Friatribe.

Whenever I see a headline or a quotation or a panel discussion that proclaims "___________ is dead," or "____________ is broken," I feel like running to the hardware store and doing a Lizzie Borden on the speaker, or even, the forum.

Lizzie Borden took an axe

She gave her mother forty whacks.

When she saw what she had done

She gave her father forty-one.

Much of the industry's issues in my opinion, much of its decline is similar to saying about someone who eats two-dozen donuts a day, washed down by two-dozen beers, topped off by two-dozen scoops of ice cream, and saying "metabolism is broken," or "svelte is dead." 

In short, you can't blame self-inflicted wounds on exogenous events. The industry has been wrist slashing for decades now and while it's convenient to blame any number of circumstances, most of the demise of the ad industry is because the ad industry fails to believe in the power of advertising.

Data was all important.
One to one.
Interactivity.
AI.
Targeting.
Divestiture of media.
Programmatic.
Cable.

The list is as long as the menu at a Greek diner. And not nearly as appetizing.

We have spent literally decades throwing darts at a giant dart-board of excuses on why advertising is no longer a great career or lucrative or influential or whatever. We never say it's because we forgot to water and feed the very industry and the craft responsible for our livelihoods. We treated advertising as a cash-cow milking it dry while pumping it full of chemicals that made parasites rich while destroying the host.

We've forgotten Mr. Bernbach as we have forgotten things like "government of the people, by the people and for the people." And that little thing about all being equal. 

Years ago, I bought the book below for about $8. You'd think DDB (what's left of it) or Omnicom (what's left of it) would keep it always in print. But no, they're too busy selling the advertising equivalent of collateralized debt obligations and ginning up golden parachutes. 

They forgot that one hundred million little things aren't the same and never will be the same as one big thing. With a big budget behind it. So when clients tell them to make a trillion banner ads no one will ever see they don't say, "that's a waste," they say "sure." Ineffectiveness be damned. Actually be praised. (We get paid per piece.)

There's something advertising should say about advertising. 

There's one thing advertising should say about advertising.

Instead, as an industry we bicker about which media microbe is most efficacious so we can grind our own aforementioned ax. We vaynerturbate and sinekerize and godinawful ourselves with pablum and platitudes. We venerate concocted awards for concocted ads. We show fake ads as art. Forgetting that its real ads for real brands that have real media weight behind them that have always worked. 

Instead, we herald illusions. In the parlance of the Bronx, we praise the phonus balonus. 

Not realizing for even a moment, because we're basking in the masturbatory glow of self-aggrandizement, that propagating such undercuts our legitimacy and our very reason for being.

Fake fake fake fake.

Praised. Praised. Praised. Praised.

I'll tell you what set this diatribe in motion. This article below in Wednesday's "Wall Street Journal."

Somehow it's news when a client discovers that advertising their brand makes their brand more popular and therefore valuable. They can raise their prices. 

Imagine.

"Marketing Is Helping Carnival Charge More."

That's about as astute as:
"Teenagers Go to Prom to Get Laid."
"Laundry Clean After Washing."
"Heat Causes Warm Weather."
"Water Wet."

We've fallen so far that when our industry functions as it should it's regarded as news.

GeorgeCo., LLC, a Delaware Company helps brands find out what they do, say it in interesting and memorable ways and then works to create brand-lust around a brand truth.

That ain't dead.

Never was.

We just forgot.

1.