When did ‘advertising’ become a dirty word?

Amen to that Sean.

Too right!

Ditto that too!

I totally agree there is incredibly ‘craft experience’ behind all great advertising and that this is a craft that we should continue to respect and celebrate – but isn’t the issue that people are increasingly finding ways to avoid advertising and being sold too…and thus the need to find new ways to reach and engage audiences?

Advertising a dirty word, Sean? No dirtier than words you use to describe other jobs.

Many people who work in advertising are like people who work in other businesses—they kill the English language.

Many ad people use management jargon. ‘Competitive advantage’, ‘transparency’, ‘accountability’, ‘client’, ‘key’, ‘going forward’ blah blah blah. Meaningless sludge.

One company advertises for a “Content Lead”. What does a content lead do? They “. . . drive a holistic content strategy and lifting the quality of the content produced in order to make our audience stand to attention. It means behaving like an editor. It means driving the highly creative content engine room. It means opportunities to tear up the rule book.”

Many ad people avoid clear concise words. Because clear concise words help you identify good and honest aims (and incompetence and lies).

Bingo.

He speaks the truth. And people should listen to him. The most original voice in advertising.

Can’t fault Sean’s argument at all. It would also help if mid to junior agency people across all disciplines learnt to sell their work, using agreed strategies and briefs to do so.
Also of course if mid to junior client people were also mentored as to how to buy work, it would improve the business exponentially. Learning to think, drawing on their experience as it builds and developing true intuition, instead of trying to second guess what others up the line might think….
According to the Economist last year, CEO’s of the UK’s top 100 companies apply on average 60% intuition to all their decisions. Something to aspire to for the Advertising decisions in this country.

Hallelujah.
Advert from the Latin ‘to move towards’.
If it’s paid for it’s advertising.
If it’s earned, it’s pr.
If it’s owned, it’s self publishing.
Easy.

I heard some ‘PR, journos, content marketers’ announcing the death of Mass Marketing yesterday. Yea, yesterday! FFS

Not 15 years ago when PVR’s were introduced and ‘advertising’ became ‘endangered’.

Not 10 years ago when Internet marketing would be the death knell to ‘mass marketing’.

Not c8 years ago when Facebook started taking money for pushing posts and Google for sponsoring ads.

They didn’t equate ‘digital to ‘mass marketing’ at all.

Mass marketing never existed. Jeez.

People that don’t understand how big brands communicate the products they designed for real segments will never get it.

MM was always an illusion.

Benefits move people. Advertising isn’t just attention seeking.

But crap one dimensional targetless advertising moves no one.

Say it loud, and say it proud. I’m an Ad Man. I move people.

there you have it folks, advertising is advertising.

from now on instead of bashing out a paragraph of invective every time i see some hack posting about their new ambassadorial crowdsourced branded journalism tableau, i’m just going to link to this article.

thankyou sean cummins.

While I loved being nearly sold by Sean’s piece, in the end I’m not convinced that the brothers Saatchi’s switch to communications didn’t get it right. I think most people would agree that a beautifully designed online form isn’t an ad but it can help sell a lot of stuff. So if your agency’s aspiration is to improve all the ways that your clients connect with their audiences, saying you’re in the communications business can help open up opportunities. It’s good advertising, basically.

From their website. Wonder if they do advertising?

“The force of Cummins&Partners is the partners who bring together the different disciplines that are the foundation of our creative:media agency model. A mix of strategy, media, creative and digital leaders who believe in creating a better and more holistic experience for clients. And their customers.”

Sean – advertising trying to disguise its purpose in any way is naïve these days. The bulk of consumer dollars is in the fists of a natively wary audience. They have always had the bullshit radar dialled up to 10.

The relentless push behind some new name for advertising and what it does is no more than a white flag saying “we can’t con them, so now what do we do?”

Go back to the basics. Go to market with a product that has a relevant point of difference – reinforce the relevance with your advertising (in whatever medium that is) – get sales.

Getting the message across to people has become confused with getting the logo across to people, which isn’t advertising, it’s branding – the easy bit.

Hope you’re well, mate, and nicely argued.

Jamie Everingham

advertising – deception for financial gain.

spin it all ya like, people will always hate that shit.

doesn’t make it unprofitable.

Advertising is a fine word, a fine profession and an honourable art form.

Yawn. Look at me. Look at me.

@What is this?
I presume you say this because you’re a renowned commentator on the biz? Or a lazy wannabe? Either way fortune favors the brave, not the brat youbeen to be. This article appeared in Adage. Ni small feat. And has been the most popular article currently posted there. So that’s what this is.

“People don’t actually buy things — they get sold things. And everyone loves a passionate sales pitch. I mean, everyone.”

I hate being sold to, however if ‘things’ refers to utter shite, then I guess I do agree.

I was in the market recently for an Android phone (because I hate being sold to and IOS corner you and force their products (‘sell’) you only them. So the alternative is an Android phone.

I went online and Googled: ‘best android phones 2015’ and I clicked on the organic (free) search results and read a variety of of articles, which contained expert and consumer reviews and so on and so forth. The evident advertorials (or content marketing, or even native advertising) were soon sniffed out and ignored.

I did my research and whilst the Samsung S6 ranks very highly, it is also very expensive and there are some apparent floors with it’s security, so the Google Nexus 6 was the go. It is a little big, however I was expecting that from the ‘warts n all’ reviews that I had digested, which managed my expectations fully, once the product was received. I was even able to scope out online where the cheapest place was to buy and deleted cookies ahead of doing just that, (so that any e-commerce analytic’s would show that I had gone into the site as a result of searching, in duckduckgo for their company name). Duckduckgo might be an agenda item in their next marketing meeting, who knows..?

I love the phone and to this day have never seen an advertisement for one. (I couldn’t believe I would ever own a Motorola again, but I do and again it is a great phone.) – Is this native advertising? (Oh stop it.)

I strongly believe that reputation, service and a great product will sell itself without any need for advertising. (Rather like a little cafe in my local neighbourhood, which has people queuing to get in pretty much all week long.) Do you think they advertise? No they do not. Locals know how good the place is and shout about it, to each other and online: Great food, great service: great atmosphere: amazing coffee, which services the local community with a smile.

NOW, in context to mass produced, inferior toot, that needs to be sold to keep a CEO and the board loaded: yes advertising is where it is at and without advertising these products would not get shifted at the rates at what they do currently. PERHAPS that is why advertising has become a dirty word? The products that actually make peoples live better and work amazingly well, do not need to be advertised. The majority of the ad industry is peddling crap, which isn’t really helping society, in fact many would argue that the advertising industries’ impact on our societies and communities is a negative one, second only to that of the greedy investment bankers. Could that be why advertising is a dirty word?

hmmm, agree, but needs an edit

Totally agree with this Sean. Just wondering why you called Cummns&Partners a creative:media agency then, instead of an advertising agency?

Not sure you can flat out ignore the huge disruption to the broadcast+advertising business model brought about by the internet. That’s really when all this started. And if advertisers decide to call their new tactics something else to help clients see a new way of reaching their fragmented and disengaged audience then so be it.

I agree partly with sandman, there are significant chunks of this conversation that have been left out, not sure whether that was intentional?
I had a chuckle at the comparison to MacBeth – but I don’t like “advertising” – it repels me. Whether thats right or wrong – thats the reality for me. You say “advertising” I disengage immediately – hence why some people feel the need to reposition the name.

I refuse to watch commercial TV because of advertising, I ignore billboards, listen to podcasts (not the radio) and I syndicate all my content to recieve news and information that I trust (and know will be minimal advertising). Advertising might not be dead or dirty – but it’s certainly undesirable to me.

I think Mass Marketing is DEAD – because of the internet and digital disruption the marketplace is fragmented and disengaged and as such require different tactics, niche tactics to gain customer attention.

For me as a GenY, advertising isn’t dead, I know it exists – but I try to avoid it like the plague. It reeks of laziness and if your “pro advertising” in the sense that you have a message and desire to scream it loud enough to get your attention – your simply proving to the younger generations that you’re not worth their time. Be clever and more direct – give us content that we find valuable that doesn’t necessarily sell your brand or your products – but it WILL gain our respect and attention.

I looked through my Facebook feed this morning. I have 1000+ ‘friends’ but funnily enough I didn’t see one ‘conversation’ about a brand.

A lot of current advertising efforts particularly around retail are failing miserably….here’s why:

Our washing machine died so I looked at reviews and after comparing prices on retailer,visited a store and negotiated a better deals than the so called sale price and it was delivered the next morning. All this took less than 24 hours.

For the last week I have been besieged with ads online from retailers including the retailer I purchased from offering me worse deals than the one I purchased.

Yes advertising has changed as has the way consumers purchase. The only trouble is that all that big and small data captured isn’t applied in a way that relates to how consumers really purchase. In the end the wasted efforts of retailers clearly look more than a little foolish.

@Tony comment 25

I was looking at campervan hire in France and researched it fully, on and off for around a month, (online), ahead of making a purchase. My holiday in France was over a year ago now and yet I am still getting served up Campervan ad’s on websites. I can clear cookies, of course. It is interesting though isn’t it. If the client is paying CPC / CPA, then they are not wasting money. If they are paying CPM, then they are.

In terms of branding for this campervan hire company who is following me around the interweb: well they were far too expensive and their ratings were shocking, so I would never use them anyway; probably why they are advertising so heavily…?

Nailed it.

While it’s not quite central to the theme, also agree on your hatred of the words ‘journey’ and ‘storytelling’.

Reminded me of that other shittily-overused word ‘curated’.

And anyone using the non-word ‘obligated’ should be obliged to write an apology to the rest of us.