Leo Burnett’s Marc Giusti on a new campaign from CHI & Partners.

Charged by Anchor to position the brand as the original butter brand, CHI went all the way back to advertising’s roots and have created a series of billboard posters that hark back to the old style of sign painting to dramatise the brand’s heritage. ‘Made by Cows’ features cows doing everything from churning to delivering butter.  As well as posters, bespoke handpainted artworks will also appear directly on walls in London.  For Guisti, they’re ‘a lovely return to fresh and simple things.’

CHI creative team Matt Collier and Wayne Robinson were inspired by ‘ghost signs’ – the faded old advertisements and shop signs still visible on the side of old buildings in cities and towns around the country.  ‘There are loads dotted around town if you look hard enough,’ says Collier.

Although Giusti is passionate about digital advertising, he loves that this campaign is so simple and traditional, and not a web link in sight.  ‘There is a Facebook group for anyone who’s keen to find it, but I like that fact that the posters aren’t trying to get people to join something online – it’s all about the butter,’ he says.  ‘These posters fit perfectly with the idea of promoting Anchor’s heritage.  Using ‘old world’ techniques really make the posters stand out in a world of cluttered ‘high definition’ advertising.’

To create the authentic look, Collier and Robinson commissioned a series of specialist crafts people, including a hand-lettering artist to craft the type and an illustrator to replicate the old-fashioned style.  ‘Putting all of the elements together into a design that street artists could place on real life walls was a really interesting process,’ says Collier.

The posters are part of a campaign that includes a TV commercial, and the team is about to launch a Facebook app called ‘Cakebook.’  Users control an Anchor cow who bakes a cake, and will pipe any message on top. ‘For less than a tenner, you can have a real cake couriered next day to anyone in the UK,’ says Collier.  ‘It’s just a matter of time before someone resigns by cake,’ he adds.

See the rest of the posters here.

In 2006, DDB London transformed one of the most iconic scenes in cinema history into an award-winning television commercial.

Starring an all-singing, all-break-dancing Gene Kelly, Singin’ in the Rain – promoting the new Volkswagen Golf – re-mastered scenes from the 1952 classic of the same name.

The advertisement used a mixture of computer trickery and elaborate reconstruction – including an exact replica of the original film-set.

Images of Kelly – who died in 1996 – were taken from the original film and superimposed on the new dancers. To ensure a near perfect fit, the production team meticulously followed the scene’s original camera movements, while the dancers wore prosthetics to shape their heads like Kelly’s.

The ad showcased the new Golf as a classic that survives reinvention – just like a body-popping Gene Kelly.

Elvis Communications’ Ben Clapp on a simple campaign with a refreshing twist.

‘How many times have you used the refresh button in an Internet browser? A 1000 times? 10,000 times? More? Well, finally someone has finally made it fun’ says Clapp.

themostrefreshingpint.com is a webpage with a simple aim – to refresh and reward Strongbow fans.  A few weeks ago, a full pint of Strongbow cider appeared on the page, and it is slowly being emptied as cider lovers visit the page and take a virtual sip by hitting refresh.  Prizes including festival tickets and packs of Strongbow are hidden in the pint, rewarding the loyal.

‘It’s agonisingly simple,’ says Clapp. ‘It’s the kind of idea that will eat up hours of bored office time. Staring at the drips as they run down the glass will get people’s thirst up, putting Strongbow in people’s minds mid-summer. It’s spot on for cider drinkers, who are generally a slightly more playful, witty type of regular bloke. Exactly the kind looking for something cool on the web, to send to their mates.’

Created by digital agency Lean Mean Fighting Machine, the idea, perhaps unsurprisingly, was inspired by sunny afternoons and an appreciation for cold cider.

‘You always write an idea thinking people will be interested in it, but it’s always an uncertain hunch. So when The Most Refreshing Pint took off, our first reaction was one of relief that soon turned to excitement, this is the most rewarding part of the creative process,’ says Lean Mean Fighting Machine’s Sam Ball.  At the time of writing, over 500,000 visitors had taken a sip, leaving the glass half empty – or half full.

For Clapp, this is the simple kind of idea that he loves and expects from Lean Mean Fighting Machine, but ‘has me banging my head on the desk in annoyance whenever I see their work.’

The web page is one of a series of digital projects taken on by the agency that aim to bring the cider brand to life.  Using the philosophy of creating ‘more ideas, more often’, we can expect to see more from this campaign in the Autumn.

This philosophy comes from a clear understanding of Strongbow customers. ‘Our audience would rather talk to their mates down the pub than with a brand online, for them a simple interactive experience is far more enjoyable,’ says Ball.

When V Australia wanted to increase sales on its route between Sydney and Los Angeles, Twitter was pushed to the limit.

The brief was to promote weekend deals to Los Angeles, positioning it as the ultimate short break.

To achieve this, ad agency, Droga5 Sydney, recruited three energetic Aussies willing to fly to LA for 72 hours of non-stop action. The catch? They had to tweet every minute. All 4320 of them.

Every minute they did something new, while the world watched around the clock. One got a tattoo, another had botox and the lucky one – a full body wax.  Ouch.

Droga5 then repeated the feat, bringing America to Sydney. The same challenge with a twist – the tweets were beamed live on TV.

Reaching over 15 million people, 4320 LA:SYD scooped a D&AD Yellow Pencil earlier this year.

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Blog Chapter One.  The Diary

Tuesday, 1^st June. I receive an email from someone called Harriet McDougall at D&AD asking me to write ‘a blog piece of 500 words or so’ that could ‘give a graduate audience an insight into working as a copywriter’.  Flattered, I start thinking about which aspects of copywriting I might focus on.  My inbox fills up with other emails.  I move house.  I go on holiday.  I forget all about Harriet’s request.

Monday, 12^th July. A polite nudge from Harriet: ‘I was wondering whether you’d had a chance to think about the email I sent…?’ I call her up, apologising profusely.  I promise I will send her something in early August.

Tuesday 13^th July. I look at Harriet’s first email again.  More closely.  Harriet is asking a lot of questions: Just what does a good writer do?  What is so important about the role?  Do you need to work in a team?  How do you respond to arguments in the press that there’s a lack of good copywriters, and that writers are under-appreciated?  Do people understand what it is you do? And how – considering all of the other writing you do – did you begin writing for advertising?  Hmm, lot of ground to cover, I think.  My eyes glaze over.  I am all a-blog.  I decide to have a crack at it when I am on holiday in Cornwall.

Tuesday 27^th July. A miserable day in Crackington Haven.  Rain streaming down the latticed windows of our rented cottage.  I lift out my laptop, take a quick refresher glance over Harriet’s questions and launch into a rather grand-sounding piece about the inherent qualities and native aptitudes that are the prerequisites of a good copywriter.

I decide I will have a crack at it during my sunny summer holiday in Cornwall.

Wednesday 28^th July. I read over what I wrote yesterday.  It’s awful.  I am so cringingly embarrassed and irritated by it that I no longer want to know myself.  I wonder whether I might be able to quietly drop myself without myself noticing.  I will have to start again.

Monday 2^nd August. Back home, I read over Harriet’s questions for the umpteenth time.  And now I find it is the last question that really captures my imagination.  I start writing a piece about how I got into advertising.  I am flying.  I am having fun.  The words are cascading onto the page.

Tuesday 3^rd – Thursday 5^th August. I go back to my piece several times and edit it and polish it.  I am extremely pleased with it.  It reads like the opening lines of an autobiography – the humble beginnings of a hugely important person.  There is only one problem. I am not a hugely important person.   I am not even a vaguely important person.  So who the hell is going to want to read it?  And what earthly use will it be to them if they do?

Tuesday 10^th August. The guilt is piling up.  What is the sentence I wonder for non-delivery of an article on copywriting to D&AD?  Banishment from Soho House and the Hospital Club?  Hmmm… reckon I could live with that.  But an eternal sense of shame at not sharing my experience with a new generation of young creatives?  That’s something I’d rather live without.  I ring D&AD to apologise to Harriet and beg for a little more time.  Accidentally on purpose I ring at lunchtime, so I can leave a message for her rather than having to confront her direct.  I go back to Harriet’s questions and puzzle over them one more time.

Thursday 12^th August.  13.00.32 BST. An email from Harriet:

All I needed was a deadline (and a shower).

Hi Jon,

Sorry I missed your call on Tuesday.  Ant passed your message along, but I was just hoping to catch up.  My internship is ending tomorrow (!) and it would be terrific to see your article before I leave D&AD.

I hope you’re well, and to chat with you again soon.

Best,

Harriet

Aaargh!  OMG etc etc.  There’s nothing for it.  I will have to produce something.  Anything.  Today.  Right now.  This minute.  In the shower, at last, I have an Idea.  ‘I know,’ I think, as the needles of hot water and Harriet’s deadline finally stimulate my brain into some sort of action, ‘I will imagine Harriet is interviewing me, Parkinson-style, on a chat show.  I will swivel around in a leather armchair, and gaze with rapt concentration into the middle distance as I try to formulate serious answers to the questions she will put to me, one by one…’

Blog Part Two……

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Blog Chapter Two.  In the Green Room.

Just before my interview begins, while I am waiting in the green room, now that the wardrobe lady has straightened my tie, and the make-up lady has used a truckload of powder to fill in the lines, and cover up all the spots and blemishes, I reflect that there are maybe some useful insights to be gleaned from my ‘guilt-edged’ diary.  It goes some way to demonstrating a few different aspects of a copywriter’s everyday life: the pressure of having to write to order, the unfailing effectiveness of a deadline in producing a concept, the guilt, the panic. The procrastination.  The perseverance.  Not forgetting the alliteration.  Or the ability to throw away a whole day’s work without a backward glance.  And, of course, the need for a single-minded idea.

Chuck someone one tennis ball and there’s every chance they’ll catch it. Throw them two, three, or four all at once, and they won’t catch a single one.

Part of my problem, I now see, was the number and wide-ranging nature of Harriet’s questions.  In any piece of communication, an ad, an article, a novel, I believe you need one overall theme.  I was lost without the ‘single most important thought’ I am used to getting on an advertising brief: the proposition that has been painstakingly produced by the client, the account director, and the planner (a good copywriter is always at least one third planner, by the way).  An overarching concept was required that would create one coherent piece of copy.  It’s like the old advertising analogy about throwing tennis balls.  Chuck someone one tennis ball and there’s every chance they’ll catch it.  Throw them two, three, or four all at once, and they won’t catch a single one.

And so, on to Part 3

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Blog Chapter Three.  The Interview.

Aaargh! OMG etc etc. There’s nothing for it. The interview.

Harriet: So, Jon, just what does a good writer do?

Jon: (gazing intently into the middle distance and swivelling a little on squishy leather chair)  A good writer listens carefully.  Interrogates the brief.  Trawls it for nuggets of information, single words or phrases that can translate into really big, compelling, and immediate ideas.  A good writer will ask questions of anyone and everything – the account man, the client, his own imagination, the thousand-page-long consumer research document, Google, the view from the window, his own dirty fingernails, the family dog.  He will follow his nose, using a combination of instinct, imagination and intellect.  However, he will apply these tools consecutively – not concurrently.  Judging your work as you go along, as has often been said, is like driving with one foot on the accelerator and the other on the brake.  A good writer generates an abundance of ideas, before rigorously weighing them against the brief and then throwing most – or all – of them away.

Harriet: So… what is so important about the role?

Jon: As the writer, the buck really stops with you.  If there’s any flaw in the product, or its positioning, or the proposition, the writer is going to find it out, because you’re the one who has to write all the detail.  You’re the one who has to make the arguments that are going clinch the sale to the customer.  And while you are using words to persuade that imaginary person, you will see their scepticism in your mind’s eye and hear their objections in your mind’s… ear (!)  And you will have to find ways to convince them that, in spite of their doubts, they really want to buy the product or service you are selling, they really want to give to your charity, or they really do want to change their own behaviour.  A good piece of advertising copy appears to be a monologue, but actually it’s a dialogue with all the customer’s lines unspoken.

Harriet: Do you need to work in a team?

Be open minded about who you team up with.

Jon: As a copywriter you are always working in a team.  It’s just a question of who your team mates are.  Creatively, I have traditionally flown solo through most of my career, experiencing only relatively brief periods when I was formally paired with an art director.  I have always, of course, teamed up with art directors as I’ve needed to.  And it’s usually very fruitful creatively, and enjoyable as well as productive.  But it’s not the only way.  It’s perfectly possible to generate creative ideas alone, and also to work on ideas with your account team, planners and, indeed, your client – even if you don’t bring them in on the earliest stages of your thinking.  An agency creative department often behaves as if it has a monopoly on creativity, and of course, the account management function often plays up to that idea, but every smart person in an agency knows that isn’t really so.  Some of the best headline writers in the business are account directors and planners.

Of course, all this depends to an extent on the culture of your agency and the kind of accounts you’re working on, but I guess I’m saying that in an ideal world you can modulate the degree to which you work in a team – and be selective as to who your team mates are and at what stages of the project you work with them.

Harriet: How do you respond to arguments in the press that there’s a lack of good copywriters, and that writers are under-appreciated?

The youth of today. Rude, ignorant, sruffy – and couldn’t write long advertising copy to save their lives.

Jon: With great delight!  If there’s a lack of good copywriters, I’m never going to be short of a job – and I will be paid well for my scarcity value!  Seriously, though, I think good writers are appreciated for just that reason.  There simply aren’t that many who can get a good intellectual grasp of the problem (or should I say ‘opportunity’?) as well as generating good ideas, and then developing well-structured arguments through body copy.  It is surprising to me how many copywriters can’t develop and sustain a logical argument over even half a dozen sentences.  There are many who have questionable ideas of grammar and punctuation, too.  But I have been surprised about this since I started out in 1984, so I don’t really know whether copywriting is a dying art or if that’s just one of those soapbox themes that comes up from time to time like ‘the youth of today’ having no manners or nobody being able to wait and save up for anything.  Get your hair cut.  etc etc.  In my experience, if you’re good at your craft as a copywriter – and that also means being able to adapt it deftly to different media, from poster and press to radio, TV and digital – you will get huge appreciation for it.

Harriet: Do people understand what it is you do?

Jon: People within the business do understand, I think.  You can get some clients who think they know better, but – unlike art direction – professional copywriting is a tricky thing to assess.  Everyone can write, after all – while they usually recognise art direction and design as specialist skills that demand specific aptitudes and training.  Clients will express an opinion about a piece of design or art direction, but they won’t usually try and redesign it themselves.  That’s not always so with copywriting.  Anyone who works in any kind of office has to do some writing every day, and you’ll sometimes get clients who want to have a crack at copywriting themselves.  But usually this goes away after you’ve won their trust.  They’re too busy doing their own job, and once they see what you can do, and see the kind of response they’re getting to the ads you’ve written – not just from their target audience, but also from their own colleagues – they’re happy to hand over.

You’re a copywriter? I see. You must work at the patent office.

Outside the business, of course, it’s another matter.  People often think that ‘copywriting’ is something to do with legal ‘copyright’ and assume you work in the Patent Office!  Then, when you explain your job to them, they will often say something like, ‘So, do you spend your whole day looking out of the window, then?’  Which is actually not that far from the truth!  The next question is usually accompanied by a worried expression: ‘What happens if you just don’t get any ideas?’  But the thing is, copywriters are in the job because they have the kind of mind that does generate a lot of ideas quite easily.  If you don’t have that kind of mind – and thankfully for copywriters most people don’t! – I could see it would be a worry.  But then I dare say I’d be worried if I had to answer the demands of their jobs.  Especially if it involved having a sense of direction, or being more than basically numerate!  The most annoying response you get when you tell people you’re a copywriter is ‘I’ve had this great idea for a slogan for British Airways/Budweiser/Coca-Cola, but I don’t want to send it to them in case they steal it from me.  What should I do with it?’  I always make every effort to answer politely.

Harriet: And how – considering all of the other writing you do – did you begin writing for advertising?

Oh, dear.  I see, after all, I have failed.  A quick scroll up before I even begin to answer that question tells me I have overwritten this blog by about half a mile.  A good writer can write to length.  Harriet originally asked me for ‘500 words or so’.  Can the ‘or so’ ever represent more than 50% of the main figure?  Doubtful.  But I do know it can’t be more than 300%!  I know.  I will send her the opening chapter of my Autobiography-Of-A-Nobody, ‘How I Got Into Advertising’, as an alternative.  It’s only 572 words.  And, who knows, she might prefer it…?

Blog Part 4: The Autobiography

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Blog Chapter Four.  The Autobiography.

June 1984.  I am fresh out of drama school.  And clean out of work.  I know I can’t get an acting job without an equity card.  And I can’t get an equity card without an acting job.  (Yes, you work it out…)  My brother, who left university a year ago, has recently started working in advertising.  He is making commercials, cool new mates, and by all accounts – mostly his own – a small fortune.  (Well, it is the mid-eighties.)

Your first job offer in any field can seem very hard to come by.

My girlfriend is applying to JWT for a job as an account executive.  ‘Here, you can have this’ she says, handing me something called a copy test.  It has ten questions in it, most of which I will find myself remembering years and decades later:  ‘Write a press ad for the potato as if it were a brand new product.’  ‘Write the first two-hundred words of a Mills & Boon romantic novel and make sure they make us want to read the rest.’ ‘Dame Edna Everage and Arthur Scargill [the miners’ leader] are stuck in a lift.  Write their conversation.’ Oh, yes, someone has had a lot of fun putting this together.  And now, in spite of myself, I find my imagination picking up where they left off.  But oh no, I’m going to be an actor, aren’t I?  I’m going to inherit the mantle of Olivier, become the saviour of Shakespearean acting in the closing decades of the twentieth century, a smooth-voiced smirker in a tux, jabbing the air with my best actor trophy to emphasise my thanks to my leading lady, my director, my producer and everyone else who knows me.  I take the copy test home, and think about it.  A  lot.  And dream about it.  And put it in a drawer.  And try to forget about it.  And carry on writing to repertory companies, begging for an equity card that is beginning to seem as rare as one of Willy Wonka’s golden tickets.  I scan the small ads in The Stage for profit-share plays I might audition for.  I sing and dance and act for stony-faced panels of auditioners.  I play the silhouette and back of Hugh Hefner in a TV commercial for The Sunday Times.

Switching dreams can be a bittersweet experience.

Meanwhile, a family connection, who is Head of TV in an advertising agency, very kindly arranges for me to make a voice tape.  ‘Out-of-work actors need to make radio and TV commercials to survive,’ he says.  He picks me up in his big, swish car and drives me into the heart (the groin?) of Soho.  He’s got hold of four TV and radio scripts for me to record.  In the studio, he chuckles as he reads through the sheaf of scripts in his hand before I go through to the other side of the glass to record them.  ‘These guys have more fun and make more money than anyone else in the business,’ he says.  He is referring to advertising copywriters.  Afterwards, he takes me to lunch in an Italian restaurant.  Old-school, elderly waiters in white jackets dip and glide around us as if moving to the music of silent violins. My host invites me to join him in an aperitif I have never heard of, Punt e Mes.  As I sip the dark brown liquid, served with its traditional slice of orange, and experience its bittersweet flavours spreading on my tongue, I think that perhaps I will complete that copy test after all.

To be continued….

and so onto Part 5.

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Blog Chapter Five.  The Interview II (The Plug).

No interview would be complete without the book plug.  One of the other kinds of writing I do outside advertising is writing children’s books, and the first of these has just been published.  My friend Paul Middlewick, advertising art director, designer and illustrator, saw the shape of an elephant on the London Underground map when he was in his teens.  People often ask what he was ‘on’ when he saw it.  He does like a glass of red wine, does our Paul, but the simple answer is he was ‘on’ the tube.  And he was bored.  So he saw an elephant, and went home and traced it, and then over the years, he found over thirty more animals, and now he and I have just produced our first book, ‘Lost Property’.  You can get a glimpse of it (and the animals) on our website: www.animalsontheunderground.com

It’s a book that appeals not only to children, but to advertising creatives, too.  The animals have even featured in advertising campaigns – to promote the work of IFAW, and London Zoo.

We have printed off a first limited edition of 1,000 and in shameless imitation of another blogger on this site (a good copywriter is a good thief), I am giving away two signed copies – to the senders of the best responses to this blog.

Jon Sayers, formerly a Senior Copywriter and Creative Director at Publicis, is now an independent writer, teacher, radio producer and voice artist.

If you’d like to read the other posts in this series you can also read Simon Veksner, John Simmons and Orlando Warner’s take on working as a copywriter.

In 2003, calls to the NSPCC’s 24-hour helpline doubled in the wake of Saatchi & Saatchi’s Yellow Pencil-winning ‘Cartoon’ – a hard-hitting TV ad depicting a human father.

The cartoon child repeatedly bounces back from his father’s ferocious attacks, complete with comedy sound effects and a laugh track. The final act of abuse concludes with the body of a real child lying motionless on the floor. The closing caption states: “Real Children Don’t Bounce Back”.

Amid controversy and complaint, the campaign narrowly escaped a TV ban. However, the Independent Television Commission (now Ofcom) supported the charity’s claim that the imagery was “an effective means of communicating the seriousness of the issue”.

‘Cartoon’ won a D&AD Yellow Pencil for Television & Cinema Advertising Crafts.