Ad-led: Dixon’s tube ad by M&C Saatchi

Tube ads don’t present the best in advertising. They often sound like they’ve been written by someone for whom English is a second language, they generally look like they’ve been designed by a beginner going through a Photoshop tutorial and frequently contain typos or heinous grammar.

So it’s nice to see a tube ad that’s actually quite good. The Dixon’s ad above has got everything going for it: a deceptively neat idea, nice copywriting and a simple design that not only supports the idea but actually aids the narrative flow of the story. The only problem is it seems to be setting Dixon’s up against John Lewis (and in other ads Selfridges and Harrods). Are these really their natural competitors?

Photo from Brand Republic

Hands off, Facebook

So how many people were actually surprised to find out that Facebook could do whatever it wanted with your pics/posts/updates etc?

Without having thought about it too much (or at all actually), I presumed that Facebook could see what its members were doing, but that using that content for its own purposes was an infringement of copyright. Well no. It can in fact do whatever it likes with your info as long as you’re an active member. The present furore is about whether Facebook can STILL do what it wants with your content even if you’ve unsubscribed from the site.

This is founder Mark Zuckerberg’s defence. He’s saying Facebook only wants copyright over your pictures etc so it can show it to other people in accordance with your wishes (ie, show it to your friends). Without access to this copyright, Facebook couldn’t exist.

Fair enough, I suppose, but this still leaves the problem that Facebook can do whatever it wants with your information. You have to trust that Facebook has your best interests at heart and will stick to the spirit of the site. If you set up strict privacy settings, for example, you have to take Facebook’s word that it will abide by them.

The Times, from the general tone of this article, seems to think that if we use Facebook, we get what we deserve. I suppose that’s true. The internet is too big and too complicated to be subject to the laws of the real world. Although surely Facebook could set down in its terms that it won’t share information with anyone you haven’t given permission to (ie your ‘friends’)?

The chance that Facebook will be interested in your ‘Ibiza 08’ photo album is very slim. But, still. No one likes to take things on trust do they?

When reading stories like these, I always get a horrible feeling that I’m walking into something I don’t understand – something that could go horribly wrong. It’s a question of control. This is a blog post going out to whoever wants to read it, but that’s my intention. The idea that my intentions on Facebook can be disrespected makes me shudder.

Probably it makes other people shudder as well, but this is unlikely to lead to a mass migration. Facebook is just too useful. We’re scared we’ll lose people, that we’ll be out of the loop and that we won’t be invited. So is there any way to make Facebook more accountable? Possibly. It’s worth a go.

What ‘The Wire’ does right that other dramas do wrong

‘The Wire’ does a lot of things right that other TV dramas do wrong. So many things in fact that this is going to be a continuing series, which will be updated when other things occur to me (this will generally happen when I’m watching other dramas and I go “oh for god’s sake, The Wire wouldn’t do it that way.”)

In a way it’s a shame that ‘The Wire’ does so many things right that other dramas do wrong because it kind of ruins other dramas. For example, I started watching the new series of ‘24’ yesterday and cringed at nearly every scene and every piece of dialogue. I haven’t been in love with ‘24’ for a while, but I’ve never before found it to be so out and out shoddy.

One day I believe all TV dramas will be as good as ‘The Wire’. That will be the day when all bands are as good as The Smiths and all films are as good as ‘Kevin and Perry Go Large’. Here are just a few things that ‘The Wire’ does right.

1. ‘The Wire’ remembers that every situation can be played for laughs

Humanity is ridiculous. People are flawed. Gritty dramas that deal with ‘life on the streets’ often fall a little bit in love with their subject matter and start to take themselves and their characters very seriously. ‘The Wire’ never does this, even when creating characters of gargantuan coolness such as Omar. When I think of this particular aspect of ‘The Wire’ I always think of one scene, which isn’t a particularly pivotal scene but made me laugh.

It’s in Season Three, and slick new drug lord Marlo is being picked up by a girl in a bar. Marlo’s cool. Marlo owns the streets. The girl’s trying hard to be seductive (we later find out she’s a stooge). This is the first bit of the conversation:

Girl: I think you look like a cat.

Marlo: Oh yeah? What kind of cat?

Girl: A big cat.

Marlo then goes and shags the girl in her car and the following conversation ensues.

Girl: That was good.

Marlo (throwing condom out of the window): Worked for me.

It’s hard to imagine any other drama where such a scene would be played for laughs. Why is it even funny? Because the girl’s trying hard to be femme fatale but is pretty rubbish at it and because Marlo’s a cold fish who doesn’t give a stuff.

But it’s not a comedy scene, in fact, if you weren’t paying full attention you might have missed anything funny about that scene at all. Even while he’s being seduced, Marlo’s looking around to see who and what the girl is. He knows he’s dead at any time. It’s also a scene that later ends in tragedy (I won’t say why in case anyone hasn’t seen Season Three).

2. ‘The Wire’ never tries to make death sexy

I recently started to watch a drama called ‘Spiral’, which is a sort of French ‘Wire in the Blood’. It began with the discovery of a body. Obviously, the first scene had to be a long, lingering shot over the horrifically mutilated body of a young girl. Once we were shocked enough, the second scene was set under a slate grey sky threatening rain in a rubble-covered wasteland, with the detective standing grimly over the body wearing a long black coat flapping in the wind like a raven settling on fresh carrion. In fact it looked a bit like that Madonna video, the one where she turns into a crow. One line of dialogue went like this:

“She must have been beautiful, hence the ferocity of the attack.”

Um, what? I mean, really. This is stylized murder p0rn. ‘The Wire’ never does this. Death in ‘The Wire’ is horribly casual and pretty ugly, in keeping with the cheapness of life in ‘the game’. It’s not glorified, stylized and lingered over, even when a big character dies. Typically, it’s so banal you end up asking yourself why you’re not more shocked when someone is done away with because their presence is a bit inconvenient or because they’re standing in the wrong place.

Death is not given undue importance because it’s not important to the characters. They know they’re going to die young. The sheer body count in ‘The Wire’ ends up creating a low-level feeling of threat and a feeling of inevitability, which is what it must be like to live it. Why glorify something so common?

3. ‘The Wire’ never employs actors simply for their looks

Actors in other TV dramas, especially American dramas (although British dramas are going that way too) generally look a certain way. They’re a type. They look like TV actors. They may or may not have plastic surgery, but they will generally have great skin, fantastic makeup and lustrous hair. They will be thin, especially if they’re ‘good guys’. The message you get from these dramas is that normal, grey skinned, tubby humanity is not good enough to be presented to itself.

‘The Wire’ never does this. It has actors of varying attractiveness, but all of them look like normal people. Even Aiden Gillen, who was cast as the sexiest gay man alive in ‘Queer as Folk’, looks like an average person. Dominic West could be considered a handsome man, but in ‘The Wire’ he’s generally rumpled, drunk or hungover. There are fat people in it who aren’t fools and beautiful people (I’m looking at you Stringer Bell) whose attractiveness is irrelevant. Only ITV’s ‘Trial and Retribution’ outdoes ‘The Wire’ for employing ‘ordinary’, un-photogenic actors.

That is it for now. I will be back with more ‘Wire’ observations when they occur to me.

The words and phrases that PR people use that ruin language

So I said in my profile that I wouldn’t write about copywriting that much, but sometimes I can’t help myself. I just get tired of lazy fool writing.

I am a PR copywriter by trade, but I don’t like to think I’m a particularly pedantic, nitpicky one. Language evolves, and what can seem like rubbish-speak one year can turn into accepted phraseology 12 months later.

 BUT, some words and phrases just keep coming up in the PR copy I see every day and they make me sigh. Getting rid of them won’t necessarily help improve standards of writing, but it will help make me happy, and that is what the world is here for after all.

Here, in another post that is simply a list (look, I like lists alright) are my top words and phrases that we should ban in 2009.

1. Key (when used to mean ‘important’, ‘pivotal’, ‘fundamental’)
The word ‘key’ is a wet word, a filler word. It is used to make ordinary sentences sound important and business-like. Lots of things become ‘key’ when PR people write about them: stakeholders, considerations, solutions, industries.

I sigh when I see the word ‘key’, because it means the person probably won’t have thought hard about what they’re saying. For example: “We talk to key stakeholders.” What does that mean? No one knows, least of all the person writing the sentence.

2. In the current economic climate (and variations)
Lazy-slag copywriting at its worst. It is estimated that 10 million articles in 2009 will begin with these words; around 99% of those articles will be explaining how you can ‘get ahead’ during a recession. Only 1% of the authors will have any clue what the ‘current economic climate’ is. Other variations include ‘in today’s fast-paced business world’.

3. Holistic
This word should have been laughed into oblivion by now, goddamnit. When people use the word holistic what they mean is ‘takes a lot of stuff into consideration’ – for example, a holistic health practitioner might take into account the patient’s state of mind, star sign and pet preference as well as their physical symptoms. A ‘360 degree, holistic solution’ might, oh god, who knows. Say what you mean, copy slags.

4. Innovation
I don’t want to get rid of this word altogether, just carefully monitor its use. In the past, when it wasn’t used by every company that had an incremental product refresh cycle, it was quite a powerful word, linked with Victorian inventors in stovepipe hats and smart engineers working for NASA. Now it is so abused it has become meaningless.

5. Strategic
Again, I don’t want to get rid of this word altogether, just limit its use. In certain contexts, the word strategic can be fun and sexy, for example ‘strategic missile command’, ‘strategic troops’, ‘strategic thermo-nuclear heat death’. Outside of war, however, the word strategic is just another Teflon corporate-speak piece of nonsense.

6. Revolutionary
In communications agencies, adjectives are in short supply. What do you call version 6.3 of a product when ‘new’ won’t do? The thing about ‘revolutionary’ is that ‘revolution’ describes a process or effect rather than a state of being. Ergo, a new, untried product cannot be ‘revolutionary’.

7. Enabling
OK, OK, I’m guilty of this one. It is really difficult to avoid using the word enabling when writing PR copy. You’re trying to sell a product or service, after all, and that product or service is helping someone do something. So, when drawing up lists of benefits, you generally plump for ‘enabling’. It would be an interesting exercise to find out how many enablings a journalist reads in one day.

Sometimes, just for variation, I use ‘allows you to….’ or ‘helps you to’, but these are equally as sappy. The solution is to go about the problem a different way. Instead of: “The xxx phone enables you to send video messages,” you could try “video messaging is fast on the xxx phone” or something a bit more descriptive such as that. There’s always a way around it.

8. Enhancing/maximising/optimising
These grate because of overuse, generally in copy related to technology products. They are really, really boring words, especially when repeated numerous times over the course of an article/release/white paper. They also sound a bit robotic. Skynet in ‘Terminator’ probably maximised and optimised its technology solution when wiping out the human race.

9. Solution
Private Eye already takes the piss out of this one but we still use it. The problem is, some solutions simply have no other word to describe them apart from ‘solution’. What do you use to describe a product that includes software, hardware and management consultancy? It’s a bleeding solution. What can be done? You can use the word ‘product’ instead, or ‘offering’, or ‘package’, or ‘service’. They’re not perfect but they’re better than solution.

10. Proprietary
‘Proprietary’ and ‘bespoke’ go together, and often with ‘solution’. There is a place for them. Software is often ‘bespoke’ and ‘proprietary’ and that’s OK, because those are the actual technical words for software that’s been created for a particular business or application.

But when these words creep outside the world of software there is a problem, because they rust up copy due to their technical associations. I’ve been trying to do away with ‘proprietary’ for a while. My solution (aarrgghh!)  is to use ‘exclusive’ or ‘xxx-developed’. Hopefully I’ll come up with something better soon.

New Years, New Shmears

This conversation happened between three of my friends over email today:

I get embarrassed when staff send me emails with ‘Happy New Year!’

oh god everyone keeps telling me that.

It makes my blood run cold.

i know. what’s so frigging great about it?

They should shut up with their good wishes. I’m so busy.

I am more busy.

It’s going to be the worst year of my life, so far.

mine too, although last year’ll be tough to beat.

Ten ways to kick the shite out of the New Year

Bloody Britain. Why are we so effing miserable? I turned on the Today Programme on Radio 4 this morning in time to catch the heart-warming headline ‘one out of ten children find life pointless and want to kill themselves’, or something quite similar (Guardian story here).

What do you expect if you go around asking kids if they find life pointless? What if the kids hadn’t even considered that life was pointless before the question was asked? I’m imagining a sour-faced researcher, possibly in tweed, tapping his pencil on the forehead of a young innocent while sucking the warmth from the air Dementor-like, and demanding whether they really, really want to go on with this heart-crushing existence. What would you say? And what about the nine out of ten kids who think life is a big candy floss castle on a sea of marshmallow dreams? Isn’t a 90% happiness score something to be proud of?

One hour and a rush-hour nightmare later, I opened the Metro to find the same story, plus another one warning office workers that they’re about to face a spam deluge to tune of 3,000 emails. Could this be fatal? Clearly we’re all feeling a bit Charlie Brooker (love you as always, Charlie).

Anyway, I’m ignoring the world and making up my own rules. Here are ten ways to make sure January is the best month of the year.

1. Drink red wine every day. For every gym visit that you make, drink two glasses of red (on top of your usual wine quota).

2. Don’t watch the news or read any newspapers. If you have to read, stick solely to fiction set in a grim, class-ridden industrial past that contrasts pleasingly with the present. Also try and avoid conversation with people who care about current affairs as they will drag you into their misery.

3. Do not listen to music radio, as they’ll be playing the same songs as last year.

4. Avoid the sales. In fact, save up the money you would have spent on six ‘not quite what I wanted but they were only £15 each and they’ll keep me warm’ jumpers from Gap or Next and buy something ludicrous such as an angora rabbit (which will give you wool for your own jumpers!) or a clockwork peacock.

5. The ‘Euro vs Pound’ conversation is the new ‘My house is now worth the same as my watch’ conversation. Slap the face of anyone who tries to start it.

6. Do not try and begin anything new, you’re not ready for it yet. January is a transition period while the year decides what it’s going to be. Once the nature of your year has been revealed you can start new things in February or March. In the meantime, watch telly.

7. Pretend that talent shows such as the X Factor, Britain’s Got Talent, Strictly Come Dancing, Britain/Canada/America/Australia’s Next Top Model, I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, So You Think You Can Dance?, Dirty Dancing Time of Your Life, Dancing on Ice and Any Dream Will Do are many years in the past, and the current media-savvy generation now ridicule this format as being hilariously derivative, cynical, low-quality, manipulative, exploitative and naff. In fact modern media studies courses run a module on this early 21^st century phenomenon simply titled: “What the fuck TV?” Instead, watch repeats of The Good Life on Gold and admire Margot Ledbetter’s wardrobe.

8. Do not begin reassessing things, such as your relationships, life choices, job, sofa, brand of tea or future goals. See number 6 for the reason why.

9. Do not read lists. They are an easy way for lazy-slag journalists to fill space during the dullest part of the year.

10. Use your brain in some way. If you have not had any mental exercise by the end of January you will lose your ability to think altogether.