There are so many bad ads out there. Insipid, sanitized, or just plain boring. No creativity whatsoever.
We could forgive this lack of creative vision if they weren’t paying to constantly interrupt us. If all this was easy to ignore.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Ads don’t have to be bad. It can be an art form, just like any other creative work.
This is the whole point of this podcast, Marketing Without the Marketing – that marketing doesn’t have to suck. It can be done with respect and a service mindset.
If the product or service that you’re selling is going to do some good in the world, and is not just exploitative – then marketing serves a very important purpose. If done right, it can get people to know, like, and trust the brand in question.
Draw people in with your creativity. Or repel them by selfishly interrupting them. We have a choice, and my strong belief is that the storytellers and artists will win, while the aggressors and interruptors will fall behind. So I hope you will take this as a gut check or a call-to-action now and all through 2018 to inspire, enlighten, or entertain.
This seemed a fitting topic for the season finale, since it will remain at the top of your feed for the next few weeks. I hope that it will serve a reminder – can you make creativity a business imperative? Listen to Episode 117 here or in your favorite pod player.
Show Notes
This title of this episode is a quote from Andrew Essex’s Ten Principles for Better Advertising:
Always assume that no one gives a shit (NOGAS). Make them care. Our ability to tell interesting stories is what separates us from other species. So say no to your lizard brain and actually be interesting. Create ads that people want to seek out, not screen out. Accept that anything superfluous will be instantly discarded. Be the thing, not just the thing that sells the thing. Try a little harder. Hire more quals if you’ve got too many quants. More than ever, creativity is a business imperative. Recognize that great ideas are rarely produced by committee and almost never flourish under fluorescent light.
SOURCE: The End of Advertising: Why It Had to Die, and the Creative Resurrection to Come (affiliate link) by Andrew Essex, pp. 205-8. Published by Spiegel & Grau, 2017.
Last week’s episode was a thought experiment: If we look at advertising like pollution, could we make the worst offenders pay a price for making us suffer bad ads? It’s called, Advertising Offset Credits: Calculating the Cost of Ad Pollution.
Facebook is taking a lot of heat right now for being complicit in the Russian ads scandal. They say that they are a platform, not a media company. I disagree, and I am not alone. I cover the issues in a couple recent episodes on Facebook’s Reckoning.
The upshot: Get creative or get help from a creative! What can you do in 2018?
- Get good at writing, producing video, creating podcasts, or ANYTHING that will help you “be the thing, not the thing that sells the thing.”
- If you’re not willing to do #1 (or don’t have the time), then hire someone. You need artists and storytellers.
I can teach you these soft-touch techniques. It’s what I do every day:
- Free help in my podcast and blog.
- Inexpensive help in my online courses.
- Exclusive access with one-on-one training.
Contact me here: https://controlmousemedia.com/contact
I can give you personalized training on how to go from producing static copy to search-optimized Web content. There’s a huge difference, and in the new media environment, you are wasting your time if you or your writer doesn’t know some backend SEO.
See you in 2018! Here’s what I have planned over the coming year:
- Starting a Business: A Case Example
- SEO for Small Business Owners
Subscribe to this podcast so I can let you know when they’re ready.
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