For sheer stupidity, it's hard to beat Keats' famous assertion that...
Beauty is truth, truth beauty...But Yahoo ceo Marissa Mayer took a nice swing at it at the Cannes egofest this week by asserting that...
"Art is advertising and advertising is art."Apparently Ms. Mayer hasn't visited her website recently. As I write this, here's the "art" that is on display in the upper right quadrant of my Yahoo home page:
Now, it's pretty clear what Marissa is up to here. She's obviously out to kiss the asses of the overfed peacocks who, this time every year, turn Cannes into a grotesque carnival of wastefulness and self-congratulation. There's nothing that makes a self-worshipping ad poser glow and buzz like being told he's an artist.
Marissa then demonstrated a degree of cluelessness about advertising unmatched, even by a tech ceo.
"Digital advertising needs to aspire to be as good as art and then some."Yo, M -- I got some news for you. In the septic tank that is the ad industry, digital advertising is the stuff flopping around the bottom.
Aspire to be art? This stuff doesn't even aspire to be ordinary.
Advertising has always been 90% lousy, but online advertising has set a new standard for awfulness.
The fact that a ceo of one of the world's largest media companies believes digital advertising needs to "be as good as art and then some" tells you something about the cocoon of fantasy and delusion these people live in.
M-- just a word of advice from an old hand at this game. Be careful what you say in public. People might think you're serious.
