99.99% of everyone on this blue and green planet, including your good self, I suspect, share my ill will towards the business. (The remaining 0.01%, hazarding a guess, work for the Martech Industrial Complex.)
Amongst the haters, Bill Hicks, the comedian, is arguably the most vehement. ‘By the way,’ the stand-up would tell the audience, ‘if anyone here is in advertising or marketing, kill yourself.’
We are Satan’s spawn, according to Hicks; ruiner of all things good, demons set loose on the earth to unleash garbage on humanity. Our only redemption is suicide.
When you look at the tsunami of horseshit that radiates from our mobile devices, it’s kinda hard to disagree with the man’s rant.
Even the most powerful man in advertising, Marc Pritchard, P&G’s Chief Brand Officer, concedes that we have fallen into the crap trap.
‘We’ve seen an exponential increase in, well, crap,’
Pritchard told an assembly of marketeers.
‘All of us here bombard consumers with thousands of ads every day, subject them to endless ad load times, interrupt them with pop-ups, and overpopulate their screens and feeds with plain bad work. Is it any wonder ad blockers are growing at 40%?’
While we’re on the subject of ad blockers, there are over 850 million devices that have them. Bad advertising, for once, is working like gangbusters. The sewage we’re generating is fomenting the biggest consumer boycott in history.
My motivation for doing great work might be a tad negative, but, hey, as an ad once taught us: ‘Hate Something. Change Something. Make something bet-tttteeeeeeeeeeeerrr.’ (What do you know? Great works.)
I counsel clients not to add to the pollution already out there, but to show up in a way that leaves the people in the interaction happier than if they hadn’t shown up.
I told Ann Mukherjee of SC Johnson: ‘If you have nothing worthwhile, delightful, uplifting, encouraging, beautiful, thoughtful, edifying, funny, entertaining, useful, revelatory, provocative, inspiring, shocking, perspective-altering, eye-popping, molar-shaking, heart-wrenching or just plain amazing to say, then, please do all of us a favour and shut the hell up.’
Okay, I didn’t put it exactly like that, but it was close.
Our job is to make people feel something. Our job is to make people give a damn. Our job is to do something for people, and not, God forbid, expect people to do something for us like wear a yellow jumpsuit and participate in our imbecilic sales promotion.
Only after a brand has generously served and given to people, will people ever consider listening to a single thing it says.
And perchance, even come to not loathe its advertising.
