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Fearless Group’s Jerry Judge: why advertising needs to be seductive not instructive

Why are you so much cuter than me?

When I first moved to the US, industry folk would (discreetly) ask me “Why is British advertising better than ours?”.

It wasn’t. It was different. And it’s worth understanding why.

Post war Britain had the BBC. By the seventies and eighties the BBC had two channels. And TV remotes appeared. If you didn’t like the ads, you changed channels. So the best ads (Heineken, below) became likeable. Seductive not instructive. Darwinian evolution.


US clients like P&G had cumulative US experience on their side.

Everything they said was “right.” Even when it was wrong. And unconfident imitators followed their thinking.

When you think about it, spending money on media can be dumb. If the time and space you buy is not engaging, the client is buying degrees of nothing.

And in the modern world the average consumer sees more than five thousand ads a day. And they see through “the con in content.”

At Fearless we are media planners and buyers as well as strategists and creators. Our team members talk to each other all the time.

We can’t afford waste.

Nor can our clients.

Jerry Judge is a founding partner of Fearless Group.

One Comment

  1. Sound advice from my old mate, Jerry. He’s a smart old fucker. Well, not as old as me and definitely smarter. So, take heed. As he says… You can’t afford waste.

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