Adiocracy

What’s most brilliant about this idea for “The Last Exoricsm” by The Visionaire Group LA is how incisive the media is. What more dead-on place to reach the young male demographic than ChatRoulette?! Get ‘em while their horny. They’ll def tell their friends!

Joseph Bianco

The hardest part of creativity is discriminating between what’s a sinking rock and what’s worth polishing into gold. That’s where ‘Killer Work’ comes in. The class provided me an opportunity to really ‘trial and error’ my way through my own creative process to find what worked. The class really helped me realize that you have to use TNT and let the ideas explode out of your mind before those few nuggets of gold will strike you over the head. From there – you polish.

The first day of class, Mark laid out the 3 key elements that make an ad work. I haven’t looked back since. These three criteria have become my mantra when evaluating my work. I’ll leave it to the guru to teach what these three keys are.

I highly recommend ‘How To Do Killer Work’ to anyone interested in not just creating a great book, but in developing their thinking.

You can contact me at Bianco.ja2@gmail.com

Amgad Fawzy

While most other courses are concerned with the DOs and DON’Ts of what makes good advertising — something you could read in Hey Whipple — this course helped me think consciously and honestly about the creative process and the behaviors unique to me that help me get into the mindset of generating great ideas. The course also encouraged me to not stop after I’ve come up with a good idea, but to keep pushing myself to in search of a great idea.

The process I’ve developed here will not only help me in developing my portfolio and throughout my advertising career, but it will have a positive impact on my writing in general. My greatest take-away from Killer Work is that truly great ideas aren’t simply clever or funny, they must be insightful and tell an inherent truth about the product or about life.

While the format of the course – students take turns presenting their work, which is then critiqued by the instructor and the other students – was identical to that of other portfolio course, the element that differentiates Killer Work from other classes is that Mark takes the time to discuss the creative process with students, drawing on his personal experience, while always emphasizing that each person’s creative triggers are unique.

You can contact me at fawzy.amgad@gmail.com

Jerry Oulds

How To Do Killer Work was an ABSOLUTE TEN out of 10!
Questions? Contact me at Jerry.Oulds@gmail.com

Just saw this one for the first time on AdPulp. It’s the 3rd in a series (from what we remember) created for Malibu Rum by comedy writer/actor Eric Fensler. In our opinion, it’s the funniest of the three, because the mock-morning show setting captures so many info-idioms, including all that super-duper enthusiasm, the convoluted problem-solution logic, and amazed clown-sized smiles. It’s about as stealth a mention for a product as you can get, and truth is, it may work better as a spoof than as an ad. The Mike Morgan character (is that the actor’s real name?) is so damn good, we’d hire him to do the real thing.

We can see how, on paper, the idea of a show-between-the-show for its iconic brands might have gotten Unliver excited. The big risk is, it must be executed with genius. By this we mean, it must use its insider-ness to give viewers a funny or poignant insight by pulling back the curtain in a way that an ad agency can do — because they’re true insiders — that a show runner cannot.

Otherwise you run the risk of being a poorly written and painfully executed parody.

Unfortunately for both Unilever and Mindshare, this Dove ad was nothing more than an updated version of 2 c’s in a K. A dull slice of ‘Mad Men life’ missing any kind of brilliant insider wink, or freshly minted irony.

In fact, both agency and brand missed the big opportunity here, because they lost sight of the deliciously simple, larger picture. In the message breaks for a series that is a peephole into how advertising got such an awful reputation, there has also been an attempt to celebrate the creative side — the artistic, uhm, less manipulative side of the biz — by holding up a simple mirror to it, as BMW did in this season’s premier with the Martin Puris’s BMW interstitial. It gave viewers an authentic glimpse behind the curtain.

We couldn’t have said it any better than ‘Steve of Westmont, IL’ who commented in the Ad Age Madison and Vine article on the effort:

“The ad was obvious…and very poor. Why try to recreate a show that is already on the air? You cannot elevate ad actors to the level of the show actors in a 30 sec spot… trying to recreate an ad agency environment to sell a product during an award winning show on the same topic is ridiculous.”

Well said, Steve of Westmont.

This is a great on-the-ground effort by UNICEF for its Tap project. 2 billion people lack access to clean water. A staggering statistic that is, unfortunately, completely unemotional.

It’s not the vastness of the number that resonates. It’s the effect it has on each one of those individuals. UNICEF’s Dirty Water vending machine with its eight disease flavors is the difference between a gimmick and a bring-it-on-home illustration.

It’s also a great example of how a local live event — appears to have been launched with a single event in NYC’s Union Square (right across from a Whole Foods!) — can generate great earned PR and viral buzz while sidestepping traditional media. The final button on the promo video is a little too Sasha Baron Cohen in its fun-making of unsuspecting individuals, but we forgive, because both the idea and execution are smart as hell.

We’re not saying ‘The Man Who Walked Around The World’ is not a great piece of video by BBH/London. And we’re not saying it’s not a smooth piece of choreography. And we’re not saying Robert Carlyle isn’t a natural born story-teller. And we’re not saying we didn’t stay and listen to the entire history of Johnny Walker. We’re just wondering why it won ‘Best of Show’ at this year’s One Show?

Perhaps we’re wondering this because the history of JW and their Walking Guy character is just not that interesting. And perhaps we’re wondering because knowing the history of JW doesn’t really do anything for us to reframe either the scotch or the company. Not that it wasn’t a sweet piece of logistics, but from what we understand, Old Spice’s ‘The Man Your Man Could Smell Like’ (Wieden+Kennedy) was just as much of a production miracle to make (with most transitions happening in-camera). First time we saw that, we wanted to see it again and again. And that spot only won Best TV :30. Maybe it should have taken ‘Best Of’ as well.

Here’s some student feedback from Mark Burk’s spring Killer Work class:

nicholas.troop@gmail.com

What seperates good teachers from bad ones?

I dont think it has to do with intelligence in the traditional sense of the word.  The best teachers posess an intuitive emotional intelligence that allows them to connect on some level with all the different personalities in the room; to understand their thought process and know what to say and do to bring out their best work.

After learning the characteristics of good advertising, the majority of this course is an exersize in self exploration.  The most important things you can take from this is an understanding of the way you think and the beginnings of a creative process that will produce work you can be proud of, and the confidence explore and ”keep going without knowing where youre headed.”

Nick

Robert.Ross@draftfcb.com

Mark Simon Burk has a fantastic ear for dead-on headlines and a keen sensitivity for what makes great advertising work. Whether you are a student looking to break into the industry or an advertising professional seeking to hone your skills, Mr. Burk’s class is a must-take. That’s not because you might not be good at what you do. It’s because you can be better. Even great. But you’ll first need to put in a lot of hard work and learn the fundamentals of how to do killer work!

Developing great noteworthy creative just doesn’t happen over night. It relies on the skills to competently evaluate advertising and sift through what makes bad advertising bad and great advertising superb. It requires that you develop a process in which you can delve deep into the details and come up with the insights and big ideas from which excellent creative can be developed. And, of course, it demands feedback from an advertising wiz like Mr. Burk who has the refined experience to help make your conceptual ideas sizzle and your tarnished ideas shine.

Robert Ross
Group Copy Supervisor
DraftFCB

We came across this wonderful nugget of inanity for Post Trail Mix Crunch. The big position is that it’s the ’sensation of trail mix for breakfast’. Not the real trail mix mind you, just the sensation. Okay, we’ll give them a pass for trying. But it’s the last line of copy that slays us:

‘Enjoy everything you love about trail mix in a cereal that satisfies your spirit of adventure!’ You like base jumping or free climbing? Now you can satisfy that adrenalin rush right at the breakfast table. Wanna get totally insane? For just this one crazy adventurous morning, substitute 2% for the fat free!

We actually liked the cereal. It’s the mindless garble on the package that’s so absurdly difficult to digest.

Call us elitist, but we love this involved little story created by Google which ran during the 3rd quarter of SB. ‘Parisian Love’ shows Google functionality via a delightful little romance that -yes — requires a little involvement. Doritos it ain’t.

Which is what we found so charming about it. And while the spot yielded tons of online buzz, ricocheting and pinging around the digital echo chamber, this activity did not match its TV effect. Why? You watch slapstick, but you talk over charming. While Doritos took the top 3 of the Nielsen IAG Top 10 most-recalled spots, the Google spot  came in 43 of 63 according to USA Today. And, as far as we can tell, didn’t make a single top 10 recalled list.

We say, cheers to Google for showing its human side and for giving viewers a little credit. And in terms of reaching audience, even though it’s not showing up on any of the Most Tweeted lists either, (Snickers and Betty White on top) we’d say Google knows exactly where its buzz is buttered.

We found this Super Bowl ad by the bloated Charles Barkley to be a pretty ridiculous choice for Taco Bell. Of all the aging players they could have picked, why choose a guy who’s practically flaunted his overweight-ness to sell their super high fat, super high cal meal deal. Watch him shimmy his girth through the phone booth while he raps a la Dr. Seuss.

There are a thousand spokesguys Taco Bell could have chosen that would not have pointed their bellies directly at the unhealthy qualities of its menu. BTW, we saw David Robinson at MJ’s Hall of Fame induction. He’s still looking lean and mean. We think CB is a bad brand choice for TB, made even more apparent, we think, by the Lamar Odom cameo.