Advertising Is Over.

Advertising is over. And that’s okay. Freeing actually. I recognized it this morning when a colleague who’s very well respected in the industry remarked that most ads are terrible now, but no one seemed to care. It wasn’t a revelation, but still it struck a chord. Probably because I‘ve known this truth for awhile, but was hoping that maybe it was just me.

It’s not.

He said “I see so many helpless and uninspiring ads, but I wonder sometimes if most people are really interested in new and provocative ideas that stand out. Still it’s the only way to do it, to get attention, to touch their hearts, make them curious…” and said that we creatives should still paddle against the current.

He’s right. And wrong.

For me, it’s no fun — and hasn’t been in awhile. I’m a writer, and what attracted me to the profession in the first place was doing good, edgy, funny, social-commentary-like ads. People talked about them. They worked. People apparently looked forward to them; some even saved them.

That’s been strangled. Suffocated. The guardrails of the acceptable crept in closer and closer over time. Little by little. “Oh my god, that’s great!” I’d hear a client say after they stopped laughing. “You can’t run it, of course… but can I have a copy to show my friends?”

Little by little the available colors on the palette have been removed. We can only say these things now. Show these images. Use these words. From this handful of approved colors we can only create the grayscale and, soon, only the monotone. The Dull. The Safe. The Expected.

Like a joke where the audience knows where it’s going, there is no surprise. No raucous laughter. We know at the start what the punchline will look like. So the audience waits with pleasant placid smiles and when the payoff is delivered, the audience feels nothing. They do not laugh. Perhaps they smile and nod. They’re neither entertained nor offended.

The punchline is met with polite applause.

That is the worst thing a comedian — or a creative — can hear.

We live by our feelings and if we feel nothing we remain unmoved and unchanged by our experiences. We become static and cease to grow. There is a word for that state; it often has a robe and scythe attached.

If we are unmoved and unchanged by by our experiences, there is no point to our efforts. No reason to buy a ticket because it delivers more of the same.

Digital and data and analytics and metrics. They are sold as proof of advertising's efficacy. A justification for the spend. A false determinant of ROI. We have become a fearful age that requires instant, seemingly tangible proof because we have neither faith nor patience. We are missing out on the unexpected and the richness of life. Lifeless advertising, branding, design or creative, hemmed in by unspoken constraints, does nothing. It is not justifiable; that ROI is a lie.

You must connect emotionally with your audience. What you create and communicate must stay with them. Get their attention. Provoke a real reaction. Make them think, not just ingest and move on to the next distraction. It is better to do nothing at all than to do the latter because you are training them to forget you.

The Best ads are not clicked — they’re Remembered. And so is the business they represent. That’s exponentially more valuable than any doctored metric, because you now occupy a place in the minds of the people you want to reach.

You can’t do this with a handful of common and expected terms, images, themes and ‘safe’ ideas. Or the banal regurgitations of anything AI-driven. Human’s don’t respond to that. Homogenization is a death knell.

It is only by contrast that we can discern. We need edges, not dull gradients. Not a pablum of flavorless ideas that merely sustain life and creativity at its most base level of existence.

Advertising is over. For now. And if we don’t deviate from this path, the richness of the human experience — our very raison d’etre — may be next.