Insight >
Who Killed The Adman?｜是谁杀死了Adman?

Through a green metal door on Changhua Road, you enter an intimate setting with leather club chairs, horizontal wooden blinds, and an old gentleman’s club feeling. Black Note, the only jazz vinyl bar in Shanghai, is where advertising veteran Norman Tan chose to hold the preview of his documentary film, Who Killed the Adman? The film is a passion project, made together with his twenty-three-year-old daughter, Lili Tan, to instigate a conversation about the current state of the advertising industry.

穿过昌化路上的一个绿色金属门，进入一个私密的环境，皮质俱乐部椅、木质百叶窗，一切都彰显着老绅士俱乐部的氛围——这里是上海唯一的爵士黑胶唱片酒吧Black Note。资深广告人陈耀福选择在此举行他的纪录片《是谁杀死了Adman?》内部放映会。他与自己23岁的女儿陈思立共同完成了这部充满激情的纪录片，发起关于广告业现状的对话。

Singaporean Norman Tan has been working in advertising for 37 years, fourteen of which were in China. He won several industry prizes, including a Cannes Golden Lion in 2014 for “Human-traffic-sign,” a campaign for Buick that uses car accident victims holding street signs to remind people to obey traffic rules. Tan has recently stepped down from his C-level position at JWT to work on selective projects with his own agency, OnBrand.

新加坡人陈耀福，在广告圈工作已37年，其中14年都在中国大陆度过。他获得过多个广告奖项，包括2014年的戛纳金狮，作品为别克的“事关人命”，让车祸受害者在路边举着提示牌，提醒路人遵守交通规则。去年，他卸任智威汤逊中国区主席兼东北亚创意长，如今已成立个人工作室OnBrand.

 

Human-traffic-sign｜事关人命

Lili Tan had only worked in one film before, which was part of a university project. Fitting In By Standing Out is another short documentary about a Hong Kongese fish and chip shop owner living in London. It was this project that caught her father’s eye for her early talent in filmmaking. She graduated last year in Graphic Design from London’s Chelsea College of Arts and explored her father’s industry for a while. Her experiences interning for agencies like STINK studio in London, DDB in Singapore, and JWT in Shanghai were, to say the least, eye-opening.

其女陈思立之前只做过一部大学项目的片子。她拍的Fitting In By Standing Out短视频纪录片讲述一个早期香港家庭移民到伦敦卖鱼和炸薯条的故事。该片让父亲发现了她在拍片子方面的才华。去年自英国切尔西艺术与设计学院平面设计专业毕业后，她循父亲的步伐进入了广告圈，她曾在伦敦的STINK、新加坡的DDB和上海的智威汤逊等公司实习，这些经历让她大开眼界。

Norman Tan remembers that on her very first day in an internship, she was already working overtime: “When I went to pick her up, she blurted out, ‘Advertising sucks!'” Tan knows that the advertising arena can still be an exciting one, but, overall, fresh entrants seem disillusioned and stifled. “That got me thinking and inspired me to work on this project.” He says.

陈耀福记得，女儿第一天实习就加了班，说：“我去接她的时候，她脱口而出‘广告烂透了！’”他知道，广告这行会让人很兴奋，但一般会让新人大失所望、感觉受压制。“这让我想到让她加入我的纪录片拍摄。”他说。

Tan distinguishes the term ‘advertiser’ from ‘Adman’: the former is merely someone who works in the industry, while the latter refers to an ‘elite’ or people who actually leave a mark. The film’s cornerstone is a series of interviews with eight members of the elite, professionals that helped to shape advertising in China over the past thirty years. Above all, Tan wanted to pick the brains of peers that, like him, love and feel responsible for the practice.

他将“广告人”与“Adman”两个词区别开来：前者泛指从事广告传播行业的每一人，后者更像是广告行业中的精英或留下浓墨重彩的人。《是谁杀死了Adman?》一片主要是对八位广告精英进行的访谈，三十年来，这些精英在缔造中国广告业中做出了贡献。他们像陈耀福一样热爱广告，并且自觉担任起对广告的责任。陈耀福希望调动他们的观点和看法。

He gathered all the resources and invited the guests, all from his personal network. Meanwhile, Lili Tan worked in the setup, art direction, and the entire post-production process. She felt very comfortable among the industry’s big shots. “They are like uncles to me, so it all felt very natural,” She says. “They’ve also taught me everything I know about advertising.”

于是，他利用自己的所有人脉，邀请采访对象。女儿则负责导演、拍摄、美术和整个后期。她对这些广告大人物的拍摄感到很舒服。“他们就像我的叔叔，所以觉得都很自然。我知道的所有关于广告的东西，都是他们教给我的。”她说。

Instead of simple answers, the rhetorical question aroused different theories: some of the guests blame the digital age and the fixation on data structures and algorithms; others blame greed and the nature of the Adman himself. Not everyone thinks that there was, in fact, a murder, but all of them agree that there was definitely change.

“是谁杀死了Adman？”，这是个反问，采访对象们并没有简单地进行答复。他们有人谴责数字时代以及人们对数据和运算法的迷恋，也有人提出是贪婪和Adman本质的问题。大家不都认为真的有这样一个“凶手”杀死了Adman，但都承认环境的确已经变了。

New technologies and consumer attitudes have indeed made a shift in advertising. However, as the film also conveys, it’s the creative idea that should be at the core of it all. But, is it? Do new generations even know what creativity is?

确实，新技术和消费者态度让广告发生了变化，但正像纪录片中所表达的，创意才应该是一切工作的核心。然而，现实情况是这样吗？新生代还知道什么是创意吗？

While working on post-production of the film, Lily Tan cleverly added several illustration clips of larger than life personalities, people from the so-called “golden age of advertising,” like Leo Burnett, the creator of the Marlboro Man. By doing so, she added another layer of meaning to the film that makes the viewer wonder if some form of generational nostalgia is motivating it.

在做片子后期时，陈思立聪明地剪辑进了一些所谓“广告黄金时代”的传奇人物的片段，比如李奥·贝纳，他缔造了著名的“万宝路牛仔”品牌形象。通过这样做，她希望赋予该片另一层意思，让观众去思考某种形式的怀旧是否能产生激励作用。

The six-minute documentary is an amusing conundrum. Yet, despite its investigative mood, finding the answer to the question is not relevant to Norman Tan. His goal is not to make conclusions, but to start a conversation that can help to develop the industry. This dialogue could happen, perhaps, in the form of another film, with the views of the new generation in advertising. Come what may, Norman Tan would be delighted.

这部6分钟的纪录片成了一个有意思的谜题。它带有调查的意味，但陈耀福关心的不是为问题找到答案。其目标不是下结论，而是开启一次对话，以推动行业良好发展。也许这种对话也可以与年轻广告人进行，输入他们的观点。不管怎样，陈耀福是开心的。

*The preview of ‘Who Killed the Adman?’ took place at Black Note, a three-week-old snazzy vinyl bar conceived by Norman Tan himself. Access through a green metal door, on the 2nd floor, at 46 Changhua Road, Jing An.

《是谁杀死了Adman?》内映会在漂亮的Black Note黑胶唱片酒吧举行，这里才开业三周，正是陈耀福构思创建的。酒吧位于静安区昌化路46号二层，一面绿色金属门这里便是。