“Contrarian” is a noun used to describe a person who holds a contrary position, one who opposes or rejects popular opinion. And while advertising has always been an industry for mavericks, there are few more outspoken commentators than self-titled “ad-contrarian” Bob Hoffman.
“The first important thing advertising does is create fame,” says Hoffman, of leading influential advertising and marketing blog The Ad Contrarian. “But in the marketing world that is too simple for us. We need to complicate everything, so we invent all kinds of reasoning and models on how we believe advertising works and we ignore the most important thing: that it makes you famous.”
In 2022, how does one measure such so-called fame? Today’s marketing industry has an unhealthy obsession with codifying and counting every action and outcome. There is the notion that the “perfect algorithm for success” is out there, somewhere, to guide us through the emotional and irrational chaos of humanity, if we just tinker and optimise that little bit more.
But not every dollar can be attributed to something. The general rule of good fortune applies. Advertising creates fame, fame increases your surface exposure to good luck. As Rory Sutherland, vice-chairman at Ogilvy UK, put it in a previous column: “Fame is a general lubricant for good fortune”. So, if you are a famous brand, you get media coverage more easily. Brands reach out to partner with you. People take your calls. Employees want to work for you. Things tend to fall in your lap as opposed to having to hustle for everything.
It is a stance that Hoffman is passionate about, as he is about the future of data. One of the things Hoffman is most outwardly critical about is surveillance marketing, the misuse of data by big tech.
I have no problem with these companies being ad-funded, but there is no reason why they can’t make huge sums of money without tracking us to the degree that they do
“I have no problem with these companies being ad-funded,” he says, “but there is no reason why they can’t make huge sums of money from advertising without tracking us to the degree that they do. One of the issues is that most people are simply not aware of the level of tracking that is happening. We are largely okay with allowing companies sell our data to advertisers because that is the value exchange for the utility these companies provide.”
He enjoyed his time in agencies. “I believed in the work we did but that does not mean I believed all the stuff that was going around then or indeed now.”
Post-agency, he dabbled with consultancy but, with typical candour, he says he felt “that people really wanted my approval rather than my opinion. They were going to do what they were going to do regardless of what I told them, and that never worked for me. Also, it did not pay particularly well so I wasn’t really interested.”
Advertising needs such mavericks. Without the contrarians it is an industry, at best, bereft of swagger, a blunt instrument without a point of view and an industry adept at producing instructional videos that simply lack emotional engagement in any meaningful way. At worst, without people who question and advocate against current trends, it is sleepwalking people into very real danger.
Anyone familiar with Orlando Wood, chief innovation officer at the System 1 Group, whose work on creative impact is the subject of two books (Lemon, 2019 and Look Out, 2021) will know that advertising is becoming dangerously focused on the left-side of the brain, what is also called left hemisphere cues.
The industry is at a point of inflection, facing an existential crisis. But we seem to be paralysed by the short term, our gaze transfixed on quarterly share prices, clicks, likes, shares and follows.
Most marketers are unable to take a longer-term view and believe the long term is nothing more than simply stitching together a series of short-term horizons.
To be fair to anyone who finds themselves guilty of swiping right for the short-term fix, don’t feel too bad because the reality is that the game is rigged. The system is built that way, set up to reward short-termism.
“In the real world the tactical always drives out the strategic,” Hoffman says. “It’s true in advertising and it is true nearly everywhere else. It is much easier to keep your eye on short-term goals rather than long-term ones.”
He’s right. The average tenure of a chief marketing officer is 24 months. Marketing people move around within companies and territories, bonuses are paid annually, and agency of record contracts are typically three-year-long terms at best. So as much as we want to back long-term, the reality is that business culture does not reward or value it.
We have never had more evidence to understand how marketing works and yet we seem to be unable to agree a set of common principles
We seem to be an industry doomed to our inevitable fate of left-brain hemisphere. short-term thinking, and Hoffman believes it is because “we are an industry without principles”.
It is such an irony that we still struggle with the same questions our advertising forefathers struggled with years ago, yet we have an abundance of advertising literature and understanding.
We live in interesting times, Hoffman says. “We have never had more evidence to understand how marketing works and yet we seem to be unable to agree a set of common principles, unwilling to learn from all that has gone before.”
We are blinded by data and targeting, we give little credit to human intelligence as we spoon-feed informational advertising to people, hoping the message will permeate their apathy like a scene from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
We need people like Hoffman to call out some of the nonsense masquerading as new marketing theory. We need the contrarians, much like the asylum needed Jack Nicholson’s character, to awaken us from our slumber before we slowly and collectively sleepwalk into a world of emotionless advertising.
We should never forget that humans respond to storytelling.
Dave Winterlich is chief strategy officer at dentsu
