Advertising is about sincerity (WHAAT?)

"To work in advertising, you need to be able to lie."

"All advertising is one big deception."

"Your karma is doomed."

Heard something like that from others?

It's a sensitive topic, I know. But I want to talk about it because I believe advertising is about the exact opposite – sincerity. Especially now in the era of metamodernism, when post-irony and new sincerity coexist side by side, leading us all through an oversaturated information space.

It's simple – if you're not sincere in your advertising (as a brand or a creator), your advertising won't achieve its goal. In other words, there's simply no choice here if we're talking about good, effective, non-disposable advertising.

Let's start with the goal. Yes, advertising is intended for someone's business to sell better. A pretty trivial goal, isn't it? But if you think about it for more than a second, what exactly do we want to sell after all? The word "sell" is so demonized that no one cares what follows it anymore. So I'll rephrase and say that the goal is not to sell, the goal of advertising is to connect a brand's offer with its audience (people who might be interested in that offer).

So advertising is a magical Tinder between brands and people. Let's also clarify that a brand is not an abstraction. A brand is actual people who have their own needs. For example, to improve their lives. For example, to improve the lives of people around them. So these very real people produce very real products, which in turn meet not only their needs, but also the needs of other people. And I can tell you for sure that this is the case, because if it didn't meet some need of people, the brand wouldn't exist. It just couldn't.

Thus, when encountering a brand, a person satisfies some need of their own. For example, to improve their life. For example, for empathy. For example, for hunger. And so on. In other words, advertising helps people and brands meet their needs. That's how it works. Advertising connects these two halves like yin and yang.

Advertising works with people's emotions. But it's impossible nowadays to emotionally connect with someone if you yourself (as a creator/brand) don't believe in what you're doing. People just don't buy things simply because they've seen something anymore; there's too much competition. People sense falsehood from a mile away, and I think this is arguably the main reason advertising might not be successful.

I'm glad our society has reached such a high level of awareness. I'm glad people won't buy cigarettes anymore, even if 3 doctors are smoking them on camera while smiling. I'm glad and grateful to all of us that we won't buy just anything. Because it has a big effect on businesses: they really do try to be better, they try to fit into the criteria that are important to people. Again, there are real people behind brands who live in the same world as everyone else, and often they too want to improve it using the opportunities they have. And even if a business changes only out of trivial goals – to sell – it doesn't matter, because the end result comes out positive. Less harm to the planet, more attention to people – all this leads to audience trust and, as a consequence, those coveted sales. Or rather, that very connection.

Let me try to de-demonize the word "sales" one more time, just in case? Sales is not something terrible, even though the word is associated with hellfire. Sales is just an exchange of what was created for money. And the money is then exchanged again for something created, and so on. Sales is simply our evolution, our ability as a society to distribute labor. Everyone does what interests them, and then they exchange through money. That's all there is to it.

Advertising is needed to connect a brand with its audience, making its way through a very dense and oversaturated information field. Very simple.

We also don't forget that large volumes for a brand are not only big sales and big money, but also a large staff and the well-being of many families. Everything is interconnected - pull advertising out of this system and we'll go back to living in villages, trading carrots for milk with our neighbor (maybe that's not so bad, but we'll talk about that another time).

Of course, not every brand is squeaky clean. Just like not every person is squeaky clean. Just like not every creator is squeaky clean. And that's a choice each individual person makes.

Advertising doesn't work if it doesn't hit the target. Advertising cannot be insincere, that is my deep conviction.

What about you, have you ever experienced shaming for your profession? Have you ever felt pangs of guilt in connection with your job? Or maybe you refused certain projects because they didn't align with your beliefs? How sincere is your work?