Advertising in the Year 3000.

Oh, it’s the end of the world as we know it.
It’s the Black Death, the Great Depression and the Invasion of the Huns
all wrapped up in one giant, pulsating cataclysm.
Traditional media isn’t working.
No one is clicking on banners.
Nobody opens mail.
Every TV show is DVRd; spots run unseen.
They are the sound of one hand clapping.
Clients are cutting spending.
The current ways of reaching consumers aren’t working.
We need to abandon web 2.0 and shift to new paradigms.
We need to tweet and re-tweet and social network and user-generate.
We need to use words like eco-system and taxonomy and my aforementioned favorite: paradigm.
We need to create charts on desktops that map to engagement strategies with closed feedback loops.

Yikes! If we need to do all this just to survive today,
why in tarnation am I talking about Advertising in the Year 3000?
Here’s why.
One thousand years from now people will still laugh when someone gets hit in the face with a pie.
Or when someone falls into an open manhole.
Or at a wife joke.
They will still like to see a pretty girl.
They will still listen to a story well-told, even if it is told in ways we can't conceive of now.
People will still enjoy a happy ending.
Pay extra for product that looks great.
And root root root for the home team.

Yep, it might seem like the end of the world—
indeed, some days you might wish it was the end of the world.
But depressions, recessions, new technologies and modalities be damned,
the world, and advertising will go on.

And in the year 3000,
if you impart useful consumer information in an executionally brilliant way
you will win awards.