B2H: Business-to-Human communication

10 rules for better advertising.

I don’t know how you guys out there feel, but, to me most advertising has always resembled something irrelevant somehow trying to impose a threat on me. Because, although it mostly has nothing to offer, it seems to attack me from all angles. A bit like a bunch of children trying to catch your attention by hanging around your ankles trying to trip you up while you walk away having announced, “playtime is over, kids, time for bed”. Yet, they seem to want to tell me something. Otherwise they wouldn’t be trying so hard. If only I could understand what all the fuss is about.

If those who create and distribute advertising were humans I could meet face to face, I would walk up to them and say: “where are your manners, mate, and who the fuck do you think you are?”.

For the better of all, let’s forget all this B2B-B2C-C2C gibberish crap for a moment and let me suggest some simple rules:

1. Respect every single person you target as an individual and a human being.

2. Knock and wait for a “come in” prior to entering an individual’s private sphere or surroundings.

3. Ask yourself, what you can do for the people out there, not what they can do for you.

4. You have annexed public and private space and communication channels for your purposes. Give them back!

5. Stop being environmental bad guys and polluting with your ads. You have a responsibility towards this planet, its resources and the people inhabiting it.

6. Don’t rely on agents! You should have the spine to encounter the world out there yourselves and your agents are only going to lie to you about what the public thinks.

7. Give up on the idea that you can control. You can’t. You could create though, or inspire…

8. You obviously have money to spend. Invest wisely. Not in advertising. But, in the people, in their everyday lives, in their surroundings.

9. Strive to make a difference by creating sustainable benefits.

10. If you don’t understand by now, return to rule 1 and read again.

Or ask me. Or simply move your fat, spoilt arses out there and ask the one’s you’ve been violating for so long. So far, your world is one consisting of “them” and “us” in your perception. Ever thought about seeing things as a whole, as “we”?

Yours

Brian B. Ashes