Go for an arresting Claim

Remember the Wizard of Oz? When the great curtains of the Emerald City

were finally pulled back, Dorothy and her friends found...nothing. Just a small

anxious figure who had until then been able to project a big confident illusion.

Well, advertising people have been hiding a dreadful secret, they have nothing

to hide, nothing to propose, and, worse still, nothing to support their

bombastic illusions! Listen to an ad man speak and you would not gain the

impression of a master strategist, towering intellect, communications colossus

and business titan whom we underestimate at our peril. Advertising

agencies have, for years, been past masters of making an arresting claim

whenever they are hazy about facts or logic, which happens to be most of the

time! The world, the media and our own country have for too long indulged

advertising by never responding to their abstractions that advertising works and

that has suited advertising beautifully. Now as more and more evidence of the

failure of advertising emerges one is forced to admit that advertising is a

total business disaster and has been so for many a year!

There is a niggling, small-scale dishonesty in the way they use words facts and

figures. There is, in advertising people, a paralyzing failure of intellectual

confidence together with a yawning absence of true creativity. Take for

example the intellectual nonsense of accountant turned ad man, Sir Martin

Sorrell. He recently said London and New York are

no longer the creative centers of the world. Absolute stuff and nonsense, if

he, accountant turned ad man Sorrell knew anything about the process of

communication he would appreciate the fact that creativity is no longer, if it

ever has been, the sole criterion for the success or otherwise of an advertising

campaign!He goes on to talk about the most financially efficient advertising

again, complete stuff and nonsense there is no such thing as accountability in

advertising so nobody knows a dam thing about financially efficient

advertising. See what I mean about niggling small-scale dishonesty in the

way they use words?