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I have noticed something recently when I read articles in trade publications. Much of the data we are getting about online advertising is negative . To wit: - The amount of fraud - The extent of ad blocking - The siphoning of revenue by ad tech middlemen - The minuscule rates of interactivity - The absence of consumer engagement - The lack of transparency in media agency buying Much of positive news we get, however, is anecdotal . The trades tell us about this successful social media program and that successful Facebook campaign. And the anecdotes seem to have far more impact. One of the principles that every good copywriter learned in her first six weeks on the job was "tell a story." The reason is simple -- people remember stories (sadly, storytelling has now become an inescapable and insufferable cliché that every dimwit marketing poseur is required by law to mention twice in every sentence. But we'll leave that for another day.) But storytelling has its dangers. T...

Here at The Ad Contrarian Global Headquarters, we're starting to have subversive thoughts about marketing. Well, we're not actually starting -- we've had them for decades -- but we needed a good lead line... Back in my agency days, I would often sit and listen to marketing people talk and think 'these people don't really know anything. They've learned a vocabulary and they think that is the same as knowing something.' As Richard Feynman used to say, if you know that a tree is called an acacia tree you don't know anything about trees, you know something about people -- what people call trees. Well, I'm getting off track here. The point is, I think there is a fairly large segment of the marketing fraternity (or sorority if you prefer) who are bluffing. They don't really know anything but they've created jobs in which knowing something isn't really necessary. Here's an example. Thanks to a loyal reader, I was sent a link to something...

Today I am repeating my traditional Thanksgiving post which I have run for several years. And, yes, the Trump line was there years ago. Thanksgiving is my kind of holiday. It doesn't require gods or miracles or tragedies or victories or angels or kings or winners or losers or flags or gifts.  All you need is some pumpkin pie, a big-ass flat screen, and a comfortable sofa to drool on. Oh, and a little gratitude. 
Gratitude, by the way, is a commodity in very short supply. Regrettably, we seem to have mountains of expectation but not much in the way of appreciation. It's a socially transmitted disease. 
So this Thanksgiving let's put aside harsh judgments for a day or two. Thank a fireman. Give a bum a buck. Kiss an in-law. 
I don't like Puritans of any stripe. But I like the idea of them having the Indians over for dinner. I know the detente didn't last too long, but any day you're eating sweet potatoes instead of shooting off muskets is a good day. 
Be gr...

We have become desensitized to the ridiculousness of our industry and to the pace at which yesterday's marketing miracle becomes today's bad joke. I doubt there's anything that has gone from marketing phenomenon to laughable punchline faster than "Like us on Facebook." The time it has taken "Like us on Facebook" to drop off the world, even for an industry as silly and fad-obsessed as ours, is breathtaking. Just a few years ago you could not present an ad to a client without "Like us on Facebook" lurking somewhere near the logo. Today, if you dared to do that you'd be thought a complete imbecile. Also in that brief period of time Facebook has gone from the exemplar of new age "brand conversations" to the most crass practitioner of full-on old-fashioned paid advertising. The pivot has been stunning and for the most part the lemmings in the advertising and marketing businesses still haven't awakened from their dream world in w...

The people who are always wrong are convinced that to a significant extent Trump's victory was the result of his masterful use of Twitter. According to an article in the the NY Times in which reporters in the bubble ask marketers in the bubble why people in the bubble got it wrong.... "...the chief executive of the public relations company Edelman, said Mr. Trump’s use of Twitter — which he often used to forcefully attack Mrs. Clinton and the news media — and reduced reliance on traditional TV ads showed the power of “peer-to-peer” communication." Horseshit. As usual, the people who do marketing by selfie-stick think that everyone is like them. According to a study in the UK, an advertising person is almost 7 times as likely to have a Twitter account as a real person. Here are the facts: Only 20% of adults have a Twitter account. Only 15% of rural adults (heavy Trump backers) use Twitter. Only 11% of people over 50 (the most likely voters) use Twitter. In fact, if ...

I'm much more interested in advertising than I am in marketing. But there are a couple of marketing people I pay particular attention to. They are Byron Sharp and Marc Ritson. They are both professors and both work in Australia. Sharp wrote " How Brands Grow " which is a wonderful marketing book. Ritson is one of the most entertaining and sensible speakers and writers on marketing you'll ever come across. Unlike me, they're not just bomb-throwing blowhards with strongly held, ill-informed opinions. These guys actually know things. They agree on a whole lot of stuff regarding the clown show that is contemporary marketing. But there's one thing they disagree on -- the value of segmentation and targeting. At the risk of mischaracterizing their positions, let me be clear that these are my words and interpretations , not theirs. And this is my dumbass distillation of their positions on the subject. Sharp thinks that in mass marketed consumer product categories seg...

In case you haven't heard, we had an election here the other day. The people spoke and what they said was "fuck you." They said "fuck you" to Washington. They said "fuck you" to global corporations. They said "fuck you" to people who look down on them and ridicule them. They said "fuck you" to Silicon Valley billionaires. They said "fuck you" to people who don't look like them or speak their language. They said "fuck you" to transgender toilets. They said "fuck you" to Black Lives Matter. They said "fuck you" to the media. They said "fuck you" to Hollywood. They said "fuck you" to people who want to tell them what they can eat and what they can say. They said "fuck you" to safe spaces. They said "fuck you" to smug elitist scum like you and me. They said "fuck you" to modernism. They said "fuck you" to Facebook and "fuck you...

You don't need an MBA to figure out that most of the really big marketing successes of our time did not come from data analysis or business models or strategy briefs or professional marketers. They came from daydreamers with a hunch: Steve Jobs Walt Disney J.K. Rowling Mark Zuckerberg The list could go on for weeks. The advertising industry -- whose only important asset is ideas -- has learned nothing from this. We keep heading in the wrong direction.  We hire more and more math majors. Then we take the people who are supposed to be our idea people and give them banners to do by 3 o'clock. We need to rethink the whole idea of what we mean by "creative department." We don't need more people who are tech-savvy or analytical. We need some brains-in-a-bottle who have no responsibility other than to sit in a corner and feed us crazy ideas. Just a cursory look at the output of most agencies and marketing companies will convince anyone that primarily what we are producin...

If you're a regular here, you know that once a quarter the finance committee at The Ad Contrarian Worldwide Headquarters insists that we earn money to pay off the lawsuits by doing some shameless self-promotion. Well, today's your lucky day. Now that we have a whole fucking ecosystem of Ad Contrariana going on, I'm only going to bother you with two things. First is speaking. If you've been to any conferences, sales meetings, or industry events recently and have had to sit through the life-threatening assault on intelligence that passes for "thought leadership," you are probably aware of the desperate need for entertaining and provocative speakers. Well, I'm the next best thing. Rather than bore you with self-serving assertions, I'll bore you with third party endorsements: “… the best speaker we’ve ever had.” Time Inc, UK "The most provocative man in advertising." Michael Gass, Fuel Lines "Thank you. People loved it...we have had many ...