Defying convention and denoting creativity: Lessons from the Beanie Boy.

Portrait of a young man as artist…

I’m in the Admiral’s Club at Laguardia airport when a young boy walks by me. He’s a regular looking kid, a bit disheveled in his ill-fitting blue sweatshirt and no-name blue jeans. But something else: He’s wearing a multi-colored cap with a propeller on top!

Really? I think to myself: silly enough here but a death warrant in the schoolyard. I mean what symbolizes dorkiness more than a beanie with a propeller on top? It’s like something Spanky wore on the ancient TV show, The Little Rascals.

The Little Rascals: Spanky’s the chubby one donning, yup, a beanie

Anyway, the lad sits down in front of a house computer and begins doing his thing. Again, like any other kid. But I can’t get over his crazy chapeau. It’s remarkable to me, in this day and age, that an adolescent boy would be caught dead in public wearing something so silly. He might as well have had a “Kick Me!” sign affixed to his back. I decide to sneak a picture. I don’t want to mock him necessarily but I do want to document this most anti of fashion statements. I upload the photo on Facebook, adding my line about the schoolyard.

Your comments come quickly and while some are snide (like mine) others are deeply supportive. Here’s a perfect example from my Facebook friend, Brian Collins:

i think the kid is astounding. he is wearing it with some pride. and it looks like it’s motorized. even better. if this makes the kid happy that’s perfect. and he looks deeply engaged on the web, too. great.

what we don’t need are any more cookie cutter kids dressed in oversized nylon football jerseys, cocked baseball caps and ratty jeans with their lifeless eyes glued to espn.

go, beanie boy, go.

Brian, you are so right. This kid deserves applause. He’s not a dork. He’s a maverick, a rogue, a boy who’s not afraid to defy convention. A while back, I wrote a post about how an advertising creative department is a lot like Romper Room. I think of that now…

The older I get the more I realize how important it is to stay connected to my “inner child.” The best creative people do not grow out of it when they grow up. We remain inquisitive like children. Lovers of fun. You see it in our bicycles in the hallway. Our dubious wardrobes. Our playlists. Our flirty snapshots on Facebook. Alas, you also see it in meetings, where we become pouting and defensive, wilting under criticism, frustrated by the grown-ups ruining our fun. I know we can be insufferable. Imposing MBA logic in Romper Room is bound to create problems.

And so we are. And so what? Defying convention is what makes us creative. I don’t want to lose that. Ever. Young man, I echo the words of Mr. Collins: “Go, beanie boy, Go!”

As agencies prepare their crop of award show entries, scam ads are inevitable.

“Of course they’re real…Real good!”

The new year is more or less the beginning of awards season in Adland, when all the advertising, digital and design shops gather their best work from 2011 and decide which pieces to enter into what shows. Internal lists are made. Arguments had. Egos tested. Each agency has a different process (and budget) but essentially the routine is similar: someone from the creative administration staff meets with the Chief Creative Officer and goes through the litter. This is not always a pleasant task. The CCO invariably wants to enter more things into more shows than the agency deems possible. In fact, some agencies have massive budgets for these things while many don’t have any money at all. Beseeching the CEO to free up cash is not uncommon.

There is also the matter of fake or “scam ads.” These belong in two camps: 1) Unreal ads for existing clients and 2) Unreal ads for unreal clients. Either way, they are fakes. The pressure to win awards (both imagined and real) is great enough that even creative people with good reputations fall victim to allowing (or downright demanding) that work be created specifically for the purpose of winning prizes. To indemnify themselves, agencies may place scam pieces on late night TV or in obscure publications that charge next to nothing. I have turned this trick myself. Many agencies, especially in emerging markets, do not even bother doing that. In parts of Asia and Latin America, creative directors are considered celebrities of sorts. These rock stars need hits to keep their status and paychecks. Fake ads abound.

I once judged an international awards show where just about every ad on the shortlist was a fake. I was incredulous. Yet, the Chief Juror as well as the show’s promoters muzzled my attempts (and others) from calling out these phonies. Doing so would have wrecked the show, which was a lucrative enterprise. Even fake ads pay admission fees. Besides, the real ads were mostly crap. Choosing from them would have been dismal. In the end, we all became complicit.

Over the last few years, award shows have taken steps (albeit reluctantly) to stymie fake ads. Angry Tweeters and bloggers have made it too risky to give big prizes to big frauds. Still, it is easy to circumvent these systems and fake ads propagate like weeds. Scapegoats are made of one or two and a hundred more slip through the cracks.

One of the greater ironies is that fake ads are easy to spot. Any seasoned creative person knows that a small toy company in Brazil does not do advertising, let alone spreads. And if they did advertise they wouldn’t have approved these ads. Not with that tiny logo at the bottom and no copy or contact information. (Let alone the edgy or poetic concept.)

Edgy concept + Spread + Tiny logo + No copy = Scam

The higher profile scams can be more difficult to spot. In some cases the client has given tacit approval for the piece’s creation but in no way uses it in any of their real marketing plans. In other cases (the most delicate forgeries and the most common), the real ads have been “cleaned up” for awards shows, meaning the logos were shrunk and concessions to retail eliminated. It’s just like touching up a model. I’ve been a party to this. Honestly, I don’t know a creative director who hasn’t. Doctoring the results form is also an issue. Whether facelifts and trumped up credentials constitute scam ads or not (arguments can me made either way) they are like gateway drugs leading the user to trying ever more duplicitous tactics.

I don’t have a solution. At times, I’m not sure one is even needed. Maybe awards shows are just fine being corrupt little fantasies: free booze, networking and a floorshow! Social media pushes good ‘real’ advertising all over the globe anyway. These days publicity for exemplary work happens regardless of awards shows.

Sigh. An App for awards shows.

Wilson and Wexley School for Girls triumph with delightful send-up of “Tennis Court.”

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Seattle’s delightfully named ad agency, Wexley School for Girls has come up with an equally inspired campaign for Wilson tennis: “The Tennis Court.” The campaign comes out of left field or, as is supered on each commercial, “Somewhere in the Swiss Alps,” bringing us courtroom scenarios where the merits of Wilson’s racket superiority get argued in ludicrous fashion.

It’s completely ridiculous…and wonderful. The casting is inspired, even down to the extras (check out the bored fat dude in the galley). I also adore the silly mishmash between tennis outfits (tight fitting and gay) and proper court attire. And the dialogue: “This headband is about to change your world!” Hilarious. Visually, the spots are bright and deadpan. In one, two pseudo-lawyers engage in a back and forth argument mimicking a vigorous volley in tennis.

Not only are these commercials fresh and funny they also unabashedly sell product. “This racket drastically improves both power and spin…changing the game of tennis,” argues the plaintiff.

What’s also nice about the work is that it isn’t yet another Nike-esque montage of athlete’s playing tennis. Wexley and Wilson avoid the massive cliché completely.

I “love” this campaign and the pun is gleefully intended. (To see more of these commercials visit Adpulp)

I have a confession to make: I’m just not a gamer.

“Jeez, Jesus, can’t we just watch a movie?”

You’d think that because I like horror movies and other pulp fictions I’d be into console gaming. I am not. While I adored the trailer for Dead Island I did not buy the game. I have seen all the Underworld movies, and will go to the latest, but I am not the least bit interested in the game(s) based upon it.

I’m just as disinterested, if not more so, in social games. Angry Birds, Scrabble, Farmville and all the others do nothing for me. I do not game. Not on my computer. Not on my mobile. No, I do not like games on a plane. I do not like them on a train. I do not like them with my friends. Or all alone semi-undressed. I do not like games, I do not!

Yet, I respect gaming and gamers. I get it. Games fill that gaping maw between boredom and thrill seeking, a chasm of which much could and has been written.

“Give me back my starship!”

Pragmatically, I also understand the powerful synergy between gaming and modern marketing. Even if the experiences are like body copy nobody reads, online games and gaming are hot commodities for advertisers and creative people. Knowing how to monetize them is part of the brief. Many in Adland like to play these games. But just because I don’t doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate its value. As a copywriter and creative director, I’ve worked on countless things that do nothing for me personally. I don’t play golf but I worked on a campaign for the PGA. I no longer drink alcohol but I sold Effen Vodka. That’s the job. Besides, understanding why people enjoy something I don’t is inherently interesting. Like appreciating other religions, political parties or Harry Potter, I think it’s important not to be too ignorant of anything. A liberal arts education lasts forever.

In our household the girls use their iPads primarily for games. My wife enjoys Facebook. They all like to shop online and view the occasional video on You Tube. I am far more aggressive. I took to blogging and am hopelessly addicted to Twitter, Facebook and other such goodies. Lots of people –gasp- don’t care for those experiences. Kind of like me with games. To each his own.

I think those of us vested in popular culture (marketing, entertainment, design, etc) have an innate fear of being out of the loop. Therefore, we pursue every new-new thing as if it’s mission critical. There is some virtue in that. Nothing baffles me more than an agency CEO who talks a big digital game but hasn’t a Facebook or Twitter account. The hypocrisy is worse than the ignorance. You’d be surprised how many of them there are.

“I’m sorry, Mister CEO but you cannot get a Facebook on Amazon.”

That said, I’m guessing most of us pick and choose platforms to master and are satisfied merely comprehending the others. A working knowledge. That’s me anyway. Hell, if I really wanted to improve myself I would learn to speak Spanish or Chinese. And that’s not happening. Frankly, I’d rather start gaming.

In case you haven’t seen it, here’s the badass trailer for Dead Island. I’ll eat someone’s brains if it doesn’t win at Cannes.

In tragedy and in advertising: creating tension through “unexpected juxtapositions.”

The Italian cruise ship disaster provided the world some unbelievable images. These pictures defied convention. And if I may put the human tragedy aside, they made me think of modern art more than current events. They were “unexpected juxtapositions,” to use a phrase from Wikipedia’s definition of Surrealism. A sideways cruise ship? A horizontal chimney? I couldn’t help but think of surrealist or pop art.

With countless cameras now recording images of everything under the sun, it has become increasingly difficult for a photograph to capture something that captures our attention. This goes for news stories, Facebook updates and, of course, advertisements.

For obvious reasons, tragic images stop us in our tracks. Against a bright blue sky, a jet heads straight for the World Trade Towers. For me, the unexpected juxtaposition of airplane and building is indelible, more so than any of the gruesome pictures that came after.

Again, without making light of tragedy, there is a strange beauty regarding unexpected juxtapositions. They create tension. Advertising creatives know the value of creative tension. Consider the unexpected juxtapositions in one of the most famous ads ever: The 1984 commercial for Apple computers. You have a colorful woman in a see of gray men. You have a hammer and a screen. The tension is palpable. The explosion cathartic.

Unexpected juxtapositions are like magnets, attracting or repelling us. In news it often is for the latter. Advertisers, obviously, strive for the former. Either way, disparate combinations of even the most ordinary objects give us pause, asking us to think differently.