Posts Tagged ‘DDB’
Our Princess. 31st August 1997.
I found this in the course of a major clean out of my office over Christmas and New Year.
I wrote it in Kuwait on the last day of a month-long assignment with the DDB Kuwait advertising agency, working on the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation account. Being so far away from home, woken early in the morning with the tragic news, made it all the more poignant. Later that day I flew back to the UK, in itself an extraordinary experience, the whole plane in mourning. The British stiff upper lip forgotten, so many people openly weeping.
Extraordinary events leave extraordinary memories.
At 7.00am this morning, having talked late into the night with the CEO of DDB Kuwait, I awoke in his house to the news of Princess Diana’s death, probably well before most people in the UK had heard. I remember the moment when I awoke to my alarm radio telling me John Lennon was shot and, when at the age of seven I walked across the road from school and saw a picture of the dead Bobby Kennedy sprawled across the floor, filling the front page of the evening paper. Now, today, the day I am to leave Kuwait, a day which seemed so significant already, has become a momentous day.
Overwhelmingly though, what matters is two boys, just a little older than my own, whose lives are shattered, who must feel so lonely, hurt and desperate at the moment. They need to deal with what none of us can deal with but also with the nation, with destiny, with the world grieving, angry, outraged. I cry for them.
The fairy tale is over and happily ever after was not to be. But our Princess can now achieve more than ever before. She has the ultimate victory over her detractors. She is triumphant.
Perhaps, more so because I am here, so far away, I feel this deeply. The mullah cries out as I write. I feel I hear him cry in mourning. I know that my country will be shattered. Things have changed. It will be so strange to fly back in tomorrow morning. I cannot imagine, cannot conceive the feeling that must be there. Talal tells me how he felt the day Kuwait was invaded. Now I understand.
Cry with me for the boys. Their mother is now, perhaps always was, an angel.
Mad Men
It’s hit British TV already so I’m a little bit late but I’m delighted and enthralled by this “Desperate Housewives” about the Madison Avenue ad business in the early 60s. I think that the hiatus and hysteria that I participated in thirty years later in London was the fantasy fulfilment of those earlier years.
Mad Men is the story of Donald Draper, a handsome creative director (in the days when they wore suits!) who has everything: a beautiful, adoring wife; a beautiful, adoring secretary; a beautiful mistress who kicks him out even before he gets his breath back and a host of adoring colleagues and staff. He seems to have just one skelton in the cupboard: a long, lost half brother who he doesn’t want to know any more. The story is still unfolding but, thank heavens for the internet, I have the whole of seasons one and two waiting to be watched.
You have to be an ad man to get all the in jokes. If you don’t understand the significance of the DDB VW ads then you’ll miss out on much of the point of episode three. The indolence and last minute, off the top of the head ideas are the truth about the ad business as are the enormous quantities of alcohol and the pampering and pimping for clients. The almost constant cigarette smoking by every member of the cast is the truth about the 60s too.
So who put these ideas down on paper and sold them to the production company? It’s Matthew Weiner, writer of The Sopranos and, as far as I can tell, no background as an ad man so all credit to his talent as a researcher. It’s a great show and demonstrates the sort of quality TV that we just don’t do in the UK.
Peter Reynolds 