Tuesday, October 4, 2016

Who wants pie?


If it happened once, it might not be worth writing about.

Twice, and I could chalk it up to misguided coincidence.

But the Pie Chart is now making a regular appearance on advertising briefs and I cannot let it go.

Well, 27% of me wants to let it go but 73% of me says otherwise.

This is now a thing.

Planners are not happy to do their job and find for us the single unique selling proposition, they've taken the extra step to find two. Sometimes three.

And because they are so committed to bringing their strategic insights to life, they have thoughtfully prescribed an informative ratio to guide us through the heretofore un-navigationable forest of dichotomous communication.

Due to signed NDA's and delicate agency sensitivities, I can't mention names or cite specifics, not that it matters as this is becoming acceptable point of procedure wherever I go, but I have seen pie charts for:

Luxury/Performance      75%/25%

Technology/Humanity    60%/40%

Durability/Safety            55%/45%

and my favorite

Bacon/Non-Bacon/Crust  33%/33%/20%  (remaining 14% for urgent CTA)

Look, there isn't a household in America without a DVR. Even poor Appalachian ginseng root pullers, who don't have two shoes to their name, possess the ability to fast forward through our ridiculously-labored commercials for heartburn relief and disposable adult diapers.

And is there anyone who doesn't hit the SKIP ADS button on youtube?

There are literally 38 people in this great country of ours that actually see TV spots. And now we want them to split their minuscule attention spans along some fakakta proportions that make sense to no one but our navel-gazing MBAs?

Good Night Nurse!

The quantification and commoditization of what we do, what we create and what we say is the clearest indication that people who profess to have an insight into human behavior and acumen in the field of communications, have none.

Perhaps I'm not making myself clear.

Maybe this will help:







1 comment:

Tony Mariani said...

One of the many reasons to read your blog, like George Tannenbaum's Ad-Aged, is that I will learn a new word. Today's word, "fakakta". Love it.