protein shakes lads, they're working.

Taking our 6ft cheque home was interesting. We were stopped quite a few times in Carbaby Street by passers-by wondering what we had won. And we had some minor difficulties boarding the bus home.

Thank you Robert and Garry for bringing a line in our second film to life. Although, we're having a little trouble getting the cheque to clear - they said it will take between 400 and 500 working days. Ba doom ching.