The estimable Ad Contrarian Bob Hoffman is away for a while on vacation so he’s left us with some parting thoughts about the ad business. One item to catch his attention is WPP agency VMLY&R’s new schtick “human-centered design.”
Obvious enough surely but this variant depends on A1. Here’s what Bob has to say:
Agency Discovers It’s All About Humans
The agency with the most awful name in history, VMLY&R, has discovered a new recipe for “empathy and humanity.” It’s called “human-centered design.” Apparently, before VMLY&R came along, design was not human-centered – it was centered on penguins or ducks or something.
If you’re in the mood to choke on a smorgasbord of platitudinous tripe about “empowerment” and “empathy” you won’t want to miss this.
According to the article, it turns out that “human-centered design is all about understanding…humans.” Which, I guess, if we had sat down and really thought about it we might have realized.
I know AI is, like, totally awesome, but I never realized that “artificial intelligence will be key to unlocking empathy” because, you know, artificial intelligence is so, you know, human.
So if I understand all this human-centered design stuff correctly, it’s critically important that your brand has a sense of warmth and humanity to it and assiduously avoids things that seem contrived, dry, and wooden, for example, a stupid fucking name like VMLY&R.
Unmissable – his observations on Facebook are always spot-on. You can subscribe here.
