Since the late '90s with the rise of dot con artists, something has been conspicuously missing from advertising. While advertisers (and movie makers and television producers) were wallowing ever-deeper into pools of smut, gerbil-shooting and fart jokes, intelligence just about vanished. When was the last time you read, or heard, a reasoned arguement in an advertisement?
I'm hoping that the downturn in the world's economy will ring in the demise of
botox-vertising. Stuff that might look ok, but is really nonsense pumped-up and silicon-injected--it might lure you in but ultimately, it won't stand up to closer inspection.
Oh, I guess you could say I'm waiting for David Abbott to return, or McCabe, or Amil Gargano, or Martin Puris. When ads, unabashedly sold. When they appealed to both your head and your heart--rather than just sophomoric baseness.
"Give your child an unfair advantage in life."
"The man who controls corporations ought to be able to control his own car."
"Lose the ability to slip out of meetings unnoticed."
"What do I need a computer for anyway."
You know, ads that worked.
2 comments:
The prediction was that the internet with it's measurability would produce ads that sold. It didn't happen, it seems. Maybe the new generation truly great copywriters and art directors still don't work online? And the measurability bit was harder than predicted. So now it sounds as if many want to compare banner advertising with older media where it was harder to prove whether someone had "clicked" or not. When ads didn't click with its audience, the audience ignored them. When banner ads don't click with people, people don't click on them. The sheer exposure in a relatively small space, on a normally cluttered page don't make it powerful brand advertising. And as far as reaching the right target, specialist magazines (and it's sites perhaps) are hard to beat.
Which is not reflected in ad pages sold as far as I can tell from my shallow reading of news articles. (No, I haven't checked the numbers. I just refer to what the overall message is that I am being exposed to in the media press.)
I hope you get your wish in 2009.
xo
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