Deluded Poets and Data Accountants

There was once a centre.A middle ground whereadvertising still had aspine, where it still stoodupright, looked people in the eyeand spoke in a voice that wasneither a whisper nor a scream.

That centre is gone. And in itsabsence, advertising has split intotwo wild feverish extremes.

On one side, there arethe Delusional Creatives.Breathless, manic, convincedthey are messiahs ratherthan practitioners. They seethemselves not as advertisersbut as misunderstood artists,held back by clients who lackvision and by audiences who lackintellect. They spin out campaignslike abstract poetry. Fragmented,cryptic, speaking in riddles thatno one is meant to solve.

They create for each other. Forthe industry. For the award shows.For the self-congratulatory panelswhere they sit nodding, smilingand crying at their own genius.The rest do not get it; they sigh,sipping their cocktails, lamentingthe death of taste, the tyranny ofthe market. As if the failure is nottheirs. As if it is the audience’sfault for not being able to deciphertheir masterpiece.

Think of the numerousreverse-engineered Canneswinning campaigns that makeindustry insiders weep but leaveconsumers baffled.

Ads so abstract, that theyrequire an entire PR campaignto be understood. Creatives whobelieve they are breaking allsorts of boundaries but forgetthat advertising is meant to sell,not impress other creatives in aclosed loop.

They mock conventional ads,calling them uninspired, yet failto realise that simple ideas oftenwin. They forget that the worlddoes not have time to decodetheir (so-called) genius. That noone pauses mid-scroll to analysean ad like an art critic. The bestadvertising has always been thekind that feels effortless, like astory whispered in your ear ratherthan an overthought experimentforced down your throat.

On the other side there arethe Data Fanatics. The AlgorithmPriests. The Keepers of theSpreadsheet Gospel. Theybelieve that everything – everyimpulse, every desire, everyflicker of human emotion – canbe broken down into a statistic, aheat map, a trackable metric.

They do not care about wordsor images, about resonance orrecall. They do not care if an adis beautiful, if it stirs somethingin the chest, if it lingers in themind like an old melody. Theycare about numbers. Aboutefficiency. About whether theengagement rate moved up byhalf a percentage point. They willsay things like: “The data tells usthis will work.” As if data is a god.As if it cannot lie.

They do not ask why. Theydo not ask who is behind thenumbers, what they feel, whatthey long for when they stare at ascreen. They do not know. Someof them do not even care to know.

It’s why we now have AIgenerated headlines that ‘performwell’ but sound robotic (RIPcopywriting). It’s why clickbait thrives because the numberssay it works, even if it erodestrust, credibility and authenticity.It’s why performance marketerscelebrate a 0.02% engagementlift, ignoring that the brand theyare selling has no soul left.

The obsession with data hasled to an industry where creativityis no longer a craft. It has becomea formula, a template, a dryexistence waiting for its own death.Where success is measured in‘optimised impressions’ rather thanlasting impact. Where the humanelement of storytelling is sacrificedat the altar of analytics, leavingbehind campaigns that may beeffective in the short term bututterly forgettable in the long run.

And in between these two –the Deluded Poets and the DataFanatics – there used to be theThoughtful Strategists.

The ones who listened. Theones who did not just trackbehaviour but understood whypeople behaved the way theydid. The ones who knew that anabandoned shopping cart wasnot just a statistic but a story. Ofhesitation. Of guilt. Of a motherpausing, calculating the weight ofa purchase against the weight ofher child’s school fees.

The strategist did not drown innumbers, nor did they disappearinto their own ego. They knewwhen to let creativity breathe andwhen to rein it in. They knew whento use data and when to ignore it.They knew that advertising wasneither an art nor a science butsomething in between.

They weren’t just strategists;they were translators, bridgingthe gap between creativity andcommerce. They understoodthat a campaign’s success wasnot in how many awards it wonor how many clicks it got, butin how deeply it connected with people, how it made them feel,and how it made them fall in love.And because of this, their workendured. But we killed them.

We very quietly killed themwhen someone out there decidedthat advertising was aboutquick, sasta, template-basedwins instead of long-term brandbuilding. When the already drymarketers decided to becomeCFOs in disguise, measuringsuccess in small quarterly spikesrather than that little thing calledbrand building. When the oh-soaccommodating procurementdepartment started runningthe show, demanding moreand more and more for less,forcing agencies to churn outcampaigns like our controlleddesi population.

We killed them when creativitywas forced to justify its existencethrough dashboards insteadof human responses. Wheninsights became regurgitateddata points rather than journeysinto people’s hearts. Whenadvertising stopped being aboutpersuasion and started beingabout optimisation for clicks,impressions and mindlessengagement that led nowhere.

We killed them when agenciesstopped pushing back, when“YES SIR, YES SIR” becamethe anthem they started to sing.When they became vendorsinstead of partners, when theytraded strategy for survival,choosing compliance overconviction.

And now, the industry swayswildly, lurching from one extremeto another, trying desperately tofind meaning in work that eitherspeaks in riddles or does notspeak at all.

And so, we are left withnothing. Advertising thatis either too abstract to be understood or too mechanicalto be felt. Campaigns thatvanish the second they appear.Brands that spend millions toscream into the void, mistakingnoise for meaning.

The ones who could haveheld us steady are gone. Theones who could have remindedus that advertising, at its best,was never about creativity forits own sake or data for its ownsake but about people.

And yet, maybe not all is lost.There are still some – few butpresent – who refuse to let thecentre collapse entirely.

Who understand that youdon’t just grab attention, youearn it. Who refuse to dilutethe audience down to numberson a dashboard and refute theindustry echo chambers. Whoremember that an ad shouldnot just be seen – it shouldbe a feeling, something thattouches the heart and formsa bond. Who understandthat the way forward is notnostalgia, it’s restoring whatworked: balance.

Brands must demand morethan impressions; they needideas that endure. Agencies, oh,my dear agencies, you needto fight for thoughtfulness, forconnection, for love, not justchase trends. Everyone involvedneeds to remember that their jobis not to serve themselves, it’s toserve the audience.

Because advertising wasnever meant to be a pendulum,lurching between absurdityand emptiness. It was meantto be a beautiful balance. Andif we remember that, maybe itstill can.

Ad Mad Dude runs the eponymousFacebook page.admaddude@gmail.com