Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Comment, Creativity, Insight, Perspective
Now I could say this must mean I am on the road to eventually being one of the World’s experts in music, fashion and shoes, but I won’t, instead I’ll say that it’s this perspective that helps explains why this old Jordan spot by Wieden+Kennedy, is still so bloody good.
OK, I appreciate they probably have data on me that states I buy a lot of gadgets.
After all, I’ve bought robot balls, rabbits and dogs from them in my time.
And yes, as you can see – or should I say, as you can see if you squint really, really hard at the picture at the top of this post – I am looking at purchasing yet another piece of pointless tech-tat. However, as obsessed with shit as I am, I really don’t think offering me a £1 discount is going to tempt me to act on my instincts
A QUID.
A BLOODY QUID.
BASICALLY A 0.44% DISCOUNT.
I know after Brexit, £1 is now known as 50 pence, but this is ridiculous.
Hell, even a second hand one only saves me £26.91.
I’ve always admired how Amazon used their data and buying power to offer people more reasons to buy more things, but it appears – at least where I am concerned – they can’t be arsed, which [worryingly] probably says more about me than it does about them.
Filed under: Attitude & Aptitude, Awards, Brand Suicide, Corporate Evil, Creativity, Culture, Death, Marketing Fail, Only In Adland, Standards, Wankers
Yes, I know I’ve written about this a lot before – hell, I wrote something just 2 weeks ago – but I have to vent.
HAVE. TO. VENT.
As many of you now know, GREY Singapore claimed to have developed an app that could help stop refugees escaping their troubled homeland via the high seas, from dying.
It won a bronze Cannes Lion.
It was a total and utter fake.
Rightfully, this was picked up by the media and forced GREY to reluctantly [and I mean, reluctantly] hand the award back, but I have a question …
Why are people shocked at the scandalous behavior of Grey and Cannes?
This has been happening for years and nothing ever happens. Nothing.
Of course, exploiting refugees to win a bronze Cannes Lion is utterly sick but, let’s remember, LYING ABOUT ANYTHING IN A BID TO WIN AN AWARD IS SHIT … whether it’s an iodine bindy, a wifi enabled clothes peg or an app that alleges to help stop needless deaths of refugees taking to the high seas to escape their troubled homeland, despite the fact it is all fake and doesn’t work.
And what did GREY say in response to this finding?
They claim they had been clear it was only in its ‘testing phase’.
Which begs the question, why the hell did they think it was OK to enter an award supposedly based on real work.
I’d love to see the submission and see if their write-up highlighted this fact … which then means Cannes should have kicked it out before it even got to the judging phase.
A total fuckfest managed by imposters and charlatans.
But here’s the thing …
I don’t think the creatives at Grey Singapore are purely to blame for this.
They’ll probably get made the scapegoats, but it goes far beyond them.
There’s the local management who demanded their creative department win awards.
And the global management … despite their claim they never do this sort of thing.
And let’s not forget the holding company that pushes their companies for more and more [fake] results.
And then there’s Cannes … who openly and actively celebrate agencies that do this sort of thing in a bid to keep the money rolling in.
The one slight positive – apart from the work that is genuinely worthy of applause and a true celebration of what we do when we all want to do it right – is that the only reason this scam situation happens over and over again is because, outside of our bubble, few seem to give a shit about who we are and what we do.
In fact, it is only because The Guardian newspaper decided to do a story on the Grey Singapore app [I’m assuming because “refugees” are news worthy – so they’re being exploited again] that the murmurs of a few become the scream of a lot because without that story, I’m pretty sure it would be business as usual.
I hope someone hears it. It’s killing our industry and we need to do a u-turn very quick indeed.
GREY FOR GOOD … the supposed philanthropic arm of GREY is, in my opinion, nothing more than a front for this sort of thing.
If they were being honest they would name it GREY FOR OUR OWN GOOD, but as we have discovered from this years award entries [which, let’s not forget, is just one agency of many agencies pulling this scam] GREY and TRUTH are never comfortable bed fellows.
Filed under: Comment
That’s quite an interesting post title isn’t it?
Well, it is for me.
OK, so it’s blatant clickbait, however it came about after a conversation with John Dodds, so blame him.
So a while back I wrote about how the television show ‘Changing Rooms’ had potentially ruined creative people’s credibility because whatever the designers did was met with either snorts of derision or claims anyone could do what they did.
Could the average viewer do better than the professional designers?
Well I’m sure some could, but then those people wouldn’t be ‘average viewers’, they would have a special talent – potentially honed through education and loads of practice.
But despite that, the cultural and commercial value of anyone in the ‘creative industry’ was undermined and has arguably, never recovered.
The reason I say all this is because I feel the opposite is happening with the coder industry.
I’ve been fascinated by the rise of the coder in the past few years.
I don’t just mean in terms of awareness, but in terms of salary potential and importance … especially as my Mum was one of the original computer programmers for the calculator and she got none of the acclaim even very average coders get today.
Of course I get why …
The fact is in a highly competitive, consumerist World, companies and society seem to think every coder is capable of producing life changing magic and so to be successful, they need to get them whatever the cost.
But here’s the dirty little secret … because while some definitely have the skill and talent to create truly amazing things, the majority sit in their offices and bedrooms churning out stuff that adds to the noise of mediocrity rather than the elevation of what is possible.
Or said another way, why is someone who can use a spanner seen as a labourer while someone with some ability using a digital spanner is automatically seen as a craftsman?
Look, I’m not knocking it but it’s worth remembering to be really good – be it at coding and DIY – requires talent, skill and practice which means the real difference between the two is cultural perception and value … which is arguably the smartest thing the coding community has ever created and why the last thing they’ll ever want is a ‘Coder Changing Rooms’ show hitting mainstream television screens anytime in the near future.
Filed under: Brand Suicide, Comment, Cunning, Embarrassing Moments
So a while back, this photo hit the internet …
Yes, it’s shit singer Drake wearing a Nottingham Forest kit.
I was inundated by people sending the image to me, probably because I am the only sad bastard Forest fan I know.
At first I was kind of excited by it.
I loathe Drake with every fibre in my body, but there was something super cool in the fact he was in my teams shirt.
Of course I knew he knew fuck-all about us and the fact he was wearing it was more because we have the best logo of any football team in history than anything more meaningful, but it still felt surprisingly good.
Until I got sent this.
Fuck.
However, after the misguided and momentary disappointment died down, there were 2 things that struck me.
1. If I was wearing an utterly horrendous pink Juventus shirt, I’d want to be photoshopped out of it too. And I’m a man that wears Birkenstocks.
[Nottingham Related Fact: Juventus traditional ‘black and white stripe’ shirt was inspired by the kit of the oldest football club in the World … good old Notts County]
2. As alarming as Drake’s taste is – and that pink Juventus shirt means it is even worse than I imagined – I have to say it’s pleasing to know even he wouldn’t stoop so low as to wear a Derby County shirt.