The Musings Of An Opinionated Sod [Help Me Grow!]

For passion Wieden+Kennedy London did some pretty text-ads supporting the England rugby team (for Nike).

now please don’t disregard this simply because it was written by Yanks (Fallon) – or because it is a transparent piece of corporate self promotion – dressed up as selfless act of unity/support and therefore should be rightly vilified – but that said, they did a half decent job of it. Its the United Airlines full page print ad that ran after September 11th. (perhaps motivated by the fact it was their planes!)its all copy, no images. apparently everyone in the office cried when the copywriter faxed it in (yeah, right)
should be on either the Fallon or United Airlines website (or the juicing the orange site)
hope that helps – by the way banana thick shakes are THE best drinks – although they go brown on your desk if you go off for a meeting and forget to take them

I’ve just worked out who Mr McG is – how the fuck are you?

We’re catching up soon aren’t we? Can’t wait.

Thanks mate – email it to me at rob at cynical-world dot com.

You’re a legend.

found your business card in my drawer – under the phone list and my can of emergency deodorant – have emailed the ad to your Cynic address – hope it helps

Got it – thanks alot.

Lovely stuff, some of it borders on being overly aggresive [which you can understand] and I don’t like all the ‘justification’ of the ad at the bottom [some is great, some is the usual schmaltz] but it’s brilliant, brave and genuine.

Have you seen the doco ‘The Falling Man’ – it’s a great look at how the US used ‘hero’ imagery of the terrible events of that day to establish the image of American triumph rather than American pain.

It’s not the spelling I’m looking at!

That Falling Man doco was fucking brilliant. As was Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close – the book by Jonathan Safran Foer. If you haven’t read that, you should.

I can’t think of a specific ad, rob, but I know that quite a few years ago, there were some text-heavy ads which were by a charity here – maybe Anglicare or Red Cross, or something? Possibly Red Cross, about donating blood, maybe? And I’m still light on detail, but I have a mental image of a company doing a bunch of ads in the personals section, which were text-based. Sorry, can’t remember anything more than that – what a waste of text space that was!

What about that stuff you wrote for Delo? It makes me violently fucking sick to compliment it, but it was really good and we all know what the reaction was from the “audience”.

Can you remember that ad Andy presented to some diamond company back in the 90’s at HHCL?
I can’t remember who it was but it went something like, “It’s not the way she smiles, it’s the way she frowns, it’s not the way she laughs, it’s the way she cries, it’s not the hug of hello, it’s the hug of goodbye” then ended with “The undeniable, unmistakable signs of love.”
I’m not doing it justice but it was absolutely brilliant and I am sure its the sort of thing you’re looking for. He lands in about an hour so call him and find out if he’s still got a copy because I don’t think it ever got bought.

Behave Billy …

I sort-of remember that George, but it sounds bang on so I’ll get the soppy fucker when he lands. Speak soon, see you sooner 😉

You are quite right Lauren and we realised that when we first started the company which is why we always focus on what we believe is right rather than what is expected so the relationship is based more on equality than master and servant.
Of course it doesn’t always work out (both in winning clients or getting the idea made) but the best stuff we do is when we’re “commissioned” rather than “dictated to” which is possibly why we get away with doing things in more interesting ways than some of our peers.
Excellent point and you’ve articulated our “view” far more elequently than we ever could manage.

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you John, unlike some of my colleagues, I’m not checking for updates constantly.
What I am trying to articulate is that quite often we are approached by organisations who are not clients to help them out of one off situations that they find themselves in.
Rather than give us specific output deliverables, they “commission” us to achieve a specific objective deliverable (ie: a business outcome rather than purely a communication one) because they know we have a true openness in approach (including the incorporation of 3rd parties we believe enhance our vision) as well as a “shared risk” attitude which is reflected in our costs structure.
I am not explaining myself well, it’s more why we are approached than what we do and that is a byproduct of, as Lee Hill so wonderfully said, being idea neutral rather than media neutral.
I will think about this over the next few days as I haven’t given Lauren’s point any justice but I hope it gives some better indication as to what I meant previously.