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 that’s long overdue.
In the words of Bethany Joy, self-proclaimed brand voice strategist (via LinkedIn):
It’s really pissing me off that marketing is basically becoming performance art.
We post endless photos of outdoor ads. We chortle at screenshots of big-name brands ‘interacting’ on Twitter. We share videos and campaigns, glibly declaring how good they are.
But when we say good, what we really mean is funny. Or clever. Or cool. Or controversial.
We’re forgetting that this is marketing.
And the only definition of good that actually matters is ‘effective’.
Which means did the ad or the tweet or the video or the campaign achieve the thing it set out to achieve – not did it get liked by 8 trillion self-congratulatory marketers in an echo chamber of twattery.
So can we please stop wanking ourselves off about how cutting-edge we all are and get back to the actual point of it all.
FFS.
Oh, how I love this post. (And many others from Bethany. Check her out on LinkedIn if you enjoy megaton truth bombs delivered with cutting wit and style.)
Here, she is saying essentially the same thing I’ve been shouting from the rooftops for six years — the same message that famed ad critic Bob Garfield espoused from his column in Advertising Age for 25 years:
Marketers are not doing their jobs.
Somewhere along the way, marketers have forgotten that their job is not to be cute or clever, or to win advertising awards, or make movies, or push social agendas.
No. Their job is, always has been, and always will be about just one thing: selling.
And I’ve no doubt this is a big reason why so many marketing people are losing their jobs today.
It was bound to happen. Whether brands spend tens of thousands or hundreds of millions of dollars on marketing and advertising, they expect a return on their investment.
Not “mindshare.” Marketshare.
Over the years, too many ad agencies and creatives have failed to deliver that. (For evidence, look no further than Cranky ad reviews and half of the rants on this blog.)
Now it seems the industry’s chickens are coming home to roost at last.
Here is the bottom line, folks: If you work in marketing, you’d best get your priorities straight and start doing work that gets results if you want to survive the shakeout that’s happening right now.
Your future — and the future of your profession — depends on it.
You would also like: ‘Adapt or die’: the advertising industry faces painful change
And: ‘Writers have two years left. Designers a little more.’
Main image by Freepik
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