Woman seeks copywriter
Much as he admires The Gruen Transfer, even Dr Mumbo has to admit that not every contribution to The Pitch is going to work.
Sadly this contribution from Fenton Stephens – selling polygamy – comes in that category.
Much as he admires The Gruen Transfer, even Dr Mumbo has to admit that not every contribution to The Pitch is going to work.
Sadly this contribution from Fenton Stephens – selling polygamy – comes in that category.
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I love it. Makes perfect sense to me…
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lol, I think it’s quite funny.
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I’m sold. Where do I sign up?
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I’m with Burrows; lame as can be and beyond undergraduate.
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Okay, even if there was a good idea in there, that was an incredibly poorly written ad. And just as poorly delivered.
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Written by a man no drought?
Get it?
It was a pun… I said Drought instead of Doubt.
Sorry, just given the level of intelligence this ad offers I felt the need to patronise people.
That means I treat them like they’re stupid.
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Dr Mumbo, since when was this site a platform for a public flogging? I have no idea what effort went into this ad or the skills and experience of the agency behind it, but it is well known that The Pitch offers little time for concept development and production, and some of the agencies have little experience at making TV ads. Shame on you for crapping all over this teams work.
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Hi Really Necessary.
I’m a fan of The Gruen Transfer, and think there’ve been some great ads put together for The Pitch. We’ve written about many of them.
Perhaps doing The Pitch is hard work, but plenty of other agencies have done it better, so I’m not sure that argument holds (I see you’re not arguing that it’s a great ad).
Regarding experience of making TV ads, yes the agency in question does have that experience, and makes some good ads. In my personal view, this doesn’t happen to be one of them though.
But they chose to do it, I’m sure partly for the exposure that comes with being on national television.
That means anybody – including me – is entitled to have a view. I’m not sure it’s shameful to say that a contribution that doesn’t work, doesn’t work.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
As a polygamist, I’m doubly offended.
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Dr Mumbo,
I agree with
1.ReallyNecessary?
15 Sep 10
7:43 am
“Dr Mumbo, since when was this site a platform for a public flogging?”
Or self flaggellation for that matter! The message is good and humorous. Given time money & resource production may have been better but ReallyNecessary has a fair point.
PS.As a member and founder of The Church of the Latter Day Shaggerz I’d like to say all fit females are welcome
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Tim, if it’s personal opinion you want to present, then save it for your personal Facebook page. Remember you are running a news site and are meant to present unbiased ‘news’ – it is us, the public, who can form an opinion based on that. In writing and distributing these stories as you do, you have enormous power to influence – and with that comes the power to destroy reputation. I suggest you respect that and present the facts rather than pure opinion.
Interesting how this ad actually ended up winning, too.
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Hi Really Necessary,
You don’t come here often, do you?
We post our news stories in the “news” section, our opinion pieces in the “opinion” section and our Dr Mumbo diary pieces in the “Mumbo” section. Have a look where this is posted.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Funny how I knew you were going to say that. You are right, I am relatively new to your newsletter and perhaps don’t understand your format just yet. My point still stands that singling out, naming and discrediting an agency when you are in a position of power such as yours is not good practise.
Anyway – I think we are going to have to agree to disagree. I have about 10 other forum arguments going on right now and they need my prompt response 😉
(j/k)
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Come back anytime. We like arguments here. (And opinions)
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
ReallyNecessary? – Regardless of the win, I thought the ad was awful. To its credit however, it did stick to the brief better, which may have been why it did win. But this ad didn’t really sell the idea to women of sharing their man – really answer why a woman who has someone would want to share him.
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Probably the best brief of the season… and totally botched by both contestants…
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lol @ReallyNecessary…
One thing I love about blog style posts is that there’s no pretense that what is being said is anything more than one person’s opinion. On the other hand, if you open up a newspaper or magazine, you’ll find 75% of the content is repurposed press releases, somehow presented as ‘unbiased’ news.
The posts on Mumbrella often stimulate debate, and I think it would be fair to say that the average reader is not so easily ‘influenced’ by Tim as to put their critical thinking and own opinions out to pasture.
More disturbing, in my opinion, is that the vast majority of comments are written anonymously. What is it about this industry that makes people want to hide their true thoughts behind a pseudonym?
I don’t see how sharing our opinions here can affect the reputation of the agency behind the ad. The work surely speaks for itself. We will at the end of the day make up our own mind and, for me, personally, in my own opinion, this ad didn’t cut it. (and I decided that last night before I read this post).
At least the other attempt got a couple laughs from me. [And, I thought the GT panel missed the point – rather than an ‘ad’ it was a video presentation showing the strategies they would use to launch a multi pronged campaign. Smart thinking.]
As a creative person, I know that good honest feedback is a gift. The worst thing someone can do is smile and say they loved something, when in fact they hated it. Socially we often tell white lies to make people feel better, to be nice. But if the goal is to make the best work possible, then constructive criticism, honest feedback, is necessary.
If anything, we don’t do enough of this.
The level of anonymity here would suggest to me that there’s a fear, that in expressing an honest opinion under one’s own name – to the same people who we work with, or might work with in the future – that we might damage our own employability.
Obviously I post under my own name, so I’m either unafraid of that outcome, or stupid. Your call 😉
My honest assessment of the above ad – just my own opinion mind:
– assumes that people live like Sex in the City – hitting the man drought post 30 – when in real life the average age of women getting married is under 30 yrs. That means half the population is doing just fine, and have no motivation to ‘share’ what they have with the less fortunate.
– assumes that women just want to get married/have a man, rather than considering what that represents (love, commitment, security, family, etc)
– I can’t identify with the character: what she says and the way she says it makes me dislike her, and feel insulted as yet another cliched stereotype is presented as being a modern ‘woman’.
– rule 101: ‘show don’t tell.’ A talking head with an infographic doesn’t make great advertising.
– puns, puns, and even more puns.
– sexist in that it defines polygomy as a matter of one man to many women (why not one woman to many men?)
– it didn’t offer a single credible motivation why I would decide to ‘share’ my partner with others, while I can think off several off the top of my head: help with the housework and child rearing (cause honestly men still aren’t cutting it); emotional support (cause men are frequently crap at it); always having someone to look after the kids if you want to go out, or go away for a romantic weekend; it’s like having a second you to help you out. One of the tongue in cheek things that lots of overworked women say – ‘I wish I had a wife of my own.’
There’s a rich vein that could have been mined here, however this particular ad (in my opinion) lacked any real insight into the minds or lives of the average woman.
The other pitch entry won my vote because I understood that this was not an ‘ad’ to be screened to an audience, but rather a video presentation outlining their strategy to win over multiple niche audiences. They expressed good motivational insights into why each of those target audiences might be persuaded to vote for polygamy. The video was entertaining, fresh, and spot on.
The downfall of The Pitch is that it is TVC centric while the best marketing strategies will work outside of any one platform, and may not even have a TVC component. If the goal is to ‘make the best tvc’ I can understand that Bulldozer had to lose because it wasn’t really a tvc. However, if the goal is to work out how to effect real change, then I think their strategy would have been more successful in bringing polygamy to Australia.
But that’s just my opinion 🙂
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