Advertising is too smart.

After recently seeing the new Diesel campaign, not only did it make me smile and like it, but it also made me think. It made me think about how it can be applied to a lot of aspects of life, and one big one in particular: advertising.

The print and viral campaign is telling us to ignore the one phrase that everyone of us has heard a million times as a child "Don't be stupid".







I'm not going to bang on about how I think this is a great campaign that will capture audiences' attention, get a few people talking and that its a good and relatively original angle to take to a campaign. I agree with all of this, it's just a bit obvious.

This concept of being stupid needs to be applied to advertising. We are all painfully aware that 90% of advertising is utter shite, but it's that 10% that keeps me for one, wanting to work in the industry. That 90% are smart. Going by Diesel's viral, they have the brains and not the balls. It is likely to be brand managers with big pay-checks that are set in their ways and do not want to take a risk. It is the 10% that take the risks, the risks that pay off. They are the Cadbury's Gorilla, Comparethemeerkat.com and the Guiness of the advertising world. Without these people being 'stupid' we would not have these great campaigns that get noticed and everyone talking. The very essence of what advertising is about. Creativity over research any day.