Idiots


Blurry Cars

The Reverend’s Adventures in Advertising, Episode 2.

The advertising world has many peculiar little niches and enclaves, and one of these is the realm of the Car Commercial. Cars are to advertising agencies as cows are to Hindus – sacred beings that are talked about in hushed tones and showered with rose petals.

I’ve done the music and sound for a number of car ads and I don’t think any one product ever gets as minutely scrutinized and picked over as the automobile. And almost invariably, after the ad agency creative directors have finished conjuring up hyperbolic pitches full of unbelievable superlatives and interminable drivel, the majority of car advertisements end up being nothing more than pretty pictures of the car in question driving around winding country roads. All the client ever cares about is seeing pictures of the car. Car car car. They can’t get enough of their car. No matter how clever the copy, or how novel the conceptualization, all they want to see on that screen is pictures of the car. What’s more, they fool themselves into thinking that everybody else thinks their car is as fascinating as they do too, and in this they are, for the most part, completely wrong.

One particular car ad that came my way was no exception. As usual, it began with a phone call from the ad producer:

Producer: Hi. We’ve got this great spot that we’d love you to look at. It’s got your name written all over it!*

Me: Uh huh. What’s the skinny?

Producer: W-e-e-e-l-l-l, I can’t tell you too much about it over the phone. The concept behind this one is ultra top secret.

Me: Right. Well, I’d like to know something about it before I commit to it…

Producer: OK, I have some storyboards that I can send you, but it’s super confidential.

Me: No problem. Mum’s the word.

Producer: So if I fax them over now, can you make sure you stand next to the machine. Don’t let anybody see them.

Me: O-k-a-a-y.

Producer: Promise that you’ll stand next to the machine and take them off straight away.

Me: I promise.

Producer: Because this is really Top Secret. It’s all very hush-hush. We don’t want news of this idea getting out before we have it ready to go.

Me: Sure. I understand. Super Ultra Spy-Level Top Secret. I’ll read the boards and then eat them.

Producer: I’m sending them right now. Stand by. [Hangs up]

I wait expectantly by the fax machine. The pages of the storyboard slowly peel out. First frame: a car drives down a country road. Second frame: a car drives over a hill. Third frame: a car drives through a tunnel. Fourth frame: a car drives over another hill. Fifth frame: Closeup – a car taking a bend. And so on.

I think of a possible way I could leak this to the media: “You’re never going to believe this – their car can turn corners! And it’s got wheels. Yup, that’s right, FOUR of the danged things. Underneath. Yessiree. I swear on a stack of bibles – I’ve seen the badly-drawn pictures.”

I didn’t do the ad. I think they saw me as a security risk.

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*This line is usually followed by “We don’t have a lot of money for this one…” In this case it wasn’t.

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The Bleedin' Obvious

The Continuing Misfortunes of Simple Graphics Man ~

#32: The Bleedin’ Obvious.

Part of Simple Graphics Man’s job description must surely read ‘Show ability to absolve employer from the stupidity of even the most dimwitted of morons’. How else do we explain this sign – there is actually nothing in the doorway that a normal person could trip over. Unless the point of it is that the sign itself is the tripping hazard, in which case the whole thing is so bafflingly self-referential that we are left to infer some kind of conspiracy by sign manufacturers.

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Thanks to hewhohears for this latest SGM sighting.

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For quite some years I made a very good living by writing music for advertising. That period of my life is pretty much over now for a number of reasons, and since it’s unlikely that I’m going to ever reclaim my glory days helping to sell shampoo and cars, I figured I might as well start a series based on my exploits in what must rank as one of the most pretentious, overpaid, frustrating, lunatic-filled businesses on the planet. It’s not like it will matter much if I offend anyone anymore. So without further ado:

The Reverend’s Adventures in Advertising, Episode 1.

I thought I’d kick off these reminiscences with a story about a campaign for which I was asked to apply my creative genius to the promotion of a lesser-known, but quality brand of Australian cheese.

My usual procedure for accepting a commission ((For that’s what it was in those days – a commission. Jobs were awarded on merit and talent, and advertising agencies actually sought out creative people based on their reputation. That concept, in Australia at least, has become a thing of the past, and is one of the reasons that I’ve moved on.)) was to ask for a copy of the script, and if I thought I could do anything with the idea, I’d take it on. I turned down a lot of work. This particular spot was not something that was in my usual field of interest, but it did have a certain Monty Pythonesque je ne c’est quoi and I figured it could be amusing, so I agreed to give it a go. This was the pitch, as kooky as it seems:

The Chosen Cheese

A farmer is leading his cow off to pasture. We hear bucolic country sounds and pastoral music. Suddenly there is a clap of thunder and the surprised farmer turns to see the clouds parting and the Hand of God reaching down into his barn, from whence it retrieves an enormous block of Brand X Cheese. An angelic choir sings! The farmer watches in awe as we hear a booming voice-over proclaim “Brand X! The Chosen Cheese!” ((I kid you not. I totally swear I’m not making an ounce of this up.)) The angels swell into an uplifting coda.

Kinda cheesy, I’ll agree, but sometimes these nutty ideas, if done with enough aplomb, turn out OK. And besides, the money was pretty good.

Now I need you to understand that this is not just the pitch that went to me, but was also the script that the client (I immediately dubbed him The Big Cheese) had already received and approved (generally, by the time I was called into a job, the ad had been completed except for the sound and music and the final visual effects. This spot was no exception).

A few days later the edited images turned up, and I was relieved to see that they were passable, as far as these things go. After a brief phone discussion with the ad’s Creative ((This has to be one of the most duplicitous job descriptions in existence. In my experience, advertising Creative Directors seldom know their asses from their elbows when it comes to any level of actual creativity. Mostly they are pop-culture sponges who suck ideas out of other, better pieces of work and re-tool them (usually badly) to fit their own agendas.)) Director, Phil, ((For reasons that are obvious, the names of the products and personnel involved in these escapades will remain anonymous. I don’t really care if you infer any of the details, but knowing the litigious tendencies of this business, I don’t aim to get myself sued…)) I set to work whipping up a convincing chorus of angels, shimmering with heavenly harp arpeggios. This sort of work is actually a lot of fun. It’s not like you can be too over the top with a concept like this and !!!B-R-I-I-I-I-I-I-N-N-N-G-G!!!… I’d only been at it for two hours and Phil was already on the phone.

“Um… mate… [everyone in advertising calls everyone else mate]. Mate, looks like we have a tiny bit of a problem”.

“Oh? How so?” I ask, a feeling of dread settling upon me.

“Er, well,” says Phil, “The client is not too happy about the religious connotations of the spot”.

“You what?” I say.

“Yeah, they think it’s a bit Christian“.

Now this is one of those moments in which the universe suddenly ceases to make any sort of sense whatsoever. Personally, I thought the ad might have been straying a little on the Jewish side, with the ‘chosen’ cheese & all, but it’s a joke, right – you’re not meant to think too much about it. But it was the general overall religious aspect that Phil said the Big Cheese was having problems with, as astonishing as that seemed to be at this point in the proceedings.

Now it’s pretty clear to me that when your concept takes on quite this much water, you simply cut your losses, scuttle the ship and head for the lifeboats. But what’s this? Quite unbelievably, Phil was still bailing

“So what we want to do now is try and make it less religious…”

My brain went into a mode which I imagine is very similar to how Robby the Robot feels when he’s given an order to harm a human.

“But it’s GOD!” I say. “It’s GOD’S HAND reaching from HEAVEN. How the crap do we make that less religious?”

“Well, OK… we’re considering the idea of making the hand a little sooty with a bit of digital work, and with the help of some Wagner-style music, turning it into the hand of Thor, the God of Thunder! How do you think that would work?

Well I thought it would be about as successful as putting fishnet stockings on a pig and attempting to pass it off as Dita Von Teese, but I remained stuck for words. Further, it dawned on me that the the whole sink-or-swim for this spot had somehow been deftly passed right down the line to me. If the ad failed, well then, it would be my fault! And this was not to dwell for even a nanosecond on how the whole shebang had managed to get this far without the Big Cheese making at least some little squeak about his unhappiness with the religious tone of the whole affair. It’s not like they were hiding it from him!

Phil then went on to say that there was no intention, not even the merest suggestion, of altering the tag line ‘The Chosen Cheese’. This was most definitely not to be touched. It had been sold through to the client as the catchphrase for the whole campaign. Are you with me here, as I try to comprehend the inscrutable insecty thought processes of the Advertising Hive Mind?

So, in the next few hours, after a short break taken up mostly by uncontrolled alternate fits of sobbing and laughing, I found myself wheeling out the French horn and crash cymbal samples and vainly attempting to conjure Das Rheingold. It didn’t work terribly well. Now God simply looked like an interloper at a bad Salvation Army Band fundraiser. I considered phoning Phil and suggesting they have the hand take out a giant box of crackers and a plate of lamingtons as well. It certainly couldn’t have made things any worse.

After a few days, the digital image amendments had been completed and Phil, and all the other hangers-on that an advertising campaign seems to involve, turned up to take a look at what I’d done with the music.

“Hey, that’s not too bad!” he exclaims. “It says Thor, the God of Thunder for sure! What do you reckon, mate?”

Now I hate it when advertising people ask for your opinion, because you can be sure that the one thing they never really want to hear is your actual opinion.

“Sure,” I say, crossing my fingers behind my back. “Sure, everyone will think it’s Thor, the God of Thunder. You guys have done amazing things with the digital work. Unmistakeably the Thor of the Norse Pantheon. Only an idiot wouldn’t get that!”

All the while I was imagining the cheque for my fee fluttering like a tired homing pigeon into my bank account, and the numbers clocking up like the meter on a Sydney taxi heading off along the Eyre Highway.

They eventually did put the ad to air, much to my complete amazement. Evidently the Big Cheese had forked out so much money he needed to explain to someone where it all went. A few days later my mother, who knew nothing at all of the above debacle – only that I’d written the music on a Brand X Cheese ad – called to say she had seen ‘my’ ad on air.

“It was really good!” she said, in the way that faithful mums show their undiscriminating devotion, “But there’s one thing I don’t understand – why was God’s hand so dirty?”

OK, in what must rank as one of the stupidest things that an Australian has said in public since John Howard announced that global warming was just fiction, Dr Mark Rose, the general manager of the Victorian Aboriginal Education Association, has told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that girls may become infertile (or worse!) if they play the didgeridoo.

The VAEA has called for the Collins-published The Daring Book for Girls to be pulped because it encourages girls to just put their lips to the didge and blow, thus demonstrating ‘an extreme cultural indiscretion’. According to (some) aboriginal beliefs, you see, the didge is strictly Men’s Business.

This great cultural respect for the didgeridoo is apparently new-found – as far as I can see, the didgeridoo hasn’t been any kind of ‘sacred instrument’ for decades. It gets played on pop songs, in film scores, by buskers (aboriginal and white alike) on street corners for money and in performances in pubs to rock arenas. Didjeridoos are sold in just about every tourist shop from here to Innamincka (and they most certainly don’t come with warning labels saying ‘Not to Be Played by Women’). No-one seems to have been overly-concerned about any of these secular appearences of the painted hollow tree branch that makes noises.

I’m all for respecting people’s cultural beliefs, but sometimes the earnestness of some folks to do so has them bending so far over backwards that their head goes straight up their arse.

And political correctness aside, Dr Rose’s declaration that:

We know very clearly that there’s a range of consequences for a female touching a didgeridoo — infertility would be the start of it, ranging to other consequences. I won’t even let my daughter touch one.

… is superstition of the highest magnitude. Who the hell ‘knows very clearly’ that a female touching a didgeridoo would be rendered infertile? There are lots of women didge players all over the world – I bet we could find at least one who’s managed to have a baby. And as for the ‘other consequences’, Dr Rose threateningly leaves dangling – well, like so much irrational belief, the vague open-endedness of that contention smacks of yet another attempt by a religion to replace reason with fear.

What century are we living in again?

In a newsagency at Sydney airport on Sunday:

Cover

What puzzles me is how Newsweek thinks it’s going to get people to pay six bucks for just a cover.

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*An Australian slang term that indicates incredulity: “What do you think this is? Bush Week?”

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Once again, the n00bs in the Australian Government’s technology departments (this time the Australian Communications and Media Authority) demonstrate their complete lack of acumen when it comes to the way the internet functions. This from Ars Technica:

Websites originating in Australia will soon be subject to a rating system that will tell users whether the content is appropriate for children of different ages.

Oh right. And exactly how is that going to work ACMA? What determines a website that ‘originates in Australia’? Tetherd Cow is written by an Australian, in an Australian city, on a computer connected to an Australian ISP. But, like HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of other websites, the physical bits of TCA reside in a storage system in another country.

Please don’t embarrass us in the eyes of the world you stupid oafs. The internet is not, and will never be, confined to geographical borders. Let me ask you a question – if you think this scheme has even the remotest plausibility, why can’t you stop Russian spammers from filling up my Inbox?

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