Daily Archives: February 28, 2012

Advertising’s Drivel Fest.

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I enjoy simplification.  Almost daily I refer to marketing and branding as consisting of claim and proof. Organized proof. Why is it that so many marketers don’t use proof – preferring platitude?  Health care organizations that can cut your brain open, re-jigger the synapses, cauterize a bleeder but only capture that in an ad with some drivel about “uncompromising care” or “unparalleled treatment?”

Most advertising today is a drivel-fest.  Who is writing this stuff?  Who is approving it? Is an algorithm doing it?  Ads used to make you feel.  Now they inform and if we’re lucky make us laugh. But they do very little else. 

I learned a lesson at AT&T in the 90s.  Build a book of proof.  Find the proof that is most evocative and convincing and celebrate it.  If we find our claim, organize the proof and acculturate it into the company, drivel is easily illuminated and becomes quite unacceptable.  Peace.