Am I the only one noticing that everything is turning to crap? Crap ads. Crap science. Crap food. Crap music. Crap movies. Crap people. Crap software that you “subscribe” to
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Category: Rants
Bad ads for bad brains: the mutual dumbing down of ads and audiences
Is the advertising industry dying because creatives are lazy, or because audiences are too dumb to care? For years, I’ve used The Cranky Creative to document the slow-motion death of
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The creative farce: why the world’s “boldest” thinkers are actually the biggest cowards
If your “boldness” requires a permission slip from the HR department, you are not a pirate — you’re a parrot. WARNING: explosive post ahead. In the ad world, we worship
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The lost generation: how DEI mandates erased Millennial white men
They told you it was “progress.” They called it “equity.” But if you look at the cold, hard numbers, it looks a lot more like a targeted demolition. For a
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How advertising created a nation of entitled assholes
It’s over. I’m done. For years, I’ve used The Cranky Creative to vent about the decline of the advertising industry. I’ve complained about the lazy concepts, the idiot creatives, the
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Facebook firing its ‘fact checkers’ is a win for truth
I’ve seen a lot of emotional posts from people upset that Meta has put an end to its “fact checking” on Facebook. What they don’t realize is that Facebook’s “fact
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Creativity without accountability is killing the ad industry
The advertising industry as we know it is dying, and for good reason. Just … not the reason many ad people would have you believe. Over the past year, I
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How to survive The Great Marketing Shakeout
If you haven’t noticed, the marketing and advertising fields are a bloodbath right now. AI is surely one reason for all the layoffs, but mostly, I think it’s a reckoning
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Short Pepsi film shows how obnoxious brands have become
Just when you thought ads and advertising couldn’t get any more obnoxious, here comes Pepsi with a ‘short film’ showing everything that’s wrong with the industry and the culture today.
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Marketing disguised as content is sleazy AF
Gah, marketing. The land of “free” consultations that turn into high-pressure sales pitches, “thought-leader” articles written by glorified SEO jockeys, and infographics so cluttered with logos they look like a
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Why Google is not your friend
(AKA, The Internet is neither free nor fair under Google) Remember when Google felt like a helpful search engine, a gateway to all the world’s knowledge? Now, it’s more of
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