If there’s any good news about pandemics is that they always end.
It’s the ‘when’ & ‘how’ that causes the real disaster.
Two months into the crisis and it’s pretty clear that we’ll emerge from this a little different.
The IMF predicts that we are about to experience the worst recession since the Great Depression.
Unemployment is at multiples of record-highs.
And predictably, the advertising business will be hit especially hard as brands refocus, hunker down and cut ‘unnecessary’ expenses.
Some brands will struggle. Those who survive will come back stronger.
But the biggest change in advertising will be something more fundamental — the nature of it. More especially, the end of messaging-based advertising.
Modern advertising is oriented around one thing — brands selling something by saying something in exactly right way. Or, “It’s Toasted.”
Crafting the words, slogan, motto just to motivate, persuade and compel. An obsession with a line or turn of phrase that perks consumers’ ears, grabs their attention and sparks their imagination.
“Think Different.” “Impossible is Nothing.” “Open Happiness.”
What this crisis has brought into sharp relief is that this kind of messaging-based advertising is the equivalent of brands sending ‘hopes & prayers.’
I’m not talking about the openly tasteless stuff.
I’m talking about the well-intentioned stuff coming from well-intentioned brands.
These messages — the impulse to say something, say anything — are totally worthless in crisis and will be increasingly worthless post-crisis.
This crisis has exposed the ugly reality about brands who only ‘message.’ That, no matter how well something is said, those words are vacuous coming from ruthless multi-dollar companies disguising (i.e. branding) themselves as something more.
Give money, make masks, help your customers, sacrifice profits, contribute to world. Just shut up & do something. And don’t expect any adulation for your pithy words alone.
We’ll look back at this terrible crisis as the start of when quietly doing a little good became infinitely more valuable than screaming something clever. Or, said another way: the death of advertising as we know it.
