October 2005 Archives

Ah, nothing like having done a few decent ads ove rthe years to make a man feel he can say anything he likes with no consequence. There's a big flap over legendary CD Neil French's comments that women were less likely to be good Creative Directors because they were more likely to be distracted by pesky things like their children. Basically, his view was that you can't really be a great CD and have time for your family -- and women were not good at understanding this. Not surprisingly, this didn't sit well with many people -- although on the other hand, he had many defenders as well, claiming he was a) right but maybe not politic in the way he expressed it b) misquoted c) he was an advertising legend so he could say what he wanted c) a victim of political correctness d) that advertising (unlike, say coal mining or being in the Navy SEALS) is a dirty, tough business.

This "Advertising is War" is part of the agency ethos that still lives on in the minds of some of the older guys. And younger guys who got into the business because they like the thrill of it. What's more exciting than staying all night to work on a pitch because you played foosball and hung out at the pub all week instead of working on it? By golly, you feel so alive! It's almost like what you're working on really MATTERS! And that, in my opinion, is at the root of it: the stress and craziness of it all makes what is often a pretty mundane project seem really vital to the world. And who doesn't want that?

My favourite response to Mr French is from the brilliant Chris Staples of Rethink, who, along with stating the heretical view that it was possible to be successful in this business while maintaining a family life, referred to the remarks as, "The last gasp of the dinosaur."

We should be so lucky.

Just heard that it was this day in 1961 that Bob Dylan went into the studio with John Hammond and recorded his first album. He did it in one day for $400. Not a bad start.

A play for which I designed the cover has just been nominated for a Governor General's Award. How nice to see my cover on this listing -- it's "Two Words for Snow" at the bottom -- although I do hope no one recognizes that skeleton, because I really don't remember where it came from.

It almost makes the waiting for 8 months to be paid for that job worth it.

There's an ad for Future Shop running right now where a staff member speeds up the escalator so customers "can get what they want faster" or something like that. As you can imagine, much hilarity ensues.

Anyway, after I'd wiped the tears from my eyes I found myself needing to go to Future Shop to get a new USB hub. But at the Yonge and Eglinton Future Shop. not only is the escalator not going comically fast, it's broken and not moving at all. SoI trudged upstairs at a snail's pace and I reflected upon how, once again, I had been fooled by the old bait-and-switch strategy of electronics stores and their ad agencies. When will I learn?

If you're a Dad, is there anything more you'd like than to have your son (or daughter) write a song like this about their time spent with you? Geez, you could do worse.

Written by these guys, Nizpoli. (Terrible name, right up there with Porktrashers) The other little songs I've heard sound nice too. If I could figure out how to buy it easily (ie without having to get it mailed to me) I would.

Just saw a trailer for the wonderful Wallace and Gromit movie and had to laugh at how hopeless Hollywood is at packaging anything that doesn't fit into the movie marketing formula. This is the voiceover for part of it (imagine the usual "trailer-guy" voice, all deep and breathy), I swear I'm not making this up:

"One is an inventor who never says die. The other is his dog, who never says anything. They've made gadgets. They've made contraptions. And now, they've made a movie..."

Was this ad computer-generated or something? (In fact, is the trailer guy's voice computer generated? It's always the same.) I think they must have software that produces this banal and ultimately meaningless type of copy. You basically plug in the character types, and it spits this out. Even by the fat and lazy-ass standards of American film marketing, they seem to have invested no thought into it at all. Trust Hollywood to reduce the wonderful British charm and eccentricity of W&G to a story about "A man and his dog." I guess they figure this is going to help people in Idaho identify with it -- "Look honey, it's kinda like "Ol' Yeller!"

Was at the iTunes music store and noticed a promo for The Tragically Hip "World Premiere Video". I clicked it and got a message "Sorry the item you reqested is not available in Canada." What a cruel irony, given that Canada is about the only place on the planet that could care less about a new Hip video.

Ah, just when you've lost faith... not long ago Marketing Mag called me for credits on a site we'd done because it was going to be reviewed in their "Digital Eye" column. This is a little feature where a Creative Director is shown some current work and asked to critique it, knowing nothing else about it. I felt like Benicio Del Toro in Traffic, where he's digging a hole to fall into when they shoot him the head. Given what I know about that showcase -- mostly, that it's a showcase for know-it-all Creative Directors to demonstrate their abilities to savagely cut up others' work -- I was dreading that issue. "It's a placeholder site, they have no stores or products yet, so why are you reviewing it?" I whined to Marketing Mag guy. "The client told us specifically NOT to get fancy with it."

But hey, guess what? Dave Sylvestre of Organic was the reviewer, and not only was he bang on in recognizing it as a basic placeholder site (and fairly dull at that) he was gracious about it to boot. In fact, he was like that with all of the sites he looked at. Unlike so many of the people that do that column, he actually seemed interested in figuring out what people were trying to accomplish -- for better or worse -- rather than figure out how he could be perceived as smarter than everyone else. Go figure.

Aside from the relief on a personal level, his writing made this column an enjoyable read (that is, enjoyable for those of us who don't get a kick out of others being humiliated), for a change.

Well, we survived our gig at the Clinton on Sunday, and then some. It all went great: We had a great turnout, sold enough beer to pay for the room (hooray for our heavy drinking friends), and $300 worth of CDs too, with proceeds going to the Food Bank. We also had an extra guitarist, my friend/work colleague Mike, who is an ex-pro, and he really made a big difference to the sound. Not only filling it out, but bring a nice kind of polish to it with some inventive touches. We played really well too, not too many mistakes (!), and some songs just really came to life in a way (I'm sorry to say) that we didn't achieve on the CD itself. So there is a double-edged sword feeling to all this, insofar as certain moments of this fuelled my misgivings about the sound and production of the CD -- ie we didn't really capture the "essence" of the Porktrashers (a bacon-y type of essence perhaps). But that said, I'm just so proud that we got it done and had such a great time doing it. Onward!

After that, a bunch of people came back to our place for what was supposed to be a surprise BBQ I'd set up for Carol's birthday, but which our drummer's wife let slip during the show. Sigh. It had been coming off so well... Nevertheless, the sun was just as warm and the beer tasted just as good, so that's a small thing.

Photos of the gig to come.