Badvertising 03/11/22

In last week’s blog we reminisced about how much advertising has changed. This week, it’s more of the same. Hey, many of you have asked about us doing more multi-part series so here it is. Trouble is, we then have to write the blog about the same subject we wrote about last week. Okay, it won’t be exactly the same. It’ll be the same, only different. Glad we cleared that up. This is how targeted advertising has become. Say you were looking for some living room furniture. You type into your search engine the word “sofa.” Now the data scientists of the ad world know you are over 50, otherwise you would have typed in “couch.” Furthermore they know you like soft, overstuffed things so they serve you ads for easy chairs, recliners, extra fluffy pillows, etc. And they know you like the color “yellow” (I just made that part up). So it’s all about data collection, and then how to micro-target all that data to the exact right person. And who doesn’t want to read an entire blog about data collection?

The point is, I can sound like I know what I’m talking about, but I actually have no clue what I’m talking about. The ad business has gone from two weeks in Beverly Hills, driving a Mustang Convertible, and going to Nobu for dinner, to coming up with an “event” and then an invitation to said “event.” Like Tecate Beer Tuesdays at your local taqueria. So a copywriter, which is what I used to be, has to come up with clever lines like, “Music, fun and friends! Join us for Tecate Tuesday’s at Mole Mole in beautiful, downtown Poughkeepsie!” Oh, and they love exclamation marks. Absolutely love them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now I don’t know about you but I’d rather be shooting a commercial with Brad Pitt and Penelope Cruz sipping cold ones on a beach in sunny Acapulco, but this is what the business has become. And if you’re really lucky these days, you can shoot a video of people drinking beers at the aforementioned Mole Mole on your iphone, edit it on your computer, and then run it on Twitter for under $5,000, soup to nuts. Which version of advertising would you rather be in?

Happily John and I discovered comics instead which is wayyyy more rewarding (except for the getting paid part).

So that’s it for this week, we’ll be back next week with another multi-parter. And before you know it, Spring will have sprung.

Have a great weekend,

Andy and John

On Advertising 11/20/2020

Ahh advertising. It’s a career I spent 39 years in and John spent almost as long (he’s just 5 years younger). And it’s a career I’d like to think we know a little bit about. A little bit. And it’s the career we used to do before this new career as underemployed cartoonists. So when we were talking about new topics to explore for some upcoming strips, we thought, why not write about advertising? Al has a pizza franchise, Pizza-on-a-Stick, so let him try to come up with a new campaign that will take his franchise to the moon (that’s the way they talk in advertising). They say stuff like, “We want to own the casual dining experience.” Or, “We want to own the weekend.” Now the question is, who exactly gave you ownership of a particular day of the week/time of day/mealtime/or made you the official non-alcoholic beverage of the Kansas City Royals? And the answer is, who cares? And that attitude is probably why we’re both doing a comic strip instead of creating ads. That and being over 60, which is a fate worse than death (unless you own the agency, and maybe not then either), but I digress. From our years in the ad wars, we know that franchises like Al’s are given ads from “Corporate Headquarters” in places like Akron, Topeka or Cincinnati. Usually, they hate it. And frequently the individual franchisees want to run their own stuff. And therein lies the tension for the first two comics in our three part series. The third and final part is coming next Tuesday.

Here’s a dirty little secret about most creative people. They thumb their noses at pop culture, figuring anyone can do that, but what I do, now that’s special. So Al’s reaction is based somewhat on that emotion. But he doesn’t want to admit to that so he latches onto another popular trend that has taken off, thanks to the internet. Crowd sourcing. What does that mean, you ask? It means fielding ideas from the crowd (online in general, but in this case from his store employees) for free, but then you only have to pay the person if their idea has actually been chosen. It’s just another way for an agency to not have to pay so many employees. It doesn’t matter if the ideas stink, they’re free! Well, in this case, the crowd sourced idea is so bad, it matters. And the trouble is, even though Al detests that jingle, he can’t top it. More on that next Tuesday.

Anyone want to crowd source some comics?

Have a great weekend

Andy and John