Jerry Seinfeld hit out at the advertising industry while giving an acceptance speech at the Clio Awards last month. Oh, the irony. I personally thought it was a case of ‘biting the hand that feeds you’ but Seinfeld does raise some relevant points.
His main issues – the industry lies about the products it sells (‘spending your life trying to dupe innocent people out of hard-won earnings to buy useless, low-quality, misrepresented items and services is an excellent use of your energy’), is obsessed with awards is about ‘phony careers and meaningless lives’. See the video or read the transcript here. The Denver Egotist carried an interesting editorial on it recently. There was a response to that rebuttal too – all good reads.
My views with respect to issues raised by Seinfeld and the subsequent responses:
Early in my career, my then boss explained how the concept of capitalised billing (a widely used metric then) was just notional and meant diddly-squat. I am grateful to her because it made me realise how small the advertising agency business is when compared to most of the businesses they represent. Sure, one cannot gauge the importance or relevance of an industry by its size alone but it does put things in perspective. The businesses clients run are complex, huge and deal with relatively many more issues than the ad business. More importantly, generate much larger income.
