Notes
Rosa ClarĂĄ image, added as I was archiving files from the third quarter of 2021.
The Claudia Schiffer Rolling Stone cover came to mind recentlyâI believe it was commended in 1991 by the Society of Publication Designers, which I was a member of.
Lucire 46 cover for our 25th anniversary: hotographed by Lindsay Adler, styled by Cannon, make-up by Joanne Gair, and hair by Linh Nguyen. Gown by the Danes; earrings by Erickson Beamon at Showroom Seven; and modelled by Rachel Hilbert.
I thought if we were serious about stopping tailgating, then the solution in the form of public service announcements would be remarkably simple, as far as the men are concerned. My concept, but not my photos. Since we’re talking lives here, one hopes the photos’ copyright owners will allow me to make these proposals.
You’d end tailgating overnight among half the population, and arguably more than half the culprits.
Long before Mad Men, and before I got into branding in a big way, I had an interest in advertising. One of the greatest send-ups of the industry was the 1990 Dudley Moore starrer Crazy People, set in the advertising industry against a politically incorrectâactually, cruel and inaccurateâlook at mental health. It’s one of those films that could never be made today, and for good reason. But there are some gems in it, as Moore’s character, Emory Leeson, embarks on “honest advertising”. It gets him committed to a facilityâwho ever heard of an advertising agency telling the truth, right?âuntil his ads become a hit, welcome by consumers who don’t want BS.
I came across this wonderfully copywritten and set ad from a PR professional in London trying to sell his Nan’s 1981 Volvo 244DL:
It’s bloody good. The copy kept me engagedâlike all good ads used toâand he’s done a reasonably good job with the Volvo Broad headline typeface (it was wider back in the day). The body text type should be Times rather than Baskerville, but considering the exact cut of Times isn’t available digitally (to my knowledge; it’s for larger text, and has very short descenders), there’s no wonder he opted to use another family.
It got me thinking: I’ve often posted the Crazy People Volvo ad in comments, as a humorous response. However, the ad doesn’t exist in a decent res online. The only ones that have wound up online are from screen captures from the movie. This 22 kbyte file is actually the best one around, save for one on the Alamy stock photo website that I found after the fact:
I couldn’t re-create the imageâI assume the only person who has it (or had it) is the art director of the film, or the photographer that was commissionedâbut maybe I could have a go at the type?
The digital Volvo Broad had to be widened 25 per cent, and I didn’t attempt to match the kerning.
The body type was the interesting one. I opted for Times Headline, since it wasn’t at a text size, but as I discovered, Volvo used a particular cut that had short descenders and was slightly condensed. I tried to match the leading.
Therefore, here it is, offered under Creative Commons with attribution to me for the typesetting, please, while noting the image is not mine:
With the lead-up to the 20th anniversary of the German TV show Alarm fĂŒr Cobra 11: die Autobahnpolizei, a fan group I runâthe largest unofficial community on Facebook for the seriesâhas been the subject of a Blitzkrieg by RTL. Trailers, which made up the majority of the uploaded videos, are indeed copyrighted material, but have resided happily there since 2008. But in their determination to have every video cleansed from Facebook, individual members’ copyrighted material, as well as videos that do not even belong to RTL, have been the subject of their claims.
As someone who is usually on the complainant’s side in DMCA cases, I have a lot of sympathy for their positionâbut I’ve never gone to a website to lay claim to material that isn’t ours. You would think that a company as well resourced as RTL would be able to tell the difference, if a far smaller firm like ours can, but it appears there are keyboard warriors even in the largest TV networks. A reply, therefore, is needed, and it’s going to be a nice weekend sans Facebook, where I have been barred for three days without their usual counterclaim procedure operating. Luckily, I had set up a back-door account to administer pages and groups, after Facebook’s anti-malware malware incident, which is practically all I do there these days anyway.
Ladies and Gentlemen:
Today we note that all videos uploaded to the largest Facebook group about the TV series Alarm fĂŒr Cobra 11: die Autobahnpolizei (https://www.facebook.com/groups/autobahnpolizei/) have been the subject of complaints by you, causing them all to be removed.
We acknowledge that some of these videos contain content from Mediengruppe RTL Deutschland and Action Concept. They have resided there since 2008 without a single complaint, and the overwhelming majority (over 90 per cent) are trailers that you have permitted not only on this group, but all fan groups.
Our group is non-profit and promotional in nature. Contractors to and employees of RTL and Action-Concept have happily been members for years, so it is clearly known to your organization.
You have also permitted fan edits to your material on YouTube for years, where derivative works have been created and reside.
Derivative works include subtitled, reworked Bulgarian translations to your trailers by Mr Hristian Martinov that feature new graphics, fan edits by Herr Thorsten Markus GrĂŒtzmacher featuring the history of the series, and fan videos by Herr Stefan Wilke made in 2002 and 2004. Given RTLâs own stance on these elsewhere, principally on YouTube, there is an appalling double standard that you have applied to this Facebook group.
We acknowledge that on a strict legal interpretation, some of these can be subject to your copyright claims and, had we been approached privately, we would have removed them. However, we are deeply concerned over content that Mediengruppe RTL Deutschland falsely and deceptively laid claim to, and is no concern of yours.
You have stated to Facebook that these are videos that you or your organization created. In the cases detailed below, this is not true.
We have two reporting numbers provided to us by Facebook, 1687808734841713 and 235243696819825, although numerous others relating to this group apply.
Among those are videos that you have falsely and deceptively laid claim to include those shot by individual members on set on visits to Action Concept, videos shot privately by Herr GrĂŒtzmacher while he was contracted to Action Concept, advertisements made by Kia Motors Deutschland GmbH which feature Alarm fĂŒr Cobra 11 characters, news articles covering Alarm fĂŒr Cobra 11 that are not owned by RTL but by their respective news networks, and an advertisement for Daimler AG that has no connection whatsoever to Alarm fĂŒr Cobra 11, Action-Concept, or RTL.
Please be advised that Facebook operates on US copyright law, which the above items do not fall foul of as they relate to RTL; even if they do, they are outside the scope of copyrighted material that you have any authority to file complaints about. The notion of German moral rights in copyright do not apply in the United States in this respect.
Your actions have caused accounts to be disabled and while this may be warranted in the cases that concern RTL material, it is not warranted in cases where you have made false claims to Facebook. Your statements are not only inaccurate in these cases, they are also defamatory in nature and we consider them libellous.
We are prepared to vigorously defend our position.
Nevertheless, we are reasonable, and we propose a fair solution. As there is no way to compile every reporting number over eight years of material that has vanished in the space of 24 hours, we request that all the material you have reported on this group to be reinstated in full. Once that is done, the group’s moderators work alongside you to remove, individually, only the content that belongs to you. Reinstatement should occur within a week of this email, while removal of all RTL trailers, promotional material, and direct clips from the showâthe last of which are indisputably RTL copyrighted materialâwill be done over the following week.
Facebook notes that you are under no obligation to respond. Please be advised that this message will be openly published, and will also be sent to you as hard copy, with other parties cced.
Yours faithfully,
Jack Yan, LL B, BCA (Hons.), MCA
ccs for Action Concept and Facebook, under separate cover
What an innovative way to generate goodwill for a TV series in the days before the network kicks off its 20th anniversary tributes (on March 12).
I was very interested to see this graphic on the Geely Instagram account today:
Spot the issue? I commented (and I wonder if they will delete it): ‘I would be a bit worried if the Geely GC7 found 71·5 mph its “flat out” speed. That would make it only as fast as a CitroĂ«n 2CV!’
That reference to the French 2CV (which I note the Germans called the Ente or, even more humorously, the Döschwo), is intentional. Not only is 71·5 mph the top speed of a CitroĂ«n 2CV, but here’s an advertisement from over 30 years ago (found here):
First up, the Cadillac ELR TVC, with actor Neal McDonough boasting about the US’s consumer culture and past glories:
And now, Ford parodies it with a far more down-to-earth and realistic message about what we should be praising in the occident, starring environmental advocate Pashon Murray, who runs Detroit Dirt, a composting company:
The parody is quite enjoyable and I’ve a feeling this will appeal to a wider audience than the original. However, for those who haven’t seen the original, it’ll up its views. GM is unlikely to be displeased, and the Ford Grand C-Max (or just C-Max in the US) is not a direct competitor.
Even though it’s not original, the newer commercialâsans Muhammad Ali and the Apollo programmeâfeels more responsible and in tune with where we are in the 2010s.
Above is Rupert Murdoch’s apology for the actions of the News of the World, to run in the UK in the wake of the resignations of Rebekah Brooks and Les Hinton.
They’re great words, and they’re straight out of the PR 101 playbook.
Some might say they’re a trifle too late, as was Mr Murdoch’s meeting with the parents and sister of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler.
Some might question whether this apology would even have been issued if the Murdoch Press could have kept a lid on the scandal, if the Metropolitan Police had not rediscovered its bottle, and if The Guardian had not been persistent.
More telling about this apology’s sincerity is whether real steps will be taken to change the culture within the Murdoch Press.
We still have an organization with nearly half a century’s worth of bullying tactics, skirting the boundaries of the law and allegedly breaking them, and a culture of the ends justify the means.
Shifting that culture is going to be a tough call, not while so much of the behaviour has been institutionalized.
It is going to take some effort on Rupert Murdoch’s own behalf, because, like all organizations where the boss’s personality is so strong, it’s going to rest on him to lead a cultural change. Allowing an insider who has always tolerated such behaviour to take the helm is not going to do an awful lot: you don’t get change by reinventing the past.
I remain sceptical when I think back to all the scandals that the Murdoch Press not only uncovered, but had a hand in generating.
I remain sceptical when I think back to the victories Murdoch has had over earlier controversies, and whether he believes he can weather this one simply with the passage of time.
The world is a different place, and he may just be compelled to see this out.
He may be 80, but he still has young kids by his third wife. Let’s hope he understands that he needs to do right by the 21st century, when people in the occident are more alert to corporate moves and their unsavoury hand in our daily lives. Given that his youngest children won’t have him around for as long as his oldest ones, what he has is his legacyâand unlike Prudence, Elisabeth, Lachlan and James, Grace and Chloe will spend more of their lives hearing about their Dad second-hand than first-hand.
I think back to when we wrote Beyond Branding, and how we forecast that consumers would drive integrity and transparency through their demand. It looks like this is being played out now.
The question I have is this: is this merely the first salvo in everyday people taking back their power, and will we sink back into disinterest in a month or two?
Rupert Murdoch would not be in this position if we didn’t have a love of the gossip in The Sun and News of the World. We, the people, made this man rich.
If the Murdoch that critics write about is the real man, he’s betting the farm on disinterest being the order of the day come the autumn.
In my own world, I recall that last September, when the Fairfax Press reported on the possibility of the resurrection of the Wellywood sign, the silence on even the anti-sign Facebook group was deafening. One person even said he would vote for my rival and eventual winner, Celia Wade-Brown, because I did not do enough to fight the sign.
All it took was five months for one man to forget that I was the only mayoral candidate who actively fought it. I am not picking on him alone, because I don’t believe he was the only one to suffer from a short memory. We all do it.
Instead, this one issue alone, trivial by the standards of the Murdoch story, took 14 months before anger subsided enough for it to resurface in force with a new news report.
This is the defence of the bully boss and the pompous politician: the hope people forget, thanks to our lives being harder during a recession. The tougher the economy gets, the more they think they can get away with, since they hope our attention will be swayed. Without a comfortable life, will we have the luxury of monitoring those in power?
It’s up to us to get wiser and realize there’s more important news than what the tabloid press tells us is interesting.
It’s up to us to realize that celebrity news really does not affect us, unless it’s truly inspirational. And 99 per cent of it isn’t.
It’s up to us to understand that ‘sources close to’ do not constitute the truth, nor are those sources capable of the mind-reading of their subjects.
And it’s up to us to remember the past, rather than look fondly on it with rose-coloured glasses.
Corporate misbehaviour alone can fill a newspaper, as can the incompetence of our leaders. Yet we see little of either since advertising is affected by blowing the lid on the first, and a power base is affected by blowing the lid on the second.
The first is what killed the News of the World, not a sudden crisis of confidence by James Murdoch, who put his name to the announcement of its closure.
The second contributed to the delay in a Murdoch apology, in the hope that the Murdoch Press’s close ties to the Conservative government would be sufficient to weather it through the scandal.
Look around, especially in this election year in New Zealand, and you see very similar forces at work.
Regardless of what Murdoch does, real change starts with us.
I was peering through Ford’s archive as it celebrates 100 years in Great Britain. This brought back a few memories: the Araldite glue campaign. Right next to it is an outdoor ad for the 1982 CortinaâTaunus 80 to those outside the Empah.
The Araldite ad showed how commonplace the Cortina had become. And back in the early 1980s, Ford seemed untouchable: British LeylandâAustin Rover by this pointâdidn’t have much decent product apart from the Metro, SD1 and a few others; Vauxhall had just launched its new front-wheel-drive Cavalier (Opel Ascona C) but it hadn’t achieved sales’ supremacy yet.
From memory, the other ads included a second Cortina (‘The tension builds’, I believe) and the cars torn off (‘How did we pull it off?’).
There have been some creative outdoor campaigns over the years, but, in my mind, this still ranks as one of the best of the 20th century.
And I can’t think of any of late that’s had quite the same effect, though a combined Volkswagenâinsurance one here in New Zealand comes close creatively. You think it’s a New Beetle ad till the car on the creative gets progressively wrecked each week. The last one advertises the insurance company. Down side: I have no recollection as to which insurance company it was, which says something about the failure of its branding, but have an inkling it was AA Insurance.
