How to kill an ad.

Killing ideas, whether they're ads, radio or TV commercials, online communications or whatnot, is something that has to be done wisely if it's to be done well.

Whether the killing is warranted or not, that's not my point today.

Today's post is about mercy killing.

It's about killing effectively.

It's about killing with no ambiguity.

It's about killing completely.

That is, not letting things linger and hold onto life like a flounder 45 minutes after you've hooked it.

Not sending the creative team scrambling, looking to make something more "sophisticated," when you, the passive executioner know you will never buy it.

It's not about saying "let's see if we can make it more 'edgy.'

Or 'I like the idea but not the language.'

Or some other such rot.

It's your job, if you are reviewing work--whether you're on the agency or the client side--to wield a cleaver.

It's not about being nice, hoping not to dampen the enthusiasm of the creative teams. Some people think beating around the bush with creative teams is kind.

It's not. It just prolongs things that should be lopped off.

This isn't a popularity contest.

It's about focusing and making decisions.

Which, in sum, is about using resources wisely.

So listen.

Next time you see an ad you don't like, that you know you could never buy,
just say, "I appreciate the effort. But that ad is wrong. I don't think animation is right for this."

Don't keep things alive out of kindness.

When you should be killing them.

Re-branding for a cause.

Some work I did over the weekend with the brilliant Tore Claesson. 

If you like them, please spread the word.

From Ed McCabe.

By way of Sell! Sell!'s marvelous blog. http://sellsellblog.blogspot.com/

“Advertising has evolved into a business driven by megalomaniacs who know a lot about making money but little or nothing about making advertising. In some respects it's also being driven by “creatives,” who have it wrong to the opposite extreme. They believe the ad or commercial is everything and that winning awards is something. They've lost sight of the fact that advertising, in and of itself, isn't anything. Advertising's sole purpose is to be the cause of something else. To cause a sales increase. To cause a shift in perception. To cause the creation of an edifice of imagery that allows a product or service to be something. But advertising itself is nothing. Nothing but a means to an end. Only fools believe the means is as important or significant as the end.”

Limits.

Of the many ways business has changed since the dawn of the digital era, perhaps the most seismic is the "death of the end."

Here's what I mean.

When you grew up in print--which many people of my vintage did--there was a limit to how much copy an ad could handle. A page has finite dimensions. Unlike a website, it has an end. You had to learn to make every word count--because, simply, you didn't get many.

Likewise, content. When you had a prescribed and immutable time limit, you had to excise extraneous thoughts. You had a minute. Or 30 seconds. Not 3:16, or :47. Your time had an end. You had to finish.

Shooting on film also gave you limits. A "mag" lasted just about seven minutes and then the camera had to reload. And film was expensive. You couldn't just let the camera run through rehearsals. You had to find your shot and get it.

All these limits, all these endings demanded stern discipline.

They demanded an editor's eye at the outset.

That's all.

A summation.

Well, we wrapped five days of shooting in LA.

Six commercials.

Over 80 shots.

Five early calls followed by five late nights.

A lot of work and now, one stage is done.

Now post begins.

It's always hard for me being on set because I don't really mix well with others.

My mind is on Egon Schiele or Edward Curtis.

And downtime talk usually centers on Tosh 2.0.

Or Lindsay.

Or some thing or someone I regard as puerile.

Nearly every day I feel more and more distant from those around me.

Their film references and mine are usually separated by forty years.

They talk about tracking shots and never saw Renoir's in "Boudu, Saved from Drowning."

It's a little depressing some times and it worries me.

To my mind, our "culture" is so vapid I can't seem to warm to it.

I know I should, but I don't want to be a part of it.

That probably makes me obsolete. Or, better, lends to my obsolescence.

But I have something others seem to lack.

I can take a Rubik's cube of a brief and make it four words.

And from that, good can come.

A thought can be expressed in an
understandable, credible, intrusive, memorable and interesting way.

Palettes and styles change.

But the fundamental things apply.

And that's why they still need me.

--

BTW, the picture of the painting above is George Bellows' "Men of the Docks."

It was painted over 100 years ago, in 1912.

It's still good.

Machine guns vs. snipers.

In my meanderings I came upon a quotation by Michael Caine about John Huston the great film-director, actor, and writer. 

Caine said: "Most directors don't know what they want so they shoot everything they can think of--they use the camera like a machine gun. John uses it like a sniper."

It's not hard to see the parallels to our business.

Nearly everyday we are subjected to meetings and presentations that are unfiltered. 106 page powerpoint decks containing two pages of thought.

We listen to people who call statements like "people drink coffee in the morning," an insight.

We see teams present 24 "ideas" in "answering" a creative brief.

In other words, we see machine gunners.

We need more snipers.

People who think first.

People who edit.

People who think.

And most of all people people who filter.

Roy Grace, late of DDB esteem, once said that a Creative Director's job is to "take out the garbage."

I wonder if today he'd be as overwhelmed as Staten Island's Fresh Kills landfill. I wonder if he could handle the flow of trash.

I wonder if anyone can.

Country George and the Fish.

A long time ago, probably after reading Holden Caulfield's ruminations about where Central Park's ducks go in the winter, I wondered about what fish do in ponds and lakes when the water freezes.

What I learned is that fish can lower their metabolism. They "slow down" in effect, lower their pulse, so they can survive adverse conditions.

I've always envied this ability in fish.

I wish when I was stuck on a long plane flight, in shul during the High Holy Days, or, most often, trapped in some endless and mindless morass at work--the usual messy stew of indecision and pontification--I was more like a fish.

I wish I could lower my metabolism until it all just goes away.

Agency models.

You can't spit in the environs of metaphorical Madison Avenue without hearing some gasbag spout about the need for 'a new agency model.' You know, how the old model is 'broken' and we need to outsource this or that function to Upper Lesotho or we'll all go belly-up (except, of course, for the heads of the holding companies who, though never having created an ad, pocket salaries and bonuses that are routinely in the eight digits.)

Having worked almost three decades in the business, I think I know more about agency models than most. And I probably know how to make an agency profitable--very profitable.

Acknowledge that no matter where you work or whom you work for, 20% of the people do 80% of the work. Get rid of the dim bulbs, the slackers and the talkers and hold onto your workhorses and you'll make a mint--agency models be damned.

And there's one other thing you can do.

Agree with all clients that after a certain number of reviews of work, the agency will introduce a "dumb fee." A charge for statements that are so blatantly boneheaded they could make your hair curl.

"I know we haven't met any of our dates, but why are you late?"

"I know we haven't approved the copy, but why haven't you recorded it?"

You know, that sort of thing.

An advertising life.

As long-time readers of Ad Aged may know, I am a third generation ad guy.

My father, born in 1928--back when dinosaurs roamed the earth--had a 30 year career in advertising, and went on to teach advertising at a major American university.

My uncle, my father's brother, was born in 1913 and had an even longer career in the business.

He owned, for decades, Philadelphia's largest ad agency.

In short, advertising has been in my family lineage for 100 years.

Only a century or two short of the amount of time my ancestors were raped by Cossacks.

Despite of, or maybe because of all that, growing up I never pictured myself in advertising.

I pursued, almost to the time I was 30, an academic career, hoping to teach English literature at a quiet, decent college or university.

That didn't work out for me.

And having no money for rent sobers up a lot of aspiring academics. Or at least it sobered me up.

I got a job, where else, in advertising.

It's been 29 years now.

I guess I'm looking to outlast my uncle and my father.

Speaking. And not.

Years ago I did a pro-bono campaign for the last jazz radio station in the New York area. I was doing research--actually just frittering time away reading about jazz--and I came upon a quotation by Dizzy Gillespie. "It's taken me all my life to learn what not to play."

It occurs to me that there is a parallel in our business.

"It's taken me all my life to learn what not to say."

There are so many opportunities in business, at work, with clients, at meetings to shoot off your mouth. To over-react. To blurt. To shout. To say without thinking.

What most people don't realize is the indisputable power in speaking last.

In measuring.

Thinking things through.

Relaxing.

And breathing.

Or as Dave Trott might say, "letting the ball come to you."

Try it some time.

Learn what not to say.