Industrial advertising.

This might be a little disjointed but hopefully I'll get around to a point.

I went to work via a different route this morning and saw a billboard festooned with McDonald's golden arches. That, together with some recent media news got me thinking.

What's happened to almost everything that touches our souls--from hamburgers to advertising to publishing--has been industrialized.

We create "marketing engines" that are distinguished not for their interest, motivation or persuasion but instead aim to reach the greatest number of people at the lowest possible cost.

Just as McDonald's has created a "hamburger engine" to distribute the greatest number of patties at the lowest possible cost.

The original intent--to make something distinctive and delicious is gone. The technocrats that run ad agencies and major corporations aren't lovers of advertising or hamburgers.

They are lovers of efficiency. Create multiple communications distributable over dozens and dozens of touchpoints that inhabit a communications ecosystem.

So systematically they destroy the companies they lead by abnegating their original purpose.

The sad fact is, it seems to me, that advertising has little to do with creating great ads. It's about content strategy, ecosystems, fractal landscapes, data visualization, content syndication.

These are the topics which occupy our days.

Outside of a stuffy conference room I've never heard anyone use any of those terms.

They are meaningless.

So is much of what we do.