How advertising began taking itself far too seriously

Forget science. Brands are a branch of showbusiness. If advertising is to shake off its current malaise, it needs to embrace that fact and become, once more, a “part of the world of entertainment”, says Paul Feldwick.

The industry veteran worked at top London agencies BMP and DDB, and is the bestselling author of The Anatomy of Humbug and Why Does the Pedlar Sing?, two terrific analyses of what he terms the industry’s “crisis of self-identity”.

Part of the problem today is a resigned belief that the rules of the game have changed too unrecognisably, making it harder for the industry to navigate. But talk of the ‘post-TV’ landscape doesn’t acknowledge that there was a pre-TV landscape too, Feldwick points out, one in which advertising thrived.

Modern advertising began in the 19th century with brands such as Coca-Cola and Quaker Oats, which rose by borrowing from the world of entertainment, including the showmanship of impresarios such as PT Barnum.

Sustainability: A whole new set of reporting with potential to be transformative

---

Tools and applications, in common use elsewhere in life, are still not standard in healthcare settings

---

Futureproofing the health system requires a new prescription

---

Twenty years a-growing – Ireland’s most important health summit goes from strength to strength

---

“They understood that you become successful by becoming famous,” Feldwick explains.

Back then, brands relied on newspapers, posters, stunts and events, leveraging mass media and new means of communication and borrowing from the world of showbiz to capture attention and get people talking.

All brands succeed because of what they do. They don’t succeed because of what they are

Unfortunately, by the 1900s, ad agencies had come along and, Feldwick argues, too quickly positioned themselves above the déclassé “ballyhoo” of attention seeking. They changed the discourse, distancing themselves from the industry’s showbiz origins and insisting on a professional status, akin to lawyers or doctors.

Today, fame has moved from circuses and music halls to influencers and bloggers, but it’s still the same fame. Yet, for its part, the ad industry has continued to distance itself, getting bogged down instead in research and focus groups, which are all too often used as a kind of “insurance against failure”.

Market research is of course vital when done properly, says Feldwick. But continually pushing a narrative of measurement, efficiency, and quantifiable effectiveness, with a view to presenting itself as a science, has been working against the industry for more than a century.

Agencies discarded the idea that they were in the business of entertaining and popular culture too completely. Instead they “focused much more on writing copy that sells, giving people rational reasons why you should buy this brand rather than that brand. Now it’s not wrong, it is part of what advertising does, but it takes the focus away from the point that advertising needs to create fame and sometimes needs to entertain,” Feldwick argues.

Research, used intelligently, is important because it keeps you close to your audience. No showman succeeds by showing contempt for their audience. Barnum was often accused of “humbug” by those who looked down on him, for acts such as the Fijian mermaid (actually a monkey and a fish spliced).

But Barnum knew it was the humbug that brought in the audiences. His success came because he embraced and owned the humbug, points out Feldwick.

It’s an approached echoed by Jean-Claude Van Damme’s splits advert for Volvo trucks in 2013. The audience can’t tell if it’s real or not, and it gets people talking about it, according to Feldwick, who reckons one of the biggest problems facing advertising today is that it simply takes itself “far too seriously”.

It’s the sin of over-excavation, trying desperately to find meaning in brands that was probably never there or intended in the first place

One of the most fascinating parts of Why Does the Pedlar Sing? includes insights into the famous, and business-changing, Barclaycard campaign featuring comic Rowan Atkinson in the 1980s. It highlights many of the issues still facing the industry today, starting with the pitch process itself.

The winning pitch was “flawed from the start, but everybody held onto it for far too long before realising it was totally impractical and was eventually discarded”, says Feldwick. He reveals the award-winning advert that eventually emerged after months of “chaos” came about as a result of a looming deadline and luck.

That reality was very different from the story written up after the fact in its winning awards entries.

“Ad agencies are trained to make up stories about how we got to where we got to and always want to appear to be in control, that everything was planned logically from the start, that we did all this strategic thinking and at the end of it all, this wonderful ad was created,” Feldwick says.

Ad agencies do this because they’re convinced that that’s what their clients want to hear. “And maybe it is,” he concedes, “because everybody wants that sense of control and certainty.”

Certainly, no one wants to hear it was the results of “flinging stuff against the wall and getting lucky”.

But, while there is indeed an element of luck in any successful advert, “it is neither one extreme nor the other”, says Feldwick. The true process is better defined as “emergent”.

He also takes aim at the notion of the brand essence. “All brands succeed because of what they do. They don’t succeed because of what they are,” he explains. To ask what the brand is, is therefore almost meaningless, yet endemic within the industry.

“This notion of the brand essence has become so entrenched that people think all we have to do is define exactly what our brand is and then everything else will automatically follow. They’ve got it the wrong way around, actually,” he argues.

“The only thing that matters, the only thing that your public will ever see, the only thing that will ever make a difference, is what the brand does.”

Dave Winterlich of dentsu agrees. “It’s something that we can do very easily in hindsight, as is often the case with award entries. It’s the sin of over-excavation, trying desperately to find meaning in brands that was probably never there or intended in the first place, and that doesn’t matter to consumers outside the marketing tent, they simply don’t think that much about it,” he says.

The pitch was flawed from the start, but everybody held onto it for far too long before realising it was totally impractical

Nike is a good example of a brand being what it does, which in its case, is a lot.

“We kind of know what Nike stands for but when we all try and write it in a few words, we’ll write 101 different versions of what it stands for. We all have a sense of it being consistent and coherent, partly because it’s all tied together by the same brand, uses the same logo, and the same distinctive assets,” explains Feldwick.

“But to say that Nike succeeded because in the beginning Phil Knight said Nike is ‘empowering athletes’ or whatever, and that everything followed from that, would be completely wrong. You only have to read (Knight’s biography) Shoe Dog to realise that is complete and utter nonsense.”

As a brand it’s what you do, not what you are, that counts.

The industry’s fetishisation of awards and problems with the word creative also come in for Feldwick’s flak. “Creativity means so many things to different people”, he explains, citing David Ogilvy’s famous line: “Creativity strikes me as a high-faluting word for the work I have to do between now and Tuesday.”

The fact that creativity has such a “privileged status” within the industry is what makes it “positively dangerous”, Feldwick says, particularly when it’s more about winning awards than being popular and effective.

Ironically, in advertising, popular is seen as not cool. “But advertising is not about what is likely to win awards,” says Feldwick. “It’s about what kind of work will be popular and famous.”

To catch the full Inside Marketing podcast, click here