Has 'woke' killed off the funny commercial?
Looking at advertising campaigns on television today, an extraterrestrial from another galaxy would think we are a severe species. Furthermore, this visitor would assume, perhaps correctly, that it was the role of advertising agencies to inform, educate, and impart moral lessons on societies  anything other than sell goods. This visitor would report back to their extraterrestrial superiors that ad execs on Earth form a sort of priestly class, who give hope to their subjects by presenting us with a fictional representation of a better world to come. An extraterrestrial ad exec may rightly wonder how Earth companies sell anything at all. The legendary ad executive Trevor Beattie  responsible for the iconic Wonderbras Hello Boys and French Connections Fcuk campaigns  put it this way: Ads that are made today are not commercials, but mood films. There is only one emotion in advertising now  and it is to indicate that brands are virtuous and worthy of your business.  If woke has conquered adland, then we are all the poorer for it. The tone of voice is the same for every brand, says Beattie. I try to tell them that other emotions  including humour  are available while stocks last.  To be sure, adland is struggling. Across industries, advertising budgets are being slashed as marketing execs generate more and more byzantine metrics to demonstrate their value. There are more ways than ever before to identify and target audiences, yet it is increasingly rare for an ad campaign to capture peoples imagination. Even at their most risqu, prominent ad campaigns once dictated water-cooler talk and set the cultural agenda. Beer commercials once engaged and satirised national stereotypes  like Carlings memorable sunbeds spot from 1993. They took risks in terms of sexual norms, like the provocative 1985 Levis 501 ad with Nick Kamen. And they went against the grain of cultural taboos, imagining mixed-race and same-sex families like Oliver Toscanis revolutionary photography for Benetton. All of these campaigns, forever embedded in the cultural memory, are far too risky for an ad exec ever to approve now. The celebrated creative Dave Trott explains that brands might be shooting themselves in the foot by focusing too much on targeting audiences based on identity. This approach fractures messaging and hampers efforts to create a distinctive tone of voice for the brand. Brands are not focused on people any more, they prefer to communicate issues, he says. This means a sad loss of humour. From Trotts perspective, the way to forge effective communications is to focus on the core truths that unite people of all races, sexes, classes, ages, religions, or nationalities. Those categories, he says are just superficial differences.  There is a growing sense among my colleagues that the virtue-signalling that guides advertising decisions is hurting sales. Excessive focus-grouping, the echo chamber created by the industrys Hackney-hipster homogeneity and awards-crazed processes have detached the creative process from the end result  to produce captivating, witty, humorous, makes-you-think-twice ad campaigns that challenge and stimulate the imagination. No doubt, there has been much positive change since the freewheeling, devil-may-care attitudes of the Eighties and the risqu campaigns that they produced. Many of these campaigns were laden with misogyny and stereotypes that wouldnt pass muster today. It was only in 2011 that Yorkie still sold its Not For Girls chocolate bar, and Mr. Clean encouraged women to get back to the job that really matters. One marvels that these campaigns were ever approved, and in todays gender-, race- and sexuality-diverse workplaces, its more than likely they would have been axed long before they could see the light of day. But brands have not always fared better, in recent days, when theres too much hand-wringing about causing offence. This has made advertising bland, afraid to engage satirically with society as it exists, and, at worst, blatantly cynical. Pepsis TV campaign, released at the height of the #BlackLivesMatter protests, featured Kendall Jenner reconciling police and protesters over a can of Pepsi. It drew widespread for trivialising the movement and was finally withdrawn. And Gillette, who recently published a short film referencing bullying, the #MeToo movement and toxic masculinity, was widely lampooned its opportunism and triteness. Both hurt sales figures.