Once again, my mate, Jeff Goodby, writes a somewhat pithy and pissantly prescient piece for AdWeek... "Dear Martin Sorrell, Your No Creative Model Shouldn't Happen. And It Won't." Here's the "Pithy" bit... Looking more closely at S4, one wonders why they would even need creative's. Their stated model is more like a return to the siloed kind of business its founder envisioned when WPP focused on wire and plastic products. That business didn’t require a creative department, either. The digital age has, of course, largely put its chips on the target and yell model, and it has done so at a scale heretofore unimagined. Mr. Sorrell’s company is just the latest to garner publicity with yet another promise of targeting and tonnage. Here's the "Prescient" This approach, which has made it hard for all of us in advertising to defend our profession at cocktail parties or explain our job descriptions to our children, doesn’t just drain our clients’ budgets, but it has actually raised the societal resistance to our messages, no matter what they are. And finally, here's the "Pissantly Bit." (Not that I know what Pissantly means.) In doing so, it has flat-out increased the dreariness of modern life. Exquisitely targeted advertising that treats us at our lowest common denominators has made advertising more of an irritant than at any other time in history. We see things more assuredly, but they are less and less assuredly interesting. Nice one Jeff, I couldn't have said it better myself... Even as an "Homage!"
Why S4 sucks...
