I spend my days spotting patterns. That’s what we do in advertising. We think of ourselves as clever, perched above the herd, dissecting society like amateur anthropologists. We see where categories commoditize, where every brand starts to sound the same, where colleagues march in agency uniforms, where every campaign becomes constipation instead of communication.
We sit there like gods of insight, pointing at the obvious and patting ourselves on the back for noticing. “Look how average it all is.”
But here’s the kicker: when I say “average,” I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about me. My life. My lens. My bitterness. Have I lived too long inside Adlife? Or have I just failed at seeing beauty and uniqueness where I only see sameness?
That’s the trap: every time I mock the industry, I’m holding up a mirror.
Capitalism’s true genius: sameness
People love to glorify capitalism as innovation, disruption, the endless churn of difference. But the real genius of capitalism is sameness. Make everything look different enough to feel fresh, while actually being the same enough to scale.
Multinational coffee chains pretending to be local. Global sneaker drops pretending to be subcultural. Ads screaming Be Different™ while recycling the same three story arcs. Capitalism doesn’t just tolerate average—it manufactures it, packages it, distributes it. Average is the business model.
And here I am, the Average Adman, parodying the machine while still working inside it. Selling sameness dressed up as difference, every single day.
The survival instinct of average
Maybe “average” isn’t even failure. In nature, standing out gets you killed. Camouflage is safety. To blend in is to survive. So when brands huddle together in category clichés, maybe it’s not stupidity—it’s biology.
And when I scoff at another “world-changing manifesto” for another seasonal flavor drop, maybe I’m the dumb one. Maybe what I call “average” is just adaptation.
Average as projection
The more I say everything is average, the more I realize: I’m the one who feels average. Advertising didn’t become constipated—I did. Culture didn’t lose its beauty—I stopped looking for it.
Maybe that’s why every deck I see feels like déjà vu. Maybe it’s not them—it’s me, staring through the same jaded lens, unable to feel surprise.
This isn’t anthropology. It’s confession.
Therapy by cappuccino
I joke about needing therapy, but maybe that’s the truest thing I’ve said. Because every time I roll my eyes at another ad, I’m really rolling them at myself.
Average is my addiction. I seek it, I frame it, I monetize it. I built a whole persona around it. And yeah, business is growing. Which means I can’t kill this model yet. Not until I finish paying off the cottage, the pool, the solarium in the mountains.
So yes, my cynicism is commercial. My bitterness has a business plan.
Beauty in the ordinary?
The irony is, maybe average is beautiful. The billboard in Comic Sans, the clumsy seasonal ad, the copycat collaboration. Things we sneer at in the agency bubble might be the truest expressions of humanity outside it.
Maybe the radical move isn’t to be different—but to embrace ordinariness. To accept sameness as the fabric that binds us. Maybe average isn’t the enemy. Maybe it’s the most human thing we have left.
A closing disclaimer
So let me be clear. I know what I’m doing. I know I’m the bitter one, circling the same jokes, seeing everything through the Average Adman lens. Time will come when I can lay it down—after the mortgage, after the pool, after the solarium.
Until then, I’ll keep selling sameness, parodying sameness, pointing at sameness—while knowing that average, like beauty, is always in the eye of the beholder.
And right now, I’m the one holding the mirror.
And selling you glasses to see things like everyone else in the industry.
