A Re-Direct.

A lot of my clients make things or provide services that are supposed to make a process faster or more efficient or to somehow cut down on bad side-effects.

I guess that's a long way of saying, I haven't yet won a sugar-water account, and I have a lot of high-tech clients.

With those high-tech clients I'm usually pretty nasty. I mean, I ask nasty questions.

What do you do?
How does it help people?
Can you prove it to me?

Those are simple questions, but tough. Because it takes work to actually answer them with details and truth, not hyperbole and magical thinking.

Hyperbole and magical thinking are about all that's in the post above from my former employer, the ones who fired me because I was too old. If you watch the 77-second video you can find here, you'll hurt your brain with what Shakespeare might have called MAAN™. Not to mention the track they decided to use because they didn't want to pay for music.

Much Ado About Nothing.

Going back to my clients now, when I have my fairly signature "hit me but don't shit me" discussions with them, I usually show them two or three sites I like that make data--and therefore results--visible.

One of the sites I talk about with clients is called "Our World in Data." When they make a claim, they back it up with charts that often look like this:

I love information like this. I think most people do. It's hard to argue with information when it's presented like this. If you don't want what I'm selling after I show you this, that's no longer on me. You just couldn't be persuaded. (Animation of chart above.)

I usually send clients to a site called information is beautiful as well, and a section within that site called "beautiful news." I encourage clients to let me help them make something like this about their offerings every day. Such messaging lets viewers know that the client is "active-positive." That is, they're doing things and they're good. Beautiful News posts things that look like this, daily.

Decades ago, when my friend Dave Dye, who keeps the ad industry's best blog was running Campbell, Doyle and Dye they ran this ad.

I'm tired of everyone trying to convince me how great they are. Every telco says how reliable they are. Every airline. Every ISP. Every agency, every executive, every politician and every abusive parent does the same.

Here's an idea.

Stop trying to sell me. 

Give me the facts, and I'll make up my own mind. Like Dave does above.

For the last 18 months or so, even someone like myself who watches no TV, has 27 ad blockers and listens to no radio has probably been exposed to ten-billion impressions telling me how great our purportedly AI-future is going to be. So far, at least for me, the only good thing about AI is that there's so much being trumpeted about it that I no longer need to read about how great NFTs are.

What I haven't seen are simple charts like these:

1. Time spent waiting in line since AI implementation.
2. Frustration from bad service since AI implementation.
3. Decrease in flight delays since AI implementation.
4. Cost decreases since AI implementation.

1. Customer satisfaction since AI implementation.
2. Hours returned to your day since AI implementation.
3. Increase in on-time arrivals since AI implementation.
4. Effectiveness/likeability of creative since AI implementation.

Since every automaker started trying to sell electric vehicles, I haven't seen one single piece of data about the wonders we'll enjoy if we go electric. 

I've seen all too much of this, and really nothing else.:

There are a lot of CEOs, both from within and outside the advertising industry, who read Ad Aged. 

I believe the fundamental communication problem of our era is that no one any longer trusts anything they read. 

These headlines are not the cause of that lack of trust--but evidence of the difficulty truth is having in today's world.

If advertising is ever once again going to be effective, it must reemerge as a trusted source of useful consumer information. It must be checked, double-checked, scrubbed and re-scrubbed. 

It must, as I said above, present facts. Let people decide from there.

Here's are a few examples of what I mean.

The first is the cover of a Mets yearbook from almost 60 years ago. I remember as a nine-year-old being impressed by its honesty. The covered showed the team's progress. And were candid about missteps. They did more than just say "we're great."

Then a few ads. 

Remember ads?