A backhanded self promo

I hate advertising.

No, this post has nothing to do with the Long Table of Mediocrity™. Or Frivolous Fuckwadian Digital Knick Knacks™. Or even the standard tropes that have been chewed over, spit out, salted and reviewed, for the 1000th time: daily/hourly check ins, bureaucratic clients, sycophantic planners, and budgets that would barely cover the cost of the craft services table at a Joe Pytka shoot.

Today, I'm not addressing the inglorious ways the sausage of advertising is made. We're stepping outside the slaughterhouse and looking at the final product itself.

You see, it turns out people who hate advertising are the best people to make advertising.

Why?

Because in the course of a long career our Bullshit Meters have been calibrated to NASA-like standards.

Our cynicism has been forged into a Hattori Hanzo Katana Sword.

We, the bitter skeptics who now find ourselves crafting banner ads and were crafting ads before there was an internet, are a client's best bet to touch a nerve, strike a chord or even, dare I say, go viral.

The logic on this may elude some, particularly those who like to sport red golf caps, but it is undeniable.

You see, when people of my ilk, the Been There/Done That generation of copywriters and art directors sit down with an advertising challenge, we not only know what to do (insightful, honest & persuasive), we know what not to do.

We don't do the overpromise thing.

We don't use weasel words.

We don't write contrived dialogue to come out of the mouths of contrived characters.

"Geez Bob, you smell great, new deodorant?" 
(Bob proceeds to tell Jim, who tends to stand too close to people, all about his new pit spray)

"Can you get me references, price quotes from 3 contractors and schedule of availability?"
(I'm looking at you lazy humps at HomeAdvisor.com)

"They put cheese in the crust so now I eat it backwards."
(no one on this Earth eats pizza crust first. No one.)

There is so much bad advertising like this out there it's akin to the Turducken.

It's bullshit stuffed inside horseshit and then topped with a delicate  soupçon of aardvark droppings.

Moreover, it's inescapable. What was once just on our TVs, radios and newspapers, now chokes the life out of us wherever pixels tend to gather, on our computers, on our laptops, on our phones, even on our jumbotrons where we escape to watch modern day gladiators distract us from our modern day bullshit.

It's ugly, it's exhausting and it's a colossal waste of money.

And it's why smart clients should hire people who hate advertising to create advertising people won't hate.

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