Hive Health

We have a winner, following extensive public voting,  a massive push on charity giving and dedicated support from Rossy.

The Hive Movember award for effort, growth and giving goes to Chris. Chris raised stacks of cash, and contributed the most to our £1205 total. When asked what had contributed to his current hairy success he put this success down to “his ambitious follicles” Modesty to the last.

Chris we salute you, and like you more now you are shaven.

So far this week has had its fair share of highlights – last night I was told by one of our clients that I should investigate a career in phone sex (nb. pre multiple espresso Martinis!). However, the stand alone winner is Jas’ epic fail at getting through a door. The added bonus being it has created one of my new favourite photos – as Ian points out, she must have been pulling off a pretty jaunty strut to leave such a special smear pattern.

Anyway, this got me thinking. Our director fails to get through one of our internal doors – hilarious, unexpected, hopefully a bit of a one off (for Jas’ sake); but how can we expect proper new bees to get through our door if they don’t even know it exists?

I fluked upon this industry, this agency, this career. At uni, doing a science degree, I was given 2 career options: Science (of the hard-core lab variety) or the City (of the hard-core bank variety). Neither of which appealled – I’m pretty sure flourescent pink jeans are frowned upon in both settings, whereas at Hive they get called ‘bastard strides’ and prompt Tim to put on some sunnies. Despite knowing there must be something in between, it was bloody difficult to discover and relied on an awful lot of luck.

“What a ridiculous situation!” Hive cries…how can we fix this problem? How can we help young guns find out we exists? As yet we don’t know. It’s a work in progress, some serious thinking is about to be done (thinking hats on). Any thoughts/ideas give us a shout (unfortunately no ipad bribe this time). We’ll fill you in on the the thinking and if you’re really lucky maybe you’ll get an invite to the solution.

The life of our work tends to be pretty short. The  world consumes concepts at a startling pace. Although often a visual medium for me  it’s a stretch to compare what we do with the art world where images and messages live for decades and even hundreds of years. In this sense then the ad could be considered to be disposable, there to change behaviour and move on. Tomorrow’s chip wrapping? It’s certainly the case that campaigns seem to be changed more and more, whether that be to meet and deliver against a new insight, or because a change of team requires the ‘done by me stamp’ that we see every few years. I always thought that as ideas migrated up past the A4 / 30 second constraints of ad space that we would drive towards more tactical ads, that felt coherent – but that hasn’t really happened yet.

With this in mind I was fascinated to come across people who consider ads not necessarily art, but culturally worthwhile. We build pieces of communication in such as way often we forget their wider importance once they are out of the door, the process of development being often so painful, denial and memory loss are part of the coping mechanism. (If I was braver and not a man, I would draw a lengthier connection between ad conception and childbirth and the rush of endorphins erasing pain memory and await the Comments with equal amounts of guts and fear).

The study of advertising as part of culture is established. A Google minute provides loads of thesis’s exploring the relationships between cultural dimensions and characteristics of advertisements. Dozens of theoretical frameworks have been developed covering identity, individualism-collectivism, femininity-masculinity, industrialization and even parental responsibilities. All getting (for me) more interesting when put to practical use explaining technique, characterization, appearances and portrayals of people. Loads of these research tomes feature statistical analysis that make the creative product look positively scientific rather than a result of its context.

With this geeky bubbling I have been enjoying visiting the Ghostsigns project, a collaborative national effort to capture, collate, discuss and archive all remaining examples of hand painted wall advertising across the UK. Ghostsigns are the typically faded remains of advertising that was once painted by hand onto the brickwork of buildings. If you live in London or New York  I am pretty sure you walk by a few every day.

This made me wondered whether in 50 years people will be collecting up digital communications as part of a similar project. Then the US Library of Congress announced that it will be acquiring the entire archive of Twitter messages back through March 2006. In the same way that diaries and private journals started to be considered legitimate cultural data sources in the later part of the last century it seems that this is considered an “unprecedented opportunity for discovering patterns of social interaction” This is big!

*With apologies to Bob Dylan. I saw Bob at Hop Farm Festival last weekend. He was not very good but the title is still a big one to steal.

How our industry is seen is a present annoyance for me.  I was forced by to go to a recent boys charity do and with a load of  bankers – I was turned on with multiple questions on the solid nature of what I do. Apparently ‘Media’ (said with a lightness of voice – try Frank Spencer/crossed with Dale Winton) as a sector is just nonsense. Not real work. Staggering my fellow charity goers all are in derivatives traders – pot – kettle – noir I said – infuriating them further.

I can understand this portrayal of what we do as airy-fairy-nonsense. Last night I tried to explain branding to our old IT guy Tony, who errs on the side of functional to say the least.  He just wasn’t convinced. Despite wearing Nike, carrying blackberry, and swearing by Persil, outside The Blue Posts it became apparent that I was never going to convince him on any decision making other that rational. It was the source of some frustration and much cider. But then he loves Carling because its tastes better than any other lager. (A belief I am still staggered by)

Returning to the bankers, it’s possible the view of the man in the (city) street is of the Gucci loafer wearing, Hoxton types, designing for an hour a day in-between their table fussball games that they really object to. I think also it’s the thought of a group of individuals earning  ”footballer wages” (sic), miles always from any market forces that further angered these guys. These guys just didn’t get what it’s all for. Yet when you speak to them about ads – these seem to be a result of some higher power – that clearly has never been near to a fussball tournament or infantile hand shake.

We need to dissect the elements of creativity, how a piece works, which elements are working  which need work. Assessing ideas requires words borrowed from an emotive/artistic dictionary. Which is why a collection of (daft) terms surrounds us and why often this collection of terms makes very little sense to the un-initiated.  We are immersed in tone, value, emotion, function, all elements of an idea that does something to its viewers. Perhaps this is “not the sort of thing anyone believes for a nanosecond in the real world”. but it’s a reality of our life we need the words to do the job.  I have a feeling that these are totally important to us, it’s their public outings that tend to persuade non – industry bods that what we do is just nonsense. Looking around the 5,000 member Facebook group – “Don’t tell my mum I’m in advertising – she thinks I play piano in a brothel” perhaps sums it up. A good indication of the shame those in our industry feel. Perhaps?  Perhaps not?

Why we shy away from just telling it like it is I don’t really know. Basically all that stuff we talk is for one real aim – to better connect in some way with an audience. The creation of an idea is about savings, it’s budgetary. Really it is.  Whether you are a planner, creative or suit, the business is about efficiency. We just seem reticent to tell others that by doing it this way we connect cheaper. We find ways of developing  relationships with audiences and brands that would otherwise cost more. Agree or disagree, I am not sure why the industry continues to be scared of this – hire us we will save you money seems a blinding recessionary position.

Simple as that.

Ps. No rhyming slang has been used in this blog.