For those in advertising - a lesson well worth learning

"The second problem is that advertising agencies, notably in Britain, France, and the United States, are now infested with people who regard advertising as an avant-garde art form. They have never sold anything in their lives. Their ambition is to win awards at the Cannes Festival. They bamboozle their unfortunate clients into paying millions of dollars a year to exhibit their originality. They aren't interested in the products they advertise, and assume that the consumer won't be either; so they say almost nothing about their virtues. At best they are mere entertainers, and rather feeble ones at that. Many of them are art directors who, being visual-minded, don't read anything themselves and make it impossible for consumers to read the copy I write. At a luncheon recently I heard an angry manufacturer refer to these self-indulgent idiots as mincing pansies. Given my education, I might have fallen into this trap myself if I had not spent five years selling kitchen stoves door-to-door. Once a salesman, always a salesman.”

extracted from Confessions of an Advertising Man, pg 23-24, on the four problems of crisis dimensions the world of advertising faces

That was written by David Ogilvy in the 60s. If anything I think this obscene trend has only gotten worse since.

I look upon people who think coming up with scam (or spec, as the yanks would say) ad after scam ad to be the be all and end all of advertising with the utmost disdain. And if they think they're a good creative because they can come up with catchy scam ads, then I think they, like the trend they propogate, should be "taken behind the chemical shed and shot."

That is not advertising. That is not a craft. That is pure, blatant, self-buggery and narcissism and whosoever believes in it is nothing more than a pompous jackass. And you can quote me on that.