22 You Know What’s, For You Know When.
Tis’ the cliché, and we know this for two reasons. First, there’s the unrelenting onslaught of seasonal ads that always seem to feature passive-aggressive couples taunting each other with the gift of a monster truck. Who writes this shit, The Reductionist knoweth not. Then there’s the spate of “expert guesses” about the year ahead, penned by talking heads in every category—advertising especially guilty, Well, the hell with all that fakakta schmegegge.* This year, yours truly is going to riposte with the world’s first annual list of “anti-predictions”; actually, let’s call them “predict-me-nots,” since they’re all about what totally won’t happen in 2022. No matter how much they should.
To start, Titanic deck chairs will remain unrearranged. The industry, facing existential threats on every front from mind-numbing clutter and channel explosion to audience rejection and declining trust will blithely pretend that razor wire is a variety of four-leaf clover. Einstein had it wrong: it’s really not all that hard to keep doing the same thing while expecting a different result.
On the flip side, advertising won’t disappear beneath the waves, either. That’s because the only option to spending precious coin on marketing is even less .
Meanwhile, leopards, zebras, and advertising holding companies won’t change spots, stripes, or bureaucracies. Nature of the beasts.
Bigger won’t be as big as they want you to think. Fun fact: there is no single agency or holding company, globally, that commands more than 5% of the world’s advertising market. Unfun fact: if agencies continue to prioritize cheaper over proven talent, that 5% will shrink even further.
Won’t be no silver bullets. Ad testing, direct response, sales promotion, and similar quaintness were supposed to be the shizzle back in the day; just like data-driven, influencers, and social video are now. We may be a gun-crazed country, but somehow that never seems to translate to single shots that solve it all—not in life, not in advertising.
Privacy will be much bruited about, little addressed. Despite all the public polling rage, users have yet to show much appetite for premium pricing options that increase protection. Meanwhile, back at the big house on the hill, we all know what Congress gonna do. Or not.
The loss of cookies won’t perturb the earthly axis. It’s technological whack-a-mole out there and as platforms tamp down on 3rd party data, the digiterati will find new ways to target. And if the net is that you wind up needing more magnetic creative, is that the worst result?
Linear TV won’t suffer that long-anticipated extinction event. For a medium that’s been reported dead since 2001, the oldest screen will continue to hold its own. Might have something to do with the fact that it remains the fastest way to grab an audience and that the biggest money segment is still watching as much as ever. When that changes, maybe we talk.
Streaming won’t take over the world. Irritations like stacking subscription fees charged by too many do-alike competitors will keep will pushing the brake pedal towards the floorboards. Especially in inflationary times.
Digital impact won’t come from DIY. Whole lot of people think they can get essential awareness and maximize sales by combining a slew of DIY social and search tactics. Pro tip: you need a pro.
Dance moves won’t turn into an advertising strategy. Even if Coke seems think that, as a Tiktok tactic, it doesn’t matter that you’re the 1000th brand to step that way.
Confusion between purpose- and cause-marketing won’t fade. Which is strange, because even a homeless whale could see that the “why you’re in business” isn’t the same as “buy us and we’ll make a contribution.
The ratio of “strategy slides to concepts sold” won’t shrink. For largely economic reasons, agencies will continue to insist on needing 100-page decks to ‘splain that 250 x 250-pixel display ad.
Likewise, the creative “crap-to-quality” balance won’t change, either. Not sure why, but Sr. Pareto’s 1906 economic model pegs us at a pretty consistent 3% great, 12% good, and 85% of what the great Russian author called “freedom to spit in the eye of the passer-by and the passenger.”
Lousy listening skills in agency new business won’t stop killing new business. Agencies will keep ignoring the entirely human point that “it’s not about you, it’s about what you can do for me.”
Advertising awards shows won’t recapture their luster. If it’s all one-offs, if the judging doesn’t reward originality, if we’re all not blown away by the chosen work, then instead of celebrating ideas that illuminate the North Star, we’re just squinting into the southern sky.
Weepy piano ads won’t make a comeback anytime soon. Sad news for weepy piano players.
Adland’s “aging” won’t stop getting escorted to the ice floe. Betty White notwithstanding, the industry has always viewed 18 - 25 as the creative center of cool. The mythology of digital fluency, and the reality that “more experienced is more expensive,” has only institutionalized already-toxic ageism.
Social “humblegagging” won’t go away. Seems like the online world not only accepts, but almost demands shameless self-promotion. More power to ya, but this gimlet-eyed grump still tends to believe that the work speaks louder than the words.
The advertising business won’t lose its allure for the optimistic. Seems hard to fathom, but a couple of sources say there are currently over 300,000 advertising-related businesses in the world. Oh, look at me, getting all in the spirit.
Good enough still won’t be good enough. We may continue to pursue all the above follies, but Jay Chiat’s truth will remain the signpost up ahead. At least, for those who are willing to see.
Last, but least, The Reductionist won’t stop referring to he/him/themselves in the third person. Even if it annoys just about everyone, the writer included.
Okay, that one is really more of a get-to-22 filler than a predict-me-not. And with that, may the joy of the New Year outweigh its omicronic opposite for you and yours.
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*Say what you will about Yiddish—and speaking shamefully little, I can’t say much—but when this language sinks its teeth into something, it gets right to the juice. As a great example, I was delighted to discover how delightfully this translation of “fucking nonsense” trippith off the keyboard and the tongue.