Guy Kawasaki once wrote that “Advertising is the plastic surgery of business,: a procedure to make ugly and old products look good” in his book Selling the Dream

However, the business of business has become corrupted by charlatans practicing what can only be called some kind of voodoo economics- be it in banking, insurance, or even selling cars. We’ve started taking our own economic buzzword driven drivel and packaged it into arcane business models- ones that suggest that selling “Credit Default Swaps” is actually business instead of grand theft.

I recently questioned if Venture Capitalists, as they practice their craft now are anything but parasites. With the casinoization of Wall Street- where stock prices can drop by half, even when a company hasn’t changed it’s products- business model or suffered from any change in demand (Google during the current financial meltdown), is there any reality attached to the very real and tangible ways to define and guide business?

Either you have solid financial goals, objectives and strategies- with real products and services that fill a need, or you don’t. Back in the dot.com bomb of 1999-2001 we had VC backed online companies opening only to go out of business the next day (www.bigwords.com ended up at a local liquidator- the breadth of the offering was amazing- Amazon like, when all indications that laser focus is the key to most online success).

I lay the blame purely on the shoulders of Wall Street and Bull Speak. You know, the ability of CEOs with no “skin in the game” who are able to “push the envelope” inventing new “ecosystems” for “profit optimization through….” while forgetting the basics of business, which is providing goods and services that fill real needs.

So, I was ecstatic to find this:

Bull has become the official language of business. Every day, we get bombarded by an endless stream of filtered, jargon-filled corporate speak, all of which makes it harder to get heard, harder to be authentic, and definitely harder to have fun. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

via Fight the Bull – Why Business People Speak Like Idiots.

Which besides having the book: Why Business People Speak Like Idiots: A Bullfighter’s Guide

Also comes with a downloadable BullFighter software program, which allows you to analyze your Microsoft Word document for a BS quotient. If there is one thing that stops advertising from being able to do its job- making the “ugly and old products look good” it’s the clients inability to clearly describe the market, and the product without lapsing into bull speak.

Copy god, Howard Luck Gossage once famously said “people don’t read ads, they read what interests them- and sometimes it’s an ad.” If you try to read some of the horse hockey coming out of our corporations, talking about “making paradigm shifts” when what they really mean is we can’t clearly tell you why we do what we do, but you should still believe our CEO is worth $2K an hour- and we’ll be lining up for a bailout from the Federal Government as soon as we figure out how to explain what we’ve been squandering our stockholders money on.

Business and advertising both are easier without bullshit. So go get your Bullfighter now- and lets work together on selling stuff.

We won’t confuse you with anything that won’t directly impact your bottom line (translation- make you money).

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Posted in: Advertising humor, Practical Marketing 101

You’d think with the world watching as the worlds greatest automotive company declares bankruptcy, the first effort to rebuild the brand would reassure you that they still know how to produce quality – would at least mention it?

Not so with the new spot from Deutsch.

The reason GM failed was that they took their eye off the ball, and refused to listen when Americans started buying smaller, higher quality, better fuel efficiency from companies that didn’t change the trim a little bit and try to convince us that a cat was now a dog.

Telling the American people that “This is not about going out of business. This is about getting down to business” in a spot full of canned imagery including hockey, football, baseball and horse racing- isn’t about getting down to business at all, it’s more mumbo-jumbo from a company that has not only failed it’s stockholders, stakeholders but our entire country.

When the saying used to be “What’s good for GM is good for America” you can’t just slap some anonymous announcers voice on top of  emotional images like a tattered flag waving and expect people not to wonder why our government just backed you up.

Lee Iaccoca set the standard when Chrysler took a bailout, coming on camera with a direct and honest apology for failing- and making a promise to come back. What this spot says is that GM doesn’t even have anyone left with balls enough to lead them out of their mess.

Compare this Chrysler spot from 1984, and you’ll understand why GM still has no clue about what “Getting down to business” means.

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Posted in: The craft of advertising