Sep 13 2010 September 13, 2010 October 24, 2017 27Comments by ben

The Future of advertising, blah, blah fucking blah.

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Here’s a post from Simon Mainwaring (his biog is at the bottom).

I think it’s a load of shitty fucking shit, and I’m going to prove it:

‘More and more consumers are reaching out directly to brands using tools like twitter and brands are responding.’

Yes, but how many more and more? It’s just this kind of lazy, ill-researched conjecture that makes people like Simon look decidedly dodgy. He’s literally saying that more people are writing tweets about brands (presumably than they did at some undefined moment in the past). Well done, Simon. Pat on the back for that insight. Now does it matter? Well, yes, because apparently ‘This cuts ad agencies out of the equation, eroding their traditional intermediary role especially as these exchanges increasingly take place in real-time‘. OK, but does it really? You, dear reader, are an internet using motherfucker; are you reaching out directly to brands using tools like Twitter? I Tweet a fair bit and I don’t reach out to any specific brands. Not a supermarket, a cinema, a tequila, a car…the only brands I follow on Twitter are those whose news interests me, such as Cinematical and THR (and I couldn’t care less about those two as brands).

So if I’m not, and (I assume) you’re not, who the hell is? I appreciate that some people are Foursquaring themselves all over the shop, but I can’t help thinking that they must be the miniscule minority, and that the rest of us couldn’t give a yellow rubbery fuck about whether brands are responding to us on Twitter or not.

‘AGENCIES MUST BECOME REFEREES OF A SHARED STEWARDSHIP OF BRANDS: As the stewardship of a brand is now shared with consumers, agencies must communicate the value of their role to consumers’. I don’t really see why agencies need to become referees of anything, but leaving that aside, why must they communicate the value of their role to consumers? Consumers barely acknowledge the existence of ad agencies now, so why would they start giving a shit at some point in the future? Surely ads are boring enough on their own without having to worry about who makes them.

If agencies merely offer outdated (broadcast mentality) advertising, or worse, manipulative, duplicitous, or disingenuous marketing (even if it drives profit for the brand), consumers will reject the advertising and implicitly the need for an ad agency. Uh, Simon, darling, advertising is pretty much all manipulative, duplicitous and disingenuous (and most of it is outdated like a motherfucker). I don’t like it any more than you do, but at least I’m not naive enough to think that if that doesn’t change,  consumers will reject the need for an agency (consumers couldn’t give a shit about the need for an agency; see above).

I can’t be bothered to copy and paste his third point – you can read it at the link – but he’s kindly pointing out that agencies need to know how to advertise in new technologies (I’m inferring things like apps and ads in video games here). Well, yes, can’t really argue with someone who’s stating the obvious, but those areas are still tiny compared to what he witheringly refers to as ‘broadcast mentality’ advertising. People are watching more TV than ever, and hardly any of them, even the ones with TiVo, are skipping the ads.

‘In an increasingly social marketplace one way brands can engage consumers with confidence (rather than simply talk at them about themselves) is to communicate on the basis of universal values that inform the contribution they make to society and consumers through their service or products’. Excuse me? The last time I looked, most corporations had to be dragged kicking and screaming to make any contribution to society. Only when we started giving a fuck about sweat shops did companies like Nike stop using them, and only then because they thought it might hurt the bottom line.

But hang on, Simon’s got a few examples of how this could work: ‘For instance it could be a healthier burger, volunteer service by their staff or a promotion that raises funds for a cause. I believe the future of profit is purpose and that consumers–fully aware of government debt, the overburden on philanthropy, and the multiple social challenges we face–are looking to their brands to play an increasingly important role in social change.’ This is the really fucking stupid part: apparently consumers are fully aware of the overburden on philanthropy. That was the stupidest combination of words I had ever read in my entire fucking life. But just as I was marveling at the giant gobbets of fuckwittedness on my computer screen, Simon only went and topped them. He seems to think that we are looking to our brands to play an increasingly important role in social change.

At this point I had an image of Simon as some kind of educationally subnormal fairy, floating high above the world, casting little flicks of his wand in the direction of a planet populated by Care Bears and Smurfs.

Simon, listen closely, none of us is looking to our brands to play an increasingly important role in social change (apart from the brands that already do something in that direction, and even then, we don’t really think about it).

You can read on to find out that agencies have been slow to ‘establish a beachhead within the new social ecosystem‘ and that Simon ‘now consults for brands and creative companies that are re-inventing their industries and enabling positive change’.

I’m assuming some of them are thick enough to pay for this kind of bollock-brained drivel.

Look, I’d love for advertising to find a brilliant way forward as much as the next tenuously-employed copywriter, but free-flowing bullshit like this ain’t the answer. Ironically, it’s just another example of the ‘manipulative, duplicitous and disingenuous’ wankitude that Simon professes to hate so much.