Help.

I'm busy.

You're busy.

The whole world is busy.

And, as always, the world is too much with us.

Shit is happening.

Shit is happening everywhere.

In the world.

In our country.

In our neighborhood.

In our homes.

The last thing we want to think about is how reliable our unreliable ISP is. Or how great a deal our Speculum cable is. Or the splendors of a triple-play bundle with a torrent of mouse-type that makes Niagara look like a tear drop.

We don't want to think about bad-side-effect medicines for disease we don't have. Or car showrooms filled with balloons and bad lease deals. We don't want to think about pink-slime hamburgers or chicken fried in rat-lard.

We hate marketing.

We hate advertising.

Humans always have and always will.

People LinkIn-ify proclamations like that as if they're news. As if people from my generation (Eisenhower was president when I was born and the world was still in black-and-white) or my parents' generation (Herbert Hoover was president when they were born) LOVED marketing and commercials. 

"Honey, shush, an Old Gold commercial with a dancing cigarette box is on."

No. No. And more no.

People have always and will always hate banalities and interruptions. They have and always will hate being screamed at. They have and always will hate marketing.

5000 years ago around some stoa in Attika, people got pissed if a goat-cheese vendor interrupted the blind bard just as Hector was being dragged through the mud.  Do you think Homer wasn't interrupted by commercials? Do you think people welcomed those interruptions?

Grow up.

Whether you grew up in a time conniving gods, of five channels or 50,000, you do your best to avoid crap, junk, lies, things that insult your intelligence, boredom.

Our job as marketers is to help people on behalf of our clients. Our job as marketers is to help people by showing them the value, the ease, the joy, the saliency of the product or service we represent in our messages. 

This isn't new. 

This is Gossage.

Or, as above, Homer. And not Simpson.

People don't read ads (or like ads, or respond to ads) the read (or like or respond) to what interests them and sometimes that's an ad.

I spend my days and nights visiting clients. 

Sitting in fluorescent ceiling-tiled rooms seeing the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked...Those minds giving me lists of bullet points and mandatories and clichés that they're sure will make "consumers," "users" or "the target" buy their thing without us as marketers every working hard enough to explain to those consumers, users, targets--you know, people--how our clients' thing actually helps them--is good for them, can comfort their afflictions or afflict their comforts.

My job as an agency is to find things out about my clients' products and services that are actually valuable to the people they want to sell to.

SSo when people--go to the store, regardless of where the store is, regardless if it's real or virtual, and when those people are confronted by a spate of bullshit, confusion, blandishments and deceptions, they can find solace, even succor in my brand.

Let your brand serve people. Help people. 

   Let your brand organize a supermarket with 16,000 products and reduce that supermarket to 35 products so people can get in and out in 15 minutes, not 90 minutes. Let your brand do the same for the strip of road that has eleven different car dealerships all specializing in selling the same ugly SUV for $67,000, not including transportation fees and dealer prep. 

That's what advertising is supposed to do:

Inform. Entertain. And help.

It's that simple.

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