Where's Woody?

In Australian print advertising for Woody Allen's latest film "Vicki, Christina, Barcelona" no mention, not so much as a hint, is made of the fact that he is the director. Given he is one of the world's most famous auter directors presumably the PR people (for it is their doing obviously) want to attract people who want to see a film starring Scarlett Johanssen, Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem set in Barcelona but would be put off if they knew Woody was the director (he doesn't appear so no worries of him bumming out the beauty quotient).

This seems a little sad until I realised it probably applies to me as well and I number "Annie Hall" in my top 10 favourite films. The last film of his I saw was "Match Point" and it was shit and I bet this one is too. This sort of thing has to stop. It could quickly lead to advertising not mentioning that Tom Cruise is in a film or leaving out the title so we don't know that it is in fact the latest in a tired action franchise.

Perhaps the film's advertisement will only give us a hint, the merest whiff of who is involved and what it is about. Imagine the Spanish film with just a poster and the single word "Que?"

The Clarity That HDTV Brings

Having just bought a HDTV I have noticed an unexpected advantage. The small print at the bottom of tv ads is now revealed in startling clarity. Here is an example.

Foxtel, an Australian cable channel has been advertising a deal with Telstra. A charming woman (who has done a Julliard degree in sincere, accompanying hand motions) tells it like it aint. For a saving of $275 you can get Foxtel for 24 months and included is a bunch of Free stuff including 2 minutes access to their premier service, Free standard installation (which last time I looked is always being given away) and some Free land-line phone calls (great if you call your Gran in the next suburb 275 times a month).

And then through the miracle of HDTV I read the small print. The total cost of this package for 24 months (minimum contract) is $3360.80.

I bet the small print is about to get even smaller.

Shinjuku Was the Future Once

I have just been visiting Tokyo. Unlike say NY, Paris or Rome this has always been a generic city to me. I was unable to visualise it in advance. I won't bore you with how this visit has changed my impressions of this amazing city - just come over for the slide night on Wednesday. BYO sake! Whether it's the view from the window in my superior room, overlooking the Imperial Palace (hint: if you talk loud and fast to Tokyo hotel staff they decide you are mad and give you a room upgrade, this also works in Kyoto), the Tokyo Fishmarkets (alone responsible for 70% depletion of the World's sashimi stocks), or Rappapongi Hills (another hot tip: if you want to see Mt Fuji from the 468th floor private dining club get there before 7am ). What? You are busy on Wednesday? What about the 20th? I see. Busy till 2010. Well I guess it's a busy time.

So anyway I went to Shinjuku. An area of Tokyo famous for inspiring Ridley Scott in the 80s for his dystopian vision of the city of the future in "Blade Runner". Giant screens selling (I think) Disney movies and possibly haemmaroid cream. It was hard to tell the difference. I was a little suprised at this uninspiring former vision of future now but it seems that this area of Tokyo has been surpassed by another called Shibuya. An ever more electrified area where impossibly hip young Tokyoites hang out to be videoed and projected on giant screens around the square. At least that is what it says in the guidebooks. I didnt go to this updated vision of the future. I had ancient temples, shrines and acres of dead fish to see. At least in Shinjuku there was a Gap that sold underwear in my (almost) size. But I feel I should warn you, in the city of the future what is a slim 34" in today's sizes has become a size 40".

So I have seen the future as it was once. "Blade Runner" is still my favourite movie of all time if you had asked me in 1989 - set as it was in a Shinjuku-like phantasmagoria, a traditional 1980s futuristic neighbourhood of Tokyo. Go visit. If you haven't aready.

The Revolution Will Not Be Advertised

Alexis de Tocqueville in his seminal analysis of American Society, "Democracy in America", made the acute observation (in 1830) that in a society in which everyone wants to get ahead it is logically impossible for everyone to get ahead. Some will be left behind. If you define success in your society on others doing worse than you then you will, as a society, have set yourself up for failure.

People will take increasingly larger risks as they see others, who they consider less able, to be more successful through shear luck. Given de Tocqueville wrote this at the same time that Marx wrote "Das Kapital" I think we should talk about the new Alexism rather than Marxism.

Another Frenchman, Alain de Botton, wrote an equally insightful book "Status Anxiety" in 1998 in which he argued that most people are ultimately tied to defining their success in terms of other peoples' failure. It is a very weird world we live in the West that we do this when there are so many people who live on a pittance - several cents a day - and all we worry about is that the person next door has a nicer beach house.

Why is this about advertising? Because advertising has two paradigms. The first is that they are giving it away for free. To everyone. The second is that in buying their product you are one of the cool people who gets it and is getting ahead.

Update: A programme on advertising last week called "The Persuaders" said there are two sorts of advertising. The first is stuff given away for free and the second is where they flatter you by making you feel like you are in on the joke. This is what viral marketing is about as they want you to talk about what you saw and mention the brand at the same time hence increasing brand awareness which is the only metric for success that advertisers care about, well that and industry awards for creative campaigns that never happened. Increased client sales is a distant third. As I suspected.

Is White the New Black?

Having lived in the UK and US on or off for the last 8 years one of the things that is noticeable is the absence of mixed race couples in US advertising whereas in the UK it is entirely unremarkable. In London, where I lived until recently, based on looking at couples on the Underground, mixed race couples seemed to make up about 30% (very approximately) of couples where at least one of the partners was black. This seems to be about the same percentage I have seen in (entirely uncontroversial) UK advertising. I have never seen a mixed race couple in a US advert.

Will Obama's election change attitudes in the U.S. to miscegenation in advertising?

Cool Mule

Stubborn Mule aka The Raw Prawn has cast his observant eye over some telling logos. Are we looking at a post-Obama resurrection of the signifier/signified paradigm? Madbreak approves. 

He plans to sacrifice a chicken (or at least buy a Red Rooster chicken roll) tonight and read the.... errm....crumbs.

Official - it's an Obavalanche!

One of the interesting aspects of the late stages of the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election has been a reluctance by the punditocracy to call this as a knock-down 60-40 victory for Obama. 

Despite polls which show him not just leading in the blue and purple states but a few red ones as well. Whether it's a "knock on wood" or Bradley effect or vague references to a (so far) hidden racist backlash who knows. 

There has been a late move by the media to declare a late move to McCain and last minute need for the American public to reconsider their vote and buy more newspapers. I wonder if this will be the last election in which the treemedia figure?

By the time  Americans finish voting on Tuesday it will already be Wednesday lunchtime here in Bondi Towers but we promise to keep the result a secret.

(Update: Flugelhorns all round. I called it first)

Too Much Soap - Not Enough Hope

The Obamamercial - a paid 30 min spot on prime time tv - in the U.S. has understandably attracted a lot of comment. Now I have as big a man crush on Obama as the next guy (unless the guy's name is Joe the Plumber) but I found it a bit disappointing. Five families were featured and (as Obama said on The Daily Show) they were "all hopeful but they all faced challenges, yadda, yadda, yadda". I found all this a bit depressing and tuned out half-way through. One of the things I like about Obama is his sly sense of humour ,which comes through in his book "The Audacity of Hope". This includes the mustard story. You have to remember at this stage state senator Obama was just traveling around Illinois, solo, meeting folks, without any expectation he would one day be the Democrat Presidential Nominee.

 I am hoping that it is just his advisers trying to make him look serious and Presidential.

Someone Here pointed out that the opening of the Obamamercial featured the flugelhorn. On listening again I am not so sure. It sounds a bit like a French horn to me though if it was a French horn I am sure Fox would have run with the story by now.

The flugelhorn is of course famous for the opening bars of Aaron Copland's sublime "Fanfare for the Common Man", or so I thought. When I was at music camp in the 1970s we played this piece for our final concert (I played the trombone) and the opening fanfare was played by the flugelhorn player. He was also the Australasian Junior Euphonium Champion. He was my music camp bestie and then this slutty flautist got his attention and it was clear that I was a "third trombone" and so spent the rest of the time practicing on my 'bone alone - well I was 12. I still have a photo of him, me and that girl in concert.

Anyway. Checking out the wikipedia entry Here it lists, inter alia, the trumpet and French horn as the main instruments playing the fanfare. You can see a video of this piece being played Here. I see that it is indeed played mainly by trumpet and French horn without a flugelhorn in sight. In case you are wondering the flugelhorn looks like this. It was allegedly invented by Alfred Sax who invented the.... guess what?

The Copland is one of my favourite pieces of music, especially as the theme of his Third Symphony and everytime I have listened to it down the years I have imagined the opening bars being played by a solo flugelhornist.  I hope that this doesn't represent the first of many disappointments that Obama's presidency might bring.

Flugel means wing in German and it is not inconceivable that had Obama grown up in Germany (and hence have been a secret Nazi. Maybe he was! We need to be told the truth etc.) his nickname would have been flugelhorn as that is the German equivalent of "wing nut"or "jug ears"*.

We'll soon have this resolved though as the Copland piece is sometimes played at the Presidential Inaugration ceremony (e.g. Clinton's first). If I can take my eyes off President Obama for a minute I'll see if I can spot a lone flugelhornist. Possibly standing on a grassy knoll.

* Okay, I made that bit up.

Post Ad Hoc

How come I have to walk 15 minutes to buy stamps for a letter when there are mail boxes everywhere? So here is an idea. No, not stamp vending machines on mailboxes. How very last millenium. But what about allowing people free postage provided they let advertisements be stuck onto their mail? There is a lot of real estate on an envelope. Unlike junk mail the recipient will actually look quite favourably on the advertiser who is after all paying for the letter from their dear friend who is too lazy or cheap to buy a stamp. And for the advertiser the recipients address and possibly gender is a goldmine of information for targeted advertising.

 

The only problem would be to stop direct mailers sending out junk mail for free. With extra ads!

Atheist Bus Ad Campaign

God may move in mysterious ways but atheists take the bus. In a move which will hopefully infuriate the evangelically religious a campaign has begun to to raise money to put ads on London buses to counteract several campaigns currently run by Christian groups.

Richard Dawkins, the prominent atheist, has promised to match all donations up to 5,500 pounds. I have donated. Despite only running for less than a day they have raised nearly 50,000 pounds on a target of 5,500 so already hugely successful. It cost 5,500 pounds to run the ads on thirty buses for one month. I hope this spreads globally. If you have been in London and seen the original ads you will realise they are rubbish unlike the cheery message of the atheists' ads.

Existential Advertising

Here at the Existential Advertising Agency we have a simple philosophy. You are our customer and our product is You. In buying us you are buying yourself. And what could be more comforting than that?

As an special introductory offer we are offering new customers an extra 25% of themselves for Free*.

*conditions apply. offer available to existing customers only.

Guardianistas - !Uglies No Pasaran!

Is it generally considered true that left wing = young and good looking or is that just my perception from looking at The Guardian? If you go to the website of this British left-wing newspaper Here you might think so. If you look to the far right column (they probably call it the center right column as there are no far right columns in The Guardian) you will see an advertisement for "Guardian Soul Mates" which aims to bring like-minded Guardian readers together, for, errmm, romantic purposes. Now The Guardian is about as politically correct as you can get and in the UK "Guardian Reader" or "Guardanista" is shorthand for a liberal, angsty, bean munching peacenik. Such people are of course distributed equally across the spectrum of human loveliness at birth but frequently pride themselves, through self mutilation, op shop cast offs and lack of attention to basic grooming, on just how little they care about such things. I am not saying they are ugly but, you know, they certainly appear that way.

So how come everytime I look at the website the photo in the Guardian Soulmates advertisement is of a young, attractive person with the picture taken in the "slightly from above" angle favoured by professional photographers trying to get the "natural look". Is it possible that The Guardian is deliberately seeking to misrepresent the attractiveness of the singles available in order to get people to click through, perhaps, in the misguided belief that their own general hideousness and sheep-like body odour will be overlooked by that young, left wing, beret wearing PPE major who is clearly only interested in their soul and not their looks?

Advertising The Truth

I was shown to the TED website which for those who dont know contains videos of a lot of smart people giving short talks to other very smart people on topics that could best be described as cool or left-field or futuristic. What they have in common is that hardly anyone thinks these problems are simple or easily solvable. Whether it's the pursuit of happiness, supersymmetry or global warming these guys have their finger on the zeitgeist and man are they pressing hard to burst that zeit.

But wait. Are they really just standing up there, sheepishly delivering their version of The Truth? It would seem to be the case but in fact I think they are really just delivering advertisements for their particular version of the truth. One guy who gave a short talk on the E8xE8 model of supersmmetry ended his talk by showing what a well rounded person he was with pictures of his girlfriend and his passion for surfing. Accompanying his talk were some beautiful graphics illuminating the concept of supersymmetry. Now here's the thing. He could be a baby eating monster and it would make not a jot of difference as to the truth or otherwise of his theory. The universe is neither cool nor basically decent deep down. It doesnt wear hand-knitted jumpers or recycle diligently each Thursday. It wears brown when in town. And pretty much everywhere else. It doesnt eat its greens or apologise for its farts in public. The universe just is. Of course he wasnt claiming that we should believe his theory because he was a cool guy. In fact quite the opposite, he said that in case the theory turned out to be a colossal waste of time at least he would have lived a decent life. What with the surfing and the girlfriend and all. But isnt that how modern advertising really works? I just happen to be a cool guy AND drive this car. Doesnt mean nothing. Except it does.

So what we are really seeing here is a form of advertising like any other. McDonald's would be proud of this guy. I'm sure even if he doesnt discover the GUT he seeks he could get a job in advertising.

If this all seems a little harsh I have to admit I admire the guy's intellect, envy his surfer lifestyle, his chick and his van. (He is not the only one at TED "working a look", as they say in fashion circles - in a inadvisable move, redolent of late-life alcoholism, Lord Rees, the British Astronomer Royal, appears to have adopted a bow-tie. I have quitely observed Prof Martin Rees, as he was before his enoblement, for nearly 20 years and this latest development is unfortunate. Until Harold Bloom dies there should be no additions to the Order of the Bow Tie. Unless Harold Bloom has died in which case I guess it is okay. UPDATE: H.Bloom is still alive so take off the bow tie Marty and step back from the edge).

But there have been other periods in history when large groups of intellectuals, like TED, gathered and used their lifestyle to advertise the veracity of their opinions. I refer to the Middle Ages in Europe when monks and other religious were sure that they pretty much understood (a) how the Universe worked and (b) how to be happy. It was all there in the teachings of the Church. Call it the GUT or God's Undeniable Truth. God made the world, his son Jesus came to earth etc, try not to sin and if you do seek forgiveness via the Church. Pretty simple. And to aid and encourage acceptance of these ideas there were some pretty neat graphics - mostly in the form of illuminated manuscripts and stained glass windows. Of course, even then, there was nothing like a bit of viral marketing to focus peoples attentions on this view of the afterlife but in those days viral marketing meant fear of catching bubonic plague through sinful acts.

This view of the universe and how to live happily in it was complete. There were no doubts as there are today. Indeed had the intellectuals of the day kept their heads down and their hoods up we might still happily believe in it. But they couldn''t and it was the intellectuals that stood outside the mainstream who eventually tore it down from Wycliffe denying transubstantiation in the late 15th century (for which heresy his bones were dug up and burned some 20 years after his death) to Martin Luther some 100 years later nailing his "95 Theses" to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral in 1517. While these men did not act alone they certainly acted outside and against the vast tide of accepted intellectual opinion. I suspect that the people in TED see themselves as inheritors of Wycliff and Luther's iconoclasm but may in fact be more like the monks who argued about the legendary number of angels dancing on the head of a pin. I am a monk AND I believe in God. It doesnt mean anything. Except now it does.

Trying to understand that (dis)connection is what this blog is about. The way we send messages about the things we believe in and also act as personal advertisements for those beliefs, even when when we don't realise it, or even necessarily believe in them.

I wonder if some day, when we all exist inside interlinked virtual worlds, we will look back on the current time and our preoccupation with The Truth and wonder why we bothered with such trivalities and we will be pitied for our ignorance and, perhaps, envied for the simplicity of our lives in the same way that we might look back at people living in medieval times, in blissful ignorance, and both pity and envy them.

Give me an "H"

The other night a major event advertisement was shown on Channel 4. What like a live ad or something you ask? Well exactly. You err guessed right. A live ad! On tv! Yes well me too. We knew it was a major event because they told us it was in advance - an ad for an ad - now that is ground breaking.

But after the buildup what the ad actually showed was a group of skydivers (what is the collective noun for a group of skydivers? A plunge? A plummet?) forming each of the letters of "honda" the car manufacturer. Remember those 70s documentaries of synchronised skydivers that were so exciting in the 70s? It was like that. Without editing. Or excitement. First they formed an "H", then they broke up and then formed an "O", then a "N", and...well you get the rest. Then they all crashed into the ground and died horribly. If only it had been "ground breaking" in that sense.

What was interesting was that the ad stated "filmed live over Spain (except on Ch4+1)". Presumably they picked Spain to maximise their chances of good weather conditions. Then it occured to me that they probably had film crews and plummets set up all over Europe. Imagine announcing you were going to do a groundbreaking live ad (again, yawn) and then had to cancel it.

Sky+ is the limit

The new ads for Sky+ feature a selection of talking heads stating how their lives have been transformed with the new Sky+ anytime feature. It includes Michael Parkinson (national treasure, male), Mariella Frostrup (yummy mummy, radio 4), Ross Kemp (tv tough guy), David Gower (sporty, toffish), and Felicity Kendall (national treasure, female). They all seem to have been chosen with a precision bordering on control freakery to get us to identify with them and sign up to the new service. Note that it doesnt include a single footballer presumably because football fans already have Sky on their illegal dishes.

The curious thing though is their complete lack of animation or conviction in delivering their (obviously scripted) ringing personal endorsements. It is as though the ad's producer has asked them to repeat, for the hundreth time, the same lines, "but this time with just a little more oomph! darling" and created just the opposite effect. They all look constipated frankly. It must have been worst for Ross Kemp as he has to deliver an "amusing" aside (with laugh) to the effect that his gran records the snooker (geddit? his gran! the snooker! makes you laugh!) because he has clearly repeated it 99 times already. He is requiring all his actoring skills (which aren't great as you'll know from his most famous role as tough guy Grant Mitchell in East Enders, or his other famous role as a SAS tough guy or any of his more recent breakout tough guy roles) to give a spontaneous chuckle as he realises how funny it sounds - my gran! the snooker! hah! (What is it with his eyes by the way? Surely he makes enough money he could afford to get whatever it is fixed. Or is that boss eyed look a critical component of his tough guy image?)

Even Flick looks like she is ready to throttle someone as she delivers the final line "something that was really quite difficult is now, actually quite easy (unlike doing this fucking ad)". They obviously edited that last bit out.