What to read when you're not reading the One Show Annual

Tom Morello once said that his musical inspiration was a horse. Not sure what that means. My inspiration is Wonderpets. But I digress.

Seeking influences from outside your industry is a good thing. It prevents reflexivity and tunnel vision. It's not that you shouldn't be reading The Denver Egotist and AdFreak. You should. And here are a few other publications that might influence your work in ways you can't predict:

infosthetics.com: In modern communication, Information design is as creative and important as graphic design or art direction. This blog highlights some of the coolest and most creative ways to visualize the data points that make up our world.

Various style blogs: Working on American Crew, most of us at Karsh\Hagan try to keep up with fashion. The Sartorialist, Streetpeeper, Selectism and Street Etiquette are a few blogs that have developed a following. Trendsetters reveal themselves through their clothing, and seeing their styles gives us insight on how to speak their language.

wired.com/underwire: According to Gareth, more Americans played a video game in the last six month than went to the movies. The Underwire is Wired's blog about both games and movies, plus everything else that influences geek-pop culture.

creativesocialblog.com: Increasingly, and especially in digital, the power of an idea isn't defined by how many consumers might see it, but by how many consumers pass it around, mash it up, and make it their own. Creative Social is a survey of that type of work.

wallpaper.com: Architecture one of the loudest and most lasting expressions of culture. This blog puts it in the context of design and fashion, linking humanity with the spaces we build ourselves.

[Ed. - Matt Ingwalson wrote this post for Karsh Connect and cross-posted it to his blog.

If I started calling myself a message director, would that be cool or would people just roll their eyes?

Copywriters got hosed in the job title department. The word doesn't indicate that we also come up with concepts, cast talent, choose music, direct voiceovers, develop content for multiple media channels, help our partners determine a visual approach, manage junior creatives, present work to our clients, and often even determine strategy.

Decades ago, some designer looked across the table and said, "I'm going to start calling myself an 'art director.'" And his copywriter should have replied, "OK. Then I'm going to start calling myself a 'message director.'" But he didn't. Whoops.

Maybe we ought to correct that mistake. More than ever, copy is the least of a copywriter's problems. Integrated storytelling, with multiple engaging and surprising doorways into a cohesive brand, is our current measure of greatness.

Yes, I still get giddy when I get a brief asking for a 30-second spot. But I get equally giddy when a client says, "We have this much money. How do we use it to maximize our brand across multiple consumer touchpoints?" A copywriter may not have the answer. But a message director certainly would.

[Ed. - This post was inspired by a discussion on the Egotist.]

There are no mysteries

Verbal: To a cop the explanation's always simple. There's no mystery to the street, no arch criminal behind it all. If you find a body and you think his brother did it, you're gonna find out you're right.

There are no new ideas

All the King's Men and The Devil Wears Prada are such similar films, I can't believe I bothered to watch them both. In each, a young, frustrated journalist [1, 2] accepts a job as an assistant to an eccentric, controversial, dictatorial executive [1, 2] with a contracted catchphrase ["Nail 'em up," "That's all"]. Both assistants ultimately compromise their morals to help their bosses thwart coups [1, 2]. Each executive is played by an Oscar-winner [1, 2]. And each film is based on a novel [1, 2] that is widely considered to be a thinly veiled portrait of an actual public figure [1, 2].

Sigh. There are no new ideas.

[Ed. - Is this post supposed to be serious? Or is it just an exercise in intellectual gymnastics? I'm not sure. It seems that nonstop media has collapsed my sense of irony.]

What's a concept?

On September 3, I left this comment on The Denver Egotist about the definition of the word "concept."

I think the problem is the floating definition of the word "concept." In ad school, they teach you one definition, which revolves around the idea that the consumer must bring a bit of himself to the work in order to understand it. But I've heard people use the word concept as a synonym for "theme." And as a synonym for "cool to look at..." [T]he word concept is like the word edgy - so overused it borders on meaningless.

I can't remember who first explained the word concept to me. It was probably one of my teachers at The Creative Circus. But I've always found the following explanation interesting.

Consider the three arcs to the right. In each, the "A" represents the product and the "B" represents the ad.

In the top arc, the product and the ad are right up next to each other. There's no room for the consumer to have fun with the ad, to feel a connection to it. The headline is probably something like, "Today, you can buy this chair for $99." And the visual is probably a chair. This is not a concept.

In the middle arc, the product and the ad are nowhere near each other. Nobody could make sense of this ad. The headline probably says, "Attila the Hun loves you." And the visual is probably a boat, upon which sits a hippo. This is not a concept.

But the final arc is. The product and the ad aren't smothering each other, but they're close enough to make the consumer feel the shock of recognition and a bond with the brand that transcends any short-term product offering.

Of course even that labored and lengthy definition can't possibly explain something as good as this:

The National: What genius sounds like

There are many creative ads. But even the best present you with Z's that you can easily trace back to A's. Most music is the same way. Great song after great song has been built with familiar chords and proven progressions.

And then there's this.



Boxer is the latest the new album from The National. I haven't any clue how they discovered their Z's. I can't imagine at which A they started. But I know the album elevates our aging - our "uninnocent, elegant fall into the unmagificent lives of adults" - into something tragic and epic.

Final Destination and the importance of insight

There are only two scary movies. The simplest is called Bad Things Happen Off the Beaten Path. It goes like this:

• Act One: Sin - People choose to stray from the beaten path.
• Act Two: Penance - People are punished for straying from the beaten path.
• Act Three: Redemption - The survivors run back to the beaten path.

During the first act of a movie like this, you find yourself screaming at the screen quite a bit. "Don't create super-smart sharks, you fools!" Or, "Don't sneak into the woods to have sex, you morons!" Or, "Don't go searching for a local legend named Dr. Satan, you dumbasses! Because he's not a legend. He's real. And you'll find him. And things aren't likely to get any better from there."

This first type of movie is a lesson written in blood, encouraging teenagers to follow the established norms of polite society.

The second type of horror movie is trickier, and perhaps impossible, to pull off. It's called Sometimes Bad Things Just Happen.

• Act One: Fate Appears - A mysterious force comes to town.
• Act Two: Fate Decides - The force randomly chooses a victim.
• Act Three: The Fight Against Fate - The victim battles back.

This second type of movie is a way for humans to try to understand the cancers and the car accidents and the horrible accidents that destroy and take lives. It is an explanation of the awfulness of fate.

Over and over, horror movies have tried and failed to mythologize around the randomness of life. Michael Myers was visited upon Laurie Strode for no particular reason, until the makers of the sequel concocted a relationship. Jaws picked Amity randomly, but the town fathers sinned when they decided to keep the tourist beaches open. Sidney Prescott was forced to atone not for her sins, but her mother's. The victims in countless zombie movies will never learn that the zombies were inadvertently created by, say, our own government.

So close, yet still so far away.

In a life of watching scary movies, I have only seen one film that ever really challenged either of these two essential structures. Final Destination. In it, a premonition helps teens escape a fatal accident. Several of the survivors die mysteriously, and the rest realize that by evading death, they have interrupted its grand design. They search for a way to escape their fates as death circles back to complete its plan.

Final Destination squeezes the villain of the latter type of movie into the structure of the former. And in doing so, it captures the very essence of human existence. We come into this world randomly, unable to choose either our parents or our station. And we are faced with only one real possible outcome. Nevertheless, we give great weight to our own choices, imagining that perhaps we'll find some way to rewrite the script of human existence.

It is unlikely that Final Destination was supposed to be a message move. But it is. I've watched it and its sequels a dozen times, always admiring the perfection of their concept, if not their execution. They lack the energy of The Descent and often waver between Black Christmas 1974-style tension and Black Christmas 2006-style gore.

But they have something more important. Insight. And that's why I can't get them out of my head.