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| Linkedin - from my series "Tanaklogia" dated 2013 |
I have been in the communication scene long enough, and I have read the words "old advertising is dead" more often than is healthily possible. Anything from the prisma buildboards (remember those rotating ones which would accomodate, not one, not two but three ads at once?), to the electronic diplays which could accommodate even more than three, to the splintering of TV into many in one household, to advent of social media, and now the explosive ubiquitous presence of AI, and so on and so forth.
When my cousin who studied arts in the US came back to Lebanon sometime in the mid-80s, he took me for a ride and in one of those small villages in Mount Lebanon he looked at the banner above a small shop and simply said "that's advertising! Anything out of the ordinary is advertising!" - the beauty of it is that the banner was one of those that simply said so-and-so shop no more no less, but the street was otherwise barren from any other such sign, which made it very striking in the middle of that road.
Today everyone is going "if they can do it, why can't we?". Everyone who is anyone is trying to keep up with - to be honest I don't even know with what. Sure, sure, I ranted about client servicing in agencies dumbing down creative work out of fear of losing accounts, I have spoken about creatives not being creative because they've been outvoted too many times, about ignorant marketing department heads who have no clue what they are doing, about impolite clients thinking they own the agency just because they end up - very very bleatingly paying their bills. But this is different, there is a huge of sense of we-lost-the-plot-and-we-have-no-idea-what-we-are-doing.
Obviously, don't let me start with Linkedin where everyone is an award-winner and each member there posting silly AI slops and glorifying mundane happenings, and trying to exalt "lessons" from things that otherwise wouldn't register on the radar because "they are building personal brands".
What am I harping about here? I am just saying that eventually, advertising purposes have not changed. Any advertising no matter what the "brand" is does 3 things: 1) introduce the product 2) tell you the product is in the market 3) invite you to try the product. Still, even those simple, ubiquitous and very simple aims end up not being fulfilled.
I am all for creativity believe me. But what is bothering me is the fact that everyone is going for style over substance. I can barely recall any ad that stood out as of late. Has there been any? I am sure there has been, but they are more and more difficult to locate and remember. And throughout it all, the fatigue gets more and more intense.