I'm afraid.

Above is from my personal email-box. It’s, to my mind, evidence that many marketers or e marketers or digital marketers have chosen to ignore David Ogilvy’s maxim: “The consumer isn’t a moron; she is your wife. You insult her intelligence if you assume that a mere slogan and a few vapid adjectives will persuade her to buy anything. She wants all the information you can give her.”

I’m afraid.

I’m afraid that too often, in our quest to assuage the lowest common denominator we are pushed to do work similar to what the spammers above are doing.

We dumb things down.

We tell dumb jokes or vulgar ones.

We rely on tired adjectives or even-more-weary platitudes.

We make spurious promises and punctuate them with gleaming orthodontia.

We forget that there is an element of rational to many buying decisions.

We forget what Francis Bacon said so many centuries ago: “Knowledge is power.”

I’m afraid that vapidity, cupidity and stupidity are our guiding principles. The tenets which earn us industry accolades. That give us the assurance that we must be doing it right since we’re doing what everyone else is doing.

What if we imparted useful consumer information in an executionally brilliant way?

What if?