There are many differences between ads of the past and ads of today.
That doesn’t mean one is better than the other, but the differences are pretty major.
One difference is what was deemed advertising worthy
My god, back in the 70’s and 80’s there were all sorts of things you no longer see being advertised … from cream cakes to glue sticks.
Another thing was the emphasis on having a narrative that framed a product benefit in a way people would find intriguing.
Or persuaded by.
Nowadays, the art of persuasion definitely feels a thing of the past.
So much modern communication seems fixated on reiterating a product benefit over and over again. Almost as if it believed anything that deviates from ‘a feature’ is a waste of time and opportunity.
Something I imagine consultancies would call, ‘optimising message availability’.
And maybe that’s the biggest difference between ads of the past and ads of today.
Because while ‘functionality’ was very present in the ads of the past, they seemed to be written in a way that tried to win over the emotions of the customer, whereas today, it seems a lot of the work simply wants to appeal to the ego of the corporate C-Suite.
Just recently, I saw an ad for Cascade Dishwasher Powder that was so bad, I almost wanted to applaud its blatant, delusional attempt at parental exploitation … even though I know the team behind it probably thinks it shows how much they understand and care about their customers, despite it all being wrapped up in the most over-used, lowest-common-denominator strategic trope of ‘now you have more time to do the things that matter’.
How ironic this lack of cultural understanding and connection comes at a time where we have more information and access to real experiences, emotions and habits of people than ever before. But then, it’s also representative of how our industry seems to value process over outcomes, frameworks over understanding, efficiency over nuance, convenience over effectiveness, category over culture and theory over reality.
