Hilarious. And a musical too, which makes it classier.
Underground Entertainment
Another Reason To Read The New Yorker
Literary fun at the New Yorker's "Page Turner" blog
The New Yorker launches its new Page-Turner book blog with a bang — and a slide show of literary cartoons.
Occasionally I come across people who claim to be writers, yet don’t subscribe to The New Yorker. Look folks, Us Weakly isn’t going to get it done.
Keep reading the good stuff, Tom Chandler.
Happy Mother’s Day From The Underground’s (3.5 Year Old Daughter)
Who says the best creative work comes out of ad agencies?
My daughter is very good at smearing paint on her hands...
Three Surefire Ways To Generate Better Inane, Meaningless Jargon
Every once in a while I feel the urge to streamline best-of-breed architectures while scaling visionary content, and as soon as the nausea passes, I head for the Web Economy Bullshit Generator.
The Web Economy Bullshit Generator
I first blogged about this years ago, and while it could probably use a language update (who “reintermediates out-of-the-box e-commerce” any more?), it’s still a useful, relevant tool for many online marketers.
At least that’s what a casual survey of marketing blogs would suggest.
If that’s just a little too e-commerce for you, then consider the Web 2.0 Bullshit Generator, which offers you the ability to “harness citizen-media folksonomies.”
I suggest using both at the same time, making it possible to engage 24/365 mindshare while integrating peer-to-peer synergies.
(I’m doing it right now, and I’m telling you it makes feel awesome and a little dirty at the same time.)
So the next time you need to fill that ad, report or blog post with marketing jargon that absolutely no one could disagree with (you can’t disagree with something that doesn’t exist), then drop by.
I looked for a Social Media Bullshit Generator, but then realized (somewhat foolishly) that a visit to many social media guru blogs offers pretty much the same effect.
Keep bullshitting, Tom Chandler.
UPDATE: I missed the Bullshit 3.0 site the first time around. I’m not sure it’s as vertically agile as the first two, but it’s clearly bootstrapping seamless engagement, and really, what more could you ask for?
The Perfect Retrogrouch Writer Gift
Here’s the perfect birthday present for that Retrogrouch Writer in your life — a USB typewriter which delivers the appearance of Mad Vintage Writing Skillz (including the wrist strain), but combined with the digital output today’s pampered, too-lazy-to-type-it-over writers really need.
You can't write your next novel without it -- the USB Typewriter
As always, I work my fingers to the bone to bring my readers the best in writer-related entertainment.
Keep writing (and enjoy the sore wrists), Tom Chandler.
Ad Agency Reality TV Show “The Pitch” Reminds Me Why I Got The Hell Out Of Advertising
Because I was wasting my workday on the Breaking Copy blog, I discovered a reality TV series called The Pitch, which matches ad agencies in head-to-head competitions for campaign work — in this case a Subway gig.
I haven’t played the agency game for a long time (though I’m still pitching clients), and frankly, I enjoyed the show mostly because I hated the game when I was in it.
Apparently, I take comfort in the suffering of others.
Subway wanted to sell breakfast to 18-24 year-olds (the most over-pursued, under-funded demographic on the planet), and they foisted this dust bunny of a problem on two ad agencies: McKinney and WDCW.
Right off the bat, we saw the agency principals default to their younger creative teams, the idea being anyone over 35 couldn’t possibly sell stuff to 18-24 year olds. It’s an attitude that infects the industry now more than ever (apparently old people can’t operate Twitter).
After recently cleaning up the damage wrought by a pair of under-30 social media gurus, you can imagine my feelings on the subject. (At one point, an agency head says “The world is not kind to advertising agencies.” He should have said “Advertising agencies are not kind to over-40 creatives.”)
Amusingly, the winning team played right to stereotype; they used their creative powers to search the Internet, essentially outsourcing the creative burden to a puffy YouTube rapper with a viral pancake breakfast video (really).
That other concept produced by the winning agency? Dreck.
So much for the myth of youthful creative enterprise.
A Couple Observations
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It’s disconcerting to be reminded just how bad creatives are at presentations (even to their own staff).
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We see the angst of the agency principals but remain one step removed from the real crucible — the creative offices. Sadly, we saw little in the way of sweating, pained creatives.
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McKinney’s Chief Creative Director comes off badly; an arrogant jerk to his employees and a horrendously bad pitcher at the client’s. I actually winced.
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WDCW’s leader (Tracy Wong) makes a wonderful statement about John Wooden-style leadership; you don’t talk in terms of win or lose, you just do everything you can, take the shot, and forget what happens next.
“I’d Like To Thank The Academy”
My take? The wrong agency won. I thought WDCW’s Breakfast zAMbie concept had more legs than McKinney’s rapper “freestyle” concept. The ability to move campaigns across traditional media and multiple digital channels is critical, and some of those digital channels are narrow.
ZAMbie was funny, the word could easily enter the lexicon, the campaign tapped into the zombie zeitgeist, and you could take it anywhere.
I think the client copped to all this when he said the decision could have gone the other way had not McKinney demonstrated some unseen (by us) “strategic” insight.
Things, it seems, are never what they appear to be.
I’ve been involved in pitches where I’d bet my retirement fund we killed it, yet if I had, I could look forward to living on the street twenty years from now.
Keep creating, Tom Chandler.
Reading Is Fundamental: A Fun, Simple Ad For Books
As the father of a little girl (soon to be two little girls), I thought I’d do the dad thing and post an adorable PSA for books.
My daughter’s bedroom is largely overrun with books, but I do wonder how the rise of digital books will translate over the course of her life.
She figured out the iPad within minutes of getting her hands on it (she’s 3.5 years right now), yet she hasn’t been captured by the admittedly rich book experiences on the iPad. We’ll see what happens when she starts reading instead of simply looking at the pictures.
The Writer’s Version Of The Seven Deadly Sins
Like the comic? Click it to buy the t-shirt (no financial interest)
You can buy the t-shirt here.
The Rejection Generator For Writers (or, Why Wait?)
“Inspired by psychological research showing that after people experience pain they are less afraid of it in the future, The Rejection Generator helps writers take the pain out of rejection.”
It’s rare for an Internet gag site to be founded on sound scientific principles, but there it is — the Writer’s Rejection Generator figures you’ll better handle rejection after you experience it on an ongoing basis.
The Rejection Generator Project (click image to travel there, as if by magic)
Frankly, I want a copywriter’s version focused on inane client notes (“Can we remove all apostrophes and use of the color blue?“), but I’m too busy being rejected to build it.
Keep getting rejected, Tom Chandler.
Why Every Other Writer Is Smarter, Better & Faster Than You Are
Because writer neuroses are a specialty of mine, this excerpt from an interview with writer/director Greg Mottola (Superbad, Adventureland, etc) caught my eye:
Are you good with the discipline of writing? I know that you’re writing something at the moment — how are you with the writing process?
Um, I’m pretty good at, yeah– the problem I have as a writer is that I am extremely hard on myself, so I lose faith constantly. So it’s just a matter of– the only way I can do it and feel good about it is just put in a lot of hours. I’m quite jealous of people who write very quickly and churn out things that they love immediately.
See? It’s not just me. Everyone else has it too.
Other Writer Envy (OWE).
Group Hug
I think every writer — regardless of what they write — believes it’s easier for the other guy.
You look at the finished, polished product (movies, ad campaigns, blog posts, etc) and it’s crystal clear. They’re faster (than I am). They don’t have to rewrite (like I do). They don’t get stuck (like I am).
For them, it’s easier. It just appears on the screen.
Which, it turns out, is not so much true.
Years ago — when I was new to the ad business — I “accidentally” met the creator of an award-winning campaign and had him sign that year’s advertising annual. He looked wistfully at his campaign in the annuals pages and told me it took him “forever” to concept and write.
“Not like most of these other ads” he said, gesturing at the pages of (equally sweat-stained) winners. “These folks know how to make great ads.”
That Moving Target Thing
After more than 2.5 decades in this, I can count on my fingers the concepts or copy blocks that flowed like butter, needing only minor cosmetic surgery.
In 1999, I might have told you I was getting this copywriting thing wired, but two years later I discovered the Internet had passed me by, and suddenly I was learning to write copy all over again.
My recent foray into video scripts? Sounded fun. Sounded easy. Turns out it was less like easy, and more like wrestling a greased alligator. (Still, it has been great fun.)
Ira Glass speaks knowingly (and inspiringly) about the gap between our taste and our talent, and how that only narrows with experience.
For most of us, that gap never wholly closes; if you’re not vaguely dissatisfied with your finished work or wrestling with the in-process stuff, then you’re either a genius or your judgement is impaired (and statistically, one is far more probable than the other).
We’re apparently all jealous of the other guy’s natural facility with a sentence, yet the other guy is leaning back in his desk chair wishing writing came as easily to him as it does to you. (Well, maybe not Stephen King or Aaron Sorkin, but then, Sorkin has his doubts too.)
If you’re not similarly afflicted — if the writing is easy and great stuff always just appears on the screen — then I’d love to hear about it in the comments. In fact, I’d like a few of your stem cells.
If you struggle like the rest of us, I’d like to hear that too.
Keep writing (and making it look easy), Tom Chandler
Hollywood Movie Marketing As Blood Sport (or, Fiddling While John Carter Burns)
I think somebody in Disney’s marketing department needs a hug.
The poster makes less sense than the movie
Every marketer knows the pain of having your carefully built campaign mangled by the know-nothings in that other department, but when you get blamed for the failure of a plan you said wouldn’t work, well… things get said.
Entertaining things.
Which is why this public flogging of John Carter director Andrew Stanton by anonymous Disney marketing grunts feels so… familiar:
While this kind of implosion usually ends in a director simmering in rage at the studio marketing department that doomed his or her movie, Vulture has learned that it was in fact John Carter director Andrew Stanton — powerful enough from his Pixar hits that he could demand creative control over trailers — who commandeered the early campaign, overriding the Disney marketing execs who begged him to go in a different direction.
Whew! For those who live in hemp yurts and don’t know, John Carter is the $250 million Disney sci-fi/adventure movie that is withering at the box office, and everybody blames the marketing.
And the marketers are blaming the director:
Carney’s plan was to “make it more relatable to the modern audience,” says our Disney marketing mole. It would find a way to spotlight the effects and action for men, while also stressing the love story and personal journey, which would ideally make the film appeal to women in the same way that Avatar and Titanic did: Four quadrants!
At first, Stanton responded that he liked the new strategy, “but then it’d die by a thousand cuts,” recalls our spy, with Stanton dismantling each facet inserted by Carney’s team one by one. “He’d agree with the rhetoric, but he’d say, ‘I like it, but not this bit and not that bit and, uh, not this bit.’ And so we’d be like, ‘Oh, you like the plan, except for all the parts that do the things we say it needs to do?’”
I can’t count the number of times I have uttered that last line after I left a meeting (chickenshit). But because I’m typically playing with thousands of dollars instead of hundreds of millions, there wasn’t a trade press reporter ready to print it.
I once said Hollywood screenwriting was the most spectator-friendly of the writing sports; I might extend that to include Hollywood marketing, which feels more like blood sport than craft.
From a safe distance, it’s great fun.
Keep writing (ducking when necessary), Tom Chandler.
linux is for writers
I’m reading these on GoodReads.com
they like us
The Pitch “Reality” TV Show About Advertising Pulls… A 0.0 Rating…
In the comments below my prior post about AMC’s The Pitch advertising “reality” show, I said it was too bad they weren’t making the episodes available online.
I don’t follow many television shows, but I figured The Pitch was good for a few blog posts.
Turns out I shouldn’t have worried; the show’s doing so badly, they may not even air the episodes they’ve already taped:
Wow. A 0.0.
Clearly, TV viewers love the advertising industry.
Sadly, those that watched all the episodes really only learned one thing.
Clients typically make the wrong decision about 80% of the time.
Keep watching, Tom Chandler.