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Being Useful

C and her husband are much younger than us and they just celebrated their baby's first birthday. C is corporate lawyer so her parties tend to have more than a fair share of those in attendance. I found my chatting with a group of them and the conversation turned to the value (if any) of advertising. It was interesting to hear their perspective which I think is a bit different from that of more heterogenous sample of people. They were unanimous in their opinion that all advertising is not bad. There needs to informational or entertainment value. 

People love Super Bowl ads for the later reason and AARP ads for the former. When it fills neither need and poses an interruption to whatever task the person is trying to get done, that is when ads are truly annoying and must not exist. All that said, these folks thought there is no reason to reject advertising overall. It made me wonder if there could be a future for advertisement where there was explicit contract for value exchanged between the advertiser and the consumer. 

Yes, pitch me your brand's latest shampoo but do it in a way that in informational - maybe teach me a bit about the chemistry of shampoos and conditioners when you first show me the ad, share a trivia about human hair the next time the ad shows up. Make it worth my while to see it through the end. Once you run out of ways to make the ad informational or educational stop showing it to me. Chances are I will associate good and positive value with your shampoo and will likely buy next time I am shopping for some. Perhaps doing all of this is much easier with generative AI.

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