Our clients operate in sectors including Sport, Travel and
Finance. We’re a true convergence agency: in one space, under one system of
creative direction, we’re seamlessly creating advertising, design and digital.
ACCOUNT MANAGER
The brief is to work across our accounts. We're looking for people who expect creative and strategic excellence. However, there is a lot of administration and production involved, so a head for detail is also a must. Must have least 2 years big/mainstream agency/brand exp. Digital helpful but not essential.
JUNIOR DESIGNER
The Junior Designer of our dreams would be
a brand design and print genius, but also have a real affinity with the experiential nature of
web and the ‘big idea’ mindset of Adland. They would be more than happy to help out on artwork as well as the high-end stuff.
For both jobs, we're looking for a deep-seated creativity but also the ‘multitasking mentality’ to really get involved with the wider company and team. People who get being a Percivalian.
Please send CV and (for the designer job) .pdf or web link of your best work to jobs@percival-agency.com
I’ve never used this blog to criticise or slander other people’s creativity. The fat content in Pret sandwiches, yes, but never the ideas that people put out there. Anyone brave enough to follow your creative star, I salute you. That sentiment is really what this blog’s about.
But then I saw the chip ad. And I think perhaps Microsoft is confident and comfortable in its own skin enough to take a tad of criticism.
I don’t know where to start, but let’s start with this ginormous widescreen illuminated poster in Edgware Road. Lord knows how wide it is or what size? 192 sheet? Good old 96 sheet was the biggest I ever dressed!
And let’s rewind still further to the strat-errrr-geee.
The campaign is to launch Windows 7, the Microserfs latest attempt at being nowhere near as good as Mac when it comes to operating systems. It comes after the 3 year debacle that was Windows Vista, the clunky, complex and deeply faulted system that so many Windows users simply ignored, sticking to their quaint old XP.
(Yes I use a Windows VAIO as well as my home and office Macs, so I have a foot in the Gates camp and the right to an opinion.)
So what is the strategy that the £200k ++ planners have come up with? Simply that YOU created Windows 7. ‘I’m a PC and Windows 7 was my idea.’
I mean hello, how obvious is this? Everyone knows that software is developed using customer feedback. Isn’t that what Beta testing is? Aren’t we living (thank you T Blair) in a country shaped by focus groups?
The campaign is almost staggeringly patronising. I haven’t memorised the TV scripts, but one has a slightly Sloaney girl in the back of a taxi, having a Eureka Big A-ha moment realising that ‘I wanted Windows simpler, so they made it that way’, or words to that effect.
For once I’m lost for words – it’s a real insult to their customers’ intelligence.
Most of the print executions are pretty harmless, featuring models out of that stock of Central Casting ‘real people’ types that somehow don’t have the ring of authenticity at all.
At least they don’t have the funky girl of mixed ethnic background with the explosive mane of frizzy hair who seems to appear in every ad from M&S through to Dove. I’ve actually never see anyone look like that in normal life, but I guess in adland that’s an accepted take on ethnicity. Why can’t we see Christine Ohuruogo-alikes in our ads or even lads cut along the lines of Didier Drogba. (Man, he’s on fire.)
But I digress. I thought the campaign was just patronising and bland until I saw the fellow staring out onto the Edgware Road munching deep fried potatoes.
Call me old fashioned, but I quite like people with manners, particularly when it comes to eating. I know there was a period at the end of the nineties where agencies – led by the flavour of that day, HHCL – tried to get as many revolting images of gluttony in their ads as possible. Even across the year I remember the Pot Noodles being slobbered by various dysfunctionals. I confess it was quite funny at the time, and carried the shock of the new or rather new-on-TV. But do we need to go back there? Can’t Beautiful be the new Ugly?
And they’ve also fallen into the trap of casting the agency. Doesn’t he look like a planner in a Soho agency? Or maybe Noho? He looks very Saatchi and Scratchy. Long sleeve T, calculated stubble, and that look of concentrated arsiness that only an adman can give. (And I should know.) He’s slumped in the local, forcing a chip into his gob.
Now really Mike Rosoft, do we really want to look at this guy on a 70 foot long poster? Does he make you feel happy, inspired, challenged, educated? Nope. Personally I’d just like to set my retriever on him or send him into Brogans on Fulham Road on Match Day with an Arsenal shirt on, but there you go.
It’s just a really horrible image. Not artful, not funny, not stimulating. But he does look like the people who created the ad. Probably.
When I was in Big Agencies, back in the day, I had a general rule of thumb that the ads I was proud of would be the one I could one day stick on the wall in my study in the retirement home, and feel that I’d at least had a go. It didn’t have to be a beautiful ad – Nike was rude, Canon was weird, BA was cheeky, Emirates was thoughtful. But it had to be an ad, an image, a communication that would fit the looks-good-in-your-dotage test.
I mean how could you really be proud of this ad?
The model’s Mr Surly. The photography’s like it was done on a Nokia n73. As client or creative director, I wouldn’t accept an ad like that in a million years. The words aren’t special. The strategy’s generic, at best. But enough.
Rant over.
Anyway I’m off to lie on the sofa, turn on the web cam, and eat some McCains, yeah!
It's a tribute to the fonts of English businessman, printer and typographer John Baskerville (1706 - 1775), although it has some lovely characteristics all its own.
Like his fonts, Baskerville was a controversial character. He hired a certain Sarah Eaves as his housekeeper, but her duties involved more than just sweeping the scullery.
Eventually her husband Richard abandoned her and their five children, and Mrs Eaves became Baskerville's mistress and eventual helpmate with typesetting and printing. On the death of Mrs Eaves estranged husband, she married John Baskerville inside a month. Licko's selection of the name Mrs Eaves honours one of the forgotten women in the history of typography.
Really, what a beautiful way to be remembered.
Taking a five minute break from writing
to seek inspiration on the Internet, I found this colourful background to the
name I share with the company. (source: Internet Surname Database)
"Percival: This interesting name,
with variant spellings Perceval, Percifull, Purcifer and Passifull, derives
from the male given name Perceval, first recorded as the name of the hero of an
epic poem by the 12th Century French poet Chretien de Troyes, describing the
quest for the holy grail or chalice. The name is fancifully taken from the
French elements "percer", to pierce or breach, plus "val",
a valley, hence "pierce the valley", a nickname presumably given to a
keen poacher or soldier remembered for his breach of a fortification. The exact
origin of the name is uncertain; however, the most likely source is the Celtic
"Peredur" from the Old Welsh meaning "warrior of the
cauldron". This name was borne by a Welsh legendary hero of the Middle
Ages and the cognate Old Welsh "Pair-cyfall" means "warrior of
the Chalice". Occasionally, the name may be of French locational origin from
Perc(h)eval in Calvados, Normandy, as in Richard de Percevill (Staffordshire,
1203). The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of
William Percevall, which was dated 1229, in the "Calendar of the Close
Rolls", Shropshire, during the reign of King Henry III known as "The
Frenchman", 1216 - 1272."
I've always been a FroggyPhile, so my
Gallic sympathies suddenly stack up!
