Blogs: True Advertising Stories
The True Source Of Most Bad Advertising

About 20 years ago, when I was drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes for the Biggest Ad Agency in the State of Indiana and playing junior copywriter—okay, I was senior copywriter, but ad agencies handed out titles like popcorn in those days—I found myself one afternoon helping my account team pitch new ads to the agency’s biggest client. AcmeCorp was a B-to-B and B-to-C manufacturing company, lots of print and collateral, none of it glamorous. But it paid my salary and the salaries of a dozen of my coworkers, including Rick Burrows, account supervisor and Number Two at the agency, who was also in the meeting.

AcmeCorp’s ad manager was a 50-year-old guy named Ted who looked as if he combed his hair with 10W30. So far as I knew, Ted was AcmeCorp. I’d worked on the account for almost four years and had never even talked with another person who worked for them.

We met that day in the agency conference room. My art director partner and I were prepared to show Ted six or eight concepts for a trade ad for a new product. That was how the agency worked, no shit—show as many ideas as you can come up with and the client’s bound to buy one of ‘em.

And we showed them all. And we weren’t particularly proud of any of them. We knew everything we presented was lame, but we clung to an unreasonable hope that Ted might choose the least lame concept we presented and maybe, just maybe, we’d have a piece we could put in our books and cough through.*

Ted didn’t say much during the presentation. When we finished, he looked me straight in the eye and said, without a hint of irony, “You know the problem with all this stuff? It’s too good for us.”

Hours later, after the shock had worn off, I wished I’d have said, “Gee, Ted, we tried to do as bad a job as we could.” As it was, I was too dumbfounded to say anything.

“You know what I mean, guys,” said Ted. “I mean, we don’t need anything this good. We really just need average ads. We need a picture of the product and some features.”

“Benefits,” said Rick Burrows, and the account executive and account coordinator nodded their heads. “We definitely need to get to the benefits.”

“Right,” said Ted. “Features and benefits. And a product photo.”

Poof. The ad was done. A bullshit headline. A bullet list. A photo of a metal box. I could cash another paycheck.

You know, I’m sure any of the admittedly mediocre ads we presented that day would have been more aesthetically pleasing than the ad we eventually produced. More important, I’m sure AcmeCorp would have been better served by any of our ads. They wouldn’t have cost any more to make, and they wouldn’t have looked like every other freaking ad in Industrial HVAC News.

But you’ll notice that we didn’t even present any ads we thought were actually good. That was not how the agency worked. We were not out to challenge our clients. We were out to sell ads—period. According to Rick Burrows, the definition of a good ad was one the client was willing to buy.

You will also notice that the client didn’t want good advertising. He wanted safe advertising. He wanted ads he could approve without having to take them to his boss.

Let’s call these advertising archetypes “The Craven AE” and “The Comfortable Client.” When you put them in the same room, they are, more than all other factors put together, responsible for Bad Advertising.

It’s a true story. Mostly true, anyway. I was there.

*Cougher: a spot on your reel (or ad in your portfolio) that causes you to cough suddenly and loudly in the hope that your prospect will be distracted and wait for the next spot to start paying attention again (or turn the page without comment). Thanks to Dean Crow for this one.