If advertising is dead, then it’s a nice time to start doing advertising
Somewhere advertising took its eye off the ball, forgot what it really does and how it works, and allowed both stupidity and malice to take control of the game. In this excerpt from Eat Your Greens, UM Melbourne’s Eaon Pritchard explains why it’s a great time to take back the upper hand.
These days everybody seems to hate advertising.
It’s not just those cheeky ‘authenticity-seeking purpose-driven millennials’ that claim to hate advertising. Even ‘old’ people (that’s anyone over 45 in ad-speak, btw) will say they hate it, whilst big sections of the advertising and marketing trade press definitely hate it.
And lastly, most of the people who work in advertising and media agencies seem to hate their jobs – or more specifically they hate the idea that they are selling brands, products and services rather than the more noble aim of solving society’s problems. Indeed, it often feels like we’ve now ‘successfully’ produced a generation of advertising professionals who have never even known what advertising is for, or how it works.
All advertising today sucks.
Make advertising great again!
Bye now.
I’m in a global agency now. The complicated pretend science that planners are selling marketers is appalling. I’m not that old, but I remember an era when ads simply had to be noticed. Not the sheet of cans and cannots that accompany every brief. And the bull around social is incredible…no one cares about your brand’s content unless it’s bloody amazing. But, these are the times we live in. Simple, rational, pragmatic, empathetic thinking is ignored.
Ps: I think missed the point of your article and just wanted to vent. Good day.
Great article,
It’s a shame Mumbrella seems to lead the charge in the anti-marketing industry-backstabbing that has become the backbone of it’s coverage. I’d love to see a shift away from revelling in redundancies and ‘bad advertising’ to an encouraging window into our industry.
Seconded
Eaon… how can I be authentic?
100% with you here: expanded 21st-century media and technology canvas to actually make killer advertising. A crazy idea, but it might just work…
Advertising sucked yesterday, it sucks today, and it will suck tomorrow. The world would not fall apart without it, but might in fact recover from its current insanity. It would obviously take some time for everyone to wake up and see how they’ve been manipulated and turned into selfish childlike idiots, but well worth it I think. I hate you all. Fuck off and die, as Bill Hicks said.