Asbury & Asbury

Problem: how to win a book

A post to point you towards the Johnson Banks Review of the Year 2012, which has become something of an industry institution. I sent in some contributions that made their way into the mix and won me a copy of the new edition of Problem Solved in return. A good way to start the year.

If you haven’t already moved on from 2012 retrospectives, the full list of contributions I emailed went like this:

Best blog
Mike Dempsey’s six-part story of CDT. Lovely balance of personal and professional insight. 

Over-hyped thing you’d like to see the back of (and that Creative Review should probably stop covering)
Pantone colour of the year. A tired but frustratingly effective PR ruse.

Best ad of the year
Channel 4 ‘Meet the Superhumans’ Paralympics promo. Still electrifying to watch.

Worst ad of the year
Colgate ‘focus group’ – possibly the most excruciating thing ever committed to film.

Second worst ad of the year
Facebook is a bit like a chair, sort of, if you think about it.

Writing project of the year
Ma’amite. Single word, but pretty good.

Best creative project of year
Olympic opening ceremony, obviously.

Worst creative project of the year
Olympic closing ceremony. Conceived by "a hugely powerful establishment creative director who is not actually creative." 

Best creative of year
Danny Boyle

Design of the year
The Heatherwick cauldron is the obvious and deserving choice, but the gold postboxes were a lovely touch. 

Influential design project of the year
gov.uk by Government Digital Service. Still an epic work in progress but on course to be a major design and writing achievement.

Design story of year
The Comedy Carpet not getting in-book at D&AD. An indictment of the design judging culture that ought to be a tipping point, but probably won’t be.

Unfortunate book of the year
The Snowman’s Journey – the book of the John Lewis ad.

Brand refresh of the year
Ecce Homo restoration.

Worst brand use of Twitter
This ‘topical’ tweet from @YahooNews:
Last week a Moscow judge sentenced a band to two years in prison. What musical act would you send to lockup and why? 

Website of year
http://comediansincarsgettingcoffee.com

Quote of the year
“Hard work and grafting.” Mo Farah after winning second gold.

Worst brand campaign
Mini Cooper sponsoring what turned out to be a deadly weather front.

Those we have lost
The Waterstones apostrophe, which inevitably got its own Twitter account.

Much more comprehensive Johnson Banks review here.

11 from 11

In the predictable rush to cover natural disasters, political upheaval and the fall of empires, many reviews of 2011 will no doubt fail to note our blogging exploits – so we've been forced to write our own.

Here are eleven posts from 2011:

1. The year began on a sad note with Mr Blog’s Valedictory Awards Show.

2. The valedictory mood continued with reflections on Rob McElwee’s disappearance from our daily lives.

3 & 4. February was poetry month – one about Asda launching a dating service, and one about the birth of a new Asbury (the defining moment of our year in a big and increasingly noisy way).

5. April saw ill-informed copywriters defacing a blind man’s sign.


6. May was all about the Creative Amnesty, a joint venture with Creative Review, which saw the great and good of the creative world sharing their worst ideas.

7. June was the month of 1,000 words.

8. July was The One With The Really Good Friends Advert.

9. September saw a rare venture into long-form blogging, with some reflections on wackaging and the trouble with copywriting.

10. October saw the unwrapping of WrapperRhymes.

11. And finally there was a salute to the greatest brand name of all time: Rotavator.

 

If you have been, thank you – and happy Christmas.

Another successful consultation

You may remember I blogged a while back about a Brent Council online survey regarding the branding and messaging for its new recycling initiative. The one that led me to reflect that, in many instances, "consultation is a hollow, life-sapping, time-wasting distraction for people who are too lazy, lily-livered and feckless to make even the smallest decision for themselves." The full post is here.

Well, you'll be pleased to know the consultation exercise is now complete and the new initiative has been launched. After much consideration, they've gone with 'recycle more' in a friendly lower-case font, against a green background (interesting innovation there), along with a picture of an ethnically-balanced group standing cheerfully beside some bins.

Good work, Brent. I'm glad we were able to help.

The consultation curse

I think it was Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert cartoon strip, who said that the word ‘consult’ comes from a contraction of ‘to con’ and ‘to insult’. Yesterday, I came across an archetypal example of what he meant, courtesy of Brent Council. They have launched an online survey regarding a new logo and messaging for their waste collection service.

Here are the first two questions:

Have you had enough time to think about those? OK, here are the next two questions:



There are 17 questions.

This is the last one:

One final question – does this survey make you feel that carrying on living is important, or not important?

It so accurately sums up everything that is wrong with ‘consultation’ that I wondered if it was a parody.

I suppose it should be said that consultation can be a useful and necessary thing, especially when you present people with a limited range of viable options that have meaningful differences between them.

More often, consultation is a hollow, life-sapping, time-wasting distraction for people who are too lazy, lily-livered and feckless to make even the smallest decision for themselves. (I offer no opinion on which camp Brent Council falls into – I’m just describing two ends of the scale here.)

It doesn’t help when the questions you ask are almost literally meaningless. Take those first four questions. Precisely how bad would a logo have to be to make you feel that recycling is unimportant? “Yes, I’ve seen the data, I understand we’re creating mountains of waste for future generations, I get that we’re destroying natural resources unnecessarily… but ever since I saw that logo, I can’t help feeling it doesn’t really matter.”

I haven’t even mentioned question 16 of the survey, which asks you to choose between 15 (fifteen) very slightly different copy messages. They might as well include an extra question asking people to come and sit at their desk for eight hours a day, Monday to Friday, and pick up their shopping on the way home.

Like reality television, consultation exercises are usually a carefully manufactured gesture towards openness and involvement without actually being anything of the sort. Scott Adams had it right - they're not just neutrally pointless, they actively express a thinly veiled contempt for their audience. Like so many online surveys, this one is hosted on SurveyMonkey. You can't help feeling the clue's in the name.

Thanks (I think) to @daisymcandrew who pointed this out on Twitter yesterday, retweeted by @66000mph

I’m blind. Please leave my sign alone.

There’s an old story, usually attributed to David Ogilvy, about a copywriter whose daily walk to work takes him past a blind beggar on a street corner. His sign reads, “I’M BLIND. PLEASE HELP.” Every day, the beggar is largely ignored by the passers-by. One sunny morning, the copywriter stops, takes out a marker pen and scribbles three words on the sign, then moves on. From that day, the blind man’s cup is stuffed with notes and overflowing with change. The copywriter has adapted the sign to read: “IT’S SPRING AND I’M BLIND. PLEASE HELP.”

It’s a lovely story, which has been making copywriters feel good about themselves ever since (and possibly making blind people feel somewhat patronised). It’s usually quoted in the context of how important the ‘emotive sell’ is when pushing the latest commercial message into the minds of unwitting consumers, which is what copywriters generally do when they’re not being selfless superheroes.

Anyway, I mention this because a video version of the story has recently gone viral, attracting 6 million hits on YouTube. It’s a promotional video for online agency Purplefeather, titled ‘The Power of Words’. But, regrettably, the story isn’t quite the same. It’s been what you might charitably call ‘adapted’, or less charitably call ‘unforgivably mutilated’.

You can watch the video yourself if you want to add to the viewing figures, but suffice to say the key moment comes at the end, when the copywriter (a woman this time) takes to the sign with a marker pen. This time though, instead of elegantly adapting the existing text, she turns the sign over and writes: “IT'S A BEAUTIFUL DAY AND I CAN'T SEE IT.”

This is seriously what she writes.

The copywriter ignores the existing text written by the hapless blind man, and writes her own line on the reverse, thereby removing any of the wit and charm of the original story.

But she goes further by spelling out what was implicit in the original line. “IT'S SPRING AND I'M BLIND’ is a spare statement of fact that leaves the reader to fill in the emotional gap. This is where it gets its power. “IT'S A BEAUTIFUL DAY AND I CAN'T SEE IT” is the same line rewritten by the Ronseal copywriting team. In fact, it doesn’t even have that level of disarming directness, because the writer has forgotten to include the call to action. Without the ‘Please help’, it’s all a bit pointless.

And there’s another problem. What if it isn’t a beautiful day? What if it’s raining tomorrow, or in a couple of hours? Ogilvy thought of this – ‘spring’ is nicely open-ended (although you have to hope he adapted the sign come summer). Does this new copywriter have a stack of signs covering various weather conditions? “IT'S DRIZZLING SLIGHTLY AND I CAN'T SEE IT.” “IT WAS NICE A MINUTE AGO BUT HAS SINCE CLOUDED OVER A BIT AND I CAN'T SEE IT." (If you watch the video, you can see it appears to be a grey and damp day, even though the woman copywriter is bizarrely wearing sunglasses. Almost makes you wonder which of them is blind.)

It’s testament to the power of the original story that this bastardised version nevertheless retains enough impact to garner 6 million hits. But it’s also disheartening. We copywriters only have a limited supply of industry folklore to keep us going. If you’re going to use this story to make your agency promo, at least get the line right. Redrafting David Ogilvy isn’t something to undertake lightly, especially when your video is all about the power of words.

Anyway, if I ever fall on hard times, I’ve already planned my sign, which, if nothing else, should raise a smile from the odd passing copywriter – “IT’S SPRING AND I’M BLIND DRUNK. PLEASE HELP.”

I just hope that woman doesn’t come along and change it.

Plain offensive

How would you describe the language on this front page? The “pure terror”, the “snarling mob”, the “terror written across her face”, the “steaming gang of masked rioters”?

A few words probably spring to mind – but “plain” is unlikely to be one of them.

Strange, then, that the Daily Mail has been singled out for praise today by the Plain English Campaign. (Yes, it’s National Plain English Day.)

True enough, the words themselves are plain. No one is going to misunderstand “mob”, “gang” and “horror”. But maybe it’s a sign that plain words don’t necessarily add up to plain talking.

Perfectly straightforward language can also add up to some of the most insinuating, sly, offensive writing imaginable.

Still, let’s forget about that and poke fun at a footballer for misusing the word ‘literally’.

RSVP to the Conservative Party

Dear Conservatives

Thank you for your invitation to join the government of Britain.

This is a bit awkward, but I think I may have received this in error, along with the rest of the British public. The way I understood things, it's us who are meant to invite you to form a government, not the other way round.

I appreciate you were probably intending to be inclusive and empowering with your invitation, but it's actually a bit creepy and presumptuous when you think about it.

My invite goes out on 6th May. If you haven't heard anything by the 7th, assume it's all off.

All the best

Nick Asbury

Word-dull

Following the State of the Union address last night (Obama's not Steve Jobs's), I notice the press are still using Wordle as a way of visualising political speeches. It's a bit tired now and I think they should stop.