No Thanks

People hate to be sold to. Hate it. That was one of the very first rules I learned at Art Center when I was starting to take advertising courses. If you don’t believe it, check your own reactions when you get a telemarketing call, or a salesman walks up to you in a store, or a stranger at a party starts extolling the virtues of financial planning, or somebody wants to talk about Jesus with you.  “No thanks,” you probably say. Unless you’re on medication.

A friend of mine related a story about how he and his partner were enjoying the beach one day when this clean-jean guy comes up to them and, uninvited, kneels down on their blanket and asks if he can take just ten minutes of their time to talk about his love of Jesus. My friend says, “Sure, but here’s the deal: afterwards you have to stay an additional ten minutes and listen to me talk to you about my love of men.” The guy got up and walked away. Why? Because he too hated to be sold to. Like everybody.

And yet, so much of what passes for advertising these days violates this most basic of rules and starts in on trying to sell you something. The writers don’t wait until the end for the CTA (the call to action). No, they jump right in with the pitch. No entertainment. No comedy. No attitude of deference for having just interrupted your show, or your reading of an online article, or enjoyment of a funny panda video. These very same writers who, if you tried it on them, would click the X, or the mute, or the “skip ad” button. They hate it too, even as they do unto others. But exercise of empathy usually isn’t one of their creative talents.

It reminds me of that Monty Python bit in “The Meaning of Life” on sex education at a British boys’ boarding school where John Cleese asks the students in the class of ways to get a girl in the mood.  One of them offers a shockingly vulgar suggestion (which I won’t make you blush with; you have to go to the movie clip).  Cleese, after a long pause, responds, “What’s wrong with a nice kiss first, boy?”  Advertisers today have forgotten how to get people in the mood for their sale. They’ve forgotten the nice kiss first. And stampede right to the sale.

This is sad. The human race lately seems to be devolving on so many planes; political, social, intellectual, health, environmental, economic, moral, ethical. So lamenting the demise of advertising seems the least of our worries.

But having thrived in my own career during an age of entertaining, creative, and engaging advertising–advertising that really seemed to make a difference back then–it is heartbreaking that this discipline too has evaporated. Empathy was one of the primary skills we were trained to hone–empathy for the person we were intruding on who doesn’t want to hear our pitch. Tell them a joke first. Make them go “awww” first.  Give them a nice kiss first. Honestly, when was the last time you were interrupted by an ad on a show that you didn’t immediately mute? Or one on a website or your social media that you didn’t skip over, or hide altogether?

I know this sounds like an old man making one of those “in my day” rants my own  grandfather used to make. Well. What of it? That’s where I am now.  I at last have empathy for him, rest his soul, which, I hope is in an ad-free heaven.