Award-winning copywriter Tony Jaffe joins Fitting Group as a guest blogger.

You’ve no doubt heard about the Golden Age of Advertising. At the risk of being cynical, there is no metal worthless enough to describe what’s happening in this age. I admit it – I watch a lot of television at night, subjecting myself to hours of safely boring commercials that make the shows they interrupt feel like Pulitzer Prize nominees. And thanks to some beautiful media buys and the rotten economy, the same spots run over and over again. And over again. To be fair, production costs are astronomical, and shooting more than one spot a year is no doubt prohibitive. Anyway, even if they had the budget you know they’d do more of the same just to keep it “interesting,” like the unusually unfunny Apple spots with John Hodgman. I especially despise these ads when they’re put on the Internet when all I want is information. I curse the Internet people as well, the greedy punks.

Yeah, there are exceptions, there always are, but the industries with all the marketing bucks are obviously out to hurt me. You know who you are, cars, phones and fast food! If that weren’t enough, there’s always Billy Mays yelling at me about something, even though I know I’m not the target. But I have feelings.

Even Super Bowl commercials have been mostly disappointing. If it weren’t for Budweiser and E-trade, I’d have to watch the game (not really a fan). But come on advertisers, you need to loosen up and at least do something great for this event. It’s the damn Super Bowl!

You know what I yearn for? A campaign like MasterCard’s “Priceless.” Besides being strategically brilliant, it’s always engaging, even when they’re doing promotions. The sheer emotion of it marches on through the years, whether it’s humor or something that gets you in the heart, or in the intellect. Obviously, that’s why it marches on through the years. Bless you, BBDO. Also thanks for the M&M stuff. I always smile.

Okay, I’m done. I’m a child of Doyle Dane Bernbach where I was a copy trainee/ mail room boy, and we were doing Volkswagen (without even showing the logo), Polaroid Camera live on the Tonight Show, Barney’s, and other products that dominated the Clios. Oh, and these ads did one other little thing … created brands that sold like crazy!

Well, it’s time for my nap. I’m turning on the old flat screen.

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Posted by: Tony Jaffe in: Advertising at: 10:05 am Keywords: Advertising, Apple spots, Budweiser, Doyle Dane Bernbach, E-trade, John Hodgeman, M&M, Marketing, MasterCard, media buys, Polaroid camera, production costs, Pulitzer Prize, Super Bowl commercials, television, Tonight Show, Volkswagon

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This entry was posted on Thursday, May 14, 2009 at 10:05 am and is filed under Advertising. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.