Breaking news: The world is clamoring for A.D.D. That’s Advertising Deficit Disorder for you, not Attention Deficit Disorder. We already have too much of the latter and not enough of the former. Without meaning any offense to those children and adults who have a tough enough time dealing with the clinical effects of real A.D.D., I’m here to advocate a strong dosage of Advertising Deficit Disorder (I’ll call it the “New A.D.D. here on). And yes, I know I’m thoroughly mixing up my medical metaphors here, but bear with me.
At a time when the entire advertising world is performing its routine as a rough hangover cure for the much more anticipated Cannes Film Festival in France, it might seem just a little ironic that I’m talking about less advertising rather than more. After all, for the large part of this past week, all of us ad and marketing folk around the world seemed to be riveted by happenings in The Gutter Bar and Martinez and the likes, not to forget the stages graced by Bill Clinton, Shekhar Kapur and Selena Gomez, among others. At least, that’s what the trade media would like us unfortunates who are not actually in Cannes to believe. But I’m wandering from my main point. Maybe I should get myself checked for the real A.D.D.
But getting back to the New A.D.D. I think some of the awards at this year’s Cannes Lions would probably reinforce the point I’m making. There’s less advertising in them and a lot more of just old-fashioned storytelling and conversation generators. Even in media that are supposedly as static as outdoor and print. The fact is that stories travel, have travelled since pre-historic times, and there’s no reason why they won’t even now. It’s probably why Bennetton’s Unhate won Print Grand Prix. It’s why, not just this year but year on year, the truly outstanding award winners do win. Because they have the power to create storytellers out of regular people (which, by the way, Dear Ad / Marketing Person, includes you and me). And yet, when Award Season is past, we get back to making ads, once again.
Yes, yes, we all know the litany of reasons we can’t not make ads most of the times. Bad clients. Insane deadlines. Shoestring budgets. Untalented teams. Office politics. Ad nauseum. But much like love, great stories happen inspite of all the obstacles, not because of all the stars being aligned. And the right starting place. In place of the old saw of starting with a brief that’s about creating stories, perhaps there is another, more appropriate one in these inescapably and inextricably connected social times that we live in. First, get rid of the idea that we have to create ads. Remember, if it’s not the real A.D.D. people already have, they’re craving the New A.D.D. Don’t even start with creating stories. Instead, think of our task as that of creating storytellers. Which means you must also arm them with stories worth telling.
Think about it. The most interesting (or annoying) people in any group are the ones with stories—about people, about interesting things and places, of things that interest themselves and others. You can like them or hate them, but you usually can’t ignore them. Best of all, they already have an established social network, on and offline. All we have to do is given them a story to run with. And they’ll run it along a wire that connects more people than all the ad networks, news networks and social networking sites put together.
The author is National Planning Head, Dentsu Marcom