The Death In Advertising

Image via Wikipedia

For some reason, the people at Dubai-based document imaging company Xeratek think using the sound of an ECG flatlining followed by someone wailing 'Nooo' in their advertising is a smart idea. I'm probably over-reacting here, but I really, really take exception to having the sound of someone's death forced on me during my morning drive to work.

I have moaned before about the use of unpleasant sounds in radio ads, the National Bonds campaign used a woman suiciding, a couple arguing and so on. I've posted about the awfulness of radio ads in the past, too. Nobody's ever popped up to defend any specific ad or, indeed, the industry in general. Oh, now I tell a lie. Some blithering idiot from Kellog's ad agency tried astroturfing this post, resulting in this act of SEO-driven revenge.

Much of the awfulness is mired in agencies trying to use 'picture power' to make the ad stand out and help it get its point across. I can see them in my mind's eye, clustered around the client (a small, fat balding man in a suit, somewhat hapless looking and a little off-colour) urging him to take their advice and illustrate the product, make it come to life for the listener. This is what they call 'the creative'. Let's take a concept and put it into living sound in the most imaginative and attention-grabbing way, really disrupt the listener and then get our message across, they babble excitedly as Mr Klienman looks uncertainly at them (he's actually wondering if he remembered to feed the dog and if Pauline would notice again. Damn dog's her pride and joy, loves it more than me, he's thinking as he watches the people from the ad agency work themselves into an evangelistic frenzy. One of them has fallen on the floor and appears to be having some sort of seizure.)

I don't doubt that a calm, factual announcement wouldn't work as well as a colourful, illustrative and entertaining treatment. The trouble, I suspect, is that the advertisers so constantly fail to provide the latter. And then there's the issue of what concepts you actually pick to illustrate your company's products and services. Those concepts are associated, after all, with the brand you're promoting. So the sound of death, the ultimate worst fear of the human race, the cessation of our time on this planet, is perhaps not the smartest idea. Someone just died. Yay. Buy our product.

Hey, it's just a joke though, isn't it? I'm taking it all too seriously, it was just meant to get the ad running and bring a smile to people's faces, surely? I don't remember what the punchline is, though. I was too busy being unsettled by the sound of a death.

Klienman is looking doubtful as the exec on the floor starts to shout in a strange voice, semi-words that sound English but somehow don't make sense, like a Sigur Ros vocal. The account director whips out a pen and a sheet of paper and Klienman, remembering now that he hadn't put water out for the stupid mutt either, signs distractedly. His mobile rings and, sure enough, it's Pauline who's come back to the house and is shouting at him about mistreating the dog. Miserably, he watches the account director licking his lips and folding the paper into his pocket as the creative team help their spittle-flecked colleague up. They've won and the client agreed to the death concept. Kleinman watches them bundle excitedly through the door as he realises Pauline has just told him she's leaving him.

Death Stalks My Keyboard

Image by tanakawho via FlickrTo mark the start of the Dubai Summer Surprises Shopping Festival and the re-appearance of the infinite-eyed yellow tide of evil, I'm putting up a traffic-destroying writing post today.

Death Stalks My Keyboard

I was at a workshoppy thing with a client a while back, run by a very nice but terribly keen American person. I don't think anyone can properly understand wacky sects until they watch someone corporate giving it their all - the reinforcement, the expectation of people to 'become one' with the goal of being a team sometimes scares me in a mild sort of way. Anyway, the workshop was to start with everyone introducing themselves, their organisation and something that not everybody knew about them.

There were English people present. Worse, there were Jordanians there. The introduction was met with wide-eyed horror and then people started, cajoled and jollied along, to mumble their introductions. Joe Doe was from this agency and he was a karaoke singer, Jenny Penny from that agency had a secret love of Brussels sprouts.

The beam swept up to me. 'Hi, I'm Alexander McNabb and I'm from Spot On. Last week I killed a girl."

I Kill Her

The silence was rather marvellous. Our visitors smiled nervously; two watery, uncertain grins. I went on to explain and their relief was palpable, which was something of a surprise, I have to say. I mean, do murderers really confess all to visiting workshop leaders? Perhaps they do...

I had told the truth, in a way - the girl I had killed was very close indeed to my heart and hers was the first death that actually affected me. I was amazed at the strength of my reaction the decision to end the life I had essentially given her in my head. I couldn't listen to Secret Garden's ethereal Sleepsong for weeks afterwards, a song that was as connected to her death as George Winston's February Sea was to her life. It was all the more surprising as I had carried out a vast number of deaths in my first attempt to write a book, a funny book called Space. This was at least partly because one of the characters derived sexual satisfaction from the act of killing - the neat bit being that she worked for the CIA. (She also wore a black leather catsuit. That was just my female side coming through)

Olives, my first serious novel, had - as one writer friend put it - a pretty high headcount. But Beirut starts with a death, one which has invariably provoked very strong reactions indeed from test readers who had previously read Olives. It's a brutal death, a cold death - and from its terminal simplicity the whole book flows out into its different directions, plots and possibilities. And yes, the baldy bloke with the scythe and sartorial challenges is never far away.

The book I'm working on right now is totally hinged on death's inevitability. The one thing you know from the first word is the main protagonist the book is named after is going to die very soon .

Death does, indeed, stalk my keyboard. I'm not sure why, because I don't consider myself a morbid person at all. Mind you, as I pointed out in a (similar, in fact) guest post over at Phillipa Fioretti's blog, if I wasn't getting this stuff out of my system this way, who knows what I'd be getting up to?

Anyway, sorry Naeema. But I did enjoy the reaction! :)

Maudlin

Image by n0cturbulous via FlickrI've started work on the next book, which is about a man who has cancer. That's all I'm telling for now. It's one reason why this particular topic caught my eye when @ahmednaguib slung out a tweet about it.

When I read Derek Miller's last words to this world (on his blog), I was moved to eye-prickling silence. This was a brave man, an incredibly brave man. Possibly braver than the man who inspired the character in my book, although that's a hard call as I didn't really know either of them. I knew my guy more, he stayed with us in Sharjah for a couple of days on his way to meet a skinny bloke hefting a scythe. As for Derek, I didn't know him at all: my only knowledge of him and his family comes from the last words he penned to be posted the day after his last breath left his body.

If Derek was right about his soul's progress, then all is gone in a last moment of peace: eternal darkness and, yes, rest. If he was wrong, his soul is in heaven looking at that blog post and going 'Oh, shit, I didn't mention Shirley and there are too many I's in the damn piece'. Or something like that. Because the act of posting is (for me, anyway) the act of realising you've missed an apostrophe or the sticky S key on your damn laptop has meant you've posted that Modhesh is a hit.

The link to Derek's post is HERE. It is a remarkable thing that hit a massive, ten-fingered, end of Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band chord for me. There are all sorts of things to get from this, from whether you'd pre-write your past* blog post (yes, I would, but I'd have a lot more to say about all you complete bastards out there) to what you'd say (maybe I'd focus on more important things than the bastards) and to how you'd say it (*ulp*).

But to sit at a keyboard and frame your last words? That's a very hard thing to contemplate.

* See? That was supposed to have been 'last'!!!! (See? Part two: the original post above had a broken link!)

A Grave Situation

I have long been impressed by an American epitaph, apparently engraved on the poor woman’s gravestone. It struck me so much that I can recite it even today:

Here lies the body of Mary Anne Lowder
Who burst whilst drinking a Seidlitz Powder
Laid in this grave to her heavenly rest
She should have waited ‘till it effervesced

It's TRUE. I swear to God.

Well, now I’ve found a better one. Well, Sarah actually found it. But how’s this for your last earthly inscription:

Beneath in the dust,
the mouldy old crust
Of Moll Batchelor late was shoven
Who was skilled in the arts of pyes, custards and tarts
And every device of the oven.
When she’d lived long enough, she made her last puff
A puff by husband much praised
And here she doth lie and makes a dirt pye
In hopes that her crust may be raised.

It is to be hoped that Moll didn’t succumb to one of her own pies. Both inscriptions are perfectly genuine, apparently, and are sourced.

As we’re on the subject of being amused whilst dying, the ‘best epitaph of all time’ award still goes to comedian Spike Milligan, whose gravestone reads, in Irish: Duirt me leat go raibh me breoit

“I told you I was ill.”

The fact that it's my birthday tomorrow has NOT influenced the subject of this post... >;0)