Busking and big business

In the eighties and nineties I lived in London and throughout that time, London Underground put buskers on a par with the small, grey, dusty mice running between the rails. That is, vermin ripe for extermination. Okay, maybe not extermination, but certainly eviction. Signs and notices festooned every station, threatening fines, arrests and stern words for anyone who tuned up within earshot of passengers.

I wasn’t a busker (I can’t carry a tune in a wheelbarrow) but I knew people who were and, while they bemoaned the unfairness of London Underground’s antipathy towards them, they also rather relished their maverick status and the cat-and-mouse game they were forced to play with officialdom. If they’re still busking today, they are operating in a very different environment. The Man sooner or later comes to realise that outlawing an activity is never as effective as subsuming it – and so it is with busking.

Latex factor

On the face of it, baked beans and condoms have little in common. Which is handy, because a mix-up plays havoc with your bedsheets, believe me. However, a couple of weeks ago, I expressed my enthusiasm for the Heinz ‘Jack and the Magic Beans TV work, thoroughly expecting to wait years for another ad so alive with creative ideas.

Happily, I was wrong.

Back in November 2010, Euro RSCG London won the Durex business and this week their first campaign broke. It’s been worth the wait. The television execution is soundtracked by the mighty Marvin Gaye’s ‘Let’s Get It On’ – a choice so trite, it seems impossible it could be deployed in condom marketing without the entire world rolling their eyes, rather than rolling in the hay. But creative team, Fabio Abram, Braulio Kuwubara, Mick Mahoney and Brendon Wilkins are smart enough to take a cliché and make it a virtue.

The problem with BFGW

This week Channel 4 has attracted considerable attention. Its high-profile, much discussed ‘documentary’ strand Big Fat Gypsy Weddings has returned to a big fat viewing audience and water-cooler debate over the style merits of pineapple themed dresses. But the marketing campaign for the series has also brought the channel to the notice of the Advertising Standards Authority, which has received just under a hundred complaints.

The accusation is one of causing offence by way of racism. A national poster blitz has featured images of the travellers who appear in the show, strapped with the line: ‘Bigger. Fatter. Gypsier’ Some of the complaints have been offered by the London Gypsy & Traveller Unit and London assembly members Jennette Arnold and John Biggs.

Where is the love?

Valentine’s Day and again I am forced to spend the morning clearing the avalanche of envelopes from my hallway. I had no idea HMRC were so sentimental. However, it does set me pondering the role of romance in advertising.

For decades brand marketeers have worked hard to draw a direct link between a product and the possibility of success with the opposite sex (they’ve rarely been brave enough to suggest a connection with same sex relationships outside specialist publications, despite the acknowledged value of the ‘pink’ pound). It’s a proven strategy and certain goods have decided they must be inextricably linked with romantic relationships and are constantly searching for new ways to push that message.

Ten reasons to avoid telly ads

1. Enjoyable songs re-sung by ethereal ladies with breathy voices

Please don’t rush to point out that I’ve pitched this before. I have, but nothing has changed. I wish it was possible to pinpoint exactly when this began, but who knows? It’s just one of those trends long past its sell-by date, staggering on because we’re too lazy to change. From ‘I Just Can’t Get Enough’ to ‘Close To Me’, it seems every TV clip for every brand must be accompanied by a husky waif warbling through a track I used to like. A shiny new cat for the first agency to pack this in.

2. Clients fronting their own campaigns

Like so many bad ad ideas, this originated in the USA. Watch a few minutes of TV in the States and you’re bound to come across a bloke called Crazy Larry or something similar. He’ll be outside his bed shop or car dealership banging on about his insanely low prices which must soar in a few short days (don’t worry, they won’t). While it may have some amusement value when holidaying, it’s just toe-curling back at home. In my locality we have a chap called Andrew who has a conservatory outlet and an inability to speak clearly, you probably have the equivalent. It is our duty to our clients and their grandchildren, to hold them back from this excruciating folly at all costs.

3. Baby product ads directed at the baby

Hey, I’m no wet nurse (that would be bizarre and perverse) but I do know the howling poo machines we know as young infants don’t watch TV ads. In fact, they have no idea what the TV is. In more fact, they don’t really know what their own hand is. Because they’re babies, you see. Quite why nappy brands and others insist on briefing the copywriter to do the whole script as if they are addressing the baby, I do not know. I suspect they think it’s cute. It’s not.

UB troubled

On 4th October 2011, the family and friends of UB40 gathered at the Hare & Hounds public house in King’s Heath. The Performing Rights Society was presenting them with an award at the site of their first gig in 1978. The musicians played a short set and a party followed. After 70 million records sold and 50 chart hits, it should have been a sweet moment for the act. Instead it was the slightest glimmer of light in a period of disarray, betrayal and recrimination which had brought them to near destruction and actual bankruptcy.

Where have you bean?

I felt sure if we waited long enough, someone would grasp the nettle and prove that the art of copywriting isn’t dead, just having a lie down. The fact that this little miracle has been achieved by one of the nation’s best known (and best loved) brands, is just the icing on the cake. Or at least the sauce on the beans.

Every copywriter of a certain age recalls one of advertising’s most successful straplines in an instant. ‘Beanz Meanz Heinz’ accompanyied the familiar blue tin for years – and served the little orange morsels very well. Times change, every strap has its day and eventually ‘Beanz Meanz …’ was retired. What came after it was mostly average, mostly forgettable. You see, that’s the trouble with a classic line – with what do you follow it?

Cash from chaos

The connection between punk’s pop cultural movement and the political ideology of ‘anarchy’ stems from the 1976 debut single from Sex Pistols: ‘Anarchy In The UK’. The Pistols weren’t actually a political or anarchist band, more of an art statement, and their reference to ‘anarchy’ was a statement of provocation and disgust rather than a manifesto. They did, after all, sign to three major record labels and fought tooth and nail for the money they earned.

However, their battle cry was taken as literal inspiration by many punk disciples, who adopted anarchy as a philosophy and lifestyle. Crass, the Essex band and communal collective, were the prime movers in this politicised brand of punk rock – with long-established counter culture pamphleteer Penny Rimbaud as their guru. Adhering to a determinedly alternative lifestyle and agenda, their music was raw and basic, but their presentation bold and intelligent.

Take your pick

Social media is currently the marketing Holy Grail. Formerly sceptical clients are now convinced that, properly leveraged, facebook and twitter will open up a treasure trove of commerce.

Against this backdrop, Dutch airline KLM is offering its passengers the chance to select the person they sit next to on a flight, based on their social media profile. Leaving aside the horror every good Englishman feels when faced with the prospect of making small talk with strangers, isn’t this all a bit unnecessary? Can we not be relied upon to simply ‘play nicely’ with our fellow travellers, without vetting them over the net? Don’t people just sleep and read on a flight anyway?
Clearly, this gimmick (and it is a gimmick – if KLM still offer this in a year’s time I’ll eat one of my many hats) is born of the most overrated concept of our time: choice.

We're all writers now ...

There are many signs that something is going wrong. The scarcity of invitations to join the staff of a particular agency; the lack of requests to pencil out dates in your diary and the distant memory of those top-dollar, overnight emergency briefs.

Only fool wouldn’t come to the conclusion that the industry’s finances are sinking faster than Simon Le Bon’s yacht. Still, any seasoned freelance copywriter has seen all this before. Recession follows boom as surely as a belch follows a can of cola and things will surely come right. And they will.

But in the meantime, what’s happening with the clients, the agencies and firms once so ready with their copywriting budget? To some extent, they are simply producing fewer campaigns or even going out of business. But those who aren’t are making a very risky decision. They’re writing their own copy.