02.04.2020

It’s a truism so obvious it’s almost not worth mentioning, and despite a whole superstructure of psychic warriors, public relations staff, journalists, mortgage lenders, legislators etc. who dedicate their lives to obscuring the fact, it is now undeniable that there is a direct inverse correlation between how much you earn and how useful you are.

If the stock market was suspended now, or if the vast army of management consultants suddenly ceased to exist, most of us would barely notice. In fact, for a lot of us, our lives might improve. But if the cleaners stopped cleaning, or the nurses decided, actually you know what, fuck it, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of people would die, and the survivors’ standard of living would be significantly worse. If the pizza shop I’m working at stopped trading it would be an inconvenience for a few people, but multiplied it would be a real strain on the food supply chain, especially considering the ‘just in time’ stock system which keeps the whole country permanently on the verge of collapse in the name of efficiency and profits. So arguably, actually, objectively, right now I am more important as a pizza delivery guy than any six figure earning hedge fund manager. The only exception to this rule I can think of is doctors, and maybe lawyers, but I think the more useful the work lawyers do, the less they’re paid.

The one area that doesn’t fit this pattern is artists, writers etc. who’s work is vital, but not quantifiably useful. However most of them earn pittance, maybe 0.1% become fabulously wealthy.

One area, for whom this has never been truer for, who tells itself it’s special because it straddles the line between art and commerce, is advertising, the rock stars of business. It still commands huge amounts of money and employs a lot of people who would otherwise struggle to get paid for what they’re good at and keeps them afloat while they make their real work. However, over the last twenty years, as capitalism has entered its slow decline it’s become more and more irrelevant. As we have become desensitised it’s gone through a kind of arms race, getting shoutier and more invasive to achieve the same results.

Even before the pandemic, one of the big advertising holding groups, Publicis’ share price had lost 50% of its value in five years. IPC in the five years leading up to 2020 lost 80% of its share value, WPP better at losing only around a third of its value. The business model is fucked. Agencies are bloated, full of wastes of space, and for a lot of reasons the standard of work has collapsed. Personally I think that’s a good thing, I love it when brands get it wrong, but they are failing at their own stated aims.

And as capitalism stutters and falls every ten years and is unable to recover between crises, advertising can see, even if only subconsciously, that it’s days are numbered. As it comes to terms with the passing of it’s relevance, it’s going through the five stages of grief identified by Elizabeth Kubler Ross.

Right now I believe we’re moving from bargaining into the depression stage. I can hear next door, my partner who is still producing a film for a huge drinks brand boasting about their green credentials, despite half the board of the parent company not believing in climate change. REDACTED JUICY SECTION HERE. 

They then dumped over $1.5m on the production, flew everyone half way across the world to shoot it and came back. During this time, the owners of the agency got nervous and brought in a ‘safe’ (incredibly boring and out of touch) pair of hands. This pair of hands is paid £900 a day

MORE REDACTED GOOD STUFF. 

desperately trying to justify her £900 a day. What do you think, is she more useful than the guy who is going round cleaning the door handles of the buildings on my estate, and is right now filling in for the bin men who haven’t turned up? What’s he on? £8.20 an hour I’d estimate.

Clearly the minimum wage is meaningless without a maximum wage.

Meanwhile, calls with client briefs are coming in. They’re more or less all the same. How can [BRAND] be the hero in the terrible situation the world is in? The suggestions are usually the same too “provide a platform for artists to show their work and denote any profits to relief efforts.” If they genuinely wanted to help, it would be better to donate the marketing budget to help, or their products, or better yet, suspend share holder dividends and maybe stop existing.

Advertising is the voice of capital, if we look at what it’s saying, the prognosis isn’t good. But before we go through the stages of grief, let’s take a look at what topical ads the genius bad boys of commerce have come up with, to reassure us all in this trying time.

 

Thank you for your service.

For me these have a real air of depression about them. They’re badly thought out, badly executed, ill judged, tone deaf and offer nothing but sadness. Cognitive impairment is a very common symptom of depression and I think it’s apparent here. Included in this phase is loneliness and reflection, also on show.  

According to the psychologist who came up with the system, not everyone experiences all of the stages, and might not experience them in a linear order. I think that’s even more likely to be the case if we’re talking about a collective conscience like advertising.  

But let’s look at them in order, because it will help us make sense of the writhing mass of cloying, screechy, needy voices.

First is denial. It helps us survive the first shock of what we’re experiencing. In this time the world becomes meaningless, nothing makes sense, we go numb. As the credit crunch was beginning to bite in 2007 Cadbury’s launched their glass and a half campaign with the famous drumming gorilla ad, which set off an explosion of zany, wacky nonsense ads, that over the years have got more and more annoying. I’m guilty of writing a few of these.

There have been a lot of these over the last 20 years, but to me the gorilla really epitomises that bullshit branded content, advertising can be entertainment as long as it’s totally divorced from the reality of the existential crisis the world was entering in earnest at that time. The disparity between what was going on and what the brands were saying was weird but it was only a hint of the total reality collapse event that was coming.

I believe capital tried bargaining first, but let’s stick to the text book order.  Anger is totally natural and has to be accepted or it will fester and grow. The angry advert, or anti-ad has really taken off over the last few years. Anger is often just pain that doesn’t know where to go. Brands are feeling hard done by so they’re blaming their customers. They know people don’t like ads, neither do they, but we need to keep this fucking wheel turning.

Edgy.

Traditionally ads would try and ingratiate themselves with you. Pretend to be your mate, or that they understand you. That doesn’t work so well so now brands are just like, you don’t like us, we don’t like you, fuck you buy our stuff. I find that more annoying because the lack of effort really shows the distain these brands hold humanity in.

Before anger, in the chronology of advertisings grief for its relevance, came bargaining, in the form of purpose driven advertising. It’s still with us, but was an earlier trend. Whole agencies have sprung up with it as their definition. Bargaining sets in with the panicked realisation of what’s going on. We’ll stop being such evil, polluting, misery inducing bastards if you just let us carry on, we’ll make the world a better place, we promise!

At best these campaigns are disingenuous, other times downright dishonest and offensive.

Check these out –

For international women’s day Brewdog attempted to do their bit to smash the glass bottle by reinforcing gender stereotypes. They did a similar thing that was ostensibly protesting homophobia in Russia, but all they did was photoshop make up on an image of Putin, as is that’s what gayness is, men wearing make up.

A few years ago, when, for a brief moment, the plight of migrants and refugees was big news, brands and agencies got in on the action. Grey Singapore made an app for a charity called Migrant Offshore Aid Station to do what they could to help (win awards, they got some Cannes Lions or something). The app was called I Sea, and the premise was users could look at live satellite imagining to spot refugees drifting in the ocean who needed rescuing. Thing is, it all turned out to be fake. They used old satellite photos and pretended they were live, so no one was rescued apart from a few egos.

Honestly, what the fuck were any of these people thinking?

After bargaining our attention focuses on the reality of what’s going on, it’s hard to process so we drift into depression. This stage might last a long time, and it’ll be interesting to see what depressed brands will come up with, but eventually it will lift and we’ll move into acceptance.

I have no idea what acceptance will bring, apart from hopefully a bit of peace and quiet and an end to the psychic pollution advertisers leave everywhere. If there’s one upside to this pandemic, it looks like one of the biggest fatalities may be advertising.