a new voice beckons...

Adland is a dangerous place to set up your stall for a long-term career, mainly because people are forever muttering about it being a young guys, or gals, business. A myth the bosses love to perpetuate as it allows them to replace older heads with bouncy youngsters they can fob off with a handful of shiny beads and a bagful full of empty promises.
It is, of course, a fallacy, (Over 70% of the work in the illustrious D&AD awards annual this years was created by over 45 year olds), but that is not to say that adland isn’t packed with enough precocious talent to make Roman Polanski think of a career change.
Before heading off to her nut-crunching, carrot juice slurping health spa my appallingly young art director was bemoaning the fact that agencies are becoming more like the Gnostic creature Ouroboros, constantly devouring their own tail in a cycle of rebirth and that the circle seemed to be tightening around our necks.

Certainly there is some prodigious talent sneaking into the business, in my own dear office young Steve O and Kate are constantly flashing genius in meetings. And they come fully loaded with opinions, Kate, for instance fervently believes that, “Adland is no exception when it comes to the chain of command. The lowly team reports to a group head, who in turn must answer to their creative director, it’s passed though the executive creative director, and of course, client service and client have more than their two cents worth. However, even with all these supposed experts working on them, there are still some mighty terrible ads out there that a poor, unsuspecting public gets tormented with.”
Hardly the respect one had hoped to engender in one’s prodigies.
She does, however, have a good eye for crap, her current top hates are the Silversands Casino spots, as she puts it, “The first makes absolutely no sense, and the most entertaining thing about it is listening to viewers’ interpretations of what it’s going on about. You can read some and add your own at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49Et0h2V1GI.)
The follow up ad has more than a touch of the heavy hand of either a client or a careless creative team, “I win my fights, I win my girls, I win my poker,” it’s either genius or, erm not, it’s curiously hypnotic in the same way as “Strictly come dancing” is to the prematurely senile.”

The Kellogg’s Coco pops “Where has all the chocolate gone” campaign also makes it high up Kate’s dissatisfaction list.
“Sometimes,” she says, “an idea might start out as ok, and then it gets morphed into another, boring ‘so what’ ad that does nothing more than provide an opportune moment to get another cup of coffee. Now, I must admit, although not the greatest ad, I was intrigued by their teaser campaign. Relive it at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Okq0dyhYTCI. However, I was left thoroughly disappointed when the big reveal turned out to be nothing more than a bland explanation for a kids breakfast cereal accompanied by the terrible line, “It’s where the super chocolatey taste’s at.” (Presumably they can’t actually say “chocolate” as it’s some kind of chemically assembled brown compound), anyway, get a taste of the thing at: http://www.cocopops.co.za/whatcg/.
It’s refreshing to note that the new intake of fresh faces from our colleges are full educated in the arcane craft of brutal criticism, it seems adland’s future is in steady, if harsh hands.