Wednesday 25 June 2008

JC Penney & Saatchi Saatchi



This is a beautiful ad. It feels more wholesome than prurient to me. I understand that Saatchi & Saatchi are saying this ad is nothing to do with them but they are nonetheless trying to take it down.

7 comments:

  1. Beautiful or not - it's another example of agency scam, just abit better than the usual trash.

    I'm fiesty today - need sleep.

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  2. Good comment though because I think the topic needs airing. First off I don't pay attention to awards. I love it when I find out that work I love wins an award but I hope I can see a great idea with my own eyes. The best one for me was finding out the Uniqlo clock won because I raved about it on my blog but when nobody else did not now it's won.

    OK I know that's a terrible admission to make but I rarely watch TV too.

    So in my view we have these awards that are easy to police. People still cough up thousands of dollars each year to go and then the inevitable griping over scam ads begins. Don't go or pay attention to awards if it's an issue.

    Secondly I think that putting in work that breaks the rules is good agency marketing. The only caveat I would add to that is they should be identified as scam ads later on and applauded as agency creative potential and marketing. I found out today that this is a scam but its still rocks and works for me because it's viral and I haven't thought of J.C. Penney since Xmas Dinner 2006 because my mate's dad worked for them. So it went viral and I got the message.

    I once was asked what sort of planner I was and I answered a purist. I now know that you Rob are a purist and I you know I think you're brilliant but I'm having a Titanic intellectual struggle (confused kerfuffle) about the future of communication because the future is all about information war and I really don't know if disruptive stuff like Gorrilla which you don't like but I do (despite acknowledging it's brand building deficit in the long term). I can only guess at some of the things but I haven't sat with the Fallon gang but the follow up was to me useless and lacked the impact of the first.

    I've gone off on one haven't I. I think its OK to break the rules I guess I'm saying but I think its important to put hands up after and say 'yeah. we broke the rules but because we really wanted you to share something with you'

    That and show off a bit, which I guess is ameliorated by knowing its down to agency marketing.

    I should get annoyed but there's way to much information out there to get bogged down by the Scam word and franky I saw a JWT ad in Milan for a language school that was the best print ad I've ever seen. Only a few of us in the room recognised it but we all said its world class and yet 2/3 of the creative around the room didn't get it.

    That's when I realised it's all so subjective its not worth fretting over. Why not put the Cannes awards online and let the people vote. Wiki Cannes?

    Anyway. Sorry about that but as I keep missing you I need to vent a bit now and again :)

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  3. Hello matey ...

    The problem I have with creative advertising awards is that they only judge the 'creativity' angle and yet we're more than that - we're about creativity that leads to business effectiveness and to discount this element is deluding ourselves interms of our value and importance.

    The other thing I hate is that bar the odd exception, the majority of the creativity they recognise is 'classic ads' - and whilst the odd thing gets through [ie: BK Video Game / Earth Hour etc] they still are the exception, mainly because ad agencies like traditional channels as they [and clients] know how to charge/pay for them.

    What I loved about HHCL was we believed we were at the creative end of commerciality, not the commercial end of creativity - so when we won awards [as you know] in the main it was for REAL work which is about 20 billion times more satisfying, well it is if you really value great ideas.

    As for planning purity ... yep, I think we both suffer from that [though Andy calls it naivity, ha!] but so what ... it means that whatever the future may bring we can embrace it or have an opinion on it ... and as much as we all have ideas of what might happen, the truth is no one really knows which is probably why so many of us talk about it, because no one can say we're wrong till the future is the past, ha!

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  4. Wise words indeed Rob. Very grateful to have these conversations. Spent years dealing with planners who didn't share and/or were too shy to discuss the business or ideas. Now on that subject I've been mulling over Microsoft for a long while now and its probably to late but who do I send some thoughts/ideas too at Crispin? I'd rather share them then not at all. Even though they've probably set there strategy.

    Just like to get the ideas out these days :)

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  5. Hi matey ... this seems daft conversing via blogs ... I'll call you this afternoon and we can catch up and put the World right :)

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  6. Dont forget what happened to the Titanic.

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  7. I'm from Southampton John. "Home of the Titanic"

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