Jean-François Thériault

Good photography from French photographer Jean-François Thériault. Particularly this set of shots from Vegas shopfront signage. It's hard to beat some nice type well shot.

French Connection

Zis is the campaign. Fallon have launched a new campaign for French Connection, I'm sure that won't have escaped the attention of our observant readers.

I've always thought that ad agencies have an interesting relationship with fashion brands. Pure fashion advertising is very single-minded and focused (I might do a post on that separately some time), they tend to get on perfectly well without advertising agencies, thankyouverymuch.

I think where you get that crossover point between fashion products and more mass-market or retail, like Clarks, Gap, Diesel maybe, M&S and French Connection it's an interesting place. That where ad agencies get involved - and they sometimes have a tendency to treat these like any other product that they advertise. They're desperate to put an addy idea into them. I don't really like terms like addy, so let me try to explain what I mean. I think they try to put a layer of idea or execution over the top of the product, something that seems to try hard to be clever. Agencies try to do that too much anyway - often what they think is an advertising idea is just a layer of complication that gets in the way rather than helps.

But fashion is a different business again, and finding the balance between a strong, consistent mass-market idea but that feels like it's still in fashion is hard thing to do. What people want from fashion is a mix of things, but basically very simple and very human - ultimately they want to look good, in order to feel good, they want to feel like they're wearing stylish clothes that are right for them. They also want something to aspire to, it's a cliche, but they want to feel better about themselves through the clothes that they wear. Its the age old thing of wanting to be more like or be with the man or woman in the ad.

I think that the new French Connection campaign walks this difficult line outstandingly well. It portrays classic masculine and feminine characters in the way that fashion advertising often tries to do, but it instantly subverts them with a perfectly executed wry knowingness and just the right amount of self-mocking. It has humour and self-awareness that's missing from most fashion advertising. There is so much about it that's well done - a great tone of voice that you can read, as well as hear, lovely style and production values (and let's not underestimate the guts it would have taken someone somewhere to go completely with black & white). The pace of the film/TV/video stuff is lovely and relaxed.

I'm going to reserve my most embarrassingly fulsome praise for three things - the casting/characterization, the writing, and the embracing of the product. The casting of the man is outstanding, bold and excellent, he's the man that blokes want to be; strong, individual, confident, but he's not afraid to be silly - doesn't take himself seriously - and he's not too clean cut. The character of Woman is feminine, young, and is portrayed with that confidence slash innocence slash utter utter disdain that the strongest female movie characters have.

The writing has a strong tone-of-voice, I saw the print ads first and couldn't help but have in my mind the kind of voice that then turned out to be on the film stuff, credit to the typography and art direction for that, too. In the film-based stuff it walks a perfect line between celebrating and taking the piss out of these perfect masculine and feminine characters, it's a bit like classic fashion advertising on a weird mix of uppers and downers. And there are some well-observed little human truths in there. Occasionally it slips into the odd little 'allo 'allo moment, but quickly recovers.

And thankfully, the product is celebrated and integral to everything. Praise the lord.

It may get some criticism from your typical ad-crowd along the lines of 'where's the idea?' in that lame sort of way, or because it's not in-your-face. But fuck 'em I say. This is classic creativity. Doing its job very well, but not overdoing it. It's such a difficult thing to get right. It's probably the piece of Fallon UK work that I most envy. And a great piece of mass-fashion advertising.

Perfectly-styled hats-off to all involved.

I'm here

If you haven't seen Spike Jonze's latest 30 min film, 'I'm here', then we recommend you do. 

Jonze teamed up with Absolut Vodka to create the short - a story about two robots who fall in love in LA - and it seems to be quite an integral part of their latest campaign, which bears the strapline, 'In An ABSOLUT World, Ordinary Is No Place To Be'. 

According to Absolut, 'the film honours Absolut's history (hmm), while embarking on a new and innovative alliance with one of today's most original film makers' - well they're not wrong there. And to follow on with this theme, the film is set to be screened in interesting and unexpected locations, which challenge people's 'ordinary' perceptions. 

Advertising aside, it's beautifully shot, has gentle touches of humour and not too many glaringly obvious Absolut references (note the title and credits in Absolut's futura font), with just the right amount of weird - bucket loads. 

Take a sneek peak below.

Star Wars on Earth

aka "The Dark Lens Series" by Cédric Delsaux.

Over the last 5 years the French photographer has been slowly releasing this brilliant series. Each shot shows Star Wars stuff in different parts of France and Dubai. Last week he released the final installment. You can check out the whole collection on his site here, and read a bit more about it over here.

The Credit Expert

A pig called Sophocles, a posh bloke that plays the harpsichord, a Chinese butler, ice from the sea of tranquility. It's a pretty bizarre combo to get people to check their credit rating.

On the one hand, I like the pace and feel of these ads. That, along with their downright weirdness, certainly makes them stand out amongst the frenetic clutter of most commercial breaks. The casting and performances are good and I also like the way that the CreditExpert.co.uk logo is shamelessly incorporated into the ads.

However, I'm less certain about the messaging. These ads don't really give people a reason to visit the site and get their credit checked [a free 30 day trial is offered up in one of the executions but I'm not sure whether this will be the main take-out of that ad].

It almost seems as if the agency has taken the "let's make sure that the one thing people remember from this ad is the brand name" mantra from the insurance comparison website battleground and just simply applied them to this market.

Getting a cheap insurance quote and signing up to a site to get your credit report are two very different things in two very different markets.

I reckon that people need much more of a push and a reason why to engage with the world of credit reports. The line "I know you're curious about your credit rating" is used in one of the ads as if it's some kind a universal truth and that it's something that the entire population are already interested in finding out about.

I think the reality is that there a loads of people who aren't curious about their credit rating. Millions of people probably don't know what one is or how to get one. Or even, more crucially, why they should actually get one.

The campaign might be more effective if the role of advertising was to actually make people curious about their credit rating. And having a good old-fashioned benefit in the ads that explained why it might be important or useful to check your credit rating would have undoubtedly helped.

I'm sure that triggers like how to improve your credit score, how to find out what information companies can see about you, how to help prevent ID fraud, how to see who's been checking your credit could all be motivating things to talk about that would get people clicking.

"Nice execution, shame about the message" seems to be a bit of a recurring theme at the moment. Can't help thinking that this is symptomatic of many creative departments being marginalised into simply focusing on how something is being said, rather than what is being said in the first place.

Newer readers to this blog [and planner-bashers] might like to find out a bit more about this topic in an earlier post here. Or indeed another one here.

Please, please, please

Spotted last week. Perhaps an innocuous slip lead to a face plant into a freshly laid, still steaming, slightly wet mound of doggy doo. It must have been something pretty nasty to lead this poor person to write such a desperate poster.

Self Delusional Salesmen

If you don't already read the blog of ace marketing man Dave Knockles, I Am The Client, then I heartily recommend that you do. I couldn't agree more with his observations of the lunacy of the advertising world, and his latest post Things I Don't Understand About Agencies is a perfect example. I particularly enjoyed this part:

"The industry-wide self-delusion that they aren't salespeople.
Come on, folks. Let's the two of us have a heart-to-heart here. Nobody else - just us. Let me be honest, because I like you / you buy me beerz.

The only difference between you and a car salesman is an ironic T-shirt."

It's something that I think is very true, very sad, but very funny about the most of the ad industry. Maybe it's a distaste for the idea of selling among the oxbridge graduates and precious, business illiterate creatives that find their way into advertising? Maybe it's a result of agencies trying to guarantee their role at the top table of business by hawking the nebulous role of Brand Builder? Whatever the reason, it's a delusion that has confused the ad industry in a state of perpetual denial crossed with verbal diarrhoea.

The real irony is that business valued advertising agencies much more when they accepted (and moreover enjoyed) that they were in effect, highly skilled, creative salesmen.

Bob (The Ad Contrarian) Hoffman has written brilliantly on this strange and damaging phenomenon here, I've wittered on about it too, most recently here.

Self delusion.

You never quite know that you suffer from it.