Russell Davies

you're such a child

This is, basically, the conversation Anne and I had before I quit work and started OIA. It's the end of the wonderful Hucksters.

i love you, you bastard

Here's another fantastic ad movie. An historical perspective on work/life balance. I hope that this illustrates how far we've all come, even the advertising business is better than this now. Surely. Though I do regret though that I've never said 'I love you, you bastard' at any point while leaving a meeting. I must try and do that.

archibald is the man

Cary Grant's character in North By Northwest is who made me want to get into advertising. (Plus a bit of Darren Stevens). The whole movie is perfect, but this little clip is consumate Madison Avenue. Who hasn't indulged in expedient exaggeration from time to time?

careful with that axe maurice

These extracts from I'll Never Forget What's 'is Name are brilliant. Though it does add up to quite a long file. The opening is a scenario you will start to imagine at some point in your life (if you've not already). Orson Welles is the best Top Management Guy ever (especially the golf off the roof stuff) and the final fake ad is the best radical-artistic-statement-turns-out-to-be-commercial-genius sequence you'll ever see. And it's by Michael Winner, who'd have thought it?

running it up the flagpole

This is a little scene from 12 Angry Men. One of the jurors is an ad guy, and boy does he let everyone know. He's like a one man urban spam operation. In some ways he's the personification of interruptive marketing. Pleased with himself, oblivious to others yet simultaneously desperate to entertain and mad for approval. And, I wonder, is this the origin of 'run it up the flagpole and see who salutes it'? Was it invented for the movie? (an exaggeration of a pre-existing phrase) Or was it already popular currency in Madison Avenue?

hucksterism

Every meeting I've ever had as a client I've felt tempted to start it like this one. It's a temptation I resist, because it's horrible, but it certainly would be memorable.

(And I always want to end each meeting with a rousing 'go back to your constituencies and prepare for government' but whenever I do everyone in the meeting is either too young or too American so they just look at me blankly.)

Anyway, this is the quintessential ad meeting moment. It's got everything.

1. The account manager type trying to make sure 'the talent' doesn't say anything that might annoy the client.

2. Splendid assortment of junior toady clients (all required to shout CHECK! to affirm their agreement with the big senior client)

3. The best meeting opening moment ever. (I won't spoil it for you)

4. The worst and most pointless visual demonstration ever ('anything else is all wet')

5. The most accurate, chilling and pointed exposition of the worst and most prevalent advertising thinking I've ever come across. (All products are identical. Consumers are there to be duped. Advertising works through mindless, irritating repetition. It would be funny except this seemingly facile view represents how so many practitioners actually behave)

6. The first instance captured on film of 'the Theatre Of Insight' - when the ad hero (clearly a planner) uses overly flowery language to point out that the ads the client so clearly loves (and which seem to be extremely effective) are all wrong. And he gets away with it.

A fantastic movie. And at the risk of inventing youtubevertising, here's where you can buy it. (Including my affiliate number, hurrah)