Wisdom of Chandler

Years ago Ted Horton told me that being a copywriter was easy.

All you had to do was take the proposition and find a more interesting way of saying it.

I've shared that wisdom with hundreds of young creatives since them.

Next time I have to do it I think I'll print off a copy of this poster of Chandler from Friends to give them too.

The man is a genius.

And like me he came to copywriting late in life.

Watch and learn

You're not yourself

I reckon I mistype about 80% of my search queries. So this campaign was obviously created with me in mind. Funny thing is I've never seen it. Still a great idea though.

Fetch!

I've watched this a couple of times now and I still have no idea what it's about or what it's supposed to be actually selling.

But it's got dogs. Lots of dogs. Catching tennis balls. In super slow-mo.

Seriously. What's not to love!?

What's your thing?

YouTube via Twitter

I was reading an article about YouTube usage yesterday.

Some of the stats are quite mind boggling.

But what really tweaked my interest was the amount of YouTube video links shared via Twitter.

700 a minute.

Now that may not seem all that exciting really when compared to most YouTube usage stats but take that figure of 700 and multiply it across a 24 hour period and it gets a lot more impressive.

1,008,000 YouTube links shared via Twitter everyday. Wow!

Like like like

I've been wanting to do something like this for ages but haven't had a client to buy into the idea.

So you can imagine how jealous I was when this ad landed in my inbox this morning.

Kudos to Unicef for being brave enough to run it. And congrats to whoever it was that created it.

Click the pic if you want to read the copy.

Moms demand action

I think any sane person would agree with me when I say that America has a gun problem. And I think this is a strong ad.

Kinder Surprises banned?

Now that's the sort of thing that makes me wanna shout 'Only in America' at the top of my voice.

Cars that park themselves

Seems like every new car coming out these days has the ability to park itself.

Not sure this iPad ad is the best way to advertise it though.

It's all a bit meh don't you think?

When I worked on the launch of the Ford Focus with 'park assist' a couple of years ago we embedded a fun little parking game in an expanding banner ad.

Much more fun.

It's housed on the Ford website at the moment. Click here to go play it.

Tim talks D&AD

Great chat with Tim Lindsay the CEO of D&AD. Don't know about you but I always enjoy hearing people in the creative industries talking about their work. 

Oh dear...

Sorry. It's not the best quality screengrab.

But then it's not the best quality tweeting either.

A spurious attempt to make money out of other people's misery.

Shame Epicurous shame. 

Missed opportunity

Is it just me or is that headline (if you'd call it a headline) a totally missed opportunity?

Actually I already know the answer to that question. So I'll spare you the rhetoric.

Fact is this ads main failing is it doesn't talk one to one.

Of course I am quite happy that the tram company have gone out of their way to improve my experience with them.

But really. Who uses language like that?

And who uses it in an ad?

People who should not be writing ads. That's who.

Be a part of #agencylife

If you haven't come across it yet the Agency Life hashtag is generating all sorts of fun on Twitter.

Might contribute a few myself when I get a minute.

Ain't that the truth

Last month I was invited to speak at a get together of SEO people.

My talk was entitled Importance of Interesting.

Its premise was that no matter how much work you put into SEO if your brand and content are not interesting then people are not going to be interested in it.

Today I came across the Bernbach quote above.

if I'd seen that before I could've cut my SEO talk from ten slides to one.

Celebrating the forgotten heroes

Cycling brand Rapha is one of my favourite brands.

Yes they make a lot of lycra but they don't cover it in ridiculous logos.

It is probably best described as a fashion savvy cycling brand.

Which is probably why it has developed a sizeable yet cult following amongst cycling aficionados.

They genuinely understand people who love the self propelled two wheel experience.

A great example of this is their new jersey in collaboration with Paul Smith.

It's black. Nothing new in that. But the story behind it makes it a very special black.

It's an homage (or should that be celebration) of the Maglia Nera. The jersey awarded to the person who finished last in the Giro d'Italia back in the day.

A celebration of the bloke who comes last. Can't imagine Nike or Adidas doing that?

But Rapha have done it.

And they've done it because they know that after two weeks of flat out competitive cycling simply crossing the finishing line is an achievement in itself.

So big thumbs up from me to Rapha.

Big thumbs down as well though as they're already out of my size!

Find out more here.

Homage or just plain lazy?

Bonds have been responsible for some of Australia's nicest advertising over the last few years.

Cheeky. Silly. Fun. Loveable. Sexy.

These are the sort of words that come to mind when I think about the Bonds ads I've seen on TV.

With their entry into the UK market I was expecting big things from Bonds.

What I (or should I say we) got is a blatant rip-off of the legendary Hello Boys poster for Wonderbra.

It was created by TBWA-London who also created Hello Boys.

Client and agency have been quoted as saying "The result is clever, confident and an ad that doesn't take itself too seriously".

Not sure I'd agree with them. In fact I think it's lazy. But hey what would I know?

What I do know though is the photo of Eva Herzigova is a million times better than the Bonds photo.

The joy of six

I'm a big fan of anyone that does things a little differently.

Which is why I like the idea that DDB in Belgium are using Vine to find young creatives.

I particularly like that you need to have an iphone to participate as Vine is only available for iPhone at the moment.

What I don't like though is the way whoever created the campaign has used the double quote marks symbol for seconds rather than using secs.

Because who in their right mind can't see that it looks like six inches not six seconds?

Interesting Instagram stats

When I was a kid you got 24 or 36 photos on a roll of film.

There were cheap and expensive cameras but either way you had to finish a roll of film then wait a week (on average) to get it developed before you saw a photo.

Try explaining that to kids today and they look at you like you're 100 years old.

I have no idea how many photos were taken on any given day back then but I very much doubt it would be anywhere near as many as it is now.

In fact the usage stats for Instagram are utterly mind boggling - 40 million photos published every day.

Not every month. Every day.

On top of that Instagram receives 8,500 likes per second and 1,000 comments per second.

Compare that to waiting a week or more to see the photo you've taken and it's easy to see why my kids look at me like an idiot when I talk about how long photography used to take.

Less is more

Love this design for the cover of Orwell's classic 1984.

So simple.

So effective.

Wish it was real rather than just a design.

It by Adronauts of Vienna. 

Lost for words

Every now and again I come across an ad that leaves me utterly speechless.

This ad did that. But not in a good way.

Weirdest thing I've seen all year.

Advice for copywriters

Banks need customers not branches

I'm old enough to remember the introduction of the automated teller machine or ATM as we more commonly refer to it.

It had a $50 a day withdrawal limit and it totally changed how we went about getting our hands on our money.

In 2000 I worked on the launch of internet banking for HSBC in London. They were one of the first banks to do this.

Since then we've seen countless bank branch closures. Especially in rural areas.

And as much as I love the idea above by US agency Jackson I can't help thinking it's message of not needing to visit a branch is overshadowed by the technological changes that have slowly but surely removed customer service from the banking industry.

Of course I could just be some old bloke with a touch of melancholia.

But they do say that you don't know what you've got till it's gone. 

Are banner ads worth the money?

I've done more than my fair share of banners ads in my career.

I did some of the first flash banners back when Yahoo wouldn't run them.

And I created homepage takeovers long before they became annoying.

But these days there is nothing that annoys me more than banner ads.

Not because they're bad (even though most of them are) but because they're bloody everywhere.

The internet is literally covered in them.

They're like graffiti. Only they're not works of art. And they cost a lot of money.

So is that money worth spending?

It would appear not:

A standard banner has a 0.04% click thru rate.

Almost half of the clicks on mobile ads are accidental.

And the stat that has been much talked about of late - you're more likely to walk away from a plane crash than click on a banner ad.

Of course if you're happy to ignore these stats and need some banners done feel free to give me a call.

Wisdom of Wendy

Appetising advertising

If there's on thing that really bugs me it's the way Aussie supermarkets generally advertise meat and other foodstuffs.

Raw. Un-cooked. Sitting on a plate with no appetite appeal whatsoever.

I just don't know why they do this.

Look at that rib of beef. It looks like something you'd be served at a top restaurant.

These ads are for Tesco obviously. They're by W&K London.

I very much doubt they'll be troubling any award show juries.

But they are hands down the yummiest looking supermarket ads I've seen.