The Problem of Underclass

Watching Manchester fall victim to looters and vandals was horrible. Seeing people trash their own city and boasting about it in barely comprehensible language was a nasty sight to behold. It's perfectly acceptable to be full of rage at these people. I can understand calling them scum and other names; I did it myself on seeing the shit they were pulling on the place where I live.

After such an event it is inevitable that many people will swing their social views to the right and demand tougher punishment, less benefits and tougher police. But the question we have to ask here, is why are there so many people who feel so out of touch with society, so absent of trust or hope in our society that they think it is acceptable to do this? How have we allowed people to become this way, if they are scum, they are scum of our own making. We cannot start taking heavy handed action on the symptoms if we continue to do nothing about the real causes.

This isn't just about bad parents and social media, this is about 32 years of government in which groups of people have been so left behind and ignored by society that we can refer to them as the 'underclass' without irony or insult. How else do we get a system that manages to take the worst of the left and worst of the right and combine them? No future, no jobs, no support, no propects combined with a dependence on social benefits; is it any wonder people are addicted to benefits? If money from the government was all you could expect to get for your whole life, is it any wonder you are both reliant on, addicted to, and angry at, the system?

It's no coincidence the trouble appears in poorer areas, places left behind. Always the first to get cuts in a tory government. If you leave food out in the open, it will go mouldy; whose fault is it if it then makes you ill?

In the words of Megadeth, 'Peace sells, but who's buying?' I read one report that 2000 black people protested peacefully in London a few weeks ago with not an inch of coverage in the press, one burning building and the world is at the door. I'm not saying these people were doing anything with a political point, but the fact they do it in the first place is a bigger political point.

No government wants to tackle it. This is our modern equivalent of dragging families out of the slums and into council houses. We won't get there by focusing on the symptoms. If it was us, how would we approach this problem?

Cannes the Cannes

The problem with advertising awards is that they judge creativity.

Well, they judge creativity without a benchmark of where the ad came from. No idea of how tough the birth of this idea was. It also tends to be based around a fixed set of creative principles.

To me, judging agency awards based purely on their creativity is rather like judging the quality of a school based only on the final grades of its pupils. Is the 10 A's averaging school in a rich area better than the 3 A's school in a poor area where English isn't always a first language? Surely understanding how hard it has been to get to the results, and the starting point going in are more than relevant to the success?

If you don't understand the initial problems and the process involved in an ad, is it not a little unfair to then reward only the outcome.

To me, an agency that gets a half decent idea out of a really difficult client is just as, if not more deserving of reward than the agency that makes a great ad for a great client.

It's why I keep hoping for good ads from DFS... when they get a good ad through we will know it deserves praise because of how hard it has been to sell in good work (so it seems at least!).

I am also a hater of the term 'regional' agency. A term that seems to brand agencies outside the M25 with a semi-rural status that is sometimes used in quite a demeaning way. I'm not criticising 'regional' awards, but it seems wrong to me that supposedly national/international awards ceremonies often fail to truly be so. We may have smaller clients who need more direct work in much less development time up here, but that does not mean we are less creative.

Judge based on the full story.

I'd like to see awards that balance out the skew towards those with great clients and challenger requirements:

• Best ad to get through a difficult client



• Best squeezing of ad copy past BACC



• Most creative incorporation of mandatory product features



• Best price / product ad (Aldi - Tea!)



• Most warmth created for monolithic soulless mega-corporation



• Least soul-destroying daytime TV direct ad
  


• Most improved advertising

In the Region of

There is one term I am starting to hate within adland, and I hope that I'm not the only one.

It's the slightly demeaning and insulting phrase of "Regional Agency".

I don't know where the term originated, and I accept that it has uses for smaller agencies in lists and charts. But I believe (and hope) I'm not the only person who finds the phrase insulting.

It feels like a term coined by a London agency in a pitch to scare a client from going outside the M25. A phrase that implies we don't have the skills or the resource outside the M25 to run a big campaign. A phrase that tries to bracket even global linked agencies like CBJWT, TBWA Manchester, McCann Birmingham into the same group as John Smith Village Marketing.

It seems to be a curiously British phenomenon, our obsession with London (and that's not to diss London agencies) as the only place where our marketing happens. I think you will find that Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh are all bloody big cities. We have our Beatles, our Oasis, our Proclaimers (okay maybe not the best example).

You don't call agencies in San Francisco or Chicago regional because they aren't in New York.

We don't call clients 'regional clients' if they are based in Liverpool or Newcastle. We would be rightly lambasted for doing so. Just because we don't have Fallon up here doesn't mean we lack talent. It's just that too many clients and agencies are yet to step outside the M25 and see it.

It's about time that we stopped using this lazy term and looked at our industry as a whole. We are not London agencies and regional agencies. We are all UK agencies. In this time when we need to justify our talents to those less familiar with the 'intangibles' of marketing, dividing ourselves up in this way helps noone.

Sheer Loonacy

Some products deserve to be successful purely because of the genius of their name.
This is one.

A service in central London that you can text and using GPS it will tell you where the nearest public toilet is.

It's known as: Sat Lav.

Image from www.brookwater.co.uk

What Nonsense...

Rob of agency Nonsense London sent me their pre-website website link the other day, and I liked it so much I thought you might want to see it.

You can help them to pick one of three brilliant site ideas (go Grannies go!). If their creative output is as good as their web concepts then we may hear more of them in the future**.

Its High Time Nonsense had a Website.

[**and then hopefully they will need more planners... ;) ]

A Room With an Interview...

Well that was an unusual but fun day!

My interview/open day went well I think. I was pretty nervous at the start of the presentation (I never realised how talking to 6 people close up was so scarier than last time when I spoke to about 50 people!) but I think I did much better after that.

The day was fun, and regardless of what happens i'm very very glad I went. Though I never did find out which person there reads this blog (though we suspect its the planning director). If anyone from the agency does read this, thanks for inviting me along. I hope I did well enough to justify picking me!

Two amusing things though:

1. I had a surreal moment of recognising a "famous" adland figure solely by his hair sticking over a cabinet... probably given it away with that one!

2. I actually used a Homer Simpson quote in one of the interview questions (and not just for random effect, it was actually part of my spur of the moment answer!)

Oh, and the journey...

I got off the train and to my hotel (in Bayswater, about 10 minutes tube ride to the interview) at 11pm, and found out the room had a water problem and I had to be transferred.


To Wembley! 25 minutes away...

But to their credit the hotel gave me free drinks at the bar while i waited, paid for the car there (and back the following morning to ensure I got to the interview), AND put me in a Hilton which was really nice. So while it was a total pain, they dealt with it brilliantly. Well done Clarion Collection Shaftesbury for demonstrating exactly how problems can win customer loyalty.

Annoyingly though, the car company in the morning didnt arrive on time, so I left twenty minutes late...and arrived at the agency 10 minutes late thanks to hideous London traffic. You couldnt make it up. Transferred, late car, traffic...

Still. At least I had a fun day, met some very nice people, and hopefully miiiight get this job everyone keeps telling me I deserve. So thank you so much for your support people who keep backing me, I really really appreciate it.

How Lo Can You Go?

Wow. The fuss over the new London 2012 logo is immense.
Designed by Wolf Ollins, it has a weird Jet Set Radio feel to it.

I like it moving, but im not sure about it still, and I dont think much of the colours. A bit too early 90s fluro...which is in style now, but in 5 years?

Its not timeless, but it might just be perfect as a piece of design to fit a specific moment. Time, and fashion will tell...

El Capitalo

This coming Wednesday (6th) I shall be in Central London for an interview.
If anyone else is about then and wants to meet up for a couple of hours between about 5pm and 7/8pm then let me know!

I believe Will may also be turning up.

Farewell

Everybody should wave a big goodbye to HHCL.
Whether or not they managed to last, the fact is that they made some of the most original and downright funny ads of all time.

And now the wreckage is being washed up at Grey... (as im sure you already knew)