Thursday, September 1, 2016

For what?

Read this copy. Would it work this election season?

Every day literally hundreds of creative units squirt like ink from a diseased squid into my in-box. Or they're presented to me in a fluorescent conference room, or the make their way to my table. 

Tweets. LinkedIn posts. Blogs. Interactive pdfs. Banner after banner after banner like cars on the L.I.E. heading out to the Hamptons.

They keep on coming.

Ads on jumbotrons. Ads on channels I've scarcely heard of. Ads as persistent and numerous as gnats on a humid summer night or ants at a picnic.

I think we have gotten so proficient at creating and developing new ways to reach customers that we have forgotten the fundamental principles of communication. 

That a communication must have weight.

That a communication must have interest.

That a communication must have stopping power.

That a communication must provide useful information to the viewer.

I worry that we have forgotten all this.

That so much of what we do simply says "Look at me! I'm here!" And forgets that if, as a piece of communication if it doesn't provide value, it is only an annoyance.

There's nothing worse a brand can do than to annoy people.

And in today's 'new media landscape' there are so many more ways to get our annoyances to people that doing work, work that is so often annoying, is actually off brand.

My old man common sense says that something's wrong.

That we are no longer communicators.

We have become pests.




No comments:

Post a Comment