Flowers and pearls - Sarah Pally's column. This time: "Is this advertising - or can it go away?"
In her column «Blüten und Perlen,» Sarah Pally takes a close look at (advertising) language. This time: Advertising is a tool—it has a goal; it wants something. It wants something from you, and in the vast majority of cases, it wants more than just a little attention or a twitch at the corner of your mouth. It wants your money, your hard-earned cash, your soul! Or at least that’s what it should want.
But it is precisely this that is surprisingly often forgotten by those who "make" advertising. It's supposed to be "beautiful" (cool, nice, bähm). Of course "beauty" plays a role in the battle for attention - but unfortunately everyone is beautiful here, baby. That's why we can't be satisfied with that.
Or advertising is often confused with entertainment or art. What advertising should actually be able to do is then often only reluctantly acknowledged or even rejected outright: Oh, advertising has to deliver? Yikes, how crude and ugly.
As if it were our job
But if our advertising doesn't perform, then we don't perform. So it's best to do it as if it were seriously our job. And that job is to get your money, your firstborn, your soul.
Sure. It can and should be entertaining, but not for the sake of entertainment. But because entertainment is one of the big relevance triggers. Just like the even more blatant brother called advantage: if you get something out of it, whether it's a discount or extra points for coolness, then it becomes relevant incredibly quickly - no matter how ugly it comes across. On the other hand, anyone who finds advertising that has to perform not only clumsy and ugly, but also beneath their own self-actualizing dignity, should have a thick skin and will have to practice humility.
However, there is still a small group of indomitable romantics who are resisting - and they can even be honored for advertising that does absolutely nothing: The award hunters.
L'art pour l'award
You can usually see this immediately in the advertising materials with this ulterior motive: they are tailored precisely to this advertising fudge, to the goût of the juror, to the fact that they are celebrated. Most of the time, you'll only find awareness-raising pieces from "big" brands in poster format, i.e. exactly where it doesn't matter and nothing ever happens anyway. And because everyone already knows about it anyway, you don't even really have to raise awareness! Win-win-win! At most, there's still some positioning polishing to be done. Or to put it another way: this kind of advertising only happens where it's allowed to be about l'art pour l'art - or l'art pour l'award - or to put it another way: where advertising can still be a purposeless cost item. Beautiful!
