Depending on how you read it, a recent piece of ISBA research among UK marketing departments seems to have found that either
(a) marketing agencies have been doing well to stay afloat and maintain profitability in the teeth of the recession, driving out cost and improving efficiency to try and cope with diminished advertising budgets from their clients
or
(b) marketing agencies’ profits have been ‘remarkably resilient’ (and this is a bad thing).
Chris Arnold has written a nicely scathing article about this. I’m not sure I agree with all of his comments, but I do dislike the way the ISBA report seems to suggest that profitable agencies are a bad thing, something to be mistrusted. It seems by implication to fall back on an adversarial model of relationships, in which agencies are trying to fleece their clients, and the clients are hell-bent on bleeding the agency dry.
Of course agencies have responded to the recession. If advertisers cut their budgets, this usually hits agencies either through reduced commission and/or reduced fees. Faced with falling revenue, the agency has to cut costs to maintain profitability. In 2009 many agencies did just that: pay freezes, redundancies, 4-day weeks were all reported across the industry, not least among the behemoth WPP group.
I don’t want to overplay the importance of marketing, but agencies employ people. If they’re not profitable, people suffer. Several friends of mine lost their jobs in 2009 through no real fault of their own. If a client has an agency that seems to cost “too much” or doesn’t deliver for their brands, their business will suffer, which may end up meaning their people suffer too.
The agency/client relationship should be a positive partnership. After all, the stakes are pretty high. Agency work can make or break a brand. Brand success (or failure) can make or break an agency. Ten years ago, when I worked on the Client side of the fence, we had a rule of thumb about the three main UK Grocery Retailers, and their attitudes towards their suppliers. This ‘rule’ went something like this:
Retailer X wants to make good margins, and they want their suppliers/brands to make good margins at the same time (positive partnership) Retailer Y wants to make good margins, and they don’t really care how what margin their suppliers/brands make at the same time (disinterested) Retailer Z wants to make great margins, and they actively DON’T want their suppliers/brands to make anything like that sort of margin at the same time (bordering on hostile)
I’ll leave it to you to fill in the blanks…
The agency/client relationship can be incredibly interdependent. It’s often said that ‘good’ agencies are ‘an extension of the marketing department’. In which case, why should there be hostility and resentment at (ahem) resilient profitability?
Just like any long-term relationship, both sides of the partnership need to care about the other, and to know that other cares about them. Both sides need to be motivated to work together for mutual benefit. Both need to be invested in the fortunes of the other.
If they’re not, are they working with the right people?
It’s well documented that many actors undergo a kind of transformation, sometimes physical, often emotional, to ‘become’ their character. Laurence Olivier apparently started with the shoes, and according to the director Lewis Gilbert, Michael Caine ‘became’ Alfie only when he went to the tailors and discovered Alfie’s sharp suits. Daniel Day-Lewis, Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro are among the most famous protagonists of The Method, across a massive range of iconic roles from Daniel Plainview to Tootsie to Travis Bickle, from King of Comedy to Straw Dogs to My Beautiful Laundrette.
Many of my favourite actors are interesting in dull films, steal scenes where there seems like there’s nothing to steal, and most of all make me connect with their characters, beyond their star status. One of the most interesting actors working today is (the luminous) Cate Blanchett.
Before I start, let’s accept that not all her choices have been outstanding. Elizabeth: The Golden Age is a pretty tawdry project, which seems to turn Elizabeth into some kind of heroic Pirate Queen, fighting the Spanish Armada from the rigging of her fleet…
On the other hand, her break-out role as Elizabethis a stunning performance in a storming role; full of vulnerability, determination and courage. She was nominated for an Oscar but lost to Gwyneth Paltrow for Shakespeare in Love (I’m not sure what The Academy were on that year, as SIL also beat out The Thin Red Line for Best Picture).
As she demonstrated there, she can carry a film, and doesn’t take stereotypical studio choices. Perhaps my favourite performance of hers is in the overlooked Notes on a Scandal. She plays a fairly unappealing character who makes some terrible choices, and has to do all of this alongside an amazing performance by Judi Dench as Barbara Covett. However, she makes Sheba Hart entirely believable, full of vulnerability and unfulfilled passions. She behaves like the children she teaches, reaching out for people to take notice of her, utterly uncertain of who and what she is.
Her range is tremendous, and she brings something to supporting roles that could either sink without trace or descend into farce.
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy is a tremendous work of cinema, but they’re not blessed with female characters. Liv Tyler usually graces the posters, as the heroic Elven princess Arwen. But Arwen is a character for heroes, and boys who don’t need to play Dungeons & Dragons to get the girls. For the rest of us non-heroes, Galadriel is the real reason teenage boys play D&D. She helps the unwilling protagonists discover their quest, she’s smart, she’s nothing like the other girls and she’s just so floaty.
She glows through The Talented Mr Ripley, she makes Katharine Hepburn her own in The Aviator. Most of all, she’s always interesting. I like her performances more than many of the films she’s in; The Shipping News, The Gift, Charlotte Gray. She glowed again and sailed through The Curious Story of Benjamin Button, which frankly wasn’t curious at all, just dull. In Babel she had the good sense to get shot(!) early on to avoid the turgid nonsense that followed, and she even played Bob Dylan. And although I’ve not seen it, by all accounts she’s the most authentic element in the new blockbuster Robin Hood, in amongst historical anachronisms and wandering accents…
If you hadn’t guessed by now, I’m a massive fan. I will watch something if she’s in it, because she’s always interesting, never seems like she’s ‘dialling it in’ and commands attention whenever she’s on the screen.
I started this blog 12 months ago this week. At that time I was very anxious that it didn’t turn into some kind of mid-life version of a teenage diary, ranting and rambling about What I Reckon, and had concerns that no-one would read it.
I’m fairly happy that neither of those things have happened. I know that my audience is small (but I like to think at least a teeny bit devoted!?), and I’m also delighted that they’re spread around the globe. I know that a handful of my posts have attracted most of the visitors, through their bizarrely high rankings in Google. If you don’t believe me try Googling…
“I got a fever and the only prescription is more cowbell”… (page 2), or
“it’s a town full of losers and I’m pulling out of here to win”…(page 1!)
I have Lady GaGa to thank as well. A few months ago she tweeted that very Bruce Springsteen lyric without any further explanation to her gazillions of followers. Many of them doubtless pasted the line into Google and somehow stumbled across my piece about small-town communities in Northern England. Oops – the power of the ‘long tail’ of Search Listings…
So, one year in and going strong. I’m very proud of some of my writing. I’ve had a couple of film reviews ‘published’ on LeftField Cinema and I still enjoy reading older posts. So much so, that after a year and 60-odd posts, this is my first cheat, my first ‘clips show’ with a few links back to (ahem) unfairly neglected posts that for whatever reason haven’t been as widely read as I might have liked.
“me and my important thoughts”
The inspiration for What I Reckon – the terrific Mitchell and Webb sketch that is years old but still a frighteningly accurate parody of ‘interactive news’.
“and they say that we’l have fun if it stops raining”
We got lucky last year, in that our first family camping trips (with a borrowed tent) were blessed with fine weather. This coming weekend we’re going to buy our own tent, stove, tables and so on. We are definitely fair-weather campers, but this is surely the kiss of death for the British summer…
“it’s not going to stop” My last post listed my favourite films of the past decade. P.T.Anderson featured twice in the Top 10. He’s a fantastic, daring director. I can’t wait to see what comes next.
“take a step outside” In 2008 I spent a tremendously wet and almost as rewarding week volunteering with The National Trust in The Lake District. 12 strangers coming together to do Just A Little Bit of Good. I’m volunteering again for them this summer, clearing and maintaining the Jurassic Coastal footpath in Dorset.
Normal service will resume next week. If anyone wants to ‘get me started’ on something, I’ll do my best to oblige. Leave me a comment and I’ll see what I can do. That aside I do have tentative ideas for future posts about BHAGs, Cate Blanchett, Retailer Marketing, Sunset Boulevard, Experiential Marketing and Angelina Ballerina. Oh yes.
I told myself I wasn’t going to do this, but after hearing the epic job that the Filmspotting guys did, it inspired me. I went through lists from other reviewers & critics as well as my own reviews and ratings on Facebook.
Some of these films are here because of the impression they made upon me when I first saw them, some for their daring or originality, some for their sheer re-watchability. I’m sure on a different day the order might get shuffled around, but I think the Top 10 are all fantastic, and well worth your time. To be honest, the other 30 are all pretty flippin’ fantastic too.
40. Juno… great characters – especially the supporting cast (I Heart Allison Janney), with some wonderful scenes, and (controversially?) I really loved the animation.
38. The Incredibles… as ever with Pixar, a tremendously realised world, with a fantastic family dynamic. The simplest story filled with wonderful detail.
37. 28 Days Later / 28 Weeks Later… you might say it’s wrong to combine these, but I love these re-thinking of the ‘zombie’ genre. Kinetic, unsettling, shocking, bloody.
36. Shaun of The Dead… from the outrageous to the sublime. A wonderful British comedy that’s only this low on my list because I am so completely familiar with it, and with Spaced, that helped inspire it.
35. Team America: World Police… hilarious. Puppet Porn. MATT DAMON. I’m so rone-ry. So wrong it’s very, very right.
34. Wall-E… the first third of this film would be in my Top 5. It’s beautifully moving like almost nothing else I’ve seen. But while the space station is still terrific, it’s not something I love to revisit…
33. Training Day… IMHO Denzel Washington’s career-best performance as The Bad Cop. He tears up the screen, chews it around and spits it out.
32. Grizzly Man… a fantastic Werner Herzog documentary. It’s so natural, beautiful and surprising that I don’t want to say more for those who’ve not seen it.
31. Oldboy… wowzers. A blistering Korean film with a twisted story, occasionally gut-wrenching action sequences, a hammer, toothbrush, octopus and probably the worst hotel room ever.
30. Pan’s Labyrinth… a magical fairy tale set against the rustic brutality of the Spanish Civil War. Hard to describe its thrilling fantasy and sense of threat, so I won’t.
29. The Diving Bell & The Butterfly… another magical tale, told with astonishing honesty and verve from inside the main character’s head. A tour de force of acting and directing.
28. A History of Violence… Viggo Mortensen is outstanding in this fable of redemption and renewal.
27. Son of Rambow… boy, this touched some nerves for me, about the joys and insecurities of growing up in the 1980s.
26. Lord of The Rings (yes, all of it)… I know this is a bit of a cheat, but this captivated me far more than the original books did. The visual effects and depth of imagination to create Middle Earth are unmatched.
25. Donnie Darko… one I need to revisit, but which really messed with my mind when I first saw it. Unlike almost anything else, at times moving, funny, tragic.
24. (Odishun) Audition… The first half is a very measured, almost gentle exploration of a widower’s hesitant attempts to start a new relationship. The second half definitely isn’t, and the last 15 minutes are almost unwatchable.
23. Where The Wild Things Are…despite the source material, this definitely isn’t for kids. But it is a beautiful depiction of childhood, alienation and dislocation. Spike Jonze’s designs are wonderful and the lead performance by Max Powers is just wonderful.
22. [Rec]… a truly frightening Spanish horror film. Shot entirely with hand-held cameras in often pitch-dark interiors, this assaults the senses in a rapidly escalating fashion, all leading up to the terrifying final scene, which makes the end of The Silence of The Lambs feel like Mary Poppins.
21. Dogville… Lars von Trier continues his abuse of his female leads. This time it’s Nicole Kidman, who gives a great performance in this set-less destruction of the American Homeland myths. Paul Bettany leads a very strong supporting cast. It’s an intimate and disturbing portrayal of cruelty and vengeance.
20. United 93… Paul Greengrass recreates the events that are almost too terrible to recreate. The immediacy of the direction, the lack of any known stars and the true-to-life dialogue makes this almost unbearable. A really important film.
19. Der Untergang (Downfall)… forget the myriad Youtube spoofs of ‘that scene’. Instead, marvel at Bruno Ganz’s astonishing performance as Hitler, and shudder at the claustrophobia within the final days of The Third Reich.
18. Children of Men… perhaps the best depiction of urban violence and war I’ve ever seen. There are several bravura sequences of extended tracking shots, including one starting inside a car before going outside. Clive Owen is tremendous in the dystopian near-future that is all the more alarming for feeling so close to today.
17. No Country for Old Men… a brilliant depiction of my second-favourite Cormac McCarthy novel. Violent, nihilistic, brutal. Tommy Lee Jones is wonderful as the quiet but despairing soul at the heart of the violence.
16. Amelie… this left me grinning from ear to ear. I simply love its fantastical whimsy and style. Filled with a terrific cast of characters, it’s led by Audrey Tatou who has created a heroine unlike any other. Gorgeous.
15. Away From Her… a masterclass in acting from Julie Christie and Gordon Pinsent. Moving beyond words, it traces the sacrifice and loss that comes with Alzheimer’s.
14. Finding Nemo… my favourite animated film bar none. I must have seen this with my daughters more than 40 or 50 times, yet every scene is still funny, the plotting and characters are wonderful, the voice work from Ellen Degeneres, Willem Dafoe, Allison Janney, Geoffrey Rush and others is perfect. Just brilliant.
13. Let the Right One In… a vampire film unlike anything else. Glacial in tone, almost silent for long stretches, it traces the coming-of-age-relationship between two teenagers, except one of them isn’t a teenager. Punctuated by extreme acts of violence, it’s a wonderful and disturbing love story.
12. Brokeback Mountain…worth it for Heath Ledger’s final scene alone, this is a gorgeous portrayal of illicit and repressed love. Ang Lee has explored this theme many times, but never quite as well as this.
11. The Bourne Ultimatum… I’d like to double-team this with The Bourne Supremacy, but in fact I slightly prefer this. Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass reinvented the action thriller with Jason Bourne, which in turn stimulated the James Bond back into life with Casino Royale.
10. Memento… (alongside L.A. Confidential) Easily Guy Pearce’s finest hour, he dominates every frame in this fractured, impossible tale of grief and its aftermath. I left the cinema desperately trying to unravel the twists, and on each reviewing it still surprises right to the final scene.
9. Once… a simply beautiful love story, made on a shoestring budget. It’s full of beautiful, poignant scenes, natural performances and wonderful music.
8. Punch-Drunk Love… Perhaps my biggest surprise, certainly this high up the list. It stars Adam Sandler, for goodness sake! But he is fantastic here in this gem from P.T.Anderson, probably my favourite director of the last 10 years. There’s a clip here…
7. In Bruges… definitely the funniest film in my Top 10. This is easily Colin Farrell’s greatest performance, strangely moving as the hitman on the run. He has amazing chemistry with Brendan Gleeson, and it’s as profane as they come. Midgets. Drugs. Hookers. Gay Beer. Fantastic.
6. Man On Wire… a marvellous, charming, thrilling documentary about a lunatic. Philippe Petit is brave, visionary and ever-so-slightly mad. This is a terrific piece of work.
5. Hotaru no Haka (Grave of The Fireflies)… a devastating story of children beset by war. Brother and Sister are orphaned and abandoned, forced to fend for themselves in the dying days of World War II. There are moments of magical beauty, but their innocence and optimism seems doomed (to our adult eyes) from the start, and the final section of the film left me broken and empty, sobbing like a child. I’d love to raise the courage to watch it again, but I’m not sure I could stand it.
4. Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind… another one I’d love to review, as it’s been years since I was dumbfounded by the brilliant performances of Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet, by the imagination of Michel Gondry’s direction and Charlie Kaufman’s story, and the all-enveloping sensual experience of this marvellous film. It’s a gorgeous story about love and memory, and to me begins to unravel the secrets of the human soul. Not bad, eh?
3. Cidade de Deus (City of God)… Perhaps the most breathtaking of these films, this brutal tale of life in Rio’s favelas starts at a breakneck pace and never lets up. The cast are virtually all first-time actors, and this only adds to the naturalistic realism. It’s at turns terrifying and shocking, again with a constant sense of threat and vulnerability.
2. Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others)… Perhaps my favourite performance of the entire decade, Ulrich Muhe is simply stunning in this bleak yet heartwarming story set amidst the creeping terror of the East German Stasi in the 1970s. As a surveillance officer whose empty life becomes defined by observing and recording the minutiae of the lives of other people, his silences and face speaks louder and more movingly than any dialogue.
1. There Will Be Blood… As I have two young children, it’s a sadly rare treat to go to the cinema. So when I saw this on the big screen, maybe it made an even bigger impact. But to me this is almost perfect cinema. It’s both massive and yet personal in its scope, tracking the rise and fall of American Capitalism through the astonishing character of Daniel Plainview. Daniel Day Lewis gives a towering performance that is as big and all-encompassing as Ulrich Muhe’s is quiet and almost anonymous. The cinematography is gorgeous, with a tremendous opening sequence without any dialogue; only the pure physicality of digging for oil by hand, and Jonny Greenwood’s amazing score. So much about this film is unlike anything else. There is so much to immerse yourself in, a truly multi-sensory experience.
…and in the UK at the moment, 3 weeks is practically a lifetime. 3 weeks ago I had a bit of a rant at the Labour and Tory parties, but concluded with what I hoped wasn’t naive optimism.
I hope there is a genuine three-way split on May 6th. (Naively?) I hope this forces the main parties into constructive debate and discussion to represent more of the views and desires of the British population. I hope it breaks the complacency and arrogance of the Conservative and Labour Parties to create a more inclusive, less adversarial politics. I hope…
In fact, if you haven’t read that post, it may well be worth going there first, just to see how far things have moved on.
The last month in British politics has engaged me more than the past 5-10 years. Colleagues and friends have been openly and spontaneously, positively chatting about important issues and sharing personal opinions like never before. The TV debates were the catalyst for this, but then so was the chance of real change.
One of the first lectures of my degree (over 20 years ago, sigh) was about trying to define politics. Derived from the Greek polis, meaning a (city) state or body of citizens, a common definition ofpolitics is…
…a process by which groups of people make collective decisions (so says Wikipedia)
To my mind this suggests that decisions are made through discussion and debate, through collaboration and potentially through compromise, so that the will of the entire polis is reflected or at the very least acknowledged.
For my whole lifetime this has not been true of UK politics. Our adversarial, first-past-the-post system does not promote debates where views or policies are modified, but instead a series of monologues where opposing parties simply yell at each other, declaring their own ‘rightness’ and decrying the others’ foolishness. It’s like children playing football, bickering over who gets to be captain. Except it’s bickering over how to run the country. But the party leader with the most friends (MPs) always wins. So when the others (after 5 years or so) finally get a chance, they unsurprisingly overturn half of what has been done before.
While I was studying for my degree, The Mary Whitehouse Experience was a comedy show. One of the most famous of their recurring sketches was History Today, in which two stuffy professors start to discuss weighty matters, before descending into playground banter and name-calling.
And this is what politics has been like, for as long as I can remember. If my children behaved like our politicians, they would sit on the naughty step.If it happened in a classroom, the culprits would be sent out; it’s unacceptable. My marketing clients expect their agencies (who all have their own agendas) to work together to a common goal, sometimes setting aside their own concerns. From an early age we (rightly, IMHO) teach children the benefits of collaboration and cooperation, the qualities of listening and empathy. Yet none of these seem to have been valued in British politics…
…until this week. The right-wing Conservative party won the most votes and seats at the election, but not enough to command a majority. They might not be able to be captain all of the time. So they have formed a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, in my mind the most progressive and left-leaning of the main UK parties. Right now, barely a couple of days in, they seem extremely serious about this. Never mind that many of their respective party supporters are poles apart on issues like climate change or taxation, the leaders have grabbed the chance to make a difference.
In fact, their early speeches and press conferences feel like they have their long-term Legacy in mind. If they can make this work, they will truly be remembered in UK political history, far more than Tony Blair or Gordon Brown. Necessity may well be the mother of invention here, but it feels to me like they are going for it.
Don’t get me wrong, every time I see Michael Gove or George Osborne, my skin crawls a little bit and I shudder.
Gove makes Peter Mandelson look like a kitten. I can only hope he fails his CRB check as Schools Minister on the grounds that he would scare the children. Osborne looks and behaves like a vampire, like he truly despises mortals. He was barely present during the entire election campaign, I can only assume because he doesn’t look good in daylight.
On the other hand, the agreement between the coalition parties is an impressive piece of work, truly a mature and grown-up piece of thinking. I truly hope they can make it work. There have been countless old-guard politicos and journalists all over the media in the last 48 hours behaving as though this is a terrible thing, as though it’s such a leap of faith that mere voters will explode before they can wrap their simple heads around it.
But in fact, it’s a truly simple concept. In order to make things work, to make things better, sometimes it’s best to work together. That might mean you can’t always do everything you want. I get it. My daughters get it. My friends and colleagues get it. But it still appears that many of the dinosaurs in British politics don’t.
I hope it works. I hope Cameron and Clegg lay down the law to their ministers, officials and parties to make it work. It needs to work, to deliver the British economy out of recession without Thatcherite levels of social division. If it does work, it will transform British politics, in a very good way, to be more inclusive, more mature, more collaborative.
