Why though are my thoughts not endorsed by brands in South Africa? There simply isn’t a day that goes by without the sound of a disgruntled brand manager who might say something like; “fuck I can’t believe THEY went ahead and did that…” the sentence trails off and normally ends with a sigh instead of a throat punch delivered to the neck of the nearest creative.

I’m not smart enough to understand nu-wave-rave, the Turin test which separates the truly creative from the corporate drones, so hearing such sentiment always has me wondering what sort of supplier, client, relationship tolerates the supplier always being right and the client always wrong?

I have heard the legitimation for the power, ad-wielding-creatives, are imbued with. In short they presume they are closer to the brands they work with and are therefore the “brand custodians”, unlike their clients who in their caregiver metaphor are merely the temporary help, now in my world one shouldn’t talk to, nor listen to the help, and I guess neither should they.

Clients are alienated in this scenario, so much so, that at times I’ve heard some brand managers ask their creatives what the brand is meant to be communicating, or meant to mean to the target market. Stripped of their right to make informed business decisions they disgracefully bow out of the creative process and await the results of their campaigns.

You might say that the client in this scenario has made his / her bed by letting creative types have any control at all. However ad execs and creatives have an uncanny ability to turn even the smartest client into a ball of nerves.

Picture this, you’re the brand manager for a large FMCG brand and you’ve come up with a great idea to take brand-x’s new product extension to market. You convene a meeting with your ad agency, who have the contract by way of a global agreement with your brand’s mother brand. Your career prospects are on the line, so you prepare to pitch your plan to the agency via a comprehensive brief – your agency meanwhile sits on boingboing dicking about. You arrive, pitch hard and you’re met with blank stares – 20 eyeballs in the room look at you disconcertingly. The creative head, the strategist, copy team and account execs just stare. Then it starts, the brainstorm in which your idea is dismissed, the discussion turns to making an ad about a blind monkey begging for your product to fulfill his cravings, laughter ensues, Loeries and Cannes awards are being lined up on the figurative fucking mantle piece and you’re silenced, outnumbered and to a degree outgunned by the crowd before you. So you sign off their crack head monkey TVC, you pay a million Rand because broadcast is expensive and you pay another million to flight “blind crack monkey” whilst Top Billing is on. It literally happens that quickly and then your swirling down the crapper of insignificance in a creative maelstrom.

Now, given that I could rant about this subject for another 300 words, let’s cut to the chase. How do you as a brand manager prevent yourself from being disenfranchised like a tik addict in camps bay? Firstly, you never let the agency fool itself into thinking it is anything more than just the supplier, if you give them the opportunity to hijack your brand they’ll do it and make themselves indispensable. Secondly you have signing power and you have clear objectives for your brand, don’t let detached creatives toy with your brands core values, unless you request them to do so, even then you should maintain control. Third, don’t let creative people scare you or make you feel like your ideas aren’t as off the wall or as exciting to run with as theirs are. The very best advertising is generally like the most provocative art – it should leave you thinking “why the hell didn’t I think of that?” and should therefore entertain and spark a reaction in a very accessible manner.

Last but not least – don’t forget to apply some pressure to THAT agency which you didn’t have the fortune to select based on merit, you shouldn’t fear them, they should fear and respect you.

Rant over.

He’s resting his elbows on the bar, leaning back far enough to reach his glass of water. He slips his hand into his vintage black leather jacket’s pocket and pulls out a joint he rolled – shifts his cap with a badge which reads “fuck da police” and focuses his attention on not enjoying the band playing in front of him. My blood fucking boils, when I hear him say “ah they’re shit, not like [insert obscure band reference and obligatory name drop] they’re still underground they haven’t sold out”. Jog on twat.

Now that the Parlotones have attained commercial success it is the scenester subculture, which catalysed the bands success, which now disregards their stardom as merely a commercial endeavour. Apparently when the Parlotones were gutter trash their shit music made more sense than it does now? I don’t fucking think so.

Our local scenesters write for One Small Seed, Mahala and SL Magazine. Whilst penning their informed pieces they’ll use a lexicon which flatters the author about as well as a pair of skinny jeans. Oh these writers – who represent the consciously disaffected pseudo intellectual class – will attend your event but they’ll pooh pooh the shoddy performances of the commercial acts with polished tracks and supporting fans. Instead their focus is on the alt-grunge-avant-garde-post-rock-emo-electronica band playing discordant folksy numbers to an audience of, but one, a fan called “mom”. Don’t bother asking this lot which artists they do enjoy because odds are good you’ve never heard of them, and if you have and you share their positive sentiment well they’ll either burst into flame or toss the band aside as shameful and something they enjoyed when they were much younger.

Don’t even get me started on South Africa’s art and photographic media coverage. Let alone the manner in which writers for SA’s youth-culture literary anachronisms carry themselves at gigs. The sheer arrogance from these half-witted hacks is mind blowing. Get over yourselves, when Monocle Magazine or the New York Times begs for your copy then I’ll accept your complaints about having to pay for your own drinks, the music at a media launch, getting to events on your own steam and oh-dear-fuck paying for your own tickets you lousy cretinous shits.

Scenesters visit parks in shabby cars and whip out the latest Nikon to snap artsy pictures of friends in affected poses whilst laying on blankets drinking red wine. Later, in their chic little bachelor pad in Killarney, they’ll ensure poses are plastic photoshop renditions of a real life or at least a post-produced version of it. Huxley in his works on the futility of the intellectual class would bitch slap this banal little lot into a land fit only for religious zealots, people who drive BMW’s and Vuyo Mbuli.

These tepid, vacuous little bottom feeders will insist they are sophisticated whilst using the word “zef”, they’ll subscribe to material wants and buy macs to tap away their diatribes and when asked how they feel about commercial brands they’ll raise a fist and say “down with the man” and then pause and sip on their double machiato from Vida e Caffe.

It feels good to get this off my chest because I fear one day they’ll absorb me into their cultural-borg, and I’ll be a teetotaller, a vegan, a country-music listener, a red-checkered-cardigan wearer, a dirty little tramp with too much free time, way too much disposable income and a desire to paint the world in sepia using my iPhones Sepia app.

Until then. I leave you with the words from a far wiser man than I, Eric Cartman.

I hate hippies! I mean, the way they always talk about “protectin’ the earth” and then drive around in cars that get poor gas mileage and wear those stupid bracelets – I hate ‘em! I wanna kick ‘em in the nuts!

With little insight into the strategic objectives of the campaign, be it to drive awareness of Woolworths’ social media properties, or to utilise social media as a channel in a broader Valentines campaign, to comment on the successes or the failures of the campaign would be rather difficult. I think that the way Woolworths handled Yuppiechef’s altruistic ambush, critique from the opinionated social media guru circles, and those questions relating to competition entrants using twitter for the first time must be commended.

The campaign which relied on retweeting as an entrance criteria and a way in which to bump one’s position up on a lover’s leaderboard lends itself to likelihood of individuals gaming the system and of course to the obvious complaint of a spamathon. The retweet mechanism for instance could be gamed by using a spam bot network to a) drive up retweets of the campaign in general (for the benefit of the campaign / agency / user) and b) to ensure one achieved a high score in the competition. I am not entirely sure if either tactic was employed but with a cursory follower assessment points to multiple accounts with 0 or 1 tweet, no bio submitted and rather bizarre sounding names. Digging deeper into the data might provide more compelling evidence, but suffice is to say that such a spam network bumping up stats on a campaign could have serious implications for social media agencies, and is therefore a cause for concern in future should other brands attempt a ‘retweet’ competition.

With what would appear was a focus on an interruption – the campaign served to disrupt the ebb and flow of my Twitter stream as the WooliesLoveBirds retweets would appear alongside organic conversation on Twitter – the campaign  ran the risk of irking Woolworths’ core set of followers who followed Woolworths in order acquire information about the brand, hear of new retail offerings and generally reaffirm their status as part of the Woolworths tribe.

The WooliesLoveBirds campaign website was on the whole rather attractive, they toyed with a vintage look and feel, although some suggested it was visually anachronistic,  featuring pastels and the lovebird motif. My only critique of the website is that it required one to register, instead the designers might have utilised Twitter’s authentication API, OAuth, and saved site users the trouble or re-registering.

The Yuppiechef ambush, were it not for a good cause would have been cavalier when one considers that there were real legal implications to the ambush, but as it’s just hit the R100,000 mark, the ambush reveals just how a great idea with charitable intentions can snowball quickly and effectively online. Woolworths’ response to the ambush was a true reflection that they’ve “got it”, for a large organisation to move as quickly as they did turning a red-faced moment into an act of goodwill shows a clear understanding of how engagement marketing works, it’s a matter of honour, trust and integrity, and Woolworths showed how a considered move can position them as philanthropic and caring. Perhaps without this ambush the campaign might not have gained as much traction as it did – particularly when one considers the media coverage on the ambush and the knock on effect for the campaign in totality.

T.Rex were one of those bands that oozed ‘cosmic-cool’, a post chuck berry rock ‘n’ roll act which inspired ALL of the ‘Glam’ in Glam Rock.

Fronted by Marc Bolan, who tragically died in an ironic Mini accident – Bolan refused to drive, fearing a car crash would shorten his music career.

Words are wasted when Bolan’s face in video for 20th Century Boy says it all about this band. They’re high as fucking kites, playing sleazy Glam Rock which would only ever be repeated by copy-cats and never improved.

//

Swedish agency Farfar, in order to promote Nokia’s navigation technology have recently hung a huge digital arrow in the skies of London.

According to AdFreak, Farfar hung a  ”giant digital arrow above London that the public could control by sending (via text message or Web) any destination worldwide, which the arrow would then slowly turn and point to (and give the distance as well).”

What a great campaign, not only does it get passersby thinking/talking/tweeting it also serves to illustrate the power of technology and the inclusiveness of the brand at an emotive/metaphorical level(we’re all able to control the enormous structure) . Oh and I blogged it, so it’s great PR. Hell it’s just a kick ass campaign.

Thanks @deanoelsch for first alerting me to this great campaign!

The World’s Biggest Signpost from adghost on Vimeo.

Imagine lady readers, you’re squatting side by side with four other females. Perhaps you’re humming quietly to yourself whilst on the loo, four other females staring forward are doing the same. Like cripple race drivers you’re all staring out ahead at the mirrors in front of you, wondering what might happen if you share the awkward peripheral vision glance over at your urinating comrade alongside you. No ladies you cannot imagine this, because it’s fucked up. Unlike your male counterparts you’ve evolved and developed critical civil cognitive capacities which encourage private-private ablutions.

Perhaps it’s a sick joke and women really rule the world.

Moving along.

Public showers. Yes, it’s a legacy of the past, yes there is some historical significance to the act of social bathing but such acts correlated with a time when the world was forever at war, entire civilisations were raised up and then whacked down like epic versions of the ‘kill the endangered nile crocodile’ arcade game, legions of soldiers were humping one another and millions died of mysterious diseases – coincidence I think fucking not. Public bathing is macabre and silly. One shouldn’t have to be reminded of one’s germanic roots when walking into a communal shower i.e the suffering induced from memories of the holocaust manifest in the suffering created from seeing old white men’s dangly bits jiggling about. No fuck off I’m not having it.

You’re no doubt thinking to yourself well when does this actually happy you crazy wordy fascist, well I give you the gym as a case in point. The gym setting is horrid, you’ve trained, you feel disgusting and your legs are shaky and when you’re given an opportunity to freshen yourself up  - WHAM – you’re greeted with a display of naked folk. I’ve been told that at the Planet Fitness ladies lock themselves away in their own private shower stalls, where they get to enjoy a civil shower ALONE. I don’t see why men should have it any other way? Why shouldn’t I be allowed to clean up privately – in a cleaning booth with no outside manfluence?

Perhaps you’re thinking I have something to hide, a fourth nipple, a tail or zebra stripes across my lower half. I’m actually rather normal, at times painfully so. I prefer my space to be kept mine, not muddied with the dirty shower water, and shared awkward urinal moments. My time, my space, my bathing, my sanity. I prefer my life to be devoid of the irony of public pissing in a nation state with apparently residual patriarchal power – I would like some god damn “Vince time”.

Perhaps it’s a sick joke and women really rule the world.

Moving along.

Of the less banal tasks involved with the maintenance of a household – I’ve found at least – is shopping for junk for the house. I say junk because if let loose on a store like Home without parental control, I’d find my way to the coffee machine section and start browsing with the intention to purchase a machine which could produce the perfect brew. Like an idiot of course, because coffee machines are temperamental and coffee never tastes as good as that made from an old Italian copper beast found at most backwater corner caffes. I might not prance merrily about with a man bag draped across my shoulder but I really do enjoy shopping for shit I’ll use only once and which has a very limited life span. Why on earth can’t I perform such a task online though?

Why can’t I window shop for shit online in South Africa?

My dilemma is that I like to hold the tangible objects about to create intangible yet very real debt on my credit card in my hand before I buy them. I like to know that there will be an annoying shop assistant who will at least at some stage give me an opportunity to scowl at him or her. Passing a snide and, but very witty I shall assume, comment as he or she walks away from me. Whilst these aformentioned experiential associations I have with shopping are unfortunately impossible to recreate online, seeing items from every direction and being able to read the back of an items box could easily be recreated online and in fact might warrant discussion amongst consumers from the comfort of their armchairs. Think of such an online experience as the new unisex tupperware party for shoppers, we’d gather together to shop in a communal online space in which we’d feel comfortable communicating with fellow faceless shoppers, and as men might not even mind asking for a little advice or help on a product.

So, why then haven’t the likes of Woolworths for example not taken this opportunity and leveraged it in retail space, the online world, in which consumers feel comforted by the fact that they can stretch out to a world of intellect to gain valuable input on their purchase? More importantly why can’t I window shop online, if the world of web design is advancing so quickly that we can now create immersive digital second-lives, why can’t I in a little more bandwidth-friendly way walk about a store and interact with the store’s most popular items online?

I think there’s a gap here, so my advice to retailers who want to enter into the e-retail space, give us the consumers and opportunity to browse, and make sure that when we browse we’re encouraged to ask other shoppers for advice and are given the opportunity to consult a real expert, the tweed  clad Mr Google.

* I tossed the rugby analogy in there for you manne who can’t stand the very thought of a guy who cares about what he wears.

Lately I’ve had a bit of a change of heart though, I’ve seen how blogs and social media can change the nature of business – having seen just how effective a tool social media is behind the corporate firewall. I’ve also seen how individuals are emancipated by their online territories, are able to accrue a moderate income from transactions or advertising earnings purely from producing interesting content and finally I’ve watched as those who need support from a faceless community obtain just that. Blogging then is great.

This isn’t about blogging, if you want to read about blogging bits feck off. This post is about me and a few of my favourite things.

Pizza from Piza é Vino 4 Ever at Melrose Arch

First up, as Justin Spratt has correctly pointed out I have a “penchant” -  to steal one of Justin’s favourite words – for those activities which produce the most visceral reaction. I harvest emotion like others might rice, there’s a fuck load of it and you can scoop it up in bucket fulls but it’ll be tough on the knees and the joints. So yes, I love pizza it’s my heroin, and I’ve recently found a new joint Piza é Vino 4 Ever - it’s top class and like a restaurant which is run by a chef, the ingredients are as near to perfect as you’ll eat in Johannesburg and dare I say it the pizza the best Jozi has to offer.

Good coffee from Supersconto on Louis Botha

Unlike most humans I’m made up partially of water and mostly coffee. I drink it as often as I can and am arrogant enough to say I’m a bit of an elitist. Coffee should neither be too hot nor too cold, I expect a barista to understand that I am to him as Stalin was to his minions – omnipotent and mercurial. I’ve found the best coffee in Johannesburg is served at Supersconto, an Italian supermarket on Louis Botha, and if you’re still a little unsure of where to find it point your in-dash-compass to The Radium Beer Hall.

Frantically talking shop with good friends

Tim Robinson, Saul Kropmann and Justin Spratt have all had to make peace with the fact that at some stage they will be forced to sit down with me and hear me rev past 5000 words per minute whilst hopping from one cerebral-cobble to the next. Hopefully by now they’ve realised I sound off against them because their opinions actually count, most don’t but theirs do.

Chilling at home with Talita watching a movie

Our couch may not be the most welcoming, it has four wooden beams which like a skeleton on a leper jut out every which way and like a malicious pain ridden individual want to ensure flesh is torn and backs are broken should anyone sit atop its fragile being. However if there’s a good movie on, I’d recommend Watchmen, and Talita is sitting beside me, I couldn’t care less. A valiant roman might be standing beneath my red couch jabbing me with a lance and I wouldn’t budge.

Arriving in the restaurant, you’re greeted by a warm reception, the staff are polite without being over bearing and efficient without being clingy. I have a policy, if your waiters remind you of an ex-girlfriend stalking a long lost love when they traipse about the restaurant then feed them to the pigeons, kill them or recommend they run into traffic.

We didn’t book and we were lucky enough to find a table beneath a hazy piece of art which I could have sworn was a pop-impressionist rendition of the fabled ex-model homeless guy who roams about Illovo as if he were its groundsman and it his pasture.

Talita wasn’t hungry, so she ordered a glass of red, skipping a bland French wine for a South African Merlot. I, the philistine and classless toad ordered a Heineken, there was Peroni on tap but I refuse to drink from the same empty-vessel as do men who wear gold and drive BMW’s. The drinks arrived with their sultry partners, two fresh mini loafs of sweet bread. We had to ask for butter which was a little odd, and when it arrived it did so still wrapped in those tacky plastic butter packages.

Here’s the thing, I ordered Calamari as a starter and I welcome your derision with open arms. Idiotic choice at a steakhouse. The Calamari was cooked to perfection, it was tender, char-grilled but coated in sweet chili sauce. The sweet chili sauce was like a kid with tourette’s in a chapel, screaming “fuck shit, fuckAH” as the priest hummed and haa’d over something biblical – the culinary message was being lost and I was left with a nasty taste in my mouth. The sweet chili sauce even ruined my beer; which took on a bitter, woody taste, as the sweet chili sauce fought the hops and barley screaming, fuck, shit, fuck and lashing out with wild punches at any hope my tongue was going to have of tasting anything but sweet-chili sauce!

I ordered a 300g Rump steak. I’d asked my Dad a while ago, “how do we find out whose who in the steak making zoo up here?” and his response was “order the rump, anyone can cook a fillet steak.” I ordered it with a green peppercorn sauce as I think the slightly sweet heat offsets rump steak’s saltiness. As a side I ordered french fries and the vegetables of the day.

I ordered my steak medium rare but hoped like it hell it’d be on the rare side, and it was. I received a black peppercorn sauce which the chef – who’d clearly hated me from the start – decided to add liberal amounts of black peppercorns to. So much so that when Talita tasted one of the fries with the black peppercorn sauce her face turned a reddish colour and her eyes welled up like pales filled with water. I hosed her down with the bitter Heineken and what liquid was left evaporated off of her like it might have off of the sand in the Namib. The black peppercorn sauce to me was a thing of rare beauty, moreish heat and tongue-curling pepperyness.

I tore into my steak, it was tender but as I chewed into it, it lacked all the defining characteristics of a good rump steak. Perhaps it wasn’t salted correctly, or the chef had amidst the flames flying forth from the molten peppercorn sauce he was brewing, had simply turned up the heat scalded the meat slapped some pepper on it and sent it to me. The best description I can give the steak is that it was like dining on a cube, it was far too rigid – the fat wasn’t salty and hadn’t been adequately browned so that it was more of a deformed hump at the end of my perfectly rectangular steak than it was a salty wound on a delicious boil.

Where the hell was my carnivorous experience? When I eat a rare piece of meat, if I push down on the meat I want to put my ear to it and hear a faint moo. The Local Grill steak was too perfect, it lacked any real grit, it was possibly perfect for the conservative diner who wants to enjoy being seen enjoying a meal at The Local Grill – it was not what I expect from a grill house.

So here’s my advice to the chef. Salt the rump steak before you grill it. Score the rump’s fat slightly and rub a little black pepper and crushed sea salt into the scores. Then, if it’s a peppered steak rub the steak, grind a few black pepper corns and sprinkle them over the steak. Now pour some olive oil onto your hands and rub the steak down. Do not put oil / butter / or anything for that matter into the pan – let the steak seal the juices in and by god let it look like a piece of steak so leave it, even if it’s shaped a little too much like Sub-Saharan Africa.

The Local Grill, in Rosebank you serve a mean basket of fries. The calamari was cooked to perfection, and your staff are top class but please let the steak you age speak for itself, do not treat the steak like a pompous Sandtonian, beat it a little, rough it up, and present it in all of its gory-glory as a god damned delicious meal.

I hate to be a fear-monger but it’s really quite simple, if print media isn’t generating the revenue it once did, then those employed by such institutions aren’t getting paid what they once did and there are most certainly far less of them employed. The demand on such individuals ensures that they spend less time in field, more time at the work station, and even more time scraping news from news providers who themselves are in jeopardy of ceasing to exist. Who will keep the eye on the world while we’re resting in our office chairs lapping up micro-news content?

Investigative journalists, albeit for the Michale Moore sensationalist types, aren’t altruistic beings i.e. they do not impart their researched knowledge for free. Remember these individuals much like you and I consider what they’re doing a vocation, it might be a calling to some, but bringing the general public the news pays the bills. Often times investigative journalists compromise their own safety and the safety of those around them to uncover stories which to most of us only appear but briefly on our television screens but have the ability to alter the course of history for both good and bad. News gathering then is sponsored large media institutions,  which are controlled by individuals driven by The Bottom Line, or their responsibility to their capital-hungry investors who want to near immediate return on investment. Who will ensure that these nomadic information gatherers are paid up, fed and have the means to access informants, to pay off gatekeepers and offer up bribes to those make the news?

If your answer to that is microblogging, blogging and a network of open information you’re sorely mistaken. Twitter has been known to provide near immediate coverage of news worthy events, however more  already visible to a global audience. I’m not convinced a twitter-reaction to a highly visible event can be compared to a journalist calling up reliable sources to uncover mismanagement in a corporate which employs thousands of individuals. I cannot imagine a blogger, or citizen journalist for that matter, with the demands of his/her day job taking time off of work to chase leads, adopt a moniker and infiltrate a state run department to uncover an arms deal gone awry. Can you?

If the future is in digital print, and if such content is created for us by a core group of news media institutions who churn out reliable copy on highly visible stories then we may have to rely on independent film makers for our “news”. You’ll have to cue at Ster Kinekor and wait a year for the release of an investigative piece, but oh by god when it does finally meet your occipital lobe you’ll have no choice but to be startled by a world you thought never existed.

My advice would be to start saving, we will soon pay a premium for online news created by “real” journalists; e-news media will soon collude and change to a premium model concurrently leveraging such as the chance to move a sustainable business model – although my gut feeling says they’ll retain a small staff complement in order to push margins up. For those who cannot afford premium news there’s always the news in 140 characters or less.

God help us all.