Why advertising is full of bull
Hugh nails it. as usual. :)
Advertising people are supposed to be in "the idea business". But none of the ideas that have excited me in the last 5 years or so have come from Madison Avenue. Not one. Zero. Zilch. Nada.Advertising is in the business of selling empty and calling it creativity. I've had some pretty cool non-techie things excite me (I'm not all geek all of the time), but none of these innovations came from advertising, either.
6 Comments:
Ouch, my Masters was in Marketing and Communications. In our defence there is some blocking and tackling that needs to be done in every business. Trade shows, collateral, channel programs, partner programs, webinars, presentations. I know that these are largely non interesting to those not directly concerned with these things, but these need to be done.
As for Madison types, look at Crispin Porter (Miami) and http://www.SubservientChicken.com
gregr
My degree is in Marketing and Communications, too, Greg.
Crispin Porter is the worst of the worst offenders IMHO. Subservient Chicken was one of those hilarious pieces. Funny. Clever. Had nothing to do with innovation. Had even less to do with the fast food company it represented (I can never remember whether it was Kentucky Fried or Burger King).
Show me an advertising agency that goes in and makes a change in the way the company deals with customers or turns down business because the product is crap and I'll show you an agency with promise.
"Show me an advertising agency that goes in and makes a change in the way the company deals with customers or turns down business because the product is crap and I'll show you an agency with promise"
I think most people are fundamentally lazy, they don't go looking for information, and advertising is still the best way to reach them. It may be flawed, but it's the best we have.
What would an agency that turns down bad products look like? It won't make a lot of money, so I'm not sure it's promising. And it will be it's own brand, and people would trust what it advertises. People who pay attention to the advertiser, the medium.
I happen to be one of them, but then I go looking for information. I only consume ads for the entertainment value. So the ad money would be lost on me anyway.
Is the inbetween audience that doesn't need ads, and audience that needs ads for good product, a big enough niche? Not for advertisers, but for the companies that pay to advertise?
"Show me an advertising agency that goes in and makes a change in the way the company deals with customers or turns down business because the product is crap and I'll show you an agency with promise."
I have a marketing degree, too... I don't think it's the responsibility of the advertising agency to set marketing strategy. That's the company's job. Advertising is just the execution of part of a plan that should already have been figured out. That plan includes (or should) the design of the product.
Advertising agencies can certainly make a bad plan worse, or perhaps show the best side of bad planning--but it's not their job to design the product or figure out how the company should interact with its customers. Marketers at the company should determine these things long before they go looking for an ad agency.
I worked for a motion picture ad agency in L.A. that didn't necessarily turn down movies because they were *crap* (since they knew that their own tastes weren't always a reflection of what others wanted), but they DID turn down movies that they were uncomfortable with because of the subject or the way the subject was treated.
This was less about a moral judgement of the film, and more about whether they felt they could apply their creative talents (posters, trailers, etc.) to promote something they didn't feel good about.
It really *was* that simple.
Again, it was perhaps more about creative integrity than any moral convictions, but the result was honesty in the work. Nobody there was asked to help "sell" something they didn't feel good about. And it showed in the work, since every project they took on was because they found something they believed was worth promoting, and that people could get excited about.
Hugh "nails it" in the same way that a farmer who tries to milk a pig "nails it" in blaming the pig for not giving him milk.
Advertising and marketing people didn't invent RSS because, erm, they're not technologists. They didn't invent television either - but that doesn't mean that they didn't manage to take advantage of it to get a message across.
Saying the people who work in advertising aren't creative because they didn't create Movable Type is like saying that film makers aren't creative because they didn't write Mac OS X. It's a silly argument, with no basis in sense.
Hugh's "argument", such as it is, is nonsense. It's like blaming Hugh for not inventing wine.
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