These are things I hope
for. They won’t happen. But still I hope.
1.
We stop
lauding work that never really ran and that no one outside of industry ever saw
and that had no material impact on the health of a brand or its sales.
2.
We stop
saying, ‘we need a young person on this,’ as opposed to ‘we need ______ kind of
talent on this.’
3.
We stop saying
‘________ is available’ as opposed to saying ‘_______ has experience in doing
this sort of work.’
4.
We stop
calling everything an ‘experience,’ and then presenting a survey on that experience.
My ‘restroom experience’ is none of your fucking business.
5.
We realize,
finally, that we have so many meetings because Microsoft Outlook makes having meetings
so easy.
6.
We’ll stop scheduling meetings every lunch hour,
especially when we provide nothing to eat.
7. We’ll remember that
business success costs money. Like the Iraq war did not, as promised, pay for
itself. Like the Plutocrat tax cuts did not, as promised, pay for themselves,
advertisers replacing tv spend with social media will not pay for itself.
8. We’ll start
calling people out of unfounded assertions, claims and proclamations like ‘hyper-local
is the future,’ and start saying ‘prove it.’
9. Everyone
connected with me, even in the least tangential way (which is how most people
are connected with me), will never, ever ‘like’ something by Gary V. so I never
need to see his bs in my feeds again.
10. We stop using
words before there is general understanding of what those words mean. That
alone would expunge ‘robust,’ ‘agile,’ ‘nimble,’ ‘data,’ ‘journey’ and ‘insight’
from most lexicons and would therefore make all remaining meetings between 27%
and 42% shorter.
11. Management stops
saying things like ‘there are no raises this year,’ when everyone knows management
continues to get raises.
12. We stop hiding
surveillance capitalism under the seemingly benign moniker ‘cookies.’
13. We stop the ad
industry’s role in surveillance capitalism.
14. We stop
re-targeting.
15. We stop selling
customer data.
16. The four majorholding companies speak out against FANG, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google,the progenitors surveillance capitalism and the wholesale destruction ofcustomer privacy.
17. The four major
holding companies will speak to their clients recommending against advertising
on racist, misogynist, homophobic, anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic FOX. No matter
what Fox’s ratings.
18. People who attend
Cannes vow to tweet no more than two times a day.
19. Once, maybe
twice a year, senior management considers this ad. Written about 50 years ago.
And how it’s truer today than ever.
20. Also, we stop
allowing people to say ‘no one reads anymore.’ That is the 21st
Century equivalent of saying ‘the consumer is a moron.’ And excuses us, advertising
people, from finding ways to be interesting.
21. Decades ago, computer scientist Alan Kay said, “A change in perspective is worth 80 points of IQ.” We can encourage new ways of looking at things by spending 20 minutes a week reading Bob Hoffman, Rich Siegel, Dave Trott, Dave Dye and Ben Kay. They are some of the smartest people in the business.
22. Let’s not forget advertising at its best is simple, funny, smart and usually ubiquitous.
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