Magnus Shaw: human writes

Busking and big business

2012-02-29T11:22:00.001Z

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.

In 2003, LU performed a spectacular U-turn, deciding buskers now represented a much-loved tradition of street entertainment in the capital and offered them licences. Of course a certain amount of quality control was needed and musicians seeking a permit were required to audition. Perhaps more pertinently, they then had to pay to perform. This arrangement is still in force today and London has 300 licensed buskers. However, the licence doesn’t guarantee a pitch and a daily round of multiple phone calls is part of daily life for the street musician wanting a prime, busy and warm pitch on the Underground network.

Predictably, when people are making a buck, big corporations come sniffing, and this month CBS Outdoor began offering clients the opportunity to sponsor every busking site on the London Underground for a year. Previously, The Underground has struck similar deals with thelondonpaper and Carling but a new contract is available from July 2012. Offers in the region of half a million pounds are likely to be taken seriously.

For this not insubstantial fee, the successful brand will enjoy exposure at each of the network’s 34 busking pitches at 22 stations. CBS claims:

Brands could build specific music genres or themes into the line-up or even extend the branding above ground and link in to their own experiential activity.

In reality, the executions tend to involve hard-wearing vinyl print work on which the busker stands, backed with some poster displays. That said, moving screens are becoming increasingly prevalent on the Tube, so in future, watching a busker may more akin to seeing U2 at Wembley than tossing a penny in the cap of a scruffy old sailor with a harmonica.

Surveys show the vast majority of commuters welcome the presence of buskers, so a big slice of brand currency is certainly there to be won. Add to this the chance to align a product or service with the capital’s burgeoning music scene and the proposition begins to look pretty attractive.

So, what’s in this for the people at the centre of the campaign – the musician themselves? Sadly, not a great deal. Of course they will still be allowed to collect the coins which accumulate in their hat, box or flight case, but they had that ‘privilege’ anyway. Of the £500k paid to CBS Outdoor and ultimately the London Underground network, the violinist running through the ‘Rites of Spring’, the guitarist giving us his ‘Ticket To Ride’ or the baritone belting out Nessun Dorma for the eighteenth time, will see not a penny.

This is a shame. Although CBS’s promotional literature boasts that busking brought KT Tunstall her success and a member of Tom Jones’ band was hired after his Tube work was noticed, this campaign does nothing to promote the art. Indeed, the whole endeavour has little to do with music and plenty to do with advertising space and cold hard cash. I’m not averse to the cut and thrust of media sales but this isn’t anything like adventurous enough for me. There is a spectacular PR piece to be gained from the deal. How about a prize or recording contract for the best busker of the year (voting on phones or online)? Or CBS sponsoring a big busker festival in the summer?

This kind of activity may still occur when the deal is done with the advertiser, but it didn’t happen with the previous incumbents – so it looks likely the performers will be doing all the hard work to attract travellers’ attention to the marketing but will also be the only ones not trousering a fee for their efforts. Or even any substantial support for their talents.

Perhaps it was all just a bit more authentic and fun when hairy youths with battered practice amps were chased from Platform 2 at Oxford Circus by uniformed fellows brandishing ticket clippers. But that was then and this now.

Latex factor

2012-02-29T11:19:00.004Z

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.

Of course, a brief for a contraceptive is a poisoned chalice. The initial reaction is probably one of excitement (ahem). After all, this isn’t a low-budget, online bingo or car loan task, this is – quite literally – sexy work. But then the problems begin. The ASA won’t stand for any overt, fleshy action, so that’s out of the question. There’s also the fact that prophylactics are generally viewed as a hindrance to romance, their only benefit being birth control. Oh dear, suddenly not so sexy.

For overcoming this last drawback, credit should go to the product development gang at Durex. Performax (okay, the brand name is the weak link here) boasts unique properties. Using contrasting substances inside and outside the latex, this condom … and this is getting tricky on a family website … is able to slow everything down for the gentleman and liven everything up for the lady. So at least the creatives have a USP to … er … hang the concept on. Still, none of this can be displayed on screen. Not in any explicit format anyway.

The only real solution is a healthy dose of metaphor and a heap of lateral thinking. Fortunately, in this instance, the brilliance of both approaches leap off the screen.

Greeted by a DJ’s double deck set up, the campaign shows both playing the aforementioned ‘Let’s Get it On’ at different speeds, which slowly become in-sync with each other to the play the track as Marvin intended. The magic only really happens when one watches the clip, so here it is:

Watch the Performax ad here (opens in new window)

Wonderful isn’t it? The images in your eyes are innocent and funny, the images in your head are selling the benefits of the product in a way that is unforgettably compelling. It’s psychological trick that many other campaigns have tried, but very few have managed.

Apparently, there is also a Facebook game (inevitable, I guess) which was launched on Valentine’s Day. I haven’t played it because I don’t really understand the subtleties of Facebook and I fear the devastating impact of losing on my aged ego. This does nothing to detract from one of the sharpest, intuitive and entertaining ads we’ll see all year. It was certainly the most amusing thing about the episode of Ten O Clock Live I watched last night.

Another asset is this work’s ability to deliver the brand’s message internationally and I’m sure this global campaign will win gongs and plaudits in many, many countries. So, had I been lucky enough to be involved, would I have changed anything? Only this: copyright allowing, I’d have ensured the decks were playing ‘Come Together’.

The problem with BFGW

2012-02-29T11:14:00.001Z

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.

An investigation by the ASA is underway, but to many commentators this is an open and shut case of prejudice in advertising. As usual, however, the truth is far more nuanced.

It seems none of the complainants was upset by the ‘bigger’ and ‘fatter’ bits. The attention is all on the term ‘Gypsier’. Apart from being a pretty ghastly mangling of language, the controversy stems from the notion that the word is racially pejorative. Interestingly, the programme doesn’t actually portray the Romany community – those most closely associated with the name Gypsy – but Irish Travellers, a different ethnic grouping. As far as the ASA is concerned, this is likely to be inconsequential. Whether there are ‘real’ Gypsies in the show or not, if the word ‘Gypsier’ is offensive to a particular section of the populace, the broadcaster will be in breach of the body’s code. But how offensive is it?

Nobody is arguing that ‘Gypsy’ is an insulting term, just the invented variation. So, let’s play with that language a little. What if the poster claimed a show starred people who were ‘blacker’ than before. Or ‘gayer’. It’s difficult, but common sense suggests these terms would be problematic, using a personal trait to measure the behaviour of the whole person. In other words: stereotyping.

But consider this. The Irish Travellers gave their full consent to be filmed for the programme and were absolutely familiar with the title. This is the second run and is very much in keeping with the traditions of the first. There are no genuine signs of it being ‘bigger’ or ‘fatter’, just more of the same. And, of course, the ASA as far as we know, has received no objection from the participants

Christine Cawley, an Irish Traveller appeared in the Guardian on Tuesday, saying Channel 4 “seems to be using who we are against us in a way that feels very hard to take”.

On the same day, The London Gypsy & Traveller Unit wrote to the broadcaster’s Chief Creative Officer, Jay Hunt, and Chief Executive, David Abraham, pointing to the perceived stereotyping in the advertising and asking for the campaign to be withdrawn.

“We wonder if Channel 4 would have been so ready to use the adverts with similarly compromising phrases for other ethnic groups” said the unit, which also asked Channel 4 to remove the ads.

Channel 4 responded: “The advertising builds on the celebratory nature of the first series … The word ‘gypsier’ refers to the fact this series offers even greater access and insight to the communities featured, and the term ‘gypsier’ is not being used in a negative context. Everyone featured in the campaign has seen the posters and is happy with them.”

If this last comment is true, then what was once a prima face case of objectionable and prejudiced marketing takes on a different aspect. Surely, if the people whose lives are presented in BFGW have signed off on the campaign, all is well? Not quite. The posters are a red herring. It’s the series itself which begs closer examination and the trend for ‘ridicule TV’ is an unhealthy development. The community featured in this show, may or may not be aware of the pointing and sniggering it attracts from many viewers. They may not care. But the fact is, BFGW doesn’t attempt to explore the history, social or political issues faced by travellers, it merely holds up a section of society and invites ‘normal’ folk to stand aghast at their rites and activities.

Whether or not ‘Gypsier’ is an appropriate word to appear on a poster, exposing minorities to cheap laughs, without a hint of insight, is at best a missed opportunity and, at worst, pandering to bigots.

Where is the love?

2012-02-29T11:12:00.005Z

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.

The problem is, this messaging is now so ubiquitous, I’m not convinced it works anymore. When an edgy new perfume illustrates the potent nature of its pong with a clip of naked limbs tastefully entwined, we are just as likely to be thinking ‘Oh, just like all the others’ as we are to see the scent as some undiscovered, pheromone based passion potion. And they all seem to be called ‘Temptation’, ‘Guilty’ or ‘Fumble’ just to hammer the point home. We can’t blame them.The received wisdom tells us sex sells and so sensuality becomes the default brand image for frivolous luxuries. Even when Puff Diddy is involved.

But of course we shouldn’t conflate eroticism with romance. Eva H greeting her breasts with a cheery ‘Hello Boys’ may be funny and sexy, but it’s hardly love’s eternal dream, is it? On the other hand, the legendary Gold Blend couple bared not an iota of naughty flesh throughout the campaign, but most assuredly fell in love over the beans – and we probably fell in love with them a little too.

Unfortunately, in the race to shift units, lust has very much become confused with romance, and no product is too mundane to leap aboard the love train. A campaign for microwave burgers, in a breathtaking exercise in sexism, demonstrated the food’s convenience using a scenario in which a young fellow defrosts his frigid date as rapidly as his hot snack. And a current BT spot shows us a geeky student getting lucky with his new flatmate by taking her to an internet cafe. ‘I didn’t know you were so good at finding a girl’s hotspot’ she says in an unnecessarily fruity way.

To continue that work’s rather clunky sexual innuendo, advertising is all about pushing buttons: finding emotional responses in an audience then triggering them with creative communication. And if there’s one emotion ripe for the triggering, it’s desire. Kylie atop a bucking bronco in her scanties on YouTube gave Agent Provocateur a tremendous shove (such beautiful art direction, I watched it dozens of times) and Scarlett Johansen informing us she does all her own stunts, including ‘making love’, is surely attracting a bit of attention to D&G’s (and a rapid re-examination of Ms.Johansen’s DVDs too, presumably).

This is all very risqué, provocative and arousing, I’m sure. But there’s a part of me longing for the cheesy James Bond fantasies of the Milk Tray man and his unstoppable mission to bring cheap choccies to his lady; or the smitten fools chasing after strangers to gift them flowers after just one nasal hit of Impulse. Because the law of diminishing returns insists that all this heaving flesh will eventually become tiresome and we’ll soon be ready to respond to light-hearted, somewhat chaste romance in our advertising once again. I just wonder whether the advertisers realise that.

Ten reasons to avoid telly ads

2012-02-29T11:10:00.002Z

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.

4. All online bingo advertising

Suddenly, every brand in the country has to have a cross-promoted bingo wing. Metro Bingo? Check. Tesco Bingo? Yup. Even Foxy Bingo (not a Murdoch enterprise, that’s Sun Bingo). And why? Because it’s a cash cow. These sites are programmed to retain a fixed percentage of the subscription money. Just because your old Nan goes up the Mecca for a game on a Thursday, doesn’t mean these hubs are any less mercenary than poker sites. The dreadful ads (and they are all dreadful) are literally coaxing people into parting with cash in return for more or less nothing. It’s like buying a Chris Moyles book.

5. Ads made to look like news or weather bulletins

Remember when advertisers in newspapers hit on the wheeze of producing ads that looked like articles? And the paper had to write a clunky ‘advertisement’ above them? Clients eventually grew out of that, but on it plods on on the telly. We’re usually presented with a glamorous lady behind a desk with a sheaf of papers saying “This just in. Sofa prices are falling heavily across the land.” Or some twonk in a suit with a microphone giving us a ‘report’ from a hellish flooring warehouse. Even a middle-aged gent before an archaic, magnetic map of the country, sticking smiley faces all over it. Well, they’re fooling no-one. News programmes don’t look that. Except on Channel Five and who watches the news of Channel Five? Exactly.

6. Serious subjects presented in an infantile way

Healthier diets, medical negligence, first aid techniques – all topics worthy of our consideration. Unfortunately, those who wish to engage us on these subjects don’t credit us with sufficient intelligence to absorb the relevant information, unless it is presented by a wibbly cartoon character or talking animal. I fear this may spread. When the next election rolls round (2014, you say? Good grief) be prepared for the three major parties to compete for our support using a singing ferret, a soppy pillow and a laughing jam jar.

7. Airlines quoting one way fares

You may have lost your job, your house and your life savings, but you still want a summer holiday. In fact, more now than ever. And you probably don’t want to come back. Well, you’re in luck – because you may not be able to afford to. You see, when aeroplane2.com announce in those shouty, brash tones they favour, that you can go to some condom strewn beach in the sun for £20, it is without exception a one-way fare. I’m astonished this achieves anything. Jumping online in a rush of excitement only to discover the return leg of my holiday is going to set me back more than my spending money will merely ensure I block the airline from my browser using parental safety settings. And I imagine this isn’t the desired outcome.

8. All train advertising

Much like the banks and their hilarious pretend radio stations and empty pledges, train operators have made the mistake of imagining a clip of Vic Reeves gobbling a fried breakfast as his superfast carriage zooms through bucolic rural Britain, will mask the utter misery of the actual experience. Aggressive customer ‘service’, interminable delays and fares higher than a return flight on aeroplane2.com, all erased by some CGI piffle? Not likely. Of course, insult is multiplied by injury when the strapline appears – along the lines of ‘Get Up And Go’. If only, if only.

9. Ads with fleeting references to the financial disaster

“Everyone’s watching the pennies at the moment aren’t they?” “Right now, we could all do with a little boost.” – you know what they’re driving at, but it’s the coyness and euphemism that is so irritating. Mostly because what follows is a plea for you to choose one measly discount over another. Or worse, borrow some cash at an interest rate that exceeds the laws of physics. The truth is, many people are deciding whether to eat or pay a bill, if advertisers are hoping to attract their disposable income they will be sorely disappointed. And regardless, giving veiled nods to the looming second recession is just embarrassing.

10. Poetry

In the olden days, when I embarked on my copywriting career, making your copy rhyme was a greater sin than chucking live kittens out of the third floor studio window. The temptation was beaten out of you with a Pantone marker on your first day. Well, here comes the new generation and – quite rightly – they want to break all the rules. So ads for cheese, dating services and frozen foods are all boasting mini-poems where there used to be a script. This would be almost acceptable if the flaming things scanned, actually rhymed and didn’t appear to be written in a primary English class. But alas, alas …

UB troubled

2012-02-08T21:52:00.002Z

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.

The rise of the multi-racial Two-Tone movement in the early 1980s brought a massive surge in the popularity of ska music. So perhaps it was inevitable a reggae group, with both black and white members, would rise alongside it. From the estates of a recession ravaged Birmingham, UB40 formed to play the music they’d grown up with. But far removed from Jamaican shores, their songs reflected the unemployment and social isolation of Britain’s inner cities. Of course, the band’s name was purloined from a benefit application form and their debut was called ‘Signing Off’, an optimistic reference to leaving the dole queue.

Despite a distinctive sound - and ability to capture the national mood matched only by The Specials - their extended lease on the upper reaches of pop stardom could hardly have been predicted. And yet their profile steadily expanded and their traditional reggae covers albums (‘Labour Of Love parts 1-3) sold by the lorry load. UB40’s version of Neil Diamond’s ‘Red, Red Wine’ was not only a massive number one single, but has become the definitive rendition.

Remarkably, for 30 years, their line-up remained unchanged – the youthful gang of mates grew up, became international stars and one of the most consistently successful UK groups of their time.

Until 2008.

In January of that year, singer and handsome face of the band Ali Campbell quit. The official line was that he wanted to concentrate on a solo career. He begged to differ, saying he was "too disgusted" with them to go on.

The source of the disgust is still a little vague, but the evidence suggests the band faced some hair-raising tax problems and their label DEP International was making heavy losses. Most of the band’s members were in favour of a series of schemes to maximise their income, including one to buy and sell re-possessed homes. Ali Campbell saw this as a denial of everything the band once stood for and, along with keyboard player Mickey Virtue, stormed out of the outfit, swearing he would stop breathing before he rejoined.

In a statement he said: "It's heart-breaking. They've made a mockery of the music we made. Money talks and bullshit walks. My two brothers [Duncan who replaced him and guitarist Robin] have shit on me."

A solo Ali Campbell album did arrive after his departure, but failed to make much impact. Then a tour billed as ‘Ali Campbell sings the best of UB40 1978-2008’ ensured the bitterness between Campbell and his former colleagues and brothers was entrenched deeper still.

And there the matter would have rested – solo AC in one camp, UB40 with his brother on vocals, in
another – had it not been for the resurrection of the financial issues which led to the original rift.

By late 2011four members of UB40 were declared officially penniless. A judge sitting at
Birmingham County Court declared Brian Travers, Jimmy Brown, Terence Oswald (or Astro) and
Norman Hassan bankrupt. His ruling means tax officers have the authority to seize the men’s property to pay off outstanding debts. The case came on the heels of a hearing in July, giving liquidators the green light to chase debts and royalty payments on UB40's hits. He also awarded costs against the group.

Says Ali, "In the 1980s we were living in five-star hotels and we got through a lot of money. Why weren't the other guys listening to me when I started to flag these money problems up? They decided to back the management and not me, I'm very proud of what I achieved with UB40. But we were divided and ruled, and this is what happened in the end. UB40 has been asset-stripped by the people around them."

At the Hare & Hounds ceremony, Ali Campbell was conspicuous by his absence. He was not invited and didn’t ask to attend. He no longer receives royalties from the group's hits and confesses much of the band’s cash was squandered at the height of their fame.

Bands fall to squabbling and split up all the time. It isn’t unusual and usually isn’t pretty. But UB40 gave every impression of bucking the trend. Despite becoming very tame in recent years, their camaraderie, childhood friendships, actual brotherhood, reliable hit making and unwavering line-up, suggested they would last the course. That they crashed and burned after thirty three years of success, demonstrates an unsettling truth: in rock and roll nothing is forever.

Where have you bean?

2012-02-08T21:48:00.002Z

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?

‘It has to be Heinz’? It’s okay, but not exactly award winning.

But never mind. The new TV spot for that staple addition to toast, is an absolute gem.

And no disrespect to the art department, but this one is definitely a writer’s baby. Although perfectly adequately directed and styled, the beauty here lies in the screenplay and script.

I’m not a gambling man, but I’d have a couple of quid on the whole idea growing from a lovely little ‘lightbulb’ moment. I imagine (and I really am guessing here) the brief asked for an execution which reminded the consumer that baked beans are actually one of their ‘five a day’. Obviously a worthwhile selling point, particularly for overstretched parents.

Kids tend to like baked beans. A lot. But not so much the cauliflowers and the sprouts. So, with all the current fuss about the little ones’ diets (thanks for that, Jamie), this is a smashing bit of brand value leverage.

But back to the copywriter’s ‘lightbulb’. Playing with this proposition, it’s delicious to picture his or her face when the phrase ‘magic beans’ drifted into the thought process. Because it’s a line so superbly simple and sublimely right, you’d have to check it hadn’t been done before.

On discovering it there for the taking, I’m thinking the rest came pretty quickly: a modern interpretation of the Jack and the Beanstalk tale. It’s totally believable that a boy would swap a rather rubbish toy cow for a tin of his favourite snack, so we’re bought into the scenario from the start. That this would puzzle and please his Mum, is convincing too. Then comes the exquisite little twist – she assures her son that the beans are so nutritious, they’ll help him grow to be a giant. As if this wasn’t smart enough, we leave the scene with Jack (which is now one of the most popular boys’ names and therefore, double smart) whispering to himself ‘Magic!’.

It’s just perfect really. The copy is lean and straightforward, the concept clever but not contrived. The proposition is impressive and strong and the execution handled with a joyful lightness and warmth.

So thank you Heinz. Not only have you been making the best baked beans for nearly a century, you have now (along with your agency) restored my faith in copywriting and the power of the charmingly witty TV ad.

Magic indeed.

http://www.heinz.co.uk/ourfood/beans/Advertising

Cash from chaos

2012-02-08T21:46:00.001Z

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.

Dave King, a former college mate of Rimbaud’s was already living in the Crass commune when Penny asked him to create a logo for his (Penny was a man) essay ‘Christ’s Reality Asylum’. As King explains:

‘The logo was designed to be easily stenciled, a quality that would become very valuable later on. Its basic elements were a cross and a diagonal, negating serpent, formed into a circle, like a Japanese family crest.’

A few months later, when the band was formed, the logo was adopted for that project too. Over the next thirty five years, the Crass symbol became internationally recognised as an indicator of the counter-culture in all its colours, appearing on flags, jackets, college bags and tattoos, time after time. As a brand, it has been a considerable success.

Naturally, because the logo is a token of freedom and anarchy, King never registered the design as a trade mark nor applied any sort of copyright to the image. But this hasn’t been a problem until now.

Recently, London fashion house Hardware co-opted the symbol, added a chain and copyrighted the symbol for use on their delicately named “Whorewear” range.

Unsurprisingly, King sees a deep irony in the addition of a chain to a logo for a band and movement which strove so hard to crash through what they saw as society’s restraints. Although he can hardly take action as he has no legal claim on his original design, having set it free all those years ago, his indignation is understandable.

Almost every successful corporate image, from the golden arches to the Nike tick, can only be deployed with the consent of the copyright holder – or hefty legal remedy is sought. But this logo isn’t corporate, quite the opposite, so an interesting question arises. If, from a sense of benevolence or adherence to a political creed, one releases one’s work to the world without a handy little TM, is it fair game for another entity to seize it and register it as their own?

I’m not sure there’s a precedent for this unless we include the crucifix (and any attempt to register this would surely be rejected). Legally, it appears Hardware are on pretty solid ground. The design is in the public arena, has no owner and is there for the taking. Morally, they may well have been smarter to offer King some recompense for the use of his work (if he rejected such capitalist notions, they could have offered a sum to a charity or cause of his choosing). The attendant PR would have benefitted their business and deflected any accusations of sharp practice.

But creatively, the clothes company has exposed itself. As designers of edgy outfits they must surely wish to demonstrate their originality and imagination. By purloining another designer’s concept for their label, they are merely illustrating their lack of creative thought and inspiration, as well as a dearth of integrity and respect.

As I write this, it seems Hardware is about to bow to pressure from online Crass supporters and relinquish their claim to the logo, but this does little to dismiss their rather shoddy attempt to rip-off a talented and skilled designer.

In short, the fashion house has made itself look cheap and grasping, while King emerges with his dignity and art intact. One of punk’s mottos was ‘do it yourself’, perhaps Hardware should take that advice.

Take your pick

2012-02-08T21:42:00.002Z

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.

Our beloved politicians constantly fall on the ‘c’ word to justify their unrelenting tinkering with education and the NHS. The misguided notion that our priority, when poorly, is to spend hours raking through hospital brochures to select the exact facility we’d like to remove our gall stones, is evergreen. Being politicians, they brush away our suggestions that we’d be perfectly content with our local hospital, clean and properly funded. ‘Nonsense’ they bellow, ‘you want choice – and lots of it!’

Marketing often falls into the same trap. Take mobile phones. Enter one of those brilliant white temples of telephony in any shopping centre and within minutes, you will be bombarded with pricing plans and talktime grids. Do you want 50,000 texts a month or all-you-can-eat data? Or a spare SIM and a new handset? Of course, you don’t honestly know how many texts you send every four weeks and you’re pretty certain you don’t actually eat data. Nevertheless, you select a plan because you need a phone, but the fear you’ve lashed yourself to the wrong contract will haunt you for the duration. They’re offering you choice as though it were the sacred road to happiness, when it is nothing more than the shortcut to a migraine.

We live in a complicated world which constantly insists we make selections. There was a time when there was nothing more mundane than buying a cup of coffee, but now (as a thousand stand up routines have explained) the array of options leaves us bewildered. Is ‘tall’ the small one? Or is that ‘grande’? Why do they all sound massive? And how many ways can you really whisk some milk?

If you’ve ever visited the USA, you’ll know the Americans thrive on choice. The range of pizzas alone occupies three, road length aisles in a Wal Mart. Once, trying to decide what to have in my sandwich in a New York deli, the exasperated server asked me ‘Shall I just make you one you’ll like?’. It was a good job, I could have been there for days.

I’m sorry to say that the failure of Woolworths proves my point all too well. The beloved chain failed for many reasons, but its decline in popularity on the high street can be readily attributed to the problem of choice. There was a time when a shop selling mixed sweets and pop singles was just the ticket, but as other retail outlets began to streamline their brand positions, nobody knew what Woolies was for. They offered a massive choice of goods, for sure. But that just served to baffle folk. A similar difficulty beset WH Smith in the nineties, so they acted quickly and returned to their core business of books and newspapers. FW Woolworth wasn’t quite so agile and paid heavily for it.

The superbrands of the next decade won’t be those offering the widest choice. They will be the outfits doing one thing brilliantly.

After all, you’re never asked which flavour Twitter you’d like, are you?

We're all writers now ...

2012-02-08T21:40:00.001Z

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.

When compared with design, art direction and web development, copywriting has always faced an uphill struggle. Most clients are happy to admit they cannot draw, cannot use Adobe CS5 and have not the faintest idea what HTML even stands for. But they can write. That is to say, they can place fingers on keyboard and produce words. Occasionally, they may even scribble sentences on paper with pens. This creates an unrealistic confidence. If they can write a letter or a shopping list, they reason, they can write decent copy.

So why is this so risky? It gets the job done, it’s quick and easy and, most importantly, it avoids those inconvenient fees. Well, if marketing and advertising is about anything, it’s about communication. Advertisements are created to convey a proposition, a reason to buy, a message to buy into. This demands a compelling message is first identified, then summarised and finally conveyed in an attractive and compelling way. Jumble the vocabulary and the message is confused, ramble and the message is wooly, fail to understand how people read advertisements and the message is lost.

Worse still, if a ‘writer’ misuses grammar, misunderstands the nuanced meaning of language or, heavens forbid, misspells any words – then the credibility of an ad, a product or a brand can plummet like HMV’s share price.

This week, a large print ad appeared in Metro, the commuter freesheet. It sat proudly to left of the TV listings and was a lovely bright yellow, all the better to catch the reader’s eye. Full of natty product shots and calls to action, it seemed to be working quite hard – until one noticed the headline, resplendent with a massive spelling error. It was only three words long. That’s a third of the headline shouting ‘We are so incompetent, we cannot even write our own sales message’. Is that a reason to buy or a reason to be very wary?

Equally, I have worked with many people in advertising and marketing agencies who, although quite smart and quite capable, could not spell for topheee. One colleague would regular email to say the lottery syndicate hadn’t been ‘two’ lucky that week.

Clearly, most people in business can write, but that in no way guarantees the can write copy. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that only copywriters can write copy. The clue’s in the name. When others ‘have a go’ in order to save money, the perceived saving is often as false a Cher’s nose.

Copywriting has been defined as ‘the art of arresting the reader’s attention just long enough to persuade them to act’. That is as perfect a description as one could hope to find – it’s that simple, it’s that difficult – and only a few people can do it well.

Comfortably punk

2012-01-19T18:16:00.000Z

You may recall we recently established that punk bands actually loathed the habit of crowd spitting and certainly didn’t spit on their own audiences. But that wasn’t to say a rock musician has never done such a thing.

In July 1977, at the height of the UK punk movement, the bass player in a very popular act was playing the last show of a tour in Montreal, Canada. At the gig’s climax, he marched to the lip of the stage and gobbed at fans on the front row.

This was Roger Waters of Pink Floyd.

The antipathy between the young, angry new wave outfits and the older, pompous stadium bands was never more pronounced than in their disdain for Pink Floyd. Indeed, as legend has it, the shy and hunched Johnny Rotten was recruited to Sex Pistols having been spotted wearing a Floyd t-shirt defaced with a scrawled ‘I HATE’. And yet, the psychology of Waters and Lydon were not quite as removed from each other as they may have thought.

The Floyd leader immediately regretted his sputum flinging action, but did recognise it as a symptom of
the alienation he felt; the distance his art had put between himself and his audience. Not so different from the isolation and cynicism described by the Pistols and The Clash.

Much like those bands, Waters also took his distress as inspiration, writing about his skewed mental equilibrium. The result was the Floyd’s eleventh album, The Wall.

Although Dark Side of the Moon was no laughing party and Wish You Were Here continued its description of their former colleague, Syd Barrett, sinking into psychosis, The Wall referred to and acknowledged Waters’ personal fragility and depression. Compared with the mellow psychedelia of a vintage Floyd piece like ‘Echoes’, The Wall was a snarling, mocking, sarcastic work – every bit as angry as Anarchy In The UK.

If anything, Waters’ work (and it was largely composed by the bassist, with only the most slender of contributions from the rest of the band) was more self-loathing than any of the key punk albums. While Strummer and Lydon were asserting their independence and strength, Waters was displaying the doubt and fear that his life as a musician was a waste, serving only to dehumanise and trap him.

The Wall is a riot of Freudian analysis. The imaginary character ‘Pink’ (read: Waters) is a rock star tumbling into insanity. On the surface, it appears his swollen ego, drug use and mistreatment of friends and family is eating him alive, but as the story unfolds we are transported back to his school days, his infant relationship with an overbearing mother and the death of his father in WW2. These are shown to be extra contributory factors, conspiring to build an impenetrable barrier between Pink and the regular, healthy world.

This is the titular Wall.

As total delusion sets in, Pink fantasises he is a head of a fascist regime, running the world ‘his’ way. And as neurosis conquers normality and mental pain shatters peace of mind, he is completely adrift and ‘Comfortably Numb’ (as David Gilmore’s sole track has it).
Perhaps surprisingly, The Wall spawned a number one single ‘Another Brick In The Wall (pt.2)’. With its nagging refrain ‘We don’t need know education’ it proved almost as controversial as the Pistol’s ‘God Save The Queen’, from two years before.

The Pistols and The Clash both had a stab at motion pictures (‘The Great Rock and Roll Swindle’ and ‘Rude Boy’) with negligible results. The Floyd, with an admittedly more substantial budget, transferred The Wall to the screen, rather more successfully. In another link to the new wave, Bob Geldof starred as Pink. It’s quite an overblown affair, combining Gerald Scarfe cartoons with live action fantasy sequences, all backed by the album in its entirety but without the band appearing. Allowing for the bombast and more than a little pretention, it’s hard to see how an album of such raw, soul-bearing emotion could have been translated any better.

Unfortunately, after The Wall, the Roger Waters’ line up of Pink Floyd were trapped themselves. Almost all the tracks subsequently released by this version of the band were focused on the same subject matters, particularly Waters’ loss of his soldier father, and suffered badly from the law of diminishing returns. Before long, Pink Floyd parted company with their leader and principal songwriter.

However, for a couple of years in the late seventies, the very group the punks loved to hate was producing material very much aligned with their own. In truth The Wall is one of the best punk albums you’ll ever hear.

Married bliss

2012-01-19T18:10:00.000Z

It’s a college. No it’s not, it’s a record label. Sorry, it’s a TV studio. Hang on, no, it’s a computer games firm.

Let’s start again. Confetti is definitely a bar and meeting place. And all of the above, it seems.

Nestling in the centre of Nottingham, Confetti is quite unlike any media company I’ve ever encountered. And I’ve encountered a few. Established in 1994, the organisation launched as a well-equipped, creative technology school for college students and school leavers. It was the vision of Craig Chettle and initially worked with The People’s College of Further Education. As Craig puts it, “We wanted to create a place and an opportunity that was not available to us when we were in further education.”

Taking a small range of practical training courses in Sound Production as a starting point, Confetti has now evolved to embrace courses in television production, presentation, audio design and music engineering. Working closely with Leicester’s DeMontfort University and with an annual intake of over 1000 students, the staff push for incredibly high standards, using state-of-the-art kit and continually reinvesting in the business.

When I visited this week, I was genuinely taken aback. Housed in a former fabric factory (and before that, a convent), the exterior gives little clue as to the treasures within. Immediately on arrival, I was treated to a welcome coffee in the cafe bar / meeting area I mentioned above. Roomy, with streams of natural daylight and a modern/retro design, this is Aerial. It functions as a kind of members club and meeting hub for Nottingham’s creative businesses. The scattering of plush sofas and stylish tables explains its popularity. And this is just the beginning.

Following refreshment, Confetti’s Darren Bourne was kind enough to take me on a whistle-stop tour of the whole facility. In minutes, I was lost amongst corridors of mixing rooms, editing suites and recording studios. We dropped in on the in-house record label (particularly impressive to me as this is the home of the desk on which Manic Street Preachers recorded ‘A Design For Life’), which serves as an outlet for local bands and songwriters. A roomy TV production suite stood ready to generate broadcast quality programming and, rather surprisingly, a design workshop was busy crafting cutting-edge furniture for colleges and universities.

The East Midlands is now internationally recognised as a major hub for the computer gaming industry and Confetti has capitalised on its reputation, doing brisk business in new game development. As Darren mentioned with a proud smile, they are also providing post-production audio mixing for a number of major feature films too.

In just 17 years, Confetti has grown from a modest organisation, with a handful of staff, to one of the most forward thinking educational institutes in the UK with over sixty lecturers and support personnel. An impressive roster of well-known commercial, creative companies work alongside the educational institute, ensuring the student experience is both in-depth and authentic.

This industry involvement also forges strong links with potential employers, creating exciting and real opportunities for students, through guest lectures, studio tours, tradeshow visits and work experience with a host of industry professionals. And it’s this balance of modern learning environment, skilled staff and vocational courses which allows so many students to embark on creative careers while building their social skills and confidence.

If you have read this column before, you may know I am more than capable of being a sceptical and cynical old trout, and very hard to impress. But Confetti is undeniably eye-opening and utterly inspirational. It is simply impossible not to be impressed by the achievements and continued commitment and enthusiasm which will guarantee its continued success.

What’s more, I can absolutely assure you I have no vested interest in Confetti. I am just very pleased to have visited and to be in the position to give credit where it’s due by recognising a uniquely creative and corporately intelligent organisation.

The fact it is in my hometown is just the cherry on a very substantial cake.

Less than meets the eye

2012-01-19T18:07:00.005Z

We’ve been spoilt. The delights of the modern media have ruined us. Our predecessors would have little or no idea what a polar bear was, let alone be presented with the vision of one giving birth to unbelievably sweet baby polar bears. But now, we merely have to activate the shimmering screen in our lounge rooms, settle back with a mug of Horlicks and the majesty of the Arctic giant reproducing is displayed in HD colour. But do we gasp in awe? Do we shed a silent tear at the sheer beauty of the wondrous event? Do we heck. Instead, we rush to the Radio Times website and type away like a secretary on speed, denouncing the whole charade because we suspect the scene was filmed at Bristol Zoo and not the Tundra.

It doesn’t much matter if avuncular naturalist David Attenborough is attacked and eaten, we want authenticity, damn it!

As I say, we have been spoilt.

Strange then, that we don’t seem to give a monkey’s when advertising is not only faked, but blatantly tells us so, in real time, as we watch.

‘Poor’ Cheryl Cole, invites us to wash our tresses in a chemical soup designed in a French laboratory. Do this, she tells us, and our crowning glory will be thick, healthy and so swishy the world will drift into slow-mo each time we turn our heads. This tends to be aimed at girls and American soft rock acts, admittedly – but it’s all very impressive, nonetheless.

Until we spy the small print, transparent and apologetic at the foot of the screen: ‘Ms. Cole’s hair enhanced with natural extensions’. What? WHAT? Surely the whole exercise has been a soft-focus demonstration of the astonishing properties of a magic elixir in a plastic bottle, not an exhibition of the finely honed skills of Girls Aloud’s hairdresser of choice. Despite complaints to the ASA, the ad was given the go-ahead, the campaign still runs from time-to-time and we are drawn to the Cole endorsed brand in the supermarket.

But now, what’s this? An unthreateningly pretty lady in a shopping centre is having her teeth scanned with some sort of UV, light sabre, wand device. And then her gob is revealed on a monitor which wouldn’t look out of place on the flight deck of a space shuttle. Did she brush her teeth this morning? Why yes, of course. She’s a pretty lady, after all. So what’s with all this icky bacteria revealed by the slightly sinister apparatus? No! The horror! The humanity!

Fear not. After a night with a tube of 21st century dental scrub, she’s back. And the wand is back. And the monitor is back. She’s clean and clear; the bacteria just a distant nightmare. Oh, the relief! The pretty lady is impressed. So impressed, she says ‘I’m impressed’. Fabulous.

Not fabulous. That wand? No such thing. There’s a strapline on the screen telling us it’s all a ‘reconstruction’. It’s, quite literally, science fiction.

Perhaps we’ve become inured to artifice. Maybe it started with news and documentaries (and, ironically, we tend to rely on these shows for a hefty dose of authenticity). Maybe it’s all down to Crimewatch. To be honest, I’m not sure when straightforward reportage became infected by the ‘reconstruction’ bug, but now they’re riddled with it. As a dramatic voice-over relates a murderous event which nobody witnessed, we are ‘treated’ to shadowy actors playing out a violent scene the producers imagine may have taken place. They have no idea, of course, but the deception is justified by the single, overlaid word ‘Reconstruction’. Worse, a news report may refer to an ambulance, rushing to an incident. In which case, it’s not uncommon for the story to be accompanied by library footage of a white van, racing through the streets with blue lights whirling. And you know what the caption says …

So, if we’re going to become so animated by the sight of a real female polar bear, giving birth to real polar cubs, simply because they are in a zoo and not at the North Pole, we would do well to make an even louder noise when advertisements and news bulletins genuinely fabricate the very things they’re claiming to show.

The year ahead ...

2011-12-31T23:08:00.002Z

1. Someone who thinks they’re important will say Twitter is dead. They will tweet a link to their reasoning.

2. Jonathan Ross will wake at night wondering why the whole ITV thing never works for him.

3. Compare The Market will make more money from soft toys than insurance.

4. Lorshuggar will be shown an iPhone. He will think it’s a calculator.

5. HMV RIP

6. HM Government will blame cigarettes and the Euro for the fact no-one has a job.

7. The BBC will accidentally broadcast Brass Eye instead of Newsnight. No will notice.

8. Iran invasion undertaken to cheer everyone up.

9. Nation will attempt to recall what a Little Mix was.

10. A correctly deployed apostrophe will be found by archeologists.

11. Train fares will rise by a percentage determined by Eric Pickles waist measurement.

12. Boris Johnson will cease cutting his own hair in the dark. His popularity will plummet.

13. Channel 5 gameshow ‘Burn The Witch’ will be deemed ‘a little tasteless.

14. Evil dictator will go to war with own people. Big boost for British arms industry.

15. Teenagers will be told to ‘finish that last bit of Coca Cola and throw the bottle away’.

16. Phrase ‘Kindle Porn’ will make first appearance.

17. Man watching 3D movie will realise he is merely looking out of the window.

18. 3D RIP

19. Olly Murs will come out. As rubbish.

20. DWP’s ‘Work For Nothing Or Lose A Limb’ scheme will be piloted in Scotland.

1. NHS will say over exposure to Stephen Fry is not healthy for him or us.

2. First clothing download retail website will launch.

3. Man with 20,0000 Facebook accounts will post his status: tired.

4. Consumption of large volumes of alcohol will be blamed for binge drinking.

5. Rioters will demand return of Norden to ‘Alright On The Night’.

6. Hot tears of bitter anger and twisting frustration will be named the ‘new smoky eyes’ by Cosmopolitan.

7. Gordon Brown a breath of fresh air, on reflection – a poll will show.

8. ‘Occupy’ movement will boost the hotel industry.

9. ‘And where there used to be some shops is where the snipers sometimes hide’, Phil Oakey will say.

10. Black Eyed Peas will promise: ’This drivel could last decades’.

11. Britain will win Olympic gold with record breaking leap over the orginal budget.

12. Some bloke will state that Myan legend confirms 2012 will bring an end to the world. Despite our best efforts, he will be wrong.

Help yourself

2011-12-22T22:16:00.002Z

Merry Christmas? Times are as hard as a granite boulder, encased in steel, painted in superglue and treated with a rare carbon compound.

Broke is what we are.

Blame a multitude of politicians and stab an accusing finger in the direction of international bankers and I will be with you, brothers and sisters. Had the former been watching the latter, we may not be in this sorry situation. Add to this negligence a patchwork government hell-bent on hobbling the voluntary and public sectors and we’re staring down the wrong end of a long, bleak winter. But again, what’s to be done? In the creative industries, can we really lighten this crushing load in any meaningful way? I feel certain we can.

In the first half of this year, I was involved in a project which involved re-branding a major UK company. The task was plagued (at least while I was involved) with a lack of IT infrastructure, poor strategy and flabby briefing. All of these things could have been put in place and properly managed without too much effort, it was simply that nobody cared enough to do so.

In the second half of the year, I have been working on the establishment of a broadcast service. The team actively attached to the project have worked tirelessly and with extraordinary dedication. However, a host of other organisations, suppliers and freelances on whom we have been depending have frequently failed to deliver on their promises. From phone calls going unreturned and meetings skipped without explanation, to work arriving late and commitments unfulfilled on the flimsiest excuses, it has all too often been an uphill struggle.

I accept there will always be flaky folk and badly run businesses, ready to put a spanner in the works, but this has been an almost daily occurrence. Our country has long been infected with a ‘can’t do’ attitude and we genuinely still have a mountain to climb when it comes to customer service, but now is not the time to indulge in either. Quite the opposite. With money thinner on the ground than rocking horse droppings, we simply cannot afford this level of ill-discipline and woolly-mindedness. Every call unreturned is a potential business opportunity squandered; every appointment dismissed in favour of a lie-in not only does the guilty party a disservice, but damages a project, account or endeavour. It’s possible I’m being paranoid, but surely we’re living through a savage era, almost designed to inspire a persecution complex in the best of us.

This doesn’t just apply to the freelance or sole trader, though. Helping a business associate develop a retail website a few weeks ago, I was astonished to discover we couldn’t take the site live immediately. This wasn’t because we hadn’t built it correctly, nor that we’d failed to establish the correct relationship with the wholesaler but because THE BANK CANNOT OFFER MERCHANT SERVICES UNTIL 2012!

That’s right. A national, well-known, high street bank had severed their relationship with the third-party provider without establishing an alternative service – thereby leaving all its business customers with no means to accept online credit card transactions. You couldn’t make it … well, you know the rest.

If there are to be winners and losers when the fog of austerity lifts, I am absolutely certain the winners will be those who redoubled their efforts, stuck to their guns and developed a metal-edged determination. The losers, I’m afraid, will lose in ways we haven’t seen for some eighty years.

It’s almost as if ‘nobody else does anything properly, so why should I bother?’ is the prevalent philosophy. The phrase ‘race to the bottom’ seems particularly appropriate here. But we don’t have to join in with this trend for plummeting. We can be effective, sharp, active and reliable. We can succeed by under over delivering, keeping our promises, doing what we say we’re going to do, surprising the cynics and dazzling the doubters.

With any luck, we’ll have won a race to the top by this time next year.

Merry Christmas!

Who's killing copywriting?

2011-11-24T11:53:00.000Z

Recent months have seen a swathe of articles predicting the end of the traditional, journalistic newspaper. Indeed, I have commented on the topic on Creativepool. But, as far as I’m aware, there has been no suggestion that the art of copywriting may be imperilled. Allow me to put this right.

A car advertisement, currently appearing on television, includes the strapline ‘Do You Like Fun?’. As facile and hollow proposition as you’d ever wish to hear (the very definition of ‘fun’ being an activity you enjoy or ‘like’). Now, this may well have been written by a professional copywriter in a leading ad agency, or a small child scrawling with a crayon on a paper napkin. I have no idea. What I do know is that, in my time as writer in the advertising business, if I had presented this line to a creative director, I would have been invited to sit down and have a stern word with myself before having a bash at generating a line that wasn’t quite so hopelessly lame and insulting to the intelligence of all involved. Largely because the quality control within the creative department would have insisted copywriters applied a modicum of effort to their writing and had at least a sliver of originality and flair. In this instance (and many others), a vacuous, ineffective and glib line has been nodded through, rubber stamped and broadcast. Either this sort of garbage is being generated by people other than genuine copywriters or copywriting as a skill is seriously poorly. Or both.

I must tread carefully here. More than aware that a number of people who read the Creativepool columns are passionately ambitious in their pursuit of a copywriting career, I have no desire to discourage a new generation of writers. In fact, I would very much urge writers with skill, integrity and imagination to pitch themselves headfirst into the creative businesses and resist this erosion of the profession.

But it will be quite a challenge.

This year I was involved in a project to re-brand a very well-known company and the products they offered. As you’d imagine, the demand for effective copywriting seemed substantial as almost every piece of marketing material required attention. Unfortunately, as the work progressed, it was soon clear the complex approval process ensured the chance of my choice of words, structure, syntax and vocabulary being published intact, was virtually zero. Once any text left my screen it was inspected by the commissioning account handler, who was at liberty to make his or her own alterations (often these folk were young graduates with no copywriting training and the tendency to use poor spelling in emails). From there, the copy would go to a place called ‘Brand’. I never saw ‘Brand’, but their remit appeared to be the application of arbitrary and inconsistent rules to anything with which they were presented. Finally, the piece would be inspected by ‘Legal’. Again, I had no familiarity or relationship with ‘Legal’ but their impact was considerable as they flagged up all the areas of the copy which might land the company in hot water. Unfortunately, these problem sections were often the additions and amends made by the account handler or our friends in ‘Brand’. This bastardised document would then wing its way back to me to be re-written ‘properly’.

I imagined I had merely landed a very bureaucratic and frustrating client, but subsequent conversations with other copywriters suggested this was the modern norm and the job was now little more than a means of producing a first draft which all and sundry would then have a fiddle with. One former colleague tells me he has been presented with a book of client approved headlines (writer unknown) with which he is invited to adorn his work. Writing his own lines isn’t an option.

This is the world of the ‘brand guardian’; a place where all communication is either pre-approved or subject to the ever-changing views of a panel whose lack of creative insight is matched only by a liberal helping of timidity. And my, admittedly limited, investigations appear to show this approach is becoming increasingly pervasive.

It would be foolish to suggest there was once a golden era of copywriting, when every syllable emanating from the writer was treated with a reverence usually reserved for large diamonds and Beatles songs. Of course, fantastic headlines have always been rejected by ill-informed clients and beautifully honed text has always been trimmed and adjusted. However, until recently, the copywriter’s role has generally been to produce the words for a campaign and that work was usually respected and even admired. This is definitely changing.

I find it hard to believe this is the death of real, proud copywriting – too much brilliant work has been produced and enjoyed through the years for it to perish so easily. That said, the price of creative freedom is constant vigilance and if copywriters present and future are to reclaim their words from brand managers and legal advisors, we need to make a start today.

No offense

2011-11-11T22:22:00.001Z

Last week Ricky Gervais was forced to apologise for using a particular word to describe people he considered stupid. This week Jimmy Carr withdrew a tweet and apologised for its insensitivity and poor timing.

The Gervais word was certainly juvenile and Carr’s message badly thought through, but were they offensive? And if they were, does that matter?

In our turbulent world, there’s something of a crusade underway. The chattering ranks of the media and professional commentators are on a mission to rid all communications of any content deemed offensive. To anybody. Scripts, ads, jokes and articles have all become subject to rampant scrutiny and ‘offensive’ elements must be exposed and eradicated. No problem, right? After all, who wants to be offended?

Well, I do.

First, let me try to define offensiveness. It’s a mobile notion and, of course, completely subjective. You may be offended by public nakedness, I may feel affronted by cucumbers – it’s almost impossible to point to a word, image or idea and confirm it as universally offensive or inoffensive. In fact, when we talk about offensive material, we’re actually referring to one person’s statement to which another takes a dislike. But the potential for ‘offense’ is present in everything we say, create, write or do. There will always be someone who objects to being exposed to any activity.

When the comedy musical ‘Jerry Springer – The Opera’ was staged in Bradford, a religious group, ‘Christian Voice’, marched on the theatre and demanded the show was banned on the grounds that it offended and insulted their faith. However, the show sold well and even won awards, so obviously there were many people who were keen on its content or at least didn’t mind being offended. Withdrawing the performance on the grounds that a few folk objected to it would have been perverse and unfair. Fortunately the production went ahead, otherwise a precedent may well have been set, allowing CV to have any number of creative works abolished if they ran contrary to their beliefs. This is the danger and pointlessness at the heart of a battle against offensiveness.

That said, we must not confuse offensive behaviour with cruelty. Making statements which satirise, mock or criticise a general grouping or ideology may be offensive, but they are the natural and fair use of our freedom of expression. Cruel or threatening outpourings are entirely different. Stating an objection to homosexuality and asserting it to be immoral or unnatural is unenlightened and even offensive, but a person has the right to express and hold the view. If that person then makes it their business to focus on a specific gay man or woman, stating they are ugly, vile, disgusting or in some way sub-human – or advocates physical action against gay people – they are breaking out of the freedom to offend and becoming cruel and threatening. This is rightly illegal and unacceptable. ‘Offensive’ statements may shock, but they almost never detract from the wellbeing and quality of an individual’s life. Any communications which do, are bullying and sinister, going
beyond offense to become menacing intrusions.

In 1977, Sex Pistols released ‘God Save The Queen’. The lyrics contained no swearing or sexual references, but were deeply critical of the monarchy. It was also perceived (inaccurately) the band was calling the Queen a moron. It seems ridiculous in the modern era, but this caused widespread offense at the time and the record was ‘prohibited’ from reaching the top of the charts in Silver Jubilee week. Today, of course, we would accept the group were merely exercising their right to protest, musically and politically. In short, they were entitled to offend.

I don’t respect Gervias for using that word. He’s an intelligent man and being childish and idiotic doesn’t suit him. Nevertheless, he was entitled to say it and entitled to face the consequences. Had he singled out an individual with Down’s Syndrome and repeatedly used the word against them, he would and should have been stopped. But he didn’t, he simply caused some general offense. Just as Sex Pistols did in 1977.

In a creative industry we depend on the freedom of expression for our very livelihoods. As luck would have it, we live in a society which values and protects this freedom and we should resist any attempts to diminish it. But this right comes at a price: the likelihood that from time-to-time we’ll read, hear or see something that offends us. Next time it happens to you, embrace it and enjoy it. It’s a symptom of being free.

Back to Brown

2011-10-24T09:59:00.001+01:00

The Stone Roses have sold out the first two Manchester shows announced at this week’s press conference, which heralded their reformation. I am not surprised – neither by the ticket sales or the band’s reconciliation.

There’s a notion that certain bands will never regroup (The Jam, The Smiths, the proper Guns and Roses) and The Stone Roses were on that list. But I don’t buy it. Unfortunately this isn’t thanks to my unwavering belief in the strength of friendships forged in creativity, it’s just a conclusion born of experience. The fact is, when the circumstances are right, a handful of people who used to sell records will gladly grit their teeth and take to a few of the world’s stages. Those circumstances are usually a string of failing solo careers, the odd sizeable tax bill and a few promoters with big cheque books. Whatever the band might claim, the burning desire to recapture that old magic almost never enters the equation.

Let’s examine The Jam. Foxton and Buckler are already on the road as From The Jam (literal band name ahoy!), so I think we can see where their ambitions lie. The stumbling block is one Mr. Weller. On the rare occasions he discusses the matter, Paul is adamant there is absolutely no possibility of his first band doing the business again. As things stand, it’s pretty easy for him to stick to his guns. He’s still new wave royalty with various Gallaghers and Ashcrofts filling his court. His albums continue to shift the odd unit and his tours attract sufficient punters. But let’s imagine tastes and affections drift (and in the heady world of the rock and the roll, this is one thing you can hang your hat on) or writer’s block sets in – or both. It wouldn’t take a great mental leap for him to pick up the phone and tell the fellas they can dump the ‘From The’ prefix. It is nothing like as unlikely as we’re led to believe.

Besides, these arrangements aren’t really ‘reforming’ in any genuine sense. The agreements and contracts are always for one tour, and possibly an album. In fact, the re-split is built into the plan. When the hits have been wheeled out a few dozen times, the nostalgia addicts sated and the cash banked, everyone knows it will be back to the status quo. Or some other twelve bar rock geriatrics in need of a session man.

And now here come indie/rave’s prodigal sons.

When rock magazines with space to fill and unimaginative editors do their ‘most influential bands’ lists, penny to a pound you’ll find The Stone Roses in there somewhere. It’s a status they clearly enjoy (who wouldn’t?) and one the wider media are delighted to buy into. BBC, ITV and C4 news programmes all trotted out the party line this week, dutifully covering the press conference and building the hype nicely. But on closer examination it’s clear The Stone Roses were little more than a highly derivative indie act that happened to be from the right city at the right time. Jangly Byrds guitars and funky drummer fills were nothing new in the early nineties when the band were peaking (The Chameleons or The Bluebells anyone?), but a bit of tweaking managed to convince the rave kids they could dig a ‘proper’ group rather than just a roster of DJs. Look at the early shots of the Roses and they’re in Doc Martens and bomber jackets. I’m not saying the adoption of flares and fishing hats was entirely cynical, but it was entirely useful.

But this just explains my scepticism regarding the band’s greatness. It’s no reason they shouldn’t regroup for some shows and for those who disagree, it’s a great opportunity to catch a favoured act they thought had gone forever. I only hope they aren’t bitterly disappointed - because, while Squire, Mani and Reni are certainly a tight combo, Ian Brown cannot and never could, carry a tune in a bucket. Indeed, when he launches into ‘I Am The Resurrection’ he isn’t so much off key as separated from it by a foot thick wall of lead.

Brown’s live vocal makes Bobby Gillespie sound like Marvin Gaye. So by all means, don your Joe Bloggs baggies and enjoy the chance to relive the intoxicating Madchester heyday, but bear in mind there’s a good reason Tony Wilson never invited The Stone Roses to join the Factory family.

Again!

2011-10-16T00:03:00.002+01:00

The first time I saw New Order was at Derby’s Blue Note club, shortly after the release of Ceremony. At best, it was a muted affair. The band climbed on stage directly from the bar, it was far from a full house and Peter Hook sat on a chair throughout the performance. However, the gig was notable for its ending. Despite a hardcore fan base, whooping and bellowing enthusiastically, Barney’s mic and Hooky’s chair remained unoccupied. Eventually the house lights came up and we dispersed. There had been no encore - the first time I’d experienced this omission at a gig.

In truth, I felt a little cheated. I’d always assumed it was part of the deal: the price of a ticket included the support act, the main feature and a bit more of the main feature after they’d spent five minutes in the wings. What had gone wrong this time? I figured the idiots calling for ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ had got up the band’s collective noses so effectively they’d mooched off to Macclesfield in a grump. Actually, that could well have been true.

However, I’ve since come to the conclusion New Order had reached a point it took me another twenty-odd years to accept - the rock concert encore is the most pointless, insincere, foolish and unnecessary ritual in whole of show business.

The more you think about it, the dafter the whole pantomime becomes. Pre-rock, the purpose of an encore was to rewarded a particularly exemplary performance by an orchestra or artist, by refusing to allow them to leave the building until they had graced an auditorium with one more tune. This probably culminated in a standing ovation and a shower of roses. But it was the exception. It existed to denote a rare pleasure and satisfaction felt by the audience. Quite when rock tours started to include a compulsory encore in every night’s set isn’t really clear, nor why. Perhaps it was an attempt to convince the punters they had attended a uniquely excellent show and to buy albums as a memento. Or at least to demonstrate value for money – sort of a 10% extra free with every band watched? Either way, it caught on like wildfire and has been adopted by almost every live rock or pop group since.

I can just about fathom the appeal to a band’s fans. A gig is their opportunity to demonstrate their undying appreciation for the act’s talent and charisma. Whistling and cheering throughout the set is all very well, but to summon their idols back to the spotlights for further performance feels like the apex of approval.

Except, they’re not. The band is returning come what may. It’s on the set list, it’s built into the timings and it’s probably even in the contract. The entire crowd could sit on their hands in absolute silence for the awkward hiatus and those boys will still pile back, ciggies aloft, white towels around their shoulders.

As an unwavering supporter of Manic Street Preachers, I’ve enjoyed them in concert on many occasions and I have seen them do encores. But happily, the band adhere to the original spirit of the concept, only reappearing on the odd occasion when the gig has really levitated and something stupendous has transpired (or more stupendous than usual – as I say, I’m something of an admirer).

So what exactly does the encore offer the band performing this charade, religiously, night after night? Other than a hollow feeling of pretence and repetition, that is? I can only assume that management have convinced the performers the adoring hordes will ditch them like a needy lover if they don’t follow their set with four minutes of darkness followed by the two big hits - deserved or not.

And, to be fair, they may have a point. But how pathetic is that?

Steve Jobs

2011-10-16T00:00:00.000+01:00

Thursday morning, a bouquet and an apple with a missing bite were placed outside the Apple store on Regent Street. It was the first of many tributes to Steve Jobs, who has died aged 56.

With Steve Wozniak, Ronald Wayne and Mike Markkula, Jobs founded Apple Inc. in 1976. Long before pads, pods and phones, they had a mission to develop the first practical and affordable personal computers. That so many people read of Jobs’ death on devices he conceived is testament to their success.

As with almost all highly intelligent, creative and successful individuals, there is little doubt Jobs could be a tricky customer. He certainly had an impressive ego which generated friction with colleagues and contemporaries on a regular basis. Indeed, less than twelve months after the launch of first Mac machine, Jobs was relieved of his job with Apple – only returning once his NeXT machines proved irresistible to his old firm and they bought him out. (When Tim Berners Lee devised the World Wide Web, it was a NeXT machine he used as its first server.)

Steve Jobs will always, even now he has gone, be compared with that other giant of the geek generation, Bill Gates and their differences are not always apparent. But perhaps it is Jobs’ role as owner of The Graphics Group which is most telling. When TGG sealed a deal with Disney to build a series of digitally animated feature films, they changed their name to Pixar and released Toy Story. It is this ability to see technology as something at which to marvel, rather than simply deploy, that marks Jobs out. He was a creative not a scientist.

Steve Jobs' achievements are unique. His expertise was in digital technology, but it was married to a creative, artistic heart which revealed itself, not only in the glassy graphics
of his inventions, but in the humour and magic of Woody and Buzz - or my favourites, Sulley and Mike.

Yes, his idiosyncrasies were challenging, and the Apple brand has become rather too much of a consumer fetish. But without his inventiveness and ability to imagine products to revolutionise the way we communicate, listen to music, design and work – we would never have the Apple products which are now so ubiquitous and loved.

Jobs was never content to accept a device or system that simply
functioned. He understood that successful, technical
applications need ergonomic appeal, must be attractive as well
as effective. In the same way physicists perceive beauty in
mathematics, Steve Jobs sought aesthetic perfection in machinery.

Legions of Mac disciples swear he found it.

In the middle of 2009, with his health failing, Steve received a donated liver and his doctors praised his recovery. But January this year saw Apple announcing he was taking a medical leave of absence. He would never return to the company he founded all those years ago.

To lure John Sculley from Pepsi-Cola to Apple, Jobs asked: "Do you want to sell sugar water ... or do you want to ... change the world?"

It was no empty invitation.

He is survived by his wife, son and three daughters.

The Man Who Fell To Earth

2011-10-15T23:54:00.002+01:00

Some things are hard to admit. Pilfering cigarettes from your Mum’s dinner party would be one. Using the same train ticket for six weeks would be another. But admitting David Bowie hasn’t been much cop for about 25 years – well, that takes real emotional courage.

If there was ever an artist touched by an almost supernatural genius, surely it was Bowie. From 1969’s 'Space Oddity' to 1980’s 'Scary Monsters', he produced a body of near faultless work. Not simply interesting or satisfactory, but heart-stopping in its scope, invention and creativity. What’s more, unlike contemporaries Lou Reed and Iggy Pop, he was a household name and hugely commercially successful. Even the more experimental exercises on 'Low' and 'Heroes' did nothing to detract from his standing as one of the world’s most admired, dazzling and purchased recording artists.

But Bowie was always a breed apart. While Rod Stewart and the Rolling Stones were firmly anchored in the rhythm and blues which spawned their careers (likewise Dylan and protest folk), David Bowie appeared to be creating brand new genres on a six monthly basis – sci-fi rock, glam, white soul, industrial synth and more. If he was ever too camp or outré for the post-hippy musical traditionalists, he was never dissuaded from his theatrical adventures and constant re-invention. Indeed his approach dared the conservative plodders still adhering to the twelve bar formulae of Deep Purple and the nascent metal acts to re-think everything. Through the 70s, only T-Rex and Roxy Music really challenged rock and roll convention with anything like the same vigor. Until punk, it would have been a very dreary decade without Bowie, Bolan and Ferry. And Bowie led that trinity.

Punk is often seen as a year zero. This was the movement with the scorched earth policy, which took no prisoners and left the old school dying in the dust. But there was an exception. Indeed, the Bromley Contingent – the Sex Pistols’ fan base, which gave birth to Siouxsie and the Banshees and Generation X – came together through their shared admiration of David Bowie.

In the early 80s, The Blitz Kids (later New Romantics) arrived to replace the stagnating punks and who was their figurehead? Who pushed them to a wider audience via his Ashes To Ashes video?

And yet, and yet. Even as Bowie led Steve Strange and his friends along that beach, in their nun, priest and clown costumes, David Bowie was only a couple of years from the ‘Tonight’ album and drop in quality so marked, it was hard to believe this was the same artist and not some imposter recruited to compensate for the real David’s unexplained disappearance.

This was no forgivable blip. After ‘Tonight’ things went from bad to worse. I recall a press conference to launch the Glass Spider tour in 1987. Bowie seemed to be subtly acknowledging his frailties and promising a return to form, with fantastic sets and a fine band. Most of us believed him until we saw the gigs. Dismay rapidly set in as we gazed upon a mulleted man in a crimson jump suit with plastic wings, trolling out anaemic versions of his old hits and new stuff so lame it was hard not to wander off to the pizza stand shaking one's head.

‘Never Let Me Down’ – the album he was plugging - was a new low (as opposed to a new ‘Low’, sadly) bringing grown men to tears of disappointment and frustration.

Admittedly forming a ‘proper’ band was at least unexpected and did much to give us hope of a Bowie revival and new impetus for the man who once made songs like ‘Scary Monsters and Supercreeps’ sound at once effortless and so astonishingly good they may well have been beamed from another dimension. Surely he still had that ability in his head and that power in his heart. No, not really.

The Tin Machine project has enjoyed some retrospective kudos, but not much. They were superficially noisy and owned some smashing suits, but their output was never anything inspiring and had they not had Bowie as their lead singer, they would never had managed so much as a contract, let alone two albums.

I’d like to pinpoint a moment when it all came right, but I cannot. At the same time it is also too painful to recount the evaporation of the man’s talent, release by release, track by track. So the simple truth is this: somewhere around 1983 David Bowie lost it. Whether you include the ‘Let’s Dance’ collection as the start of the decline or regard it as Bowie’s last great (albeit very mainstream) album is a moot point – nevertheless either just before or just after the release of that huge selling LP, an unexplained rot set in.

Maybe such a level of exceptional achievement is just unsustainable and we should be grateful that Bowie’s abilities were so mighty they carried him through a fifteen year period of unbroken highs. Perhaps Bowie’s only failing was forgetting to retire in 1984. But being a rock star isn’t like being a civil engineer and I can’t think of a single example of a famous musician simply putting down pen and guitar to spend their days in a country cottage. And as a solo artist, David could hardly split up.

Earlier this year, Radio 2 re-broadcast a live performance given by David Bowie to a select BBC audience in 2002. Although the man was in fine avuncular form between songs, the set was heavy on material from that year's so-so ‘Heathen’ album and, although admirably eclectic, firmly resisted the spectacular glories of 'The Man Who Sold The World' or 'Aladdin Sane'.

Then, without warning, he rolled out the divine ‘Bewlay Brothers’ from 1971’s ‘Hunky Dory’. And how it leapt from the DAB, sublime genius rippling through every note, every cadence. Sung with conviction, style and skill, the Bowie we fell in love with was right there.

And then he was gone.

Key notes

2011-09-22T11:09:00.001+01:00

It really gets up my nose when some Charlie Big Potatoes from the creative industry blogs, tweets or posts about some exotic location they’re visiting. They disguise the mention of Antigua or Paris with a dubious link to some project or other, but they actually just want you to know they’re living it up abroad. And you’re not.

Well, it used to annoy me – but now, not so much. Because now, I’ve embraced gross hypocrisy in order to report that I’m delivering this piece from a rented apartment in Kissimmee, Florida. I’m here partly to do some writing, but mainly to have a holiday and show off.

Anyway, it seems the least I can do is share a few Floridian observations with you before I return to my iced tea and 32 rolling weather channels.

Food

It’s difficult to describe exactly how much food is available in this state. If you think those British, all-you-can-eat Chinese buffets are a bit indulgent, this place would utterly terrify you before giving you weapons-grade dyspepsia and arteries more furry than a Yeti’s muffler.

It’s as if, having built Disney World, they realised they had a few square miles left over and decided to find out how many eateries it would take to make an entire population clinically obese. The exact number has never been revealed, but they certainly succeeded.

Oh and Dr. Pepper fizzy pop flows freely from the bathroom taps.

Religious broadcasting

There was once an hilarious sketch which featured an evangelical preacher appearing in a TV show to promote his ‘pay for pray’ service. The pay off comes when he tells us that for the next 24 hours, as an offer, $100 gets you five prayers rather than the usual three and a credit card hotline scrolls across the foot of the screen. Only it wasn’t a vintage sketch. No, it’s a genuine, TV show running right now in America. It’s not a sketch, and I for one am hugely impressed by the level of gullibility ensuring this sort of thing is profitable.

Abercrombie and Fitch

For the uninitiated (like me), A&F is an American clothes store. But it‘s much, much more than that. You see, A&F is a ‘concept brand’. It’s a label reserved for kids with a level of archness, cool and mystique usually reserved for obscure Scandinavian DJs and Darth Vader. And to confirm this unrivalled status, they refuse to do anything as obvious as displaying their outfits in the windows of their stores, instead completely obscuring them with black venetian blinds and preventing any view of the merchandise or indeed the store. I did glance through the door and was doubly impressed to note that not only was the interior in almost complete darkness but was filled with slightly too loud hip-hop. This is anti-marketing so audacious and arrogant, it’s actually quite attractive.

However, in a flash of self-awareness, it dawned on me I was just a smidgeon too old to be a member of Abercrombie’s target market and scuttled off to buy a cinnamon pretzel.

Advertising

There was a time when American advertising could reasonably be described as the complete opposite of British advertising. You see, US ads are all about direct response not endearing characters and whimsy. There are only two kinds of advertisers here: healthcare and naturally, restaurants – and they all take the same approach. A problem is established (heart disease, depression, feeling hungry) and solved either by a wonder drug or a waffle. No fancy metaphors, no brand awareness work, no meerkats, just raw, naked selling. Plus a big old call to action.

But as time and recessions have advanced, Brit advertising has become less imaginative and therefore more American. Thought provoking, witty and progressive work is an indulgence clients feel they can seldom afford, subtlety is a luxury, but regardless of the economic climate, US advertising has always been this way. Fortunately, we’re still some way off professional surgeons fronting campaigns for their skills with the knife in your innards, which is showing as I type.

Root beer

When McDonalds first arrived in the UK, you may recall they offered four soft drinks: Fanta, Coke, Diet Coke and root beer. But as soon as they realised there was only one person in whole of the nation ordering the rooty stuff (me), they withdrew it. Well, I’m delighted to report this potion is still very popular over here. If you’ve never tasted it, it’s important to stress it has nothing in common with beer, other than being a liquid. It’s the same colour as cola but slightly more frothy and contains no alcohol or caffeine. Root beer tastes exactly like Coke with a healthy slug of surgical spirit or cough mixture. Incredibly, it’s utterly delicious.

Disney

My apartment is about half a mile from the Magic Kingdom (at about 9.00pm every night we hear the fireworks, but by the magic of The Mouse they are invisible to non-paying bystanders). In this part of Orlando, Disney is king. The supermarkets – which are the size of aircraft hangers for giants – offer Chip n Dale socks and Donald caps alongside the peanut butter and pizzas (also designed for the average dinosaur).

Today is my wife’s birthday, so resistance is futile and we are spending the day with the two mice, the duck, the dog and whatever Goofy is supposed to be.

So I’ll raise a root beer to everyone at Creativepool and our smashing readers and feel more than a little disappointed that next week I’ll be writing the blog in Derbyshire.

C’mon Pluto …

Pretty vacancies

2011-09-22T11:05:00.001+01:00

Redundancies, renegotiations, restructuring and rotten revenues. Tough times in the creative industry. Tough times everywhere. Sorry folks, but there’s no longer any room for passengers in this business. So here’s a thought: why don’t we take a very large magnifying glass to the recruitment consultancies? Set up to match talent with opportunities, creatives with employers, I think some of these outfits have now become more of a hindrance than an asset.

Of course it’s important not to bundle all these firms together, put them in a sack and chuck them in the canal of condemnation. I won’t, but I could name a handful of recruitment agents who are consummate professionals, work hard for clients and candidates alike and take their responsibilities very seriously. But perhaps they are the exceptions. Almost everyone in advertising, branding, marketing, art direction, copywriting and the like, has been involved with the recruitment sector at some point. Whether that was at the start of a career, looking for that vital first job or when, at a more senior level, new challenges or rewards were sought. Remarkably, when I discuss these encounters with almost any colleague, their reaction is mostly the same: frustration, and exasperation. There is the odd positive report, but only in the same way there tends to be a couple of edible grapes in a bag of rotten fruit.

It would be unfair of me to quote anyone else’s story, but I can certainly share one of my own. Looking for a new position, having left a company that was downsizing rapidly, I put myself back on the market and received a call from a consultancy in West Yorkshire (I lived about an hour away). Their client needed a senior creative to head a team in their well known advertising business. Would I care to attend a meeting to discuss the possibility of taking the role? Without hesitation, I agreed and we met – me, the consultant, and the employer. The first question the employer asked me was this: “How do you see a copywriter successfully leading a team of designers?” “I don’t.” I answered “It would be impossible”. You see, in his desperation to fulfil his brief, the consultant had put me (a copywriter) forward for a high ranking design job. As I left, he was still asking whether I was interested.

On the other side of the table, as a recruiter, I was once sent the CV of a film director when I was looking for an art director and songwriter when I was trying to hire a copywriter.

If these were rare incidents, I would gladly laugh them off and just wheel them out as amusing coffee break anecdotes. Unfortunately, I could probably write a book packed with similar gaffes. You could probably write the sequel.

So, what’s going wrong here?

This is tricky. I have never worked in one of these consultancies and can only surmise how they actually operate, but here’s what I suspect. The business model for such an agency must be built on the fast turnover of briefs and hires, otherwise the revenue dries up. This produces more of a sales environment than a genuine consultancy, with a pressure to keep the conveyor belt moving. This, in turn, can lead to a lack of proper consideration for the brief and candidates being viewed as commodities rather than customers. There’s also a tendency to over promise and under deliver. A service which offers to develop your career and find you the perfect position should do just that. When they merely send you a clutch of vacancies which are either totally unsuitable or turn out not to exist, disillusion soon sets in. Add this to a tradition of not returning telephone calls and the disappointment is complete.

Again, this is just an educated guess. If I’m wrong, I’d be delighted to hear from consultants wishing to set the record straight.

I do know the fees charged for this service are not insubstantial ( I was once quoted 27% of the candidate’s starting salary) and the candidate experience seems to be miserable in more cases than I consider acceptable. This cannot be good for the industry, either financially or professionally.

You may have noticed that Creativepool, as well as being a popular blog, is a platform for job advertisements. Some of these vacancies are handled by consultants and I have no evidence any of these are guilty parties. Indeed, I’m happy to say I have had a very productive relationship with a brilliant agent who found me right here.

So, please don’t take my concerns as a cue to avoid the consultancies. After all, if they never produced satisfying results for anybody, they wouldn’t exist. Nevertheless, I would implore every recruitment agency to remember it is people’s hopes and aspirations they’re handling – possessions that should always be treated with the utmost respect. If you don’t, the talented people who make up the industry may start to see you as an unwelcome passenger.

An offer you can refuse

2011-09-22T11:01:00.000+01:00

In the age of social engagement, double opt-in emails and viral campaigns, some vintage marketing strategies are still as popular as ever, despite their venerable age.

Take ‘the offer’. When our hunter-gatherer ancestors first started trading goats for wheat, it was probably no more than 24 hours before someone muscled in on the action, offering Buy-One-Goat-Get-One-Goat-Free (BOGGOGF).

The psychology of ‘the offer’ is of course, terribly basic: ‘choose our brand and we’ll reward you for it’. We’ll give you something, let you have two for the price of one, throw in a free gift or give you a deduction on your next purchase. Natural human lust for ‘something for nothing’ will do the rest.

Of course, we all realise there’s no such thing as a free lunch (or tin of beans, pair of jeans or Mr. Sheens). No, every offer is designed to engage you with the product, encourage you to try it, get to know it, make it your friend and continue to purchase it long after the offer has receded.

Fair enough, sounds like a win/win deal. The punter gets a modest treat, the producers show themselves to be a generous bunch as they push some brand loyalty and the retailer sells a touch more stuff. However, there is a golden rule when concocting these dream deals, a rule that is disregarded at the brand’s peril. A rule so important, that neglecting it can see a service or product actually paying to lose currency and reputation.

And it’s this: never make an offer which forces you to quibble when it is claimed.

If you do, you will wish you had never embarked on the promotion as your reputation tanks and the punters begin to view you as a confidence trickster.

The classic example is that of Hoover. It’s well trodden ground but bears repeating as it illustrates this reversal of fortune so well.

In the late 1980s, vacuum cleaner manufacturer Hoover (so successful, the makers’ name had come to be the preferred name for all cleaners, regardless of brand) hit on the irresistible idea of giving away free flights with every unit sold. Air travel at the time was still regarded as something of a luxury and so the offer was particularly attractive. So much so that people began to buy vacuum cleaners they didn’t need, in order to bag some free travel tickets to foreign parts.

In truth, Hoover had over extended themselves on this, getting the estimated uptake wildly wrong. But instead of gritting their teeth and stumping up for the air fairs regardless, they started to quibble – telling customers they didn’t qualify or could not have the flights on the dates they required them. It was a disaster. Punters went to the press and the press proceeded to savage Hoover. Investigations were launched, questions were asked in The House. Arguably the king of carpet cleaning never really recovered.

What had been conceived as marvelous way to reward the consumer and drum up some glittering PR had almost sunk the firm.

Last weekend, my wife, adult kids and I thought it would be very lovely to gather in a local American/Italian themed diner on Sunday morning and have breakfast. We chose this particular outlet as it was running an offer: two breakfasts for £10.00 and all drinks came with ‘bottomless’ refills.

A very fair deal, I’m sure you’ll agree and a hearty banquet of eggs, bacon and muffins was enjoyed by all. At this point the party of seven couldn’t have been better disposed towards the brand in question. Indeed, there was talk of meeting at the establishment on a regular basis, offer or no offer. But then we went to settle the bill. And the quibbling began.

As we were an odd number, one breakfast would have to be full price as it had no ‘partner’ breakfast to attract a deduction. Perversely, had we ordered eight breakfasts, we would have saved money. Next ‘drinks’ enjoyed a whole new definition whereby orange juice was no longer a ‘drink’ but some sort of rare plasma at £2.00 a glass. The net result being the bill was around £15.00 higher than we anticipated.

I don’t really care about £15.00, I really don’t. What I do care about is being attracted by an offer, being persuaded to take part, enjoying the experience and then feeling fleeced. Because now my relationship with this particular brand is completely undermined. In essence, this restaurant chain has spent a portion of a king’s ransom to ensure I am never likely to be their customer again.

Everyone enjoys a little discount and the opportunity to save some expenditure, but companies would do well to consider whether serving up disappointment and dismay is really an effective way to court customers. In short, be careful what you offer.

Heads up

2011-08-21T21:55:00.001+01:00

Since I was a nipper I’ve been aware of a gap in my character where most fellows have a football. Or at least an abiding love of that game. I grew up in Nottingham in an era when Nottingham Forest couldn’t sneeze without winning a trophy. By all accounts, they were the most accomplished club in Europe for a couple of years – and of course, they were managed by the city’s beloved, adopted son Brian Clough. All my friends were captivated by the team’s success and reveled in each new glory. I, on the other hand, didn’t give a monkey’s. I could see nothing remotely inspiring or heroic in the kicking of balls in fields and was moved not one iota by the achievements of my local side, preferring Hammer horror movies and latterly Sex Pistols records.

No, I didn’t like football then and I don’t much care for it now.

Unfortunately, I have since discovered another gaping enthusiasm void, perfectly positioned to set me at odds with my peers. I don’t like Radiohead.

That’s right – Radiohead, the arch crafters of conceptual guitar music; creators of aching odes to anxiety and uncertainty; stunningly capable rock artistes, I consider to be a bit rubbish.

Before you leap to your keyboard, calling for my swift demise, I will happily confirm this to be a problem with me. I am painfully aware that Radiohead have won more awards than Adrian Chiles has had hot dinners and you’d look long and hard to find anyone not completely bowled over by their vision and scope, but my lack of appreciation is as palpable as it is mystifying.

When a band doesn't impress me, I don’t often delve into the reasons. After all, there’s no accounting for taste. But such is the ubiquity of the adoration for Radiohead, I figured I owed it to myself to work out why we don’t connect.

First off, there’s the misery. I completely accept that introspection and self-loathing can produce some stunning works. From Van Gough to Ian Curtis, the suffering soul of a human being has always had the ability to communicate its pain through art and empathy. But it must either be delivered with an ironic wink – as in Morrissey – or be so profoundly sincere, it breaks hearts – as in Nick Drake. Thom Yorke, for me, falls at both hurdles. I can find neither self-effacing sarcasm nor genuine agony in his lyrics, it’s just all a bit whiney. And I don’t like whiney.

Which brings me on to Mr. Yorke’s delivery. Travelling, as I do, on Britain’s rail network a great deal, I am often unfortunate enough to encounter a tired, grouchy and slightly spoilt child, pestering a parent with constant demands for sweets, a wee or just attention. They do this in an elongated and irksome, high pitched tone. Guess who’s singing voice I’m reminded of. And much like those tortured parents, Radiohead songs seem to move me to snap ‘Oh, for goodness sake Thom, do stop moaning !!’

Then there’s the material itself. I’m not foolish enough to expect big pop hooks from this most disgruntled of bands, but something to hum would be handy. Even Pink Floyd have tunes while the likes of No Surprises and Paranoid Android just seem to drone on and on before petering out. By the time we get to the quite dreadful Pyramid Song we are faced with the prospect of a wonkily obscure time signature, Thom thumping away on a piano and (no shock here) moaning and whining atonally. They actually performed this racket live on Top of the Pops.

For most bands, song writing flair evolves as they become more experienced and adept, but for Radiohead, the desire to appear arch and arty has driven away their moderately winning way with a rock song (as heard on Pablo Honey and The Bends). What's more, I’m afraid I find the ‘experimental’ gurgles, which have replaced their more conventional tunes, utterly baffling, not in the least interesting and quite spectacularly pretentious.

Ah yes! Pretentiousness. I think I may be getting to the nub of the problem here. Clearly creative endeavours can be both pretentious and rather wonderful (Pink Floyd's The Wall, the Manic Street Preachers’ The Holy Bible), but Radiohead are far too busy hill-walking in the upper reaches of their own colons to be entertaining. Look at the evidence:

- Album titles: Kid A, The King of Limbs and the truly wanky In Rainbows

- Creep: world conquering single, they refuse to play

- And claim they don’t recognise when they hear it

- Touring in a big tent

- Spelling Tom, ‘Thom’

- They also spell their URL ‘Radiohead Dot Com’ and say their website is 'freeform'.

- Intentionally distorting tracks in the mix so they sound ‘wrong’

- Sometimes wearing beards

I could go on.

You disagree, I know. You quite possibly fancy Radiohead as the finest band ever to walk the face of the earth. Maybe you agree every time OK Computer is voted the ‘greatest album of all time’ in those magazine polls (better than ‘Pet Sounds’, better than ‘Never Mind The Bollocks’?) and you may well be correct.

You could be spot on about those soccer matches too. But, as I say, I have these character defects.

Period drama

2011-08-18T12:59:00.003+01:00

From the off, I am happy to acknowledge I am male and therefore not necessarily best qualified to judge the merits or flaws in advertisements for ‘sanitary protection’. But, as media planners have yet to find a platform completely invisible to men, I glimpse such campaigns from time to time. Ever the critic, I also tend to form opinions on the work.

Interestingly enough, there are two campaigns running right now epitomising the difficulties agencies experience when tackling this area of personal hygiene. One is very successful (or at least unforgettable), the other is excruciating beyond belief.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Although the English always find great humour in bodily functions, we are simultaneously very coy and awkward when faced with the stark reality. Probably the reason we use the phrase ‘sanitary protection’ rather than anything more frank. ‘Sanitary protection’ just as amply describes the lock on a lavatory door as it does tampons or pads, but it spares blushes. Indeed, it’s only in recent years the word ‘period’ has started to appear in UK tampon and towel marketing – although usually accompanied by images of flowers, bunnies and bicycles.

The Japanese are far more forthright about this stuff (some of their lavatory paper ads would drop your jaw). Americans, meanwhile, are even more reticent than us when it comes to grasping the menstrual nettle, referring to towels as ‘napkins’. Perhaps it’s just me, but doesn’t ‘napkin’ initiate a whole new range of inappropriate connotations?

Of course, the market for these products is both ready made and permanent, so the need to advertise them is ever present. Unsurprisingly, those advertisements have tended to veer from the po-faced to the ridiculous. There was a time when it was felt (probably by men) that women really needed to see the mechanical efficacy of the goods – and so ‘absorbancy’ was the watchword. This gave rise to increasingly bizarre but imaginative ways to show how good the fabric was at soaking things up. Naturally – or unnaturally – the slightest suggestion of blood was out of the question, so blue water was deployed as a substitute. They did the same with urine in nappy ads. I feel sure a generation of kids grew up in a panic, terrified they were unable to pass any azure liquid and therefore assuming they must be terribly poorly.

In these bloodless executions, the viewer was inevitably treated to an imaginary laboratory, where a white-sleeved arm would insert the tampon or towel into the liquid, where it would expand 10% more than its competitor. Having tired of this faux-scientific scenario the industry suddenly lurched to a pop-video format. This was not about biology, this was about lifestyle, so on came the clips of women sky-diving, disco dancing and being towed by dogs on roller skates (the women, not the dogs). A Tina Turner soundalike would then roar the brand name over the pack shot. No mention of menstruation here. After all, who has time for a period, when there’s a pack of Dalmatians to harness to a skateboard?

Product design always has a key role to play in the marketing process and ‘sanitary protection’ is no different. In much the same way as air fresheners constantly re-invent themselves in order to appear ‘improved’ and therefore desirable, so the manufacturers of tampons and towels are constantly tweaking their size, packaging, technology and delivery system. From the pads into whose packet one could safely slide its predecessor, to the increasingly streamlined and narrow tampon applicators (wouldn’t you just make them streamlined on day one?), the specifications for these goods have been refined more times than sugar cane.

Which brings me to the two campaigns I mentioned earlier. The first is promoting a tampon called ‘Pearl’ and without doubt, sets the possibility of speaking about these matters like adults back 50 years.

This is the concept: a woman’s period was once thought so disturbing it was known as ‘Mother Nature’s monthly gift’. The brains behind this campaign, instead of recognising, such a toe-curling phrase as the nonsense it obviously is, chose to actually portray ‘Mother Nature’ as a post menopausal old bat who shows up to tell young ladies in white jeans that she has their ‘gift’. They dismiss her with their Pearl tampons in applicators more aerodynamic than a cruise missile and we all die a little inside.

Then there’s the press work for a brand new product called ‘Mooncup’ – which is quite extraordinary*. Mooncup is a reusable device and its USP (at least as far as the advertising is concerned) is that it prevents used, disposable sanitary products washing up on beaches. So the photography in the ad shows us a clean, attractive beach with some shrubbery on a dune. Only the shot has been manipulated to also look exactly like a naked, female torso. You don’t need me to tell you how the – ahem – bush adds to the illusion. The whole thing quite stops you dead on the page, which is more than most press advertising can ever hope to do. Admittedly, the headline ‘Love Your Beach, Love Your Vagina’ helps.

Unfortunately, I fear the makers of Mooncup have their work cut out for them in terms of uptake. A straw poll of female colleagues tells me the notion of a disposable device, designed to be washed in the dishwasher (yes, really), has so little appeal, they would avoid the Mooncup regardless of how many beaches it protects.

But good luck to them, for their ad genuinely boasts some brilliant art direction, which surprises and impresses without remotely patronising or embarrassing its audience. And on the evidence of their competitors, that’s quite an achievement.

*Despite my best efforts I could not obtain a copy of the Mooncup press ad.
It appeared in the Guardian Weekend magazine on Saturday 13th August.

Torrential reign

2011-08-17T22:43:00.003+01:00

“As things stand now, digital music has failed.”

So says Forrester Research analyst Mark Mulligan. Of course he doesn’t mean digital music isn’t being consumed – just glance around any train carriage – what he’s pointing to is an abiding anxiety that the MP3 revolution is almost over and the record companies still aren’t across it. Not that you’d find many industry executives echoing this sentiment. Most will tell you that, as long as they can continue to bear down on piracy and intervene to make it almost impossible to download music illegally, their fortunes will rally.

In the board rooms of large record labels there’s a strong but vain hope that a position can be reached where any file sharing site will be blacklisted from the entire internet by ISP providers. It’s part of a call for a graduated response system which would see naughty up and downloaders warned several times before being thrown off the web. What’s more, the record companies (if we can still call them that) are still eager to chase every torrent service into the nearest court and nail them to the wall. They’ve made a start with Pirate Bay and LimeWire, having tasted blood by the distant closure of the original Napster.

Excuse the comparison, but this is urinating in a force ten gale.

Again and again ISPs have indicated they have no appetite for punishing their valuable and lucrative
customers for using the web for whatever the hell they like. With good reason. Who wants to be known as the first service provider to deny subscribers access to the very product they sell? And besides, it is completely unenforceable. There are now so many ways to connect to the web, all competing for a large but discerning market, it is simply impossible to persuade them all to close the door on a group of file sharers (subscribers likely to pay for high speeds and other extras,
lest we forget).

The harder the recording industry chases the ‘bad people’ the further behind it will lag in the digital race. If the inability to police the distribution of their products doesn’t persuade, they might consider this: most pirate downloaders are big fans of music. That is: the very people whose disposable income the business requires to survive.

However, survival only stands a snowball in hell’s chance of working, if the business forgets the amateur crime fighting and invests in music download platforms to genuinely meet the needs of users. Sitting back and congratulating one another on the success of Spotify and Grooveshark is as insufficient as it is idle. And it’s crucial a rapid move is made away from a strategy which seeks to make life increasingly difficult for these outlets.

Whether iTunes has a realistic business model or not is still a matter of considerable conjecture. But if major record labels imagine Apple’s innovations will wash them back to massive profits on a wave of i-Pods, they’ll find themselves mistaken. In fact, the music industry is now locked into damage limitation – they are simply managing decline. As Billy Bragg says ‘The music scene is in fantastic shape. It’s the music industry that’s in trouble.’

Can that really be it? Is the party now over for the big labels?

It rather depends what’s next. The iPod may have put mobile music back on the map and in the pocket, while Spotify may have unveiled the first accessible virtual music library, but the industry has completely failed to capitalise. MP3 players actually inspired the illegal torrent market, largely because the pirates strolled into the vacuum created by a legitimate business, baffled and angry at new technology. If they’re lucky, the majors have one last shot at getting this digital thing right. As long as further media revolutions (and recording artists) don’t conspire to exclude the old buffers.

To stay in the game, the music industry has no choice but to strive to ensure any forward strategy completely coincides with the highly fickle desires of the consumer. And that demands an agility and deftness they have failed to display for many, many years.

It's not what you think ...

2011-08-17T22:40:00.003+01:00

I work in advertising. I’m also something of a writer. And in a way, I’m a radio presenter. These are all quite enjoyable and satisfying things – at least from time-to-time – and I’m pretty lucky to do them for a living.

I know, because now and again somebody will contact me asking how he or she can get started in one or other of these fields. I’m happy to give what mediocre advice I can (most of my jobs I happened upon by accident, so I’m no expert) and always reply. But often, I am struck by the distance between the impression these correspondents have of creative media work and the reality.

I don’t blame them and I’m certainly not mocking their ambitions. In many ways, it’s the industry’s fault.

Advertising agencies have a vested interest in appearing glamorous, stylish, arch and even (heaven forbid) crazy. It shows clients the depth of their creative thinking and the ‘energy’ they will inject into an account. And naturally, ad agencies can sometimes be stimulating, exciting and fun places to work. So can supermarkets. The point is, more often than not, an advertising business is an office-based environment with the same stresses, politics and frustrations as an insurance company. You’ll look long and hard for leggy models, of either gender, reclining on sofas, absent-mindedly drawing on a Marlboro Light. Celebrity actors supping lattes and cracking witticisms as they prepare for a voiceover are nowhere to be seen, and cabs do not wait expectantly outside the building, readying themselves to whisk copywriters to Barbados for another sun cream shoot.

In fact, disappointingly, most days are spent with a keyboard and screen, trying with ever decreasing gusto to cook up something the client will buy without amending the entire concept into oblivion. And often failing. Then there are the unpaid late nights, the unreasonable criticism and the propensity for employers to hand round the P45s each time an account is lost. Nobody even drinks that much anymore.

Now writing is an interesting career selection. It’s very easy to get into. Just open your laptop and type something. Bingo! You’re a writer. Making a living from your efforts is a touch more tricky.

You may imagine a writer simply slams down whatever is on their mind, emails it off to some publication or other and trundles off for dinner. Unless you’re JK Rowling, this is not even close to a realistic picture. If you are to earn money from your writing, you will have to generate a product which is a) sufficiently liked by an editor and b) stands a chance of making money for a publication, albeit indirectly.

No matter how wonderful, enlightening and original you think your piece to be, there’s every chance it will come winging back with requests for deletions, rewrites, re-ordering and a new angle. Then you have a choice, take your ball away and never work for that editor again, or acquiesce and see your work appear in a format you never intended.

This is even truer for a novel, so it would be wrong to imagine published authors of novels (and indeed, non-fiction works) are swimming in a heated pool of unfettered imagination.

For even a reasonably accomplished scribe, the work can be hard to come by, the deadlines often unrealistic and the end result battered into submission by an uncaring ogre. Finally, there’s the wait for the modest payment.

And what of radio? Surely playing records and talking between them is a well-paid cinch? And so it is, but that is not the job description of most radio presenters or jocks. If getting hired in advertising or writing is a trial, you’d be astonished at the challenge posed by the search for a gig on the wireless. How oafs like Moyles and donuts such as Zane Lowe found their way through is a paradox still baffling scientists to this day.

The suggested route, as voiced with such enormous glibness by careers advisors, is to start off ‘making the tea’. Funnily enough, the BBC and Global Media Group have never, to my certain knowledge, advertised a vacancy for an Executive Tea Maker, so that’s a red herring for starters. The fact is, if you have a good enough demo and send it to enough folk often enough, you may just get a break behind the microphone. Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean all your prayers are answered and the Radio One breakfast show is yours for the taking. Holiday cover for Disco Dave on Wherethehell FM is considerably more likely. If you land a staff role, expect it to be overnights when no-one is listening and ensures you will never see your family again.

It almost goes without saying you will be required to play vast quantities of music you wouldn’t even play at ear-splitting volume to a South American dictator, holed up in his mansion. The station may well demand you read endless pre-written guff from cue cards and will threaten they have somebody better and cheaper waiting in the wings should you fumble the ball. This industry too, is renowned for poor rates of pay and almost non-existent job security.

All that said, please don’t misunderstand. It is hard for me to imagine how I would have had any career whatsoever if these sectors hadn’t allowed me to muck about in their hallowed halls. Despite the long hours doing jobs I didn’t really fancy for people I didn’t really like, I have spent some considerable time enjoying being creative, with some genuinely talented people and sometimes getting paid for it.

So would I recommend a career in the media? Without hesitation, but with a rather large caveat: be very patient, do not approach hoping for fame and fortune, remain robust and resilient and always, always lower your expectations.

Amy dreamers

2011-07-30T23:11:00.004+01:00

Last weekend, 76 people were murdered in Norway and one of Britain’s best-known singers died in her flat.

And so we were torn. Our sympathies were instinctively drawn to the horrendous Norwegian events, but our fascination to Camden Town. Before long, people were deciding on the helping of compassion the victims in each story deserved, like portions of grief porridge. An undertaking as unnecessary as it was in dreadful taste, but one seized upon with undue relish by swathes of the blogosphere, Twiteratti and professional media.

The predictably glib argument went like this: the poor souls who lost their lives in or near Oslo were blameless. Whereas Amy Winehouse invited her death through heavy drug and alcohol use. Poor, poor Norwegians. Silly, silly Amy.

No industry will ever be more closely allied with mood-altering substances than popular music. The romantic explanation suggests the psychonauts of rock and roll use drugs and booze to push at the boundaries of reality and perception and achieve creative profundity. You know the deal, the road of excess leads to the temple of wisdom, and all that. The fact is, the life of a professional recording artist can be hellishly boring. Studio sessions drag on, photo sessions more so.

Then there’s the touring. Charlie Watts once said being on the road with the Rolling Stones was five years performing and 25 years hanging around. Mix that tedium with almost unlimited funds and a plentiful supply of gear and excess is pretty much inevitable; more for something to do than any serious attempt to rise to a higher state of consciousness.

Long before the Beatles dropped acid, they dropped speed to propel them through six live sets a night in the Hamburg clubs. After the gig beers took the edge off the amphetamine.

Billie Holiday found grass and heroin soothed her crippling nerves before taking the stage. Benzedrine kept her going for the after show booze-ups.

These temptations (or even necessities) don’t present themselves quite so readily in the career of a family solicitor or chartered surveyor. But they slide all too easily into the toolkit of the professional musician.

It would be foolish to suggest musical entertainers have no choice in such matters. They are as able to decline offers of powders, herbs and shots as any one of us. It’s just that their work makes ingestion initially desirable, even useful, rather than risky and problematic.

As their audience we, mostly unintentionally, encourage these habits. We love to see stars walking a path fringed with danger, paved with decadence and marked with incident. Because, fame is an exotic concept, we want the famous to lead exotic lives. There is little point in stars resembling and behaving like our neighbours, because we already have neighbours. So, we demand they inhabit a wondrous, alien land, where unimaginable highs are matched only by outrageous flirtation with an unhappy end. It’s exciting, intriguing, thrilling and just a little scary. We urge these people to ride the rollercoaster, because watching them soar and scream is so compelling.

When they don’t, they are nothing more than Justin Beiber.

In life, Amy Winehouse was one of the most documented performers of her generation. When she was written about, her intoxication was never ignored, but nor was it particularly condemned. Journalists of every hue often seemed rather impressed by the anarchy and broken bottles she left in her wake. It convinced them of her authenticity and rebel spirit. Understandably, none of us wanted her to lose those qualities – and yet we were all aware how costly her indulgences and addictions could be. Nobody wanted Amy dead, but very few people wanted her completely sober either.

Never traditionally beautiful, it was Amy Winehouse’s sheer precocious talent that initially thrust her front and centre. Smokey jazz, soul and blues pulsed behind her tales of abandonment, heartache and tears to pull us, irresistibly, to her work. Then, charisma, unmistakable hair and erratic personal affairs kept us riveted. She always looked wild and hazardous and she was. We’d never bring her home to meet the folks, but we’d always climb out of our bedrooms to hang out with her.

Amy may have been as reckless as she was troubled but she had allure, temptation, abandonment, defiance and passion - in spades. And however hard we wish these qualities never had tragic consequences, they often do.

Prized apart

2011-07-24T00:14:00.001+01:00

The problem isn’t losing, it’s winning. Losing attracts back-slaps of commiseration and sympathetic platitudes. Losing brings assurances of injustice and judges with poor taste.

Winning, on the other hand, gives rise to accusations of undeserved spoils, notions of being overrated and, above all, great expectations. Such is the curse on the Mercury Music Prize.

The track record of previous winners doesn’t make happy reading. Indeed, it could be argued, being crowned the victor isn’t so much the kiss of death, more the huge sloppy snog of an ill-fated future. When Roni Size and Reprezent won in 1997, they gave every impression of being at the cutting edge of drum and bass. Their New Forms album, full of rattling washes of ambient electronica packaged in clinical, minimal design, sounded and looked very hip and very young. It felt like the future.

But it wasn’t. The immediate and disproportionate expectation of ever more vital and ground-breaking releases almost froze the band and became a self-defeating prophecy. Reprezent failed to dent the music loving community’s consciousness further. Accusations of domestic abuse aside.

Granted, PJ Harvey and Primal Scream pushed on with successful careers, but they are the exceptions proving the rule. A rule that torpedoed the careers of Speech Debelle, Gomez and Ms. Dynamite before the bubbly corks and paper hats had even hit the bins.

The stated mission of the Mercury Music Prize is to ‘champion music in the UK, mainly through the Albums of the Year competition, which celebrates recorded music of all genres by British or Irish artists.’

So unlike The Brits, this award is not based on sales figures but on artistic merit – it is given for pushing music’s boundaries, innovating and excellence in the art. Or so the organisers would have us believe. By that token, MPeople would have won with Elegant Slumming whether they had sold albums by the hundredweight or barely had a deal – and how likely does that sound?

I would suggest the Mercury panel has many motivations in its decision making process, but artistic merit is only a minor consideration. Much more emphasis is placed on chasing the contender most likely to convey a certain cool on the ceremony and the prize itself. “Look at us” the choice seems to cry, “We have our fingers right on the pulse. We know where it’s at.” And well they might, but for a single rather large elephant in the room: they’re making a prize competition out of contemporary music.

Award ceremonies have always suited certain creative endeavours better than others. Hollywood adores them. So does advertising. But there’s something about good music that depends on a certain authenticity and integrity. A great band will (or should) do exactly what their instinct compels them to. The results are there to be heard, experienced even – but surely not to be measured against other releases.

At least the Top 40 is compiled from comparable metrics: sales and downloads. The Mercury Prize is awarded for purely subjective, critical whimsy. Can anyone really say Adele’s album is better than Ghost Poet’s? And if so, on what criteria? Sure, the judges can prefer one to the other, but that is merely the individual taste of one person, or one panel.

The decision means next to nothing.

Diminishing revenues and profits in the music industry are a secret and surprise to no man. So it makes good sense to cling, like a cat to a buoy, to any activity guaranteed to boost sales of CDs and downloads. The Mercury Music Prize, in most cases, does just that. Last year’s winners The XX sold 200,000 copies of their album once their nomination was announced. (The formula failed Speech Debelle who achieved no more than 15,000 sales, but in the main, the prize is a banker).

So when the artists listed below, clutching their free plonk to their chests at the forthcoming ceremony, and are biting down hard on their bottom lips in anticipation of glory, just remember that the result says zero about the quality of the band or album. In fact, it’s a tiny statement of archness and preference from the judges and an enormous marketing push from the record labels.

Good luck everyone.

The 2011 Mercury Music Prize Nominees are:

Adele – 21
Anna Calvi – Anna Calvi
Elbow – Build A Rocket Boys!
Everything Everything – Man Alive
Ghostpoet – Peanut Butter Blues and Melancholy Jam
Gwilym Simcock – Good Days At Schloss Elmau
James Blake – James Blake
Katy B – On A Mission
King Creosote & Jon Hopkins – Diamond Mine
Metronomy – The English Riviera
PJ Harvey – Let England Shake
Tinie Tempah – Disc-Overy

Hacked

2011-07-17T00:09:00.000+01:00

News of the World, for many years the boorish drunk of the print media, is finished. Up to its red top in charges of illegal, corrupt and venal practices, its owner has cut it away like a necrotic limb.

Some things are self-evidently wicked and the activities of the best known, best selling Sunday title provide the perfect examples. Plundering the voice mails of an abducted and murdered teenager and deleting the messages, thereby encouraging their family to believe they are alive, would be one. Invading the privacy of those whose lives have been stolen by the insanity of terrorism, another.

Frankly, the public’s appetite for the flaws and errors of the celebrity universe is more than hearty. Indeed the content of Rupert Murdoch's NOTW’s was tailored to that very hunger and the paper’s circulation confirmed the size of the market. So the notion the hunter would deploy dirty tricks to nail its quarry, was neither surprising nor overly concerning. But this week, the tectonic plates shifted and vulnerable, bereaved and grieving human beings were seen in the sights of Rupert’s rifle. The British are salacious, easily titillated, coarse and lustful – but they will rarely tolerate cruelty and unfairness. Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?

Monday, when the unimaginable depths of the tabloid's criminality came into focus, marked the moment any
chance of a nonchalant stroll away from the unholy mess slipped from NOTW’s grasp. Just like the poll
tax, the bankers and the bombers, they had crossed the rubicon and become the truly reviled. Two years
ago we wondered how long it would take for us to trust MPs again (answer: no time soon), now that distaste and cynicism is trained on the press. And, just like the expenses debacle, we always suspected there were dodgy shenanigans behind the scenes, but faced with the extent of the casual monstrousness we are utterly dismayed and demanding retribution.

That said, we shouldn't imagine the closure of NOTW has anything to do with regret or contrition. The action is shot through with Murdoch's ruthlessness. Essentially he is terminating the jobs of hundreds to save his own commercial interests and the career of one chief executive.

The registration of the sunonsunday.com domain, may well point to his intentions and strategy.

However, it will take such skill and manipulation to lure a readership and advertising base to any new title, even News International will find the challenge considerable. A simple change of clothing, will not suffice. Not by some distance.

For the low market press, this changes everything. As the media eats itself, they will never again return to their blasé, anything goes, make-it-up-as-we-go world of self-regulation - and the newspaper business was hardly in rude health before this astonishing tale emerged. The Guardian has revealed its priority to be the free online edition, The Sport titles have shut up shop and revenues from the Telegraph to the Mirror are in unstoppable decline. A purge was coming, but few saw it arriving in quite this shape.

Exposure on this scale not only delivers a brutal end to the News of the World, but hastens the metamorphosis of the news media. The shift in the balance of power is already obvious.

Within 24 hours of the appalling allegations breaking, social digital media set about NOTW’s corporate partners (read: big advertisers). Inevitably and one at a time, they withdrew their support from a business which once reveled in scandal, as it was swallowed by its own. The paper which once, alongside its sister The Sun, wielded such power it could claim to make or break elections, was suddenly at the mercy of a digital populace ready to expose the publication's fetid underbelly and lobby its clients to cut the cord. From top flight to bitter end in just four days.

This is what happens when institutions become swollen with power and bloated with conceit. They reach a lofty position playing fast and loose with professional boundaries, the boundaries become blurred, then transparent. Nothing is off limits, no holds are barred and the intrepid feel invincible. It befell Clinton, it beset Enron, it infected Lehman Brothers and now this karmic spectre calls on News of the World.

When suggestions of malpractice first came to light it was only the royals, rich and famous at peril and it must have seemed so easy to dismiss. A ‘rogue’ reporter, a ‘wayward' private eye – nothing to taint the top floor at News International, nothing to reach close to the boardroom. Then Andrew Coulson, former editor and press officer to Cameron became the story. In the dark art of spin this was a mortal sin and he was gone. The tabloid mighty must have prayed this sacrifice would save the tribe. The denials continued while the police persuaded themselves this was a storm in a broadsheet. Two minor players (as it now transpires) took the fall, one was jailed. At the time, this probably looked like the end of the affair. It wasn’t.

Here is a saga with longer tentacles than a giant squid. Coulson was the PM’s media advisor, taking its reach to the height of the establishment. Indeed, Murdoch has been courted by every leader since Thatcher and his ambition to own BSkyB may still be realised, thanks to a nod from the coalition and in spite of the shame and misgivings. The police too, have failed to shower themselves in glory, confirming various papers were buying information from them like a glorified, uniformed wire service. Their initial investigation is now acknowledged to have been little more than a travesty. Nobody here has any claim to the moral high ground. It is just a matter of the depth of their immersion in the swill.

Only a rash man would predict the downfall of News International – even when it has been tarred with such a filthy brush. But the revelation that a 'fun', 'family' newspaper has a soul as dark as night cannot be without profound consquences. So far, that has meant mass sackings for the blameless and the loss of a profitable newspaper for the protagonist.

Unfortunately, this is neither the victory, nor the pardon, either side is hoping for.

Dear John

2011-06-24T00:06:00.000+01:00

The joke runs something like this: “If John Peel could see what Glastonbury has become, he would be spinning in his grave. At the wrong speed.”

We know John was no fan of U2 and quite what he would have made of Beyonce is anybody’s guess. But I don’t think this year’s bash at Worthy Farm was quite bad enough to disturb the great man’s rest (he would surely have adored the superb Jimmy Cliff set).

However, it’s hard to imagine Peely not furrowing his brow and glowering at his wellies if he had seen the BBC television coverage. And this is where his gruff presence is so sorely missed.

For those working in music radio or TV, this must be the booking of the year. Three days at a world famous, sold out music festival, staying in a half decent trailer or even a guest house, food laid on, drinks provided – it’s quite a jolly. So, you’d imagine those lucky enough to be selected would be on top form, delivering exceptional coverage and outstanding commentary.

Some might say, that’s exactly what they do. I wouldn’t be one of them.

First things first: exactly how many anchors does a broadcaster need to cover a music festival? Two? Three? How about eight?

That’s right, eight; a head count, which surely reflects the cushiness of the brief and the willingness of the BBC to indulge the clamour to attend. Almost forgivable if only this crew were as erudite, knowledgeable and incisive as they are giddy, dizzy and starstruck.

If only.

I am genuinely bemused by some of the hiring decisions taken by the national broadcast media. Take Fearne Cotton. She is reasonably attractive and somewhat fashionable. But these are no qualifications for music journalism (and nor should they be). Cotton knows next to nothing about music. That is to say, while she may know the names of current acts and their songs, she clearly has no awareness of popular music’s evolution and history. Which means she is unable to offer any insight other than ‘How amazing was that?’ When one has no comparison and no sense of context, it’s easy to imagine everything is ‘amazing’. It’s like being ten years old. And that’s precisely how she comes across. Reggie Yates is simply her best mate in the playground.

Jo Whiley is older than Cotton, but barely any wiser. It’s astonishing how a presenter with almost 20 years’ experience still appears to be an embarrassed media student, pulled from a provincial campus and plonked before a camera for the first time. Again, Whiley’s considered take on most performances consists of little more than empty adjectives ‘amazing’, ‘wonderful’, ‘astonishing’. Nothing falling under the Whiley gaze could possibly be tainted by a smudge of negativity, every band is perfect, every show beyond criticism. Coldplay brought a tear to her eye. And so it follows, her commentary is utterly pointless.

Of course, this glazed admiration lapses into queasy sycophancy the minute JW is presented with a band on the sofa opposite her chair. Never one to give vocal support to mainstream bands in the past (lest she appear uncool), faced with U2 and Coldplay, the most she could force from her lips were questions as scenery crushing as ‘Were you nervous?’, ‘Did you enjoy it?’ and ‘You didn’t want it to end did you?’. When faced with a Bono on a ramble about Joseph of Arimathea the public needs the likes of a Richard Bacon to keep such nonsense in check – but a swooning Jo was all we had.

John Peel loved music. From death metal to rocksteady, if it was performed with integrity and honesty, he’d play it, support it and enthuse about it. But he had no fear of critical judgement. When he disliked a record, a band or a gig, he would say so without hesitation. He knew a true fan cannot like everything and for him, comment was an essential part of his passion for recorded music. This principle was completely absent in last weekend’s festival coverage.

Don’t mistake this for some latent sexism. I must confess I knew Zane Lowe only by name and reputation, having given up on Radio One many, many years ago – and I was impressed. Impressed by the way one individual, paid to be a communicator, could so consistently make such an utter twonk of himself every time he spoke. If he didn’t exist, Chris Morris would surely have invented this antipodean arse as an exaggerated example of the absurdity of rock presentation. To Lowe, The Horrors haven’t simply added a bit of electronica to their sound, they are now ‘ambiently groove driven … taking the whole vibe to another dimension’. Needless to say there is nothing he doesn’t love to death except Beyonce (who was pretty good). He obviously felt she was in danger of encroaching on his hip credentials.

You’d think we could rely on Lauren Laverne and Mark Radcliffe for perspective, maybe a touch of sarcasm and certainly a healthy helping of salt. But a desperately needed injection of scepticism and irony never materialised. Radcliffe was more concerned with carving out a role as the latter day John Peel to contribute any of his substantial grasp of bands and music culture. Meanwhile, Laverne looked trapped in the headlights of live telly, frozen and babbling (either she couldn’t hear the pleas to wrap up or her earpiece was full of cries of ‘keep going, keep going’.) They should both know better.

So how should the Beeb proceed if we are to avoid this expensive but hollow shambles in 2013 (no Glasto next year)? I have two suggestions.

1. I think we need proper journalists, rather than DJs. Professional folks who understand the subtleties, nuances and curiosities that make up a real interview. People who will bring an appreciation of the importance of background and context and won’t get swept up in the ‘amazing’ nature of a massive pop festival. Surely, if we need a presentation team at all, we need them for analysis and critique – just as we do in sport.

2. I say ‘if we need a presentation team at all’, because I have suspicions we probably don’t. Great camera work, smart direction and intelligent editing should be enough to bring us Glastonbury in all its muddy glory. After all, why shouldn’t we be permitted to watch the acts in which we are interested and decide for ourselves whether or not they pass muster?

Either way, Cotton, Yates, Whiley, Lowe, Laverne and Radcliffe should be saving their pennies, ready to buy their tickets and stand in the rain with the rest of us in two years time. Because they are not required on our tellies.

Centre of the universe?

2011-06-24T00:00:00.000+01:00

So the BBC are flogging Television Centre in Shepherd’s Bush and the great and the good of the media world are sobbing hot tears and spinning fond tales of this wonderful, vintage institution.

Bless.

However, truth be told, TV Centre is a rather ugly old pile with insufficient parking and the feel of a late 1960s hospital with budget problems. Most of the people who worked there had little good to say about the place and the nation’s favourite uncle, Terry Wogan, often called it ‘the deserted doughnut’. Now history is frantically being rewritten and the structure is presented as an emblem of an imaginary, golden era of broadcasting, long since abandoned to the garish vulgarity of reality shows and Sky 3.

So what’s really going on here? Well, principally something called Media City UK. Media City is a rather spectacular, purpose built complex, overlooking an attractive expanse of water and conveniently situated near some very amenable restaurants and shops. It has its own public transport station and regular services to and from the buildings. This is to be the new home of various BBC projects, some displaced by the sale of TV Centre. It’s an impressive development and most non-media folk would be delighted to work in such a modern, well-equipped facility.

But it’s in Manchester (or Salford Quays to be precise).
And that will never do.

Yes, incredibly in 2011, the ridiculous and wholly unnecessary snobbery of the north/south divide is
alive and thriving at the BBC.

When the idea to move a substantial mass of the Beeb to the former dockland area on the far side of Salford,
it was met with doubt, derision and denial. Many in the capital’s media cliques thought it would never really happen and scoffed at the notion that successful programming could be created anywhere that far north of Oxford. But the time for skepticism has passed. The project is happening and shows (mostly radio) are already being made at Media City. Before long BBC Breakfast, almost all of 5Live and all children’s shows will be created there.

Presenters, staff and unions have been up in arms. How can their employer seriously expect them to leave London and relocate? It is so unfair – they claim. To an extent I do have some sympathy with anyone who has been disrupted by changes within the organisation for which they work. It can be a huge upheaval and genuinely unwelcome. But guess what? Companies have taken decisions like these many times before. Either for strategic, financial or market reasons, they have relocated (sometimes to other countries) and insisted their employees move with them or move on. However unpleasant these instances have been, they have always gone largely unreported outside the business pages, because they are really little more than the cut and thrust of the fragile, commercial world of employment.

However, when a similar arrangement involves lifting myriad journalists, writers, presenters and producers out of the metropolis, it is deemed such a blow to their self-image and self-respect, it is tantamount to a national crisis. Even though covering the events and activities of a nation from one city in the south east clearly defies good sense and logic.

Of course, the media has always been particularly guilty of such regionalism. I don’t perceive engineering companies indulging in a pecking order based on their proximity to Trafalgar Square, nor construction firms or opticians. But the advertising, broadcasting, design and creative industries have persistently had a foolish hang up about their post codes. Despite some of the finest creative work being produced in the regions. - Aardman Animations (Wallace & Grommit) are in Bristol, director Shane Meadows is Nottingham based, award winning brand agency The Attik are in Huddersfield – there is still an enormous bias towards London. Indeed, in my time in the advertising business I have seen accounts and clients gravitate to the capital for no other reason than it is … well … the capital.

This attitude is not only tiresome, counter productive and a little silly – in a digital age, it is completely archaic.

Moving a swathe of the BBC to Salford Quays may inconvenience a few people, upset one or two egos and drive the more stubborn souls out of the corporation. But if it lifts the creative industries out of a single-city mentality and into a more inclusive frame of mind, I am all for it.

Freed from bondage

2011-05-23T23:51:00.000+01:00

If Siouxsie Sioux was the dark, feline, icy ying of female punk, then Poly Styrene was the awkward, loud and colourful yang.

Poly, born Marianne Elliot-Said and the former singer with the X-Ray Spex, has died at the age of 53.

She formed the band after seeing Sex Pistols play on Hastings Pier on her 18th birthday and soon became
immediately recognised by followers of the movement thanks to her idiosyncratic vocals, fantastic headgear
and glinting dental braces. Her style was unconventional even by new wave standards,but was also incredibly
motivating and infectious.

X-Ray Spex songs tended to avoid the nihilism of the Pistols and the revolutionary spirit of The Clash in favour of critiques of consumerism and environmental destruction. Their best known number was the typically strident ‘Oh Bondage Up Yours!’, a rebellious rant of rejection which tackled social and gender norms and kicked off with Poly's voice mocking: "Some people think little girls should be seen and not heard."

Perhaps surprisingly, X-Ray Spex released just one album, Germ Free Adolescents, in 1978, but they didn’t waste the opportunity. The LP carried all their best numbers ‘Identity’, ‘Warrior in Woolworths’, ‘I’m A Cliché’ and the tremendous title track. They also showed a sax wasn’t out of place on a punk recording.

Not long after the band released the album, they split. Poly went solo and put out a more nuanced record, Translucence, in 1980 then retreated from the music industry to join the Hare Krishna movement.

Living in a Krishna temple in Hertfordshire with her daughter, she developed bipolar disorder but continued her creative career and recently launched a new musical work called ‘Generation Indigo’.

A late diagnosis of cancer of the spine and breast brought a final, insurmountable challenge and a statement on her official Twitter feed said: "We can confirm that the beautiful Poly Styrene, who has been a true fighter, won her battle on Monday evening to go to higher places."

Poly: "I know I'll probably be remembered for Oh Bondage Up Yours!" she told 6 Music last month. "I'd like to remembered for something a bit more spiritual."

Time will tell whether that becomes the case, but the fact she will be remembered is beyond doubt.

Closing the pop mart

2011-05-19T23:50:00.000+01:00

U2 is the biggest band in the world. If ticket sales are the measure, then The Edge and pals overtook The Rolling Stones earlier this week. So they really should be at the height of their powers. In fact, it could be argued they’re all but finished.

Look at the evidence. The last U2 album ‘No Line On The Horizon’ sold comparatively poorly and only produced a sole, meagre minor hit. This was despite an enormous marketing push and BBC2 being rebranded in support of the record. The official line from the band was that it wasn’t really written to have mass appeal and lacked obvious singles. This is disingenuous to say the least. Indeed, it's akin to Spinal Tap’s ‘more selective appeal’ argument. If there's one band that makes records with the intention of selling truckloads , it’s these fellows.

The fact is, U2’s commercial potential is now entirely split. As a touring rock and roll show, they have proved they can put more denim clad bums on more plastic seats than any other act. No contest. But as a recording unit – considered as ‘artists’ if you like – their stock is visibly and rapidly diminishing. Do people want to watch the foursome cavort under a huge lighting rig in an enormodome? Indeed they do. In their thousands. But do punters want to hear a selection of unfamiliar new tracks from Dublin's finest on CD or MP3. Mm, not particularly, no.

This is a syndrome increasingly affecting a number of acts. Funnily enough, it was U2’s ticket flogging rivals, The Rolling Stones, who probably first exhibited the malaise. It's widely accepted that the Stones have failed to produce an album of real note since … well … ‘Emotional Rescue’, at a push. They could float a new album on the industry’s most engorged marketing budget and still only anticipate a modest success. Nobody is breathless with anticipation, awaiting new material from the Glimmer Twins.

But put the Stones on the road and you are looking at the business end of half a billion dollars in tickets and merchandising, guaranteed sell out houses and records broken every night. What's more, you can be sure someone will bung the whole deal on a DVD and a clutch of TV networks will jump over each other to screen it.

The two offerings are utterly distinct and one is as dubious as the other is spectacular.

There is no doubt in my mind, that Jagger, Richards, Watts and Wood are very comfortable with this arrangement and record new albums out of habit and contractual obligation, rather than feeling they have anything profound left to add to their portfolio. In truth, they only really exist as truck-bound nostalgia fest, albeit an entertaining one.

However, U2 would strenuously resist any similar description. It’s clear that Bono is certain the outfit has much music still to make, songs to write and points to score. Apart from him being that sort of guy, the band is founded on a semi-punk credibility, a ‘something to say’ philosophy that demands new, listened to, material. Whereas The Stones have always flogged themselves as a ‘good time’ blues band and therefore exclude themselves from any ‘spokespeople for a generation' pretentions.

For the Irishmen, this is an unfortunate position. Of course, it’s entirely possible the next U2 album will be so compelling, such an extraordinary return to form, that its sales will match their touring income and they will truly rule the world. But is that likely? And will their audience really prefer a set of their new numbers to ‘Pride’, ‘Where The Streets Have No Name’ and ‘I Will Follow’?

I’d say, it’s highly probable their records will continue to deliver diminishing returns while their tours will sell like towels in a sauna.

Then U2 will either have to break up or accept they have become the Rolling Stones of the 21st century.

Anything you can do ...

2011-05-18T22:35:00.000+01:00

So Ronan Keating says he intends to make acting his full time career. I wonder what has led him to this decision. Could it be the string of BAFTAs, Oliviers and Academy Awards he has already attracted for his searing and heartfelt performances in a string of cutting edge dramas? No, frankly.

I can only imagine that, faced with a shrinking solo career and a limit on the number of Boyzone reunion tours he can stomach, he just figured acting would be a half decent substitute. An insult to genuinely talented but struggling thespians to be sure – but also indicative of a malaise that strikes the successful entertainer all too often. Let’s call it ‘overreach’.

All the confidence and self-regard that accompanies achievement in a public arena has the tendency to mutate into ill-founded ambitions to enter other fields and anticipate similar rewards. Perhaps the internal argument goes something like this:

“I am a half reasonable vocalist whose band got lucky releasing a string of singles at a time our kind of stuff was popular and now I am rich and recognisable. QED, when my agent persuades some poor sap to cast me in their motion picture / TV show / play, there is no doubt my proficiency will shine like venus on a clear night.”

The phenomenon has undoubtedly flourished in these sleb-fixated times, but it is actually nothing new. True, we guffaw and ridicule when we hear that Ashley Cole fancies embarking on a music career (rightly so), however we shouldn’t forget that Messers Jagger, Bowie and Sumner have also ventured outside their specialties and fallen flat on their pretty faces. And, almost unbelievably, former Prime Minister Harold Wilson took on a talk show in the 1970s. The results were predictably hideous as he sat in silence, listening, every time his earpiece became active.

Of course, a TV chat show is the natural home for the overreacher. After all, it looks so easy. Once you’ve peaked as an anchor, reality show mainstay or stand up comedian, it can’t be too hard to sit and natter to mates with books to plug, can it? To do it impressively, of course, is terribly hard – but that hasn’t stopped a queue of media types pulling up a leather chair and pointing it at a sofa. Admittedly, some have suceeded (Frank Skinner, Graham Norton), nevertheless Davina, Anthony Cotton, Johnny Vaughan and Fern Britton have all stumbled on this deceptively rocky road. Each of these people has proven, specific abilities but ‘overreach’ urged them to a format in which they were under-experienced and ultimately underwhelming.

The affliction also taints those we’d expect to know better. The Ten O Clock Show was an ambitious project for Channel Four. An hour of live, satirical and topical humour once a week and scheduled against Question Time. It might have worked if it had been fronted by proven satirists and/or hardened journalists, but it crumbled when it was actually helmed by comics Jimmy Carr and David Mitchell, and DJ Lauren Laverne. The only intelligent pick was pithy, pissed off writer Charlie Brooker and it showed. Presumably Carr and Mitchell felt a ‘little bit of politics’ wasn’t beyond their comedy abilities and Laverne guessed it wasn’t such a tough brief – after all, she’d done The Culture Show. But common sense should have dictated that a razor sharp dissection of the week’s news is tough enough for those who know what they’re doing. 60 minutes on live telly, with no track record and it’s going to be an uphill slog. Nevertheless, once again, ‘overreach’ took over and the outcome was, at best, very, very patchy.

And so it continues. Big Brother contestants crash and burn fronting projects they could never hope to grasp, panel programme also-rans host lengthy award ceremonies with piss poor scripts and far too little charisma. Models write novels, singers design dresses and actors open restaurants. Again and again these ventures garner nothing other than tears and embarrassment. Overreaching does that with surprising efficiency.

Happily, it is a syndrome easily avoided. Simply discover what you’re good at, do that well, concentrate on doing it better, try to become exceptional BUT never, under any circumstances, begin to believe your flair in one field suggests you will be anything other than dismal in another.

Not your typical girl

2011-04-23T22:20:00.000+01:00

The great myth about late 70s UK punk bands is their inability to play. In fact, The Clash and Sex Pistols could play pretty well, and the Buzzcocks and The Damned were more than proficient.

But The Slits really weren't. Formed in 1976 by Arianna Forster (Ari Up) who has died aged 48, and her friend Paloma Romero (Palmolive), their lack of musical skill and tender age presented no barriers. Arianna was just 14, but thanks to the do-it-yourself spirit of the time, their amatuerish performances were regarded by many as being most authentic if not particularly listenable.

Perhaps it was inevitable Arianna would pursue a creative life. Her mother was Nora Forster, a friend of Jimi Hendrix, boyfriend of rocker Chris Spedding and the daughter of the owner of Der Spiegel. What's more, Nora would go on to marry John Lydon (Johnny Rotten), front man of Sex Pistols and shy figurehead of the UK punk movement.

By 1977, Ari and Palmolive had been joined by Viv Albertine and Tessa Pollitt and The Slits were regularly supporting The Clash on tour. Footage of the band appears in Don Letts' The Punk Rock Movie and does confirm their basic approach to their instruments, but it also shows their appeal. It's clear these young women were driven, serious and full of the limitless energy reserved for the very young. And that is surely what people loved about the group.

The Slits probably didn't realise it, but they were also blazing something of a trail for women in rock, putting an end to the manipulation of groups like The Supremes and confronting their audiences and the industry in a way previously set aside for hairy blokes. They were women, but they were never demure.

As with many of their contemporaries, The Slits had a huge regard for reggae, but unlike most punk bands who used the Jamaican influence only now and again, Ari Up and her crew adopted it as their principal sound, combining it with an angular, metallic new wave that was limited but all their own. Unsurprisngly, John Peel was an early fan and their first recordings were a session for his show.

Palmolive's relationship with Joe Strummer ensured the band had access to some rudimentary tuition and in 1979 they entered the studio to record their debut album for Island Records. Appropriately, reggae stalwart Dennis Bovell was tasked with producing them and is widely acknowledged to have done a near faultless job in capturing their naive, schoolgirl dub and spiky, jerky guitar stabs.

The record, named 'Cut', reached number 30 on the album chart, but the music was overshadowed by the sleeve. Featuring the band covered head-to-toe in mud, bare breasted and sporting loin cloths, it led to the departure of Palmolive who was very much against the concept.

Clearly Ari had no taste for pop stardom and further releases were steadfastly experimental. Work with Bristol's Pop Group and a relatively unsuccesful second album 'Return of the Giant Slits' preceded the band's split in 1982.

This freed Ari to explore beyond exotic music. I can safely say she was the only figure from the original London punk scene to live with the tribal peoples of Indonesia and Belize. Sporting a proud headful of dreadlocks (and an interesting hybrid accent), she then settled in Kingston, Jamaica with her husband and twin daughters.

A new band was formed, The New Age Steppers, and Ari continued to record with them and as a solo artist, occasionaly using the titles Baby Ari and Madussa.

In 2005 Ari released her only solo album 'Dread More Dan Dead' and in 2006, The Slits reformed - or at least Arianna and Tessa Pollitt toured Europe, the USA and Japan under the name - producing an EP with the help of Sex Pistol Paul Cook and Ant Marco Pirroni. Only last year, an LA label announced they had signed the band and were planning a fresh Slits album.

That was not to be and of course, Arianna would never trouble the UK charts again. But I feel sure this wouldn't have worried her one bit. So many artists refer to themselves as free spirits (while regarding their royalty statements like hawks), but Ari genuinely did embody the notion of following one's heart whatever else the world expected.

A friend of the Rocking Vicar who knew her said 'She was completely nuts but only did anything because she wanted to.'

That seems an exciting, brave and honest way to live a life.

That Thursday feeling ...

2011-04-18T23:43:00.000+01:00

The first edition of Top of the Pops was broadcast from Dickenson Road in Rushholme, Manchester in 1964 and featured the Rolling Stones, The Beatles and Dusty Springfield. It was presented by Jimmy Saville.

We can’t watch it now. It was the BBC’s habit to wipe broadcasts of ‘no particular significance’ and that first
show was a victim of that policy. From that debut, TOTP ran until the Summer of 2006, when it was pulled from the schedule (barring a Christmas Day edition).

Since then, rumours of a resurrection have persisted but have been unfounded. Even a campaign by Andy Burnham and the Ting Tings failed. But now something stirs.

BBC4 has announced it will show every episode still in the archive (starting in 1976), in its original Thursday night slot. They’ll have already launched the parade with an evening of TOTP shows, by the time you read this.

I may well be dead by the time the entire stash has gone out, but the whiff of nostalgia pouring from anyone over 30 is already palpable.

A wise man once pointed out that the BBC is always burning with a desire to impress the edgy kids. Something it can’t really achieve, but drives it to make foolish decisions nonetheless. Hence the Brand and Ross affair, the less than talented but hip callow youths with shows on Radio 1, Dr. Who being taken away for years and, yes, Top Of The Pops' cancellation.

But, like the BBC itself, TOTP was never cool. To the groovy folk in the 60s, the punks in the 70s, the Blitz Kids in the 80s and indie troops in the 90s, it was always there to be mocked and derided. It was too brash, too crass, too cheesy, too much like a wedding reception, never enough like a nightclub.

But, without fail, we watched it. We watched it because here was the chance to see bands who were genuinely credible (to our ears at least) flash across BBC1 at peak time. Watching The Cure, The Stranglers, David Bowie, The Specials, The Damned or Dr. Feelgood – preening or leering into the camera, ten minutes before Tomorrow’s World, felt great. The ‘rubbish’ format was there to let us feel smug and superior, the lesser ‘novelty’ pop acts appeared for our sneering and the great bands clattered in to subvert the whole farrago. The feeling was akin to being a guest at a juvenile, prissy party when suddenly, some very exciting gatecrashers show up.

After its demise, Simon Cowell expressed an interest in buying the rights to the show, but that would have been as hopeless. Only the BBC could produce TOTP and make it work, because (Coronation Street excepted), only the BBC can generate shows that stand as cultural monuments. When ITV attempted to carbon copy the show in the 80s (it was called ‘The Roxy’) it crashed. It was all but identical but we couldn’t accept the format from any other broadcaster.

Of course, tweaking the formula wasn’t unknown. At one point it was decided to dub whooping party noises over the bands (who were in turn miming over backing tracks). There was a surfeit of balloons and streamers and clapping. All the more entertaining when Sisters of Mercy appeared.

Another phase saw the instrumentalists mime while the vocals were performed live (exposing one or two underperforming singers in the process). The artists’ miming was always a source of consternation amongst the music purists and always the blunt end of the argument against the programme’s existence. Introducing the live singing was intended to be some sort of sop, but the miming debate was a red herring. Now we have X-Factor where every vocal is live and the snobs are even less content.

TOTP was removed when its ratings had declined to around a fifth of their peak and at a time when it felt particularly out of step. The MP3 revolution was in full swing, it was being asserted, adamantly, that the ‘single’ no longer really existed and that pop music was being overwhelmed by gaming platforms anyway. The Beeb responded by giving the show a couple of ineffectual re-brands, moving it to a Friday and ultimately to Sunday night to give it more proximity to the release of the chart. All this was designed to make TOTP more urgent, relevant, dynamic and aligned with ‘da kids’. It didn’t work, the Beeb blinked and it was all over.

As it turns out, those knee jerk reflexes were unnecessary. Singles are now selling in a brisk fashion (albeit as downloads) and acts like The Script and Adele are as popular with young folks as Medal Of Honour or Angry Birds will ever be.

It‘s true, other music programmes have tackled contemporary music with more style, wit and insight than TOTP every did. ‘Later’ would never dream of allowing miming, ‘The Tube’ had its finger firmly on the pulse for a good decade, ‘The (Old Grey) Whistle Test’ was always very earnest and The Culture Show now frequently elevates popular bands to their rightful place in the country’s consciousness. No wonder we often thought TOTP deserved a right good shoeing.

But with 20/20 hindsight, it’s obvious that slating TOTP, while a national sport, was completely pointless. The show never existed to explore the hidden depths of experimental music. It wasn’t there to muse on the subtle appeal of dub, progressive rock or world music. Its remit was simple – to give a platform to the singles performing particularly well on the national chart in any given week, and put the number one at the end.

Watch the BBC4 re-runs and I think you’ll find they did it pretty well.

Trouble rap

2011-04-10T22:38:00.000+01:00

The Guardian’s Weekend magazine recently featured Jay-Z as its cover star and interviewee. In the piece, Jay-Z explains the lyric to the song ’99 Problems (But A Bitch Aint One)’ is actually a decoy. Apparently it has been crafted to cause alarm in the narrow minded, prejudiced critic who may well be enraged by the use of the word ‘bitch’ to describe women, when the bitch in the recording is actually a police dog.

Yes well, all very clever, but there are two fundamental problems with this. For starters, the song wasn’t written by Jay-Z (a fact he either didn’t reveal, wasn’t known or was excluded from the article), so the supposed ironic trick actually belongs to fellow rap stars Ice T and Bun B.

The second – and far more relevant issue is this: Jay Z’s material is frequently derogatory to women and often accuses them of attempting to seduce him in order to steal his wealth. Beyonce excluded, presumably.

"Many chicks wanna put Jigga fist in cuffs
Divorce him and split his bucks
Just because you got good head, I'm a break bread
So you can be livin' it up?"

Jay Z, Big Pimpin’

The interview was conducted by Simon Hattenstone and it wouldn’t have taken a few minutes of his journalistic time to expose the hypocrisy in Jay-Z’s argument, but this wasn’t his tack. As is so frequently the case when white, middle class media types rub up against rappers, he was busting a gut to show how Hip-Hop is largely misrepresented and its content misunderstood.

Sometimes, of course, this is true. KRS1 is a rapper who has spent most of his career producing intelligent songs which challenge the excesses of his contemporaries. Miss Dynamite also used a lyric to question rap’s love of diamonds, when so many of these gems are produced by impoverished and imperilled Africans. But these instances are very much the exception.

Many rap recordings are riddled with aggressive misogyny, an unhealthy glamourisation of firearms and a depressing tendency to equate money with achievement. Unfortunately, this is an inconvenient truth for the broadsheet hack attempting to acquire street credibility by praising a particular Hip-Hop artist and who, by overlooking it, betrays an inverted snobbery.

If another musical genre (let’s say a strand of Heavy Metal) leant so heavily on such reactionary philosophy, it would surely be roundly and rightly condemned by the liberal media. When it is released by a former gang member from the Bronx or South Central LA, it is somehow transformed into street poetry and induces much head nodding and chin stroking. Indeed, a great many Hip-Hop artists have latched onto this notion, attempting to explain away the promotion of physical and sexual violence as social commentary. Sorry, but I simply don’t buy this.

"Fatal attractions is mad real
Last bitch I deaded got mad and swallowed 50 Advil's
They say money make the world go round
Material things make a hoe go down"

50 Cent, After Me Chedda

This lyric is not a commentary of any sort. It is the juvenile spewing of an emotionally backward idiot, but it is so rarely described as such, its passage into the cultural mainstream is almost entirely unhindered. This fawning and forgiving by the commentators of the left leaning media is similar to the slack jawed sycophancy one sometimes sees in those enchanted by highly attractive but reprehensible members of the opposite sex. And it’s just as pathetic.

None of this would really matter if Hip-Hop had no traction, no profile, no influence. Somewhere in this sorry world lurks a band called Skrewdriver who are really no more than racist skinheads. They’d like to think otherwise, but they are no threat to anybody, as they are almost universally ignored. Hip-Hop is very, very different. Rap acts account for an enormous proportion of the music industry’s income and most of that revenue comes from young men. While I am sorely tempted to resist the connection between any music form and bad behaviour (I had to undergo all that with punk), I see evidence of Hip-Hop’s (or at least some of its purveyor’s) negative influence in many places. The prevalence of guns in some urban estates, the rise of gang related assaults, the attitude of some young men to crimes like rape – all have echoes in the songs of enormously rich and spectacularly popular Hip-Hop stars.

Now, it would be a fool who claimed any youth movement accounted for all society’s failings, but if a disenfranchised young man admires artists claiming their aggressive criminality and shoddy treatment of women have led to success; and that success is illustrated by their gaudy displays of monetary wealth, what conclusion is the kid supposed to draw?

I must emphasise, I am not in any way flirting with the notion that black men are corrupting white children. That would be vile and completely untrue. This is absolutely not about race: Eminem’s raps frequently feature him fantasising at length about murdering his ex-wife, after all. Neither am I siding with the right leaning press who would seek to ban something as innocuous as a micro-scooter as well as most rap recordings. Censorship is the last resort of the coward and is as dangerous as a style of music advocating the ownership of automatic weapons.

However, I would be very keen to see journalists with access to high-selling music stars acquiring a set of cojones and challenging infantile, dangerous bile wherever they find it. Rather than getting all dizzy and excited by the presence and heady edginess of deeply credible (but terminally unpleasant) recording artists like the currently incarcerated Lil Wayne. For everyone's sake.

"And the E is for ever elegant Erica
A sweet red bitch we used to call her Miss America
I aint gon lie now
Erika is a dog"

Lil Wayne, Alphabet Bitches

The Man Who Fell To Earth

2011-04-09T23:26:00.000+01:00

Some things are hard to admit. Pilfering cigarettes from your Mum’s dinner party would be one. Using the same train ticket for six weeks would be another. But admitting David Bowie hasn’t been much cop for about 25 years – well, that takes real emotional courage.

If there was ever an artist touched by an almost supernatural genius, surely it was Bowie. From 1969’s 'Space Oddity' to 1980’s 'Scary Monsters', he produced a body of near faultless work. Not simply interesting or satisfactory, but heart-stopping in its scope, invention and creativity. What’s more, unlike contemporaries Lou Reed and Iggy Pop, he was a household name and hugely commercially successful. Even the more experimental exercises on 'Low' and 'Heroes' did nothing to detract from his standing as one of the world’s most admired, dazzling and purchased recording artists.

But Bowie was always a breed apart. While Rod Stewart and the Rolling Stones were firmly anchored in the rhythm and blues which spawned their careers (likewise Dylan and protest folk), David Bowie appeared to be creating brand new genres on a six monthly basis – sci-fi rock, glam, white soul, industrial synth and more. If he was ever too camp or outré for the post-hippy musical traditionalists, he was never dissuaded from his theatrical adventures and constant re-invention. Indeed his approach dared the conservative plodders still adhering to the twelve bar formulae of Deep Purple and the nascent metal acts to re-think everything. Through the 70s, only T-Rex and Roxy Music really challenged rock and roll convention with anything like the same vigor. Until punk, it would have been a very dreary decade without Bowie, Bolan and Ferry. And Bowie led that trinity.

Punk is often seen as a year zero. This was the movement with the scorched earth policy, which took no prisoners and left the old school dying in the dust. But there was an exception. Indeed, the Bromley Contingent – the Sex Pistols’ fan base, which gave birth to Siouxsie and the Banshees and Generation X – came together through their shared admiration of David Bowie.

In the early 80s, The Blitz Kids (later New Romantics) arrived to replace the stagnating punks and who was their figurehead? Who pushed them to a wider audience via his Ashes To Ashes video?

And yet, and yet. Even as Bowie led Steve Strange and his friends along that beach, in their nun, priest and clown costumes, David Bowie was only a couple of years from the ‘Tonight’ album and drop in quality so marked, it was hard to believe this was the same artist and not some imposter recruited to compensate for the real David’s unexplained disappearance.

This was no forgivable blip. After ‘Tonight’ things went from bad to worse. I recall a press conference to launch the Glass Spider tour in 1987. Bowie seemed to be subtly acknowledging his frailties and promising a return to form, with fantastic sets and a fine band. Most of us believed him until we saw the gigs. Dismay rapidly set in as we gazed upon a mulleted man in a crimson jump suit with plastic wings, trolling out anemic versions of his old hits and new stuff so lame it was hard not to wander off to the pizza stand shaking one's head.

‘Never Let Me Down’ – the album he was plugging - was a new low (as opposed to a new ‘Low’, sadly) bringing grown men to tears of disappointment and frustration.

Admittedly forming a ‘proper’ band was at least unexpected and did much to give us hope of a Bowie revival and new impetus for the man who once made songs like ‘Scary Monsters and Supercreeps’ sound at once effortless and so astonishingly good they may well have been beamed from another dimension. Surely he still had that ability in his head and that power in his heart. No, not really.

The Tin Machine project has enjoyed some retrospective kudos, but not much. They were superficially noisy and owned some smashing suits, but their output was never anything inspiring and had they not had Bowie as their lead singer, they would never had managed so much as a contract, let alone two albums.

I’d like to pinpoint a moment when it all came right, but I cannot. At the same time it is also too painful to recount the evaporation of the man’s talent, release by release, track by track. So the simple truth is this: somewhere around 1983 David Bowie lost it. Whether you include the ‘Let’s Dance’ collection as the start of the decline or regard it as Bowie’s last great (albeit very mainstream) album is a moot point – nevertheless either just before or just after the release of that huge selling LP, an unexplained rot set in.

Maybe such a level of exceptional achievement is just unsustainable and we should be grateful that Bowie’s abilities were so mighty they carried him through a fifteen year period of unbroken highs. Perhaps Bowie’s only failing was forgetting to retire in 1984. But being a rock star isn’t like being a civil engineer and I can’t think of a single example of a famous musician simply putting down pen and guitar to spend their days in a country cottage. And as a solo artist, David could hardly split up.

Earlier this week, Radio 2 re-broadcast a live performance given by David Bowie to a select BBC audience in 2002. Although the man was in fine avuncular form between songs, the set was heavy on material from that year's so-so ‘Heathen’ album and, although admirably eclectic, firmly resisted the spectacular glories of 'The Man Who Sold The World' or 'Aladdin Sane'.

Then, without warning, he rolled out the divine ‘Bewlay Brothers’ from 1971’s ‘Hunky Dory’. And how it leapt from the DAB, sublime genius rippling through every note, every cadence. Sung with conviction, style and skill, the Bowie we fell in love with was right there.

And then he was gone.

Deep South

2011-03-23T23:33:00.000Z

At the end of January 1976, vascular disease did what the authoritarian might of the American government had failed to do. It broke Paul Leroy Robeson, killing him with a massive stroke.

Imagine for a moment that Bob Marley, at the height of his career, had been labelled a dangerous radical, prevented from international travel, banned from live performance and his records removed from radio playlists. Would that have shocked you? Then consider this man's extraordinary life.

Robeson was born in 1898 and long before stardom called, he showed himself to be exceptional. The son of an escaped slave, at high school and university his sporting prowess saw him playing football at a national level. But in the early 1920s he took up amateur theatre and within ten years was globally famous for his work on screen, stage and radio.

Paul Robeson was the first black man to play Othello in an otherwise white cast but incredibly, it wasn’t acting or sport that was to be his creative legacy. It was his voice.

Most vocalists bear some resemblance to other singers,
but it is all but impossible to recall a delivery approaching
Robeson’s. A bass baritone, to hear this man sing is to hear
a sound so deep it seems to rise from the Earth’s mantle,
so rich it appears to be pouring molasses into your chest
cavity and so soulful you fear you may evaporate in tears.

With this staggering ability, Robeson’s performances in films
like ‘Show Boat’ (in which he performed ‘Old Man River’) saw
his fame spread and his fans become legion. By the 1940s, he
was arguably the most famous African American of all time.
That’s when he did something as notable as it was unexpected.

Always politically interested – he had supported the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War – at the pinnacle of his fame, he decided that showbusiness should make way for a role as a political artist, dedicated to using his profile and creativity to raise awareness of injustice, oppression and prejudice, wherever he observed it. Naturally, the cause closest to his heart was the U.S. civil rights movement, which sought to end segregation and racial murder in America, but he was driven to understand and join struggles throughout the globe.

He founded the International Committee on African Affairs, he spoke out against fascist Italian incursions into Ethopia and in favour of the revolution in China. When his management expressed alarm at these activities and the potential harm it was doing to his career, he simply said “I can’t help it. Something inside me has turned.”

Unfortunately, these were less than liberal times and an influential black man, with an inclination to vocalise his objections to draconian regimes alongside his stirring music, could not avoid the attention and condemnation of the men in power.

Throughout World War Two, Robeson had been a keen supporter of the allied war effort, even raising funds for the troops affected by the attack on Pearl Harbour. He was a patriot, but when the Iron Curtain fell, left-leaning celebrities were not looked upon with any favour. Not that this held him back. When four men were lynched in Alberta, he telegraphed President Truman to demand action and suggest reluctance was tacit approval. The continuing atrocities in the American south inspired him to lead a 30,000 person march to the Lincoln Memorial, insisting on federal intervention and protection. Addressing the crowd he said “This country can call out the Army, Navy and National Guard to restrict union actions. Why then can we not stop the lynchings?”

It was too much. He was embarrassing the establishment and becoming a thorn in the side of the administration. In 1949 an anti-lynching delegation was refused a meeting with Truman and in 1950, Paul Robeson’s passport was withdrawn. Primarily because of his activism, but also because his concerts and records were now branded ‘communist’ and banned, making international concert tours his sole source of income.

They wanted him broke, frustrated and silent. They didn’t get their wish.

In an act of defiance, unions in the U.S. and Canada organised a concert on the border of Washington state and British Columbia on May 18, 1952. Paul Robeson stood on the back of a flat bed truck on the American side and performed a concert for a 40,000 strong crowd on the Canadian side. Over the next two years, two further concerts took place.

Despite his travel ban and with the encouragement of his friend the Welsh politician Aneurin Bevan, Robeson recorded a number of radio concerts for supporters in Wales.
Continuing his activism, he presented the United Nations with an anti-lynching petition. Called ‘We Charge Genocide’ the document asserted that the U.S. federal government, by its failure to act against lynching in the United States, was "guilty of genocide" under Article II of the UN Genocide Convention.

In 1958 Paul Robeson was handed his passport back. No gratitude was asked and none was given.

The story of this enormously talented and hugely committed man is very much of its time. Paranoia (and people) ran riot in the United States in the aftermath of two global conflicts and movements dedicated to liberty were all too readily taken to be subversive and seditionary. What is striking is Robeson’s unique ability to stand as an adored and charismatic entertainer and a pillar of protest, political momentum and indignation.

So many contemporary rock musicians would aspire to this achievement. But for all their bluster (and occasional good work) they are unlikely to ever struggle with a hostile, racist government, nor risk their popularity and lucrative careers in the way Paul did.

Ultimately, Paul Robeson believed his perfect, reverberating voice was worthless unless those who heard it were free from fear, discrimination, violence and degradation. Which is why it filled the world and the world fell in love with it.

Are you sitting comfortably ...?

2011-03-19T23:38:00.000Z

Can I ask you this? When you’re attending a rock concert (not an 02 Academy club style affair, but a more sedate allocated seating event) at what point do you fetch drinks, buy food or have a pee?

If you go right at the start when everyone’s arriving, good for you. That’s when I use the facilities too. Or perhaps you attend the bar and lavatory between the support and the main act. Again, perfect choice, that’s what the interval is for - no argument whatsoever.

However, if you wait until a band is on stage and your fellow ticket holders are concentrating on the music, then push your way past the entire row, ensuring you shove your rear end into the faces of its occupants, before returning five minutes later with large beakers of beer, bags of Doritos and even pizza, repeating the process in reverse, can I ask you this?

What in holy hell do you think you’re doing?

A gig by a 'name' act now costs upwards of £35. Like me, you paid to attend. Unlike me, you have little or no interest in the performance, the band or their work. You can’t have. Because if you did, you’d sit and watch and listen and enjoy. The band is likely to be on stage for little more than 90 minutes. Are you really unable to pass that time without alcohol, snacks or several wee-wees? As if you were six?

This week I was very happy to attend the show staged by The Feeling and Squeeze at the Royal Albert Hall in aid of the Teenage Cancer Trust. The RHA is a great venue. It’s not literally ‘in the round’ but because of the circular building, it has that intimate feel. It’s high and plush and thanks to roof-mounted baffles has a very crisp sound. Which is just as well, as Danny from The Feeling had a noticeably heavy cold (he called it flu, the big softy) and his projection needed that lift.

When I first heard this band on the wireless, I was rather underwhelmed. Had I never caught them live, that’s pretty much where I’d have rested. But after four evenings in their presence, I really like them. They remind me of those early 80s new-wave acts like The Jags and The Knack – all skinny ties, wedge hairdos and uplifting power pop love songs. What’s more, they seem to have the enviable ability to build instantly memorable and lovable tunes with lyrics in similar territory to those of Neil Hannon or Paul Heaton.

The Feeling look good, love to show off and genuinely enjoy themselves. That’s a spirit you quickly find very infectious.

Between bands, those of us not at the bar or the smallest room in the Hall received a spirited presentation on the work of the TCC, including testimonials from two young men whose illnesses had been tempered by the charity’s work. So I’d just like to give a special mention to the two women sitting in front of us, who spent this entire section (and indeed most of the rest of the evening) nattering incessantly about their dull careers and aimless office lives. Thanks for that, it added to the atmosphere and experience no end.

Being tagged ‘the new Lennon & McCartney’ is no blessing. It does nothing to manage people’s expectations and insults the originality and personality of a band’s work. Squeeze have been party to this lazy labeling, but they shouldn’t – and probably don’t - care. After all, it should be obvious to any fan of popular music that Chris Difford and Glen Tilbrook have spent over 30 years crafting a collection of songs so unbelievably attractive, they defy idle comparisons. As they canter through ‘Is That Love?’, ‘Annie Get Your Gun’, ‘Black Coffee In Bed’ and over a dozen more stone cold gems, it’s the undiminished clarity and idiosyncratic tone of Tilbrook’s vocal one notices most. ‘Slap & Tickle’s bridge (“If you ever change your mind …”) is as nasally and brilliantly sharp as the venerable single version. The man’s larynx is either touched by a divine hand or the result of regular hot water, honey, lemon and Scotch.

By the way, alongside their regular cohorts, a 26-piece string section – very appropriate considering the venue, accompanied Glen and Chris. Now I’m a big fan of the old violins and cellos in pop music. From Spector to The Manic Street Preachers, they rarely fail to get me all roused up. And their addition to the
comedy and tragedy of the Squeeze repertoire worked perfectly well. But to say this mini-orchestra was on stage throughout the set, they seemed strangely underused, only kicking in about a quarter of the way through. It would be churlish to suggest an opportunity was missed, but that was the niggling doubt by the time ‘Cool For Cats’ tore the house down. Perhaps it’s an idea needing more development, because there’s definitely an exciting kinship between Squeeze’s ear-worm melodies and a wash of orchestral arrangement, but they're not quite connecting just yet.

There's no doubt, if they choose it, Squeeze's story will run and run, such is the affection they generated here. And there is no reason The Feeling’s third album shouldn’t see their stock rising nicely.

But whether there’s a future for this punter and the modern concert going audience is something that is very much more uncertain.

Who's BAD?

2011-02-13T23:27:00.001Z

Mick Jones always wanted to re-form The Clash. He and Strummer came very close to doing it too. Negotiations were approaching a conclusion when Joe simply said ‘Let’s not bother’. It was probably a good decision - and with Joe now absent, one that will be permanent. But I hope Mick doesn’t feel his next band proper - Big Audio Dynamite - were in any way a substitute for a re-united Clash, because they were far more important than that.

When Jones and his former punk colleagues parted company amid no little bitterness in 1984, they were already exploring the unfamiliar music they’d heard in New York: the nascent hip-hop and electro scenes. In fact, they’d gone as far as to have Futura 2000 appear on stage with them at Bonds Casino and incorporate raps into tracks on Sandinista and Combat Rock. But Jones’ departure led to a marked fissure – Joe and traditional rock on one side, Mick and the new electronic territories on the other.

I’m sure it felt very different at the time, but this was an unintended parting gift from the band. As his former comrades descended into the compromised, disowned disaster that was Cut The Crap, Mick Jones was free to recruit a likeminded posse and cut loose with a blend of rockabilly guitars, dub, electro, hip-hop and sampling. After a brief false start with TRAC, Mick formed a new band. This was B.A.D. and their debut album was intriguing, adventurous, fresh and clever in just the way that Cut The Crap was not. They sported a terrific line up too: former Roxy DJ and London Calling video director Don Letts, keyboard ace (and first husband to Patsy Kensit) Dan Donovan, reggae bassist Leo Williams and drummer Greg Roberts. As with The Clash, they looked fantastic too – a blend of sharp young punks and cool rastas led by Jones, often in an outsized titfer.

More importantly, B.A.D. were opening doors and exploring possibilities, the effects of which are still very much seen and heard today.

Sampling is now taken for granted, but the first time I heard snippets from other songs and classic movie dialogue in a track was on early Big Audio Dynamite releases. And I don’t recall having the slightest inclination to discover breakbeats until Mick and his crew introduced them to the ever eclectic B.A.D. sound.

Pleasingly, the second Dynamite album - ‘No.10 Upping Street’ - was co-produced and co-written by Joe Strummer and it started to dawn on those of us who cared, that this was the music The Clash would have created had they managed to hold it together.

I saw Joe Strummer and The Latino Rockabilly War around this time (Mick was dangerously ill with pneumonia) and he not only praised Jones and his band but covered B.A.D.’s Sightsee MC. Joe clearly liked B.A.D. a great deal, but loved Mick even more. Regretting his rash decision to fire Jones years before, he was now contrite and possibly even meditating on a means to restore their working relationship.

But I guess it was more than just logistics and money that prevented these two friends and brothers in music coming together again. Could Joe join B.A.D. without it becoming a quasi-Clash? Not really. Would Mick split his band in order to work with Joe? Of course not.

Effectively, Big Audio Dynamite were so good they put the kibosh on any further Strummer/Jones/ Clash adventures.

Fortunately, a number of excellent albums from the band (Tighten Up Vol. 88, Megatop Phoenix) followed and the burgeoning acid house scene was absorbed into their later work. But eventually members left, inspiration faded and subsequent releases brought diminishing returns. Name changes (BADII and Big Audio) did little to boost their fortunes and in 1994 the band called it a day.

Now rapid wind to the present and Mick Jones, fresh from a world tour with Gorillaz no less, has announced the reformation of the original Big Audio Dynamite line-up and a UK tour. I, for one, am delighted. I sincerely hope this outing will draw attention to a truly original and unmistakable act, who were never properly recognised for their influence and pioneering spirit. But more than that, I hope Mick Jones is reminded of the fact that he fronted not one, but two stupendous, legendary bands, that he feels rightly proud and I am there to see it.

The cult of Mac

2011-01-23T23:30:00.000Z

This week, as Steve Jobs and his ill-fitting jeans, were holding a press conference to launch the i-Pad 2, members of staff at a major broadcasting outlet were standing round a telly, watching and applauding.

Imagine for a moment, this behaviour was triggered by the appearance of Muhtar Kent, the CEO of Coca-Cola or Tommy Davis, leader of the Church of Scientology. Wouldn’t it be regarded by most folk with a mixture of discomfort and horror? After all, aren’t major corporations and powerful organisations supposed to be viewed with at least some suspicion or even contempt. Particularly by the free minded, intellectual media classes. So what on earth is happening here?

What is happening is ‘the cult of Mac’.

Since IBM, Microsoft and Apple MacIntosh peeled away from each other in the race to perfect a micro-computer for the mass consumer market, Apple has always been the one to deviate from the expected path. They were first with the mouse, which incredibly was widely dismissed at the time, they also used graphics as buttons and drop down menus when the competition was concentrating on glowing green text. However, far from bringing them huge and immediate success, Apple came very close to insolvency as this new technology found it’s level and the market settled. Indeed, had Steve Jobs’ firm not captured the graphic design audience so comprehensively, they would probably have succumbed to Bill Gates’ dominance in the same way IBM caved.

Instead, they sought to drag the computer out of the mathematics lab and into the world of interior design and objects of desire. From the PowerMac to the i-Book, they did this with considerable aplomb and when MP3 showed itself to be future of recorded sound, the pulled off the same magic with the mighty i-Pod.

It is not for me to scoff at the achievements of this corporation and, in fact, I believe they have a remarkable flair for building very functional and rather beautiful kit – albeit using Chinese low-wage, non-union labour. No, it’s their disciples that leave me bewildered. And ‘disciples’ is not too strong a word.

Quite what inspired a section of 21st century society to fall in thrall to a range of metal and plastic boxes filled with wires and circuits, I can’t begin to guess. Do we ever meet people who evangelise about a particular dishwasher, at length, at dinner parties? Or come across folk who sneer with superiority at your choice of calculator? Of course we don’t. But we all know individuals prepared to take such stances on the subject of their computer or music player.

An Art Director of my acquaintance once told me he believed his Mac had a soul and PCs were just toys. All other evidence suggested he was a reasonable and rational fellow, but he was quite serious when describing these emotions and ascribing them to his machine and screen.

I’m a PC user by habit. Nevertheless, I have no inclination to defend Microsoft Windows and am very happy to admit is quite badly designed and prone to cause frustrations from time-to-time. But, on the whole, it works, delivers the functions I ask of it and does so at fairly reasonable price. To that extent, it’s no different from my fridge.

The Mac adherent, however, is liable to extol the virtues of the device and its operating system in much the same way a street preacher would recommend a particular route to salvation. That is, without exception, without question and with a slightly scary zeal.

Not only is this not a healthy relationship to have with a company which sees you as little more than a revenue unit, it is a rather sad attempt to assert some kind of techno-exclusiveness in order to belittle the non-believer.

Naturally, Apple is more than happy to exploit this unwavering devotion. The firm is delighted to continually re-release its products with slight modifications, in the knowledge there is an immense army of devotees only too happy to bin the previous model and fork out another several hundred pounds for the new. Lest they should slip from grace and be black-balled from the club which gives them so much status and self-affirmation.

The OED defines the psychological term ‘fetishism’ as:

‘A form of desire in which gratification is linked to an abnormal degree to a particular object’

That is what Mac lovers are indulging in – a fetish. And like all fetishes, it only really arouses a certain kind of person. For various reasons, I’m actually writing this on a MacBook Pro. Sadly I remain entirely unmoved and notably flaccid.

Never Everett

2010-12-14T23:18:00.000Z

Over Christmas, BBC Radio 2 is presenting both a tribute to the late Kenny Everett and a new show created from edited highlights of Everett’s programmes. As a pre-amble, various presenters have been posing the rhetorical question ‘Was Kenny Everett the greatest DJ we have ever known?’

One isn’t supposed to answer rhetorical questions, but no, he wasn’t.

Have you ever known a person who, through nervousness or shyness, always talks in a funny voice? Well, Cuddly Ken made a career out of that. But that’s not to say he wasn’t a pioneer. Before his shows began, comedy radio came in the form of sketch shows like ‘Round The Horne’ or the surreal antics of ‘The Goon Show’. Music radio tended to stick to the rigid format of link, record, link, record – and Everett deconstructed the format to mix sound effects, characters and gags with the discs. Because of their novelty and unpredictability, his broadcasts gathered quite a following, but that didn’t mean they were consistently hilarious and it certainly doesn’t make him the best DJ to ever appear on British radio.

Kenny Everett was born Maurice James Christopher Cole on Christmas Day 1944. A contemporary of The Beatles, he passed up an opportunity to join the BBC light programme in 1962 in favour of a job with the Radio London pirate ship. His rise to prominence had begun and with the scuppering of the pirates he joined the nascent Radio 1 in 1967. This rise wasn’t without turbulence; he was famously dismissed from both Capital and Radio 1 for jokes so tame by today’s standards they would now slip by without a mention. Less well known is the fact he was already familiar with his P45 having been dismissed from Radio London for criticising their religious output.

So Everett was clearly a loose cannon, no doubt. And that anarchic streak naturally endeared him to his listeners – and later, through his Kenny Everett Video Show on LWT, his viewers. But to my mind, he was never reliably funny. As the first TV performer to include the laughter of the crew, it could be suggested he was breaking barriers, but it is just as possible he was simply garnishing rather weak material. Sketches about breasts, about transvestites and nakedness – if anything, on telly, he was no more than the alternative Benny Hill.

Arguably Kenny’s nadir was his appearance at the 1983 Conservative Party Conference where he bounded onto the stage to suggest bombing Russia and kicking away Michael Foot’s stick may well make good policy. Whether he genuinely held right wing views – which he would be perfectly entitled to – or he was simply acting up, was a matter of some debate. But there was little doubt he had made a fool of himself.

Those who knew him well confirm that Everett could be a difficult, even tormented, man – and it seems his fluctuating religious beliefs conflicted with his homosexuality to produce periods of real unhappiness. It’s not unusual for comics to be depressive. Cleese, Milligan and Hancock all suffered this way and Kenny Everett would be suitable addition to the list. His broadcasts were always performances and were surely an outlet for (and escape from) his frustrations.

So, with this popularity, rebellious adventurousness and undoubted skill with the most basic of studio equipment, why was Kenny Everett not the finest DJ the UK has ever heard?

Well, despite the fact he actually toured with the Beatles and produced two of their Christmas records, he was never about the music. Pop was merely the filler in his shows. As with many of the presenters who followed his style (Steve Wright being the most notable example), he was always itching for the disc to end to clear the air for more Kenny. For die-hard Everett admirers this posed no problem. They tuned in to hear the characters, noises and voices that were the stock-in-trade of his programming. But to be exalted as disc jockey, it is necessary to be passionate about the music you play. Think about the definition of DJ – a presenter who is carried by the discs, rather than someone who spins the playlist minimum in order to allow themselves the maximum exposure, no matter how entertaining that non-musical content might be. And although to these ears he rarely produced belly laughs, I wouldn’t deny his ability to entertain.

Sadly, Kenny Everett was one of the first high-profile broadcasters to succumb to HIV infection and while it is clear Chris Evans, Johnny Vaughn and many others were there to take on his mantle, he was never truly replaced. As an originator, mould breaker and unique comedian, he died with his reputation as strong as ever and his place in radio history assured, but it would be wrong to accept him as the greatest DJ of all time. But in all fairness, it was a title he never claimed for himself and perhaps others shouldn't try to glue to his memory.

Odd Stewart

2010-10-23T22:17:00.000+01:00

“Are there any Americans in tonight? Pointless rhetorical question. No answer required.” And so Stewart Lee opened his set at the Leicester Square Theatre on Tuesday night.

His comic cliché of an opening line was instantly picked apart and dismissed, which is the essence of Lee’s comedy and it’s quite unsettling. Throughout his two hour routine, we’re never entirely sure if an anecdote or observation is genuine (and therefore funny in its own right) or a parody of a comic approach laid bare for ridicule in few moments time.

But Lee never invites us to settle back with our drinks, comfortable in the knowledge we’re embarking on ninety minutes of gut-busting, gag-filled fun. Indeed, Lee confesses the show will include only three jokes and we’ll spot them because he’ll lean forward when he cracks them. In the event, two of the jokes are the same with a single word changed. No, Stewart wants us on the edge of our seats, unsure where we’re being taken. Or why. And he succeeds.

The first half is almost entirely consumed by a circuitous and surreal exploration of his grandfather’s love of crisps, which Lee explains he steals from charity events. But behind this Booshian stream of consciousness there’s some fairly savage distaste for the competition between comics to perform at the most fee-free benefit shows.

I suppose Lee isn’t unique in taking shots at more traditional or more careerist stand ups, but where he does have the edge is his fearlessness in naming them. He’s running down popular ‘modern’ comics like Andy Parsons and Frankie Boyle who may well have fans in his crowd. But for Lee this is merely another discomforting and provocative thrust to trap us in his headlights or prod us off our seat backs.

Using fuzzy logic he reveals Mock The Week’s Russell Howard to be better value as a charity cyclist than a comic – he doesn’t really mean it, but he does mean the wider, sceptical point.

Surprisingly, Lee does comedy songs too. Who knew? He certainly didn’t use them in his recent (and superb) ‘Comedy Vehicle’ TV run. For me, they aren’t a highlight, but they are another channel through which his contempt for showbiz gag merchants and panel show prattle can bubble. And a lyric which paints a picture of P-Diddy rapping in a jungle clearing at Russell Brand’s wedding while David Baddiel applauds can’t be entirely without merit.

So far, so post modern. What was completely unanticipated was the physical comedy which opened the second half. Clearly Lee wasn’t about to launch into a Lee Evans style pratfall extravaganza – instead he turned twenty minutes of guitar tuning into a masterclass of understated, perfectly timed and expertly executed visual (and aural) comedy. For a performer noted for his sarcasm and misanthropic monologues, it was quite a revelation to find his talent apparent in a routine of extended twanging and silences. It is most impressive and very, very amusing.

I won’t divulge the payoff to the lengthy, political memory which absorbs the final furlong of the show, but it does confirm my suspicion that, to this performer, predictability is the greatest failure of all.

Stewart Lee is a comedian but he is on a mission to distance himself from his mainstream colleagues and share his dismay with his audience. So much so that his bemusement oozes from every pore of his act. His revenge is to undermine the sleight of hand and button pushing other comics deploy to raise laughs. Lee is the magician who breaks the code and points out the smoke and mirrors.

He is the anti-comic but what’s impressive, is he makes his disdain and cynicism so compelling and so funny.

Worth the weight?

2010-07-26T23:20:00.000+01:00

Kenneth Tong, remember him? Of course you don’t. He was a Big Brother contestant with a trust fund and a haircut, who came not even close to winning and sank into obscurity. Until now.

Kenneth has recently made something of a name for himself thanks to anti-fat comments he has placed on Twitter. By Kenneth’s reckoning, all girls should sign up for ‘managed anorexia’ to keep them skinny. He also proposes women should ‘get thin or die trying’ and claims to have devised a pill which will make all its users size zero.

I have no way of knowing this pill even exists, but assuming it does, it’s quite obvious Kenneth is using shock tactics (and social media) to advertise his unnecessary and unpleasant medication. But this is just an extreme example of advertisers’ tendency to manipulate and worry the populace into buying their stuff, using body weight as the lure.

The Special K brand has always played on its health giving properties, but in recent years has really hammered home a fat loss proposition. It runs something like this: replace two of your daily meals with a bowl of Special K and you’ll see your weight reduce within two weeks. I should say you will. You’ve cut out two meals and replaced them with something that seems to be more air than anything else. It surely has nothing to do with the ingredients of the cereal.

And that’s the catch. The pressure on consumers to conform to some template of perfection is such that we are often quite prepared to accept a particular product has magical slimming properties. We will all lose weight if we eat less and exercise more, but we want the magic bullet and there is no shortage of quasi-medical products claiming to deliver the no-effort fix: Adios, Cyclotrim and Alli are just three.

Whether these treatments work or not doesn’t really concern me. What is depressing is the constant demand for physical conformity. Primarily because it causes so much anxiety and misery in so many people, while creating vast amounts of money for those claiming to provide it.

Hold on, though. Why should the advertising of diet products be so much more dubious than any other strand of marketing? Well, promoting a style or brand of watch may well persuade an audience their social status will be elevated by this particular timepiece. Nevertheless they are unlikely to have been bombarded, from childhood, with images and messages suggesting their worth as a human being is directly linked to their choice of wrist adornment. When advertising flogs expensive watches, people buy them or they don’t. When it critiques their bodies, the impact on lives can be quite profound.

Even advertising which isn’t pushing a means to slenderness is entwined with the cult of the slim. Holiday commercials never feature the extra flesh most of us display in a swimming costume. Nor do beer ads show young folk with distended bellies brought on by consuming pints of the brew.

The expectation of bodily ‘beauty’ is marbled through almost all marketing communications and, almost without realising it, we are engulfed by a fantasy world, populated with impossibly shaped beings.

Ridiculously, side-by-side with this compulsion to look like an army of mannequins, there are powerful temptations to indulge in the very habits which cause the opposite. Alcohol, burgers, cakes, chocolate and sugar are all heavily advertised (always by underweight models and actors) – so when commentators, moralisers, politicians and celebrities pontificate so righteously about our disgusting bodies, they would do well to consider why we’re all so flipping mixed up.

It is hardly surprising the government funded ‘Change For Life’ campaign was such a dismal failure when it was simply a tiny voice of healthy advice drowned by a deluge of ‘lose weight you freak’ and ‘buy our delicious fatty, creamy, cheesy goodies’ contradictions. The messages are both confused and overwhelming.

I think most of us know in our guts (whatever size they may be), that being very, very skinny is as dangerous as being truly enormous – but to be at some point between the two is really okay. If you wish to be a ripped and muscled fitness icon, you are most welcome. Should you happen to be a regular person with a bit of a tummy, no-one really minds or cares. Knowing and believing this really does begin to negate the unfair body fascism so often seen in advertising. And although I work in that same tainted and rapacious business, I would be delighted to see such a lazy and damaging practice challenged.

One more thing. Obesity doesn’t discriminate, but the social coercion on which marketing thrives, certainly does. The vast majority of weight-based advertising is pitched at women – and most anorexia sufferers are also female.

In 1978 Susie Orbach wrote a book called ‘Fat Is A Feminist Issue’. Thanks to advertising, the media and Kenneth Tong, it still is.

Dull 2.0

2010-07-24T00:03:00.000+01:00

Big technology companies are selling us obsolete kit. Sorry, but that pad, phone, camera, laptop, Bluetooth, wireless web widget you just splurged half your salary on? More redundant than a manufacturing industry recruitment consultant. And that MP7 player that folds away into the top of a cigarette packet and beams 24 hour music videos onto your neighbour’s garden wall? It’s just so much landfill fodder, friend.

You see, these giants of microchip magic are retailing the stuff they were working on about five years ago and are now busy building gear that will make your latest acquisition look like an egg timer in about eighteen months. That’s how the tech market works and we’ve all bought into this earthbound space race where the winner is the bod with a box more magical than the last expensive doo-dah you bought.

Nevertheless, these modern day alchemists must still battle each other relentlessly to persuade us to part with our income to fund the development of the next pile of beeping implements. So, why on earth is their advertising so utterly lame?

Almost without exception, new technology is marketed with about as much creativity and flair as a discount carpet superstore.

Microsoft has two campaigns running right now – one for Windows 7 and one for their search engine Bing. Unusually for Microsoft, they’ve managed to produce a couple of products that, while clearly not as achingly cool as something with a half eaten apple embossed on the lid, are at least regarded with nods of approval from some quarters. Here then, is their opportunity to raise some positivity for the brand, perhaps gain some credibility (they don’t need the money, that’s for sure) and make up the ground lost in the release of the abysmal Vista. But they haven’t taken it.

The Bing campaign, to be fair, runs with a valid proposition: Google’s results are too clinical, too literal, even too logical. So Microsoft (or their agency) has chosen to show how inconvenient this would be in a conversation. I can see how the premise may well have worked, but the execution is woeful. In order to demonstrate how irritating their competitors are they spend half the spot irritating us. By the time we receive the pay-off, we’re hacked off. They don’t even bother to show us Bing solving the problem using the same metaphor – or indeed at all. By the ad’s climax it has collapsed, with the voice over simply claiming the product is a ‘decision engine’. Whatever that might be.

The Windows 7 work is even more baffling. From its launch, Bill’s Barmy Army tried to convince us that every feature of the operating system was suggested by a punter. Again, a handy (albeit completely untrue) selling point – you recall the ‘Windows 7 was my idea’ work? Well, this has now been replaced with MS punters claiming they only have eight seconds to tell us about a Windows 7 feature. But why? I suppose it makes for short ads, but airtime has never been cheaper and the world’s soup kitchens are hardly filled with Microsoft execs. Is it to show how rapid the product is? If it is, they don’t choose to make that one of the propositions in the ads. I may well be missing a crucial point, but it all smacks of a format built for want of something better. (There’s also one unintentionally hilarious execution explaining the simplicity of deleting one’s browsing history – in case one has been shopping for a surprise gift. Surprise gift? Okay, right.)

And before every Apple snob becomes animated, their advertising is hardly leading the pack either. After some really smashing spots for the i-pod around five years ago and some so-so work with Mitchell and Webb to follow, they now appear to have gone for some lowest common denominator output hinging on the line ‘There’s an app for that’. Hardly the kind of cutting edge messaging we’ve come to expect from the gurus of trendy, glassy tech. And with Subway running an almost identical strapline for their sandwiches, it has all started to look more than a little trite.

If 2.0 hardware and applications have been created to leave us gawping in awe, like a seventeenth century shepherd stumbling across a pot of hair gel, then the means by which the life-changing advantages of these matt black mechanisms of wonderment are presented to us should really do the same. Instead, I find myself infinitely more impressed by the Specsavers Lynx spoof, than by anything relating to screens, searches, software or servers.

And I don’t even wear glasses.

East Mids Girls

2010-07-23T22:33:00.000+01:00

I'd like to talk about contrast and the ways different acts at a single event can throw each other into sharp relief. But first a few notes on the Splendour festival.

Yesterday marked the third anniversary of Nottingham City Council's pop party, held in the grounds of the glorious Wollaton Hall Park. It's a one day festival with four stages, a small fun fair and the usual smorgasboard of burger stalls, clothing traders and ice cream vans. It's a smashing occasion and the quality of the acts is way above the level one would normally expect from a modest, urban festival. Well organised, friendly and comfortable, it's a credit to the city and long may it continue.

Towards, the end of the bill, however, one has to choose which act to watch as several big names perform at the same time. The Cornbury bash stagger the appearance of bands and it's great - you can see every outfit on the bill by walking the short distance between two stages. Splendour, it's worth considering.

Metal aside, most of music's favourite genre's were represented here. Athlete and Shed Seven were the indie delegates, Fyfe Dangerfield put up for the singer songwriters, Calvin Harris gave it large for the ravers and Noisettes had modern pop covered. So I'm not sure why they were all a little subdued.

Athlete tried hard, but their brand of Brit guitar tunes never really catches light until their best known number 'Wires'. Perhaps the rain shower was to blame. And I love the Fyfe Dangerfield album, but his stripped down 'band' (two violinists and himself on guitar and vocals) didn't do the material justice. He even did his own soundcheck, which isn't the norm, and nevertheless suffered from a bad mix throughout. His slot clashing with the Noisettes (see my comment above) meant a tiny crowd, so he was poorly served by Splendour, sad to say.

Dashing over to the main stage, I caught a fair chunk of the Noisettes set and they lifted things somewhat. They really work hard on stage and singer Shoniwa is a bit of a star. If they can pull a few more soul pop corkers like 'Never Forget You' out the hat, they could be an M-People for the new decade (in a good way).

At the moment Calvin Harris is a bit of a star too. Tunes like 'Born In The 80s' and 'Ready For The Weekend' have been filling club dancefloors for a couple of years, but that was the problem. Listening to his set in a park was like sitting on the grass outside a nightclub. The compere (who was beyond annoying) even announced him as the 'UK's top producer'. I don't recall Steve Lillywhite ever being second on the bill at a festival, do you? Maybe it's all for the young folks.

Shed Seven? They can definitely belt out their hits (more than you remember) with energy and a tight skill, but what are they for? Ten years ago they were Brit pop also-rans and there seems no reason for their continued rocking and rolling. Particularly as they never depart from their wannabe Oasis song format. Though I should point out there was no shortage of people at the festival for this act alone, so I could well be missing something. After all these years, I probably won't find it.

And then. And then. The headline act on the main stage: Pet Shop Boys. I could easily catagorise the other performers at Splendour - but I cannot categorise Neil and Chris. As English as the Bonzos and exotic as Kraftwerk, as wry as Ian Dury and stylish as Roxy Music, anyone under the impression they are a synth pop act who should have disappeared years ago simply hasn't taken the time to examine their unique place in British music history. You'll note that Erasure never had a South Bank Show special.

Pet Shop Boys' current show (and crikey, it is a show), is exceptional. Every song has its own setting, but uses the same white cubes which adorn the stage. Indeed, at first, both band and dancers have their heads obscured by boxes. In other hands this could be wildly pretentious or just a bit boring, but PSB are incapable of being either. Because for all their arch artiness and inspired irony, they can't help being utterly joyful. If anyone laughs at the PSB, you can be sure it's never as hard as they're laughing at themselves.

Everything Neil and Chris touch is instantly drawn into their cinematic and impossibly glamorous world. This doesn't just extend to the impeccable covers of 'Always On My Mind' and 'Vive La Vida' but us, the audience. Watching Shed Seven in their jeans and t-shirts is mildly diverting, watching PSB is akin to being picked up in a vintage sports car and whisked through Paris, New York, London and Vegas, stopping to revel in brief, intense love affairs, lounge in Broadway dressing rooms and wander the bars of the most exclusive nightclubs. Athlete wouldn't and couldn't dream of taking you on such a journey.

It's not so much the duo do things never before attempted - costume changes, back projections and dancers are no strangers to pop music - it's more that they do it faultlessly every time. Their four dancers are as impressive as Neil and Chris themselves, in fact they're the best dancers you can remember seeing work with a band. The staging for each number (and there's a new, complete concept for every one) is the best staging you can recall.

All this, of course, would be pointless and silly if the music was below par. But this isn't an issue for PSB. Their ability to conjure effortlessly brilliant songs, with moving, glittering and clever lyrics - and to do that almost every year since 1984 - is simply staggering. This material is so timeless, so strong, you rather suspect that anyone claiming to dislike their music is either too utterly stupid to know outstanding songwriting when they hear it or are simply lying to appear cool and misunderstanding what 'cool' actually is. Last night I tweeted that I thought this could be one of the best shows I have ever seen. I have changed my mind not one iota.

I have never heard Pet Shop Boys mentioned in the same breath as The Beatles, The Clash or Joy Division when the great British bands are discussed. But I have no idea why. They have some of the best pop music of the last 20 years in their portfolio. They have longevity and continued creative success to their name. And they produce some of the most incredibly exciting live shows I will ever enjoy. It's high time this injustice was corrected without delay.

Say cello, wave goodbye

2010-07-22T22:24:00.000+01:00

I like classical music. The problem is, I only like Dvorak’s ‘New World Symphony’ and Holst’s ‘The Planets’. I’m very fond of Erik Satie piano music too, but I’m not even sure that counts.

And that’s it. Of all the huge volume and vast variety of classical work, I can only manage affection for two and half recordings.

There’s clearly something wrong here. Music has dominated my life since childhood, from Abba to Crass, Hawkwind to Pet Shop Boys - I have spent more hours listening to bands, attending gigs and humming pop tunes than I have eating or sleeping. I’ve worked as a club DJ, a radio presenter, a music writer and even played bass guitar in a very poor post-punk rock group. Surely my tastes are catholic enough to embrace the sweeping drama and high emotion of orchestral compositions, choral recitals or string quartets? But no.

Heaven knows I’ve tried. My wife and mother are both keen fans of classical music and have often fed me CDs of works they think I’ll appreciate. Without exception, one listen is enough to confirm my inability to find anything enjoyable in the genre. And my excuses aren’t even terribly original:

“It all sounds the same.”
“It’s too long.”
“Where’s the tune?”
“I’m lost".

Please don’t misunderstand. Not for one minute do I deny the incredible talent, skill and dedication it takes to become a proficient classical musician. And the ability to write this astonishingly complex and sophisticated music strikes me as demanding extraordinary levels of creative flair and profound understanding. Nevertheless, the resulting sound leaves me utterly unmoved. This doesn’t please me, it’s just a fact.

In his book ‘Rock Me Amadeus’, Seb Hunter describes his journey from my position to a love of classical music through exploration and education. It’s a great read and shows it is certainly possible to build affection for Handel, Wagner, Mozart and the rest. But I have to wonder whether a musical form which only becomes appealing after study and force of will is really an artistic arena designed for me. 15 years ago I was assured acid house would reveal its glory to me if I took the right drugs – and I am told classical music will become compelling if I understand its context and history. My reaction is the same in both cases: I am resistant to any music that has to be, in some way pre-treated, before I can properly enjoy it.

My lack of connection with classical composing is odd. Many of the pop/rock performances I find the most wonderful, so astonishingly good they strike me dumb with awe, involve grand gestures, melodrama, great passion and large measures of emotion. The Doors’ ‘Riders On The Storm’, Manic Street Preachers’ ‘Everything Must Go’, Elbow’s ‘A Day Like This’, Echo and the Bunnymen’s ‘Killing Moon’ – all have the resonance of orchestral pieces woven through the guitar, bass and drums.

This is a sound I love in contemporary music. When a band uses a string section, I’m usually the first to applaud. So why doesn’t this carry, rather logically, to an adoration of the same classical works my family find so enriching?

Maybe I’m lazy. Perhaps a recording lacking the immediacy of say, ‘Reach Out, I’ll Be There’ is asking too much of an idler like me. It’s possible I’m just not prepared to put enough in to classical music to get anything out. But that’s the way I’ve trained myself to address any music. It’s too extreme to claim that a song has to be instantly lovable to avoid my dismissal, but it must have something to hook and net my attention. In many ways, I believe it is the duty of a worthwhile musical endeavour to arrest me. It must have sufficient originality, energy, pathos, anger, tunefulness, cheek, sexiness, simplicity, poetry – something, anything – to halt my life and demand my time.

And, much to my regret, classical music almost always fails to do that. My loss, I guess.

Failure to launch

2010-07-19T22:29:00.000+01:00

I have an irrational dislike of Frank Sinatra's 'Fly Me To The Moon'. Actually, while Frankie-boy was guilty of many things, this isn't his fault. He didn't write the lyric (indeed, he never wrote a single song in his life) - and it is the lyric to which I take exception. No, it was written by Bart Howard in 1954. So what did Mr. Howard do to upset me? Let me explain.

'Fly me to the moon / Let me play amongst the stars' - The stars are actually suns at the centres of inumerous galaxies, millions of miles away. So one wouldn't have any better chance of playing amongst them by being on the moon.

'Let me know what Spring is like / On Jupiter and Mars' - Although the planets in our solar system do have seasons of a sort, Spring wouldn't be any more stimulating on Mars than any other point in its cycle. Jupiter is a gas giant, with no solid surface and clouds of acidic atmosphere. It being May would not dispel this.

'In other words (the original title) / Hold my hand' - In exactly what way is travelling throughout the solar system, analysing the seasonal differences on other worlds analagous with grasping someone's sweaty palm?

'In other words / Darling kiss me' - Just a second. In the previous line, the interstellar journey was a token of the desire to hold hands. Now it's a plea for tonsil hockey. Make your mind up.

'Fill my heart with song / And let me sing for ever more ' - Right, now Howard has just abandoned the whole astronomy as love metaphor stuff. Probably because he quickly realised he hadn't the faintest idea about the subject and anyway, it wasn't really working. Also, I find it hard to believe anyone would wish to 'sing for ever more'. It would play havoc with your vocal cords and if it were this particular song you were stuck with, everyone would take you for a doofus.

And that is why I dislike 'Fly Me To The Moon' so very much.

Sun, Squeeze and Staton

2010-06-23T22:45:00.000+01:00

I'm awake. Mexican food has given me roaring indigestion. There is more moisture in talcum powder than my mouth and it is 4.35am. Oh, and my bladder is as full as David Crosby's waistband and I'm in a tiny tent.

SATURDAY

Joshua Radin - main stage

We have to confess, our music collection isn't exactly bulging with with Mr. Radin's output - but we were more than happy to be impressed. And we were, Joshua is a very good looking young man. His music is less stimulating. By his own description his songs tend to be about friends, girlfriends and travel. Well trodden ground and there was little in the way of new angles here. There was, however, a plethora of therapy pop (a number called 'No Envy, No Fear', for instance) and a beyond glib comment on Hurricane Katrina titled 'It's Going to Be Alright'. Joshua Radin? He's rather like James Taylor for the Twlight generation.

Eyes For Gertrude - Riverside stage

The Riverside stage is the centre of a small folk festival within the main Cornbury bash and despite its modest facilities (we sat on hay bails), the acts were of a satisfying standard. We've selected Eyes For Gertrude for a special mention for a couple of reasons. 1) They seemed to name themselves as they came on stage, which is brave and 2) they did a song about Pat Butcher, which is braver still. Powerful vocals and unusual lyrics, we liked them a great deal. If you happen to catch them, please be advised they may well rename the band at any moment.

http://www.myspace.com/eyesforgertrude

The Independent stall - main arena

No sign of a Weekend Guardian on site, so we plumped for a copy of the Indie with 60p off. The paper had hit on the splendid marketing ploy of putting out branded deck chairs on which to place one's bum while reading. Unfortunately, as we bowled up, they put them all away. This says something important about the ailing title.

Stax featuring Kiki Dee - second stage

A band performing old soul covers is never going to change the world. But this huge outfit were more than proficient and certainly lifted their whole show above any lame 'tribute' accusations. Particularly when they brought on the veteran Kiki Dee, who normally performs acoustic sets these days but sounded in tremendous voice with a full horn section and three backing vocalists. She gave us 'Just Another Day' and 'I Got The Music' before helping out Stax with a genuinely uplifting 'Proud Mary'. Perfect lunchtime material - not too innovative, but very cheery and not too taxing.

Buddy Guy - main stage

Who doesn't love an old bluesman? They always deliver on the brief. Smashing hat, wrapround shades, throaty delivery And Buddy Guy ticks all these important boxes. But to stereotype him is to underestimate his power. At 74, here is a performer whose gift has not only failed to desert him but appears to be in full bloom. Over 60 minutes, Buddy tore the roof off the mainstage with a stream of earthy blues and a barrage of quite breath-taking guitar breaks. Between songs his banter was as witty and charming as it was wise and fruity. A master of his art with enough verve to deliver searing shows when he's 104, an elder statesman playing like a youthful rogue, it's not hard to see why Buddy Guy is Clapton's idol.

Candi Staton - second stage

We were a bit nervous waiting for Candi Staton. After Buddy Guy, we were concerned karma may seek balance and roll out an artiste past her prime and phoning in some old hits for posterity. Nope. She was splendid - and so were her band. We have no way of knowing whether they were recruited by Candi herself, but she got the top team. Two co-vocalists up front (one crazy dread, one 'star in her own right' soul girl), snappy horns, tight drummer and, get this, Mick Talbot on keys. As well as the expected 'You Got The Love' (now boosted by Florence) and 'Young Hearts Run Free', Ms. Staton treated us to 'Stand By Your Man' - a feminist anthem by her account - and lots of advice on affairs of the heart. A cracking set from a genuine star with deserved longevity and a superb young band.

Noisettes - main stage

Rapidly becoming one of the bands of the moment, The Noisettes can certainly claim a big sound. 'Go Baby Go' propelled itself across the site like a bottle of wee at other less refined festivals. If it's possible, the band fill the long vacant punk/pop/soul niche - not always successfully, it has to be said. They are definitely better when cooking up great commercial bouncers like 'Never Forget You' than when serving up sound experiments, but the Cornbury masses liked them well enough. The Observer has called them the best live act in the UK. They're not, but they're having a damn good time trying.

Squeeze - main stage

When you're Glen Tilbrook and Chris Difford, it must be hard not to be complacent. A portfolio of songs rightly compared with Lennon and McCartney and lyrics as dear to a certain generation as Morcambe and Wise sketches - how do you raise your game when performing? Well, with a little difficulty.

To be fair, the band seemed to have technical issues through the first two numbers and by the time they got to 'Hourglass' they were hitting their stride. Song choice was an issue though - and a couple of album tracks and the sleepy 'When The Hangover Strikes' made for a saggy middle section. When you only have an hour, much as you don't fancy it, a greatest hits set is really what's called for.

That said, the closing 20 minutes were sublime: 'Tempted', 'Annie Get Your Gun', 'Goodbye Girl' and 'Pulling Mussels From A Shell' were fine enough to send a collective shiver of joy through the crowd and we can't have been the only ones to make a note to see the full Squeeze set soon. Who knows? Chris Difford may even smile.

It's raining. Not on the festival, where it's lovely, but on me in my tent. The condensation from the breath of two sleeping people has caused fat droplets to form on the ceiling and, reaching a certain weight, fall on my slumbering face.

SUNDAY

The Blockheads - main stage

Sunday lunchtime and there's a big hole in the arena. It's the shape of Ian Dury and it's right up there on stage. We're delighted the Blockheads are still working together and on the Cornbury bill, but it's so hard to overcome their late leader's absence and we feel a bit awkward. Dury's place is often taken by Phill Jupitus, but today it's one Derek The Draw and he's simply giving us a rather unconvincing impersonation.

No matter. We're concentrating on the sinewy, gurning and impeccable work of Norman Watt Roy on the bass. Through 'Reasons To Be Cheerful', 'What A Waste' and 'Clever Trevor' he works like a trooper, his uniquely twisting features unable to hide the glee he still has for his job. It would be churlish indeed not to share this man's skillful enthusiasm, so we jig and shout along and leave feeling just swell.

Fisherman's Friends - second stage

To be honest, the Vicar's photographer had to drag this writer to watch these guys. I'm slightly dubious about the whole populist folk thing sweeping the nation and I'm expecting something very serious and 'olde worldly'. Instead, I find a line of splendid fellows with voices as rich as sauce and songs which make me feel I must have been a 19th century trawler skipper at some point. And they're led by a shaven headed, handle-bar whiskered cove so witty, chaming, wry and warm he should genuinely have his own primetime TV show.

We thought about eating, but couldn't possibly leave until the final note of the final shanty rang out across the sun bathed site. Even if you have no time for acapella seamen's songs hundreds of years old, you really should take time to enjoy these old boys, because you'll love them.

Reef - main stage

Reef? They're not still together are they? Well, it seems they weren't for a while, but now they are again. And sometimes there is room in one's life for a muscular, well-drilled, long haired rock band. Reef are that band. Note perfect, tight as two coats of paint and making a big old noise, there's very little of which to be critical - but not much to genuinely like either. There seems to be a hardcore Reef following (and a good few of them down the front) and they must be delighted the group are working again. However, we really aren't sure what Reef are for.

The Feeling - main stage

When The Feeling released their debut '12 Stops And Home', I was somewhat sneery. Indie pop by sharp, skinny young men? Tsk, who needs it? Then I caught their set in this very field three years ago and all was revealed. Live, The Feeling have everything in place. They spent their formative years as a show band at ski resorts and you can tell. For this band, the show is everything. They cast aside obscure album tracks in favour of 'guilty pleasure' covers - 'Video Killed The Radio Star' and 'Take On Me'. It's cheese, there's no doubt. But well made, well presented and very tasty cheese is there to be enjoyed - and we did.

What's more, just as I was thinking this lot may well be the latter day Squeeze, they played their ace and brought Glen Tilbrook on for a run through 'Up The Junction' which managed to exceed Squeeze's own version from Saturday. At a festival, making best use of the available time is everything and somehow, The Feeling managed to make 60 minutes feel like their full set. I'm still not sure I'll be playing that album on a daily basis, but I'd go to see this band any time you like.

Jackson Browne - main stage

Certain members of rock aristocracy, while hugely succesful and influential, aren't really household names. Jackson Browne may well be the king of this tribe. From the instant he arrived it was clear we were in the presence of a seasoned performer. He has that laid-back delivery and twinkly confidence that says 'I'm the professional here, nothing I don't know about gigging'. And that's fair enough. A career that's almost four decades old and a face that has forgotten to age, are more than sufficient to earn my respect for an artist's quality. Nevertheless, this is not necessarily enough to make you the perfect closing act of a two day festival. In fact, it may be the reason they shouldn't stick you on last, because this level of proficiency isn't particularly rousing. Okay, there is an argument that a crowd should be lowered gently down on a cushion of polished West Coast folk rock, but it's not a logic I subscribe to. So we both agreed, if Jackson had swapped places with The Feeling, Cornbury would have had a cracking finale. Though I suspect Jackson's management would have disagreed.

Until next summer.

Feeling blue

2010-06-20T23:35:00.000+01:00

If you’ve ever had the good fortune to catch ITV’s Jeremy Kyle Show, you may recall the host stating with alarming frequency that he is ‘paid to tell the truth’. So, inspired by the dubious assertions of Jez, I’d like to make the same claim. And to prove it, here’s some truth:

Avatar is awful.

Available on Blu-Ray this week, the ‘biggest movie of all time’ is now being re-reviewed across the media, and for some strange reason, there appears to be a great deal of apologising going on. Phrases like ‘visually superb’ and ‘ground-breaking effects’ are flung about to mask most reviewers’ subtext of disappointment. It’s as though no-one wants to break cover and admit how tiresome this movie really is.

I don’t work in digital animation, so I’m prepared to accept that Avatar is technically very impressive. But this is faint praise indeed – Bloggers are rarely admired for their typing speed, however ‘technically impressive’ it might be. Therefore, whatever the programming merits of the movie, they are hardly a sufficient basis for critical acclaim. Indeed, to my untrained eye, the animation looked proficient and the 3D rendering seemed adequate, but it delivered nothing more impressive than stuff I saw at Disneyland about ten years ago.

3D, of course, is the format of the moment for Hollywood (well, it’s easier than producing movies of any quality). Now, it may just be my aging eyes, but this high-tech marvel always appears as flat images placed in layers – like those cardboard theatres kids used to play with. It never really cooks up an immersive, ‘real world’ feel and for $200m, perhaps it should.

This needn’t matter, of course. If a picture is loaded with creative flair, bursts with wild imagination and explodes with surprise and wit, its use of technology is all but irrelevant. But Avatar does none of these things. With the combined might of Hollywood’s finest art directors available, I am honestly astonished that tall, skinny blue people is the most arresting alien life form James Cameron could manage. He did much better with the sub-ocean, neon creatures in ‘The Abyss’. And the planet’s backgrounds may well have been imported from a folder tagged ‘generic jungles’. In fact, many of the movie’s other key design points are lazily lifted from previous films. We’ve seen people riding dragons in everything from ‘Eragon’ to ‘Revenge of the Sith’ – while the robotic exo-skeletons are taken wholesale from Cameron’s (far superior) ‘Aliens’.

‘Dark Star‘ and ‘Silent Running‘ are two much older science fiction flicks with comparatively miniscule budgets. The former uses a beach ball with feet for its alien and the latter has walking microwave ovens as robots, but these are genuinely brilliant movies. Why? Because the storylines,characterisations and scripts are lovingly crafted and truly original – further, obvious weaknesses for Avatar.

The metaphor deployed as a comment on America’s questionable, imperialist adventuring is so clumsy it’s a wonder the audience didn’t trip over it on the way out of the screening. What’s more, the entire plot is derived wholesale from Dances With Wolves. Presumably, Cameron imagined throwing enough pixels at the screen would ensure no-one noticed. One can’t help feeling the years of production that went into the film were largely consumed by young, lonely men hunched over super powered Apple Macs, leaving just a couple hours for some hacks to cobble a screenplay together. Calling a rare mineral ‘Unobtainium’? Why not dispense with the subtleties and go for ‘Trickytogetholdofium’?

Given its over-achievement, there is an ironic and depressing lack of ambition at the heart of Avatar. Where one would hope to find ideas and concepts to take the viewer to new and fascinating places, there’s a gaping void, fringed with cliché and laziness. Take away the paint and glitter and there’s nothing more than a half-baked, badly written script and barely memorable characters, clinging to a hackneyed storyline. And it is far, far too long.

If you saw Avatar in a theatre and you’re tempted to see what BluRay adds to the experience, resist that temptation. Even if the movie was projected into the night sky above the UK’s major cities, it would add little or nothing – because a poor film will always be a poor film.

There are some things you can’t polish – Avatar is one of them.

Electile dysfunction

2010-05-23T23:57:00.000+01:00

In 1978 a poster appeared in the high streets of Britain. Placed by Saatchi & Saatchi for the Conservatives, it showed a long line of workless Britons under the line ‘Labour Isn’t Working’. That poster is now widely considered to have been responsible for the Tories’ electoral victory the following year.

Impressive work for 48 pieces of paper. In fact, so impressive that the three major parties have been trying to repeat the feat ever since. But the law of diminishing returns is at work and this simplistic approach to political communication is now woefully inadequate.

“Public resistance to heavy messaging has grown, and for politics … there is no guarantee that the rewards of a well-funded … and well-executed ad concept will outweigh the risks.”

This note of scepticism, perhaps surprisingly, comes from Alistair Campbell and he’s talking about the election just called. What’s more, he’s right.

In fact, he’s a little late. In 1997 the Conservatives piled in with ‘New Labour, New Danger’ and Blair’s demon eyes; very memorable, but ultimately meaningless, a complete failure and 13 years ago.

Clearly, the parties now have more communications, marketing and press advice than you’d find at a D&AD dinner dance – and yet, big posters, PPBs and press releases seem to comprise the most imaginative route they can muster. This is not only achingly predictable, it’s rather a shame. In this media saturated age, the passion, ambition and verve generated by an election campaign should be throwing up advertising strategies and messages as sharp and poignant as that 1978 poster at least once every hour. But alas, it seems the budgets and efforts have, once again, been assigned to highly predictable posters and direct mail.

There’s some very lumpy complacency in play here. One supposes the Tory campaign office thought hijacking Labour’s Cameron as Gene Hunt image and chucking it back at Brown was a stroke of witty genius, but they were looking in the wrong place. In the post-modern, post-Banksy field of outdoor messaging, there is an unintended but important audience reaction to political posters – vandalism. And when one of your valuable voters defaces your wall mounted announcement with anything beyond a graffiti tag, they have done more than earn their place on a thousand Twitter feeds.

They have given would-be ministers a potential hotline to the electorate’s heart. They have shown their hand and passed the parties an opportunity to address some uncomfortable issues. This defacing of official communications should be seen as focus grouping in the raw, at least one voter silently shouting his hopes and fears. If Cameron is scratching his lustrous locks, troubled by the lack of a likely landslide, he could do a lot worse than examine the sentiments of this ‘redesigned’ bit of electioneering in central London.

A word, too, about straplines – and a little quiz. Match the line to the party:

‘A future fair for all’

‘Change that works for you, building a fairer Britain’

‘Year for change’
For the record, it’s Labour, Lib Dem, Tory. Not that it matters. In some strange twist of neuro-psychology, they leave your brain the second you look away from them. Just try it. And if you ever wanted to know what copywriting by committee looks like, the Lib Dems have just satisfied your curiosity in a way that will never be bettered. These mottos are the very worst examples of watery weak branding and in the real, commercial world would have been rejected in a heartbeat.

Naturally, if the competing parties were left to build their own communication strategies and creative work, we would expect nothing less than an absolute debacle (these are politicians after all). But they hire agencies, consultants, PRs and spinners by the truckload – so it’s quite astonishing the creative work emanating from the campaigns is so anodyne, so cowardly and so devoid of emotional impact.

I am sure I will never find myself in the unhappy position of having to persuade the beleaguered public to opt for one cabal of career politicians over another. But in the event, I honestly think jettisoning adverts, leaflets and slogans (I’d probably retain PPBs) and spending the budget on policy research, manifesto crafting and actually encouraging voter participation would be excellent advice. Telling people you had done it would probably play very well and attract votes.

You could even put it on a poster.

Ello, ello, ello

2010-05-17T23:24:00.000+01:00

1. The crime under investigation must be the murder of local prostitutes.

2. The leading male detective must have a troubled past and a broken or rocky marriage.

3. And a drink problem.

4. His boss must have doubts about the male detective's involvement, but must admit he's the only one who can crack the case.

5. An autopsy scene, quite grisly, is mandatory.

6. Nobody must ever do any paperwork.

7. Arriving at a murder scene, our protagonist must ask a uniform officer 'What have we got?' A white tent will be involved here.

8. Lots of sexual tension between lead male and lead female detective is essential. She must be younger. At some point in the first episode we must see her in her bra for no good reason.

9. Lead male must be seen standing on a bridge staring out across a dark urban setting. He must be pouting. And squinting.

10. Lead female must, at some point, lock herself in the ladies' loo and sob about something.

11. An obvious perpertrator must be dragged into the cop shop early on and aggressively questioned by the troubled male lead. Then released.

12. We must suspect the lead male cop of the crime for a bit.

13. Lone saxophone all over the incidental music please.

14. One scene will involve the use of the internet to advance the case. It won't be like the internet you use.

15. It must rain. A lot.

16. Lead female cop must look achingly at her child playing as plot deepens and more murders occur.

17. When any male returns home, he must pour a scotch and sigh. A lot.

18. Perpertrator (who wears specs) must laugh in a crazy way when cops can't make evidence stick.

19. Lead male cop will then consider 'taking things into his own hands'.

20. Audience must be unable to quite relate to friends and colleagues how the crime was solved. But will happily hum the title music.

Massive sweep creatures

2010-05-09T22:26:00.000+01:00

When I was young and it still existed, the Melody Maker got its knickers in a twist about 'rockism'. This was the notion that various acts were snubbing innovation in favour of rock stereotypes (feet on monitors, low slung guitars and the like). Manic Street Preachers often stood accused and a debate raged across the letters page. If those accusers were to hear 'Postcards From A Young Man' they would either keel over in indignation or book a victory party.

The previous Manics' album 'Journal For Plague Lovers' was awkward and obtuse but this new release is so 'rockist' it even features Duff from Guns And Roses. Which means it is an easily dismissed, glib collection of commercial cliche right? Not right.

Sure our heads say 'Plague Lovers' track, 'Mummy What Is A Sex Pistol?' is everything a challenging alt. rock record should be. But our hearts know fat, rolling, stick-to-the-ribs hooks and full-throttle guitar breaks are just as nutritious for the soul. If not more so. After all, an afternoon at the ICA may well make us feel all arch and perceptive, but it can't really compete with the elation of an evening at a West End show. And the first track (and lead single) on 'Postcards' - 'It's Not War' - is every bit as invigorating and charged as one those vast productions.

Now lead singles from any album can often be deceptive. They promise ten or so other tracks just as accomplished and positive, but on purchase, the work frequently delivers all too many fillers and indulgent experiments. Such trickery isn't for Manic Street Preachers. 'Postcards' is awash with tracks as full and fabulous as 'It's Not War' which, not content with taking over the playlist of at least two BBC stations this week, has all but taken over my life.

Clearly, if you're searching for an album to change the nature of contemporary music and force everyone from Portishead to Radiohead to re-consider the whole project, then you're going to have to look elsewhere. But if you happen to be in the mood for head-thrown-back, spine-arching, sky-spinning guitar workouts bouncing on a sea of string sections, trumpets and massive production, you're in luck. In fact, you've never been more lucky.

The Manics have never been about the introspection of emo or the shyness of shoegazing. Their brief has always been romance. Not romatic love necessarily, but the passion and emotion of being a rock band. When Richie Edwards was with us, this veered towards angst, but since he vanished the emotion has been more dramatic, more escapist. Manic Street Preachers never turn away from the giddy fantasy of rock and roll, it is their prime motivator and they wear it on their sleeves. Of course, this leaves them wide open for harsh judgement and ridicule - but that naivety and audacity is at the heart of their appeal.

Although I love this band, I couldn't say they are faultless. They are more than capable of a bad record ('Lifeblood' is overwashed and flat) and bad judgement (playing for Castro), nevertheless this tenth LP is absolutely on target. Certainly more a sizzling Piri Piri Nando's chicken than the tester menu at The Fat Duck - but, be honest - which makes you salivate more?

'Postcards From A Young Man' references older Manics albums without shame and 'Everything Must Go' is the obvious touchstone, but their debut 'Generation Terrorists' is also present. What the band have done is syringe the striking strings and theatrics from the former, drawn the glam punk from the latter and injected the whole concoction into a dozen joyous, thrusting and instantly adoptable new songs, to produce an album only Manic Street Preachers could make, but everyone can love.

That's pretty irresistable.

The man who designed punk rock

2010-05-08T22:53:00.000+01:00

For those of you too fresh of face and short of tooth to remember, the punk movement spewed into the mainstream from the basements of Soho and shops of the Kings Road during the feverish summer of 1976. For many, it was the most radical and exhilarating injection popular culture had experienced since the birth of rock ‘n’ roll in the Fifties. So, unsurprisingly, its most influential figures became household names: Johnny Rotten (nee Lydon), Joe Strummer, Siouxsie Sioux and even Billy Idol.

However much punk was a musical overhaul, it was also a visual revolution. The hacked, coloured hair, the torn and painted clothing and, yes, the safety pins, were just as significant as the roaring sound. The clothes were largely the creation of Mclaren’s partner, Vivienne Westwood (who you know), but the graphic design was the work of Jamie Reid (who maybe you don’t).

Reid was born in 1952 and educated at John Ruskin Grammar School in South London. But it was at Croydon Art School, while taking part in a protest sit-in, that he met the young Malcolm Mclaren. As well as a huge enthusiasm for anti-authority activity, the pair shared a fascination with the Situationists.

Founded in 1957, The Situationist International group was made up of revolutionaries and artists, hitting its peak during the unprecedented French wildcat strikes of May 1968. This movement is worthy of an article in its own right, but for now it is sufficient to say that Mclaren and Reid saw a real connection between the civil unrest of Paris and the dire state of British society in the mid 70s. Initially the two were simply friends – Malcolm’s ambitions lay in shop and band management, while Jamie became involved in the subversive newspaper Suburban Press. Nevertheless, it seems their careers were destined to intertwine. When Malcolm pieced together and launched Sex Pistols from his shop ’SEX ‘ in Chelsea’s World’s End, he knew exactly who to recruit as the in-house graphic designer.

I’ve always thought Mclaren had no real idea just how explosive his band would be and he certainly found their immediate notoriety quite worrying. So it’s safe to say, Jamie Reid was equally unaware of the incalculable influence his work would have, long after the demise of the Pistols and punk itself.

Reid’s creativity and anarchic flair are so impressive, it’s very difficult to single out one aspect as the most important. That said, the ‘ransom note’ typography , used almost every time punk is referenced, was Jamie’s concept (from his publishing days) and instantly lashed itself to the language of punk as the Sex Pistols’ logo and on the sleeves of their early singles. But there can be very few British people over the age of 40, who do not recognise Cecil Beaton’s photographic portrait of the Queen, photocopied and corrupted by a safety pin jammed through her mouth.

Of course, we’re somewhat unmoved by anti-monarchist sentiments these days, but the strikingly rebellious and outright dangerous nature of this work at the time, cannot be underestimated. If Sex Pistols built their fame and power on a mixture of anger and outrage, Jamie Reid’s designs doubled their potency. He created sleeves for the monumental singles: ‘Anarchy In The UK’ (a shredded and defaced union flag), ‘God Save The Queen’ (a version of the ‘Beaton’ montage), ‘Pretty Vacant’ (a bus with its destination showing ‘Nowhere’ and ‘Holidays In The Sun’ (a mocking cartoon vacation brochure) – each as provocative and challenging as the single within.

In 1997, to mark the twentieth anniversary of the Pistols’ ‘Never Mind The Bollocks’ album (another Reid masterpiece of violent yellow and shocking pink), Jamie released limited edition prints of his best known punk designs and has, more recently, produced artwork for the fusion band Afro Celt Sound System. He is still a working and highly regarded designer and artist, mounting exhibitions like Peace is Tough at The Arches in Glasgow and the Microzine Gallery in Liverpool, where he now lives.

A career retrospective, May Day, May Day, was held in May 2007 and his work can also be found at L-13 Light Industrial Workshop in Clerkenwell, London.

Perhaps inevitably and rather pleasingly, Reid was also a leading light in the campaigns against Clause 28, The Poll Tax and The Criminal Justice Bill.

Sean O’Hagan of The Observer once described the ‘God Save The Queen’ sleeve as “the single most iconic image of the punk era”. For me, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to adjust that to “any era”.

The bare facts

2010-04-21T22:55:00.000+01:00

Someone at BBC Drama has had a lightbulb moment. 'Pop stars ...', he or she has noted, '... often have complicated relationships with their Dads. We could make some films out of that'. And so, a fortnight ago, we were treated to an exploration of Boy George's paternal frictions. This week it was the turn of John Winston Lennon.

'Lennon Naked' struck immediately as the superior effort. From the opening, the attention to detail and authentic 60s feel were convincing enough to draw us into the period (not least of all because everyone smoked cigarettes at a rate a Player's beagle would struggle to match). That said, Vicarage researchers are still working hard to establish whether 'shagging' was a term widely used in 60s Britain and the script could certainly have done with a final tightening before shooting began. 'So, John. What's next for the Fab Four' from Freddie was beyond clunky.

But of course our eyes weren't really on the vintage microphones and motor cars, they were on erstwhile Dr. Who, Christopher Ecclestone as the former Beatle. And here was the first difficulty.

Ecclestone wasn't so much playing Lennon as channelling him. He'd clearly done his homework by watching hours of footage to capture every inflection, idiosyncrasy and tick. The instantly familiar scouse drawl never wavered for a second and the laconic mannerisms were in place in every scene. So much so, in fact, that the whole performance began to overwhelm the work. It was more like a very clever turn than a characterisation. He was almost too Lennony.

This is a harsh criticism because in less skilled hands, the part could have been rendered toe-curlingly awful and it was far from that. But we hadn't settled down to watch a masterful impression and the piece promised much more too.

Indeed, it was intended to be an examination of John's relationship with his parents and the ways in which it shaped his life and actions. Now, to almost anyone with a passing interest in popular culture, this is an endlessly fascinating subject. As a genuine icon of the last century, who spent his career inventing and building some of the most memorable popular music we'll ever know, Lennon's motivations and inspirations fill many volumes. Clearly, an hour of TV isn't long enough to delve into these areas. Therefore it was vital not to squander a single insight or opportunity to shine a light on the lesser known John. A shame, then, that the focus of the drama was the rapid-cut recreation of the most obvious of his life's events. He met Yoko at an art exhibition? You don't say. Epstein had something of a crush on him? Who'd have known.

And so this went on. The plot was less a psychological analysis of a one-off genius and more a 'greatest hits' compilation of Lennon's musical life. Even when utterly superfluous to the story, we had to be exposed to well documented incidents like the trip to see the Maharishi Yogi.

Which is not to say the core conceit was ignored completely. The very best scenes, the most illuminating and telling, showed us John's reunion with his absent father. We had no way of knowing whether these precise conversations or arguments actually took place, but that was the appeal.

We were presented with so many events we know happened - and have seen for ourselves many times - that the speculation was refreshing. But it also indicated how the piece had the balance wrong. It needed to show us the ways in which the history of which we know little, led to the occasions and music of which we know so much. What it gave us were painstaking reconstructions of oft-told stories, lightly sprinkled with new ideas.

So the film did touch on Lennon Snr's failings and the anger and hurt this ignited in his son (and a special mention is deserved by Christopher Fairbank as father Freddie, easily the best performance throughout) - albeit in a far too sketchy and glib way. Inevitably, we also saw a great deal of the mutual admiration club which was the marriage to Yoko. But was I the only viewer wondering why one of John's most profound and affecting relationships was completely written out? That's right, no Macca.

I mentioned this on Twitter and was gently chided for forgetting this was a tale of John Lennon, but surely any exploration of his psyche is incomplete without a recognition of this most creative and fractious of partnerships? Yes, Paul was there as a bit player, but anyone unfamiliar with the story (if such a person ever existed), would assume he was simply a sideman in a band called John Lennon And His Beatles.

'Lennon Naked' isn't bad but it is flawed, probably because it isn't nearly brave enough. The scene where Lennon plays his father the tape of him primal screaming ' ... daddy don't go!' hinted at different drama, maybe a two hander, maybe totally imagined, where John's bitterness and fury do battle with his Dad's indifference and idleness.

Whether this would have attracted the necessary funding and exposure on the BBC, I couldn't say. But it would have given us the chance to properly ponder the emotions, longings and cruelties that took John Winston Lennon from his Aunt Mimi's Liverpool house to the pavement outside a Manhattan apartment building. Something nobody has yet managed to achieve, this film included.

Terror Vision: Chris Morris' Four Lions

2010-04-10T23:14:00.000+01:00

Chris Morris is the writer and mind behind the peerless media satires ‘On The Hour’, ‘The Day Today’, ‘Brass Eye’ and ‘Nathan Barley’. ‘Four Lions’ is his first feature film, co-written by Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong. It is a comedy about suicide bombers and its UK provincial premiere was at the Broadway Cinema, Nottingham, where Chris, Sam and Jesse talked about the film.

The first third of ‘Four Lions’ features a scene where four terrorists argue in a Sheffield flat about their ideal target. ‘A mosque!’ insists one, ‘Not a mosque you idiot’ counters another, ‘f***ing Boots The Chemist!’.

This perfectly captures the ‘Four Lions’ premise: the difficulty five men have in reconciling the profound, dangerous and exotic nature of international terrorism, with the prosaic, mundane aspects of life in South Yorkshire. And their insurmountable ineptitude.

‘It is hard to like murderers, but there is something endearing about anyone struggling.’ – Chris Morris

And struggle they do. Perhaps surprisingly for Morris, the humour here is rather traditional. The bombers are clumsy, accident prone and at least two are painfully simple – attributes we recognise in characters from The Three Stooges to The Chuckle Brothers, Some Mothers Do Have ‘Em to Dad’s Army. Ah yes! Dad’s Army, a show that is a real touchstone when considering Four Lions. In both cases we’re following a troop of men utterly unsuited to their task, led by one who believes himself to be a robust leader but who is ultimately hopeless and hopelessly naive. Being trapped is the common thread in all great situation comedy (and this is a sitcom) – either literally (Porridge) or by circumstance (Frazier) and these four lions are trapped by ideology, trapped by confusion and trapped by their limitations.

‘I wasn’t sure there was anything amusing about terrorist plots until I started to research the subject.’ – Chris Morris

What lifts Four Lions high above crass tastelessness is credibility. We know men from Yorkshire really have planned (and carried out) mass murder with explosives in London. So the context is easy to accept – but it’s meticulous detail that allows us to believe these fictional characters are doing the same. Detail from court records to which the director had access.

‘I wonder what that ant is thinking …’ ‘It’s not thinking anything. It’s a leaf.’ – from a transcript of a bugged terrorist planning meeting.

As Morris points out, it would be impossible to deliver a comedy on this subject, had actual terrorists not actually revealed themselves to be hilariously stupid. Strong sitcom humour derives from reality, hence My Hero is unfunny and Outnumbered succeeds. Terrorists may well be wicked and frightening, but often they are also hapless and daft.

‘There’s a rhythm to Chris’s writing that is irresistible’. - Jesse Armstrong

That the Four Lions script is splendid is no surprise. Brass Eye and its companion pieces rest on their incomparable use of exaggerated media-isms and Armstrong and Bain write Peep Show. What is praticularly impressive is that three middle class, white men use Asian English and Punjabi so astutely. It would be all too easy to roam into ‘It Aint ‘Alf ‘Ot Mum’ territory but there is no hint of such clumsiness.

In fact, it is remarkable that the whole screenplay rolls out without race or politics ever becoming an issue. But that’s not to say it is without controversy. After all, this is a comedy movie about violence and death – and both feature prominently in the second reel.

‘I never set out to be controversial’ – Chris Morris

So the key question for any comedy – ‘Is it funny?’ – is easily answered. It is very funny. One scene involving the purchase of bleach is a contender for one of the most amusing I have ever seen in cinema and the slapstick is superbly executed throughout.

But if there is a flaw in Four Lions, it’s this: it sags in the middle. Clearly the film is moving us from gags and absurdity to the hellish truth of suicide bombing but the transition isn’t as smooth as it should be. At its mid-point it is neither uproariously funny, nor disturbingly moving.

What’s more, it sets up some threads which it chooses not pursue. For instance, Julia Davis’ character could well have been excised without any loss of pace or pathos.

In short, it feels one edit short of perfection. Four Lions’ trajectory is very similar to the last episode of Blackadder when the endearing idiots are eventually thrown into the line of fire, but it doesn’t quite manage to turn the tone quite so effectively.

‘What is funny about terrorism? Watch the movie’ - Chris Morris

Morris asserts that he never embarks on a project with offence as a motivator – and I believe him. He clearly finds sensitive issues interesting and taboo full of comic potential but there is nothing to offend the intelligent viewer here. Four Lions did shock me, not because it was inappropriate, but because it made me care about dangerous, desperate men. To reiterate, Four Lions is, at its heart, a traditional sitcom and therefore in many ways, it is Morris’ least controversial work. Yet it’s an outstanding film that proves his ingenuity, as he makes you laugh in the face of terror.

Life's a pitch

2010-03-23T23:48:00.000Z

“We’ll take a short break now and give you a chance to spread your legs.”

Thus an Account Manager ensured one particular new business presentation would haunt her for many years to come.

The last decade has seen the advertising business change in almost every way, but some things remain evergreen – and the live pitch is one of them. It is the opportunity to flash your creative colours, reveal your bedazzling personality and stun with your finely honed strategy. But here also lies the possibility of shame, embarrassment and humiliation.

It’s business as sport and losing is all too easy.

What follows is a collection of pitch anecdotes I carry with me to enliven dull dinner parties and scare the living daylights out of interns. All these things happened and I was either present or close enough to the event to vouch for their veracity.

Raising The Roof

This was a solo effort for the new business guy. The prospect was hot and all he had to do was pull off a confident, professional pitch and the account was his.

If experience had taught him anything it was to arrive early and prepare. Fortune was smiling on him that day and he was shown through to the presentation room to wait. Having set up the laptop and projector at record speed, he found himself with a good ten minutes in hand. So, he thought he’d run the cabling through the gap between the polystyrene tiles and the ceiling to prevent tripping.

This neatly filled the spare time and the prospective clients filed in and took their seats. Our man welcomed them, cleared his throat and in one deft movement pulled the laptop towards him. This was sufficient to bring most of the tiles crashing down on the assembled audience and give them a light covering of white dust.

Passing out ceremony

Pitching for a project for a chain of steak restaurants, the Creative Director showed his final piece of work with satisfaction. The client seemed to like the ideas and he was pretty confident the business was in the bag.

Next up was the portly Account Manager with the media strategy. Positioning himself between his colleagues and the client, he stepped forward and started to run through his plan. Within seconds he was white as flour and his shirt was soaked in cold, clinging sweat. Seconds after that, his words trailed off to a feeble moan and he dropped to the floor like a bag of shopping.

Folks, even if you can’t face breakfast on the morning of a pitch, a couple of squares of Dairy Milk before you get started keeps that blood sugar up and may just prevent you from fainting halfway through.

The Devil’s in the detail

The Account Manager was convinced the key to the client’s heart was a superb piece of marketing software he had just introduced to the agency’s offering. The Account Director was less than convinced, but gave him the benefit of the doubt, allocating him a ten minute slot to pitch the software’s benefits.

The appointed moment arrived and our AM took to his feet to explain in intricate detail the splendours of this new kit. So much detail, in fact, that 15 minutes later he was still talking. Ten minutes on and he still hadn’t finished. A volley of coughs from the pitch team was enough to push him to his conclusion:

“Any questions?”

“Yes,” said the client

“What is the name of the software, please?”

“Er … I don’t really know” replied our hero

“Can I email it to you?”

Hammer Time

The pitch brief made it absolutely clear that the winning agency would be the team who most accurately understood the business and had the ability to deliver the message with laser-guided precision. The Creative Director translated this as ‘hitting the nail on the head’. Fair enough, but the seeds of his doom were sown there and then.

The pitch opened with the creative strategy and the CD stood all smiles and glinting eyes. Boy, he was going to make an impression. And so he did, because his opening gambit was to produce a hammer and four inch nail. As he spoke he drove the nail home. Straight through the enormously expensive, antique boardroom table in front of him.

With their creative leader promptly ejected from the building, it seemed somewhat pointless for the agency to continue with the pitch and a very quiet drive back to the office soon followed.

There are, of course, hundreds of these tales of woe from the frenzied theatre of the pitch. But it’s worth noting some of these fraught presentations still won the business and the stories are brightening flagging dinner parties to this day.

Demanding branding

2010-03-23T23:04:00.007Z

As BP’s stricken rig barfed over 2000 barrels of oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico for the best part of a month, some wag suggested pouring gallons of vinegar into the ocean to create the world’s largest salad dressing. But that’s probably the extent of the levity to be drawn from the situation – because alongside the black stuff, the UK oil giant has been pumping its reputation away at a similar rate. And as any marketing professional will tell you, brand is reputation, reputation is brand.

The branding process has always had a built in Achilles’ heel. It certainly takes a great deal of hard work and an extraordinary sum of money to create, assemble, promote and maintain a global brand, and when handled correctly the results and profits are astonishing. But here’s the sting – the entire entity can be severely if not mortally wounded in a matter of hours.

It would be logical to assume the biggest brands are immune to this kind of corporate banana skin, but in spite of (or maybe because of) their immense size, they tend to be the most vulnerable.

Take Google. Yes, good old, reliable old, new media champion Google. The world warmed to Google thanks to its dedication to personal freedom, its commitment to open information and its anti-corporate image. But the temptation of China’s enormous market and huge population proved too much. Before you could bring up a humorous cat clip, they had agreed to censor their results in exchange for their share of the spoils. Hey presto – brand values evaporating quicker than sake steam.

Coke, arguably the world’s biggest brand, has managed to generate similar gaffes – not once but several times. Firstly, by trying to suggest their much gulped formula wasn’t all that brilliant and launching New Coke in 1985. A miserable failure, the original recipe was eventually restored and the process of rebuilding the damaged brand began. However, not content with that exercise in messing on their own doorstep, in 2004 Coke launched Dasani – a bottled water purified using ‘NASA technology’. Before long it emerged that Dasani was drawn from the mains supply and merely filtered using the same process as a home device.

Surely this rather sorry offering couldn’t suffer any further? Indeed it could, as it was then revealed the water contained a carcinogen called Bromate. PR disaster and a severely tarnished brand followed. Presumably by then, Coke’s executives were wishing they’d stuck with their caffeinated, sugar loaded flagship drink and not bothered with whole ‘pure’ thing.

The British can be sparing with their affections, but we loved the Post Office and Royal Mail. It made us feel secure – not only would our letters and parcels be handled with care and delivered on time, but this was a service at the heart of our communities providing a venue for our local gossip and a hub for our public services. No-one in their right mind would ever, EVER, tinker with a brand attracting that level of goodwill, support and loyalty would they? Of course they would. In 2001, the organisation founded in 1681 by Charles The First dropped one of the most highly regarded names in the nation and became Consignia. To almost nobody’s surprise, the new handle was widely disliked, poorly understood (not least of all by the board which introduced it) and rapidly came to represent everything the public disliked about the corporate world. In less than a year, Chairman Allan Leighton confirmed the new name was to be axed and the Post Office was to return. The cost of this unfathomable folly is lost in time, but it certainly ran into the millions.

Now, BP haven’t actually decided to damage their brand by letting oleaginous mayhem seep into one of the most beautiful regions on the planet. On the face of it, this appears to be accidental. But what they did decide to do, around eight years ago, was rebrand their business. ‘British Petroleum’ became ‘Beyond Petroleum’. The famous BP shield logo became a green, radiant sun. Here was a company shouting with all their might ‘We’re no longer evil, petro-chemical merchants of black smoky doom. We’re the shiny new leaders of the eco-revolution, investing in this natural, lovely solar stuff.’ And for a while, we almost bought it. Obviously we noted they still sold petrol at the pumps, but we didn’t think too much about it because we needed it to get to work and go on holiday. And, hey, BP were probably going to phase it out and give everyone an electric car pretty soon, right?

But it’s pretty hard to paint yourself as the green, clean guardians of the planet when one of your pipes it turning the ocean inky and providing an early grave for swathes of marine life. That key brand value is now … ahem … dead in the water.

So what can we (and our clients) glean from all this. Is every successful brand doomed to eventual disaster? Not all. But a corporate brand must always be seen as a cut glass goblet full of vintage claret. Carry it carefully, revere and respect it and you have something admirable, impressive and valuable. But water it down, spill it or drop it and the consequences will be sudden and the regret long lasting.

Not so simples

2010-03-20T22:59:00.000Z

As with so many wonderful things, the Meerkat was first introduced to us by Sir David Attenborough. In the 1980s documentary ‘Meerkats United’ we discovered they are not cats, they reach sexual maturity aged one and they ‘speak’ to each other. It wasn’t necessary to point out that they are almost unbearably sweet and cartoon-like. 20 odd years ago, Sir David would hardly have imagined this sub-species of the mongoose would be the star of one the most successful and memorable advertising campaigns of the noughties. And yet, they are.

The achievements of the campaign are undeniable – 57,000 Facebook friends, 26,000 Twitter followers for starters. But they’re not the reason I love this work so much, it’s the audacity that brings a smile to my face. I don’t know what the original brief from comparethemarket.com to VCCP was, but I’m willing to bet it wasn’t to produce some fairly low-budget animation, a website that wasn’t theirs, a TV ad that barely mentions a proposition and something with rodents in it. The pitch must have been something to behold.

To the client’s credit, they went with an idea which seemed more based on children’s TV than on anything related to car insurance and almost two years on, they are enjoying all the bounty associated with this joyful, genuinely amusing and utterly endearing work. And this audacity has thrown the quality of other contemporary campaigns into sharp relief. In a marketplace where the infantile banality of the webuyanycar.com chant jostles for position with achingly patronising and stunningly stupid Halifax radio station scenarios, we can only look to Alexander Meerkat and his pal with warmth and admiration.

This is no mean feat. The work may look thrown together with a certain charming naivety, but to bring off an idea which must have looked quite daft on paper, with such aplomb shows real care and skill from the creative team. The fact that other advertisers have tried something similar (noisy opera singers anyone?) and failed, only emphasises this.

Put simply, I am never irritated, agitated or annoyed by any of this campaign’s executions and when I consider the recent output of the broadcast advertising industry, that’s quite a remarkable and unusual turn of events.

Feathering the nest

2010-03-10T23:16:00.000Z

Would you like to own Twitter? I’m not selling it or anything, so don’t reach for your cheque book just yet. But if you were richer than golden syrup, I’m guessing you might be tempted. Only, here’s a note of caution – Twitter has yet to make a penny in profit.

You’d be forgiven for thinking I’m playing a blogger’s trick and will, in the next sentence or two, reveal it has made piles of lovely lolly, but I’m not. According to Alexa – the authority on these things – Twitter is the world’s 11th most popular website and has yet to make a red cent.

What is going wrong? A global, social media tool, employed by everyone from the BBC to Bill Gates, isn’t a financial success? At a time when the creative and digital industries are struggling to make money, shouldn’t this be costing us sleep?

Perhaps not. Because Twitter isn’t actually struggling – it is simply demonstrating a new business paradigm (yes, I know that’s the kind of phrase that makes you want dangle bloggers from windows, but bear with me).

Here are some facts:

Just four years old, Twitter now has 105 million users, delivering 55 million tweets per day. It enjoys almost $60 million in venture funding and to date, the company has done very little to generate revenue. But that’s the backwards business model of the digital age. Rather than hitting on a way to make money, then researching and launching it – this fresh strategy suggests you merely come up with a very, very good idea then give it away. If the idea is popular enough, a massive audience will gladly avail themselves of your free service (remember: making it free isn’t enough to attract an audience in the digital market. Just put up a rubbish landing page on the net and watch the visitors stay away in droves, if you’re in any doubt).

Now, although it was once a fact that money attracts money, it is now equally true that crowds attract cash. Link 105 million people together, let them express their opinions, tastes, thoughts and activities 55 million times a day and some very wealthy folk will be more than happy to share a frothy coffee with you. And then, they’ll probably hand you an extraordinary amount of the folding stuff.

Sure, they’re going to want it back at some point, but if you manage to extract no more than five quid per user at some point, that really won’t be a problem. Naturally, you’ll be planning on a figure considerably larger than that, but that doesn’t seem to be immediately important. It’s all about the demographics – the dollars can wait.

So this new battle plan goes something like this:

1) Good idea

2) Big crowd

3) Venture capital

4) Here comes the money from somewhere.

Sounds easy, doesn’t it? But before we all rush to build social media tools and retire to the Maldives, there’s a factor we shouldn’t ignore: fickleness. The web is more susceptible to trends, whims, fashions and mood swings than a spoilt teenager on a sugar rush. And without the ‘big crowd’ element of the four point campaign, we have a whole lot of nothing plus a cup of very cold frothy coffee.

When Rupert Murdoch plunged $580m into the purchase of MySpace in 2005, it was one of the hottest properties on the internet. Within months, many thousands of its subscribers had migrated to Facebook and with all the clout of News Corporation behind it, and a music-based rebrand, MySpace is losing users and still looks unlikely to make a return any time soon. Indeed, Mr. M is bucking the trend I have described and will soon be charging users for access to all his newspapers’ sites.

So, is this just the Emperor’s new digital clothes? A subprime mortgage market sitting on servers? Another fatal attempt to conjure profits out of thin air? The truth is, it may well be. But the genie is out of the bottle. The planet’s most popular websites (Facebook, YouTube, Spotify, MSN and their ilk) are free to use – and whatever Murdoch might think, they really have to stay that way. But the pressure to make these services pay is building. Google led the way with an advertising model, but their success may well have closed the door on other sites seeking to achieve something similar.

Which brings us back to Twitter. It seems likely that, before long, we’ll be enjoying some kind of contextual advertising along with our messages of love from Ashton Kutcher. Whether that will be enough to produce the kind of margins desired by its backers remains to be seen.

In fact, the writing may already be on the wall. The social network aimed at younger kids ‘Bebo’, is being sold by AOL and if it fails to find a buyer, it will close having lost a great deal of money. It cost AOL $850m and it’s yours for around $50m. Friends Reunited has already been sold at a big loss by ITV.

Clearly, this is not a brave new business utopia – it’s an incredibly fierce battle for online success, and while there will undoubtedly be incredible victories, there will also be a few more sorry casualties before any real money is made.

Get off of My Space

2010-02-23T22:28:00.001Z

As the mighty Twitter launches its 'people you should be following' tool and Facebook announces it now has a fifth of the world's population signed up, a few thoughts occur:

1. Anyone considering a bid for Twitter should pause for a moment. Yes, the world is Twitter-tastic as I type. In fact, we are probably only days away from David Cameron telling the country we're all being laid off via this particular medium. But exactly how long do you think it's going to last?

People are fickle, to say the least. I'd say if there was an award ceremony for fickleness, with gongs handed out at a swanky Park Lane restaurant with accompanying dinner cooked by Jamie, then people would sweep the board. Put it this way - do you think Rupert Murdoch wakes each morning and thanks the sweet heavens that he spent squillions buying the now widely ignored MySpace? He does not.

2. There's probably only one roll of the dice left in the clamour for untold fortunes from social networking websites. So, how's this for an idea? An anti-social networking site. Exciting features (or 'apps' as we're supposed to call them) would include:

- an area where one could post pictures of people with whom you wished to have no contact whatsoever. And tag the ones you actually wished would meet with a freak yachting accident.

- a pop-up window you could activate which allowed you 164 characters all of which have to be expletives.

- a facility for compiling a list of people you don't know and don't want to.

- a facility for compiling a list of people you do know and wish you didn't.

- a scrolling javascript banner advising visitors, in no uncertain terms, to leave you alone.

- a search engine allowing you to track people with whom you went to school and with one click delete them from your page and ensure there is zero possibility they will ever email you with news of the birth of their sixth screaming progeny and their burgeoning career as an assistant manager at Burtons.

- a weekly email newsletter that implores you to leave the service and get on with your miserable, deperate life so that at least you can enjoy some privacy.

I'm thinking of calling it nobodyisthatinterestedinyou.com or stayoutofmylife.net or twatter.co.uk

3. Don't imagine we've 'arrived'. We haven't.

This isn't the end it's a mere sliver of the start. Social media is simply a foothold on a very long (and possibly endless) digital climb. I have absolutely no doubt a developer in a company or more probably, a bedroom, is spewing out code righty now, that will become the basis of something quite obvious, but quite wonderful. Something that will make us regard Facebook and Twitter as quaint distractions. And sooner than we think.

This is a genuine stumbling block in the web game. You are often as close as a few months from being out invented. The lifespan of any successful internet platform is measurably short. Remember GeoCities? Remember Friends Re-United? Even Second Life? Nothing lasts forever, but in this arena, nothing really lasts at all.

4. When is anybody going to make a buck? Don't misunderstand - I'm as heartily sick of the capitalist free market as the next pinko. But these massive sites must have a better business plan than 'Let's just wait for someone to give us a big cheque and leave them to figure it out'.

Unless the new economic model is 'pro-bono' and all future media outlets will simply thrive on goodwill and good fun, real money making has to enter the equation as some point.

Facebook has been running an advertising programme for a while now, but it hardly has Adwords quaking in its boots. And Twitter now has sponsored trending topics (not sure how paying for something to be a trend works, but there it is). MySpace looks doomed to lose money until News Corporation gets completely fed up, despite trying to re-invent itself as a music industry hub and poor Bebo is all but dead.

Traditional advertising models don't really sit comfortably in this brave new world but the commercial efforts of the social media giants seem to closely resemble the 'old ways' and just don't have the same ring of innovation as the sites themselves.

So, if social networks are ever to be truly profitable, they need to have the same 'lightbulb' moment when considering their balance sheets as they had when they dreamed up their user experience.

Paint wars

2010-02-12T23:32:00.000Z

There is a grand tradition of animosity and grudge amongst any era’s foremost artists. Just think of the squabbles between Picasso and Matisse or even Michelangelo and Leonardo. But these cultural showdowns rarely take place on the towpath of the canal in Camden Town – until now.

King Robbo was one of the UK originators of graffiti art and, to other artists at least, is a bit of a legend. Banksy is the Bristolian who took the practice overground and made a fortune in the process. Now there is a battle for the spray can throne and it’s being played out on the walls of north London’s bridges. Or so it seems.

Few art forms split opinion like graffiti. To some it is heavy with youth, self expression, rebellion and urban attitude. To others it is nothing more than miserable vandalism, wrecking the appearance of precious communities. I would suggest it can be both.

The word ‘graffiti’ is from the Italian for a message scratched into the surface of stone. And perhaps that’s the difference. It would be very difficult to argue that the trend for ‘tagging’ – a rough sprayed signature – involves any message greater than ‘I Woz Ere’ (a popular graffito in the UK in the 70s). And while that might be significant in terms of gang territory, it barely qualifies as a message.

However, the legitimate murals commissioned for public places, the witty alteration of political and commercial posters and, yes, the work of Banksy can claim to be carrying a message of sorts. King Robbo stands somewhere in the middle.

Robbo’s ability isn’t in question. If you have ever tried to draw or write the most simple shape with a spray can, you’ll know how difficult it is to produce a multi-coloured, layered and textured image using these materials. And Robbo’s work, in the tradition of the original New York graffiti B-boys, is particularly striking and noticeable. Mostly, though, the image is little more than his name.

Banksy is from a different ‘school’ – stencilling. Influenced by the Parisian Situationist movement and latterly, the design styles of early UK punk, Banksy’s creations actually take place in the safety of a studio, where his images are carved out of linoleum. Only then are they transferred to a wall, bridge or building with the ubiquitous spray paint. So, in all honesty, the two artists are not executing graffiti in quite the same way.

Nevertheless, when Banksy (or at least it is assumed to be him – anonymity is all in the graffiti world) defaced a Robbo ‘masterpiece’ which had stood almost untouched for nearly 25 years, there was trouble. The stencilist had added the image of a council worker papering over the Robbo work and to some, this was sacrilege.

Over Christmas 2009, revenge was taken and the words ‘King Robbo’ were restored to the artwork. Whether this was the work of the ‘King’ or his courtiers, isn’t known.

As you might expect, the temptation proved too much for the man from Bristol and he returned to prefix Robbo’s title with the letters ‘FUC’. This was accompanied by six other pieces along the Regent’s canal, perhaps to further assert his superiority.

And there the story may have ended had it not been for the multitude of online graffiti forums. There was some defence for Banksy, but for the most part, the spraying community could hardly contain its outrage – which is interesting.

Surely defacement is in the very nature of graffiti – indeed, it could be defined as artistic defacement. Banksy’s work is very often defaced, sometimes in an artful way, often with tags or council chemicals. And it would seem he accepts this as an occupational hazard – even though each piece is worth thousands of potential pounds. This is the graffiti game and surely Mr. B is simply playing it, with some wit and no little irony?

Robbo, or at least his online supporters, appear to be taking a strangely purist stance over an art form that is always temporary and has a history of ongoing alteration. Had Camden Council erased it, they would have some justification in crying ‘philistine’ – but it takes a very inartistic outlook to miss the humour in Banksy’s adjustment. If they want their art protected by severe looking guards, there are thousands of works in hundreds of secure galleries. But graffiti’s intention has always been to oppose this stuffy, elitist arrangement.

A final thought. It is not beyond imagination that King Robbo and Banksy spotted the benefit of a joint enterprise. Neither is a stranger to self-publicity and both, like all artists, have a need to maintain their profiles.

So, as this graffiti war rages, it is just possible there will be two winners, because the whole escapade was designed that way.

Good Lord!

2009-06-16T22:23:00.000+01:00

There's much to enjoy about BBC1's The Apprentice. Alongside Dragon's Den, it has somehow managed to levitate above the seething mass of reality TV we've endured over the last decade.

Particularly the pointless, nauseating and now departed Big Brother. That said, there are some issues I must raise at an executive level so I have copied you in on the following memo:

1. Lord Alan 'Lorshugger' Sugar tells us in the opening sequence that the prize is 'to work with me'. Leaving aside the rather puzzling notion that to graft for Amstrad is the kind of blessing of which mere mortals can only dream, it seems obvious the winner gets to do nothing of the kind. I understand former 'apprentice' Michelle Dewsberry was put in charge of recycling PCs. Is this a flagship area of Lorshugger's operation that's alive with challenge and opportunity? I'm not so sure. No wonder she left after three months.

2. Many of the contestants are really incredibly stupid. Now they may be picked for that very reason, but that would force Lorshugger to hire an idiot. Nevertheless, only this week we saw several grown, educated adults turn down an offer from Boots (only named once and thereafter dubbed 'The Pharmacists') and ensure their ludicrous 'novel as a windbreak' concept attracted not a single buyer. Razor sharp thinking there, ladies.

3. The 'team leaders' almost always fail miserably to grasp even the basics of people management. In most cases their strategy appears to involve dumping any notion of planning, discussion, listening, deputising or executing in favour of a festival of shouting, bickering and occcasionally crying. If the next generation of industry captains are going to take all their cues from the playground, then this fiscal crisis is likely to have a long shelf life.

4. I don't really get the cooking tasks. This season favours these episodes - we've already had sausages and there's at least two more kitchen briefs to follow. They don't really explore the complexities of business and are closer to an edition of 'Ready, Steady, Cook'. I can't imagine a three figure gig with Lorshugger calls for much culinary flair and what about hygiene? Do restaurants really buy meat products from gangs of youngsters on the street? I hope not.

5. On the Piers Morgan documentary, Lorshugger claimed he was one of the few people who could write a valid cheque for £100m. So how come his boardroom resembles the meeting room of a medium sized plumbing supplies wholesaler? I've seen better furniture in the Ikea Spring sale. C'mon Alan, surely you have Lawrence Llewelyn Bowen's number.

6. Returning to the title sequence, I note Lorshugger no longer glides over the office blocks of the capital in his SugarCopter. But is this a result of the recent 'authenticity' scandals tainting other shows (ie: he doesn't really have a chopper), or a nod to the cutback culture we're all enjoying so much? I must find out.

7. Karen Brady is no Margaret. Last week, it was rather ironic that the young lady who was shown the door was accused of taking a back seat and not getting 'stuck in', when this is very much Ms. Brady's modus operandi. Her little 'women in business' speech was her sole appearance of note (and was largely nonsense) so the barbed observations of her predecessor were particularly missed.

8. When the 'saved' pair return to the house and their fellow competitors jump to their feet to embrace them, as if to say 'Thank God it was you who survived!', the insincerity almost moves me to physical sickness. Just for once, it would be wonderful if the two strode into the lounge to be met with moans of disappointment, exasperation and dismay.

9. If I was to be summoned to Heathrow at five in the morning to watch Lorshugger's 'bulldog licking a nettle' visage on a big screen, before being whisked back to central London, I might have cause to question the decision making abilities of my potential employer.

10. When Lorshugger appears through the frosted glass door of the shabby boardroom, straight after the task, it looks like he's just been for a poo.

Still, Alan, loving the show, loving the show.

Skin deep

2009-03-14T23:22:00.000Z

Last weekend, an easily missed news item showed up in the press announcing the dissolution of Prince Charles’ complimentary medicine charity. The board claim they feel their work is complete as ‘alternative’ therapies are now widely accepted by the NHS and conventional practitioners, but there are also some financial problems involved. This may bring a slight reduction in unscientific process promoted as useful medical advice, but I very much doubt the endless tirade of questionable claims in beauty product advertising will diminish any time soon.

Of course, if you’re looking for examples of science as marketing, skin care would be the richest seam to mine. As early as 1918, Woodbury soap was claiming its application would make a lady’s skin flawless for her soldier, but at nearly 700 words, I’m not sure their advertisement would carry much weight today. Since then, the cosmetic business has built its messaging to embrace the kind of terminology that would baffle Dr. Who. Which is the whole point – no lay person really understands their chemical explanations, assertive jargon and studious bar charts, and so we tend to believe it must be correct because it’s ‘clever’.

We’ve all heard the promise that ‘biospheres’ will inflate up to nine times to fill our wrinkles, but a moment’s research reveals a ‘biosphere’, in the real, grown-up world, is a project to encase an eco-system, often in space. But it sounds convincing, doesn’t it?

Similarly, calling a product ‘Code’, suggests it contains a substance ready to drill into your DNA and reverse its annoying habit of making you age. Add some double-helix graphics on the tub and the confusion is complete. Most intelligent people know genectic code can only be altered with great skill and laborious lab work, but our desire for youth tends to mask this common-sense logic and wishful thinking takes over.

The language and window dressing surrounding the pseudo science is vital too. Use words like ‘revolutionary’, ‘breakthrough’ and ‘advanced’ and you give the impression you’re responsible for pushing back the frontiers of biology. Couple it with close-up Photoshop work on your chosen model or celeb and you’re really motoring. You could even insist your salespeople wear white lab coats in stores, as one famous manufacturer does.

This would all be quite amusing if it wasn’t so unfair.

The rise of cosmetic surgery from taboo secret to mark of success has driven people (and let’s be honest, mostly women) to a state where one’s physical appearance is never quite sufficient, where perpetual teenagehood is one of life’s most important goals. And, as the surgeon’s blade is beyond the purse of most, in step the creams and potions, marketed as the perfect alternative. Not that they’re particularly cheap, with some well-known skin brands retail at £400 for a tub.

So what is behind the beguiling marketing? Are any of these lotions actually wildly different from the others? Well, the truth, in one word is: ‘moisture’. Skin tends to look better if it has a high water content as it, unsurprisingly, swells slightly. It feels better too, less tight and smoother. Central heating, air conditioning and weather can cause skin moisture to evaporate. That’s real science.

Now, almost all skin creams start life as something called Aquabase (a sort hydrated jelly) which happens to be pretty good at moisturising skin. What defines one cream from another is the scent, oils and other stuff added to the Aquabase. Finally, those chemical compounds we hear so much about are tested for safety (rather than efficacy), named (almost always by marketeers, rather than scientists) and added, usually in tiny amounts. Everything else is packaging, branding and advertising.

Aquabase, I should add, costs around £10.00 per kilo.

You might be surprised to know that I’m not actually against the bundling and marketing of gunky, moisturising skin goodies for profit. They do, after all, make the skin feel and look a bit better for a short while. When plain old watery water is subjected to the same regime, no-one seems to mind – and as our lovely ad from 1918 shows, the process is nothing new. What I do object to is the suggestion of scientific miracles in pots – that somehow this is medicine not make-up. Because proper medicine is terribly important and slightly damper cheeks really isn’t.