But what is it selling?
Have you seen that ad with the beautiful girl with the long legs and the car that wont start?
Yeah, shes gorgeous!
But what is she selling?And no one can tell you!
Does this sound familiar? It should because it is a common experience. Clever ad-people entertain without bothering to sell what they are paid to sell. They are forever chasing The Big Idea, which is as elusive a beast as the Yeti or Bigfoot. Like humor, The Big Idea occasionally hits a creative professional sometimes as many as three times in a career. Sometimes they will have a less than big idea that cements their reputation for as long as their career lasts.
A high-pressured advertising career is not as long as it could be that is the nature of the industry. Accept it or get out while you can. Advertising is not for sissies.
Years ago, to get into advertising you had to have a strong contact Dad was a big client or knew someone who knew someone; and it worked as a system. Advertising was extremely well paid and offered a reasonably long career with multi-level (diminishing) options. You could go from agency junior to the big time and then slowly descend to retail and a non-agency job, as you grew older. Today it is a short career that is not well paid.
In the hunt for The Big Idea and with too many ill educated people in the industry, standards have declined. The client reps are not as astute as they should be in discerning bad advertising ambiguous or misleading ideas. Rosser Reeves of the old Chicago school said: Do you want fine writing or do you want the sales graphs to move up?
He was dead right. Forget the fancy touches effects and the jokey stuff get on with selling what you are supposed to be selling and make the jokes part of the branding, so that everyone knows what you are selling. Be clear!
Yeah, shes gorgeous!
But what is she selling?And no one can tell you!
Does this sound familiar? It should because it is a common experience. Clever ad-people entertain without bothering to sell what they are paid to sell. They are forever chasing The Big Idea, which is as elusive a beast as the Yeti or Bigfoot. Like humor, The Big Idea occasionally hits a creative professional sometimes as many as three times in a career. Sometimes they will have a less than big idea that cements their reputation for as long as their career lasts.
A high-pressured advertising career is not as long as it could be that is the nature of the industry. Accept it or get out while you can. Advertising is not for sissies.
Years ago, to get into advertising you had to have a strong contact Dad was a big client or knew someone who knew someone; and it worked as a system. Advertising was extremely well paid and offered a reasonably long career with multi-level (diminishing) options. You could go from agency junior to the big time and then slowly descend to retail and a non-agency job, as you grew older. Today it is a short career that is not well paid.
In the hunt for The Big Idea and with too many ill educated people in the industry, standards have declined. The client reps are not as astute as they should be in discerning bad advertising ambiguous or misleading ideas. Rosser Reeves of the old Chicago school said: Do you want fine writing or do you want the sales graphs to move up?
He was dead right. Forget the fancy touches effects and the jokey stuff get on with selling what you are supposed to be selling and make the jokes part of the branding, so that everyone knows what you are selling. Be clear!
