CREATIVITY IS A BRILLIANT DISGUISE.

Someone once said the art of creativity is 'disguised stealing'.
We all do it. I once wrote a TV ad for Sure deodorant which ripped off a scene from Indiana Jones. I used the scene where Indy fell through the top of a pyramid in to a pit of angry snakes. I even used the same snakes from the film. A rather obvious-shamefully-lazy can't-be-arsed- rip-off on my behalf.


The art of disguised stealing is to use, or appropriate, an idea that hasn't been seen by the brand's audience. 

I have decided to rate some advertising ideas on how well they are disguised. 

Disguise Rating: Out of 5.

1. A Royal Guardsman in full military uniform on a nudist beach.
2  A big toe toe nail in a small meat pie.       
3  Groucho Marx mask made with real skin.
4  A bearded tit a hundred feet in the air with a flock of coal tits.
5  Harry Potter's Invisibility cloak worn by the Invisible Man.


 Volvo. Live paint.

Originally used to paint deer antlers in Finland to cut down on road deaths. Widely reported on BBC news networks and the national press in early 2014. Later appropriated for Volvo and cyclists.

Disguise rating: 2.  A big toe toe nail in a small meat pie.  


















Guardian newspaper and mock law trials.





You don't have to take too many clicks before you find films of theatre groups, schools and university law students running through mock trials of nursery rhyme characters. The trial of Goldilocks is a favourite at UCLA.


The idea for the 2014 award winning Guardian ad was woefully transparent. However, the execution added value and the writing craft and production took the idea to a new level.

Disguise Rating: 3. Groucho Marx mask made with real skin.                                                                                                                                         

Toshiba and Simon Faithfull's video art.
                                                                               

The video artist Simon Faithfull's Escape installations came from a very personal feeling that he was 'tethered to a mundane realm.' His piece, Gravity Sucks, opened at the BFI in 2009. I doubt very much the audience for Toshiba had seen this. They were tethered to their own armchairs watching Grey's Space Chair ad on their Toshiba televisons.

Disguise Rating: 5.  Harry Potter's Invisibility cloak worn by the Invisible Man.



Honda and Fischli and Weiss.


In 1986 artists Fischli and Weiss rented a huge empty warehouse and created an art film called The Way Things Go.  The film showed 'everyday' objects colliding to create a fluid moving narrative.

In 2003 Fischli and Weiss threatened legal action against Honda for copying 

their film for the Wieden and Kennedy produced ad called Cog.

Fischli and Weiss had refused several requests to use the film for commercial purposes,

Wieden and Kennedy eventually admitted to copying a
sequence of weighted tyres rolling uphill.

The controversy was blamed for denying Cog a Grand Prix at Cannes.

Disguise Rating:  4.  A bearded tit a hundred feet in the air with a flock of coal tits.





David Letterman throwing coloured balls down a street and Sony Bravia televisions.

In 1996, David Letteman released thousands of coloured balls down a steep street in San Francisco. 
In 2005, Sony did the same thing to promote the quality of their colour televisions. 

When you take an idea from one of the most popular television shows to advertise a popular television shame has all but disappeared.

Letterman also released thousands of melons down the same street which curiously wasn't ripped off by a sports bra brand.

Disguise rating: 1. A Royal Guardsman in full military uniform on a nudist beach.

John Lewis and Youtube foxes.

Videos of foxes bouncing on trampolines
have been appearing on Youtube 
for over ten years now. I suspect the only fox films John Lewis shoppers watch is Basil Brush with their kids.

Disguise rating: 5.  Harry Potter's Invisibility cloak worn by the Invisible Man. 

This blog post. 

Disguise rating: -1. A coal tit pretending to be a toe nail on a nudist beach of bearded tits in Groucho Marx masks made of real skin. 

                                                                                         

How to write a John Lewis Christmas TV ad.

1. Work hard.

2. Join the Watford Ad School.

3. Work hard.

4. Get a job at Adam and Eve/DDB.

5. Work hard.

                         By Ben Stilitz, Watford class of 1999.

By Milo and Sophie, Watford class of 2010 and 2009.

By Aiden and Laurent, Watford class of 2003.

By Frank Ginger, Watford class of 1997.

The Bothersome Man.

One of my favourite films of recent years is Jens Lien's The Bothersome Man. It's a Norwegian film I heartily recommend.

It's about a young man who arrives in a small grey town where people have grey thoughts, work in grey jobs and live in grey buildings. 
Everybody in the town is smiley, dull and boring. 

The main character works as an accountant in an office where everyone is overly polite to each other. 
No one speaks the truth. 
No one has an opinion. 
No one has taste. 

In this post-modern politically correct society, the notion of speaking out, or having a different opinion would be offensive and rude. 

So, everyone in the town is conditioned to agree with each other. 
Agreeing is placid. 
Agreeing is, 'we are all on board.' 
Agreeing is the consensus that makes us feel comfortable. 
Agreeing will keep us in our jobs.
Agreeing is easy.

There is a scene in the film where the staff are having lunch in the office canteen.

One of the female workers is choosing a sofa for her home.
She shows her work colleagues the catalogue of sofas. 
All the sofas look the same. 
She agonises over making a decision and getting it wrong.
She makes a safe choice.
Her work colleagues approve of her choice. 
She is happy. They are happy.
The Bothersome Man can't believe they all agree with this safe decision. 
He wants to say, 'this sofa is shit. It's just like all the other sofas. Choose something different. Be an individual'.
But he doesn't say anything. 

Anger, jealousy, passion, love, humour are all casualties of this benign, polite society. 

The Bothersome Man wants to feel and taste real emotions. 
He wants to laugh, hate, shout, get pissed, rage, fight and love. 
He wants to be an individual. He doesn't want to be conditioned to fit in.

Lien's film is set in an accountancy firm. 
It could easily have been set in a modern day advertising agency

Every creative industry needs more Bothersome Men and Women.

Work ethic.

August Bank Holiday Monday was a lovely day. 

Many were out in Soho and enjoying the late summer sunshine and a well deserved break from work. 

I found myself walking down Kingly Street toward the offices of BBH.

Outside the agency was ex-Watford and BBH creative, Sara Sutherland.

"What are you doing here?", I asked.

"Working on briefs. There are more ex-Watfords in the agency today. Come on up", she replied.

I went up to the creative department  and found five of my ex- students toiling away. 

Dan Delhavi, Drew Haselhurst, Ash Hamilton, Lance Boreham and Sara were putting in some extra hours.


There were the only creatives in the whole building. 

In fact, save for the security guards, they were the only people in the whole building. 

"Have you all been summoned to come in today?", I enquired.

A resounding "NO" came from all five.

When you have a brilliant job that offers brilliant opportunities and you are building your career you do what it takes to get on. 

Sometimes, that means working voluntarily on a Bank Holiday.

No wonder so many  ex-Watford students get to the top of this crazy business.

ALL THINGS MUST PASS

Bye bye Watford.  Running toward Adland with folios in hand.

It is Friday July 1st.  The last day of the 2015/16 Watford programme. 

The graduating teams collected placements as if they were Euro 2016 Panini stickers. 

Sarah Fox/Julia Middleton: Grey, BBH, Anomaly, CHI, Saatchis, JWT and Droga5.

Tom Lee/David Gibbs: VCCP.

Dan Scott: Mother.

Lucy Jones/Chaz Mather: AMV, The Joint, JWT, WCRS and BBH.

Bryn Jones-Walters/Liv Adda: Crispin Porter and WCRS.

George Robb: TBWA, Anomaly and Rainey Kelley.

Connor Stephen/Charlie Ditchfield: Burnetts and Rainey Kelley.

Charlie Smith/Max Gil-Engel: CreatureLondon and Karmarama.

If you helped me out over the past year,  a big thank you.

I couldn't have done it without you.

If you didn't help me out, there's always next year.

Tonyx

End of year pool party at Mike Comley's house..

The Creative Spirit. The First Element.

I have just completed a round of interviews for next year's course.

What was remarkable was the lack of work people bring to me on the day. A few pieces of paper, a couple of ad concepts, a script, a few photographs;  the offerings on the interview table are usually thin.

There are many young people who say they are creative, yet they are unable to be productive. 

They are not willing to put down idea after idea after idea after idea until their brain hurts.  

What I am talking about here is a lack of energy.

Energy is one of the four elements of an individual's Creative Spirit. (I'll write about the other three elements another time.)

Without sufficient mental energy, your creative pursuits suffer from flaws, caused by faulty logic. 

Without sufficient physical energy, your creative ideas don’t get put into motion, they remain in the closet to gather dust. 

All creativity begins as pure energy because the ideas that compose your creative thinking are nothing more than electrical impulses in your brain. 

Without energy, creativity is impossible.

The term energy also relates to the degree of passion you bring to everything you do.  

When you are fascinated by a project, or personally invested in a subject or task, you feel charged and exuberant.
 
You are able to summon up as much energy as it takes to create dozens, scores, even hundreds of ideas to one brief. The energy you invest is repaid by results and positive feedback. 

The more you love something, the more energy you will have to dedicate to it. 

And so the more creative you will be. 



When you are not energetic, the whole process may seem like a struggle, and your creativity will take a dive.

Energy is the force that drives you to write 6 campaigns when the the creative director asks for one.

Energy is what keeps you up all night writing great ideas that get bought the next morning, while the charlatans are in the pub.

Energy is what gets you to the top and keeps you there. 

The Beatles played 3 gigs a day, 7 days a week honing their skills.

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy made nearly 200 films as individuals before they made a film together. 

Stephen King's first published novel was the 17th book he'd written.

You may be the most interesting and talented  person around. 

You might get a job in advertising.

You might even write one or two decent ads.

However, if you won't make your mark on the business you need energy.




Addendum for wanna-be creatives.

Get off the lap top. 
Stop clicking on images and Youtube videos. 
Put your Facebook life on hold for a while.

Get loads of paper and a pen. Now, think of the brand problem as your coal face and get digging.

You dig away at a brand. 
Work to simple emotional truths.
Questions, insights and hunches are your tools of choice.
What's the brand's problem?
You produce a mound of paper rubble trying to find an answer. 
You look at it. 
Are there any nuggets in there?
No? 
Keep digging. 
Dig in a different place. 
Dig with a different tool. 
Get someone alongside to help you dig.
In no time at all you have 20 ideas. 
If you think one of them is good, develop it. 
If none of them are good, read The Sun, have a strong coffee, eat a biscuit and get back to work.
Advertising is a working class pursuit which means you have to work.

An interviewee arriving with some ideas at the next round of interviews.

ADVERTISING NEEDS FIGHTERS

Recently, I spoke at our graduation event. The graduates of 2014 and those from 2015 were there to receive their diplomas. 

These graduates are all in the business so I thought I would tell them what they are now up against. 

Part of the speech was published by Campaign magazine. 
Here is the full version. 

You are in the business.

You made it.

Congratulations.

Now let me tell you something.

Advertising is rubbish.

It’s broken.

Busted.

Kaput.

There are no stand-out agencies.

No stand-out campaigns. 

No hot shops. No creative boutiques.

There’s no creative jealousy.

The words, I wish I’d done that, are rarely uttered by writers and art directors these days.

There was a time when the ads were better than the programmes. 
When the cinema ads entertained and when creatives fought for the poster briefs. And the radio ads did cool things to your ears.

This is great news.

You have come in to an industry that, creatively speaking, is on its knees.

What a great opportunity you have.

You are in a fantastic position.

Because the only way to go is up.

Standard wise, we can’t go down any further, in my view.

So what do you do?

The answer is simple.

You fight.

You fight.

You fight for more time.

Clients want to see ideas too soon. It might be good for the agency client relationship, but it's not good for creativity. 

It is proven that the most talented creative professionals play with ideas for longer. 

They are prepared to suffer the anxiety you feel when you haven't cracked a problem in an original way.

Creatives get tense and anxious after they have brainstormed ideas. So, to release the tension you feel you have to make a decision. 

They decide to present, or they are asked to present, their ideas  too soon and run with them. 

The creatives who want original ideas do not make a quick decision. They are happy to live with this tension and dissonance for longer periods. 
And in doing so come up with ideas that are more original.

Fight for the right to wallow in the anxiety you need to create great work.

Fight for more time.

Fight for simplicity.

You need to take on the introverted risk averse clients who are using advertising for the sole purpose to further their own careers by introducing confusion and complexities just so that they are seen to solve the confusion and complexities they themselves introduced.

Fight for the 6 word brief.

Fight against the big words. And the verbose intellectuals.

When I worked at Lowe Lintas there was a Head of Planning who was a big hairy man who had a wizard’s beard. 

He wore linen tops that had embroidered sleeves. 

He had books on his shelf about from Eastern philosophers. 
(The creatives had Viz, The Beano and Spike Milligan.)

He walked around bare foot. The clients thought he was the guru of all things advertising. He would stroke his beard and utter  stuff like, 

...'the purpose of the brand journey is to maximise the transportative emotion to register the consumer consciousness with a brand mnemonic'. 

What he was trying to say was, write a memorable ad.

Advertising is your mum your best mate and your brother and the little old lady next door.

Fight for simplicity.

Fight for fun. 

Fight for humour.  

Fight for the right to entertain.

Take on those who stand by the water cooler, waxing lyrical over The Book of Mormon, Three Lions and Alan Partridge and then return to their desks and are scared shitless at the thought of presenting your funny script.

Fight the client who lost his humour with each sprout of his pubic hair and  who last laughed when he saw the dinner lady slip over a spilled bowel of rice pudding in the dinner hall at Eton.

Fight for fun.

Fight for your own space.

Fight for more walls. Walls are not barriers.  They are quite the opposite.  Walls are creative canvasses where your collection of madcap images, quotes, illustrations and photos talk to you in wondrous tones and with magical voices. 

Walls are an organic, ever changing tapestry of your  own unique creative culture,  a tangible inspiring display of the creative you, which confirms that you are not working in a bank or telesales centre but in the nourishing womb of a creative advertising agency that respects the notion that the creative mind needs a creatively stimulating environment.

Fight for your own space.

Fight against the nodding brigade.

The industry is far too polite. 

If we all nod and agree and we look for approval we get agreeable, polite advertising that gets approved.

Shake your head occasionally.

No that doesn’t make sense.

No we can’t show that.

No we can’t run that.

No, I disagree because.

No, we need more time.

No, that is not good enough.

No, this brand deserves better thinking…a clearer brief..

No, we need more time.

My father had a Triumph Herald.

On the back shelf he had a nodding dog.

It used to bounce its head up and down and it had a big smile on its face. The thing I noticed was this: the dog nodded when the car was going fast. 
It nodded when the car went slow. It nodded when the car went forwards and when the car went in to reverse. It nodded up hills and it nodded going down hills.

It nodded in sunny weather and in bad.

It was as if the dog was continually giving him approval on his driving.

And when my father drove into the back of another car which he shunted into another car which in turn hit another car, causing a 4 car pile-up, guess what? The dog was still nodding.

Still giving its approval.

The industry is far too polite.

And my guess is that a lot of great ideas are crashing.

Fight against the nodding brigade.

Fight for learning.

Surround yourself with mentors, muses and magicians.

Every agency should have a creative mentor.  Learn from them. And if you don’t have that special one in your agency, you are in the wrong agency and you should leave and join an agency that does have a special one.

Fight for your agency to send you on courses.

Go to pottery classes and throw ads.

Go to  knitting  classes and knit ideas.

Go to clown school  and create childlike, clownish ideas.

Keep learning.

One day you might want a second career.

So, the answer is simple.

You fight.

Fight smart.

Fight with your logic,

Fight with your smiles,

Fight with your humour,

Fight with carefully chosen powerful words and with your every inch of your self-belief.

Fight with your passion. Fight with your heart.

Fight with common sense.

Fight with reasoned argument.

Fight the battles you know you can win and fight the battles you think you can win.

And sometimes fight the battles you don’t think you can win.

You might win them.

Above all, fight with your talent.

And, if you keep fighting, every great piece of work you make will be hugely rewarding, because you fought for it.

And if you lose your jobs in trying to make the industry creatively better, then frankly the business doesn’t deserve you.

The future of advertising is in your hands.

Advertising is busted.

It’s now your responsibility to fix it.

It is worth fighting for.

I know how good you all are.

And how much better you want to be.

You can do it.

Good luck.

The Digital Beard.

Technology has created some mind-blowing ideas of late. 

One rather disturbing development I have come across recently is the Digital Beard. The use of male facial hair as a digital storage device.

Klaus Von Strutenberg a digital pioneer in California has successfully transferred data from optical fibres to the strands of  human hair. 

Strutenberg's research found that men's beard hair and optical fibres  have a very similar molecular structure and they behave in very similar ways.

In 2012, Strutenberg successfully uploaded a Mariah Carey music video to a single bristle.

Tom Yoravinmeon, a volunteer, had his films, playlists, photos and personal information uploaded to his beard via an adapted bristle
port and cable. 

Strutenberg said, "I know this sounds implausible, but I see the day when Netflix will be able to stream direct to Bluetooth beards. 
All personal ID, like passports, CV's and bank details will be stored on a hairy chin. Facebook will actually be on the human face."

The trials have not been without controversy.

Female scientists and groups like WAB, Women Against Beards, have attempted to disrupt Strutenberg's trials on the basis of inequality.

A group of female lawyers, backed by Gillette, have filed a petition  to stop the trials on the grounds of sexism. Women, or most women, are unable to grow beards.

In response, the research team have tried to digitalise a woman's hair with disastrous results.

Strutenberg found the electrical negatively charged  impulses from the brain interfered with the positively charged digital information. 

One female volunteer's head caught fire when Spotify, (a major sponsor of the trials), tried to upload the complete discography of Dolly Parton to her ponytail.

Another volunteer's ears melted when the researchers tried to upload Kim Kardashian's Twitter page to her lustrous bob.

An extreme female activist group called  Bye Bye Beard, ( The BBB),  have been attacking men in San Diego bars with shaving foam.

Unperturbed, Strutenberg's team are continuing with their trials and they expect the Digital Beard to be launched in 2018. 

During the research trials there was one notable discovery. 

Any advertising or branded content was automatically rejected by beards. 

The advertising content remained on the hair follicles to be removed later with a fine beard comb. 

It appears that beards are natural adblockers.

Here is a quick film that was smuggled out of Strutenberg's Labs.

The passing of time never defeats a good idea.

In 1994, two students Zane Radcliffe and Graham Davey knocked on my door.

"We got an idea Tone. Can we borrow the whiteboard stand?", they said.

"Use it well. Bring it back", I replied.

Off they trundled with the portable whiteboard and a few marker pens.

Later that same week the boys pinned up an idea for Hornby model train sets at our Friday Review. 

The campaign showed how they put the whiteboard to good use. This is what they did.

The idea showed many skills.

It showed the team could write witty headlines.

It showed how they could steal up on an audience and grab their attention.

It showed they could write ads that didn't look like ads.

It showed they could think in a topical way. Back then railway concourses then were awash with excuses for delayed and cancelled trains. 

It showed they had smart media thinking.

And it showed they had conviction in their ideas and a bit of mischief.

Not many first term ideas at Watford make it to June.


The Hornby campaign did.

I loved the idea. So much so, that a few years ago I found the work in the plans chest.  

I laminated it and displayed it in my rooms.

After Watford, Zane and Graham split. Zane formed a partnership with Mike Oughton and landed a job at Leo Burnett. 

The Hornby campaign was one of many great ideas in their folio.

Zane won tons of awards in his 15 years in advertising.  

He left London and started his own agency in Scotland called Newhaven. 

He then left for Northern Ireland and became a best selling author. (London Irish and A Killer's Guide To Iceland were two of his bestsellers.)

In 2015, Zane  came back to advertising and is now the Creative Director of AgencyUK in Bath.

Zane wanted to inspire the younger creatives in his department to come up with simple, fresh ideas.

So he went back into his own plans chest and dug out the Hornby campaign he wrote with Graham when he was a young creative at Watford.
  
Zane also showed it to the Hornby client.  The client loved it and bought the idea.

The idea took 21 years to go from the Watford pin boards to the real world.

Zane entered the work for The Drum Awards 2015. 

It won the top prize, The Grand Prix.

It also won the prize for headline writing.

Good ideas will  always be good. 

Hang  on to them.

You never know when their time will come.

On your bike.

When I was a wannabe creative I found a job by cycling around the offices of Leicester knocking on doors. 

That's what the Tory Government of the time told us to do. 

'Want a job? Get on your bike', they said.

I managed to get a job 3.5 miles from where I lived. 

I worked out that 3.5 miles was the maximum distance that my front bicycle tyre would manage.

You see, it had a slow puncture and I couldn't afford a new inner tube. 

I stuck a new Elastoplast on the inner tube every morning. 

I pumped it up and it got me to work. 

And every evening I stuck another Elastoplast onto the tube and managed to cycle home. 

That's why my first job in advertising was at a local advertising agency called Gaytons. 

3.5 miles away from home.

The Creative Director didn't have a bike. 

He had a sports car and a pretty secretary. 

He also had a hyphen.  

I'd never met anyone with a hyphen before. 

I was really impressed with hyphens. 

Back then it meant you were posh and rich and you came from a good school.

The Creative Director was called Nigel Parry-Williams. 

And when 'the hyphen' spoke I listened.

He told me that if I wanted to make it in advertising I would have to go to London.

I told him that if I worked in London I would need 60 Elastoplasts a day.  

30 to get me there and 30 to get me back.

He gave me money for a train ticket.

Nowadays, young folk can afford inner tubes.  

They can fill their house with inner tubes if they like. 

So, they can work further than 3.5 miles from where they live.

It's not surprising that an increasing amount of my ex-students are now working a long way from home.

Here are some ex-Watford students who now work in The U.S.

Some of them have bikes.

None of them have hyphens.

                            Sherry Malik Ogilvy New York

Adam Arber, ex-Watford and now Creative Director. His Joe Boxer campaign for FCB Chicago, below.

Michael Micetich class of 2012 and now working as a writer at 22 Squared in Atlanta.

Simon Horton, ex-Watford, and now freelance writer/art director in New York. Simon is Brooklyn's very own Catman.

                                 Simon's view from his office. 
                      Below, Catman strikes.

There are stray cats behind every apartment I lived in. I fed them but wanted to do more, so sold this idea to my local cat charity:

The idea is that lucky cats have brought good fortune to people for centuries, so its time cats had some good fortune themselves - particularly those at the Brooklyn Animal Action. We made 40+ ceramic lucky cat donation boxes and put them in stores across Brooklyn. 

Each ceramic cat was hand glazed to resemble a cat in need of adoption, we also added the cats name to the collar.

It's a tiny project but it's providing the charity with a steady income and helping with adoptions. Simon.

Ex-Watford team, Thom Glover and Eoin McClaughlin with the account handlers at Droga 5 New York.

Ex-Watford, Jeeves works at Wieden & Kennedy, New York. Below, one of his silly films for Gap plus a recent print ad he did that unsettled a few people

          Helen Rhodes, ex-Watford and now an art director at Wieden & Kennedy, Portland with a selfie which is a photo of a drawing of a photo.
 

Sam Oliver, class of 1999 and now the Creative Director of     Apple, Palo Alto California. Sam sent me a pic of Eric, his faithful gnome. Eric is not a digital gnome. He is just a gnome.

Paddy Fraser, Watford Student Of The Year 2008 and now Creative Director at Crispin Porter, Los Angeles.

Jana Pejkovska, ex-Watford and now a senior art director at  Publicis New York .

Gavin Lester Creative Director, Deutsch Los Angeles.

Antony Goldstein Creative Director WK Portland, Oregon.

James Cooper Creative Director Betaworks New York.