Ad Aged: Are You Talking to Me?

Not all that many years ago, when I was an ECD at the "Digital Agency of the Decade," I often felt like I was the only person in the agency who actually wanted to be in advertising.

I felt I was the only person who believed in telling people what a client did, why that client was important, what made them different. You know, why it would be good to look into that client.

Everyone else was off in a tangential world I simply didn't understand.

I still don't.

They wanted to design logos. They wanted to design "experiences." They want to design "user interfaces," brand guidelines, content management systems. The most ambitious of my erstwhile colleagues wanted to create "new products."

I kept mum about this for a long time.

I wasn't one of the cool kids and didn't want to betray my un-coolness by revealing that I didn't know what a new product was. So many people were bent on creating them, I was sure that somehow I had missed the boat.

In fact, I'd think about everything I ever bought and I wondered how many new products there actually were. Where were these new products, who was buying them and what purpose did they serve?

I thought about mops. We had a mop at home. I thought about the food I eat. We eat pretty much every day. I thought about household goods like grape-jelly and aluminum foil. For the life of me, I couldn't think about any new product I had ever bought.

A new yogurt in a tube rather than a cup isn't a new product. It's a new way of consuming an old product. Likewise, adding vanilla artificial flavoring to a cola ain't a new product, it's a variation on a theme. Even a car to replace my 1966 Simca 1500 with 425,000 miles on it wouldn't be a new product. It's just a new car--not a new mode of transportation.

Like I said, I'm stupid this way and I didn't understand why all these new products seemed so important to so many people.

I thought a lot about it. I still do. How advertising agencies (and the holding companies which are really simply big-box leveraged buyout entities that have hundreds of ugly aisles of indistinguishable products--formerly independent agencies) have decided that building platforms to communicate a brand's efficacy is considered, today, passé.

Then I started thinking about failure and relationships that fail, which is most of them.

Most marriages fail.
There's hardly a parent-child relationship that isn't tainted by sadness.
The bond between governments and people is weaker than ever.
As are most service relationships. Broker-client. Waiter-diner. Mechanic-car owner. Contractor-home owner. Client-agency.

The glue that keeps the world working--if it's ever going to work again is relationships.

Relationships based on candor, honesty, trust, doing what's promised. Relationships based on coming through, being there, listening and being kind.

These relationships are based on clear, accurate, honest and warm communication.

Communication.

When relationships falter or fail, or both, it's usually because communication sucks. Yet the advertising industry today seems to have forgotten the importance of communication.

That used to be the role of advertising agencies and advertising people. Tell people who don't know about your client about your client in a way that makes them consider your client.

Communication.

It goes back to pre-historic times. Sorry if this is triggering, but Venus of Willendorf dates from about 30,000 years ago. It communicated to the people who made and shared it. Love, lust, fertility, the potentcy of womanhood and the power of sex.

I don't care about your brand. I don't care to be screamed at. I don't care about your new logo or triple play bundle and your death-defying offer of unlimited minutes. I don't care about what tested well or what bullet points you're shooting me with.

Who are you?
What do you do?
Why should I care?

Communication.