This piece of half-baked lunacy appeared in a magazine on Sunday.
Doctor Johnson suggested, with regard to writing “Read through your composition and whenever you see something that seems to you particularly good, strike it out.”
Davbid Ogilvy referred unkindly to people “skidding about helplessly on the slippery surface of irrelevant creative brilliance” – a fine piece of onomatopoeia.
I don’t think we can say the above example is particularly good or brilliant. It is a particularly fatuous and round-about way of boasting – a bad habit in advertising as in personal life.
But why should you care?
Well, it is because there is a gap worth thinking about.
Although a small army of people who want to write copy that gets results has sprung up, they almost all fall into two camps.
They are either devoted to online media, as a result of the ability to measure what works and what doesn’t online, or are rusting old relics of the palmy days of direct marketing – like me.
Meanwhile, there is a yawning chasm.
Ignorance is bliss in the big advertising agencies. Showing off is confused with selling. The golden price is an award, not a sale. Countless thousands of otherwise harmless young people are inextricably marooned up their own pink little posteriors.
I predict that as we all find ourselves working away to pay for the greed and folly of the bankers, speculators and politicians a new interest in advertising that gets measurable results will arise. I hope so.
Not before time.
Drayton,
Could you elaborate a little more about what so offends you about this ad? Certainly, one can sense the “Gee aren't we smart!” aspect, without them realising that this isn't new. However, I would have thought that it would do a reasonable job of getting people's attention. From there it goes downhill as if so impressed by their own cleverness, they forgot (if they even know) to write a decent ad.
I have this image of you reading the paper over the weekend suddenly enraged and ripping the thing to shreds!
Kevin Francis
I think the individuals that created this ad for the mini cooper must have been smoking pot and drinking.These advertising geniuses enjoy throwing feces up against the wall to see what sticks. Its no wonder we have been bombarded with horrible advertising in today's marketplace.
I don't think this is better ad. The only thing I know this can get my attention.
Any fool can get attention. It is relevance that counts
Doesn't onomatopoeia sound like onomatopoeia?
It's also confusing to the eye.
[…] mentioned Drayton Bird before on these pages, but he has a point when he refers to the ‘gentle swish of creative masturbation‘ – and it applies to these things as much as to design. Stop it. Right […]