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14/11/08

WILL WE LIVE TO SEE A BLACK D&AD PRESIDENT?

It looks unlikely.
There are no black people on the executive committee.
There are what seven black people working in our business?
As for the students trying to get into our business, they’re probably 90% white, 10% Asian, 0% black.
Let me rephrase that, it sounds like I can spot what the genetic composition of a person is merely by looking at them.
For every ten students I see, nine will be Caucasian, one will be Asian, and all will have spikey hair and wearing jeans halfway down their arse.
In fact, I can’t ever remember seeing a black student.
If pushed I can only remember four black creative people in the business since I started back in 1985 - Alex Ayuli, Ray Barrett, Cordell Burke, and Trevor Robinson.
Why?
The numbers just don’t add up.
2% of the country is black. So statistically there should be eight black people at AMV alone.
White people are generally more privileged?
Maybe in account management and planning, but surely not in the creative department. There you are judged on your ‘book’, regardless of race creed or religion.
So why oh why are we so white?
This is the first in a series to focus on minorities in Advertising or whatever we call it this week- Communicatising?
Marketinations? Advertisineutralating?
Future subjects include ‘Women In Advertising’, ‘Albino Into Design Doesn’t Go!’ and ‘The Lactose Intolerant in The Digital Domain.’

06/10/08

Courage rewarded

The end of this month will mark three years since my then agency, Hill/Holliday Boston, pitched to Liberty Mutual, the US’s eighth largest insurance company (now sixth) the idea that it should base its positioning upon its commitment to doing the right thing: to make its unshakeable sense of responsibility its organising idea.
It had been clear to us as we met and observed them at work during the month-long pitch process that responsibility was what the company was all about - so in line with our commitment to reflecting ‘the truth inside’, it was near self-evident to us that this was what the brand should be all about too.

The clients, to their credit, didn’t take much persuading - the company’s outstanding CEO, in particular, immediately seeing the potential internal as well as external benefits of publicly celebrating the company’s defining cultural trait.

But at the time it was a very gutsy move from a commercial perspective.

For in the autumn of 2005, responsibility wasn’t sexy. Risk-taking was.
Only underwriting the credit-worthy wasn’t sexy. Underwriting anyone was.
In pitches on the Commercial side, Liberty was often finding itself run out of it at the death by a rival ever prepared to push the envelope that bit further.
To the extent that some Liberty insiders were starting to ask, ’shouldn’t we be more like AIG?’

The new positioning, anchored around the line, ‘Responsibility. What’s your policy?’ launched in May 2006. Its call for both companies and consumers to consider the role of responsibility in their corporate and individual actions struck an immediate and resonant chord with the American public. The call quickly took on a life of its own, moving within months from a corporate ad campaign, to a community website, to an abstract public movement (’The Responsibility Project’) involving film-makers and leading public policy figures alike. By the end of 2007, ‘Responsibility’ had become a Business Week case study.

Right now there isn’t a single financial services company in America that wouldn’t kill to be associated with an operating philosophy of responsible business, responsible lending, responsible underwriting.
But sadly for them all, it’s not available.
Liberty Mutual owns it.
Why?
Because responsible is what it truly is.
And because it had the guts to publicly celebrate who it truly is even at a time when the prevailing ‘wisdom’ was running in the exact opposite direction.

25/09/08

‘Er...hello?’

29/08/08

N evil le Brody's D&ad Annual

It’s out in a couple of weeks, and according to D&Ad’s magazine Ampersand - Neville doesn’t think much of advertising and as a consequence he’s separated the design and advertising disciplines.
On the cover, he’s put the ‘design’,(D), on the cover, and the ‘advertising’ (AD), on the back.

He then ran off sniggering, pushing copywriters into bushes, and later left all the taps running in the mens loos at Fallon.

What a rascal!

The thing I don’t get is why such a talented designer has a bee in his bonnet about advertising, and it’s been there for over twenty years?

It surely can’t be that most advertising is crass, patronising and derivative.

Because so is most design.

Maybe his view of Advertising is solely based on Shake‘n’Vac jingles and small space ads for Leatherland and the like?

But that would be like me judging the world of design based on the latest pack design for Aunt Bessie’s Yorkshire Puddings.

The lines between communication disciplines are now so blurred that the idea of separating them seems almost quaint.
In searching for the picture above, I discovered the separation is now due to ‘Digital Vs Non Digital’.

Oops, my mistake, it’s ‘Digital Vs Anti Digital’.

Get it? D - Digital, AD – Anti Digital.

But what does ‘Anti-Digital’ mean?

D&AD President and Digital bod Simon Waterfall said, “The theme of ‘Digital vs Anti Digital’ represents the evolution of the digital industry. Clients and creatives are moving away from ‘Can we do this technically?’ to ‘Should we do this for the brand?’. Digital design today is more joined up, more integrated and more about brand behavior than bits and bytes - what a great time to be a part of this industry.”

Are there people in the communications business who are ‘Anti Digital’? Who don’t think Digital is a lot of fuss over nothing?

No.

It’s like trumpeting about the benefits of oxygen – ‘breathe it in! isn’t it great?’

Anyway, if this pixelated screen grab is anything to go by the book looks cool, as you’d expect.

28/08/08

Gum, a new medium?

Step 1.

Step 2.

Step 3.

Gradually, all the old squashed gum patches in Muswell Hill are being turned into little pieces of art.
Or graffiti, depending on how curmudgeonly you are.

As you’d expect, they’re very small, here’s my son Harrys eleven year old fingers for scale.

There are literally hundreds of them, maybe four hundred in the High Road alone.

You can commission your very own message.

Take this one - announcing the birth of a child.
I guess it’s cheaper than announcing it in The Times.

Some are more self promotional,

some dedicated to their favourite musician,

or a dog.

Here James professes his love to Daisy. The old romantic - chewing gum outside Sainsburys, never fails.

It raises a few questions: Who does it?

Does he/she work in other areas?

Art/graffiti?

Will the council scrape them up/vandalise them?

How long before they pop up in the ambient section of D&AD for Wrigley’s/Bubblicious?

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