The good ad man
Apr. 4th, 2008 08:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusI tend to think that ad men can't be gurus, and that a creative director most famous for a cigarette campaign (the Silk Cut "silk cunt" purple silk slash) couldn't possibly have done the world much good. But British ad guru Paul Arden, who died this week aged 67, wrote a self-help book -- a thought experiment of sorts -- called Whatever You Think, Think The Opposite, and I'm going to follow his advice today. Whatever I think about advertising, I'm going to try thinking the opposite.
Paul Arden worked for Saatchi and Saatchi in the 80s, masterminding ads for British Airways, Silk Cut, Anchor Butter, InterCity and Fuji. Later he started his own agency, Arden Sutherland-Dodd, and did campaigns for BT, BMW, Ford, Nestle and Levis. He's the man who advertised The Independent newspaper with the slogan "It is. Are you?" (The paper later gave him a column, which is where his bestselling motivational books began.) He came up with "The car in front is a Toyota". This is his ad for the BMW C1:
[Error: unknown template video]
Do you see what he did there?
His first book, It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want To Be, contained ideas like these:
The problem with making sensible decisions is that so is everyone else.
Why do we strive for excellence when mediocrity is required?
Don't try to please the client.
Have you noticed how the cleverest people at school are not those who make it in life?
If you can't solve a problem it's because you're playing by the rules.
You don't have to be creative to be creative.
You don't have to be able to write to be able to write.
Don't seek praise, seek criticism.
Sometimes it's good to be fired.
There is no right point of view.
It's right to be wrong.
Those last two thoughts contradict each other, but maybe there's nothing wrong with self-contradiction if nothing is wrong? Maybe it's better to be interesting than right? Maybe wrong is the new right? Let's think those thoughts today, or think their opposites. Maybe there isn't much difference between thoughts like that and their opposites.
Arden's second book details cases of people breaking through to new success by thinking the opposite of what they previously thought. He starts it with Dick Fosbury, a highjumper who came up with the Fosbury Flop. Previously Fosbury, like everyone else, had vaulted forwards, crossing the bar parallel to it. Then one day he did the opposite; he flopped over it backwards, and broke the world record. Penguin did the same thing, says Arden, when they invented the paperback:
"Good writers, good design and good value at sixpence. Sounds obvious. Not in 1934. Booksellers told Penguin, 'If we can't make a profit on 7s 6d, how can we make one on sixpence?' Writers thought they would lose their royalties. Publishers would not agree to sell their titles for paperback printing. Only Woolworths, who sold nothing over sixpence, was cooperative. As a publishing venture it was considered a bad idea. The founder of Penguin, Allen Lane, thought the opposite. The rest is history!"
After leaving Saatchi, Arden started a film company, taught at the School of Communication Arts, and founded his own agency. His film company made this rather interesting (or interestingly boring) film, The Man Who Couldn't Open Doors. To me, it's a take on Colin Wilson's The Outsider. It looks like an ad, but it's slowed way down, so you just get the metaphysical remoteness of advertising, its detachment from life. Instead of machismo, a certain kind of pathos is communicated. We're in the world of 1980s advertising, but also the world of Magritte and Camus.
"All the man who couldn't open doors had in his flat was a poster of Mao Tse Tung. The previous tenant had left it." Somehow, I can recognize that that thought comes from the same man who made the Silk Cut ad. It has the same Zen-like emptiness. Arden was apparently such a perfectionist that people joked he wouldn't play football unless the grass was the right shade of green. But he was also religious. His last book was called God Explained in a Taxi Ride.
Here's his take on 9/11:
"If instead of showing strength by spending billions on weapons of war, the West was to build a mosque on Ground Zero, it would be a remarkable symbol of our understanding of the Islamic point of view. It would be a major step towards world peace."
Here are some of Paul Arden's other pieces of advice:
If people constantly reject your ideas or what you have to offer, resign. You can't keep fighting and losing, that makes you a problem. If you are good and right for the job, your resignation will not be accepted. You'll be re-signed, on your terms. If they accept your resignation, you were in the wrong job, and it is better for you to move on. It takes courage, but it is the right move.
Your vision of where or who you want to be is the greatest asset you have. Without having a goal it's difficult to score.
To creative types: don't worry about the medium you work in, focus on the money you'll make. It's honest.
Paul Arden gave lectures which, according to Creativity Online, were boring at the time but interesting for years afterwards when you thought back. "In one industry talk, he stood silently next to a woman playing the cello. Another time he gave a speech with a naked man on stage, demonstrating that a person is a blank canvas. And he once hired an actor to babble onstage while Mr. Arden displayed meaningless charts. His point was that although no one in the audience knew what was going on, they would never forget it."
In an interview with The Independent shortly before he died, Arden struggled with the question of advertising's moral culpability:
"If anyone is to be accused, it's the manufacturer," says Arden, who also believes that the state should take responsibility for irresponsible ads. "Cigarette advertising should have been banned by government but they wouldn't because it brought in too much money. It's the government that's corrupt," he says. "We all in our heart know that casinos are wrong. They are a way of robbing poor people of their money. Why does the government allow them? Because they make a lot of money. It's not the people advertising the casinos or the lottery but the governments that allow them that are creating the cancer."
Although nobody denies that he was a difficult man and a perfectionist, his colleagues remember Arden fondly. A good ad man might be something of a contradiction in terms, but today, in tribute to Arden, let's think the opposite of what we think.
Paul Arden worked for Saatchi and Saatchi in the 80s, masterminding ads for British Airways, Silk Cut, Anchor Butter, InterCity and Fuji. Later he started his own agency, Arden Sutherland-Dodd, and did campaigns for BT, BMW, Ford, Nestle and Levis. He's the man who advertised The Independent newspaper with the slogan "It is. Are you?" (The paper later gave him a column, which is where his bestselling motivational books began.) He came up with "The car in front is a Toyota". This is his ad for the BMW C1:
[Error: unknown template video]
Do you see what he did there?
His first book, It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want To Be, contained ideas like these:
The problem with making sensible decisions is that so is everyone else.
Why do we strive for excellence when mediocrity is required?
Don't try to please the client.
Have you noticed how the cleverest people at school are not those who make it in life?
If you can't solve a problem it's because you're playing by the rules.
You don't have to be creative to be creative.
You don't have to be able to write to be able to write.
Don't seek praise, seek criticism.
Sometimes it's good to be fired.
There is no right point of view.
It's right to be wrong.
Those last two thoughts contradict each other, but maybe there's nothing wrong with self-contradiction if nothing is wrong? Maybe it's better to be interesting than right? Maybe wrong is the new right? Let's think those thoughts today, or think their opposites. Maybe there isn't much difference between thoughts like that and their opposites.
Arden's second book details cases of people breaking through to new success by thinking the opposite of what they previously thought. He starts it with Dick Fosbury, a highjumper who came up with the Fosbury Flop. Previously Fosbury, like everyone else, had vaulted forwards, crossing the bar parallel to it. Then one day he did the opposite; he flopped over it backwards, and broke the world record. Penguin did the same thing, says Arden, when they invented the paperback:
"Good writers, good design and good value at sixpence. Sounds obvious. Not in 1934. Booksellers told Penguin, 'If we can't make a profit on 7s 6d, how can we make one on sixpence?' Writers thought they would lose their royalties. Publishers would not agree to sell their titles for paperback printing. Only Woolworths, who sold nothing over sixpence, was cooperative. As a publishing venture it was considered a bad idea. The founder of Penguin, Allen Lane, thought the opposite. The rest is history!"
After leaving Saatchi, Arden started a film company, taught at the School of Communication Arts, and founded his own agency. His film company made this rather interesting (or interestingly boring) film, The Man Who Couldn't Open Doors. To me, it's a take on Colin Wilson's The Outsider. It looks like an ad, but it's slowed way down, so you just get the metaphysical remoteness of advertising, its detachment from life. Instead of machismo, a certain kind of pathos is communicated. We're in the world of 1980s advertising, but also the world of Magritte and Camus.
"All the man who couldn't open doors had in his flat was a poster of Mao Tse Tung. The previous tenant had left it." Somehow, I can recognize that that thought comes from the same man who made the Silk Cut ad. It has the same Zen-like emptiness. Arden was apparently such a perfectionist that people joked he wouldn't play football unless the grass was the right shade of green. But he was also religious. His last book was called God Explained in a Taxi Ride.
Here's his take on 9/11:
"If instead of showing strength by spending billions on weapons of war, the West was to build a mosque on Ground Zero, it would be a remarkable symbol of our understanding of the Islamic point of view. It would be a major step towards world peace."
Here are some of Paul Arden's other pieces of advice:
If people constantly reject your ideas or what you have to offer, resign. You can't keep fighting and losing, that makes you a problem. If you are good and right for the job, your resignation will not be accepted. You'll be re-signed, on your terms. If they accept your resignation, you were in the wrong job, and it is better for you to move on. It takes courage, but it is the right move.
Your vision of where or who you want to be is the greatest asset you have. Without having a goal it's difficult to score.
To creative types: don't worry about the medium you work in, focus on the money you'll make. It's honest.
Paul Arden gave lectures which, according to Creativity Online, were boring at the time but interesting for years afterwards when you thought back. "In one industry talk, he stood silently next to a woman playing the cello. Another time he gave a speech with a naked man on stage, demonstrating that a person is a blank canvas. And he once hired an actor to babble onstage while Mr. Arden displayed meaningless charts. His point was that although no one in the audience knew what was going on, they would never forget it."In an interview with The Independent shortly before he died, Arden struggled with the question of advertising's moral culpability:
"If anyone is to be accused, it's the manufacturer," says Arden, who also believes that the state should take responsibility for irresponsible ads. "Cigarette advertising should have been banned by government but they wouldn't because it brought in too much money. It's the government that's corrupt," he says. "We all in our heart know that casinos are wrong. They are a way of robbing poor people of their money. Why does the government allow them? Because they make a lot of money. It's not the people advertising the casinos or the lottery but the governments that allow them that are creating the cancer."
Although nobody denies that he was a difficult man and a perfectionist, his colleagues remember Arden fondly. A good ad man might be something of a contradiction in terms, but today, in tribute to Arden, let's think the opposite of what we think.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Roy Andersson
Date: 2008-04-04 07:22 am (UTC)http://imdb.com/title/tt0445336/
http://imdb.com/title/tt0120263/
They are of the same aesthetics ... but very different. Shouldn't be hard to find in Berlin.
/
homepage.mac.com/produkt/
"Think the opposite" day
Date: 2008-04-04 08:03 am (UTC)The Pro-Bling Turbocapitalist
Re: "Think the opposite" day
Date: 2008-04-04 08:25 am (UTC)Thinking the opposite of what you think should be > sarcasm.
If I thought the opposite, I would be speaking sarcastically now.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-04 08:30 am (UTC)The Nice And The Good.
Date: 2008-04-04 09:25 am (UTC)Suppressing a knee-jerk prejudice against the sort of person you 'should' despise?
If this is where is the territory you intend to explore with your right versus interesting debate then so much to the good.
Arden does sound like a fascinating character, I'm not completely buying his 'the government are responsible' line but his lectures sound like conceptual art.
His religiosity is off-putting but his idea to build a mosque on Ground Zero is wonderfully inflammatory stuff coming from an ad man.
You have presented an intriguingly contradictory character in Arden, someone whom I'd rather spend a bus ride with than some right-on bore whose politics and worldview I would find more 'acceptable'.
To employ a personal allegory: it is a little like my preference for the composer Charles Ives over Aaron Copland, Copland has all the right personal credentials but Ives the workaholic, hymn-loving, insurance executive is just so much more interesting...
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-04 09:29 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-04 10:13 am (UTC)In other words, it's the agreement that a certain set of opposed pairs constitutes a valid subject and forms a set and stable relationship that really counts. Everything after that (one's positionality within that agreed binary) is fairly irrelevant.
So speak!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-04 10:20 am (UTC)[Error: unknown template video]
No, wait, I don't have to take sides, because, according to what I've just stated, they're all basically in agreement. And in fact that's how the conversation ends, in synthesis: the Hatter agrees that the Dormouse's "I breathe when I sleep" really is the same as his "I sleep when I breathe".
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-04 10:26 am (UTC)When it comes to self-help type stuff, I do have a soft spot more for Sheldon B. Koop, author of, "If you see the Buddha on the side of the Road, KILL HIM". He's not a designer or anything, just another psychiatrist. His main tenants (and this is paraphrasing - his *real* main tenants are in some sort of inspiration poster-form) are: Get over yourself. Get on with it.
Perhaps this advice won't help much with a design problem, but I do find, like today when my tired feet come back from the studio at 4:00am and I reflect back at all the creative work I've done, it is because I stopped thinking I was walking on eggshells, and just dove into whatever creative problems I had. In this case, getting over myself and getting on with the task at head works. This advice also helps sometimes get out of myself and into that mode where time really isn't a presence and I can more directly connect with... whatever nameless thing it is inside of me that needs to do the artwork in front of me.
I don't think that word means what you think it does
Date: 2008-04-04 11:25 am (UTC)Anybody who thinks that the words "evolution" and "God" can plausibly refer to the same item obviously doesn't undestand the meaning of one or both of them.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-04 11:41 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-04 12:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-04 12:10 pm (UTC)To be honest I didn't really know much about Arden except he worked in advertising and he'd written successful self-help style books; Two things that instantly stand out to me as somewhat unappealing. But having read some of his views, such as the 9/11 mosque idea, and having seen that quite brilliant BMW advertisement, it's obvious there was definitely something more to this guy than just an ad man.
Re: "Think the opposite" day
Date: 2008-04-04 12:22 pm (UTC)Eggactly my veiw two!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-04 12:24 pm (UTC)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Sense
Re: I don't think that word means what you think it does
Date: 2008-04-04 12:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-04 12:47 pm (UTC)smelling the opposite
Date: 2008-04-04 01:32 pm (UTC)http://www.monocle.com/Shop/Items/Fragrances/Monocle-x-Comme-des-Garcons-scent/
cheers,
William Thirteen
http://www.squirm.com
Re: I don't think that word means what you think it does
Date: 2008-04-04 01:33 pm (UTC)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hedgehog_and_the_Fox
smelling the apposite
Date: 2008-04-04 01:41 pm (UTC)Re: smelling the opposite
Date: 2008-04-04 02:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-04 03:18 pm (UTC)yes, lets contradict ourselves! lets think like i already do!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-04 03:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-04 04:17 pm (UTC)"You will reply that reality hasn't the slightest need to be of interest. And I'll answer you that reality may avoid the obligation to be interesting, but that hypothesis may not."
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-04 04:34 pm (UTC)But since today is opposite day, let me ask you this one important question. Do you want me to PUNCH you? Yes or No?
Re: I don't think that word means what you think it does
Date: 2008-04-04 05:29 pm (UTC)Re: I don't think that word means what you think it does
Date: 2008-04-04 05:35 pm (UTC)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRsXU4Q6a0Q
Re: I don't think that word means what you think it does
Date: 2008-04-04 05:41 pm (UTC)Re: I don't think that word means what you think it does
Date: 2008-04-04 06:11 pm (UTC)*punch*
Date: 2008-04-04 06:37 pm (UTC)Acceptable answers would have been: a) "maybe?" b) "eat you? with a gammy leg? or c) "what rhymes with octopus-dust?"
momuku
Date: 2008-04-04 07:49 pm (UTC)To those people I have only one thing to say, from you to me, on opposite day -- Stop writing books!
From the bough
floating down river
insect song.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-04 09:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-04 09:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-04 09:44 pm (UTC)an example of opposites meaning the same thing from the world of alternative rock
Date: 2008-04-04 09:49 pm (UTC)- Nirvana
"He might be a father, but he sure ain't a dad"
- The Replacements
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-04 10:05 pm (UTC)Anyway, I gotta run, I have a test in the morning and I have pages and pages of stuff I have to mesmerize tonight.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-04 10:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-04 10:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-04 10:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-04 11:04 pm (UTC)Re: "Think the opposite" day
Date: 2008-04-04 11:14 pm (UTC)There's nowhere outside of society, Paul. No private heart of anarchy. Just follow the rules, step by step, and don't think.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-04 11:58 pm (UTC)Oh really? Gee golly, mr. Paul Arden, now that you've made up that rule I see it fitting in so many cases, fuck you.
Making it in life.
Date: 2008-04-05 12:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-05 03:13 am (UTC)Would the real Brian Eno please sit down?
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-05 04:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-05 07:16 am (UTC)Well, as Alice said, rather queer.
But how nice to be remembered at all, your honor.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-05 10:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-05 07:05 pm (UTC)