That was the first drawing I saw by R. O. Blechman. I loved it instantly. Firstly, it’s a great observation of how companies operate, particularly ad agencies. But also, I was in the ideas business and I’d never seen them represented like that – in different levels from a tiny lightbulb to an enormous chandelier. I also loved the naive style of the drawing. It looked like a note one naughty child would pass to another secretly in class. DrawnRead more
Posts tagged: #George Lois
Hands Up Who’s Heard Of CHARLIE PICCIRILLO?
Before we had this thing we had books. There were few about advertising. Aside from the awards annuals, there was one by Jerry Della Femina, but it didn’t have any pictures. One by David Ogilvy, but he wasn’t exactly popular at the time. George Lois had a giant square one, which was good. Then there was Bill Bernbach’s Book. Different league. The gold standard. Our bible. Virtually all creatives owned a copy. We didn’t know who’d done ads as thereRead more
WHAT I LIKED before I knew what I was SUPPOSED TO LIKE – George Tannenbaum.
I grew up in an advertising household. My father was a copywriter at a large, mediocre agency called Kenyon & Eckhardt. He lays claim to having written Brylcreme’s US slogan, “A little dab’ll do ya.” Later he rose to Chairman of that agency. Accordingly, even at a very young age, we paid attention to TV commercials. We watched them and often commented on them. My father also did work for Nabisco, now the horribly named “Mondelez.” Way back in blackRead more
THE MOST UNFASHIONABLE FORM OF ADVERTISING?
What was the last product demo you saw? Not on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, they’re all over those, but on tv, billboards or press (does press still exist?). You just don’t see agencies doing them anymore. Odd, because, and I hope I’m not giving away any trade secrets here, the goal of most advertising is to persuade people that the product featured is good. Ideally, REALLY good. So showing it in action, performing well, seems like it might be aRead more
GREEN BOOKS: Ads 2.
I have a confession to make; not everything on this site is from the loft. Apologies to those of you who feel cheated. I feel such a fraud. The good news is that this post is 100% loft. Not mine, my old partner Mike McKenna’s. I started putting these green books together when Mike and I worked as a team at Publicis, back in the early 90’s. They were our internet. We’d split the cost of the pricey books fromRead more
GREEN BOOKS: New Yorker Ads 1.
‘‘Alright fatty, what you after?” How do you react? I’m guessing it would taint your opinion of that particular bookshop, making you less inclined to buy. Nobody likes being disrespected or patronised. What about if that bookshop owner had said “Oh, just to let you know; the new Proust collection is just in”. Sure, you’d look behind you to check that they were talking to you, but you couldn’t help but be pleased that they’d presumed you were intelligent. ItRead more
GREEN BOOKS: New Yorker Ads 3.
Another batch of fertilizer. That’s not a euphemism by the way, just a reminder that ideas grow from ideas, they rarely appear out of the blue. I sometimes hear people say ‘I’m all about tomorrow, I never look back…I’m like an arrow heading towards the future’. It sounds bloody exciting. Then I look at their output, and it often feels so…so, soul-less gimmicky…nothingy. Like it or not, the truth is that jobs, like most jobs, are less about inventing thanRead more
INTERVIEW: Sir Alan Parker.
Sir Alan, where did you grow up? I grew up in Islington. Ours were the first council flats built after the war and I moved in aged about three or four. Ironically, the flats overlooked the street where my Dad was born and brought up. (My Grandad was the local barber and the family were evacuated in the war when a bomb hit St Mary’s Church close to their shop. He was also the local bookie—illegal then—and so they movedRead more
INTERVIEW: John O’Driscoll.
Where were you brought up John? Before I answer that question are you sure about this interview? I don’t give short answers and have a tendency to go on a bit! Ask my family! Yeah, I’ve heard that. I was born and bred in a Surrey village called Hersham. Birth place of Julie Andrews and Jimmy Pursey of Sham 69. What was the first ad you remember? It wasn’t until I was 13 that I remember seeing an advert thatRead more
PKL BOOK: The first year.
A few months back, I chanced upon this. It’s an ad by George Lois. It caught my attention because I’d never seen it before and it looked ,from the photograph, like it was from a large, sharp image. I followed the link. More Papert Koenig Lois ads! I could see these weren’t tiny pictures from an early New York Art Directors Club. Where the hell were they from? I read the text underneath: “Some months ago, Julian Koenig died. He wasRead more
BOSS No.6: Tim Delaney.
Why advertising? I wanted to be a hotel bell hop boy when I left school at 15. But when I looked in the newspaper want ads – Junior Opportunities – they only had 2 ad agency messenger jobs. I went up to London and one of them offered me a job. What was your first job in advertising? A messenger- in a tiny basement room with 4 others. Quite Dickensian,when I look back. Did you try and get into Collett’s,Read more
Hands up who’s heard of STEPHEN O. FRANKFURT?
“I try to find a way to get into the head of a child.” – Stephen O. Frankfurt. His quote sounds spooky, but I guess it’s just another way of saying keep it simple and interesting. Virtually unknown today, he was a big deal in the fifties, sixties and seventies. His Mum was the secretary to the head of the Twentieth Century Fox film studio. (Sounds irrelevant, it isn’t.) He spends three years at the Pratt Institute, being ‘molded’ by Alexey Brodovitch. He leaves and visits every majorRead more
TURNING STORIES INTO ADS: Panorama.
THE PROBLEM: Panorama’s audience was shrinking. We knew where to find a potential audience; The Guardian, Times and Telegraph. But how do we approach ads for one of the BBC’s most respected programmes? PANORAMA’S PERCEPTION: Serious, straight talking and truth-seeking. ADVERTISING’S PERCEPTION: Bullshitting, tricking and spinning. We couldn’t do anything about advertising getting itself a bad name over the last century, but we could avoid looking like we’re in that gang. Ads tend to look like ads; a small logo bottomRead more
IPA POSTERS: Investment opportunity.
It’s tough for newbie creatives to get noticed. If you aren’t in an agency that produces good work it’s hard to produce good work. If you don’t produce good work it’s hard to get a job in an agency that does. One of the ways around this is to find a client that will accept good. Up and coming copywriters Mike McKenna and Alastair Wood spotted one of these opportunities back in the late eighties; The IPA Society, they heldRead more