The art of arranging flowers

Michael Andorfee takes the lift up to the offices at Dogma9, admiring his hair and Japanese jacket in the mirrors whilst reflecting with relish that any woman in the office would probably give him a blow job in the lift, if he asked them. He just hasn't asked yet. How to get (a)head in advertising. He walks through the office in slow motion, like a movie star or royalty. The creative guru has arrived. In the kitchen, the timid new office manager says she likes his jacket and asks if it's vintage (and not, is it new?). Thanks, Michael says, yes, yes it is vintage, with an approving lilt in his voice. I got it in Japan recently. Since Japan he's been to New York, and now he's back in the London office, partly to check the design mock-ups for a pitch for a new client.

Andorfee swans over to the design desks to view the designs on screen. Six other people suddenly materialise behind him; creatives, account handlers, groupies. Michael first looks at James's work. James has spent days on it. He looks at it for maybe five seconds, says it's too fussy, too complicated, and moves over to Alex's desk. This is more like it, he says. Alex is beaming. It actually looks like a Gap ad or a black and white Calvin Klein ad from the 1990s. With bland, meaningless text wrapped around some chiseled male figures.

Michael likes the photos… they remind him of a photographer whose name he can’t remember… Alex jumps in with “Terry Richardson?”, presumably the first, hip photographer he can think of. No, no, no, chants Andorfee. I like Terry but not what he does with kids. Cue canned laughter. There’s the implication that he’s worked with Richardson. Andorfee finds the photographer he was thinking of online and shows Alex. Ah, yes.

Michael Adorfee doesn't like the text. The text needs to be organic, he says. I can change it, enthuses Alex. Try handwritten text instead, suggests Michael. Alex immediately looks for handwriting fonts. No, no, no, intones David. Try actual handwriting. Genius! Everyone applauds. It occurs to James – whose designs were dismissed in five seconds – that Michael looks maniacal and crazy and may be an idiot. There's something of the Emperor's New Clothing about him, and not just the Japanese jacket.

Michael strolls over to his own desk and brings back a book with a spine some two inches thick: Shozo Sato's The Art of Arranging Flowers. Published in 1966, this book has acquired cult status for pretentious designers and creatives with more money than sense. To everyone else it just looks like a boring, old-fashioned book of flower arranging. Inside the book is the invoice, from IDEA, the poncy 'super' bookseller on Dover Street Market, said by Vogue to be the 'coolest publisher in the world' . The book cost Michael £125, though can be bought on eBay for about £17. It's all about context.

Michael tells Alex the book is beautiful and useful for inspiration. Alex stares at it blankly but gushes, 'Of course, brilliant, yes!' Michael asks him if he'd like to borrow it. As he hands the book to Alex – i.e. there's no option but to borrow it – there's a moment of awkward confusion as Michael also has his notebook in the same hand, and Alex thinks he's asking him if he wants to borrow his notebook. 'Well, don't you need your notebook?' Asks Alex in confusion. Not the fucking notebook, says Micheal, the book. Relieved laughter all round. In fact, every time Michael says anything, there's nods, yeses or laughs from the groupies.

Michael is regularly interviewed for creative magazines where he makes predictions such as '2017 will be the year for creativity in advertising'. Naturally he's working on a novel, a screenplay and a play but doesn't have time to finish them. His Instagram account has 15k followers but being a creative, Michael states that Instagram is 'for writers', and posts photos (rarely his) of an advert or newspaper headline or screenshot and writes besides it witty cynical commentary (self-deprecating yet superior sounding), to which his many admirers comment 'you are the best', 'bravo', 'incredible' and 'you are amazing', which certainly doesn't go to his head. Annoyingly I find myself chuckling at his clever copy, but at the same time realising it's fairly similar in tone to, say, the Dos and Don'ts in Vice magazine I also used to chuckle at. Some comments celebrate that he's 'STILL GOT IT'. Implying, one day, one day, he won't. Advertising and social media are fickle friends and he's almost the wrong side of 30.

Michael gets up and goes somewhere else, perhaps to go do some Japanese flower arranging. Like a puppy eager to please his master and still basking in that warm glow, Alex jumps up and gets everyone in the office to write a sample of their handwriting on a piece of paper. James rolls his eyes and almost imperceivably shakes his head. I walk out and presumably never go back.

Updated Southern Rail ads

I wouldn't mind the Southern Rail ads on the trains being so badly designed and ugly if the service wasn't so atrocious, but there's something about the smug, smiling faces on the ads and the pretence that everything is hunky dorey that irks me to the point of redesigning the ads to show what it's really like. I'd actually been cycling everywhere for weeks, so hadn't had to endure the service, but I took a Southern train the other day, and, yup, random cancellations and stops at red signals every few minutes still happening. Reassuring, almost, to know some things never change.

Previously on Barnflakes:
Travel first class on Southern trains
Public transport courtesy cards

The death of cigarette advertising

Is the earthy tone Pantone 448 C really the death of cigarettes? Doesn't seem so bad to me – but that's the colour picked by Australians as the ugliest colour in the world. And that's the colour they, and now the UK, has chosen to replace all branding on cigarette packs, along with 60% of the pack surface consisting of health warnings and photos, and the logos reduced to a small standard generic sans serif typeface. Whether it has or will reduce cigarette smokers is another matter, but one immediate outcome is the confusion cashiers have of trying to find your brand of choice – the packs do all look exactly the same.

The 1970s and 80s was the most imaginative decade for cigarette advertising – and the start of the end. Advertisers weren't allowed to show cigarettes as evoking youth or coolness or even display a person smoking a cigarette on their adverts so companies such as Silk Cut and Benson & Hedges devised creative and surreal methods to evoke their brands.

Cigarette advertising was banned on TV in the UK in 1991 (also lamented; for example, the famous Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet campaign is often voted as one of the top TV adverts of all time). In the early noughties cigarette advertising was banned from sport (snooker and Formula One used to display prominent advertising at its events); then advertising was banned altogether. In 2007 smoking was banned from enclosed public spaces such as pubs and restaurants.

So now with the advertising and branding gone, as well as the ever-decreasing places to smoke, there is more incentive than ever for smokers to continue smoking quit, I mean, obviously. The new No Logo non-branding branding is presumably intended to stop people (in particular, youth) smoking, as is the banning of packs of ten and small packs of tobacco (though smokers trying to stop always found the small packs useful; if you're trying to stop the last thing you want to invest in is a pack of twenty).

Long before I started smoking, I always admired the advertising and branding of cigarettes (maybe because I was an art/graphic design student going through a surreal phase). I remember one seminar on subliminal advertising at art college where the tutor tried to convince us of the skull in the pattern of the camel on Camel cigarettes and the words 'horrible jew' sort of spelt out in the Marlboro logo if you turned it upside down and backwards ('orlb jew').

Anyway, I guess it's a good move to make cigarettes less attractive. But why stop at cigarettes? Hopefully enlightened future generations will see alcohol advertising banned. Then car advertising. And certain food advertising banned (meat, chocolate). I'd like to see (or not see, as the case may be) crap films, music and TV advertisements banned too.

Previously on Barnflakes
Australia first country to ban cigarette branding
Cigarettes vs. smartphones
Surreal Silk Cut cigarette ads
Silk Cut anagrams
Life branded 'a health and safety risk'

Silk Cut anagrams

Cuts Kil
Sik Cult
Lik Cuts
Tucks Li
Slut Kic
Luck Sit
Lit Suck
Clit Suk

Previously on Barnflakes:
Surreal Silk Cut cigarette ads

The nation's favourites

I love a cheese sandwich, me, but if I were to choose my favourite bread and cheese to make one, would it consist of Cathedral City ('The Nation's Favourite Cheese Brand') cheddar and Warburtons ('Britain's Favourite Bakery') bread? No, it certainly wouldn't (it would be from an organic bakery, naturally (or at least Waitrose). The bread would be thick and crusty, not limp and pappy; the cheese would be rich and creamy, not bland and tasteless). I hadn't even heard of either brand until a few years ago, now suddenly they're our 'favourites'. There's something so arrogant and bold about the claims, but if true, surely based on a combination of blandness and cheapness rather than quality.

Where did these claims originate and are they verifiable? I can't be bothered to find out, but I bet it's like one of those anti-ageing cream ads where it says in huge writing 70% of women say the product works, then there's an asterisk and you look at the bottom of the ad to the small print and it says their survey consisted of asking twenty women in the street, and probably gave them a few free tubs of cream if they said it worked.

(I also noticed the other day that Q magazine is the self-proclaimed World's Greatest Music Magazine. It's another bold-yet-difficult-to-pin-down-exactly-where-they-got-it-from claim. Err, have they not heard of Mojo? Wire? Rolling Stone? Uncut? (All much better than Q.) I use Q magazine like I use the Radio Times, ie what they like, I hate, and vice versa.)

Lookalikes #26: holiday adverts

It's not so much that advertising nowadays consists of nothing else but a Photoshop filter but, rather, that an attractive red-lipped woman will have much to do with your holiday. Maybe she will, especially in Amsterdam, but ads like these always manage to annoy me, highlighting as they usually do the most uninteresting aspects of a holiday (tourist, beach, building…). Besides, Agadir is a dump and Amsterdam isn't that much better.

Australia first country to ban cigarette branding

If all goes according to plan, from December next year Australia will be the first country in the world to have cigarettes appear in plain packaging. The logo-free packets will feature horror movie-style photos of toothless and blind people with slogans like such as 'Smoking Causes Blindness' (really? does it? I thought masturbation did. Do they mean smoke can get in your eyes? Alcohol seems more likely to cause blindness (blind drunk?). In fact, I know of someone who did temporarily go blind after drinking too much. Anyway, the man in the photo looks like he can actually see, or if he can't it's because there's a pair of forceps pulling his eyeballs out).

Australians are a funny bunch. I used to work with lots of them. One in particular always used to correct me whenever I used a 'branded' word instead of a generic one. So when I said 'Pritt Stick', she'd correct me and say 'glue stick'; when I said 'Biro' she'd say 'disposable ink pen'; when I said 'Hoover', she'd say 'vacuum cleaner'. I'm not kidding; this is what she did. Every day. Was she taking the piss? I've no idea, but she was adamant that all Australians use generic names for things rather than branded names, even/especially when they're household names, like Biro or Hoover. I have no idea if this says anything about the Australian character. Or if it has anything to do with the no logo cigarettes.

William Gibson's 2003 novel Pattern Recognition features a marketing consultant called Cayce Pollard whose hypersensitivity to corporate logos and brands makes her a valued commodity. The more effective the branding, the more allergic Pollard is to it. She only wears black and removes all logos and tags from her clothing. If she smoked, I'm sure she would approve of Australia's forthcoming legislation.

Previously on Barnflakes:
Surreal Silk Cut cigarette ads

Perfect timing

In watch advertising there is such a thing as the perfect time. Most analogue watch advertisements display the time ten past ten (or ten to two) to give a harmonious, balanced, happy looking face, with the two hands almost forming a smile. 10:10 also draws your eyes towards the maker's name and logo which is typically placed towards the top centre.

Other less believable explanations include 10:10 being the time Abraham Lincoln and/or John F Kennedy were shot and/or died; or V for Victory; or open legs.

The Chewing Gum Artist Vs The Admen

We saw pavement artist Ben Wilson – better known as the chewing gum man – in action today, painting a mini-masterpiece on a piece of trodden chewing gum on the pavement near the Marquis of Granby pub (where some of Peeping Tom was filmed) in Fitzrovia. Ben has been painting scenes on old discarded chewing gum for quite a few years, completing around 10,000 pictures around London and has became something of a minor celebrity.

We are joined by an 'adman', drinking outside the pub too (there are lots of advertising agencies in the area), who introduces himself and seems quite excited to meet Ben. The adman, looking like a badly dressed middle-aged American tourist, tells Ben he'd recently done a presentation about him (in the ad agency someone gives a monthly presentation about some cultural phenomena). Ben appears nonplussed. We're then joined by a young hipster with a stupid haircut and turned up tight jeans. The middle-aged adman immediately recognises him as a kindred spirit. 'Are you an adman too?' he asks. Hipster answers an enthusiastic 'Yes I am!' For a minute I forget which century we're in.

Then Ben, wisely, goes on his way.

The two admen waste no time and start discussing ways to exploit and commercialise Ben's works. 'He's just too pure, he's not interested in being commercial.'
'But the potential's there, we could do anything. We could put his pictures on… T-shirts, mugs, badges… the sky's the limit.'
I've worked with admen before, but these guys, they had vision. When they get an idea, they run with it.
We move away, but eventually see the young adman join his mother and sisters. What a hip hipster he was too.

There's some nice photos of Ben's chewing gum paintings on this Flickr set.

Previously on Barnflakes:
The New Shape

Surreal Silk Cut Cigarette ads

UK cigarette advertisements in the 1980s and 90s, in particular the brands Silk Cut (with ads designed by Saatchi and Saatchi) and Benson & Hedges (with ads designed by Collett Dickinson Pearce), were some of the most sublime, surreal, mysterious and beautiful ads ever produced, precisely because British law prevented cigarette ads from associating cigarettes with status, youth, coolness or sexual attractiveness. So the ad men needed a different route. In fact, in the case of Silk Cut, there was nothing to tell you these were cigarette ads apart from the obligatory Government Health Warning, and, of course, the luxurious purple silk being cut in various surreal (and often threatening, occasionally possibly misogynistic) ways.*

(It's interesting to compare American cigarette ads of the same period which didn't have the same restrictions and were extremely dull and unimaginative, consisting mainly of smiling moronic Americans… with a cigarette in their mouths.)

Cigarette ads were the main inspiration behind me wanting to work in advertising in the late 1980s (which I eventually did, briefly). In the early 90s at college I used to smoke Silk Cut, partly to get the free cards they were giving away with them. There was a fellow student who also smoked Silk Cut and collected the cards as well and we used to exchange them to try and complete our sets. I never did, but here are the ones I did get; a fine collection of Silk Cut's billboard ads from the 1990s.

The 'mud people' (not my expression!) advert (bottom right) is a doctored Sebastiao Salgado (I think) photo, one of their best and certainly most controversial, and was actually banned at the time, on the grounds that it was condescending to ethnic minorities.

By the end of the campaign, in the late 90s (cigarette advertising was banned outright in 2003), the brand had achieved its aim, creating a seamless blend of art into advertising with thought-provoking, witty and striking images. And huge sales of cigarettes. It is perhaps morally wrong to lament on campaigns to promote cigarette smoking but the 1990s were a golden age for British advertising, when risks could be taken and fun could be had.

* Which sort of reminds me of the Hays Code in the States – from the 1930s up to the late 60s films weren't allowed to show explicit murder or sex ('Excessive and lustful kissing, lustful embraces, suggestive postures and gestures, are not to be shown'), so film-makers devised 'inventive' visual metaphors and other tricks, some not so subtle, such as a train entering a tunnel, to suggest the sexual act. In hindsight it was a blessing in disguise for directors such as Hitchcock, whose misogyny wasn't allowed full rein. It wasn't until the late 60s, when the code was abolished, that Hitchcock started making what he had probably wanted to do all along: having beautiful women being murdered in slow and painful ways. Witness the protracted murder in his nasty and tacky film Frenzy from 1972. Limitations often bring out the most creative in people.

Windows 7 wasn't my idea

The latest Windows TV campaign seems to have been going for years and shows no signs of abating. It consists of random, deluded, 'normal' (though usually cool and good looking – possibly they're actors or models) people claiming they had 'X' idea for a new Windows component – like watching TV on your laptop (couldn't you do this years ago?) or being able to see all your windows at once (didn't Apple do this years ago?).

But what gets me is that these random, normal, deluded people are actually admitting to having a Windows idea. I mean, how embarrassing. Isn't this like admitting you stole a TV, broke a window, voted Conservative or worked for Enron (even if you didn't)?

I mean, Windows is crap, right? It's the ugliest, clunkiest, least-userfriendly operating system ever (even if, ever since its beginnings, it's tried to emulate the Mac OS as near as possible without copyright infringement). And its applications – don't get me started; I hate them all. And these people are admitting/pretending to have had a hand in it. On TV. Shouldn't they be arrested and put on trial for crimes against humanity?

Let Me Ad One More Thing...

One thing on TV which was better in the distant past (the 1980s to early 90s) was its advertisements. Ads used to have style, imagination, surrealism, eroticism and wit. It's hard now to believe a time when ads actually tried to convince Jo (or Joanne) Public to buy its product with such flair.

For the last 5-10 years all ads have needed to do is show the product and add a celebrity. It doesn't matter what the ad's like. There's no need to try and convince people to buy stuff anymore – they don't need any encouragement. Consumerism has won and ads are as bland as the programmes between them. Maybe advertisers finally believe the old maxim that bad ads work better than good ones.