The advertising business, for years, has been a content assembly line manned by people expert in creating and polishing ads — experts, who are typically white, college educated, in their 30s, and lived in big urban centers. Some have emigrated from the burbs. Not a particularly heterogeneous group.
Brand planners and strategists suffer similar backgrounds, though suffer may be the wrong word. Unfortunately, these 5,000 or so well-paid people don’t really represent those to whom they’re selling. This group of ad men and women don’t look like the 300 million consumers targeted with doing the buying. These creators try to pretend they understand the targets, while really only understanding storytelling and ad production.
It is my view that content creation can best be done, most effectively done, using more creators who are part of the demographic and psychographic. Think about the best blogs. They speak to their targets by being part of the target. Let’s get more ads into the hands of people who really understand those they’e talking to. Not into the hands of a small class of interpreters.
Peace.
