Asbury & Asbury

LOCOG unveils new (brief for a) slogan

Some thoughts on the London Olympic slogan, which has been ‘unveiled’ by LOCOG today. (Not sure how you unveil a slogan). The chosen slogan is ‘Inspire A Generation’, which most commentators agree is pretty uninspiring.

As I said on Twitter, it reads more like the brief than the answer.

Slogans are tricky things to generate – many of the best ones arose by accident, conceived as part of an ad campaign, often without a long-term future in mind, but growing naturally to take on the status of a brand line. As soon as you begin a formal process to generate a slogan, you’re facing an uphill struggle.

This is partly because even the best slogans can never tick every box in the brief. They’re not rational animals. If Nike had drawn up a detailed brief for a new slogan, ‘Just do it’ would probably have been rejected. The brief would have asked for something warmer, more engaging, less confrontational. As it was, ‘Just do it’ was a last-minute line conceived for a single campaign, which then grew in status after it received a positive response. It’s hard to re-create a process like that.

That said, LOCOG could have done a better job. ‘Inspire A Generation’ is a reasonable sentiment and ties in with the overall bid theme, which is a focus on young people and the legacy that the games will leave. But the best way to inspire a generation is to have a more inspiring brand message.

At this point, it would be nice if I could supply a brilliant answer myself. Given the brief, my first reaction would have been to question whether they needed a slogan at all. Is it really worth trying to hang everything on one phrase that will probably get slated by the media in any case? I’d also have warned them not to expect a single slogan to answer all their expectations. I’d have supported the idea of an open competition, but also encouraged them to get a panel of copywriters to cast an expert eye over them and suggest other answers. And I’d have sent them the recent Creative Review slogans issue, which shows how haphazardly a great slogan comes into being.

But some first ideas? I wondered about something trendy like #GBPB – the idea being that everyone in Great Britain this year should be aiming to achieve their PB in whatever they do. (PB = personal best – we’ll hear the abbreviation a lot this summer.). It’s a message that appeals to everyone and is cast in the language ‘the kids’ speak. Maybe #worldpb is less jingoistic. Either way, the media would probably hate it.

A more grown-up version of the same sentiment might be ‘Excel yourself’, in the sense of urging people not simply to spectate, but to get involved in the Olympic spirit – do whatever you do better than you’ve done it before. It’s a hard one to say ‘meh’ too on Twitter without sounding like a lazy oaf.

I’d like to think I’d arrive at a better answer than either of those, but they’re there to demonstrate the point that, if ‘Inspire A Generation’ is the brief, there are many potential creative expressions of the same thought.

But ‘Inspire A Generation’ will do its job to an extent – it gives the media something to talk about for a few days. It’s a three-word slogan that you can stick on all the merchandise. And it won’t scare the horses – no one could really object to such a safe sentiment.

Doubt it will make the next slogans issue of Creative Review though.

NB: I was going to use the 2012 logo to illustrate this post, but decided to use Daniel Eatock's alternative logo instead.

What I did yesterday

The judging took place yesterday for Writing for Design at D&AD. There’s still a lot of mystery about how the judging process works, so I thought it would useful to break down how the day went and the different stages we went through. It’s a rigorous process, which I think would reassure anyone forking out for their entry fees.

Some of these timings are a bit rough, but give the general idea.

8.30am
Arrive at Kensington Olympia. Listen to opening addresses from Tim Lindsay and Rosie Arnold.

9am
The Writing for Design jury starts work – seven judges, with Jim Davies as the foreman, plus Luc Benyon from D&AD giving advice and helping with the practicalities.

9am to 12pm – The initial sweep
There are 74 entries laid out on half a dozen long tables, with a screen at the end showing the six online entries. The idea is to go round and familiarise yourself with each one of them. This is a daunting stage. Some items are posters or packaging with just a few words, but many are books and brochures that need real time and attention. Not much discussion takes place – just lots of reading.

Each judge is given an iPod which lists all the entries, together with the brief and background information that the entrants supply. There was a technical glitch that meant a lot of this information didn’t appear, but it was also available in a printed folder which the judges consulted and read out loud when necessary. There’s an option to vote yes, no, or abstain if you were involved in the job.

‘Involvement’ generally counts as working directly on the job or at the same agency that did the job. If you’re part of the same global network, but not actually at the same agency, it’s OK to vote.

Abstaining: there were three entries I’d had some involvement in, not all of which I knew were going to be entered. Other jurors had similar situations. Whenever that piece of work was up for discussion, the person involved would walk off and be called back by Luc when the discussion was over.

12pm – Longlist voting
By 12pm we’d all cast our initial votes on each piece of work. At this point, you’re not voting for what goes ‘in-book’, but for anything you feel is worth discussing. If a piece gets a ‘yes’ from 50% of the judges (i.e. 4 out of 7), it gets put on the longlist. D&AD then rearrange the tables, with all the longlist work on a couple of tables, and all the rejected work on the other tables.

A note on the longlist voting: There’s some confusion about this terminology and what it means to get on the longlist. On the one hand, it’s an achievement, as it means your work was sufficiently interesting to four of the judges. But the judges are also instructed to be generous at this stage – it’s essentially a conversation starter and you’re not necessarily making a value judgement. Once the longlist is decided, there’s also the opportunity for the judges to look at the rejected work and retrieve anything they think has been unfairly overlooked. Of the 74 entries, I voted for 19 to go on the longlist. Once all the votes were counted up, we ended up with 26 on the longlist in total.

12pm to 1pm – first discussions
The idea now is to go through the longlisted work and discuss each piece before voting on whether it goes in-book – the first big achievement in D&AD. Getting in-book means you’re in the hallowed Annual – the book that documents the best creativity in the world that year.

This was the ‘bloodbath’ hour. We went through the first table of work, discussing each piece, usually with one judge putting the positive case and others raising any objections. And there were lots of objections. It’s at this point you’re really applying the critical filter, imagining that piece of work in the Annual and judging it on that level.

1pm – Lunch at Pizza Express. Bob Gill was there.

2pm-4pm – More discussions and in-book voting
We reconvened and carried on discussing the longlisted work. The next table contained more pieces that were positively received, including one that everyone was purring about. Having reached the end of the longlisted items, we then went through the rejected items and judges had the chance to make their case for any piece of work they thought should be put back in. I argued strongly for one piece – a very straight, corporate annual report that I thought still did a good job in its context – but failed to sway people. When you fail to sway six great writers, they probably have a point. However, one other piece was reinstated, meaning we had a longlist of 27 pieces. As I say, I would really underline the fact there isn’t that big a difference between non-longlisted and longlisted – some non-longlisted work was still seriously considered, and some longlisted work was quickly dismissed once discussions started.

In-book voting: The next stage was to cast our yes/no/abstain votes on the longlisted work. At this point, we’re voting on whether we think it should go in the Annual. Again, a piece needs 50% of the votes to go in.

In some cases, it’s really easy to vote, but there was one I really struggled over. You feel a weight of responsibility. On the one hand, you need to uphold the standards. On the other hand, you don’t want to be the guy who votes no and then realises on the way home he should have said yes.

Of the 27 pieces, I abstained on two and said yes to three. This sounds really low, but it had already become clear in the discussions that the numbers would be low this year.

4pm – In-book voting confirmed
Once the votes had been logged, Luc gave us the chance to check we were happy with the results and there was still an opportunity to argue against work that got through, or for work that got rejected. But it didn’t take too long for the list to be finalised – five pieces in-book.

4pm to 5pm – Nominations voting
The next round involved going through those five pieces and deciding if any were worthy of a nomination. If a piece is nominated, it gets considered for a Yellow Pencil. But a nomination is also a big deal in itself, raising the work above everything else in the Annual.

There was an extended discussion about each of the five pieces, and it became clear that one really stood out. We all voted and that single piece got through.

5pm to 5.30pm Yellow Pencil voting
We’d all spent the previous hour talking enthusiastically about this one piece and why it should be nominated, so we were still in that frame of mind when it came to thinking about the pencil voting. But once again the rigour of the process is admirable. We talked at length about what a Yellow Pencil means, what had won before, what hadn’t won before, what makes something extra special. Then we all cast our votes anonymously and we’ll find out what happened on Thursday.

And that was it, apart from the pub afterwards.

The results
D&AD have published the longlist here and the in-books and one nomination here. Congratulations to Pentagram who got the one nomination with a brilliant piece. I worked on Little Chef with Venture Three and was really pleased to see it go in-book. But then I was also really proud of another job I’d done with Hat-trick which didn’t make it in – shows you never know with these things.

Will talk more about the work itself in another post – the stuff that did well, the things that didn’t, and the reasons for the low entry numbers. This post is about the process itself, which is very good. Kensington Olympia is a brilliant environment in which to judge and the process is scrupulous. It can still lead to strange results occasionally, but so will any process that comes down to human judgement.

One small improvement would be to print out the briefing and background information and display it next to the work, so you don’t have to check on your iPod or look in the folder. And as I suggested above, publishing the longlist still feels misleading, even though D&AD have tried to clarify what it means this year.

That's my opinion anyway. As I discovered yesterday, others are definitely available.

Powering up

I’m part of the Writing for Design jury at D&AD this year. Judging takes place this Monday 16 April at Earls Court – the image above is from D&AD and shows the iPods that the judges use to make their decisions. Bet mine still runs out of battery.

I believe nominations and in-books are being announced over the course of the week. The Yellow Pencils are handed out at a live-streamed ceremony on Thursday night, in a change of format from previous years.

I’ve been involved in the judging once before and it was a great experience – lots of lively discussions and plenty of interesting stuff to read (arguably a bit much for one day). But I may get the odd chance to tweet an update if you want to tune in.

In the meantime, if you haven’t come across it already, it’s worth keeping track of a debate taking place on the other side of the Atlantic. Paula Scher recently wrote this article about AIGA and its drift towards celebrating effectiveness over creativity. It’s a well-argued piece and predictably provoked a polarised response (see the comments). Paula Scher has just followed it up here. Although the whole debate is about AIGA, it also has a lot of resonance over here –many of the same issues will no doubt flare up as awards season gets into full swing this week. 

We interrupt this prose...

I’ve written a piece for Semionaut
on poetry in commercials.

The link is here—please share your thoughts,
however controversial.

Late Victorian crowdsourcing

Today’s Guardian carries a story about Kraft Foods, who have set up a new company to handle their snack food products. As is often the case these days, rather than getting the professionals in to come up with a name, they launched a crowdsourcing-style competition. The result is Mondelez, where the ‘monde’ suggests ‘world’ and ‘delez’ supposedly suggests 'delicious'.

It doesn’t immediately strike you as a great name. The pronunciation is ambiguous and it sounds slightly like a French xxx-rated site.

The tone of the Guardian article is certainly wry and the comments so far suggest the name will draw mockery, not just on its intrinsic merit or lack of it, but also for the fact that it was crowdsourced – the winning suggestion came from two employees.

But it’s worth noting that, when it comes to naming, crowdsourcing is nothing new.

As long ago as 1890, a Macclesfield breadmaker called Richard ‘Stoney’ Smith launched a national competition to find a name for his new flour and breadmaking business. The winning entry came from a student called Herbert Grimes. And it was Hovis.

Like Mondelez, it comes from a contraction of two foreign-language words. In this case, it’s the Latin hominis vis, meaning ‘strength of man’.

It’s a great name, for which Herbert Grimes won £25. Not bad money in those days, although he may have negotiated more had he known it would still be around in 120 years.

The story is proof that crowdsourcing is far from the newfangled practice it’s made out to be. In many cases, it's really a fancy name for a competition.

There’s another interesting footnote on Hovis. The runner-up in the naming competition was ‘Yum yum’, which would have set a very different tone for the brand. It suggests that a tendency for slightly grating, infantilising brand language was also alive and well in 1890.

The picture at the top of this post (sourced here) shows the gravestone of Richard 'Stoney' Smith in Highgate Cemetery. It's a fascinating irregular shape and there is something satisfying about a Stoney stone, especially as it commemorates a man whose stock in trade was ground flour.

UPDATE: This article has subsequently appeared in a revised form on the Creative Review blog. Commenter Ben Millar notes that £25 would equate to £2,400 in today's money. Not to be sniffed at.

Failed jokes

I recently submitted a piece to a new magazine/bookmark project called dogear.co.uk. The piece was called 'Collision' and goes like this:

Collision

— Knock knock.
— Who's there?
— It's the police.
— It's the police who?
— It's the police. I'm afraid there's been a terrible accident.

I wrote it a while back as part of a notional series called 'Failed jokes', where jokes run up against the real world in a variety of strange and uncomfortable ways. The one above was the darkest. The rest never quite made it into a fully fledged project or series, but I thought I'd post some of them here. Imagine you're reading them on a set of lollipop sticks.

— How many trapeze artists does it take to change a lightbulb?
— Leave it, I’ll do it.

 
— Doctor, doctor, my arms keep falling off!!
— When did this start happening?
— Yesterday!!
— And how often does it happen?
— Every ten minutes!!
— Are there any other symptoms?
— No. My arms just fall off!!
— Hold on, I’m going to get the senior registrar.
— OK!!

 
— What do you get when you cross a blancmange with a combine harvester?
— I'm on the phone.


— What do you get when you cross a kangaroo with a ham sandwich?
— I hate it when you're like this.

— What do you call a giraffe in a baseball cap?
— Can we just order?


— Penguin walks into a bar and asks for a pint of lager. The barman is about to serve another customer, which the penguin hadn't realised, and the penguin apologises, even though they’d both arrived at about the same time. The other customer barely acknowledges the apology and takes forever to order two cappucinos. The barman stands by the coffee machine waiting for it to percolate, rather than serving the penguin at the same time, because he's incapable of doing two jobs at once. The bar, which was empty a minute ago, is now full of people waiting to be served. When the barman finally brings the coffees over, the customer wants to pay by card, which takes a lot longer than paying by cash. The barman then serves the person standing closest to the till, forgetting that the penguin should have been next. The penguin is furious and leaves.

— What did the bear say to the helicopter?
— Just here at the lights, thanks.


— My dog's got no nose!
— Sorry?
— My dog's got no nose!
— No, it keeps dropping out.
— I'm saying my dog's got no nose. Ask me how...
— Can you call me back on the landline?
— OK, hold on a sec.

— Why did I marry you, Keith?
— I don’t know, why did you marry me, Karen?!
— Keith, I’m sorry. It’s over this time.
— Me no geddit!

— Why did the wombat eat the mango?
— Because you’re an idiot.

— Two men are out hunting in the woods and one of them accidentally shoots the other.
— When did this happen?
— So he goes to the phone box and calls the operator.
— Jesus Christ. Is someone coming to help?
— Look, don’t worry about it.

That kind of thing.

You can read more about Dog Ear on Creative Review.