Ads that do no more than pay the Bill

It's been a little while since my last post, but I have renowned chef and restauranteur Bill Granger to thank for giving me just the jab in the kidneys that I needed to get back me into the blog seat.

On this particular occasion, Bill was not plugging his latest book but rather his love for Poliform kitchens – and I'm not surprised given that Bill's one of the few people that could probably afford one. But what grated about the ad that I saw (one of a series of ads including the one shown above) was the complete lack of imagination when it came to the copy.

My Poliform kitchen combines the best ingredients – elegance, functionality and quality and it's not as expensive as you think.

I'm all too well aware that clients often set incredibly tight deadlines, but surely the agency in this case had the time or creativity to do more than simply copy–and–paste the brief into the ad? But then if you don't know what you're doing, even the best ingredients can leave a bad taste.

On the record

I was rummaging through my record collection at the weekend, and it inevitably got me thinking about album artwork.

For me, part of the romance of records is simply a question of size – 12 square inches have always trumped the compactness of the compact disc. And from Factory Records and the work of Peter Saville to the team at Stylorouge at the height of Britpop, I've forever been fascinated with this pivotal point at which music meets design.

In the 60s, Warhol led the way with his multimedia aesthetic and the help of the band he was managing at the time, The Velvet Underground. And by the time 1969 rolled around, it made perfect sense to Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones to ask Warhol to design their next album sleeve.

And so he did. In fact, here's the letter he wrote Warhol to brief him on the project.

Do whatever you want.

Please write back saying how much money you would like.

Take little notice of the nervous requests to "Hurry up".

Not exactly your typical brief, but then Jagger wasn't looking for your typical response.

And here's the result, complete with working zipper for that added touch of sexual tension (not that you can quite tell from the visual, sorry).

If it's true that you do your best work for your best clients (have a read of this post for more on that matter), then I'd certainly say everyone could do with a Jagger or two at some point in their career.

This is your airplane speaking

I've written in the past about infographics – first here, then here. Because I firmly believe that data doesn't have to be dull. Or, to put a more positive light on it, information is beautiful.

And I have a work colleague to thank for pointing me in the direction of this blog and its brilliant infographic as the livery for a South African airline called Kulula.

As you can see, Kulula have always been the creative types when it comes to painting their planes over the years.

But this latest design is truly outstanding. Quite literally.

That's it. The airplane says it all really.

Nature or nurture? (*conditions apply)

One of the eternal struggles in our society is the tug of war between nature and nurture. It's the fundamental question of human behaviour, and the extent to which we are the product of our innate qualities from birth or our personal experiences as we develop.

It's a hotly debated topic – and one that is yet to be conclusively argued one way or the other – but there can be no doubt that our behaviour is shaped over time by the world around us.

You only need to take a quick flick through Jane Fulton Suri's book Thoughtless Acts to see all those intuitive ways we adapt, exploit, and react to things in our environment; things we do without really thinking – the result of her work as a partner at groundbreaking design and innovation firm, IDEO.

And so it is that we act instinctively (nature) or we are conditioned over time (nurture) to respond to our environment in intuitive ways.

One of the ways in which we have been more aggressively conditioned is the concept of fine print, a perennial bane of the modern world that allows businesses to make grand offers in ways that attract you, while at the same time limiting these offers in ways that suit them. We're used to having to read the fine print wherever we see the ubiquitous *conditions apply, and to ignore them is often perilous to say the least.

But last week, the tables were turned when Grill'd, the burger chain, seemingly forgot to include the fine print on this ad promoting 2-for-1 burgers for university students.

As it turns out, what they had intended to include was a disclaimer that limited the offer to the readership of the Uni Times publication in which it appeared. However, it wasn't long before consumers took advantage of the great deal on offer and starting making their way to their local Grill'd.

And that's when the real problems started.

Grill'd realised their error and naively tried to pass it off as a simple oversight. They wrote on their blog that they hoped all of our customers can appreciate the good faith in which the offer was released. But as you can read for yourself in the comments that follow, their customers held them fully accountable.

As it turned out, Nando's then dived in to exploit their competitor's error of judgment by offering to accept the vouchers at their own restaurants.

And only then did Grill'd apologise (finally! – with a message from the founder on their homepage), and agree to accept the 2-for-1 vouchers.

Ultimately, Grill'd failed in their bid to have customers overlook their error. Not simply because they refused to take responsibility and apologise, but more so as a result of the years of conditioning by corporations that have nurtured us to read the fine print.

*Because when any society is exposed to such a sustained effort to nurture our response in a particular way, it isn't too long before it switches from nurture to become second nature.

It's never as easy as Abc

Last week, I was watching a documentary about the history of music. Inevitably, Nirvana were featured at one point in the story, much of it rehashed reports on the lead-up to Kurt Cobain's tragic death.

But one thing I had never heard before – that was mentioned only incidentally – was the fact that the band always jammed for the first half-hour of any rehearsal, only then setting their minds to specific songs or half-written tunes.

Likewise, designers will take weeks to work their way through dozens of concepts and half-baked ideas before settling on the one that cracks the brief.

And how many times do you hear of artists painting over their work, only for these hidden canvases to be discovered years later and revealed as forgotten masterpieces?

I realise that none of this sounds like a big deal. But believe me, it is.

Because when the amateur writer starts to write, they often expect great things from the moment the pen hits the page. And I mean, great things.

As writers, we can tend to put undue pressure on ourselves to create epic stories worthy of equally epic praise with every stroke of the pen or tap on the keyboard. However, if you take even the most fleeting glance at any other creative pursuit, there is always the basic belief that success does not come straightaway.

What's more, the pressure is doubled by the fact that everyone can read and write. From an early age, we're taught how to recognise and create the letterforms required to communicate through the written word. That said – and as you'll have read in this previous post – we don't spend nearly as much time promoting the creative arts as we do our technical skills.

And so it is that the examples I gave at the start of this post show the way for any aspiring amateur writer.

Firstly, a musician might jam or improvise. So why shouldn't we do the same as writers?

Then there's the act of rehearsing. Things don't always flow straight onto the page, and it takes time and practice to get the words to read and feel right.

And finally, writing is first and foremost about writing. And writing. And writing. Which is different to re-writing. And nothing at all like editing. Three different activities with three different mindsets that ought to be kept entirely separate.

Ultimately, the distinction between the technique and the art of writing is an important one.

We can all do the one, but we should never take the other for granted.

Unlock your creativity (but please don't use a key)

In life, creativity is essential.

I realise that's a pretty broad statement, but so often it gets forgotten in the midst of all the other demands on our attention and time from one day to the next.

And that's even more true when it comes to thinking even more broadly in terms of one generation to the next.

Which is why I think it's so important that everyone – and I mean everyone – should listen to what Ken Robinson has to say here about the role of creativity in the education of our children. In his view, schools kill creativity: we systematically erase it from the future generation's skill set in the interests of preparing them for a world that has long since passed. We have evolved, but our education system has not.

This became painfully clear to me when I came across this ad for MGSM (Macquarie Graduate School of Management) in the paper earlier this week.

Now I should say that you have to be careful what you say these days given the universal access that the Internet provides – as Hill & Knowlton found out to their dismay this week when their GM criticised Telstra-owned Sensis on Twitter without considering what their client Telstra might have to say on the matter.

As it happens, I've actually completed strategy-related work for MGSM in the past, and I truly believe they are a great business with an outstanding product.

Which only makes this ad all the more underwhelming. Is this really the best that one of the top MBA schools has to offer?

An image of a key.

In the shape of the letter M. You know, as in MGSM.

With a headline that says Unlock your potential.

And don't even get me started on its design aesthetics – or lack thereof.

Call me demanding, but that's as bad an example of a cliché as you'll find. And when you're a prospective applicant, considering which graduate school to give your top dollar (thousands, not hundreds!), it's perfectly reasonable to set the highest standards. Afterall, they expect nothing less from you.

MGSM is not your average graduate school. But you wouldn't know that from reading this ad. Even for MGSM, it seems that creativity and education are not the most comfortable bedfellows.

But as luck would have it, just as soon as I had finished reading the paper, I picked up a magazine and found this ad for the Australian Institute of Architects.

Now there's an organisation – with a comparable (although not identical) role in terms of its educational remit – that doesn't just have a clear point of view on its purpose in this world, but also the ability to communicate it in a creative and compelling way.

And here's another one for good measure.

This is an organisation that is inspired and unparalleled not only in what it does, but also in how it does it – and that has to be one of the most exciting type treatments you'll ever see. Scroll back up to the MGSM example and the difference in impact is astonishing. Judging from this advertising, who on earth would want to have an MBA when you could be an architect?

And it's not enough simply to say that architecture is naturally more creative than commerce. Creativity is as much nurture as it is nature.

Here's an example from Dixons, an online electrical retailer in the UK, that demonstrates exactly that point. They may well be at the bottom of the pile, but that doesn't stop them coming up with one of the most imaginative taglines you'll ever read.

Dixons.co.uk. The last place you want to go.

In a world where the competition is as daunting as John Lewis and Selfridges, any brand that chooses their words so well is most certainly a brand that I want to talk to.

And here's another one.

All that's left to say is that creativity is king. And if you believe Ken Robinson, whom I mentioned right at the start, we need to start investing in the creativity of the next generation, now. Or they might just end up in MGSM's marketing department.

The post and the poem

This week, a friend of mine tipped me off about a conversation happening here about whether technology is killing the way we communicate.

I posted a comment, and it started me thinking about how everything is now about tweets and updates and txts – basically anything short and sweet that is easy to absorb and doesn't make you think too hard. And while I can appreciate that, I would also like to think that there's still a place in the world for writing that is longer and a little more challenging and creative.

With that in mind, here's something you don't see much these days. A poem.

This one 's by Ted Hughes.

Written in 1957, it's called The Thought-Fox, and it deals with the idea of creativity and the writing process itself. And I hope you enjoy it.

The Thought-Fox

I imagine this midnight moment's forest:

Something else is alive

Beside the clock's loneliness

And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star:

Something more near

Though deeper within darkness

Is entering the loneliness:

Cold, delicately as the dark snow,

A fox's nose touches twig, leaf;

Two eyes serve a movement, that now

And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow

Between trees, and warily a lame

Shadow lags by stump and in hollow

Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye,

A widening deepening greenness,

Brilliantly, concentratedly,

Coming about its own business

Till with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox

It enters the dark hole of the head.

The window is starless still; the clock ticks,

The page is printed.

Why I write

Earlier this week, I read an article in The Australian about how today's teenagers use an average vocabulary of only 800 words each day, preferring instead to use the abbreviated language of text messaging and hip-hop. I've never counted, but from reading the article, it would seem that 800 is not very high – in fact, it appears that "800 words will not get you a job". What's more, "yeah", "no" and "but" all feature in a top 20 that accounts for about one third of the words they use.

All of which I find a little sad. Especially when I think about how much I love words.

Here's a quick 50 from Australian poet Kenneth Slessor:

I looked out my window in the dark

At waves with diamond quills and combs of light

That arched their mackerel-backs and smacked the sand

In the moon's drench, that straight enormous glaze,

And ships far off asleep, and Harbour-buoys

Tossing their fireballs wearily each to each,

And tried to hear your voice, but all I heard

Was a boat's whistle, and the scraping squeal

Of seabirds' voices far away, and bells,

Five bells. Five bells coldly ringing out.

Incredible writing if you ask me, but then Kenneth Slessor was far beyond the reach of teenage angst by the time he penned Five Bells.

Which brings me to another of my favourite writers, George Orwell. I must admit to a touch of hubris in taking the title for this post from an essay he wrote in 1949. That said, there's nothing particularly unique about the title, and it does seem fair given that I'm discussing a similar subject – although maybe not quite with the same degree of finesse.

In his essay, Orwell took the time to outline "four great motives for writing": sheer egoism, aesthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse, and political purpose. By his standards, I'm guilty of sheer egoism simply by continuing to write past the age of 30; I'm not the sentimental type, so posterity in the guise of historical impulse holds little appeal for me; and yes, I am political, if you subscribe to Orwell's broadest definition of the term.

But what most strikes a chord in my heart is aesthetic enthusiasm: what Orwell describes as everything from "words and their right arrangement" to typography and even the width of margins.

For me, there's something wide-eyed and beautiful in an elegant turn of phrase. Each word gently pushed along by a mix of alliteration, juxtaposition, onomatopoeia, repetition, rhetoric, tempo, crescendo, cadence, the list goes on.

Which all goes to explain why I love the work we're doing for Griffin Theatre Company – apologies for the shameless plug!

And I was pretty excited when I found this recent Fiction issue of Vice, with every page dedicated to new writing.

However, words don't always comes all that easily for people. It takes time and effort and discipline, as well as creativity and flair and ideas. And that even goes for some of the most prolific writers, as Stephen Fry explained in what will be his last blog post for a little while.

For me, writing isn't always easy, but it is important. In a previous post, I wrote about how they say a picture is worth a thousand words, but a single word can start ten thousand stories. That said, not too many of them start Yeah no but.

Death on a whiteboard

If you want to get something done, I've learned you don't write it on a whiteboard.

Over the years, I've had a number of clients with whiteboards mounted on the walls of their offices. Without exception, not much changed from one week to the next. Any scribbles were usually just that – scribbles. One client had even gone to the trouble of marking out a section for his kids to doodle, and I was always intrigued by the idea of holding serious business discussions as Laura woz 'ere would catch my eye across the room.

When it comes to workshops, whiteboards take centre stage. However, it usually doesn't take too long before they start to interrupt rather than illuminate the discussion. There's rarely any pens to hand that work for more than four words, after a couple of lines you start to realise that you're writing on a ridiculous slant that makes everything trail off into the bottom right hand corner, and it's only once you've riddled the board with a sheen of half-baked ideas that you discover you've been writing in permanent ink.

Technology doesn't make things any easier. If you have a whiteboard from which you can make prints, one of three things usually happens: there's no paper, you write on the one screen that doesn't print, or you fail to use the only colour that reproduces with any degree of legibility. And if you're lucky enough to have one of those whiteboards that saves everything to a central hard drive, you can be certain that it will be saved to the hard drive never to be seen again.

Unfortunately – and in spite of my better judgement and past experiences – I recently learned this the hard way.

Our studio is now the proud owner of a brand new, shimmering whiteboard. A breeding ground for cartoons and caricatures, it produces little in the way of insight or efficiency. To make matters worse, it has been hung (professionally, I might add) at the perfect height for anyone below 5 feet tall. Now and then, I stare longingly at the whiteboard, in the desperate hope that it will spring into life, but I'm also slightly worried that it will instead crash to the floor, pinning any nearby designers to the ground.

But then, it could always be worse. We could be having one of those brainstorms where there's no such thing as a bad idea – like buying a whiteboard.