Ad-ness Madness

Which of the following profession is least trusted?

a)    Advertising Professionals

b)   Lawyers

c)    Politicians

I know, pretty close huh? Give it your best shot.

Anything? Trust me, it’s not a trick question. Go with your guts.

If you answered (a), then shame on you! Come on, we’re not that bad. The correct answer is (c), no surprises there really. So how do we ad pros rate? It’s disheartening that the people who work in advertising are less trusted than even lawyers. Yes, I work in the second least trusted profession, after politicians, according to an international research done recently by the GfK Group.

I stumbled upon this fact on a rather interesting website call stoptheadness.org. It’s pretty much an agency initiated drive to spread the word about bad advertising or b-advertising. Those irritating, offending, mind-numbing, privacy-trespassing communications that seem to be everywhere these days. And I must say I am guilty of quite a few of those in my time.

Stop the Ad-ness
Stop the Ad-ness

The site even outlines a pledge that industry professionals can sign, as follows:

To anyone who experiences my advertising, I respectfully promise to:

Always reward your attention with something that is useful, entertaining or informative.

Never bombard you with messages anywhere and everywhere just because I can.

Communicate with you in honest, real and authentic ways.

Constantly collaborate with you by really listening to your wants and needs, and responding with information that actually meets them.

Create, execute and deliver communications that are audience-appropriate and relevant to your life.

Enable you to share our messages with others who may also need them or who can help you make the best decision.

Help you investigate more deeply if you need more information to make the best decision.

Always recognize my responsibility to you and be considerate of your time, privacy and feelings.

Reinvent the social contract of advertising by creating communications you welcome into your life instead of avoid.

Yes, I signed it. But to actually practise it in day-to-day life, would be like promising not to use the word ‘free’ in my copy ever again. But it’s a start to become a more responsible ad person, although the paymasters would have more than a few words to say about this.

In the meantime, I’ll have to start working on my trust issues.

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Know Thy-Brand

Isn’t it a no-brainer to know thyself before your tell others about yourself? In the context of a product, service or brand, it’s about learning everything you need to know – from attributes to USPs and strengths to weaknesses – before even considering a marketing effort.

It really pains me to see the lack of knowledge and understanding that permeates the corridors of marketing departments. It is disheartening to come to terms knowing that marketing or brand executives do not take the effort to live and breathe their assigned portfolios. It has become so rotten, that almost everything is done to please the bosses instead of pleasing the targeted consumers.

Are SWOT analysis’ even conducted by companies these days? Maybe the fears of discovering the threats and weaknesses mix trigger a phobic reaction. There’s a serious lack of responsibility and a high tendency to make assumptions. Briefs these days do not even come with requisite information. Wait a minute… hell, there are sometimes no briefs at all.

At the very least, the absolute bare minimum, a job order (instead of a ‘brief’ since they are pretty much non-existent) must outline these points:

–      Who are we talking to? (psycho & demo)

–      What is the objective? (what’s the purpose of this communication)

–      What is so interesting about what we have to say/sell/give? (USPs)

I bet many marketing “professionals”, handling key accounts, would not be able to furnish the above without referring to their superior or Google. No doubt, there are many talented marketing and brand people out there whom I’ve had the pleasure of working with. And I must say I’ve learned tons from them.

But there are this I-Know-It-All, I’m-Better-Than-You and Do-As-I-Say bottom dwelling creatures that make me want to puke. But then again, I would not even waste my energy on throwing up for them.

Please, take the effort. Learn, ask questions and take the initiative. And don’t act smart if you don’t know what you’re doing, we notice you know?

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