Faith.

One of the big changes in the advertising industry from when I grew up in it, until today, roughly thirty years after it was fully-subsumed by voracious financial strip-miners, is the matter of faith.

Faith.

Faith in the efficacy of the work we do.

Faith in its importance to a brand.

Faith in its power to persuade.

Faith in its effectiveness.

Faith, without all the two-dollar words, that advertising works.

Not everyone, not every agency, not every account, but if you were working at one of the top shops, DDB, Scali, Ammirati, Levine, Chiat, or one of the good groups at larger, more anodyne shops, you believed in the product, service or brand you were charged with selling.

You became so intimate with that product, service or brand that you found reasons you could believe in it. And you, being charged with helping to make that product, service or brand successful, you worked and worked and worked to do things that did so. So others could believe.

That was our job.

Period.

The people who have taken over the advertising industry have no such faith.

That's not their job.

They bought the advertising industry but they don't believe in advertising itself.

They bought the advertising industry because at one time it had cash-flow and no capital plant. They wanted that.

ROI.

Buying the ad industry had nothing to do with loving the ad industry. The only thing they loved was the almighty buck.

Read their stream of bs and you'll see none of it circles back to advertising itself. There's always some data bs, or programmatic bs, or influencer bs, or AI bs that works. You never hear anyone say: 

"Good ads made Phil Knight a billionaire."
"Good ads made Steve Jobs a billionaire."
"Good ads made Fred Smith a billionaire."
"Good ads made the people who imported Absolut rich."
"Good ads built BMW, Honda, Lexus."

Because they don't believe in good ads. 

They find some ratiocination to explain success. It's seldom attributed to ad people who took apart a client's product, figured out what made it special and said it in an interesting way. 

Here's one example.

They don't believe in the work it takes to do work like this. Or the power that comes from work like this. 

It's too much work.

Especially when you can just have a machine stamp out what everyone else is doing and have AI generate data that says it worked and then give yourself a trophy that proved it worked.

I start every project I've ever gotten the exact same way. 

I write my client's product name on a sheet of paper. Then I write brand x cures cancer, or its equivalent.

A friend just told me he does something similar. When he hears about a product, he starts by trying to answere the question, "Where have you been all my life?"

Not too long ago a tech client called me. 

They were in trouble. Like clients always are.

They had, overnight, been subsumed by larger competitors. They were still "making shovels," while their industry had moved on to backhoes.

No offense to hoes.

They called me. 

And I knew it was important.

Because they had their engineers on the phone. 

When you talk to engineers not marketers, it's because the c-suite is scared. Engineers know how things work. Marketers know how to say things. 

They seldom talk to each other. There's a disconnect between the what and how. And neither gets the play it deserves.

That's why they call me.

The engineers spoke to me for an hour. Explaining unexplainably the efficacy of their technology advances. I didn't  understand a word of it.

Finally, I got mad.

Look, that's fine, I said. 

But what's it going to say on your landing page when people want to find out more about your product.

They pfumpfered liked a engine run out of gas.

Look, I said. 

What you're saying is simple. Also, you're not selling off the page. You're just getting people interested in learning more. You're giving them hope.

The rules have changed, I said.

Now the tools have changed, I said.

That's a moon, June, swoon rhyme.

But it carried the day.

It captured the specialness of the product. It helped define and differentiate it.

I believed in them.

I believed in their offering.

I believed I could make it sexy.

That's how this works.

--

BTW, about a month ago I was looking for a specific ad that I thought Chiat\Day New York had done, about two decades ago. My Chiat source helped, but I eventually found it myself.

I realized that with all the advertising books I have--probably 400--I didn't have this one. I found it on abebooks.com for less than most people spend on a week's worth of monopoly-owned coffee.

How can you not have this?

In looking at the work, a lot of it I hadn't seen before. Some of the work dates back to the early 70s. Before I was as advertising-perspicacious as I am today. And before anyone had heard of Chiat\Day. Much less the word perspicacious.

I took pictures of a few of the ads that I hadn't seen that I liked. They are ads that do what advertising is supposed to do. 1) Get noticed. 2) Differentiate a product. 3) Respect the viewer.

I can practically hear the naysayers saying today that my comparison is an apples and orange one because everything made or offered today is a parity product.

You could say Hondas are the same as Nissans. Why try.
You could say all banks are the same. Why try.
You could say all colleges are the same. Why try.

You could say all liquors are the same. Why try.

You could say all breaths are the same. Why breathe.

But parity-ness only happens when people don't look hard enough for a differentiation. 

Because they don't love either the product, their craft, their client or their customers sufficiently.

There's no reason advertising has to suck.

We just, apparently, like it sucky.