I went to a pub quiz last night. With my in laws. A small pub where they serve good beer, they don't have Sky and they don't play music. That's right, I'm approaching middle age.
Anyway, I had a chat with the landlord. He's leaving the pub and new tenants are coming in. He's not retiring, he hasn't got anything else lined up. He's, to quote him directly, 'running away'. This is a man who doesn't want riches, he just wants run a nice pub that's like they used to be, and be able to afford to live.
The pub is thriving, but he can't stand to work for the brewery anymore. He used to love it, but since they were taken over by a bigger group, they've made his life impossible. So he's leaving his life's work, not much but it mattered to him.
Why am I telling you this? Because out there in the real world, beyond our fake world of NHS rimmed glasses, 'brand innovations' and aching coolness is an extraordinary world of very normal people that's full of more passion, drama, romance, tragedy, heroism and importance than most people in adland can imagine, if they even bother to try. That's what great stories are about, that's what great communications are about.
It's not just ads and stuff though. Most of the movie's released are big on 'talk value' and low on heart. Take the sci fi genres. Compare Transformers bollocks:
With ET:
I think people miss the point about Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings. Both may have great special effects and stuff, but they're stories about people you care about. People in cinemas for the final Harry Potter film are actually cheering and crying.
This is one of the problems with even the best campaigns. agencies create So many of them are high on talk value and low on heart.
The stuff people actually care about. I'm not saying that shouldn't be done in an entertaining way, quite the opposite, it needs to be jaw droppingly great, better than the stuff it's interrupting. But like ET was insanely great, but also a story about a lonely little boy (and so was Harry Potter) our work needs the beating heart of humanity at it's centre, not just influences from German cinema or the latest fad for brand characters (what the competitors don't get about Compare the Market is that people respond to humanity of the character and the way he doesn't know he's funny.
There's a story about misunderstandings and the fierce pride humans have in things they've built themselves, no matter how irrelevant it is to everyone else…that's where an annoying Opera singer goes wrong. He might be a brand icon,
but he's just, well, annoying).
This spellbinding work for Chrysler is about people, specifically, the deep romance America has with the values of hard work and perseverance and the right for everybody to live with dignity (or that's what I think).
One final thing about my friend in the pub. He's like lots of people who work in agencies. Most of them want to do great work, they want to work somewhere they feel pride in. They want to work with interesting people. They don't really care about their face in Campaign or doing a TED talk. They just want to do what they love with a level of security and fun. Because let's face it, if working in an agency isn't fun and stimulating, why else would you do it? But most of them work very, very hard in spite of the huge groups most of them now work for, you know the ones to whom they are just a number, where their livelehoods can be taken away from them with the flick of a pen. The ones that do their best to extinguish every flicker of originality, personality and spirit in everyone who works for them.
You wonder how many people take the decision of my pub friend. Not because they're retiring, not because they're off to something else great. But because they've lost all the joy in something they should love.
NORTHERN PLANNER 
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