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?!