Things That Have Been Bothering Me Lately

The new Media Arts Festival awards show. Award shows in general. Cannes. Advertising people at Cannes wearing Speedos. Black Speedos. (You know who you are.) Menard’s ads. ‘This Is Our Country.’ That the internets suck up time that can be used making ads. Groupthink. The herd mentality that decides that a particular ad is amazing. The overuse of the word ‘amazing’. Not to mention ‘content’. ‘Media-neutral’. And ‘robust.’ Facebook’s ad plan. 45-year-olds with Facebook pages. Wait, that’s me. Print ads on two consecutive pages, always two, not three, or eight. Creatives who slam others’ work in Creativity magazine. And finally: gourds.

The Hardest I Have Laughed At An Ad In Years

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8qVM6f9Ogs

Out loud. Screeching, snorting, embarrassing laughter. The kind of laughter I don’t even laugh at funny movies, or George Bush press conferences.

The Jeep spot with the singing animals.

“Rock Me Gently”? The squirrel? The wolf that eats the bird?

So fresh.

I know, talking animals. It’s an old idea. It doesn’t matter.

“Rock Me Gently.”

Killer!

Beyond all that, two questions:

How did heck did they sell this ad to the client?

And, how the heck did they sell an ad to the client which barely even bothers to mention the vehicle it’s ostensibly launching?

Still: kudos.

On Focus Groups

Sometimes you need 100 words.

Sometimes you need 13.

Bob Lutz, legendary car guy and head of GM design, has 13 words for focus groups.

‘Testing,’ he said, ‘is like driving a car by looking in the rear view mirror.’

An Open Letter To Music Houses

I write this for defenseless creatures like advertising creatives, and puppies.

We are delighted your spots, demos, shorts, long-form films are on the internets.

And yet, can we make a humble request?

PLEASE MAKE IT SO WE CAN ACTUALLY LISTEN TO YOUR #&!@% MUSIC!!!!!

Again, calmly:

Please make it so we can actually listen to your #&!@% music.

Without eight-minute downloads per spot. Without pop-ups of the next act you are launching. Without the befuddling, yet admittedly hip, graphics to wade through.

Between focus groups and craft-service-table turkey jerky, our life is difficult enough.

Kind regards,

Gary

The Future Of Advertising

People often ask me, ‘Hey Gary, what’s the future of advertising?’

Actually, ‘often’ may be a stretch. Truthfully, they ask sometimes.

Oh alright…never.

Yet, here is the answer.

The future of advertising is your Ikea ‘Olaf’ sofa. Or anywhere you sit your bum in front of a television.

Television? Transmitter of the 30-second commercial that is losing relevance faster than Kid Rock? Yes.

But also the master of branded content, advertising-embedded video games, the internets, and who knows what else to come.

Television.

Television and your ‘Olaf’ sofa, the undefeated champion content-absorption device for a motion-challenged America.

They are the future of advertising.