Take a look through any agency website and you're sure to read about how innovative they are. They do things differently. They have a unique perspective.
Spend time at these agencies, on the other hand, and you're sure to find out how absurdly derivative and slavishly trendy they are.
According to Ad Age, no fewer than 60 agencies have so far posted videos of their staff doing the Harlem Shake.
Not only are agency cretins posting Harlem Shake videos, but so are advertising "educational" institutions like the Miami Ad School and the VCU Brandcenter. If that's not enough for you, so have Pepsi, A&W, Chili's, Google, and Facebook.
I guess one of the positive things about the web is that the life cycle of these memes is so short that by the time these dimwits have posted these monstrosities they are already past their sell-by.
On a similar subject, last week in a post called Rethinking Our Addictions I wrote about how resisting the shallow lure of pop culture had helped some advertisers create standout commercials in this year's Super Bowl...
"The interesting thing is that they may have stood out because they eschewed the thrash-pop sensibility. They were gentle, innocent, and positive. They were not evocative of pop culture in their style and structure."Apparently someone's been reading this blog. A few days later, Adweek wrote...
"The top five (ads) show how viewers can appreciate quieter and more poignant moments during an often-hectic Super Bowl telecast. Three of the five, including the top two, are heartwarming productions, rather than the broad comedy for which Super Bowl ads have generally become known."I'm going to say this one more time. Bad advertisers think that advertising is about identifying the latest fad and jumping on it as fast as they can. Good advertisers know that advertising is about finding something interesting to say and saying it cleverly, wittily, or beautifully.
