The Lint Screen, Satire/Humor/Etc.

Tag: Patrick Scullin

  • There’s Gold in Them Thar Fake Ads

     

    "I wonder what Adam Smith would make of this..."
    "I wonder what Adam Smith would make of this…"

    What’s wrong with advertising these days? Advertising people. You grab a chair, I’ll grab a soapbox, let’s bitch this thing out.

    I recently met with an art director with about eight years experience tugging down a small fortune in salary.

    He took me through his book of nicely laminated ads and while he had some tasty things, well over half of what he was showing was fake ‘joy pop’ ads–– ads whose whole purpose was to snag awards.

    The guy did these ads at big name agencies that actually spend a small fortune in time and salary costs to chase awards for chest thumping purposes. Imagine that, big time professional ad agencies playing make believe in hopes of winning some shiny trophies that prove to the world they are CREATIVE, dagnabbit!

    Outrageous. Pathetic. Shameful.

    Is it this guy’s fault he’s been showered with money for demonstrating his creativity for essentially phony ads? Hell no. He’s just playing the game. He’s a junkie, hooked on the goof of award shows and agencies that’ll drop their drawers to win them. He produces the work, snags some awards and steps up to the cashier’s window and another agency ups his ante.

    But he’s not worth much to me–– certainly not his current high salary.

    The beautiful thing about advertising is it’s a true free market. You’re worth whatever you can get. If someone else thinks this game of fakery is worth big geeters, they’ll pay it. But to me, if there’s any justice out there, this guy is headed to a healthy market adjustment to his salary. His stock will be downgraded until he can prove he can work with live ammo on real business problems. And when he can suffer through the rigamarole you sometimes encounter.

    But then again, maybe not. Maybe he can just keep climbing the salary curve doing what he’s done.

    I’ve seen it time and time again: creative people who play the game and are rewarded. People who have work whose sole purpose is to get the next job. Ads not for clients but for creatives.

    And so it goes. Ours is one of the few professions where such a thing could exist. Lawyers don’t do this. Engineers don’t. Other professions wouldn’t dream of rewarding work that was basically make believe. But we do. Some of us do. Too damn many of us do.

    Let’s be adult and professional and prove our worth on real assignments for paying clients. I’d much rather see rejected ideas for real client projects than phony ads created to cop an award. Be up front about it. This is a subjective business. If it was a real assignment for a real client and you had a terrific idea that the rest of the world ignored or rejected, show it, stand tall and make your case on the interview.

    Don’t succumb to the fake ad game. Students have to do this, professionals shouldn’t.

    With the game being played by alleged serious professionals, is it any wonder we have a hard time getting paying clients to trust us?

    I’ll now dismount the soapbox. I have some real work to do.

  • Monkey Crisis, Monkey Love

    Curse you Darwin–– these monkeys have gone too far!
    Curse you Darwin–– these monkeys have gone too far!

    Recently I came across this alarming image and frankly life has not been the same since.

    It seems to me that monkeys need to get along and be more accepting and open to tender loving, compassionate relationships. If they continue with their drinking, debauchery, sword fighting and gambling on violent conflicts, well, I don’t see much hope for us capturing monkeys and displaying them in cages at zoos so we can observe them and oooh and aaah when they do humanlike things like throwing dung or eating their own sick. Anyway, that’s my two cents. How about it monkeys–– how about a little more love for one another, for cry eye?

  • Sports Hurts

    Only belligerant tattooed man ass could ruin these seats.
    Only belligerent tattooed man ass could ruin these seats.

    They were the best seats I’d ever had at a baseball game. Eight rows back, between home plate and third base.

    Seats so close when the players scratched I felt it. Ahhh, that’s the spot.

    Seats so close one could almost feel the showers of spit.

    The kind of seats where you can park your lazy ass and eager servants stand at the ready to take your order and fetch whatever food or drink your highness desires.

    Seats like what the swells sit in, from cradle to coffin to seated at God’s right hand.

    Oh, baby, these were prime seats. But here’s the thing about any seat: it’s a confined hunk of real estate. You have no control over who occupies the surrounding seats. And that’s where this story gets interesting.

    Directly in front of me was a twenty-something dude with more artwork on his arms than the Sistine Chapel. He was sporting loose jeans and a thick chain from a belt loop to his wallet, as if it were a Doberman that needed to be choked back. He had short red hair and a classic rock T. He was enjoying the game with his woman, who appeared to be eight months pregnant hunkering down on delivery at any moment. She was not drinking alcohol so the man was drinking for three: he, she and baby2B.

    The Atlanta Braves were getting beat up by the lowly Seattle Mariners. Gregor Blanco was playing outfield and a fly ball was smacked his way. Gregor ran full tilt for a moment, then downshifted to a trot and fielded the ball neatly on a short hop, throwing it to the cut off man as a runner scored from second. The dude in front of me stood and angrily began shouting at Blanco.

    “Come on, man, what the hell was that?! Hustle, you lazy overpaid son of a bitch! HUSTLE!”

    His woman stood by her angry man as he berated the fielder returning to his position. Suddenly my prime seat was worthless–– I had a view of the angry man and his woman’s asses and little else. The man had his hands balled into tight fists as if he might just go down onto the field and administer a healthy beating to Blanco. The tats on his forearms seem to gain color intensity as he ranted. And rant on he did.

    “Jesus, you’re making millions–– hustle, man–– run! You should have had that! What the hell are you doing?! Shit, I could have caught that. Come on, man! You suck, Blanco!”

    I got the feeling the madman fan actually thought Blanco could hear him in the outfield and was shamed enough to come apologize to him. Nope.

    Meanwhile, the game continued with a man on base on a field I couldn’t see for the blue jeans ahead, butts at eye level. The guy was obviously tanked and angry but I finally had to ask him to sit down. He did so begrudgingly. The Mariners scored some more and eventually he and his woman vanished into the night, like a beer burp that just escapes unexpectedly.

    At least those Indians had them some sweet style.
    At least those Indians had them some sweet style.

    Those minutes where he stood before me and raged were testament to why I don’t follow sports as closely as I used to. Long ago I allowed myself to believe I could control the outcome of events I had no control over. I’d deliver newspapers listening to the Cleveland Indians of the early 70’s attempting to play baseball. I’d hope and wish they would not find new ways to blow games and disappoint me and their fans. Alas, no dice. Those Indians were God-awful and could manage to blow any lead, crush any spirit.

    Still, I believed I could sway some power over their lack of athletic ability. I only set myself up for disappointment and the rage would manifest itself with my right arm hurling the transistor radio down the street, breaking it into pieces.

    It was costly to follow the Indians. I began to wean myself off sports. I had to. Seeing the tatted man reaffirmed I’d made the right decision.

    (But I still sneak peaks at the box scores of the Indians.)

  • On Vanishing Turds

    We can all hide behind technology, right?
    We can all hide behind technology, right?

    The following appeared in Creativity Atlanta’s e-newsletter premier edition. The request was for a ‘rant’ on the subject of my choice to the ad community at large. I turned the faucet on, and here we are.

    I am what ad-historians refer to as an ‘old fart.’ I can be carbon dated to the days when copywriters hunched over Selectric typewriters and art directors wielded Exacto knives like surgeons, cutting and pasting type until it kerned like a mother. The creation of an ad was a painstaking process that took time and craft–lots of both. If it was a turd of an ad, you had to live with the stink of it a long while before you flushed it into the world to be ignored. There was only so much varnish you could put on said turd.

    Things are much different today. Now computer technology enables the creation and flushing of turds to be almost instantaneous, and the opportunities for varnishing turds are virtually limitless. Science marches on!

    Great ads have always been rare, but today technology allows us to raise the level of mediocrity to such an art that we can actually create the illusion of an idea when there isn’t one. Put simply, we can create ads that have more varnish than turd! (For those of you just joining, this is not the Harvard commencement address or the welcoming speech for a Mensa meeting.)

    Way back when, you began with an idea, and you did your level best to get a client to buy your idea so that you could work like crazy to bring your vision to life. Today, all too often, creative people begin with a great stock photo or trendy type treatment or borrowed award-show-winning-but-altered-just-enough-so-as-not-to-scream-complete-rip-off layout.

    Today it’s easy to sell a beautiful stock shot or technique because the technology exists to do so. You can disguise the lack of a concept or strong selling idea with your pretty picture. The client buys the ‘shiny object’ you dangle before him or her. You get approval and off you go, trying to lay on some digital varnish in hopes that somewhere along the line the concept will get stronger, or maybe even come to life.

    It doesn’t, but the varnish does seal-in the stink.

    Back in the dark ages, I worked at the Richard Group and every art director was taught to draw (yes draw–with hands and everything!) layouts in a very precise rough style. They were taught to pencil-in headlines in a style that gave no indication of font or type trickery. Copy was indicated with horizontal lines. These were truly rough layouts that looked nice. The beauty of this system was simple: it forced creative people and clients to focus on the concept, not the elements of the ad. Turds rarely got through this system.

    Has technology made our lives easier? No doubt. I don’t miss my Selectric, I don’t know of any art directors yearning to knife type again. But technology can be a seductress to hiding the fact that maybe what we have isn’t so much a great idea, but a well-varnished turd.

    Maybe it’s time we all got a little old school; in concepting at least. Turn off the computer, put down the C.A. Annual, get prehistoric with pencil and paper and see if you can make an idea materialize before technology brings it beautifully to life.

    That’s it, a not-so-vicious rant with some friendly advice. Now I’ve got to get to work on that Harvard commencement address. You never know when you’ll be asked to give one of those suckers.