Making advertising less crap is its own award

Can we be honest for a moment? Most things on social media are shit. OK, I’ll qualify this a little. Most branded content on social media is shit. Dross. Appallingly unengaging dreck. Word soup. Uninspiring, energy sapping offal. You can probably think of more adjectives and nouns to describe it.

If you are responsible for this online landfill, please just stop. Unless its paying your mortgage, which I doubt it is … have you seen the money being offered to social media content managers?

It feels for the most part a creative-sounding job for people who aren’t especially creative. A job that is currently “managed” by someone wearing multiple hats including PR manager, marketing director and COO. Enough already.

My mission

I am the enemy of bad advertising. Ever since graduating from advertising school, I’ve been on a one man mission to make it less shit. I’ve been consistently amazed at how low the bar is for work to get bought by professionals who should know better. And this was the same in the glory days too. Do not be fooled, barring one or two gems, they were not in any way golden, apart from the salaries.

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Take a look at some of the work on the archive page of my website. I’m not proud, I’ve put everything up there that I can remember creating, and some of it sucks. But before you shake a profoundly unimpressed head at my flyer for a company that builds kit houses, think how bad it could have been had I not rescued it from the hands of a CEO who was going to write it himself. It may not be Shakespeare. The client may have jettisoned the idea which might have won him an award, but its not dreadful.

I regularly come across brands seeking full-time social media creators. “You’re an olive oil,” I tell them. “No one cares.”

Even if they do, they don’t need a 24/7 content stream. I offer to take the money – all of it – and suggest I give them two days of my time spread over five, which seems plenty.

How much “content” do people need about olive oil … or shoes, after school education courses or care homes? Most reject my offer out of hand. OK, all of them do, but you get the picture. Isn’t two days a week of decent creative output better than five days of churn? Isn’t two days of being bombarded with olive oil posts better for everyone than five?

Unrecognised genius

Most brands see social as simply a space that needs colouring in, however badly.  Good enough is good enough. If no one ese is knocking it out of the park, why should they? And so we’re left with vast swathes of online salad and only me to try and clear it up.

To my chagrin, one brand didn’t even say “no thank you” to my offer of livening up their Instagram feed, despite me filling an official online application to do so. They were too busy churning out witless paragraphs of anaesthetic prose paired with soporific stock imagery to reply. So in a continuing fit of gross passive aggression, I now comment on all of their posts, suggesting how they might be better. I’ve turned it into a kind of micro masterclass slash conceptual art project. Worryingly, they care so little that they have yet to block me.

Recently, a Melbourne-based business school wanted a social media manager. I told them they needed an idea, and suggested they use their best teachers and alumni to offer thought leadership via podcasts, webinars and Substacks, then use their socials to link to these with click-baity headlines. In other words, provide valuable perspective and wisdom on global events which people find useful, and which might make them APAC’s go-to business school.

Cue silence and tumbleweeds from the client.

I remain undaunted. One day, these brands will realise that they need creativity, not space filler, in order to survive when the legacy media channels which carry advertising finally switch off. In the meantime, there’s work to be done. Advertising isn’t going to get less crap on its own.

Cheeky bugger: Chas Bayfield