Old ideas.

Ask a thousand people in the business (if there are that many left) and you'll probably hear each of them say that advertising needs new ideas.

New ideas.
A new business model.
A new way of doing things.

What I'm about to say then, is heresy.

We need old ideas.

We need simplicity.

We need trust.

We need clarity, imagination, craft and time.

We need more ingenuity and fun.

Those things aren't new. 

They're old.

We don't need new gimmicks.

We don't need new scientific programmatic surveillance-driven marketing that does more to erode consumer trust than build it.

We don't need a raft of new techniques that we hate when people do them to us (like ads that follow us around, like ads that spy on us) but we do to others.

Advertising is, or should be, a simple business.

You create something creative--something fun, interesting or spectacular--that gets a viewer's attention.

You present a clear idea in a persuasive way.

You are respectful of the viewer.

Those aren't new ideas.

They're old ideas.

But our quest for new ideas has forced out the inherent simplicity of what we should be doing. 

And when our new ideas don't work--because we have forgotten what does work--we, as an industry get desperate and rely on technology and volume to do creative's work.

So, we are an industry swirling down the drain in an almost empty bathtub.

Looking for a new savior.

When the old way--a way that's based on 200,000 years of human understanding and empathy--is staring us in the face.

But we're too busy to see it.