The C-Word

When I was a baby copywriter, I learnt the c-word.

Consumer.

It was everywhere. In our briefs. In meetings and discussions. If advertising is a game, then Consumer is the target. The thing to shoot down.

I always cringed at the c-word.

It implies a passive, gormless worm that just eats up whatever it is fed.

It implies a serious disrespect by marketeers towards people who are buying their services and products. Not people. But consumers.

No wonder the attitude is just to lob lazy work at them. Or to just pump them full of platitudes and hard-sell. No wonder we as an industry now rely so heavily on advanced data crunching and technological targeting techniques that we have lost our soul as a creative business.

Don't believe me? Spend a few days walking the Croisette in Cannes during the third week of any June and tell me if this is about ideas or about tech.

Before advertising can save itself, it needs to rethink its relationship with the people it exists for. Our job is to show them how our clients' brands can be useful to them in a way that respects their time and intelligence. That understands people don't want to engage with brands. They just want to pay the rent, get their kids through school and at the end of the day - not kill their spouse. Whatever flash of brilliance we can come up to entertain, touch or make them pause - let's do that.

Less of the c-word. More of the h-word.

Human.