Can’t help but think Spotify Advertising is trumpeting the degradation, devaluation, and impending destruction of advertising. The service will create an ad—covering writing and producing, from concept to live—in under 48 hours. For free. That’s music to the ears of anyone tone deaf to quality and originality.
MediaPost reported on the 2022 Ipsos Global Trustworthiness Index, which ranked the most and least trustworthy professionals—and advertising executives landed near the bottom of the list, managing to only beat cabinet officials and politicians. Okay, except Ipsos is a market research company that provides marketing and advertising advice; and like lots of global consultancies in recent years, the place has been expanding its advertising capabilities. So how trustworthy is the 2022 Ipsos Global Trustworthiness Index?
In The Basement: Ad Execs Are Near Bottom Of Trust Index
By Ray Schultz
Despite controversies about COVID-19, doctors are seen as the most trustworthy professionals by 59% of consumers worldwide, according to the 2022 Ipsos Global Trustworthiness Index. And scientists are second.
Who’s near the bottom? Not government employees, cops, business executives or even journalists.
Rather, ad executives are third from last, beating only cabinet officials and politicians.
Ad people are trusted by 18% worldwide, and by 13% in the United States.
That presumably includes email marketers, although permission-based email is based on trust, and may be less reviled than broad-based advertising.
Still, it’s a miserable number, given that pollsters, lawyers and TV news/anchors all do better, although not by much in the case of pollsters in the U.S.
Politicians generally are trusted by 12% worldwide and 10% in the U.S.
Contrary to their common demonization, teachers are trusted by 58% in the U.S. and 52% globally. And 56% of Americans trust the Armed Forces, a figure that slips to 41% outside the U.S.
Clergy/priests have a higher level of trust in the U.S.—37%, versus 26% elsewhere. But even here, the majority seems to have little faith in them.
Americans are also more trusting of police—41%, versus 37% globally. But only 17% trust lawyers, versus 29% outside the country.
Journalists are trusted by 25% worldwide, and 24% in the U.S.
Ipsos surveyed 21,515 adults under the age of 75 between May 27 and June 10. The findings cover 28 countries.
Vintage Advertising: An A to Z by Julie Anne Lambert presents historical advertisements from the John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera at the Bodleian Libraries in the UK.
The showcase may underscore a key difference between UK and US advertising. That is, the book contains no characters like Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben or Rastus. Additionally, there are no stereotypically racist figures or situations.
However, the ads are exclusively White—besides a tea flyer printed on Japanese paper with Asian art figures, there is not a single person of color depicted from A to Z. So, it could be argued that the book is a blatant display of White privilege.
The underrepresentation of BIPOC in UK advertising and UK advertising agencies is openly acknowledged. And the country is hardly without bias and systemic racism.
The lack of racist critters and campaigns in Vintage Advertising: An A to Z is enough to make you say, “By Golly!”
Whoever thought to use fortune cookies as advertising tactics should be beaten with chopsticks.
It’s easy to imagine how the idiots responsible for “Scared Straight Out of Advertising” thought they had a brilliant idea, as hacks rarely realize they are hacks. But this video is heinous on so many levels, from the global stereotyping to the clichéd script to the substandard production values. The exclusive millennials casting displays a true ignorance of the audience too. In the end, the video actually succeeds in positioning the advertising industry as a place to avoid.
NPR published a report titled, “Scientists Start To Tease Out The Subtler Ways Racism Hurts Health.” The researchers should consider using the advertising industry as a rich source for data.
Monster.com perfectly sums up the state of affairs in the advertising industry. For a VP, Executive Creative Director position, the related jobs include: E-Commerce Creative Director, Vice President of Creative Services, Art Director, Sr. Art Director, Production Designer, Creative Director and Uber Driver Partner.
The Museum of Science + Industry in Chicago salutes Black History Month with the Black Creativity Innovation Studio and Black Creativity Juried Art Exhibition. Hey, Blacks have a better chance of becoming scientists and artists versus advertising professionals.
Campaign published a perspective from Google UK Industry Manager Paddy Collins on the ever-popular topic of “How to change advertising for the better.” It’s interesting to note that Collins appears to have never worked at an advertising agency—but hey, that shouldn’t stop him from pontificating on ways to improve the field. Collins essentially believes adland needs more outliers and mavericks that refuse to use the word “maybe” when selling and creating ideas. Gee, such novel and breakthrough thinking. If the Google guy did a Google search to see how the industry is failing with diversity—just like Google—he’d realize an easier solution to change advertising for the better simply involves hiring minorities versus mavericks (not to say that the two are mutually exclusive). Of course, that would require outlier, maverick conviction and a steadfast refusal to accept “maybe” as a response.
How to change advertising for the better: more outliers and mavericks
By Paddy Collins
Google’s industry manager, Paddy Collins, was the winner of this year’s Last One Standing event, held each year by the Advertising Association. Here he unpacks his winning pitch on how to change advertising for the better.
I don’t actually think that, as things stand, there’s a whole lot wrong with advertising.
There is great encouragement to be taken from an industry that deals calmly with duality. Things are simultaneously getting better and worse. We routinely navigate situations of perpetual flux, speaking confidently about intangible value and perception.
The problem is, people just don’t seem to care.
As Dave Trott long before me has noted, with an annual spend of £18 billion on advertising in the UK, just 4 per cent is remembered positively and 7 per cent negatively – leaving around £16 billion totally forgotten.
The number of complaints received by the ASA is also steady at roughly 31,000 for the last three years – only climbing to 37,000 last year when one particularly objectionable piece from a gambling company garnered over six thousand complaints.
Research by the Advertising Association shows favourability for advertising falling from 51 per cent in 1994 to 26 per cent last year. The shift here isn’t polar; these folk don’t now dislike ads, they simply don’t care either way.
At a time of supreme opportunity for advertising, we’re using advanced technologies to chase people around the web with some shoes they didn’t want to buy, we’re sleazing and insulting our way across already ample boundaries of acceptability, and from the look of the numbers we’re paying a hefty premium for invisibility.
The problem, I believe, is that we’re stuck in the middle. Neither good nor bad. Reneging on our responsibility to produce the very best work we can.
Rather than single out a particular offender, I thought of the Grayson Perry story of two Russian artists called Komar and Melamid. In the 90s they commissioned a big international survey to find out what art people in different countries wanted. The results were unanimous. Every country wanted a landscape, few figures dotted around and that it should be mainly blue. Whilst these paintings would clearly be answering the brief, the results would make for some staggeringly dull art.
As we base our decisions in endless data and research studies, this felt like a reasonable parallel. Great work requires commitment, it requires vision, and true creativity is unlikely to grow from a bunch of homogenised opinions.
How often have you felt you had an idea that could have been exceptional, and yet someone or something limited it?
The idea was never really vetoed, just slowly starved. For some reason you just couldn’t get enough oxygen around it, so you deposited it in the top drawer and moved on with something more vanilla.
What I think we need is more outliers, and more mavericks.
We need people wholly committed to their ideas, supported by people courageous enough to go along with them. The greatest fear, our harshest stigma, should be only just failing. There should be no place in our culture for failing a little bit. The reason we are stuck in the middle can’t be time, we can always make more time. It can’t be money, as we’ve got £16 billion being ignored every year. Therefore the only thing I would change, would be to eradicate the word ‘maybe’. Ban the use of it, incinerate it, take it out the back and shoot it, and in doing so banish all of its attendant inertia. Let’s stop saying maybe, and start choosing ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
Whether we’re a client judging an agency’s work, an agency briefing a media owner, a media owner creating content, or a technology company coming up with new advertising products – let’s nail our colours to the mast.
Our responsibility is not to just kick the can down the road a bit.
We should commit ourselves to ideas, safe in the knowledge we’re better like that, and we can endure either glittering success, or use the flaming wreckage of glorious failure to illuminate the way ahead.
Yes or no, but never maybe.
Paddy Collins is the industry manager at Google UK
The ever-revolutionary Harry Webber presented more breakthrough thinking at LinkedIn…
A Company Is An Idea That Goes For A Walk.
By Harry Webber, Creative Director at Idean Enterprises, Inc.
I have been starting business entities for almost fifty years. All of them have been profitable. All of them have been based upon a simple idea. Help other businesses gain more customers. In all, the companies my companies have helped, have enjoyed more than one trillion dollars in sales. They have become household words. They have become global brands. They have dominated their product categories. This has made my reputation on Madison Avenue.
In five decades of doing the same thing over and over again, I knew that one day, my methods of working would ultimately outlive their usefulness. I knew that one day the world of business would change. 2015 has brought that change to light. Today, the customer is now in charge. That single event has changed the ways that companies go to market. Unfortunately, 99 44/100% of American companies have no idea that this change is now in force. Unfortunately, for them. Not unfortunately for me. I saw it coming a long way off. When the change arrived, I was ready and waiting to leave Madison Avenue behind and step into the future. The Era of CX is now upon us. Customer Experience Rules!
But this time I intend to play a different game. Rather than sell what I know about this brave New World of CX to the highest bidder, I will use it to build one more company. A company that takes this idea for a walk. Companies that are based on CX are structured completely different than other firms. Their structures are far more flexible. They are built to constantly change with their targeted audiences. When the customer changes, the company changes to accommodate them. When the wants and needs of the customer changes, so do the products that the company offers those customers. The products change to meet customer desires. Flexibility is built into the business model. The company anticipates changes rather than following trends. Products are designed to be produced and delivered digitally, when possible. Digital and analog aspects of the company are designed to be integrated and in many cases interchangeable. But the greatest advantage of these CX companies is that they are massively scalable.
Where as traditional companies earn revenue through the sale of physical products or offered services, this new generation of companies earns revenue through the delivery of experiences. These experiences combine product and service components into memorable experiences. These experiences begin as an answer to an unmet want, need or desire of the selected audience. Their cost is minimal, so as to provide the least amount of risk to the customer. These experiences are interactive so that they can be altered by the audience to suit their specific needs and interests. We strive to allow the audience to see themselves and their interests in the manifestation of the experience. Each experience strives to reflect the values and lifestyles of its audience.
Every touchpoint between the customer and the company is specifically designed to be friction free. The audience is a participant in the creative process that evolves the experience as well as the personas who are enjoying the experience. And as the experience grows and evolves the personas involved have the option of sharing these experiences with like-minded participants and communities. At will, these experiences can be unique or shared, simple or complex, realistic or fantasy driven. Ultimately, these experiences evolve into a massive feedback loops that stimulate and engage the creativity of all involved. Experiences can be active or passive. Experiences can be imaginary or physical. Experiences can be ongoing or episodic. The audience is in the driver’s seat for every moment of their journey.
The company will deploy these experiences from house to house, neighbor to neighbor, block to block, zip code to zip code, city to city, state to state, nation to nation. Only one aspect of each experience will remain constant. This common ground will draw those within the experience closer and closer. This common ground will provide the singular “reality” that manifests the reality of each experience. This common ground will allow the shared experiences to grow.
Soda makers headed down same road as tobacco: analyst
By Richard Morgan
Soda makers, which have seen sales in the US fall for nine straight years, appear more like this generation’s cigarette sector, one Wall Street report contends.
Both sectors are under attack for health reasons and both have seen a years-long decline in sales, the report from Cowen and Co. explains.
More recently, soda makers are “taking a page out of the tobacco playbook by focusing in styles, flavors and price/mix to manage volume declines,” Cowen analyst Vivien Azer writes.
“Youth consumption [of soda] is falling notably, which is unhelpful in terms of driving future volumes,” Azer writes. “What is more, both categories have an outsized exposure to an economically challenged core consumer.”
Azer, in her report, “ Is Soda the New Cigarette?,” acknowledges differences between the products — but gives cigarettes an economic edge for “being dangerous but addictive.”
Soda, by comparison, is easily substitutable — with water being a cost-free option.
To manage volume declines, Azer says, both industries are emphasizing different styles, flavors and mix shifts.
Tobacco’s decades-old flight to filters and nicotine lights, for example, preceded soda’s rollout of diet and decaffeinated drinks.
Flavors encompass menthol, in one instance, and the re-introduction of Fanta, in the other.
Mix shifts have to do with packaging — different colors, designs and colors — all in an effort to engage new consumer niches with a differentiated brand.
MediaWeek published a dim-witted perspective from Thinkbox Chair Tess Alps, calling on all adpeople to band together and clean up online advertising.
What makes Alps’ viewpoint so annoying? For starters, she leads Thinkbox, a company primarily focused on promoting TV. Alps wrote, “Before you think I’m having a competitive snipe, remember that increasing amounts of TV ads will be consumed online. This matters to every one of us.” Somebody tell Alps that the overwhelming majority of TV ads online are unwelcome shit that most folks don’t even want to watch on TV.
In her global praise of advertising, Alps gushed, “But we know [consumers] can—and do—love ads in particular: meerkats, floating beds, boys impatient for Christmas. Not just TV; they like outdoor ads brightening up cities and magazines’ ads are part of the reason for buying them.” These lines prove that watching too much TV—as Alps likely does in her line of work—makes you an idiot.
The main blow was delivered when Alps opined, “I’d like to believe every part of our industry strives to make advertising not just tolerated but accepted and, ideally, welcomed. It doesn’t feel like that online; most advertising I see behaves more like cowboy builders: bish-bosh quality, barely legal and with the certain knowledge that it can’t be traced. It feels like an industry that does not believe it has much future so goes to squeeze out every penny now.” Um, advertising by nature is not welcomed—it seeks to interrupt, disrupt and seize consumers’ attention. And while it’s easy to point out the poor quality of online ads, the same critiques can be directed towards TV ads. Simply consider commercials for pharmaceuticals, local car dealerships, legal services, financial institutions, household cleaning products, exercise devices, political campaigns, etc.—in addition to infomercials and TV programs that are essentially product placement vehicles.
Alps completely crushed her own credibility by stating, “I apologise to those striving to make online advertising a beautiful thing, but you’re being drowned out. Maybe because I’m 60, I only see ads for raspberry ketone, dental implants and sofas from a website I briefly visited last month. No space here to dissect addressable advertising and how creepy and insulting it can be, but 300 million people using Adblock Plus says something is broken.” Sorry, Ms. Alps, but you’re digitally ignorant—and perhaps a dinosaur too. Please put down the remote (as well as the raspberry ketone) and read The Open Brand for general enlightenment. Oh, and Adblock Plus is also a popular tool for eliminating those pesky TV ads online.
MultiCultClassics has consistently argued that digital practitioners should not be allowed anywhere near a TV project. On the flip side, TV enthusiasts like Alps should not be permitted access to a mouse and/or digital initiatives—and they absolutely have no business making stupid suggestions on how to save the World Wide Web.
Ad money should go towards cleaning up
It is time to stop moaning and use our collective influence to achieve the advertising environments we need.
By Tess Alps
I’ve had low-grade anxiety about this for ages, but a brilliant mea culpa in The Atlantic by Ethan Zuckerman, the director of the MIT Center for Civic Media, titled “The internet’s original sin”, brought it into focus.
Then there was the Financial Times article exposing online fraud and, in The Observer, John Naughton had a pop at the surveillance culture online.
“This” is the parlous state of online advertising. Before you think I’m having a competitive snipe, remember that increasing amounts of TV ads will be consumed online. This matters to every one of us.
We don’t expect people to say they love advertising, even if they can be nudged into articulating its rational benefits. But we know they can — and do — love ads in particular: meerkats, floating beds, boys impatient for Christmas. Not just TV; they like outdoor ads brightening up cities and magazines’ ads are part of the reason for buying them. It’s a fair exchange — but also a delicate balance.
I’d like to believe every part of our industry strives to make advertising not just tolerated but accepted and, ideally, welcomed. It doesn’t feel like that online; most advertising I see behaves more like cowboy builders: bish-bosh quality, barely legal and with the certain knowledge that it can’t be traced. It feels like an industry that does not believe it has much future so goes to squeeze out every penny now.
Zuckerman puts this down to the “investor story”, where advertising revenue and traffic are hyped to drive the short-term share price; excessive frequency, uncloseable pop-ups, click-bait and fraud are just some consequences.
I apologise to those striving to make online advertising a beautiful thing, but you’re being drowned out. Maybe because I’m 60, I only see ads for raspberry ketone, dental implants and sofas from a website I briefly visited last month. No space here to dissect addressable advertising and how creepy and insulting it can be, but 300 million people using Adblock Plus says something is broken.
I downloaded a free game app recently. After every move, I was served the same ad. Eventually, I paid 69p for the ad-free version. Effectively, some advertiser was allowing its ads to be used as punishment to promote an ad-free format. We are fast teaching people to become militant advertising avoiders.
Zuckerman’s conclusion is that we have damaged online advertising to such an extent that it must be abandoned. But surely we can collectively solve this? No-one has a better incentive. Talking is good and there are plenty of industry forums for that.
But nothing talks like money, so let’s use our investments to encourage the online advertising we want for the long term. Brands and agencies should reward only media owners doing the right thing: treating data and intellectual property respectfully and allowing independent traffic audits. Let’s not allow content to become commoditised by pricing all views as equal within superficial programmatic algorithms.
Moderation in all things: some frequency, some personalization, etc is good. Media owners must say no more often.
Even if we did just those modest things, the situation would immediately improve, and we could start to rebuild an online advertising landscape to be proud of.
Tess Alps is the chair of Thinkbox
The New York Times advertising columnist Stuart Elliott published a report on an exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York titled, “Mac Conner: A New York Life,” featuring Conner’s illustration work from the Mad Men era of advertising. Three examples of his work appear below.
It kinda makes one wonder which artists were responsible for illustrations like the following examples below.
Just in time for Black History Month, RaceMan Answers by Lowell Thompson will soon be available as an eBook. Pre-order your copy today.
This Veterans Day, let’s salute veteran adman Harry Webber.
No, Webber hasn’t represented his country through military service—and he’d never imitate Tom Cruise by comparing his career actions to those of a soldier in Afghanistan. Rather, the following tribute merely seeks to recognize his tour of duty in the advertising field. Plus, offer a unique way for all of us to honor his victories.
Webber’s creative breakthroughs are nothing short of historic. “A Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Waste” has raised over $1 billion for the UNCF. “I Am Stuck On Band-Aid Brand” remains the longest-running campaign ever. In a business dominated by White men, Webber’s achievements routinely rival and exceed the best efforts of the majority.
Webber spoke out on the dearth of diversity when others remained silent, earning an expulsion from the industry.
Webber presented the 4As with a strategic plan to launch the first minority training program on Madison Avenue, effectively recruiting countless people of color into the ranks.
Webber literally wrote the book on market segmentation, orchestrated a truce between rival gangs in Los Angeles and masterminded the Obama Super Pac.
While most professionals boasting such an impressive résumé would enjoy praise and reverence, Webber has not received his just due. It’s time to change that.
For the past five years, Webber’s company—Smart Communications—has been reinventing advertising. The culmination of the experiments is called NeoAdvertising (click to learn more). Webber is ready to unleash it on the world. To succeed, he needs your help.
The Chase Mission Main Street Grants Program will fund Webber’s initiative, provided he can show he has public support. To be considered, he must convince 250 people to vote for him. This is where you come in.
Go here now at the Chase Mission Main Street Grants site and cast your vote. It’s that easy. You must connect via your Facebook account. But don’t worry, your information will not be stored, shared or abused—it’s only to verify legitimate voters and prevent fraud. Hurry, voting ends November 15.
Harry Webber is a veteran adman who deserves your support. Take a moment to show it now.
Advertising Age reported U.S. antitrust officials from the FTC have cleared the merger between Publicis Groupe and Omnicom. Gaining the nod from antitrust authorities is quite a feat, considering that adpeople are consistently rated among the least trusted professions. Clearly, the approval process did not include lie detector tests.
Publicis, Omnicom Merger Passes Antitrust Test in U.S.
Holding Companies Await Approval in Other Global Regions
By Alexandra Bruell
U.S. antitrust authorities from the Federal Trade Commission have cleared the Omnicom Group and Publicis Groupe merger.
“The expiration of the HSR review period in the U.S. and the approvals received in other jurisdictions satisfy some of the conditions necessary for the transaction to close,” Publicis Groupe said in a statement. HSR refers to the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976.
The companies also received regulatory approval in Canada, India, Turkey, South Africa and South Korea.
While U.S. approval is a major milestone for the ad giants looking to complete the deal by first quarter of 2014, the merger is subject to shareholder approval at both companies and additional global regulatory approvals.
In Europe, draft notification has been discussed with the European Commission since mid-September. In China, a draft filing was provided to MOFCOM (the nation’s Ministry of Commerce).
In the U.S., the anti-trust filing was made at the beginning of October.
The groups’ leaders aren’t worried. “I don’t anticipate any major issues,” said Maurice Levy, Publicis Groupe’s chairman-CEO, while addressing analysts and press about the company’s third quarter earnings on October 16. “The hard work is behind us—now it’s just a process that we have to follow cautiously. I’m optimistic, based on the opinions of lawyers and economists who’ve worked on market share issues.”
At the time, he also said the companies were in the process of setting up an integration committee and task force.
A note from Deutsche Bank analyst Matt Chesler in late September following a meeting with Omnicom Group CFO Randy Weisenburger stated: “[Management] said things are going well for a complex, cross-border transaction. We have filed in US, EU, India, Australia, & others, with 6-7 more to go. Since the review of media buying will be on a country-by-country basis and is only 15-20% of combined [revenues], they are not concerned.”
Business Insider invited visitors to Meet The 24 Most Creative People In Advertising Right Now—and the number 15 slot was filled by Steve Stoute. Really? Stoute deserves praise for landing accounts and assignments typically denied to advertising professionals of color; however, his shop has yet to consistently produce breakthrough creative. The Business Insider story claimed, “Perhaps nobody embodies the integration of hip-hop culture into the mainstream [better] than Steve Stoute, whose book ‘The Tanning of America’ covers that very subject.” Okay, that explains the dubious honor. Even trade websites love hip hop.
MultiCultClassics mistakenly thought CBS series The Crazy Ones debuted a few weeks ago. Wish it had—as that would’ve resulted in missing the premiere episode.
If AMC series The Pitch and TNT series Trust Me were stuffed into a trash compactor, the produced garbage would still smell less shitty than The Crazy Ones. The promotional hype calls the show a single-camera workplace comedy. That’s one camera too many—and it’s impossible to identify a single moment that could be classified as comedic. The only positive thing about The Crazy Ones is its 30-minute format. A full hour would have been pure torture.
Mork is a more believable character than Robin Williams’ Simon Roberts. Buffy should be recruited to slay Sarah Michelle Gellar’s Sydney Roberts. Creator David E. Kelley comes off like a staff writer for AgencySpy.
The Crazy Ones bears virtually zero resemblance to the real advertising industry—except in its depiction of a star-fucking, staff-fucking, nepotistic, predominately White agency.
Campaign reported the Solus Club—an 84-year-old dining club for U.K. media and advertising executives—is admitting female members for the first time in its history. Look for the organization to fully embrace diversity in the 22nd century.
The Solus Club to admit women for first time
The Solus Club, the dining club for senior members of the media and advertising industry, is opening its doors to women for the first time in its 84-year history
By Jeremy Lee
The news was given to members at its annual general meeting at the Dorchester on Wednesday evening and followed a ballot carried out earlier this summer.
Of the 117 members eligible to vote, 109 did so. Ninety-eight voted in favour and 11 against. From January, senior women in marketing communications will be allowed to join.
The issue of allowing female members has long been an embarrassment to Solus Club leaders.
In September 2003, its then club president Mike Moran and president-elect tried to push through the reform but were thwarted by the “old guard”. Shortly afterwards Hamish Pringle, then the IPA’s director general who had been due to become club president, resigned in protest.
Don Thomson, the current president of the club and a former chief operations officer of Global Radio, was determined to force through the changes as part of his presidency, arguing that the ban on women is increasingly difficult to defend while robbing the club of potential new members.
Advertising Age presented the 2013 Creativity 50 to honor the fifty most influential creative figures in entertainment, tech, advertising, publishing and more. Three of the four Black honorees were movie director Ryan Coogler, TV show innovator Shonda Rhimes and Jay-Z. The only legitimate advertising representative was R/GA VP-ECD Tim Allen, who runs the user experience design department. Is Ad Age unintentionally telling Blacks there are greater opportunities in entertainment than advertising?
