Clancy's Notebook

Creating Good Ads

2006-02-23T17:03:00.000-08:00

Over the past decade, while working as Creative Director of a $90MM Ohio ad agency, hfa, I've taught a night class in Advertising Copywriting at the University of Akron. Tonight's class covered the elements of creating a powerful print campaign. Legendary adman Howard Gossage once said that people don't read ads. People read what interests them. And if what interests them is an ad, people will read it.
The textbooks offer up "the Four A's" of effective advertising: Attention, Attraction, Attitude and Action. Sounds good as a formula on paper, but it doesn't grasp the inherent soul of creative concepts. A killer concept is brimming over with surprise. Surprise is usually created by something termed Imaginative Divergence. In other words, nothing more or less than the combination of old ideas reconstituted in a new environment. But there's more. To be effective, this Imaginative Divergence must also have Structural Connectedness, that is, be "on strategy".
This is what my art director and I created in a campaign introducing a new service for Time Warner Cable. We used the characters from Time Warner owned movies in a style evocative of Time Warner's Mad Magazine Goes To the Movies. The result: Imaginative Divergence with Structural Connectedness.

Selections From My Field Notebooks -- 2005

2006-02-21T06:24:00.000-08:00

PRODUCTION NOTES, DECEMBER, 2005.
Los Angeles & Julian, CA.

On location in downtown L.A. and Julian, CA. (in high desert about 1 hour east of San Diego).
Shooting long format HD Video to introduce new Goodyear performance tire -- Eagle ResponsEdge -- with Tim Damon and Damon Productions. Shooting Saturday morning, December 17th, 2005, on 3rd Street & Grant overpass near Geary's Disney Center and MOCA. This is Damon Productions Hummer camera car outfitted with Russian Arm camera rig. (Ability to shoot 360 around moving vehicle from moving vehicle with complete control and steadiness. Very cool.)

Between set-ups, visited MOCA and exhibition of famous American cartoonists -- Jack Kirby, R.Crumb, Harvey Kurtzman.While filming, I recorded my own vision in my Moleskin Journal, Vol. II, 2005. I use it to make a quick record of my travels and experiences encountered throughout the year.

Generally, I use a Derwent Soft Led Pencil or Pilot fine point black ink pen. Then I apply a wash using Windsor & Newton watercolors or
a variety of old German Marabu photo-retouching greys and blacks formerly used by our art directors to re-touch photos. (What they did before digital photography and photoshop existed.)

Another interesting activity in southern California is to visit Venice Beach. It's an easy walk along the beachfront running/biking route from Santa Monica to Venice Beach. Street vendors, performers, hawkers, poets, visionaries, con artists mingle in a New Age-bazaar.

I posed with a motorcycle gang and noted intriguing handcrafted items for sale.
Handcarved and gaily painted Mexican chotchkes for sale in Venice Beach.

Our second location was in the foothills of the high Mohave Desert outside of San Diego near Julian, California. Stayed at a unique B&B there. The country is rolling pastures and rocky, wooded ravines ideally suited for cattle ranching. Coyotes abound, coming out at night to hunt for stray dogs or cattle. We spent two days shooting on a variety of roads in the area.

Oils painted this summer in Maine

2005-10-17T06:44:00.000-07:00

These are a few oils I painted this summer in Prouts Neck, Maine. American master Winslow Homer painted at his studio in Prouts Neck. I was inspired by the Maine artist and critic, Fairfield Porter, who painted scenes from ordinary life in Maine during the 50's and 60's. He infused an emotional overlay on everyday scenes that transcend the commonplace. I attempted to achieve the same in my efforts.

CLANCY'S NOTEBOOK: My first blog.

2005-09-30T10:49:00.000-07:00

"Ordinary objects reveal their extraordinariness through accentuating their lines, shape and texture."
Edward Weston

"Art cannot be taught, it must be self-inspiration though the imagination may be fired and the ambitions and work directed by advice and example of others."
E.W.

One of my first oil paintings was this self-portrait. I was inspired by a self-portrait of Max Beckman and Early American primitive painters. The photo is from 1957, my home at 7 Greenway Street, Hamden, CT. The third piece was drawn using Microsoft Paint program.

"The reward of a thing well-done is to have done it."
R.Waldo Emerson