My man! This is a riff off of thinking about our jobs through speech-act theory. The thing that Habermas ads into the convo in Theory of Communicative Action is an explicit uptake of old school rhetorical theory. Mark Ritson is out there doing the devil’s work yelling about how people aren’t spending enough time memorizing undergrad flash cards. The real crime is that we aren’t expected to know rhetorical theory. I’ve met maybe 3 strategists in my career who knew what I meant if I said ‘Ethos, Pathos, Logos.’
Always down for some Habermas, and the idea of pitting him against Ritson tickles me no end in a kind of surreal, hell in a cell type of way.
And yeah, couldn't agree more, advertising needs 'renaissance men and women', but they are in short supply everywhere these days - and we're particularly susceptible to pushing out smart, expansive thinking because our industry is uniquely predisposed to making the mistake of assuming that because simplicity of output is desirable, simplicity of thinking is therefore also desirable - when if you look at something like the tech sector they understand that to create simple products you need to have impressive people crunching through complex and difficult problems. Advertising does not get that, and instead we assume that to create something that is intuitive and simple for consumers we must approach it in simple minded ways (which is not always a bad thing mind you)
So many comments to make… we probably need to do a collaborative scribble. What I will say re: Ritson, because I’m petty, is that the cultivating a persona as the ‘bad boy of advertising’ where your whole schtick is basically saying, ‘umm, you’re bad at marketing effectiveness actually’ is objectively hilarious and embarrassing.
My man! This is a riff off of thinking about our jobs through speech-act theory. The thing that Habermas ads into the convo in Theory of Communicative Action is an explicit uptake of old school rhetorical theory. Mark Ritson is out there doing the devil’s work yelling about how people aren’t spending enough time memorizing undergrad flash cards. The real crime is that we aren’t expected to know rhetorical theory. I’ve met maybe 3 strategists in my career who knew what I meant if I said ‘Ethos, Pathos, Logos.’
Always down for some Habermas, and the idea of pitting him against Ritson tickles me no end in a kind of surreal, hell in a cell type of way.
And yeah, couldn't agree more, advertising needs 'renaissance men and women', but they are in short supply everywhere these days - and we're particularly susceptible to pushing out smart, expansive thinking because our industry is uniquely predisposed to making the mistake of assuming that because simplicity of output is desirable, simplicity of thinking is therefore also desirable - when if you look at something like the tech sector they understand that to create simple products you need to have impressive people crunching through complex and difficult problems. Advertising does not get that, and instead we assume that to create something that is intuitive and simple for consumers we must approach it in simple minded ways (which is not always a bad thing mind you)
So many comments to make… we probably need to do a collaborative scribble. What I will say re: Ritson, because I’m petty, is that the cultivating a persona as the ‘bad boy of advertising’ where your whole schtick is basically saying, ‘umm, you’re bad at marketing effectiveness actually’ is objectively hilarious and embarrassing.
Lots to chew on here, thanks Joe.