Eek! Entertainment! Eek!

The new definition of advertising:

n. Entertainment with some commercial message or agenda of some sort in there somewhere.

The industry simply must stop being phobic about unapologetically identifying what we do as entertainment.

I blame David Ogilvy for this affliction. Since his time, the advertising environment, as well as the larger cultural environment in which advertising plays, has changed enough to render many of his tenets about advertising obsolete. Including his jaundiced view of “entertainment value” in advertising.

Clients need to accept that, in today's environment, with consumers having so much choice and so much power to exclude messages that are boring or annoying, advertisers had better embrace not just the value, but the absolute indispensability, of entertainment in their marketing efforts.

Entertainment is a very broad word that doesn't preclude the possibility of effectively incorporating a strategically grounded, persuasive message.

After all, what does entertainment mean?

Entertainment:

n. That which is created in order to amuse, interest, please, divert and/or stimulate an audience.

Surely this is a necessary condition for something to qualify as a “good” ad.

So let’s stop being so dang timid and defensive about recognizing that advertising must be entertaining first, in order for it to accomplish its other goals.

Maybe if we can get over this problem, we can tackle the phobia that so many advertisers, particularly BtoB advertisers have about referring to their funny advertising as “funny.” When I’m selling work to a client, I’m still compelled to draw on my lexicon of euphemisms for “funny” in describing funny concepts. I can call an idea “lighthearted”, “fun”, “friendly”, “good-humored” and so forth. But if I call it funny, the client invariably squirms, and the idea is dealt an oft-fatal blow.

This “funny” problem is a simply a subset of the “entertaining” problem. But for many clients, they will become comfortable with “entertaining” long before they finally embrace “funny.” And it may only be when we can provide objective neuroscieentific evidence of desirable changes in the brain brought on by smiling and laughing (increased endorphins, etc.), evidence that these changes contribute to positive attitudes and intentions toward brands that makes them laugh, that advertisers will see the light.