We’re in the business of communicating.

So, if you’re an art director, you appreciate visual communication.

And, if you’re a copywriter, you appreciate good writing.

Art directors collect pieces of design, or illustration, or photography they really like.

Copywriters are that way with writing.

Often they collect quotes from famous people, headlines, song lyrics, or  film quotes.

Just because they’re nice pieces of writing.

It might be the rhythm of the words or the imagery.

But there’s something about it that you really like.

I know a few other people who enjoy this as much as I do, so we’ll often play it by email.

Just send the film quote and see if the other person can name the movie.

Or send a piece of a lyric and see if they can name the song.

If you’re really cool you don’t even name the song.

Just send back another piece of the same lyric.

It’s a way to add a little fun to sharing pieces of writing you like.

Of course, film quotes and lyrics are also about context (actor, plot, music, etc).

But finding any excuse to study good writing, think about, question it, must make you better at it.

 

Here’s are some off the top of my head..

 

FILMS:

 

“I’ve killed women and children.

I’ve killed everything that walks or crawls.

And I’m here to kill you Little Bill.”

 

“One’s too many and a hundred’s not enough.”

 

“Nemesis: righteous retribution manifested by an appropriate agent.

In this case an horrible cunt: me.”

 

“Okay leave in a huff. And if that’s too soon leave in a minute and a huff.”

 

“That man there is a hero.

He killed fifteen Japs.

Thirty if you like.”

 

“I know it’s a bit Mumsy. But I find I’m going in more for that sort of thing nowadays.”

 

“Is this some white cunt’s joke that black cunts don’t get?”

 

 

LYRICS:

 

“Then we’ll put our dark glasses on,

and make love until the dawn.

And when the sunlight comes streaming in,

We’ll get up and do it again.”

 

“French girls they want Cartier.

Italian girls want cars.

And American girls want everything in the world

you can possibly imagine.”

 

“Van Gogh did some eyeball pleasers.

He was quite a pencil squeezer.

He didn’t do The Mona Lisa.

That was an Italian geezer.”

 

“I’m invited in for coffee

and I give the dog a bone.”

 

“You better watch how you’re talking

and where you’re walking

or you and your homies will be lying in chalk.”

 

“Not everyone who smiles at a child is a paedophile.

Some people are just nice.”

 

 

John Hegarty says a great ad is 80% idea, it’s also 80% execution.

I love that, it’s how anyone from Bill Bernbach to Alex Ferguson puts a team together.

Find people who think their part of the process is the most important.

The resulting energy from their separate passions will cause tension, sure.

But you’ll get something far bigger and better than a merely comfortable result.

So how do you put a team together in the first place?

Students always find it difficult working out who to team up with.

Usually they look for someone they like.

Someone they can sit and chat with.

But spending social time with someone is not the same as working with someone.

They’re two separate briefs.

You need someone who’s good at the things you’re not.

So the first thing to work out is what sort of person you are.

I always tell them it’s pretty simple.

Are you a fusspot?

Do you get fanatical about getting the details right?

Will you be fussing about type faces and point sizes until 2.00am?

If so, be an art director.

If not, be a writer.

“Writer” is actually a misnomer.

The job is actually more of a strategic thinker.

While an art director’s job is more of a tactical thinker.

Think of it as a military airplane.

The writer is the navigator, the art director is the pilot.

The navigator is in charge of the mission.

The pilot is in charge of the plane.

For simplicity, split it into right and left brain.

Right brain is emotion and feeling.

Left brain is reason and logic.

Right brain is the senses: pictures and sounds.

Left brain is thought: words and numbers.

Right brain can tell you what’s good, but not why.

Left brain can tell you if it works, but not if anyone will like it.

Right brain is brand, left brain is product.

Right brain is sizzle, left brain is sausage.

Right brain stops you, makes you read the ad.

Left brain makes the ad work, makes you want to buy.

In any team you need both.

So, first you have to work out which you are, then you can look for the opposite.

A simple test is, do you find this interesting?

If you do (like me) you’re left brain, be a writer.

If you got bored and stopped reading way back, you’re right brain, be an art director.

Here’s a thing that always used to fascinate John Webster.
The corny done brilliantly.
He was fascinated because you just didn’t see it.
So he identified a massive opportunity.
Take Leo Burnett in Chicago.
They had a massive agency built out of unashamedly corny advertising.
Like The Jolly Green Giant.
Or Tony the Tiger.
What breakfast cereal was he advertising?
I remember he always said, “They’re GREEE-EEAAA-AATTT”
And I’m sure it wasn’t Rice Crispies.
(I think that was three other corny little guys called SNAP CRACKLE & POP, wasn’t it?)
Maybe it was Kellogg Sugar Frosties, Tony the Tiger advertised.
The point is, I’ve been seeing that advertising for decades.
The character is so powerful I remember him even though I don’t remember the product.
But I go into a supermarket and I don’t have to, because he’s all over the box.
So, without even knowing the name of the product, I can buy that brand.
The character is bigger than the product.
The commercials were always pretty badly written.
Tiger does pratfall from surfboard, roller skates, skis, BMX, or whatever research shows kids are into.
Then gets up and delivers the mnemonic to camera.
Corny.
But the ads worked and people loved the character.
Now John’s fascination with this kind of advertising was as follows.
If these characters are so powerful when they’re not even well written, imagine how powerful they’d be if they were well written.
At that time the ads had the emotional appeal of a cute lovable character.
But that was all they had.
Imagine if they were written with wit and style, and you could add intelligence to emotion.
How good would that be?
Well, you tell me, how good was it?
Here’s some of John’s list, and everything on it won awards:
The Honey Monster.
Cresta Bear.
The Smash Martians.
The Hoffmeister Bear.
Arkwright.
The Humphries.
All absolutely brilliant on any scale of measurement.
Rational or emotional.
And to prove the point, reverse the process.
BMP lost Sugar Puffs to Y&R.
So Y&R had to carry on the Honey Monster campaign.
Look at the commercials John had previously written and made.
Funny, witty, intelligent.
In fact, the entire campaign won a D&AD silver.
Not bad for a fluffy children’s character to impress a snooty D&AD jury.
Now look at what Y&R did with it.
You see John’s creation is still there, but nothing else.
Honey Monster is now shorn of wit and intelligence.
Just another lumbering character that has to end every commercial with a prat fall and mnemonic to camera.
So you see, like John, we can all learn from corny advertising.
Because even in that, there’s something that works.
You just have to be clever enough, like John, to work out what that is.
Then keep that and throw away the rest.

 

Most of the kids coming into advertising have never had a film class.

They come from Watford, or other purely advertising courses.

They learn to come up with ideas.

But they don’t have time to learn much of the craft of what we do.

The thinking is, the portfolio will get them a job.

The rest they can learn as they go.

But, as soon as they write a good script, they’re expected to oversee the shooting of a commercial.

How does that work?

The director, the producer, the editor, the sound engineer, are all professionals.

How can a junior be overseeing them?

So, at our agency, we used to run film classes once a week.

For the juniors, or anyone else who was interested.

Just to learn the very basic grammar of how a film’s put together.

Starting with the structure: the master shots.

Then the cutaways and reaction shots (to cover non-continuity cuts).

Then lighting: practicals, chiaroscuro, moulding, etc.

The relationship between 35mm SLR lenses and film camera lenses.

Picture editing, using non lip-sync shots so we can re-edit dialogue.

Sound editing to cover multiple shots, different days, different locations.

Once you understand the basics you can also write scripts that are way beyond what you have in the budget.

Because you can suggest ways of shooting that will get around set builds, locations, weather days, overtime, etc.

The mechanics of putting a film together adds another dimension to your creative possibilities.

So, with all that in mind, we’d have a film class one night a week for 6 weeks.

You’d had to watch the film before the class.

Because we needed to get the story out of the way.

So we could concentrate on the purely technical aspects, and stop and start the film for discussion.

Without any grumbling.

So we’d start with the most basic: High Noon with Gary Cooper.

Filmed in real time.

So a minute on film is a minute in the story.

The camera keeps cutting back to the clock to build tension.

Mournful cowboy soundtrack linking close-ups and landscape shots.

Contrast the shadows on the set with the shadows the light sources should be making.

A great movie to learn the basics.

Next would be a Hitchcock, personally I think Psycho is great, you  learn so much about editing.

But Suspicion is great for learning how to use the camera to let the audience mislead themselves.

Then probably Triumph of the Will, Leni Riefenstahl.

A piece of propaganda, and a boring film, but a great place to learn film rhetoric and its use in advertising.

Then Onibaba, a Japanese film that uses the soundtrack as one of the most important elements in the film.

Probably no one but Kubrick uses sound as well.

Then Battleship Potemkin to show non-narrative editing.

The mood you can create by arranging shots in a montage, instead of a simple continuity of action.

Then usually ending with Touch of Evil by Orson Welles.

Showing how to break the rules once you’ve learned them.

A murder that takes place as just shadows on the bedroom wall.

Another murder that takes place just as sound, over a walkie-talkie.

Orson Welles is one of my heroes.

But what you like and what you respect isn’t always the same thing.

And, so none of those great films are in my personal top ten.

They are just my subjective choices.

They might be films that remind me of different times in my life.

But they’re films that I’ll always stop whatever else I’m doing to watch.

Films which, if they’re on TV, I can’t switch off in the middle of.

So, sorry if they’re a bit obvious but, in no particular order:

 

Midnight Cowboy

 

Lock, Stock.

 

Big Lebowski

 

Full Metal jacket

 

The Unforgiven

 

Richard III (Ian McKellen version)

 

Oh What a Lovely War

 

Lawrence of Arabia

 

The Rebel (Tony Hancock)

 

And anything the Marx Bros ever did

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why is some advertising better than others?
Why are some agencies better than others?
The answer is the same in both cases.
Clarity + focus + consistency = powerful.
What happens at a lot of agencies is the energy gets dissipated.
The power evaporates.
Because too many people are making the decisions.
The creative director makes a decision, the planner changes it.
The planner makes a decision, the account man changes it.
The account man makes a decision, the client changes it.
The client makes a decision, a different client changes it.
Nothing is ever added by this process.
Something is always lost.
What do the great agencies have in common.
They’re all run by one powerful person with a vision.
One person, one vision, one agenda.
One guy tells you what to do.
One guy judges what you’ve done.
If he likes it, it gets sold.
Everyone knows what the job is.
There’s power, energy and clarity in that.
Not seven people arguing what’s right and wrong and eventually agreeing on a compromise that results in something everyone can just about live with, but nobody really loves.
For energy and excitement you need one man (or woman) with a clear sense of where they’re going.
They’re not going to argue the toss.
They’re going to take the decision, and take the responsibility.
It’s like the referee on a football pitch.
Or the sergeant in a platoon of soldiers.
Or the captain on a ship.
They are the authority.
When Frank Lowe was running Collett Dickinson Pearce it was the best agency in the UK.
Arguably in the world.
Ron Collins told me Frank came up to him one day and said, “Ron, I want you to write the best possible campaign for Cinzano Bianco.”
Ron said, “Okay, but I’ll need a brief first.”
Frank said, “I’ve just given it to you.”
In that sentence he’s told you everything you need to know about the type of work that’s wanted, who’ll be judging it, and how.
And the fact that no one, and nothing, is going to get in the way.
That’s what made CDP great.
Another time Ron had just written a commercial he was really proud of.
He was so thrilled with it, he wanted to show it to someone.
But it was lunchtime and no one was around.
Then he bumped into Frank Lowe in the corridor.
Franks said, “You seem very pleased with that piece of paper, let me see it.”
Ron gave it to him, and stood there and waited.
Frank read it and said, “This is a terrific script. Who shall we get to shoot it, Alan or Ridley?”
Ron said, “Hang on Frank, we’ve got to research it first.”
Frank said, “I’ve just done that. Who shall we get to shoot it, Alan or Ridley?”
At CDP, you didn’t waste a lot of time and energy wondering what you were supposed to be doing.

Clarity + focus + consistency = powerful.