Dear member,
Congratulations. If you’ve ever said “advertising is dead,” you’re already one of us.
Doesn’t matter where you said it—onstage at a conference, in a client call, or quietly into your oat flat white—you crossed the line. Membership is automatic. The moment you called time of death, you joined the only club that never sleeps: Advertising Murderers United.
The Joke We Can’t Quit
Here’s the thing: advertising isn’t dead. It’s never been dead. It won’t die.
People still want things. People still buy things. Brands still need to be remembered, found, chosen. That hasn’t changed since the first caveman carved a logo into a rock.
But we can’t resist the drama. So we keep killing advertising—not for real, but for show. The murder is the content. The funeral is the case study. Every “death” buys us one more headline, one more keynote slot, one more chance to look like a disruptor instead. ie. like an Average Adman.
We don’t kill advertising to bury it. We kill it to keep it alive.
Why We Kill
Step one: Write the obituary.
Start with a LinkedIn article. Title it “Advertising Is Dead.” That’s your membership badge. Doesn’t matter if you believe it. Doesn’t matter if you know you’ll be running pre-rolls again tomorrow. The declaration is the point.
Step two: Find a new wave.
Pick something you didn’t invent and barely understand—AI, influencers, TikTok, Web3, pick your poison. Call it the future. Say it changes everything. Position yourself as the sherpa guiding brands up the mountain of whatever trend you were mocking last quarter.
Step three: Kill the past.
Declare everything before this moment useless. Consistency? Dead. Mass media? Dead. TV? Definitely dead. (Ignore the fact you’ll keep spending there—quietly.) Call anyone who still uses it a dinosaur, while you quietly ride their reach.
Step four: Rebrand the same old playbook.
Here’s the fun part: while declaring the end of advertising, keep doing what advertising has always done—reach people, repeat messages, build memory. Pretend you invented it. Pretend it’s a revolution. Keep cashing in.
That’s the rhythm. That’s the bloodsport.
Membership Rules
This is not a passive club. You don’t just join—you participate. Every member is armed, and every weapon is the same: declaring advertising dead in a slightly different way.
Here’s what you signed up for:
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You fight each other. Every member’s job is to stab the last member’s declaration. If someone says “influencers killed advertising,” your role is to say “influencers are dead, AI killed advertising.” Then the next member kills AI. Then the next kills whatever replaces AI. And so on, forever.
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You kill advertising daily. Not metaphorically—publicly. On panels, in op-eds, in Slack. Always loud, always righteous. Bonus points if you manage to sell a training session immediately after.
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You never admit it works. Even when your new campaign relies on the same old boring rules (reach, consistency, emotion), you never say that out loud. You sell it as reinvention. The knife must always be in your hand, never in your drawer.
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You fuel the deathbath. The more corpses we pile up, the more alive the industry feels. That’s the paradox. We kill to survive. We stab to sell.
This is not hypocrisy—it’s the glue of the business.
On Fighting Each Other
Think of this club like a football league. We don’t just play; we tackle. Each new season, we pick a different ball, a different rule, a different slogan. The only thing consistent is the fight.
Or maybe it’s like Alcoholics Anonymous, but in reverse. We gather to confess our murders:
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“Hi, my name is Marc, and last week I killed TV again.”
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“Hi Marc.”
We laugh. We clap. We go back out and do it again.
It’s not tragedy—it’s sport. It rocks. It sells.
Why You’ll Stay
Because deep down, you know the truth: advertising is immortal. No matter how many times we kill it, it wakes up the next morning, puts on a new jacket, and asks if you’ve seen the latest deck.
That’s why we need this club. To keep the death spiral spinning. To keep ourselves entertained. To feel dangerous while doing the most average thing on earth: selling.
And let’s be honest—you love it. You love the kill, the fight, the game. We all do. That’s why we keep coming back.
Closing Words
So here’s your official welcome: you’re part of Advertising Murderers United. You’re one of us now. Sharpen your knife, pick your trend, write your obituary. Kill advertising again. Kill each other’s kills. Keep the wake alive.
Because the truth is boring, but the deathbath? The deathbath never dies.
Yours in murder,
Advertising Murderers United
