They don't make em like they used to

I was scouting the Anna's site the other day and was having a look at the Judges Classics section. I love the old school ads just because of the simplicity. No fancy graphics, no drumming gorrilas and no fancy visual bumming to hide behind. And because there's nothing to hide behind you seem to get more truth and insight out of the product. In these days of digital, 2.o twittering lark it's good to go back and have a look at these.

They do kinda feel like it's your mate talking to you not some company trying to sell to you. Makes you wonder if Citreon had the 2CV today would they let an ad like this run, get the feeling you'd hear "that's great just get rid of the copy, shoot the car in colour and stick it on a windy road."

Ads like this are great doff of the cap to writing lines, lines, more lines and then some more lines. This seems to be becoming a bit of a lost art now. It sounds daft but everybody seems to be an art director nowadays. Any monkey can learn to use a Mac but can you then turn that into making great ads rather than polishing turds?

It's amazing when we show our book to CD's how many times we've heard them say it's nice to see some good lines in a book and they don't get to see much of that nowadays, makes you wonder what people are showing them? Visual bumming anyone?

Nearly every CD James and I have met says they are copywriter, maybe there's something in this?

Nobody says can you design an ad; you have to be able to write a good ad. I believe that in order for a creative team to be good at what they do the writer should be able to art direct a bit and the art director should be able to write a bit.

Maybe the next ad you write give yourself a bit of a challenge. Turn off the mac, do it in black and white and only allow yourself to use a shot of the product you've been asked to advertise. See what happens.

Cheers, Ben (art director)