Crap

            In the ad world, there’s been an increasing amount of work designed to pull on people’s emotional strings. There’s no benefit to most of the stuff and, ironically, no real understanding about which emotional string should be struck in order to compel people to buy. Its proponents want to build big brands like Nike or Apple, but evidently lack the knowledge of how Nike and Apple got to be Nike and Apple. I keep hearing that consumers want to have a conversation with brands. Seriously? I think they want their car to run, their computer not to freeze and their vegetables to be fresh. To spout such advertising without offering up real reasons, just shows a lack of respect for consumers. I mean, do we really think people are that stupid? Sadly, the problem goes beyond Madison Avenue.

            In the wider world of politics, we now have a propagandist for a president who, as such, has no regard for facts and rouses our worst emotions. Lacking the requisite RTB’s, he, too, shows exactly what he thinks of us, presumably believing that we should give him our respect automatically because he’s president. Wrong. He works for us, remember? That said, what’s he done? He’s insulted, lied, been greedy, abused women and minorities and so on. He hasn’t shown any depth of knowledge in politics, history or command of the issues. He hasn’t revealed a deep moral core. So why should we respect him? Respect has to be earned. He must think we're stupid.

            Last year the big headline from the Cannes Ad Festival declared that there’s a lot of “crap content” out there. Well, now, as I read that Trump is running ads to draw more people to attend his inauguration, I can only conclude that there’s crap content and there’s CRAP content. I can't even bring myself to watch it on TV and contribute to positive ratings.