Is advertising evolving or devolving?
John Long, formerly the executive creative director at Ogilvy and now in the same role at LG’s in-house agency, is an entertaining and insightful advertising critic.
He has a thread going on Twitter called “How it started/How it’s going,” in which he shows classic ads from yesteryear alongside current ads for the same brand. Inevitably, the newer ad is flatter and less compelling. Long’s point is that modern advertising has lost its creative spark.
We are not convinced of his premise because there is a survivor’s bias at work. Not every piece of ad copy written before 2010 was penned by the hand of God. You remember good ads from long ago because they were good. You forget all the ads that were wallpaper. We are not sure whether the ratio of good-to-bad is any worse now that it was back in the day.
However, Long’s comparisons reveals a lot about what separates quality copy from mediocre copy, regardless of how old or new it is.
The good ads make you think…they don’t tell you what to think
The good ads are metaphorical
The good ads have a certain voice or an attitude. They aren’t dry and purely informative.
The good ads tell a story about the consumer, not just the brand
Some critics of Long’s critiques argue that he is unfairly comparing print ads from back in the day to modern website and social media banners. However, messages don’t have to be less compelling just because of the medium in which they are presented. You can create incredible ads on radio with no visuals at all. You can create a great 6-second ad. You can create a great ad using almost no words.
As Long says, “Everything a person sees from a brand makes the brand.” Moreover, certain best-practices principles apply, no matter the format in which an ad is presented.
