Lies Well Disguised: You & Yours
As You may remember, advertising industry authority Ad Age named You ad agency of the year. I know I know, big fucking whoop. You didn't even attend the awards ceremony and you sold the hardware on eBay for five bucks (btw, it now sits on Donny Deutsch's nightstand with a newly-engraved name plate.)
But...I just thought you should know, in this critical week leading up to Super Bowl XLI...that many people in the biz have their panties/manties in a bunch over You and Your amateurishness. And some are taking cheap shots at every single one of You.
Last week, in a piece titled "Giving Your Work Away," AdWeek columnist and Euro RSCG partner Tom Messner hides his uneasiness about consumer-generated content behind some weak snark. His lede reads "Consumers, those hot new creatives taking over the business [ouch, Tom-my!], need to improve their compensation agreements or suffer the consequences: Chapter 11 and penury."
For the rest of the article, Messner is careful to belittle You as "You the Consumer" every chance he gets. But other than to relay that he once worked for $1/hour at the Abacrombe Flag Factory on 11th and 44th St., I can't find a fucking point in Messner's 850-word mess. That's Tom at right. He got rich & bloated with his own agency back in the go-go '80s thanks to sweet, sweet 15 percent compensation commissions.
Teressa Iezzi, editor of Ad Age's monthly Creativity, the mag for the creative half of the industry, can't quite conceal her contempt for You laypeople in her January letter. Talking about the cheap production values on Your homemade efforts, she says "a computer cam and a bedroom set don't work for every brand message..."
Hmm. OK. Honestly though, none of these You-created finalists for the Doritos Super Bowl spot contest feel much different than the usual professional come-on. Their production costs ranged from 12 dollars up to about $150. The average production budget for a "real" Super Bowl spot? $300,000.
Not documented: the widespread belief among ad copywriters, art directors and creative directors that their "craft" or "art" (their words, not mine) could never ever be executed by You.
(Next week: I'll do my best to sit through all the Game commercials without getting too drunk and report back. In the meantime, here's one of my favorite Super Bowl spots. It cost much less than 300 grand.)
94 years ago, liar H.K. McCann launched his NYC ad agency with the slogan "Truth Well Told." That was a Big Fat Lie. Advertising copywriter copyranter brings you instances of Ad Lies and the Lying Liars who sell them.
