Let's Pretend: 5 Banal Straplines (thinking aloud about work)

I'm a (copy)writer who likes writing. I like discipline and form and I like the due process of bringing something to life.

Whether it's an ad., a website or an instruction manual for...erm... a gas-chamber, the methodology is always the same. I spend my entire bloody life writing and scripting things out because it's not enough for me just to have "an idea." I need to see it, feel it, and understand it. I need to look it in the eye and know exactly how it's going to behave. I'm Nadine Baggart, celebrity beauty editor of- sorry, no. Hang on that's something else...

What I'm trying to say is...erm...maybe if I made up an aphorism to explain..? How about: "If a writer wants his voice to sing, he better make sure it's breath doesn't smell."

Bollocks. That's not what I'm trying to say either.

I know what I mean...

Anyway. So I was working on something boring the other day; something pretty niche, bland and corporate. But I didn't feel it. I wasn't feeling bland and corporate (I never do). So I went back to the beginning and started to re-write it. I started to think "bland and corporate" thoughts and in no time at all everything just fell into place. Suddenly it was perfect. But why?

Well, because I bloody love writing, that's why. Even with a dismal client and boring breif, I can still find something that inspires me. You just gotta look inside yourself. Look. Here's 5 random, utterly banal straplines plucked from that piece of work. On the face of it, they're just embarrassing corporate platitudes. But to me, as I write them, they're part of a thunderous, totalitarian hollow-speak; the voice of an evil future government. To me, this is pure sci-fi, man. Ace! Look!

ORGANISING YOUR ORGANISATION

MAKING TIME FOR YOU

PROUD OF YOUR BUSINESS? SO ARE WE

BUILD YOUR IDENTITY. BUILD YOUR TEAM. BUILD YOUR BUSINESS.

THE CHOICE IS YOURS

Do you like pretending too? :-D

[Actually, reading them again, they sound like the titles of Charles Handy books]

Advertising Vs. Politics (via creativity. via philosophy. via literay criticism. via ramble ramble ramble ramble...)

[WARNING: Despite the funny Karl Marx picture, this post could be quite dull. ]

It happened again to me yesterday. Someone asked me what I do and I told them.

"Ha-oh!" came the reply. "It's you then. You're one of them - the liars."

Yep. The "liars". That's us. Anyone who works in advertsing and marketing is a liar. We sit round on Satan's patio all day, making up evil, insidious fibs with which to poison the dear and innocent earth. Or so is the perception of the hysterical left-wing imbecile who works in my local.

So exactly how does one reconcile a healthy, idealist, proto-Marxist, working class, fuck-the-man politic (such as my own) with the apprently oppressive, totalitarian, globe-raping poltics of 21st century capitalism? Hmmm...

When my career trajectory first began to point towards advertising, I knew that deep-down I was gonna have to face this peculiar moral quandry. How can I work in an industry that appears to contradict everything I beleive in? After all, advertising is propganda, right? It exploits people's weaknesses and questions their judgement. It baffles and confuses them; argues with them and dictates to them. Mass media is garbage, yet I'm volunteering to create more of it. I'm potentially gonna be part of that machine that hectors and heckles us/we/they, the brow-beaten proletariat. Or so goes received opinion.

So I went away and I thought about it. Really thought about it. Pros and cons. Finally, I asked myself why I wanted to do it; what was my motivation. And the answer (not surprisingly) was... creativity. Yawn. I just wanted to be creative. It's that simple. Just like every other fucker these days. But. That then posed a further, even greater philosophical question.

I was placing my own, personal pursuit of creativity and expression above all, which seemed selfish and, well... just a bit shallow. Therefore, I had to ask myself what was my moral reasoning - my position- on creativity? And this was an important point for me to nail because otherwise everything I did potentially lacked any integrity at all.

Eventually, I stumbled across the answer in a novel; the bloated, badly-written, and obnoxious "masterpiece" Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand.

Atlas Shrugged tells the story of what happens when all the creative, innovative people in the world fuck-off to an island and leave civilisation to crumble without them. (Cracking idea for a story, but dragged out over 1500 interminable pages of insufferable dialogue and dry intellectualism. Unless you're unemployed, don't waste your time). Anyway, Rand's novels are all vehicles for her (often flawed) philosophy of Objectivism which champions "competition, creativity and human greatness." And within Objectivism comes a model of capitalism that I'd previously never considered before; a model of consensual capitalism, where free and open competition is the wellspring of excellence. Only via competition can we acheive our potential and only by acheiveing our potential can we evolve.

Ok. So it all sounds a bit Neitzsche. Which, to be fair, it is. But here was capitalism without the master-slave dynamic. Here was capitalism being presented as a dialogue; a constant, on-going debate about new ideas. And so the purpose, the reasoning of creativity was to participate in that debate. And -voila- that's where I found my moral position on creativity and, eventually, my work. Creativity is not necessarily a force for mediating individualsim or celebrating the self. Sure, I can behave like an artist from time to time; heckling and complaining from the sidelines about how things are going, but it's just as exciting to be right there on the pitch. I know it sounds kinda obvious now... but at the time...

So the next time some moron calls you a "sell-out" or even "a liar" just tell them that it's all about competition. If they're not up to the fight, then keep their fuckin mouths shut.

Nice.

NOTE: This post is dedicated to pisspoorenglish who made this initial observation the other week. (Once again, thanks for your comments man - oh! and the link too. I've now returned the favour...)

So. The word "nice." You hear it a lot round here in Ad. Country, I'm afraid.

Nice. Nice, nice, nice. I'll say it again. N-I-C-E. Nice. Just. Nice. From an onomatopoeic point of view it does sound kinda insipid doesn't it, like a pensioner sneezing or something -ah! -nice. Bless you.

But nice is the ultimate in faint praise. And no-one (in their heart) likes to hear it. Because nice could always do better. Nice is not superlative; lovely, excellent, ace or incredible. Nice is...well, just nice. Except, perhaps, in the studio-jargon of the ad-man. Where, for some reason, it could mean absolutely anything at all.

Whether it's via another creative, or an agency director, at some point we've all had our work described as "nice." And depending how it's said, nice can mean everything from "fucking fantastic" to just "quite promising." And I for one(along with pisspoorenglish) am fucking sick of it. It drives me up the bloody wall. Here's why:

When I was at college my art lecturer used to circulate around the studio, pseudishly pausing from time to time to consider whatever bollocks any one of us happened to be painting/sketching at that time. With a flick of his sports-jacket, he'd suddenly stand all hipshot, left hand in his pocket, right hand on his chin. Then, waving at a random area of your canvas/drawing board, he'd mutter, "This is... interesting." Then, when you pressed him for more info, maybe by asking "What this bit?" or "Do you mean the foreshortening?" he'd sort of sigh very earnestly and just go, "Yeah. Interesting," before skulking back into the shadows and leaving you none-the-effing-wiser.

And this is the problem with "nice." Nice isn't a judgement or an opinion, or even an assessment . Nice is just a repsonse, in the same way that "interesting" was to my cock of an art teacher. Nice gives the impression of expressing a view before one has clearly been formed. And in that sense, nice is a front. But in the ad man's studio, being able to hedge your opinions is a pretty useful thing to do, not least since a lot of what goes on is (don't tell the account managers) pretty abstract anyway. But by the same token, that's surely all the more reason to be direct with people. I spent all week last week with a serial "nice" offender: "Hmm. Nice." "Oh, that's nice." "Yeah. Nice." "Nice. Yeah." "Nice... nice." And whilst it gave me an inkling that (at least some of) my work was good, I then had to second guess all the bits which might not be.

So. Can we all please stop using the word nice and just be honest with eachother. I know this job can be all farty and floaty but let's not make it any more pseudish than it already is by talking to eachother in abstract, mysterious terms. I really value and respect the opinions of everyone I've ever worked with, so -please god!-let's hear 'em.

And besides, should n't we be saving our bullshit for the clients? ;-)

Cre-hate-ive Review

Reading Creative Review increasingly makes me feel like Nicholas Cage in the film 8mm.

Listlessly rumaging through it's pages like a jaded pervert, I sit there groaning, unable to reach any kind of climax. But I keep on going... keep on going. (See, I just can't help it.) And when I get to the end? I am appalled and disgusted with myself.

I've just wasted 10minutes of my life reading about the new wayfinding system in Selfridges.

I feel dirty.

Self Promotion

I've been messed around by a client. No work until next week. Sigh. Still, these things happen - last minute changes; other projects within the agency. Can't be helped.

So. If anyone out there* has anything they'd like me to work on, then please feel free to get in touch. Look, I've even made a new little poster for myself and everything..!


[* Who reads this anyway? Somebody does because my Google Analytics account tells me so. Come out! Show yourselves! I know you're out there!]

Song-Poems

Ever had a really shit breif? Ever been passed a really clunky piece of creative and been told to sodomise it with an incongruous, unworkable concept?

Then let me tell you the story of one Thomas J. Guygax Sr.

But first...

A few years back now, I developed a rather unhealthy obsession for the little-known cultural phenomenon known as the "Song-Poem;" a vast, uncharted body of vanity recordings made by unscrupulous music industry "pioneers" keen to exploit the aspirations of the general public, long before Simon Cowell had the idea of doing it on television.

Here's how it worked:

It's America. It's some time in 50's, 60's or 70's. You open any number of tabloid papers and magazines and you see adverts like the one above. Maybe you're an aspiring poet. Maybe you're an aspiring singer-songwriter. More than likely you're a hapless, feeble-minded dolt without a glimmer of talent. But spurred on by the possibilty of fame, you scribble down whatever old shit comes to mind and hastily send it off for "appraisal." Then, whadya know! Within days you receive a commissioning letter. You got talent, kid! But we need $200-$400 to press the disc. And miss your chance of stardom!? No way! Here! Just take the money! Meanwhile, backstage, a sweat-shop of session musicians have already set your naive, incoherent bilge to music. It's in the can man, and these guys can do 5 or 6 of these a day. But by now the cheque's in the bank, so here's a copy of your record. We did try to get it on the radio but you know, it's just not right for now. By all means though, feel free to try again.

It's hard to underestimate the sheer numbers of these recordings. Literally hundreds of thousands of song-poems are out there, most of them lost to mists of time. But a good proportion remain, leaking out into thrift shops and garage sales around the world, and are now highly sought after by pseudish, sniggering postmodernists like myself. To tell the full story of the song-poem requires a website in itself - Phil Milstein's stupendous American Song-Poem Music Archives is a great place to start.

My personal favourite song-poem ever was found on the internet after a day of battling with Google: the truly unbelievable "My Husband, Lover, Friend." It's a chilling account of domestic violence, callously set to a jaunty, upbeat country and western tune:

My husband, lover, friend,

On him I can always depend,

The bruises on my eyes and nose,

They go right down to my toes (wo-ho-hoes!)

Maybe that's a bit too hardcore to begin with though?

Whilst the joy of discovering a song-poem for yourself can't be beaten, there's a good handful of commercially available compilation discs out there with enough madness on them to keep you going for a good while (there's even a song-poem Christmas album!) The classic "Blind Man's Penis" is one of the few song-poems to be written as an outright piss-take, and should be mandatory listening for everyone.

But what of Thomas J. Guygax Sr. then?

Well, Thomas Guygax is one of the most prolific of all the known song-poets. Whatismore, he's also one of the weirdest. Check out this completely typical submission, entitled "At The Time":

Although by the also to have differed with yearly and all known dearly

Throughout and among, we use preferred

By the also of having choicefully

Three times a day, as the average, we use of thee among of our foods

Along by our knowledge of the well-kept adage by the more of all helpin' with the all of coulds

Towards being among our masters and the also by our intelligence while the passin' of time

Decides our manners by the also collectively to being with the tense

Throughout and among, we use preferred

By the also of having choicefully

Three times a day ...

Or how about the downright spooky "During Evening":

It will be nice and noticing

Our reflections helping you to show

And about tomorrow and all of our rice

There all the time is at the also about now

Governments we all are acquainted

And of course that's all of our public knowing

With all of the tomorrow

And all of the well-fed

By all of our working and also our growing

All along with much of our everyday

We all of course know why

With all of our work and all of our everyday

With all of ourselves and you and I

All along with much of our everyday

We all of course know why

With all of our work and all of our everyday

With all of ourselves and you and I

So, the next time someone gives you an impossible breif, just think of poor, deluded Thomas J. Guygax Sr. and the men and women he challenged to make sense of his work. In fact, next time a designer gives you some cruddy piece of creative to work on, why not just say "I can't do it man. You've given me a total fucking Guygax!"