Mark Vandegrift
Welcome back to another episode of the Brand Shorthand Podcast. I'm your host, Mark Vandegrift, and with me today is our advertising all-star Lorraine Kessler. Lorraine, how you doing?

Lorraine Kessler
I'm good. I'm good. I'm here.

Mark Vandegrift
Good. I'm here. Well, today, what we thought we'd do is there was an article I found on The Drum. You're probably familiar with that. And thought maybe we'd do a little deep dive on it because it was interesting. The article was written by Andrew Tindall and it's entitled, Nine Timeless Marketing Quotes That Will Always Keep You Effective. So it's interesting, you know. It's like these maxims that say do this and then, yeah, I don't know. Maybe it's a fortune cookie. What's a fortune cookie begun today?

Lorraine Kessler
I don't know, they're not fortunes anymore. They used to be great.

Mark Vandegrift
So they're not, that's what I'm saying. It's like do this and you'll have a prosperous life. It's like be kind to people. Okay, I already knew that. So much for fortune cookies, but oh well. So I thought what would be cool is let's take these nine quotes and put them through our positioning lens, because we kind of do that. That's why this is behind me, right? So I'm going to give you each quote individually, Lorraine, and then you give us your perspective on it. And we can open it up to discussion. So you ready? OK, the first quote is from Howard Luck Gossage. And he said, people don't read ads. They read what interests them Sometimes it's an ad. So just like a book, it's rare that people are going to sit and read through something that doesn't interest them, right? And we always say we're in an over-communicated world where people encounter thousands of ads today. You know, whether it's 3,500 or 12,500, that number seems to shift depending on who you ask. But advertisers, us, on behalf of our clients, have to grab attention and keep their audience engaged or else they will simply go unnoticed. So give us your take, let me read it again and we'll have Lindsey throw these on the screen too. People don't read ads, they read what interests them, sometimes it's an ad. Lorraine, go.

Lorraine Kessler
Well, it's obvious, right? I mean, I don't know anyone who goes to their Kindle or Amazon or wherever and buys an ad. So, I mean, so we don't yearn for the advertiser to reach out to us. So it's pretty obvious. In fact, Dick Maggiore gave us a book of gossage stuff years ago and I have that. But it reminds me of Ogilvy, David Ogilvy, the great British advertiser called the father of advertising and who really believed in research and what have you relative to advertising. And he said something pretty, I mean, that's obvious, right? Advertising begins, he said, with understanding your customer deeply. So obviously it means understanding what interests them and making your ad about that. And then he piled on that by doing a lot of research on headlines and found that five times as many people read the headline as the body copies. So if your headline doesn't interest me or appeal to my interest and therefore draw attention, you can draw attention by being outlandish or you know, breaking all the rules or doing something shocking. But an easier way is just appealing to the interest of the reader and knowing what that customer cares deeply about. And that's what Ogilvy saying. And make your headline about

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, you know, we did an AD this week and I cited the Bill Bernbach AIDA principle, right? Attention, interest, decision, action. And it was interesting to see that folks had never separated the marketing function from the selling function. And that was an eye-opener to them and it was a good one because they needed to hear it. What...what we always say on the marketing side for the A and the I, it's like a teenager walking away from you. You can yell at them. You can say whatever you want until you get them to turn and look at you. That's the attention. And then you have to say something interesting. That's when they finally are listening. So that's marketing's entire job is attention and interest. And then you turn it over to selling and you get the decision and the action. But yeah, that was That was eye opening to them. We've glommed everything together because we have like director of marketing and sales, right? Well, if it's one person, it must be the same thing, right? It's not.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, that used to be, that was hugely big when I started. And as if those two functions are there, they interrelate, but they're very distinct in what their job is.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah. And we find companies we've run into them where marketing and sales are like this. They don't get along at all. And then we find other ones where sales is using marketing only to develop their collateral. And there's actually no marketing going on. And so there's the balance in there where marketing has to get the attention and interest. Sales has to close the lead with decision and action and they're very discrete functions. How does that tie back to this particular one? Well, we said people don't read ads. They do. Sometimes it's an ad if you've done a good job getting attention and then providing interest. So that's a way to address that, right?

Lorraine Kessler
Well, problem is sales. Yeah. And the problem is too, that sales doesn't do as effectively and in the volume as that marketing does. What Peter Drucker said is the purpose of business, which is to produce a customer. Sales can convert that customer. That's decision action. But, and they might get a customer through referrals, but they don't produce the customer, marketing does.

Mark Vandegrift
Yep. Good. Okay, let's go to the next quote you mentioned or you referred to David Ogilvy. So he's our next quote. Here it is. When you're selling fire extinguishers, open with the fire.

Lorraine Kessler
That's one of my favorite, favorite quotes of all time.

Mark Vandegrift
I love it. Yep. And it kind of goes back to the other one, which is if you're going to create interest, what do we, what do we all stop and watch even though we're not involved with it when we're driving? If there is an accident, it's we're all like,

Lorraine Kessler
We're natural gawkers. We're natural. It gets our curiosity. What the heck happened over there? Why has everybody stopped? let me look. And then they realize that's causing a bigger traffic jam than the accident itself. Yeah, I love this.

Mark Vandegrift
Yep, exactly. And so what we always say here at the agency is we're, open with the fire in the sense that when we dramatize the position, if it's differentiated, which makes it a position, right. We dramatize that through advertising, it should have the impact of a fire. And then everything else is about the product being the solution to that fire.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, and you know, even as positionists, we don't start, as you're saying, with the position as a rational, flat, unemotional statement. You know, buy our car because it's safer or buy from us because we're the leader. I mean, your job, Bernbach, Bill Bernbach said, is not to bore people to death, right? So you, the talent of the creative, the copywriter especially,
is to find the emotional benefit of the position. What does it promise you? And zero in on that. And usually it's something what we call one of the great motivations, right? So you might like, let's say you have a, might, if you're promoting a safer car, you might show a car demolished and have a headline, everyone walked away safely. Wow. Okay, I mean, that's the emotional benefit that I could realize for my family. A lot better than saying we make the most safe car on the planet. I mean, it just doesn't work that way. And if you're a leader, let's say you might have a headline instead of saying we're a leader. If you're an aerospace, you might say 100,000 aerospace mechanics can't afford to be wrong about reliability. Right? So...And remember that leaders do get the advantage. If you're a sales leader, market share leader, whatever, technology leader, whatever, performance leader, you also get the benefit of owning an attribute. Reliability is a great one. So I'm just taking a stab at this. I'm not a copywriter, but as you call it, the art of dramatizing the position and the unique benefit that it delivers to that customer that will resonate with them. That takes a lot more talent than I have, and that's why we have great copywriters. So I just think my only talent is understanding talent, like recognizing good talent and recognizing when we haven't hit it.

Mark Vandegrift
Yep, exactly. Well, and it's been funny because as we have younger and younger appreciative discovery participants, you refer to some of these great things. This week, fortunately, we had a more seasoned group. And so I brought up overnight delivery, FedEx, when it absolutely positively has to be there overnight. The fast talking salesman, they all remember that. It was a, it was a hoot because they were laughing about it. And that's, as we always say, the examples might be old, but it's because the principle is proven over time. If I give you an example from an ad that was, that launched two months ago, do we really know if there was effectiveness around that? And so we have to cite some older examples. Another one is like, I, I'm trying to remember the, tide commercial, but Why do mothers want cleaner whites? Right? Why?

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah. Well, it's about wanting to be emulated and seen as being emotionally, this is an emotional need. I want to be seen as a good mom. I want to be seen as someone who takes care of my kids, my home. And so it's an emotional, psychological need.

Mark Vandegrift
Right, and so you see most of those commercials, they don't start out with whitey whites. What do they show? They show a soccer kid or a football player coming in with mud, you know, completely covered, and that's the fire. Right? Yep. Yep. So good. Quote number three is from a British writer. I think it's pronounced Saki or Saki. It looks like Saki, you know, the drink. Yeah.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, looks Japanese.

Mark Vandegrift
but he's a British writer. anyhow, this is a great saying. When baiting a trap with cheese, always leave room for the mouse. I thought that was interesting. In the article, the author, Andrew Tindall, who I mentioned, referenced the Zeigarnik effect. Remember that? We talked about, I don't know, months ago, and we just were going through it to talk about this notion that you can leave room for the imagination of the consumer, right? So if you create an ad, which he calls the trap, that leaves room for the audience, is your, or leaves room for the mouse, which is your audience, you're creating ads that require some extra attention, interpretation, or an engagement from the viewer, which can be more memorable or result in higher recall. So take on that quote, okay? And let me know, I'm gonna say it again, when baiting a trap with cheese, always leave room for the mouse. So give us your take on that.

Lorraine Kessler
I'm not really impressed with this one at all. No, your take is a lot better than mine. I prefer the aha, right, result. I prefer you tell me something new or you help me discover something I don't know. Maybe that's what he's trying to say. I just, I don't know. I'm lost in this one. But if that's what he's trying to say, help me discover, if I discover something for myself, that's always more engaging, right? But the problem here is you don't want to leave up for interpretation too many interpretations because that's art. That's not advertising. Advertising has a very strategic aim. The mousetrap has a very strategic aim, right? It is to catch the mouse. So I think that I just, if you get that aha from that, and I guess the snap of the trap would be a big aha from the mouse. So, yeah.

Mark Vandegrift
I interpret it as intrigue. In other words, that's part of the Zeigarnik effect, right? You're intrigued by the use of what they did, but it requires, it does require more use of the audience's emotion or logic to complete it. And if it's done right, it can be powerful. But the way I walked away from this quote was, develop intrigue into it, but there's gotta be the right balance of that. And you're saying, aha, I think at the end of intrigue, if there is an aha, then you've accomplished what he's talking about. least that's the way I picked up on it. Good, well let's get to the next one. You ready? This is one of the classic guys, GK Chesterton. And he says, humor gets under the door while seriousness is still fumbling at the handle.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, well that's a good one. That's a really good one.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, I know we use this example a lot, but think of the Super Bowl. Which ads are more generally talked about? It's the ads that involve humor, right? And they evoke all sorts of emotions. And if you basically had an ad that said overnight delivery, overnight delivery, overnight delivery, I don't know, maybe it would be so different today, it wouldn't matter, but versus a fast talking salesman who says it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight. You know, again, we talk about dramatization. So, you you can't do that with a serious brand, but most brands today, I think you can have an aspect of humor to them. Give us your take on this one.

Lorraine Kessler
Well, I think humor is like a pleasant sneak attack, right? So you didn't see it coming and that's the aha. And many of the old quote, many a truth is said in jest. So we get that. I will, so humor can definitely be an advertiser's best friend, but unfortunately doing humor well is not easy. And I believe few do it really well. I don't. I think there's a lot of ads that try and do humor and fail, probably more that fail than those that succeed. So it takes a particular talent for copy, for comedic performance even. Casting is certainly key. You know, one that comes to mind that tries to use humor, which I think is the most annoying, awful, cringy ad I would never buy from this insurer just because I can't stand their advertising. It's Liberty Mutual, right? With the emu and now they have like this park bench baby talking to this guy and it's like, is the dad or is that some creepy guy? I they're trying to be funny. It's not funny. It's just, I don't know what it's about. So humor fails too if you try too hard or you get caught trying, you know? And so it's a very, it's a double-edged sword. And it does apply to certain ads, obviously anything that we consume, you know. It can apply to things we don't want to buy like insurance. I think a good example of an insurance company who uses humor really well is progressive with the, we can't protect you from becoming like your parents. I mean, that's a really well done set of funny, well written, appealing commercials, but we can protect the rest of you. So I think the points made. I remember it. don't know what the point, I know that Liberty Mutual is something like we customize your insurance, but what does an emu have to do with that? So anyway, that's just my personal opinion and people can agree or disagree. I think that you really need talent to do humor well, both in writing and crafting the concept so that the majority of the customers that you're reaching understand the point, laugh along with you, that you don't get caught trying to art, and that you actually use great talent in the performance, the casting.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, and it's funny because we all have a different sense of humor. So I always think about watching football with my father-in-law. And he was in the advertising business in the world of newspapers. So he sold ad space. And it's funny because we'll be watching a Cleveland Browns game and an ad comes on and the humor's like you kind of just said. And his comment is always, jeez. That was awful. And so I laugh at him laughing or not laughing. And then some of the things he finds funny, I don't find funny. So I think there's also when you think about it. When you think about it, that from that standpoint, there's probably a little range of humor, but to your point, they really need to make sure they know the sense of humor of their particular audience because you know, someone's older or someone that's younger may not get it. They may miss it. They may not even know the people delivering the humor. So there's, it is such a balance of how do you do it? Well, and so much anymore is cross humor that I think, is almost offensive to some. And so there you risk just totally pushing aside part of your audience because of that. So.

Lorraine Kessler
One of the best commercials using humor that you'll remember is the Betty White Snickers commercial. You're not you when you're hungry. With Abe Vigoda, mean, great casting, phenomenal concept. And I think who doesn't find that funny, right?

Mark Vandegrift
Right. Yep. Yeah. That one's hard because Betty White was so universal, right? You could be... Yeah. Yeah.

Lorraine Kessler
yeah, but they did others and they were funny. They were all funny because the premise is fun and they carried it through with great talent.

Mark Vandegrift
Good. Okay, quote number five is from David Abbott, and you're gonna be shocked when I have to use these words, but it's what he quoted. And it really does go to what we've always said about the long-term effect of positioning and doing advertising right. So this is a good one. Shit that arrives at the speed of light is still shit.

Lorraine Kessler
And we really need comments on this.

Mark Vandegrift
No, not really, but it, it, goes back to several of the topics we've hit over the last couple of months. Think about it. We talked about this idea of using celebrities a couple of weeks ago, right? And what was the problem with the celebrities we're talking is no one's committing long-term to the celebrity. That may be good or bad because most celebrities seem to run off the rails recently, but you see a Super Bowl ad with that celebrity, you're done. Right. So what long-term effect did it have on the brand? We would probably you love this sign zero or committing to an idea over the long term, which in this world of ADD, people are not sticking around to it. Right. So the whole point of this is you go out with lightning in a bottle and you catch nothing. And so I think that's the point of this. So do you have any further elucidation on this concept.

Lorraine Kessler
I think it says it all, shit is shit. Whether fast or slow, how it's delivered makes no change in the biological makeup of what's on the plate.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah. Yep. So the next one, we're going to, we don't know who this person is, but we're going to say this is a good one because we adopted part of this quote as a, would you call it a mantra for a while or I don't know.

Lorraine Kessler
We actually used it as our brand slogan, which I can talk about.

Mark Vandegrift
So here it is. When the world zigs. Zag, right? And we're all about differentiation. So if all your competitors are zigging, then let's zag. So go ahead and talk about how we grab zag for a while.

Lorraine Kessler
Well, first of all, I don't have any clue who Barbara Noakes is. Do you? I I heard this first from Marty Neumeir. In fact, he has a book called Zag, right? And like you mentioned, when we first embraced positioning, we tried to dramatize it in a rather fanciful way by saying, we zag. And we had like zag materials and zag things. And there were several things wrong with this dramatization, which goes back to Ogilvy. We didn't really understand our customer deeply in our market and who we were talking to. They're serious business people. And so when we said we zag, there were two things wrong with that. One, we didn't know how to define what zag meant because our staff at that time, were other than Dick and myself and maybe a few others, had no clue what positioning was and all the principles. They hadn't been trained. hadn't. So when they would say it, they would say it without any commitment. Like, yeah, we zag. And the client would like, what does that mean? they'd go, I don't know. The agency came up with it. So it was lack of commitment, which is really a problem when you try and be too fanciful too soon. I think secondly, the audience that we're appealing to, they want responsible marketing. They're like, what do you mean? And just the way we put it, pronoun, we-zay, was more about us than about what we were doing and how we were going to deliver rewards to the client. So it sounded a little frightening, a little scary, a little off-putting, a little egotistic. So it laid on the floor like a squash turtle. Now, truly positioning is zagging one other zig. It's finding a difference, finding a hole. It makes a lot of sense. But I think we had the emphasis on the wrong syllable by saying it's something we do rather than something we want you to do because of competition. Anyway, one of the things that Dick and I thought about later, we were able to trademark Zag and we sold it for some pretty good coin. But it would have been great, I think, had we renamed the agency Zag and then had a kind of America's number one position in ad agency under that. Because a Zag, easy name, one syllable starts with a Z, fricative, you remember it, cool name, stands out, and then you give a real proposition. But we didn't think about that until after.

Mark Vandegrift
Well, you know, sometimes it takes a while to get the creative just right.

Lorraine Kessler
I know. I mean, we were the close. were just... What we had wrong was wrong enough that it didn't work.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah. Well, and I think at the core, we grabbed it so, so fast after telling everyone that we were, you know, positioning is going to be our thing from here forward. And as you said, it, you have to be immersed in the principles of positioning for a very, very long time to be able to rightly navigate the nuanced rules that are involved. Now, positioning on the surface,is very easy to understand. You could communicate it as zag, but the nuance behind that and how to steward the brains of our clients, I think that's, we didn't have that nuance at the time. And this is a good example of that because emotionally dramatizing it, we didn't do it just right. Was it the right idea? Yeah, but we didn't get the idea right.

Lorraine Kessler
No, we didn't get it. And that's right. the thing is that, you know, life is hard because it gives the test first and the lesson after. What it taught me is that when you, when we work with any client and we provide their position, they have to invest internally in the idea and educating because there's going to be naysayers. There's going to be people who will never get on board. And guess what? It's okay to help them find a better place for them. And they will leave and that's a okay. But you do need to do the missionary work or ministry work inside the church building, if you will, to get people to understand this is why we're saying it, this is what the value is, this is how you talk about it and training before you launch it externally. Very few clients do that. Even though we've recommended it, I think that's a necessary step.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, and I want to heighten that point. You know, we always talk positioning and people think it ends there. The nuance of knowing how to dramatize positioning. You know, I'm saying what you just said, but maybe in a slightly different way. The nuance of dramatizing your position through creative. You just can't take a position or run with it. And that's important. That's why we tell clients, Yeah, we can give you a position. You can go do all your creative. That's fine. But the chances of you getting that creative right is slim to none only because we have so many years of executing on it now. Yeah. How we internally execute it. Our team knows how to take a position and work through the nuances to appropriately convey that. the zag thing, we were still learning that and that's you know that's going on gee over 25 years ago now so anyhow good let's go to the next one and i love this one because it made me think of Roy H Williams who we had on the podcast a couple years ago and the the quote is from Rory Southerland who says show me the brave clients i'll show you the brave work. And what does that mean? Brave clients are those that are willing to take risks or willing to do what it takes to make sure their position gets top of mind in their prospects gray matter. So what comes along with that? That comes along with the fact that agencies like us are able to produce brave work. So the downside is not all clients are brave, right? So I think some clients want, give me the regular stuff, don't make me go out on the, jump off the ledge, just give me safe stuff. And we do that. And you can still be somewhat successful with that. But the really, really great work is from those where clients say, I want you to push me over that ledge, right? Or take me to the ledge, don't push me over. take me to the very ledge where I can see what this can get us. So go ahead, let's hear what you have to say about this one.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, well, I mean, I love this quote, too. And unfortunately, the separation between brave and reckless is a thin line, right? So you said you have to take risks, but you have to take calculated risks. So you have to be to be the kind of brave that they're talking about is you have to be smart. You can't just be stupidly brave. And what does that mean to be smart? You really have to have good instincts. You have to have a great instinct about your customer, about your business, about the world in general. You have to trust your gut and operate from a perspective that goes against group think, that doesn't allow great ideas to be, this is what we see often. Even in ADs, there's always what we call, Scott Edwards and I call the whittler or the dumper. There's always someone who no matter the idea isn't even formed yet. It's a baby. It's just coming out of the womb and they're already nipping at it, right? They're already dumping sand on it or dirt on it or mud or taking away because they're security minded. So, you know, you have to operate from a perspective that goes against group think because group think is conventional thinking. If you're going to be conventional, then you're advertising conventional what you say and how you say it, then you are going, you're setting yourself up to be ignored. So this is really not easy. You can be brave and stupid, that can happen, right? You could be Custer, remember his last stand, right? Or you can be brave and smart. And the X factor to me is smarts. So when you have a client who's like that, God bless them, get down the ground, thank the heavens for them, because you can do great work and breakthrough work, working with clients.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, it was interesting you were talking about the poo-pooing of things. We had, in the AD session this week, we threw out a line that was kind of, I don't wanna disclose what it was because it's confidential, but we threw out this line and the comment was, I just got tingles. And then almost immediately someone else goes, I'm not sure legal would like that. That's like.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah. It's like hotels.com. You can't say best. What if it's in our name?

Mark Vandegrift
So yeah. We got past it. So it was all good. But you're right. That's the first reaction of a lot of people and they forget the tingle they got the first time they heard it. Well, if you got a tingle, imagine what the consumer reaction is going to be. And why not stick with that? Don't forget that first reaction to something that you had that was good creative.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, and you know, I always say, hey, give the way or something, you know, you're paying them, give them something to do. Get them out of marketing unless you need them.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah. Well, building on that, this next quote from Leo Burnett is one that I think is good because it plays off that idea, which is if you got a really great ad, like, you know, don't poo poo it. So here you go. Leo Burnett, any fool can write a bad ad, but it takes a real genius to keep their hand off of a good one.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah. Well, it's kind of what we were talking about earlier that, you know, few people are great copywriters. There's a lot of copywriters, but few are really great. And great copywriters are like hen's teeth. They're scarce, right? So, and very few account managers I've ever met or business owners or CEOs, whatever, are great copywriters. So I have not met one. So the best thing that account people and owners and business owners can do, I think, is to have a sense for what makes great talent, what really great copy is about, and then get the hell out of the way. So, and it's not unlike, know, people will say, well, that's so derogatory, but it's not because there's people who are able to recognize talent in others are great leaders, right? Look at professional sports teams. How many of these teams, like you take the Detroit Tigers right now, this young team, and by the way, the catchers from Jackson Township, and he's batting like near 300. He's great. He's got like the third best.arm of any catcher in major league baseball. His name is Dingler, kind of a funny name, Dillon Dingler. But the GM of that team has put that team together and they don't have the budget of the Dodgers, right? And yet this is all about talent recognition. So I think people who can recognize talent and kind of know to let it go, I think they're, again, wonderful, wonderful people, and we just need more.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, good. Well, let's finish up with the last quote for today. And Lorraine, this one has floated around the agency since I've been here. It's how we ended up with the idea of advertise responsibly, which is one of our, I guess, little trademark phrases that we use. It's from John Wanamaker. Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. The trouble is I don't know which half. Now we have since used that in a way to say, guess what? We can know which half is working because of all the analytics and things like that. But that being said, I think we have too many people focusing on what they call activation marketing or transactional marketing. And so they stick everything over to that and they forget about the value of brand building and how brand building helps activation side or the transactional side or whatever terminology they want to use. They both need to be done. Okay. I just think we do know with the measurements that we have around today, we're definitely know which half of advertising is wasted and which half is working. So we can move that needle to say, well, three quarters of my advertising is working. So what's your take on this one? I know you love this quote.

Lorraine Kessler
I love this quote. I actually worked for John Wanamaker in Philadelphia, the great store that then became a Macy's and now is closed with one of the world's largest organs that used to play in the morning. And then they played taps when they closed. It was crazy. But you know, here's this guy who lived in the 19th century, was born in 19th century and died early in the 20th century. I think this quote is still Regardless of what you said about what we think we know, I think it's what we think we know. I think we feel very comforted by the analytics, but I think so many of them are KPIs and they're not necessarily true facts in terms of what happens in terms of your long-term growth, your prosperity, your sustainability. And I think they were dazzled by the analytics to a point where we're blind to what real value and real success looks like in terms of growth and market share and profitability. So anyway, I still think Monica's quote is more accurate than not. And I'll rant on this. And here I agree with Bob Hoffman, who is the all time ranter of advertising. He's even known as the ad contrarian. Even says that advertising is less effective than it was, and it's less creative. And that targeting makes us feel good, but is it really working? And I go with that. He further says that we don't use data to learn or data, data, data is Saki, Saki, whatever. And like I've said, I've seen the misuse of KPIs confused with goals, right? So, and he points out something I think is so important. If we're so data-driven, people over the age of 50 control 70 % of all the wealth in the US and yet only 5 to 10 % of marketing activity is spent on this audience. And this is an audience that spends over half of all consumer dollars, yet they're ignored. Does that make sense? So we love data when it serves us. So, you know, don't think that data means you're unbiased. When data is used in a biased way, which I think very much it is today, to support whatever you want to support, then it's really as good as it's no, it's like having no data. Okay. So, and yet we still spend on these 18 to 34 year olds, like we did 50 years ago. But 18 to 34 year olds 50 years ago were coming out of World War II. They were buying houses. They were spending money. They were looking to improve their wealth. that's not the 18 to 34 year olds today. They're living with mom in the basement or dad, and they're figuring out what they want to do, what next college degree they want to get. So it's a very different time. So anyway, and if you remember too, Mark, because you were on the cusp of this. When social media started, right, we were told it's going to replace advertising. You know, there will be no more intrusive advertising. Conversations, people would talk and then it would go viral and this is how brands would be built. And then we had the Seth Godden, it will only be permission marketing. None of that happened. None of it. It's total fantasy. Now we buy ads on social platforms. And at a higher rate than we do in many other media. So the amount of paid advertising we're seeing has gone up so exponentially, but the results have not kept pace, in my opinion, with this intrusiveness. And then another rant, now we're spied on, and the advertisers tell us, it's okay because this is how we serve our people. Really? I mean, advertising worked for 70 years without spying on people. Someone called social media the greatest propaganda tool in the history of the world because it's all based on tracking, and I agree with that. We have to realize that these media have such power, Facebook reaches more people every day than the Super Bowl does in a single year. I mean, it's a little, and here's something that Bob Hoffman points to that I think more people should pay attention to in our industry who care about the quality of what we're doing and what we promise clients, i.e. what is your advertising really delivering? He said that there was a study done by the executives at Facebook. So you can research it that found that 64 % of people who went into radical militant groups were sent there by Facebook's algorithms. So they didn't just find these groups or choose them. Facebook actually recommended these groups to them. And I just saw, this was frightening, I just saw a 20 minute video featuring Al Roker and Lester Holt talking about a cardiohypertensin supplement that's better than your big pharma and Al Roker used this and found out. It was so convincing. And the only part of it that seemed weird to me was Lester Holt. Al Roker seemed, guess what? It's all AI, it's all fake. And it's a deep fake. And I can't believe that it got served up to me on Facebook because I had a cardio event. As you know, it was so believable. don't know how someone, I barely could tell. I had to search, this real? Because it just seemed a little off from the Lester Holt part, but not the Al Roker part. How many people would know to do that? And there should be some law. mean, you can't pretend you're Katherine Hepburn on the radio. You can't imitate her voice, even when she was alive. Why is this allowed? Why is this deep fake, as you call it, allowed to continue? So we have some house cleaning. I still think half is wasted. I think we're myopic in what we look at. I think we use data to our own purposes. And now on top of it, I think we have some real looming issues that are putting advertising under a spotlight that requires some good ethical and legal action.

Mark Vandegrift
Well, there was, was it called the social network or the social dilemma on Netflix? think it was documentary. I mean, they basically said that's what they were doing was propaganda. They were trying to manipulate the mind, everything else. So there's, you don't have to be surprised when we hear these types of things. It it's they've declared it themselves. They've told us what they're, what they're doing. It's almost like it's a requirement for them to tell us and they do it anyway. It's like, I'm gonna rob you right now and then they rob you and somehow that's okay. Cause I told you first. So, well, let's wrap up today's episode. I love these quotes. They provide a really good framework for things that we discuss every day. And they're always good to keep on hand just to remind us of their principles.

Mark Vandegrift
Thank you to all of our Brand Shorthand listeners and subscribers for joining us again this week. Lorraine, thanks for joining us. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and share with a friend. And until next time, have an amazing day.