No Difference.

In my long days and nights in advertising, I've never worked for a client who thought they had money to squander.

Usually, even the biggest clients lament not having all the money they want to do all the things they want to do to sell whatever it is they're charged with selling. (Or, these days, not selling.)

But more and more, to my old and increasingly glaucoma'd eyes, selling and advertising don't seem to be connected. Just like, too often, baseball seems more about obscure statistics than who wins the most games, and politics seems to be more about crowd-sizes than governing, advertising seems to be about stupid human tricks that have little or no bearing on the success of the brand propagating the tricks.

The two examples above arrived in my inbox within minutes of each other on Friday, September 20th. I rolled my eyes when I saw the Hellman's stunt. Then when I saw the goldfish stunt, I checked to make sure it wasn't my eyes or my memory playing tricks on me.

I realize now that the goldfish thing is a quirk of the designer, Kate Barton. While the mayonnaise thing is a quirk of an ad agency. So maybe this comparison really is apples and oranges or, yuck, goldfish and mayonnaise. But the point remains.

Maybe Andy Warhol really did say "in the future everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes." But whether he said it or not is not the issue.

That we in advertising crave 15-minutes of fame for our brand is the issue. In short, we seem to have forgotten that when the ad industry was most valued by those who most value brands, we did not focus on creating brief spasms of notoriety. A brand is not a epileptic seizure--something that gains great attention, is usually harmful, and is something you'd rather not think about.

A brand is meant to be a promise. 
Something you can count on.
Something that "does what it says on the tin."
A brand is meant to have meaning so it can stand out from the scores of products or services or people who do roughly the same thing, usually for less money.

I'd be damned if today there are ten (non-monopoly) brands that actually stand for something. That is, ten brands with meaning. That is, ten brands you can actually count on. That is, ten brands you might feel loyal toward.

There are all sorts of pundits infesting the vast social-media sick ward who will pompousicate about how today's consumer (whatever we're calling them today, GenX, Y, Z, K, GenLSMFT) has no loyalty to any brand.

No one says, wait: No brands are giving people reasons to be loyal. No brands are even giving people reasons why they exist. Instead, they're stunting and handbagging and doing stupid brand tricks.

As an industry, we're confused. We think it's about momentary fame. Not long-lasting meaning. We're not supposed to make "one-hit wonders." We're supposed to make the Beatles.

Covered in my blanket statement about the flaccid condition of most brands, are agency/holding company brands. Like all cars, all QSRs, all ISPs, all airlines, telcos, hamburger places, Caribbean resorts, hotel chains, vacation destinations, movies and broadway shows, no one tells you anything about anything. They just tell you that they're award-winning and won some unreasonable number of meaningless stars. No one tells you what they do and why they might be worth choosing.

Reason why? Naw. 
More like Reason, why bother. 
That's work. 

And it doesn't get press.

It's the work, the training, the rewriting, the thinking, the behavior that makes a brand. Not the stunt.

As Alben Barkley reputedly once said about the Vice Presidency, I'll say about 99-percent of advertising: It's not worth a bucket of warm spit.

Which is how I feel about a mayonnaise handbag. 

Or another triple-play bundle, or another insurance product I don't want or need. With a funny commercial that doesn't make me laugh. Not to mention the hundreds of billions spent advertising adverse-reaction-causing pharmaceutical products that would be superfluous if everyone wasn't between 30 and 75 lbs. overweight.

--

BTW, maybe we should read the copy in the BMW ad above. That ad not only sold me a BMW or two. It sold me an industry.

Considering the number of new cars that look strangely similar to to BMW 325e, the traditional production line is fast turning into a reproduction line.

Being the role model for an entire generation of inexact clones is flattering for us, but hardly reassuring for a driver, especially at 55 mph. Simply building a look-alike requires only a few months. Building an authentic BMW 325e necessitates a heritage spanning 57 years.

The latest example of that heritage can be found under the 325e's hood. There resides an in-line 6-cylinder, electronically fuel-injected Eta power plant that "during cranking...sounds like an expensive aircraft engine." (Car and Driver.)

And the 325e takes off almost as fast. It has a remarkable 0-60 time of 9.4 seconds. That time is all the more remarkable because it's combined with an EPA-estimated 21 mpg, 28 highway. 

All of this muscle is supervised by the same kind of computerized engine management system found in a BMW-powered Grand Prix champion race car.

Disc brakes are standard on all four wheels and are vented in the front to further reduce fade.

BMW's innovative Service Interval Indicator informs the drive when service is recommended under real conditions, not just when the manual indicates. And its onboard computer can be programmed to even provide anti-theft protection.

All of these innovative systems demonstrate the basic difference between an authentic BMW 325e and a genuine copy. One is a finely tuned, evolutionary machine with parts and pieces created by some of the automotive world's greatest innovators.

While the other was created by some of its greatest emulators.