If you're tired of being swamped with ads, please raise your hand. That's what I thought. Ads are everywhere. When I pump gas, there's an ad on the pump handle, when I go to a restroom in a business, there's an ad hung over the urinal (makes you miss the obscene graffiti). Inside the corner, corporate-owned convenience store, the minimum-wage workers behind the counter are festooned with badges and other items hawking some product or service. Where's it going to end? To pay for my funeral, I'm considering selling space on my casket. What? That's already been done? Shucks.
Confronted with increasingly jaded consumers, many of whom are now armed with digital video recorders that allow them to speed through TV commercials, the ad world is becoming as desperate as a trailing politician on election day. They'll do anything to get your attention.
Now, they're trying to reach you via video-screen messages played in public. As described in a story in the Los Angeles Times, the ad industry is using flat-screen technology to pester you while you mosey down the aisles at the local grocer or devour a burger at your favorite fast-food spot. They're even slapping tiny screens on hand dryers in restrooms.
What does this have to do with writing? I think the contortions the ad industry is undergoing are good news for communicators who tell their stories the old fashioned way – one carefully crafted word at a time. Ads must engage. Yes, you can do that with splashy video, blaring music and graphics that come at you like a shotgun blast. But people are tiring of that. There's more and more room in advertising and marketing for quietly and convincingly persuading consumers with genuine stories told in an engaging manner.
So, wordsmiths, keep your pencils sharp and your vocabulary honed. The pen may not only be mightier than the sword, it may even vanquish the video screen.
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