Does advertising need an image campaign?

I can’t help but feel like I should be ashamed of working in advertising. Except, of course, when I’m sitting at the ADC Gala or similar «incestuous» events, where I’m «among my own kind.» Outside this bubble, the verbal and nonverbal reactions to my profession range from pitying head-shaking to perfectly feigned versions of «that’s interesting» and Mom’s «if it makes you happy.» In any case, I can hardly explain to my own family what I do all day long—and certainly not what I love so much about it.

Okay, okay: When it comes to TV commercials in which shampoos float among golden molecules—promising even shinier and silkier hair thanks to increasingly sophisticated chemical formulations— it’s not just Nobel Prize-winning chemist Jennifer Doudna who pales with envy—even the most die-hard advertiser cringes with secondhand embarrassment.

Advertising is almost like flirting

Advertising—you really have to let that word roll off your tongue. It’s so beautiful. Advertising something, courting someone. Almost like flirting; but would anyone ever think to be ashamed of flirting? We flirt like wingmen or wingwomen. On behalf of our clients, we promote products, attitudes, beliefs, and sometimes even people themselves. We promote getting involved in something, eating healthier, exercising more, and—in Cannes—constantly promoting saving the world. And yes, sometimes we also simply promote burgers, polyester pajamas, or a new car. Why not? First and foremost, however, we’re vying for people’s attention. This has to do with respect for the so-called “conscious consumer”; after all, believing that everyone is interested in what brands or their agencies want to sell them would be almost a bit arrogant.

We're not as bad as our reputation suggests

We can do things differently. We can develop genuine innovations for clients—services, apps, products, and much more. All of that is advertising, too. Or, as Lee Clow put it: «Everything a brand does is advertising.» Are we perhaps partly to blame for the sometimes lousy image of advertising and ad agencies? Yes, definitely—but not just because of floating bottles of shampoo, but also because we sometimes take ourselves far too seriously and, at the same time, not seriously enough. We hide our talents under a bushel. Yet we touch people’s lives, make them laugh, get them thinking, and even convince them to buy the next load of laundry detergent that’s been washing clothes whiter every year for 45 years. Brilliant.

Either way, the free-floating Silk Shine Shampoo, with its hyper-innovative formula for advertising—just the way I love it—has the opposite effect: It ensures that the industry shines less brightly than it could. I want to counteract that here with this little column and do a bit of advertising for the industry that’s supposedly been dead for 15 years.