Before I eventually fell into journalism, I wanted to be an advertising copywriter. I thought it would be a more “creative” writing pursuite than what I considered to be the relatively formulaic process that is news writing.
Of course, I was living under the delusion that journalism was all about the writing and that advertising was all about the ideas. But I’ve come to appreciate that for the most part advertising is as formulaic as anything else. How much advertising is truly creative? Precious little. We watch it, listen to it or read it, because it’s force fed to us, not because it’s genuinely entertaining or interesting.
However, in an age where PVRs and BitTorrent rules advertisers are losing their ability to forcefeed you their message. So what can they do? Get creative. Develop ads that people genuinely want to watch. Ads that people will go to Google Video and download.
Who knows, advertising may end up the more creative pursuit, after all.
Filed under: Marketing
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