"Ads are not cool." -- (Sean Parker to Mark Zuckerberg, circa 2004)

A great scene from a great movie and arguably the most cogent distillation of the consequences of fifty years of "Command & Control" as you're likely to find in all popular culture.

(We can debate whether FB is "cool" -- or the irony that it's now the king of display ads -- another time)

I suppose it's odd for an ad guy to celebrate a clip like this, but it's true: ads are (mostly) not cool.

That's because many of them, to quote Fred Wilson, are lazy, ineffective and expensive.

Others are insulting. Others are invisible or served in the completely wrong context. Others simply contravene basic human truths. Some are all of the above.

And then there's this:

What other form of communication engages in such self-deprecation? Isn't this the equivalent of pinning a "kick me" button on your content?

Or this:

Translation: "the ads are so bad we must force you to watch them!"

I've come to think that the worst advertising is passive-aggressive.

(Or passive and/or aggressive, e.g.):

1. pleeeease don't ignore me.
2. you're not permitted to ignore me.

 

How rude...

That can't be a sustainable way to do business.

It isn't very kind to consumers.

(Or it might have been, once upon a time.)

Things have changed.

We live in an economy of unprecedented abundance.

I think this makes the point...

...though this is the (now cliched) slide that makes media people shudder:

Given all the clutter, what's a brand to do?

My take: it's probably unwise to marginalize or force yourself on people.

In the 21st Century, any content that aspires to been seen must be primary.

Our children have developed a Darwinian ability to instantaneously dismiss anything that doesn't add value.

Communication that presents itself as secondary is going to fail.

Primary content is valuable.

Secondary content is unnescessary.

In other words: good wins, shit loses.

Don't be the univited guest at somebody else's party.

Be the party.

Don't pay for the beer and assume you're the host.

Be this:

not that:

2.

But why should you care what I think?

Okay. Well...before my life as an ad man, I ran or launched or had senior roles at some of the more important consumer publications on the planet, including, but not limited to the The New Yorker, Entertainment Weekly, Details, US Weekly, Salon.com, and many, many others. (I also used to regularly pontificate on ABC, CNN, Anderson Cooper, The View, Fox News, E! and Court TV.)

I've co-written two books, about -- among other things -- failure: "A Very Pubic Offering," which tells the story of the rise and fail of TheGlobe. com, the original social network, which was worth a lot of money until it wasn't. And "Chasing Cool," which chronicles how Barneys' CEO blew $300mm and lost the family business. I have a third book coming out this fall with pop legend Nile Rodgers.

Books and magazines, and the industries they represent, ain't what they used to be.

You can learn a lot from failure and how the once-invincible react to tectonic change.

I like to boil it down to this one lovely sentence (with kudos to former Yahoo Music guru Ian Rodgers):

I believe my background gives me a unique perspective on the danger of hubris.

If you think the old ad model "works" because you see some measurable lift, you need a new thermometer.

3.

Here's a slide from another great movie: "The September Issue," the Vogue documentary.

It offers a rarely seen perspective. Let me explain:

What you see above is a rare, sausage-factory pov on how a magazine is put together. You may notice there are no ads.

That's because the people who assemble the editorial content don't make the ads, they put up with the ads, which are inserted when the real work is done.

It's not quite "Ads are not cool," but no less us and them.

This is, to put it mildly, ironic: an ad-supported medium in which the creators of the content essentially patronize the forces that subsidize their content. Proof that, in the eyes of some at least, there are two classes of content.

Once the magazine is finished, a series of loosely linked ads will be randomly inserted into this mix. And that's how it's gone for years.

Princes and patrons.

Seems odd, no?

Now, I am not in any way advocating the blurring of church and state. Consumers are smarter than that. I am simply questioning the long-term viability of randomly inserted ads and infelicitous adjacencies, especially on emerging platforms. 

I am however seriously questioning, given how critical context is in an age of boundless content, why we still see ads in places they simply don't belong. 

Might be better for brands to go where they're welcome...

4.

Here are some cool ads, by Droga5.

What about these, Mr. Parker?