I've been struggling a little with my advertising book. What I wanted to avoid was the old marketing book trick of 'an argument that could be expressed in 10 pages stretched out to 210'.
To insure against this I'm not going to write a single, cohesive, arguement - instead it's going to be 12 provocations. 12 Rants from the Dark Side that talk about business, brands and the death throes of the American advertising industry. Each rant will be the 15 pages I need to 'get it off my chest / prove I'm right / offer a solution' after which I'll simply move on to the next topic.
Thank god that the American Ad' Industry is screwed up enough to support my A.D.D huh?
I'm going to write both the intro and the first chapter "Brand Surrender. The You Tubing of American business" over the next day or so. After which I'll move on to 'Mirrored convictions', 'Creative narcissism', 'All mouth, no trousers" and take it from there.
I do genuinely believe that the current mania for surrendering the course of brands entirely to the public (YOU design your own shoe, write your own ad, help us come up with a new product, wipe our ass) is a huge mistake. Yes interruption as a method of communication is slowly dying off - but the response has to be something other than 'the customer is in control' - aren't brands supposed to be beacons of belief? aren't they supposed to stand for something that makes them worth the extra couple of bucks we pay for them? It's bad enough that Government has been castrated by an over reliance on focus groups (I can't imagine Churchill saying "We will fight them wherever you think it's a good idea to fight them - let us know on 0890 112211, press 1 for beaches, 2 for France, 3 for the streets' etc.
Anyway this isn't nearly as well expressed as I'd like but it's early here and distractions abound. But I'm jazzed to the point of spontaneous Fosse hands
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