MacDonald Manufacturing Concern

This is the life of an Advertising Professional, Part III

After wasting half the day looking for swipe of splattered blood, you finally take matters into your own hands. (Note: photo depicts real art director. Fake blood.)

In My Merry Oldsmobile

THE BRIEF: It's 1932. You're a hapless creative working on the Oldsmobile account in the middle of the Great Depression. (Granted, people aren't exactly calling it the "Great Depression" quite yet, but things are "depressing." All those Hoovervilles on Sheep's Meadow really mar the view from your Central Park West apartment.)

Brothers can't spare a dime, so how the hell do you convince them to buy a car? Let alone an Oldsmobile--a vehicle so dull they admitted defeat when they named the damn thing.

THE SOLUTION: A cartoon! A really, really creepy one with a four minute jingle! See you at Cannes, suckaz!

Back in the Day

Everyone knows it was better back in the day. You could drop ten tabs of acid, stagger into work, write something incredibly stupid, cash your ridiculous paycheck, then head back to your $200.00 Soho loft where college dropouts would drizzle you with milk and honey.

At least that's what this old guy in the studio told me it was like.

Zinger!

Agency.com puts their Subway pitch video on YouTube to make it all "viral." Here's the score.

+ 1 point for transparency
+ 1 point for guts
+ 5 points for slinging sandwiches for the day

- 10 million points for comparing their salaries to the Subway delivery guy
- 20 trillion points for leaving that shit in the final edit

New Sony Ad is Blowin' Up

Part of me thinks it's lame to release behind-the-scenes footage from a commercial shoot. But another part of me likes it when things blow up real good. And since it's being directed by Jonathan Glazer, the final product could still be  surprising even though we know the central concept.

For example, we have no idea what hushed, lo-fi acoustic track will accompany these ultra slow-motion explosions.

This is the Life of an Advertising Professional, Part III

You spend an inordinate amount of time in the back of cabs coming home from other people's goodbye parties.

Scarlett hearts. I hate.

Let me get this straight. Scarlett "hearts" Rbk?

Could there be a more pointless celebrity endorser than Scarlett Johansson suddenly signing with (or as they put it "heart-ing") Reebok? If you're going to spend millions on a celeb, why not pick one with at least a tangential relationship with the brand? I saw 'Match Point.' The closest she got to physical activity was being on the receiving end of an oily rub-down from Jonathan Rhys-Meyers.

One hopes this isn't the beginning of a trend. You know, Star hearts McD's, Britney hearts KFC, Courtney hearts Rehab, Tom hearts OTL8CoSInc. (Operating Thetan Level 8, Church of Scientology Inc.)

And c'mon Reebok, what's with the Rbk? Try pronouncing it. It's the sound a fourteen year old makes after downing their first bottle of Strawberry Boone's.

The Life of an Advertising Professional, Part II

Your first morning meeting is the rebrief of the rebrief.

Free Idea of the Day: Jake Leg

In our ongoing effort to serve the advertising community, we will occasionally post free ideas that are yours for the taking. This is Idea 1: Jake Leg.

Ever wanted to write a spot that makes fun of physical deformities, but held back because of your lingering liberal guilt? Worry no more. You can mock Jake Leg all you want because nobody gets it anymore.

Let us turn to the all-knowing Wikipedia:

Jamaican Ginger Extract (known in the United States by the slang name Jake) was an early 20th century patent medicine that provided a convenient way to bypass Prohibition laws, since it contained as much as 85% ethyl alcohol.

However it contained tri-o-tolyl phosphate, which is, in fact, a potent killer of certain cells in the nervous system in human beings, especially in the spinal cord. Large numbers of jake users began to lose the use of their feet and sometimes their hands. Lucky users recovered full or partial use, but for most, the loss was permanent. Some victims could walk, but the muscles controlling their feet did not work, and so they walked by throwing their legs high in the air and flopping their feet onto the ground. This very peculiar gait became known as the jake walk and those afflicted were known to have jake leg.

There you have it: Jake Leg. I look forward to seeing it in your next Hallmark commercial.

This is the life of an Advertising Professional.

You spend an inordinate amount of time staring at the back of someone's head.

Head On

If you haven't seen this dystopian example of television advertising, watch it now.

Seth Stevenson over at Slate basically nails the issue—head on, yo!—in his latest Ad Report Card. Note this terrifying question.

It really is sad when you think about the hard work that gets done inside advertising agencies. All the writing and rewriting, the late-night brainstorming, the mining of creativity from the deepest recesses of one's cortex. And then there's the casting, the directing, the high-budget locations. The question we must now ask is: Why bother with any of this? The HeadOn ad is more effective at reaching its goals than 99 percent of the ads on television. And it succeeds on the strength of a few, bare-bones tactics that most advertisers carefully shun:

People who work as advertising creatives often struggle with the question of whether or not their career is ultimately meaningless. This won't help that internal debate much. But hey, if it gives you a headache, I know exactly how to fix it.

Read the rest of the article here.

Logos 2.0

Famous logos redone in Web 2.0 style. In the future, will we cringe every time we see a soft, rounded gradiant? Just like we cringe when we look back at all the Cosby sweaters we wore back in grade school?

The Latest from our Manufacturing Concern.

This is one of the reasons why I haven't posted in over a year (besides that unfortunate six months in Riker's). I've been busy makin' the ads.

Title: Tested
Client: L.L.Bean
Director: Chris Milk
Music: Bibio "Bewley in Grey"

The Knights of Awesome

An artful blend of sci-fi, spaghetti westerns, kung-fu, and face-licking.

Strike Broken - Site Resuming Operations

Our long, national nightmare is over. Thanks to the crack strikebreakers at the Pinkerton Detective Agency, we will soon be resuming regular posting. But first we'll clean house a little.

See you next week.

Matt

Workers on Strike: Site on Hiatus.

The little elves that keep this operation running have gone on strike. Therefore, MacDonald Mfg. is going on hiatus until January 3rd, when our kneecap-bustin' Union Breakers arrive on-loan from GM.

As I always do during our annual holiday work stoppage, I will be enjoying this time by not thinking about advertising. I urge you to do the same.

Merry, you know, whatever.

The Agency That Drinks Together, Uh, Still Goes Out of Business.

Today's email edition from the NY Times' Stuart Elliot contained an interesting aside about former employees of shuttered agencies getting together for reunions. I post this only because I myself am a onetime Bates person who keeps skipping these gatherings. Not that I don't want to see my former colleagues, or anything. I just prefer to do my drinking on the street, cardboard placard in hand.

Dear Readers: In this space last week, I answered a question from a reader who was seeking information about alumni organizations for two agencies for which he worked in the 1960's and 1970's, BBDO and Ted Bates. While BBDO provided information about its alumni newsletter, The Pink Sheet, I asked for information about Bates, most recently called Bates Worldwide, because it is no longer in business.

Here is what I learned in e-mail messages from several of you. One former employee of 141 Worldwide, a division of Bates Worldwide, says "there are ad hoc get-togethers at the 'Bates Bar,' which as recently as last month was still functioning at 498 Seventh Ave. in Midtown Manhattan," the former headquarters building of Bates Worldwide."

"I went to one in October," the reader writes, "and many former Bates and 141 people were in attendance."

Another reader writes about a "semi-regular convening of the 'Bates Irregulars,'" which took place last week at the Midtown restaurant Orso, "one of our more upscale haunts when Bates was at 1515 Broadway."

The group, which included employees from departments like account management, creative, media planning, human resources and strategic planning and research, "started to flesh out an action plan for a reunion," the reader writes, which is being planned for May 2005; the group is hoping to put up a Web site for alumni before then.

"Reunions, especially among employees of shuttered agencies, are bright spots in what has been a gloomy period for our industry," the reader writes. "They also put to the lie that agency folk are mostly shallow or opportunistic because there are connections spanning decades where the only 'payback' is the satisfaction of staying in touch or renewing contacts with those you respect and like. Plus, they are a blast!"

Readers, I will pass on any information about the reunion plans that I learn in the coming months.

This Just In From Gallup: We Suck.

The annual Gallup survey of honesty and ethics in the professional world is out. The good news? Well, we're not in last place.

Advertising practitioners rated just above car salesman as being highly honest and ethical. Scraping the bottom of the barrel along with us were newspaper reporters, auto mechanics, and nursing home operators.

This seems to me to be a very outdated view of the industry. As far as I can tell, used car guys and greasemonkeys don't have teams of corporate lawyers breathing down their necks every day, hunting down and killing every bit of potentially litigous copy they can find.

But I'm not going to dwell on it. Instead, I'll exact my revenge on consumers by inserting subliminal messages into my ads commanding them to murder their parents. Then maybe we can FINALLY beat those car guys at their own game in time for next year's survey.

MacDonald Mfg. Begs for a Halt on Anthropomorphic Disease Symptoms.

The group behind an anti-syphilis commercial starring an irascible chancre named "Phil the Sore" says it will file a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission after Los Angeles broadcasters balked at airing the government-funded ad.

Remember the good ol' days when company mascots were nothing more than talking animals ("They're Grrrreat!") or cultural stereotypes ("They're Magically Delicious!")? Now agencies have had the bright idea to create company mascots that can kill us.

Perhaps I'm overstating the case a bit. But nothing's more disgusting than seeing Digger the dermatophyte lift a human toenail and happily scrape away like a kitten in a litter box. I'm fascinated that large groups of human beings—all of them most likely boasting successful careers, postgraduate degrees, and six-figure salaries—could gather together in a room, look at that idea and say, "What the hell. Let's blow a few million to run that."

So before we see the introduction of Phillip the Flaccid Penis for Levitra or Karl the Kaposi's Sarcoma for the AIDS cocktail, let's all agree that we made a colossal mistake. Then we can make the world safe again— producing pharma commercials with women riding bicycles next to their golden retrievers.

Two Sponge-Related Headlines in a Row.

This might mark the end of the "Year of F'd-Up Sandwich Ad." Quizno's has dumped the Martin Agency.

The article gives the usual breakup excuses: "we had creative differences", "we were going in different directions", "he stopped listening and didn't give a damn about my needs", "she never got over her affair with the Spongemonkeys."

Godspeed, little Spongemonkeys. We'll miss you and your sandwich-related hijinks.