If it’s not advertising, WTF is it?

    “I’m a little afraid,” an ex-client of mine recently confessed, “to use the words “brand” and “advertising.” He made it sound like he tip toes around them, concerned that a growing number of people use “brand” interchangeably with product, while “advertising” connotes something leftover from the dark ages. Mind you, this isn’t just any client saying this; this is a client that has spurred a lot of great work with Weiden, Crispin and BBDO.

    I’m not entirely sure what’s happened to “brand.” Perhaps everything is now a product. Maybe our content is on level with the widget on the shelf, so if consumers like the communication, they will like the widget, as well. And, if there are only products, there doesn’t need to be a distinction, right? Or, maybe it’s being confused with the identifying mark burned on cows. Regardless, shouldn’t the communication have some different specs from the actual product? If it doesn’t, what about it will change consumer behavior, assuming that changing consumer behavior is what we’re paid to do. As it has been defined, “brand” is what the consumer thinks and feels about a product, and as such, it labels what we’re supposed to be working on. I think it helps to know what one should be working on.

    And what about “advertising?” Admittedly, for most of my career, I’ve preferred to use “communication” over “advertising,” because I wanted my work to communicate, genuinely, if not sincerely. For me, “communication” was just a way to separate the wheat from the chaff –– like, I hate advertising but I don’t hate good advertising. The fact that it was meant to shape a consumer’s attitude toward a product was assumed. Hey, we’re accountable for the brand; maybe we’re in accounting.

    What if we call it “persuasion?” To my way of thinking, if our work were formulaic and feels “traditional,” it cannot be persuasion. The word may be a little antiquated but at least it states a purpose. And, as Bernbach wrote, “Advertising is fundamentally persuasion and persuasion happens to be not a science, but an art.” Without the art, the communication can’t make people feel something powerful and if you can’t be artful, you can’t compel people to change. Without the art, it’s dreck.

    This is not a picayune argument about semantics. Words are symbols; symbols motivate; and symbols actually direct behavior. We ought to know that.

    Wait a second. Isn’t advertising “any paid for communication intended to inform or influence one or more consumer?” What’s wrong with that again?