Porsche Enthusiasts Club Forum

Err thought you didn't watch much telly Gordon

I dont, just the first 5 seconds of most things before i walk out in , I do like the adverts though, I love to see how stupid the advertising industry thinks we are, and i also believe it gives us some indication of the general levels of stupidity across this once great nation. The ads for hair products are just fantastic, outlandish claims based on rubbish science, and the bits where they say 78% of women agreed and the smallprint says "of 121 women questioned", who inn their right mind buys something with "boswellox" in it? that has to be someone having an april fool joke I can just imagone the conversation at bbh bogle bartle heggarty tosspot and legover one april:

ad man1 Ok boswellox

ad man 2 what?
1boswellox
2what s that?
1just made it up, if you can promote it in hairspray I will buy the next piece of cheap and tacky damien hurst rubbish in formaldyhyde that comes on the market.

2deal

so now some goon with too much cash has half a pig in a tank of poison all because of a bet and boswellox is upon us

Bit like the politicians then..............................................

the politician I can cope with I can vote them out or in, its the people who comission I am a celeb or the x factor that keep this country numb and full of dullards that i cant stand. The people who bring you cash in the attic, trisha, that sort of crap. I am all for a bit of entertainment but corrie, eastenders, neighbours etc etc etc thats just wallowing in the pretend misery of others and a bit like watching through the curtains, gets right up my nose and as for the ice skating with chimps stuff......................................................................

and wot about come dancing...................did you ever hear of such a thing !!!!!!!!!!

well said Gordon,couldnt agree more!

OK I'll bite as an ex-agency person who still makes his crust in advertising (Bartle Bogle Tosspot are one of my clients).

The cleverest people I've ever met, with the best strategic business brains, work in advertising. The top agencies apply extraordinary effort to understanding their audiences and creating work which resonates with them. The problems with which they are faced are honestly amongst the knottiest I've ever encountered (and my degree was in theoretical physics - the briefs from clients are much tougher). They are also ridiculously hard-working - I counted it a bonus to have a rare weekend off without having to go into the agency which would be a busy place on a sunday. Most didn't leave the agency on weekdays before about 7pm at the earliest!

If they have a flaw it's that creative teams tend to over-estimate the sophistication of their target audience, believing they share their intelligent metropolitan taste in film, music, TV etc.

Can understand if you feel under-estimated as you are way, way smarter than the average (I mean this, it's clear from your writing style, high level of all your posts and the Bartle Bogle reference).

Ads would fail disastrously if they under-estimate their audience. the clients are businesses and ruthlessly track their advertising's effectiveness.

Agree with you that most haircare ads are dreadful though. next time I'm in Paris I want to try and find the Laboratoire Garnier! tbh a lot of these ads are created in house (by advertisers themselves, not by advertising agencies - this would be true of much fashion/fragrance ads too) by businesses who have a very functional/rational model of advertising. Top agencies like BB Tosspot wouldn't touch it with a bargepole as it offers no 'creative' possibilities. If an agency is involved very likely to be done by dull network agencies (the work will have probably originated in the States) with a low reputation in the industry.

Rant over!

ah I also used to read "Campaign"magazine.

I have no problem with well made well thought out ads, I struggle with the ideas that are lazy, the idea that celebrity will sell, I know it does but by god I wish it didnt. The most annoying are the generic euro ads, the cillit bangs of this world when you dont see mouths move. I know we all have the hierarchy of needds but god please sell me my wants in an imaginative style, i may just reach self actualization but not by using something advertised by Barry soddin Scott especially if it has boswellox in it.

I love the origional tango campaign, The ongoing gold blend withe bloke from buffy was fantastic. Some of the abstracts have been great. So dont get me wrong it is just the moronic stuff that annoys me, the stuff where no real thought or creation has happened and the appeal is the lowest common denominator that can be found. Oh and the concentration on yooooof is a bit of a pain as well.

Also the demographics that some agencies seem to think are watching stuff amazes me, It would appear you can sit down to watch "great scania's of the 70's" and you still have ads for tampons and hair care stuff, who the hell is paying for these slots? thay have to be free fillers dont they????????

oh and i was secretly pleased when Saatchi's wharehouse full of junk burnt down, and his wife cant cook either. But that is just a personal dislike from the late 70's and 80's, mind you "labour isnt working"was brilliant

I love theoretical physics and astro physics, always have done, I never had the maths to do it though
So I did Philosophy.

The ads that annoy me are the meaningless "up to 20%" and "from £5"





Nick

[quote="dekandgord"
So I did Philosophy.[/quote]


and it shows!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! good stuff Gordon

Fantastic - a chat on a car forum about one of my other passions - this is why I love TIPEC!

Gordon we should have a good chat at some future event where we're both attending but briefly:

- you will learn very little about advertising - and be seriously misled - by reading Campaign. When I used to help with graduate recruitment we counted it as a factor against the candidate if they professed to be keen Campaign readers!

- yes a lot of ideas are poor/lazy. Not all 'creatives' are magicians - far from it. There are bad creatives just as there are bad account directors, strategists, media planners etc as in any job.

- the concentration on yoof is partly a result of something I referred to before - the culture of creatives is a very young/laddish one so the work often reflects that. Also a huge proportion of people in agencies - and their clients - are 20 somethings.

- advertising tampons in a truck programme isn't necessarily daft. As a proportion of the total audience women will be a lower fraction than for Emmerdale say, but there will still be a certain number and the (low) rate paid will reflect that. TV is in any case a notoriously blunt targeting medium compared with say a magazine, even for niche satellite channels. Bear in mind where the TV set is, and that someone's partner/mum/daughter may be in the room. I can't stand Top Gear but I may watch to keep my wife company who is a fan (and she has zero interest in cars which tells you a lot about Top Gear). Oh and another problem is that the actual measurement of who is watching a TV programme is notoriously flawed, and the accuracy is only getting worse now we have more than one commercial channel, not to mention Sky+, internet, 3G....

- I never had the maths to do theoretical physics either (ultimately Physics is Geometry as my old lecturer used to say), which is why I got into advertising instead!

Cheers,

Adrian

dont read it anymore, this was during the early eighties late seventies,

So this yoof concentration, lets say i am a client, I have aproduct that is by definition a cross over age wise. Do I trust myself to the creatives who opt for youth or do I disregard advice and try for the area of population with the most disposable income( possibly my ex wife but that is a different story) obviously excluding the youth market?

Jhegarty is a talking head now more than anything else, i see him on allsorts of reviews of the 80's type programs, respect for hm though and for what he did. I did spend a while selling space on a mag called chequred flag and boxing outlook but what a heartbreaking job that was!!!

on the demographics front I still think some of the channels are taking a loss just to be showing prestige company ads, I know it happened with magazines, get Shell and others willl follow !!!

still dont think Saatchis wife is a good cook

Well if the product has a clearly defined audience then the media planners at least would be buying time/space to that brief. Problem is more that the creative team may produce work which appeals more to an audience more like them (think laddish, male, interested in culture outside the mainstream). Occasionally both client and agency engage in a kind of conspiracy to target a product/service younger than makes business sense, because they find it difficult to envisage the lives of people say 20-30 years older than them.

Also questions of targeting are much more subtle than simply measuring disposable income. An 18 year old may not have much ready cash, but he would be much more given to spend what little cash he has on ringtones say, or the latest edition of Halo than me (come to think of it he probably would have more disposable cash than me).

Mr Hegarty has been much more concerned with growing wine on his French estate than creating ads for some years now. I would say he's quite old skool though in that he's considerable more literate/articulate than your average modern creative director - maybe a pity he's not more directly involved.

The TV stations would be desperate for any income given the slump in TV spending (partly recession, partly the massive shift to new media channels and 'event' marketing). Honestly TV stations just don't think about the prestige of clients in the same way as magazines - they are not precious about an editorial 'look' and are not art-directed in the way that print magazines are.

Must go back to droning on about 928 flexplates now...

did you vote for the present prime minister ?

Just watching Jesse James is a Dead Man on Quest. He is building a hydrogen powered Land SPeed car.

PS. Just realised he is the guy who was at Goodwood FoS this year in a buggy & is also the owner of West Coast Choppers & lucky git is married to Sandra Bullock