Ad Aged: Whaaaaaa?

Tuesday, July 7, 2026

Whaaaaaa?

I haven't joined, not even once, the ongoing diatribes about AI-writing. I've never once commented on the nature of the Oxford comma, the use of m-dashes, or the use of millennial-banished words like "moist."

I think all that blather is, well, so much blather.

What I care about when it comes to writing is good.

Sensible. Add-up-able. Readable. Thoughtful. Euphonious. And honest.

My belief is simple.

Writing we like acts like people we like.

It makes us smile.
It cares about us.
It tells us the truth.
It has some surprise, some wit, some reward.

Mostly respect.

It doesn't high-falutin' us.

Or talk down to us.
Or talk in a way as to make us feel out-of-place, dumb or inadequate.

Also, it forces us to think.
By being interesting enough to make us pay attention.
And it lets us put things together in our heads.

As Ernst Lubitsch said to Billy Wilder as recounted to Cameron Crowe,
"Let the audience add up two plus two. They'll love you forever."

One of my favorite movies is Alexander Mackendrick's colossal flop "The Sweet Smell of Success," with Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis, written by Clifford Odets, Ernest Lehman and Mackendrick. You can download the script here, for free. Or head over to YouTube and watch the movie for practically free. Read any snippet or watch any clip, and you'll find good, human, seminal writing. Just drop an axe on any page at random.

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When I'm online--when I'm trying to buy something, or shop for something, or I'm simply curious about something--a different kind of writing assaults my baby blues. Honest to goodness, I don't know what planet it comes from, who or what could possibly have written it and why or how it got approved (how big was the committee) what it's supposed to do and what it's supposed to be selling me.

I suppose this is the kind of obtuse writing that bad creatives and bad clients generate because they think it sounds effete and elevated. They think it sounds like bad poetry. It must be good because only a select few (not idiots like me) can fathom the beauty of its inscrutability and its charms. If common people can get it, it can't possibly be any good. So they obtusify.

Oh.

Most of the writing below leaves me slack-jawed. I find almost every phrase has an insult in it.

Taking my "daily drive to new heights"? My 0-60 in 4-seconds car has been in bumper-to-bumper traffic about 94% of the time I've owned it. Icons that celebrate forever? That sounds like you're selling ashes from a loved-one's cremation. Maybe most disgustingly cloying of all is "drivers like you." Like you know who I am. You wouldn't know a hiccup from a hand-grenade.

This is writing like most writing today.

It no longer speaks person-to-person.
Rather it speaks buzzword-to-buzzword.

I saw this on LinkedIn a week or so ago.
From one of the 97 people who have the president title at the 1/10th its size of ten years ago, Ogilvy.

I've been writing for a living for well-over half-a-century.

I have no idea what any of this means or why.

Or worse, what I should do about it.

Frankly, I don't truly know what "strategy & solutions at WPP" means either. I doubt anyone does.

This is typical of the garbage writing we see.
If good writing is good thinking,
bad writing is bad thinking,
is bad sales,
is bad marketing,
is bad business.

But bad is good enough.