Friday, May 20, 2011

If I got one wish...

If I had one advertising wish it might very well be the elimination of the word "experience." Not only is it overused and hackneyed, it is outright deceptive.

Most agencies are infected and infested with "experience designers." You wanna know something, I've never had an experience online. I click through pages, I might watch a video or fill out a form, but I've yet to have an experience.

When I read a book, and I believe this is a parallel, I do not consider my "page-turning experience." Even when the book I'm reading has pictures or photos, I do not have a "visual experience." I just look at pictures.

I just got an ad from a shoe store, trumpeting their "shopping experience." I was in an airport that promised a "superior airport experience."

Oh, go fuck yourself sideways.

The reason people and technocrats and consultants use the word like a bludgeon is that what they offer or provide is so profoundly and insipidly boring that they need to mask it in grandiosity. That "experience" you designed? As flat as a plate of piss.

Driving a Porsche on an open road, seeing the Parthenon, meeting the President--those are experiences. Using a deodorant or visiting a deodorant's website isn't.
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7 comments:

  1. TimMay 20, 2011 at 11:03 AM

    Sounds like 'This changes everything' now has a little brother.

    ReplyDelete
  2. jeffMay 21, 2011 at 1:43 AM

    I have to disagree with you on the Parthenon.
    The best parts of that have been stolen and now reside in London.
    Now walking the streets of Rome - that's an experience.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousMay 21, 2011 at 1:58 PM

    So why do tou work for a digital agency?

    Jon G

    ReplyDelete
  4. george tannenbaumMay 21, 2011 at 5:22 PM

    Jon G, you can work somewhere and still be critical of it.

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousMay 22, 2011 at 5:56 PM

    Hyper critical to the point of near hypocrisy

    You know what digital agencies mean by experience, coin another word then

    I like reading you when you're clever, not ranting about something that's a phrase and nothing more

    Pls, doing a new tern

    Jon G

    ReplyDelete
  6. AnonymousMay 23, 2011 at 8:34 AM

    Forgive mt predictive type errors in last sentence


    My point: simply that you're using language as a club here, coin a new term

    When I read a book, it is an experience

    When I see a movie, it is an experience

    when I make love to my wife, it is an experience

    Certain websites are experiences, others are purely transactional


    I know you're not this petty Geo


    I get the point but it's heavy handd


    Don't become a curmudgeon or buy the hype

    But don't make much ado about not all that much

    Jon G

    ReplyDelete
  7. Lacey HMay 23, 2011 at 4:14 PM

    My favorite post of all I've read on your blog!

    ReplyDelete