Campaign Magazine’s Facebook page is pants

The advertising industry’s trade magazine, ‘Campaign’, announced today that they’ve joined Facebook. They did this with an article on their Brand Republic website, which said in its entirety:

Campaign has launched its own page on Facebook. You can find us by searching “Campaign Magazine”.

No call to action. No mention of the benefits of joining, or what you can expect. And worst of all, no link. Really? They couldn’t even be bothered to paste in a hyperlink so people didn’t have to go and search? Do they not care if anyone ‘likes’ their page?

Despite this pitiful attempt at driving traffic, I followed their instructions and found the page. It did precisely nothing to improve my perception of Campaign’s social media knowledge. Check out the logo they’ve used:

I didn’t add those JPEG artifacts. That’s exactly how it looks on the page. Impressive!

OK, so what about the content of the page? The logo and announcement don’t matter so much if it’s a good page. But I suspect you’ve gathered from my tone that the content is probably the worst thing of all.

So far, every update bar one has been a straight-up reposting of a story from their main website. No additional commentary – nothing. It’s just another place for them to post all the links from their main site. Which makes it utterly pointless. Why would anyone come and ‘like’ the page just to get a million Campaign articles in their news feed, which would be more appropriate in their RSS feed reader? Where’s the social aspect of this page? What’s the point?

To add cringe to facepalm, they’ve also ‘liked’ a good deal of their own posts:

Oh dear. For the magazine that chronicles the increasingly digital and social advertising industry, this is dismal.

#Clienttweaks on Twitter

The wonderful @asburyandasbury kicked off a Twitter game today with the hashtag #clienttweaks. Take a famous strapline and tweet how those ‘tiny tweaks’ clients make could have totally ruined it. Some excellent examples:

@cog_design please re-arrange to ‘UKFC’ – think you may not have noticed but your version is very close to a sexual expletive #clienttweaks

@tomcopy In the VW factory they call this a lemon, which means it’s rubbish and they’re not going to use it. Buy one today #clienttweaks

@burnettie Don’t shop anywhere else for it, buy it from Argos instead. #clienttweaks

@reedwords Guinness is good for you in moderation as part of a calorie-controlled diet. #clienttweaks

@burnettie Once you take the lid off you’ll probably eat all the crisps #clienttweaks

@cog_design When it absolutely, positively, has to be there by the morning following your pre-4pm phone call and faxed confirmation #ClientTweaks

@asburyandasbury Marmite: You’ll love it. #ClientTweaks

And a few of my own:

Impossible is not much compared to what you can do with Adidas

If you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit, Club is the biscuit for you

Johnnie Walker: Jog on.

You can follow the latest #clienttweaks tweets here.

An interview with me

I was in two minds about posting this as you might have delusions that the person writing this blog is stunningly attractive and wise, but I concluded that you’re probably better off without that particular bubble. So here’s a video of me, filmed by Concept Cupboard, giving advice for grads and newbies to the ad business:

Comments and thumbs-up much appreciated. Hint, hint.

Improve your scamps with Google SketchUp

Us Copywriters notoriously suffer from ‘draw-like-an-idiot-child’ syndrome. This usually isn’t a problem for those with Art Directors, but even then, there’ll always be times when you’ll want to be able to make your ideas look good by yourself. To display in your portfolio, for example.

I’ve been looking into various ways of doing this, and one method I’m really enjoying is 3D modelling. It’s obviously not applicable to all concepts, but if you’ve got something like a product design or experiential idea to execute, it could be ideal.

Program-wise, you really can’t go wrong with Google SketchUp. Like all Google programmes, it’s incredibly user-friendly. And vitally, it doesn’t have so many features as to be overwhelming, while still managing to be powerful enough for super-complex models.

I’ve watched the first four SketchUp tutorial videos today (the absolute beginner ones) and played with the program itself for maybe 2 hours, and already I feel like I’m getting it. While you’re practising, it’s a good idea to try modelling the things around you – here’s a quick model I made of the perfume bottle on my desk:

Yes, the glass really is that thick. Sigh

SketchUp is free and not very demanding on system resources (although it probably gets that way when you’ve got a complex model going on – I definitely noticed some lag in the more advanced tutorial videos), so if you’ve always fancied trying your hand at 3D, it’s well worth a few hours of playtime.

Download SketchUp here.