'Tis the Season or Not?

What happened to the cool agency holiday cards?

Maybe it’s just that I'm not on anybody's card list or nobody enters them in awards shows, but it doesn’t seem like there are as many ambitious agency holiday cards out there as there used to be.

We used to have an art director who said he hated to do holiday cards, but I’ve always kind of liked it. And we’ve had some real fun with them in the past. I posted a couple here. In the top one (shot by Ira Wexler), the “bum” model is Karen’s father, John Nasuti, with a couple of “ladies” we got though (ahem) Lim-O-Grams. The "kidnapped Santa" is Gonz Accame and it was Debie Accame who did the photography.

I loved the one we sent out with Slim Jims and the one where we used a rough piece of cardboard with orange type. (A friend told me he couldn’t throw that one away, but he just didn’t know what to do with it. I liked that.) One year Debi Fox shot a very cool sort of time-lapse sequence of a dancing elf (the kind of thing people would do in Photoshop today, but she did in the camera). We sent it out as an oversized poster. Another year we ran a picture of a snowman trapped in a refrigerator. Then there was the one that apparently pissed off our clients, because none of them even owned up to getting it.

And then one year we were totally broke and sent out a blank #11 card, with a rubber-stamped logo. This one was “guaranteed to absolutely not offend anybody.” And, actually, it got us some business.

Maybe it’s the expense, or maybe it’s the time it takes. But it just doesn’t seem like agencies have the fun with holiday cards they used to have.

Personally, I think clients need to step up, make America great, and pay us all to do original holiday cards -- so we can tag onto the print job and get ours done for free. Are you with me kids?

Found Art

We're moving our office. These two things have been on my bulletin board for 10 years, and I thought I'd share.

Experience Necessary

A talented young recent ad school graduate I’d met with (but didn’t have a job for) a while back sent me an e-mail last week. She’s been looking for a job, but with no experience, it’s tough. “ Everyone seems to be hung up about the fact I have no internship or experience. It's incredibly frustrating, since I'll never have any experience until someone gives me some. I've looked for internships, but most of them require that you are still enrolled in undergrad classes.” Obviously, she’s not eligible.

How do you get experience without a job and how do you get a job without experience? Everybody should be able to identify with this particular dilemma.

We worked something out with her, but it made me start thinking. Like most people in my position, I see a lot of people with student books and no experience trying to break in. Most are willing to do any damn thing just to get their foot in the door. But not everybody has an entry-level position open – at least not one they can devote any real money to. And the reality of the situation is that people need paying jobs, so a lot of these kids wind up taking jobs as waiters or temps or whatever to make ends meet. Which further hampers the job search.

So here’s an idea for the DC Ad Club. Find a way to fund small subsidies (and I mean small) for relatively short periods of time (maybe 3-4 months) that will let people right out of school be able to afford to take part-time or full-time internships with agencies. And then agencies won’t have to be able to find available payroll dollars to take them on.

I’m not talking about bringing someone on board to answer phones or file or run errands, but I mean let them do some work under the guidance of working writers, art directors, AE’s, media buyers and designers and get some real experience under their belts.

Obviously I don’t have it all worked out, and there would obviously have to be some sort of application process, but it does seem to me like it’s the kind of thing that can benefit the entire community – present and future. Not only would it help agencies and studios find some short-term, low-cost help, but also – and more importantly – nurture the next generation to help keep Washington alive with talent.

I have no idea what the Washington Ad Club Foundation does. Nobody’s keeping secrets from me; I just don’t know for sure. But near as I can tell from the Ad Club’s web site, a lot of it seems to center around scholarships and internship programs and such for current students. Well, maybe there’s a way to stretch that assistance a bit and help recent graduates and agencies at the same time? Might be a real direct benefit in there somewhere for everybody.

Just a thought.

Trash advertising and great graffiti

I don't know whether the clothes are any good, but as far as American Apparel ads are concerned, for some time now I've been in the of "why are they so hell bent on dehumanizing women"? camp.

The ad above left is fairly typical of the crap they run. Ahhhh, but the shot on the RIGHT shows the reaction of someone in New York's Lower East Side to a billboard.

Love it.

(If you can't read it, the handwritten part rsays: "Gee, I wonder why women get raped.")

Baseball, Tacos, Cars and Lipitor

Like some of you, I’m staying up way too late watching the Series. A couple of things make it worthwhile.

One is those Malibu commercials with the woman who keeps running into a parked car while jogging and the bank robbers who are ignored by the cops. They aren’t the highest-concept spots I’ve ever seen. The “Soon, there will be a car you can’t ignore” line is kind of ordinary and the VO doesn’t blow me away, but there is something about these spots that just makes me laugh every time. More memorable than most car commercials you see.

The other thing that cracks me up is when this or that particular segment of the game is sponsored by both Taco Bell and Lipitor. Lipitor is a medication for controlling cholesterol. One kind of thinks that fewer tacos might help too.

And speaking of Taco Bell, just how cool is it that everybody in America gets a free taco (between 2 and 5 p.m. on October 30) because Jacoby Ellsbury stole a base last night? Taco Bell was the company that, a few years ago when the Mir satellite was going to crash land in the ocean, floated a big target out in the Pacific somewhere with a “hit it here and everybody in the world gets a free taco” promotion. Smart, clever folks over there.

On The Road

I’m a Virginia-to-Maryland transplant. That gives me permission to say that I think the road-side political sign placement in Northern Virginia has gotten totally out of control.

But since I live in Maryland, it doesn’t really affect me so much. So why bring it up at all? Because, as we drove to a client meeting in Virginia yesterday, it occurred to us that those median strips covered with signs are a great analogy for media advertising and a great way to illustrate why a good, attention-getting ad will pull better than one that looks like all the rest. This is a real-life show of what ad people mean when they talk about “cutting through the clutter.”

Take a ride out Rt. 50 in Fairfax. Tell yourself that median strip is a publication. Which signs will you remember? Probably, the biggest ones and the ones that appear the most frequently. In other words, the ones where they spent the most "media" money.

If you pay for fewer signs (that is, “spend less on media”) and attract the same or more attention aren’t you ahead of the game? I think so.

And isn’t that where creativity comes in?

Nothing like Jack on a Friday.

Posted yesterday on AdFreak, this is pretty funny. If you're a writer or know any, that is.