Jun 19 2015 June 19, 2015 June 19, 2015 18Comments by ben

Guest Post

Posted in
Angus Wardlaw writes:
ANYTHING BUT ADVERTISING?
I have a filthy, dirty admission to make.
I don’t think digital marketing is helping to sell stuff.There, I’ve said it.

And now that I have, I can already hear the whining Toyota Hilux of the Interactive State hysterically bouncing over the dusty berms towards me as the beardy guy on the back cocks his RPG 7. 

I fear there is no longer a place to hide in the open plan, slightly more cost-effective agency spaces of Noho, Hoxton, Shoreditch, Clerkenwell, or the newly Omnicom-annexed Southbank for an infidel such as I.

But then, do I really want to sell my soul to write mood films and then call them adverts (because it went down soooooo well at the client conference?) 
Do I really want to face yet another group-ideation circle-jerk of game-changing, story-telling content as everyone absentmindedly FBs their friends from behind their MacBook Pros? 
Do I really want to lavish a thousand billable hours of frame-by-frame crafting into case study films that boast of ‘not creating a campaign, but a movement’? 
Do I really want to squander even more billable hours drawing up storyboards for user-invisible 234 x 60 pixel half-banners (when, actually, it would take less time to come up with a proper idea for a half-decent poster that could actually be scanned by the real retinas of a gazillion commuter’s eyeballs, infinitesimally). 
Or a television commercial that, when done well, would doubtless be remembered for considerably longer than the Planck time it takes a Millennial to press SKIP on the YouTubes for an ill-advised RBS financial product pre-roll?

Do I really have to defend any semblance of an idea by wielding the light sabre of Web analytics and other faux-statistical trex that can be measured in clicks, or likes, or hits (anything other than silly sales goals).

Do I really want to spend my evenings rubbing against pushy craft-beer-addled yuppies hiding behind their peak beards in crowd-funded experiential pop-ups in that famuuussss street under the micturated arches of Waterloo Station… or try my hand at a projection-mapped virtual skatepark on the AstroTurf of that totes deck ‘city’ made from re-purposed freight containers dumped across the road from Shoreditch House? 

Do I?

Do I really need to “change my tomorrow” and get a hacker mind with an MBA in Geofencing, coding (give me strength!), viral immersion or social labbing from Hyper fucking Island?

Does anyone really want to do any of this?

Of course they do. 
Because they don’t know any better. 

That is, until ad blockers really start to kick-in and cram themselves into our bony little, lazy-client-pummelled bottom-lines.

Then we’re all going to have to hobble out of the shadows, pick the cellophane off that layout pad with nails bitten to the quick (good luck with that), and suck on our Pentel rollerballs as we try to remember how we all once did A.D.V.E.R.T.I.S.I.N.G.

Perhaps even without using cats?

 

(Apologies for the squashed type. That’s what happens when I copy and paste into WordPress.)