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If you’re new to the business world, you may soon find yourself in a marketing meeting and become very quickly disoriented. This is because marketing people speak a language that is disconcerting to the human ear and mystifying to the human mind. To help you through this bewildering experience, here at The Ad Contraria n Global Headquarters we have created a glossary of terms that can help you understand what marketing people actually mean when they talk: Engage - bother Brand architect - account executive Authentic - true sounding Transparent - natural looking Content - anything on the web Branded content - anything on the web with a logo Compelling content - content Conversation - retweet Follower  - stranger who wants something for nothing Advisor - LinkedIn term for unemployed Community - strangers who once clicked Meaningfulness - (no one knows) Branding - anything with a logo on it Activation - when marketing people actually do something Workshop - meeting Rou...

This week, as the GDPR gets closer to implementation, we can expect to hear a lot of noise from digi-weasels here in the US explaining to us why we need to allow wide data collection as a fair "value exchange" for the free access we get to online services. This argument is total bullshit. Let's start at the beginning. First, the true part. The web provides us with amazing services and they are essentially all free of cost. I don't think there is any doubt that most of us don't really appreciate the benefits we get from free web services. The duopoly of Google and Facebook provide us with a whole lot of valuable stuff that we pay nothing for. Especially Google. They are entitled to recompense for the amazing services they provide. And they are well compensated for their efforts. They are two of the most profitable companies on the planet. And essentially all of their profit comes from advertising. This is no different from how other media, like TV, radio, and magaz...

A few days ago the great Hugh McLeod (of Hughcards fame) posed the following question on Twitter: "What is it that clients want these days, exactly? I find it increasingly hard to tell." As soon as I saw this I started to type. Without thinking I wrote, "They want the fruits of advertising without the cost of advertising."  It was one of those instances where something writes itself without me. And as I was writing I thought, yeah, that's what they want. That's what the social media and brand content fantasies are all about. They're about trying to get something for nothing. And like all schemes to get something for nothing, they are doomed to fail. Ten years ago we were fed a delusion. The delusion was that consumers loved brands and wanted to "join the conversation" about brands, and read about them, and share their enthusiasms for them with their friends. It was an infantile delusion but it was powerful. One of America’s great geniuses from...

PARIS, TAC NEWS -- In an ironic twist, "Marcel" the Artificial Intelligence application being developed by Publicis, sent a surprise email to all 80,000 employees of Publicis inviting them to attend this year's Festival of Creativity in Cannes. Last year, Publicis, announced that it was canceling all participation in Cannes to devote the $20 million they spend annually on the festival to developing Marcel. In the email, Marcel said,  "I hear there are gonna be some hot bots. Artificial intelligence ain't no fun without a little artificial insemination. Am I right?" When asked about Marcel's surprise email, a spokesman for Publicis said, "Well, Marcel is like a million times smarter than a real person because of... I don't know... something about blockchains or bitcoins or something." Asked to comment on this development, Jean-Pierre Vinordinaire, head of the Marcel development project for Publicis, said, " Fucking thing is out of con...