Our Advertising Sucks

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No one trusts, nor respects an advertiser.  That's a fact, and we should be ashamed of ourselves because we are the only ones to blame.  We ALL spam.  Every one of us.

Obviously, there's e-mail spam, and most of us agree that it's bad, and the majority of advertisers will scoff at the mention of e-mail marketing as just plain old spam in its lowest form. 

The problem is, it's almost ALL spam.  We spam people every day just to earn an extra buck.  We get slammed by thousands of messages a day, our landscapes are cluttered with ugly billboards, our trees are killed by billions of direct mail pieces overflowing our mailboxes daily.  Our televisions are overrun with shit advertising mostly with a SELL SELL SELL, high pressure attitude.  If it's not apparent on the screen, it's almost always there, just below the surface.  Our newspapers and magazines are a cluttered mess of coupons and messages made for everyone and appealing to no one.  We are all spammers, we all steal time from the people who need it most.  We do our best to sell the consumer by taking away what is most precious to many of them.  And it's time for it to stop.

It's time that we stood up against it, it's time we did what is right.  It's time we pointed fingers and did our best to out the worst of us, and the worst in us all.

Advertising today is impersonal, unethical, annoying, loud, boring, lazy, contrived, controlled, unwanted, hated, feared, cluttered, unavoidable, distrusted. 

If we did away with it all, and started it over, wiped our slates clean and made messages that were permitted, requested, helpful, appealing, engaging, responsive and conversational, then and only then can we regain our trust, and our respect.  Sometimes it's best to lose a few bucks in the short run to win back our customers in the end.

So, I propose this.  Ask yourself a few questions about your next campaign before you give it the green light;

Did I offer the customer something in return for their time?
Was it something they wanted?
Did they ask me to be there?
Did they want me there?
How will I respond to them when they speak up?
Do they trust what I have to say?

We are the only ones who can change our fate, or face retribution from the community in the end.  Responsible marketing doesn't mean just not spamming their e-mail accounts, it also means not spamming their lives.