That’s why we do ‘em.

When I stumbled upon this poster I was overcome by a mysterious urge to flip my work laptop shut, cue some Blink-182 on my iPod, throw my satchel over one shoulder and run all the way home. I’d grab some chocolate Primo from the supermarket and take Mr. Lucky, my trusty BMX, down to the Freeman’s Bay skate park. I might scab a cigarette off one of the older guys and he’d make me take a gulp of his vodka, which would be disgusting but I’d quickly have another go so they didn’t think I was a kid or anything. We’d save all our best tricks for when girls walked past and I’d just hang with these guys until it got a little too dark and weird old men that smelled like paint arrived at the park looking for a place to sleep. When I got home I’d be in heaps of trouble for missing dinner, and Mr. Lucky and I would have a couple of nasty grazes each, but it’d have been rad and totally worth it.

Oh what a day that would be. Alas, Outlook informs me I have meetings all afternoon. When did I go and get all grown up?

Put it on the internet.

I’d like to continue the cynicism for the week if that’s alright with everybody here.

Surely this is the most self-defeating image ever created, perhaps also throwing into dispute Item #4 from yesterday’s list.

Happy New Year?

Welcome back to the office, my faithful little readership. It’s now 2010, and to celebrate, I’ve compiled a quick list of things I think you should do this year to make it just that little bit more interesting.

1) Identify the three words you’re guilty of using most often in daily speak and eliminate them entirely from your vocabulary. Yes, that means you are no longer allowed to refer to things as ‘awesome’.

2) Pick up a book you hated in high school and give it another chance. Maybe F. Scott Fitzgerald wasn’t Godawful after all. Maybe he was. But maybe he wasn’t.

3) Quit your job and get a new one. Our generation just isn’t cut out for more than an 18-month stint at any one desk. Don’t feel bad about it.

4) Read ffffound.com every single day before you do anything at work. Anything. Not because it’s some incredible resource you’d be a fool to live without – I just think you ought to be more cocky about these things this year. The cocky people around the office always seem to command the most respect. Why not begin by being a dick about basic time management.

… This tip isn’t about writing per se. But it’s probably the most useful piece of advice I can give you.

5) Make the switch from beer to wine and hard liquor. It’ll save you money in the long run, and let’s face it, you just can’t drink beer all night like you used to without feeling really bloated.

Thanks for popping back, guys. Have an awesome… oh, er… fantastic… 2010.

A somewhat verbose Christmas.

Thanks for neglecting your workload long enough to be part of The Shortest Word this year. I’ll be back with some more nice words of encouragement on January 5.

In the meantime, here’s something Lil Cameron sent me that’s sure to get you in the Christmas spirit.

The moral of the story? Try not to care too much.
You’ll just be even more disappointed when the changes come back.

Odd type poster 3/3.

When creating a piece of advertising DM, that slight personal touch is so important. Something to suggest that this isn’t some generic mailer received by everybody on your street. That the thing in your hands right now was made for you and only you.

Of course, that’s not even remotely true. It often makes me even more bitter when I pull some glorified brochure out of the post to discover my precious name crudely stamped on top.

Forget it with the names already. Our customers are onto us.

Here’s a suggestion: Find the one thing you really want to say to them, ice it on the top of a cake, and deliver it to them by hand. Your sales – like national obesity levels – will go through the roof, I’m sure of it. This theory is especially pertinent should you own a gym.

Odd type poster 2/3.

Stumbling home at 3am, drunk and alone. Stumbling home at 3am, drunk and accompanied. An awkward morning after. An inescapable hangover. Breakfast in bed. A hospital bed. Home sick with the flu. With a tummy bug. With morning sickness. A dumb fight with your partner. The break up. An early start on Monday morning. The pink slip on Friday afternoon. The first day of the summer holidays.

I can’t think of a situation where this bedspread wouldn’t be the most appropriate thing to hide under. In fact, I want to be buried in this.

Odd type poster 1/3.

It’s true. I am obsessed with odd type posters.

Before I break for Christmas I am going to collect some of my favourites here so that we may have a kind of 3-day type poster party. It’ll be fun, I promise.

Let’s begin with this one. Sometimes the one thing you really want to say just doesn’t feel right when you put pen to paper.

The obvious solution is to write it in a bush.

When your product becomes the marketing.

Today I stumbled upon what I think must be my favourite example of cheap and easy new media advertising.

You’d have to be batshit insane to let some sarcastic video store virgin write all the movie descriptions on your subscription service. But it all makes a lot of sense when you’re compiling the best of them into a side-splittingly funny blog.

I don’t believe for a second that WTF Comcast is a convenient accident created by a bewildered customer. Everything about it reeks of a rush-job by somebody real low down in the agency foodchain.

But I don’t care. Because it’s good.

When your product becomes the marketing, you know you’ve found the Holy Grail of advertising.

Or something.

I’m very fond of graffiti. Particularly in a city like Auckland, where architecture might be suitably described as lackluster hodgepodge, graffiti serves an important function. It can humanise a space. It can recontextualise the way we view it or engage with it. At the very least, it can provide a welcome distraction from all the grey.

It’s a shame, really, that graffiti is considered more the domain of the delinquent teenager than the artist. Because on the rare occassions that I stumble upon a great example, it seems to resonate with me a lot more than other forms of outdoor communication do.

Perhaps it just feels more honest.

They never connected.

At this address.

This one is for Tessa, who could use a sign like this on her front door.

DAER EROM SKOOB.

Ssecorp lortnoc ytilauq fo dnik emos si ereht gnihsilbup ni tsael ta esuaceb.

Placing fingers through the notches in your spine.

Two-Headed Boy by Neutral Milk Hotel, from the album ‘In The Aeroplane Over The Sea’ (1998).

We can live like this.

This summer we might go bushwacking, island hopping, fishing, swimming, campfiring, storytelling, marshmellowing, sleeping. We might build a treehouse nobody knows about on an island we haven’t discovered yet. We might paint pictures, sing songs and design a life with no need for time, money or growing up.

But chances are we’ll just buy some beers, sit on your porch and talk about all the things we might do this summer.

25 years’ experience in growing up.

My good pal, Lil Cameron, has written an impressive article that tackles the thorny topic of copywriting for a youth market. It’s a refreshingly incisive perspective on a matter regularly discussed by elderly industry-folk, most of whom wouldn’t know a Tweet if it Poked them in the Facebook.

It argues that youth are the authority on being young, which seems obvious when you write it like that. But as we all know, in a day-to-day agency environment, all logic tends to be flung right out the window.

I won’t go and spoil a wonderful and insightful piece of writing any further with my half-baked summary. Lil is one of the best writers I’ve had the pleasure of working with, and this article should be prescribed reading for every copywriter in advertising.

An awfully big adventure.

As a writer I find myself transfixed by the need to find exactly the right thing to say. So often in conversation the best words seem to wait until the moment after they’re needed. I’m terrible like that, and I’m sure it’s why I enjoy writing so much. Crafting dialogue allows you to always say the perfect thing, every time.

Well, maybe not the perfect thing. I don’t think I know what the perfect thing is yet. But when I eventually work it out, I’m sure I’ll have it tattooed down the side of my body in size 32. And please don’t hold back on the serifs.

Tell me when I am no longer needed.

Love, sex, and music.

Bubble Project

I have to preface this by admitting it’s hardly news. Ji Lee’s fantastic Bubble Project was in full force a couple of years back, and if you missed it at the time, everything that happened is documented here on his website.

If this is the first you’ve seen of it, the idea was to place blank speech bubbles on outdoor advertising around New York in the hopes that people would be compelled to fill in the empty space. Like anything ‘crowdsourced’, there was a lot of shit. But a few very good ones survive in my memory.

When I first stumbled upon this work, I was gutted. I had spent the last few months on a similar project here in Auckland. I had treated my speech bubbles as more of a writing exercise than a public forum; they were pre-filled with all manner of overdisclosures.

Just as I began to get feedback from the public, I switched out the messaging to promote an upcoming show my band was about to play. Hijacking other people’s advertising space proved a very effective (not to mention cost-effective) solution – even if it was totally illegal. My bubbling continued right up until Ji Lee’s project was made public on the Droga 5 website. That’s where I discovered it.

The great thing about street art is that the community is very forgiving. Even if the writing isn’t great, you’ll gain a certain amount of respect just for getting it in the public arena. Because it’s essentially free, there’s plenty of opportunity to play. Or to execute over and over again until you do get a few right. It’s definitely a medium I’d like to work in more often. But I think my brief foray into bubbling proves that unless you have an idea that nobody else anywhere in the world is doing (whether you know about it or not), you’re wasting your time.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2566/4153364653_6209a2c792_m.jpg

I love you.

This was the Valentine’s Days that ruined Valentine’s Day forever. Tugging at the page, unassuming besides its manic folds, a sudden realisation washed over him. This was the last pull of the final string in an already threadbare relationship. Whatever reaction she had intended to get, she had succesfully ensured the opposite. And now, for the rest of all time and space, he would need to tactfully explain to his girlfriends: Sorry, I don’t celebrate Valentines Day – too many unpleasant, stabby memories.

I’m not sure where Hannah found this, but thanks for sending it through.