The Write Stuff

When will we run out of names? Although I originally got involved in product naming as an add-on feature to the business of copywriting, it really does call on very particular skills. It’s often thought of as the ultimate in creative writing, as so much is condensed into just one word. There have also been a tidal wave of nonsensical trendy names that sound creative over the past few years. They only add to the perception of it being some sort of dark art (although I think they probably have more to do with the difficulty of getting one-word domain names). Read more »

I remember when it was held as a truth that the written word was dying and the world would communicate visually. Luckily for writers, the Cannes film festival is there to remind everyone that in the beginning was the word. And not only are words essential to get a story moving, they are also there at every step of the way when it is pitched to a producer, who then pitches to co-producers and financiers, before pitching it to distributors and later the press. Read more »

I can’t help feeling excited about the buzz in communications recently. Despite the obvious and very noticeable downturn in the advertising business, it seems like everyone has a plan up their sleeve. I just read that the Belgian agency Boondoggle has a co-development project with its employees, where they invest time and share profits for business ventures that might come from it. One of the first (and oh so topical) is the Tweetnotebook that I Tweeted about a while back. I’ve also been asked to help develop no less than 3 iPhone apps recently. And there are others
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There’s nothing I don’t like about South Africa’s clip promoting itself in the run-up the World Cup. Sure, it has cutesy kids, smiling multi-cultural crowds and “ordinary” people doing extraordinary stuff. But from the opening images to the last, it is superbly directed, choreographed (Wendy Ramokgadi), edited and performed. The clip also blends the football theme right into the heart of the ad, using it to showcase the people. It’s worth noting that we don’t get the stock images of landscapes and sunsets so prevalent in CNN-type travel ads. It could make you believe that you can dance. So it gets five stars for making me dream. They are hoping the Diski dance will overtake the Macarena as a novelty. Does anyone know which agency is behind it?

I’ve been working on a few projects recently that can best be described as “personal branding”, coaches or consultants that decide to build their business under their own name. But “personal branding” has a very selfish ring to it. At its worst, it’s an exercise in ego-stroking. But as the “brands” in question were perfectly aware, there’s more to personal branding than “me-me-me”.

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This ad from Saatchi – which I had absolutely nothing to do with – is brilliant at a number of levels. What I like most is the pay-off (nope, I won’t spoil the pleasure). It runs through a series of CGI-enhanced levels before coming back to the most basic appeal imaginable.

We’re all beginning to understand that anything is possible in CGI. If you’ve sat through a dozen ads on steroids at the movies recently waiting for the big show to begin, you know how tiring it can be. So what if the screen shakes when the monster stomps by? Or of the screen seems to melt. We’ve seen that already. So it’s important to reach people with something more conceptual, which this ad does. In fact, it’s not just conceptual, it’s the emotional juice that raises the smile at the end.

Interesting also that it is basically a silent movie (the music is Charles Sheffield, "It's Your Voodoo Working").

Having done some corporate vids and drives to promote companies as a good employer, I have to salute this lovely piece for Intel (the thing you have inside but you don’t really know the significance of – an interesting branding achievement in itself). It’s unabashedly nerdy, charming and shows great community spirit. There’s admiration of achievement, blondes, a coffee machine and people singing. My type of office, in fact! The agency is Venables Bell & Partners.

The EU’s DG Health & Consumers have come up with a viral campaign produced by the Mostra agency to increase awareness about online rights for younger shoppers. They just needed a wrap up line and did we have any ideas for a suitable URL?

Finding URLs is a bit like finding a brand name. Of course there is a perfect one that sums everything up in between 5-7 letters and is funny, witty and a guaranteed magnet for visitors in itself. Problem is, it’s been taken. There are also a good number of almost-perfect URLs that are very close to your best choice. But as this is a public service type of information, you can’t risk taking a name that might be hijacked by your close neighbour to peddle porn or something (a fate that befell the Festival de Cannes a few years back). So you have to dig a little deeper. With French-speaking copywriter Chantal Debauche we put together a few ideas and then wrote the list of do’s and don’ts to the client’s brief. The URL? Quite simply Gimme the info.

With the Cannes Fest (and its market) coming up, I’m reading a lot of blurbs, pitches and write-ups at the moment. These are the one- or two-line – sometimes only five-word – summaries that people use to grab our attention and perhaps give a little flavour of what the story is about. I always remember “Alien” being sold under the warning that “In space, no one can hear you scream“. The producers of “Speed” showed remarkable focus when they were pitching the project as “‘Die Hard’ on a bus“. That’s five words, folks. Considering the millions of profit it generated, I’d say that’s pretty effective writing.

So I thought I’d start a collection of killer taglines as I come across them. The opening salvo comes from the British company Swords & King.

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A little shout out to Belgian director Patrick Van Hautem of Made in Brussels, who just picked up two trophies at the Greek advertising business awards, the Ermis. His film for Honda, called “Dreams”, was voted “Best Car ad” and “Best Commercial” in 2007.

Check out a translated version here.