We’re just not good enough
The advertising industry needs to admit a harsh truth: we’re not as good at this as we used to be.
Yes, there are lots of other reasons why the work has worsened, but the reduction in talent and ability is obvious.
I know it’s hard to separate all the strands of why ads used to be better, but allow me to remove my rose-tinted glasses and take a good long look at what has happened over the last twenty years.
In the 1990s there was much more money knocking around. Production budgets were bigger, wages were higher and margins were healthier. Gradually, for complicated political reasons that we could trace back to the deregulation of the Reagan/Thatcher years, those pools of cash have dried up to puddles.
There is still a lot of money sloshing around, but it’s now finding its way into industries like tech and gaming. So if you want to have fun and work for big brands your mates have heard of, you might now skim past the list of ad agencies and look instead to Facebook, Google, Apple and the producers of Grand Theft Auto and Call Of Duty. Your work will be seen by hundreds of millions, the wages are good and the snacks are usually top notch.
Where does that leave advertising? Fighting over the crumbs left over when the best talent has chosen a more prestigious, more significant, more creative and more lucrative job elsewhere.
We used to be able to attract the best and the brightest; people who could enjoy their job, see their stuff on TV and get well paid, while still finding the time to spend afternoons in pubs and mornings in bed.
Now we offer smaller salaries, minuscule production budgets, briefs for the kind of ads that routinely ruin your day, and the opportunity to work evenings and weekends; not because you love your job and want to do it better, but because your boss can’t afford another copywriter, so needs to get double the work out of you.
Which path would you choose? Yes, there are still good ads out there, somewhere; and yes, the salaries are still much better than 90% of jobs, but this is all relative. Things ain’t what they used to be, and in terms of motivation, attraction and fuel, shit in equals shit out.
And it doesn’t just mean the ads are worse. crucially it means that clients no longer have confidence in us producing 10/10 work. The last decade has demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that your agency is unlikely to produce anything like the work that made it so cocksure in the 1990s. Every substandard ad is another nail in the coffin of trust between agency and client, so they expect less of you, give you fewer chances to prove you can do something great, give you less money to make work that will probably be 7/10, and the vicious circle spins on.
Maybe it’s time for all of us to take a good look in the mirror and ask if we’re doing everything we can to be good at our jobs and, beyond that, do we care enough to do more?
Are you a real copywriter, or did you lose a coin toss between you and your art college partner? Do you tell people you’re a writer, or do you say things like ‘We both do a bit of both’? Do you take pride in your words, or do you try to mumble them out into the world, hoping no one will notice? Do you own a copy of D&AD’s The Copy Book? Do you read it out of choice, not as if it’s homework? Do you spend hours crafting a headline, or do you knock it out as quickly as possible because ‘it’ll do’?
Are you a real art director, or did you end up in advertising because it looked like an easier way to make money than the ‘real’ art you’d prefer to create? Do you understand that your job isn’t to make things look good, but to stop people and lead them through your communication with invisible skill? Do you know who Neil Godfrey is? Do you listen to Dave Dye’s podcasts? Do you have enough knowledge to be able to fight for your decisions with convincing authority? Do you contribute to the grade, or do you sit at the back of the suite, browsing Reddit, hoping that a nod to the colourist’s questions won’t leave you exposed as hopelessly out of your depth?
I could sum up the above questions in three words: do you care? And if you don’t, it’s OK. I understand. The job isn’t what it was, and you probably can coast through 90% of it and still pick up a decent pay packet. The client is frustrating, your ECD has ‘never done anything good’, most work is shit anyway, the pub is calling…
But that path leads to an unhappy you and a worse industry. Here’s an idea: if you don’t like the job, don’t respect it, and don’t see the point in putting in the effort, why not do something else? Your three score years and ten are ticking away far too quickly to waste them doing something that gets you down.
Then again, you could literally choose to make the best of it. You could work harder, read more, ask more questions, fight your corner, learn when to use a semi colon in a headline (pretty much never) and spend a night emailing Jean-Paul Goude references to your director.
In short, you could learn to love your job, become proud of it, become proud of yourself for doing it and go to work with a spring in your step. Then, when people wonder why the ads aren’t as good as they used to be, they’ll stop thinking it’s because of you.
I’m bursting with pride right now from those 23 likes that instagram post I spent 25 hours writing has received.
If only I spent more time on it I’m sure I could’ve raised it to 24 likes for that brand with 5k followers and about 5 real people.
I don’t think advertising ever attracted ‘best and the brightest’ in a formal sense. Chris O’Shea drove trucks, Chris Palmer was a bike messenger, Chris Herring started in the post room. And yes, that’s just the Chris’s. They fell in almost by accident. But then the door was always wide open. It attracted people who didn’t quite fit anywhere else. (Even now I advise kids who don’t have a clue what to do to give advertising a look.) The problem has started with our over reliance on colleges, grad schemes and art schools and the industry’s reluctance to consider anyone from beyond its usual source. The people who could restore advertising probably aren’t looking to get into it.
I didn’t mean in a formal sense. I meant those Chrises are better and brighter than today’s Chrises.
Nope.
The BEST creative people will find a way to do great work whatever the environment.
But very few of them work in advertising.
> get well paid, while still finding the time to spend afternoons in pubs and mornings in bed.
Really? Where did you work?
Not every day. Just Fridays.
I’ve read many discussions about this topic and it’s always the same reasons being mentioned as to why advertising has declined.
The talent pool isn’t as diverse/good.
The holding companies have ruined it for everybody.
The advent of pc/mac has diminished the appreciation for the craft.
And so forth.
The one thing I never see anyone mention is how culture in general has advanced massively from the heydays of advertising.
A good example is watching old comedians like Kinison, Stanhope, Hicks, and maybe Pryor.
Would those jokes make anyone under 20 laugh today?
I seriously doubt it, most of those jokes are just not relevant anymore.
You can see parallels to advertising in that.
Would the Pregnant Man still have such an impact as it did back then?
Would the VW Lemon?
They wouldn’t, and they hardly make any sense to any advertising creative starting out unless you explain the context in which they ran.
Compare that with today’s outrage and clickbait culture where everything tries to one-up each other, with digital media that’s constantly changing, and it’s no wonder the quality of advertising seems to be declining.
It’s hard to compete with that unless you employ the same tactics.
That’s why you see brands either trying to be as PC as possible touting brand purpose or do the exact opposite (e.g. are you beach body ready?) to attract attention.
Headlines like “At 60 miles an hour…” that you’d find in D&AD’s copy book just wouldn’t have the impact today people think it would.
I believe that’s also the reason why so many places/shops run by the ‘old legends’ of adland aren’t nearly as famous for any of the work they’re doing right now as they would be back in ‘the good old days’.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s still good ads/agencies out there.
But if we’re generalising like you’re doing here Ben, then I think it’s unfair to say that creatives just aren’t good enough anymore without looking at what goes on outside the open plan offices of agencies.
On another note I don’t like the idea of pointing the finger at creatives who are generally insecure about their own talents and are much more likely to suffer from imposter syndrome.
Especially when some of your readers probably are creatives just starting out.
The other thing that I find unhealthy to do is to idolise tech and gaming companies when you’re glancing over the massive issues they’re wrestling with.
It’s a bit of a cop out on your side.
FaceGoo with all their privacy breaches and manipulation of democracy, fuelled by ad fraud.
And the gaming industry with its in-game gambling mechanics being promoted aggressively to children and the relentless crunch studios face with massive firing waves right after the completion of a game.
Is that really where all the talented people want to work?
‘It’s hard to compete with that unless you employ the same tactics.’
Lemon and countless others in the VW campaign succeeded precisely because they DIDN’T employ the same tactics as the rest of the auto industry: Crass, over the top, shouty claim and counterclaim by Detroit’s finest.
Are you saying that can’t be done today?
The point I was trying to make wasn’t about whether or not you can do something in your category no one else is.
My point was that I don’t think you can you do a print ad for a car brand today that’ll get as much as attention/have as much impact as Lemon did back in those days.
Aside from Stanhope you mentioned dead comedians. Who knows what they’d be like now, but even if their material wouldn’t make someone under 20 laugh today, you could very much follow their principles of incisive wit, smart observation, perfect timing etc. and apply them to right now. Louis CK, Chris Rock and Dave Chapelle have all produced similarly excellent work in recent years.
I’m not saying you need to literally be an older creative, but you can take the principles that made ‘At 60mph…’ and ‘Lemon’ so great and use them today. Hardly any ads do that, so we don’t see work that presents a product truth well-told, or a truly innovative strategy. There’s no harm in looking at the greats and taking the parts that are relevant today, or are you saying that The Godfather and Abbey Road have nothing to offer an aspiring filmmaker or musician? Imagine… just imagine a banner ad with a smart, incisive headline instead of a logo and a packshot.
I’ve always said there are plenty of contributory factors, but just as you can’t blame it all on creatives, creatives can’t blame it all on other things. They’re a big part of it, and if they’re brilliant they should feel free to ignore what I said as it won’t apply to them. If they’ve just started out then they might find my advice a helpful fillip to producing better work. If this post sends them into a pit of insecurity they might be in the wrong job. After all, if a blog post has that effect, how will they cope at their next creative review?
And sure, we all know that tech companies have massive problems. I’m not saying they’re perfect, I’m saying if you want to ‘have fun’ and ‘work on brands your mates have heard of’ where ‘your work will be seen by hundreds of millions’ and ‘the wages are good’, tech is a place to look. If you want a morally unquestionable experience where you can save dolphins, work somewhere else.
And yes – that is where some talented people want to work, obviously.
Sorry if I wasn’t clearer but you seem to have chosen to miss several of my points to better serve your own.
And this whole comment feels like a bit of a cop out on your side.
Sorry, I’ve done a poor job of explaining what I meant when I said they’re ‘not relevant’ anymore.
Besides the jokes, just doing comedy on its own is not enough to stay relevant.
Look at all those comedians you mentioned.
They star in movies, write their own TV shows, write for/appear on SNL, and have massively popular podcasts like Joe Rogan.
They don’t just do comedy, much like a copywriter/creative nowadays shouldn’t just think about trying to perfect that headline for hours on end.
Yes, it’s still important to some degree, but not as much as people think it is/was back in the days.
That line on a poster won’t stick out on its own in a sea of clickbaity headlines and constant notifications going off on your phone.
The only way they do is if you do something extreme on either end of the spectrum (e.g. brand purpose type stuff or causing controversy).
And those never tend to be the well written lines (e.g. are you beach body ready?).
The job’s become much harder from what it used to be and isn’t as simple as spending more time writing headlines.
Some of your ‘favourite ads of all-time’ posts reflects this.
The Twitter hashtag campaign had no headline.
Dumb ways to die was a song first and foremost.
And while The Godfather and Abbey Road are certainly masterpieces one can learn from, they’re not relevant when you want your movie/music to be seen/heard by hundreds of millions of people.
Just think of all the movies that do terribly domestically but absolutely kill it in China and other Asian countries.
One of those is The Fast and Furious franchise, hardly a cinematic masterpiece, that’s seen by hundreds of millions of people.
Have you ever heard of a K-Pop band called BTS?
Neither have I, but their videos get upwards of 500m views each on Youtube, some even close to 1B.
Meanwhile the highest view-count for a Beatles song on their official channel is 260m.
The world (and advertising) has changed massively from what it was and clinging to the belief that a well-written headline on a banner will do anything but waste money and time (as many brands are slowly catching on to) is why I believe advertising is in the sorry state it is.
Not because copywriters and art directors aren’t good enough.
A wise person once said, ‘You can have what you want or you can have your excuses for not having it’.
And of course I’ve heard of BTS.
Take On Me just passed 1 billion views, by the way.
My apologies, I wasn’t aware that you’re into K-pop.
I’m not, but I know who BTS are.
While I’m here, when did I say that a copywriter/creative nowadays should JUST think about trying to perfect that headline for hours on end? That’s one thing they could/should do if they want to improve their work. Sorry if you can’t make the leap, but writing a good Tweet, endline, piece of dialogue, even hashtag would be examples of taking the same skill and applying it to today’s world.
Understand?
And selecting examples that prove your point while ignoring others that don’t isn’t a good look. Sure, choose ads I like that don’t have headlines, but ignore the ones with excellent writing (one of which IS Dumb Ways To Die, which was not ‘a song first and foremost’).
The most laughable thing is that apparently The Beatles are irrelevant if you want your music to be heard by hundreds of millions of people. THEN YOU ACTUALLY CITE A STATISTIC SHOWING THAT THEIR MUSIC HAS BEEN HEARD BY HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE, decades after its release.
Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, a long, intelligent, Oscar-nominated movie (just in case you miss the comparison, I’m saying that’s kind of like The Godfather) took $374m worldwide.
I get it: you have an axe to grind. But all you’re doing over here is looking whiny and not very bright. It’s just possible that those two attributes are what has got you into the situation that’s made you so dissatisfied.
There’s a lot of truth to all that you’ve said, but let me share one anecdote from my experience, fully realizing that it’s not necessarily representative of everything that’s wrong with advertising.
Between 2010 and 2016 I was a director of marketing for a large firm. We had an eight figure ad and marketing budget, spent heavily on television AND some digital channels. And the company was growing. Unfortunately, we were sold to an investment group that felt our slow growth was too slow. So they brought in consultant and people they’d worked with at other companies and all those folks told them we should switch the vast majority of our marketing spend to pure digital and social media advertising, because that would drive a ton more leads into our sales funnel.
And the switch to digital and social did drive a ton more leads.
The problem was that none of these leads converted into sales. When pressed on this lack of conversion, the consultants and friends of friends that were running the marketing department basically said, “hey, we just drive the leads, somebody else is responsible for converting them.”
Two years later, the company was out of business. But to hear the consultants and friends of friends tell it, it wasn’t because of their marketing. No sir. Their marketing drove a shit ton of leads into the sales funnel.
The moral of the story (at least from my perspective) is that a lot of people in our business nowadays don’t understand the the primary purpose of advertising and marketing is to sell to consumers. The number of clicks, the engagement rate, the likes and shares – these things don’t matter if you’re not making a sale.
Just my two cents.
A valuable 2 cents.
Thank you.
I always ask clients what business problem they’re trying to solve, then apply communications to solving that exact problem. A click is worthless; a sale is valuable.
But some people just want clicks to show their boss how great they were at providing clicks. And some bosses reward that.
Sorry about your firm…
And it isn’t just the creative side of things… The Suits have become paper-pushing yes men, with no opinion on anything and only intent on pleasing the client and not producing the best work.
It hurts to see.