OK… So, The Ubiquitous Persuaders is finally published and on Amazon as we speak. So get your arses over there and buy one, or three. There should also be a Kindle edition out this week. And because, as loyal AdScammers well know, I am not a wanker, I shall refrain from tooting my own horn, and will instead quote from Jeff Goodby’s brilliant foreword…
If there were an emperor of advertising, I like to think he’d say things like, “Bring me George Parker’s head, braised first to seal the juices, then roasted in a nice medley of root vegetables.” Yeah, George is a little controversial. He is, after all, the man who regularly refers to Martin Sorrell, probably the most powerful guy in advertising, as the “Poisoned Dwarf.” He calls out big international clients in unflattering terms that often involve genitalia or bottom-feeding fish. And he’s probably said some upsetting things about me that I’ve somehow managed to miss. Yet here I am writing the preface of his Goddamn book. Because the thing is, the guy is so often, well, right. There is still more Georgian rightness in what you’re about to read between these covers. But what he has to say in here is not just right, it’s hugely inspirational.
Jeff then waxes eloquently about how so much of the advertising we produce is dumbed down:
Dumbing down is treating people like less intelligent sheep to be manipulated. It presumes they won’t notice ham-fisted logic, irritating repetition, or the vulgar appropriation of culture and symbols dear to them. It blithely assumes that they don’t know the difference between funny enough and truly funny, between beautiful enough and truly beautiful. Ninety-nine per cent of advertising has always been about dumbing down. Advertising people, in fact, are unrepentant about this, even proud of it. People like David Ogilvy himself were fond of saying that advertising is, after all, not art. A creative director I worked with in the seventies was fond of putting down people who loathed one of his commercials by saying, “Yeah, but you noticed it.” There is a big hairy redemptive animal coming for such Luddites and its called the Internet. Suddenly, people are developing the freedom to do away with insulting ads, even before they’re exposed to them. Suddenly, more and more advertising people are being forced to wonder whether their messages are truly welcome.
George relishes the public flaying of the dumbing down forces. He has taken up a pike herein and is climbing over the crowd to finish the job. He knows that advertising may be a business that now turns out only one per cent goodness, but that letting the world devolve into dreary mercantilism and mere information gathering would be a sad fate for all of us. Because when advertising is done right, it changes commerce into magic, humor, even delight.
George will keep toiling until it all could be described that way. I think he has his work cut out for him. But this book is a great start.
- Jeff Goodby. Co-Chairman. Goodby, Silverstein & Partners
What more can I say, except, buy the bloody book. Jeff says so.
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