Voldemort is in Advertising

There’s a Voldemort in advertising.

A taboo that can never be spoked aloud.

Nobody likes to acknowledge it. They rather just ignore it. But it's obvious whenever you have a creative agency and a media agency in the same meeting.

The two talk past each other. Talk around each other.

So, this is what happens instead:

First, the creative agency sells a big idea and why it’ll excite/engage/motivate consumers. They will razzle and they will dazzle.

Then, the media people talk matter-of-factly about how they can use a combination of 'brilliant basics' and the latest adtech to find, target and retarget precisely the right consumers. They will bring the scientific rigor and numbers.

If either have feedback on the other, it's politely lip-serviced away (i.e. 'let me explain it again so you get it,' 'we'll look into it,' 'refer to case study X').

The client makes some decisions, the campaign is produced, launched and the results are predictably disappointing. An outcome that is then largely ignored, chalked up to poor timing/execution/copy tests and shuffled away in the rush to the next campaign.

Repeat to the tune of millions of dollars wasted. All over the world.

Let's unpack why this happens:

Imagine media’s ideal world where a Skynet-like apparatus knows via millions of algorithmic calculations per second exactly who you are, what you’re watching, when, how and where (some call it Facebook). It even knows your mood and when your mind is most malleable. In this scenario, they have zero-waste—the ads are only reaching the people it intends to and in the perfect moments.

Now imagine, Skynet has identified that perfect :15 to show you an ad and it’s literally :15 of poo slowly flushing down a toilet.

No amount of precision can make up for garbage creative. 100% precision multiplied by 0% creative quality is 0% effectiveness. It’s math. (It’s also called programmatic display advertising).

Now imagine creatives' ideal world where they are all Da Vinci-reincarnates who create brilliant ideas 100% of the time. But it’s reaching 0% of the right people. Same math: 0% effectiveness.

The gap is obvious, but the Voldemort isn't that creative and media don't really talk.

It's that they prefer it that way.

The cliche is that great advertising is a combination of art and science.

The Voldemort is that in the advertising business, art despises science and vice versa.

The amount of empathy, work and rework (let alone explaining to a client) is never worth it. Never, ever, ever. Really, never.

Not only because media and creative are typically two different companies (with two different sets of incentives), but just at the individual level—it’s annoying. Both media and creative have their existing 'machinery' and really talking requires, by definition, a direct and constant affront to that machinery. No, not just annoying, insurmountably exhausting.

Wasting millions instead starts to sound like to better option (who can prove it anyway?).

A friend once told me working in media like being a travel agent. You work for weeks creating perfectly budgeted plans for a great 3-month Paris trip and then the creatives come in last minute and say they want to go to Fiji instead.

Conversely, creatives really forget that humans hate ads. Humans literally spend all day avoiding and ignoring them. Ads are not art. Ads are not social currency. Nobody is lining up outside to see "the work." Ads are the grease of commerce that humans acknowledge as necessary, but would rather not touch.

Media exists to blunt the urgent human inclination to avoid/block/ignore it all. Because the human default preference is zero ads ever.

Then there's a more philosophical aspect. Which is, on principle, what is more effective—creative that is famous or creative that is precise?

Those who believe in fame believe in sunsets. Looking at a sunset is powerful not just because it’s beautiful but because you know millions of others are seeing it at the same time. There’s a shared experience contributing to its efficacy (e.g. a meme, a Super Bowl ad, 'did you see that?'). Something is only famous if it's collectively known.

Those who believe in precision believe in lasers. They believe that the most effectiveness is created with a direct, 1:1 match of moment, need, product and message. There’s no collective experience worth more than what’s personally relevant. 

Both cannot be true. At least, not at the same time.

They can only oscillate. A campaign, in totality, can achieve both with different work at different times and places. But that kind of nuance would require creative and media to really talk and define which is what and what happens when and where is how. Over months and months.

And they'd just prefer not to.

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