MC Saatchi And Bulgaria - A Love Story

Well, we've all seen the Cannes Lions silver winner, and around here in Bulgaria, there was quite a commotion about the "why you should never buy a shirt tailored by a Bulgarian."print part of the campaign. There was something mildly insulting about the reference to our bulgy fingers and fine brick-laying skills. But even more insulting was the fact that we were chosen to represent the middle of nowhere - a fictional place of peasants and stupidity, that has remained in the 19th century.
After all the noise generated in the Bulgarian public space, and heavy words like: "Why doesn't the country react?", "Where are the Bulgarian institutions at this time of crisis?", etc. I sent a letter to the creative director of MC Saatchi, telling him that I felt offended. As I read his response, I really felt that people in my country are really prone to the "storm in a teacup"-syndrome:
"Dear Nikola,

Further to your e-mail received regarding the Herringbone advertisement you saw on the Cannes Lions winners, we would like to express our sincere apologies for any offence we may have caused you, however unintentional on our part.

This satirical advertisement is one in a series which tells an imaginary and fantastical story of a fictional tailor and is written in a light-hearted, humorous way and not intended to cause offence.

The advertisement was clearly satirical and we believe the reasonable reader would not take the intended humorous advertisement seriously.

Yours sincerely,
Ben Welsh



Ben Welsh
Executive Creative Director

M&CSAATCHI
12/131 Macquarie Street, Sydney, NSW 2000"

Selecting A Face For Your Brand. How NOT To?

I'm going to go VISA on this one...

A stupid food company owner, buying a famous singer, because one of his songs involves ice-cream: EUR XXXXXX

An agency briefed to create a video for the song and a TVC: EUR XXXXX

Finding out that the  song mentions ice-cream a total of two times ( and in a negative way ) : PRICELESS

Oximoronic

"It's image, because it's not product". This is a quote from an especially productive meeting we held. Among the other brilliant thoughts of the same colleague are "Look at how good he draws, this round thing is a bear", referring to her son.

However my favorites are definitely "Osama is either in Afghanistan or somewhere else" by you-know-who, and one of my friend's "Oh, fuck, you are so impolite"

Off-topic: Cartoon Network 2.0

Dee Dee died,, so did Mandark, the daughter of Grim and Mandy was ripped apart, Jack is a gym teacher. If these names don't ring a bell, the rest won't be interesting, but if you've spent some time watching Cartoon Network, you are bound to appreciate the new adventures of Billy&Mandy ( though Billy is dead ) and of the Powerpuff girls, all drawn by their original creator in a darker, adult version of the series at snafu-comics.com

Shock And Awe in HR

Today, I felt like an Iraqi at he beginning of the aforementioned military effort of the US, led by Monkeyboy and his faithful republicans.

Our mediaplanner asked the following: Has anybody heard of a magazine called MAX? ( Yes, we are talking about the international men's magazine)...

In other news, an account interpreted the following email: "Dear ... we'd like to gather fashion editors of leading women magazines to present our new collection in the showroom at ...." as " we want to dress up the magazines' fashion editors in our clothes and make an impromptu revue..." What is more shocking is that after calling the company to tell them this is not such a good idea, none of the bulgarian marketing officers laughed in her face, or phone, actually...

Nothing so scary you'd say? Well, the same people who hired the people above, hired me... 

S(i)tupid

Living in the Stone Age. That's not the appropriate era for a person in the ad business to live in. Especially an account manager. In a time, where more and more companies in the civilized world move from measured medias to internet, from print to internet and from everything to internet, the question I got from a colleague  ( complaining about the frequency of our client's website update) was: "What is a client interface? I  can't understand what you are saying." And she is the one selling products to clients? Exactly how will she sell anything other than billboards and TVCs, when she doesn't know anything about thing s other than billboards and TVCs. And how are we supposed to create a complex campaign, when clients don't get access to some of the most popular and powerful tools at the moment? And yes, that account manager was one of the many people that raised the uproar about an ARG I proposed as a promo mechanism, stating it was too complicated.

Search

I want a stock photo search that can perform:

Couple+white+modern+interior-niggas-yellows-in-bed+cosy

Why won't getty... listen to that and save me the 6000 results search?!

Zyman Revived

What started as an incredibly stupid idea is getting closer to an ARG ( alternative reality game ) with a nice purchase-participation mechanism. Though I'm  not sure that anyone in Bulgaria will be enthusiastic, at least we should try ( and it would stand well in my portfolio too ).

If Sergio Zyman Were Dead

If  Sergio Zyman were dead, he would be spinning in horror in his coffin right now. Why? Because his  ( sensible and proven ) credo about the purpose of marketing - sell more, to more people, is getting ripped apart by a recent marketing graduate, and two even more competent art school creatives.

The Brief: Create a promo for our not-so-beloved snacks' client.

The offered solution: Anything but sales promotion - starting with SMS game, where people would answer riddles, that would pay the promo and finishing with the reality games, popular in London, Moscow and God-knows-where-else, in which we will send people searching for clues on the streets and asking unknown people password questions. Wonderful, especially in Bulgaria, where people hate most of the society, are in a constant hurry and work all day long. 

Late as dead

The headline refers to the previous post as you can imagine. The superhero idea crashed in the wall of stupidity, leaving no survivors. The ***** team couldn't grasp the basic idea ( it being a fictional super hero with the initials of the company IS), acting under the motivational rules they've come up with ( neatly integrated in the text bubbles ) and not in 50 pts. red Arial Black with blue outlines.  

Christmas coming late

Hoorah! I am an HR now. Special thanks to one of our clients, who entrusted us their internal motivation campaign. 

Well, not exactly. Someone, somewhere up the chain had created some motivational thoughts/wishes in the lines of happiness, good will, team play, peace on earth. I'd say they were copied from a bad HR textbook, but knowing the people I am dealing with, the "thoughts" came out straight from the first google hit on "motivation."

Back to the subject: these were meant to raise the activity of the mobile sales personnel + lower he employee  turnover. Perhaps it's a late Christmas miracle, or Venus  is in a strange alignment with Mars and Jupiter, but the collective (except for that romantic girl, with the idealistic idea that the client is always right) agreed on some much more trade-relevant motivation like "good ideas lead to career progress" or "Raising the company's profit, I raise my own."

Fingers crossed that the idea will pass.

The name of the game

Desperation... this is the overall feeling that hits you when you realize how lonely it is at the top. And though I've never considered myself being on top of anything ( except a girl or 2-3-4-5-20) today I felt like a genius, as a colleague account manager firmly stated that a bank account is exactly the same as hmmm ... e-pay. "Yeah," he said, " you are using computer for this thing, so it is the same." Of course, just like teen pornography, online betting and youtube.

Now imagine that the same person gets to decide which of the names I've proposed are suitable to be presented to the client. Desperation? It's an understatement. 

The account guy has no knowledge of basic economics, and the bank brand manager ( probably an ex- account ) doesn't either. Or knows a lot about economics and nothing about advertising. And me, being a simple copywriter, do not have a decisive vote in any decision, as creative people are not supposed to have any grasp of a situation beyond beautiful colors and fancy words. 

Yes, I have a Master's degree in International Business Relations involving economics and marketing ( all 4 P's included ), and yes, I have worked a few years at various advertising and marketing-related positions, but I AM A COPYWRITER and I love it, so I don't know shit about anything else.

And the only way to do all the things I like and avoid the frustration of other people's stupidity is to own the agency.

So you are now reading the blog of the next O'gilvy.