Average Adman

I’ve been conducting an ethnographic study on marketers. Well, you know. Just steering around. Participant observation, they call it. Except here the researcher and the subject are the same person, trapped inside the same echo chamber. We don’t study marketers—we are marketers. We spend our days watching each other, copying each other, selling to each other. And then we call it culture.

Spend enough time in this ecosystem and you start to notice the patterns. Almost all my friends are in marketing. Many of our partners too. The ones who aren’t? Artists, musicians, comedians—the kind of people we invite in like exotic species. Everyone else? Too boring. Too normal. Too far outside the game. They are useful to us, but only as raw material. The rest of humanity fills our surveys, joins our focus groups, accidentally likes our posts, and shows up in our ads. They are audience, not companions. They are “insights,” not people. We study them, then monetise what we learn about them to each other. And it works best when the barrier is clean: marketers for marketers.

That’s why you’ll never catch us filling out a survey honestly. We don’t admit we’re marketers when the box appears. We lie, not because we’re ashamed, but because we respect the purity of the experiment. Let the civilians speak for once. We just want to see what our colleagues are doing wrong. It’s professional courtesy: you don’t piss in someone else’s focus group.

But outside of surveys, it’s an orgy of mirrors. We don’t just see 3,000 ads a day like the average person—we double it. We benchmark, we share, we screenshot, we Slack. We have rituals for this: screenshot threads, “inspo” boards, and the sacred act of sending a link in the 2 a.m. Slack channel with the caption, “this is everything.” We sit in meetings where ten people watch the same 30-second pre-roll and then argue about whether the logo should appear at second 3 or 5. We pretend this makes us superior. Maybe it does. We’ve turned our brains into ad museums, full of dusty Cannes winners and TikTok hacks. That’s what keeps us “cool”—we’re always in the now. Which really means in yesterday’s now. Which means in the now of advertising, not the now of life. But life’s overrated anyway.

If only we could be normal people. But we can’t. We don’t even try. So we stay here. Proud.

We say we hate agency life. We complain every night—over pizza, over beer, over the same Deliveroo bag under flickering neon. “This place is toxic,” we say. “This brief is insane,” we say. Then we laugh, because we know it unites us. Agency hate is our true brand purpose. It’s what makes us family. And when one of us leaves, we crown them both traitor and hero. We’ll see them in six months, at another agency, with the same complaints. Because the cycle is the safety net. You can’t leave Adlife. You can only transfer. Leaving is just a rebrand with another color.

Even romance is stuck in this loop. We fall for each other across open-plan desks. We break up across accounts. We try long distance over Zoom, even when we’re in the same room. We know the language, we know the hours, we know the pressure. Who else would understand that a pitch weekend is a form of intimacy?

Outsiders don’t get us. We don’t get them. Why bother?

Better to stay in the bubble. The most effective closed loop in history. Marketers selling to marketers. Marketers congratulating marketers. Marketers teaching marketers how to market marketing. We’ve perfected the ecosystem: a terrarium of bright colors and recycled slogans. The oxygen is artificial, but it keeps us alive. We’ve built an economy where applause is the primary currency and the award show is a regular tax.

And yes, we are proud of it.

Because this is what being a marketer really means: to accept the bubble, love the bubble, and build your life inside it. To know that every time you say “advertising is dead,” you’ll still be at work on Monday, making another ad. To understand that civilians are raw data, not dinner companions. To find in your colleagues your lovers, your enemies, your entire social graph. To laugh at your cage while painting it gold.

So yes, everything is sales. That’s why all my friends are in marketing. It’s not a problem. It’s the point. We don’t want to leave. The bubble is comfortable, and outside is boring.

We are marketers for marketers. Always have been. Always will be.

And if one day I do leave, don’t worry—I’ll still be in the bubble. Just selling you the story of how I escaped it.

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

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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

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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

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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:

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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

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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:

• “Hi, my name is Marc, and last week I killed TV again.”

• “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

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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

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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

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

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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

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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

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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

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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?

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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

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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.

We love to believe we’re not them.

We’re the enlightened ones — sipping niche coffee, working remotely from somewhere inspiring, paid to think in “culture.”

We speak in frameworks, dress like founders, and treat “normal” like an allergic reaction.

We say: “We’re not average. We’re creative.”

Translation: We’re rich enough to forget what average feels like.

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We spend our days studying people, diagnosing audiences, dissecting behaviours.

We talk about human truths like we’re above them — like “people” is a species we observe from glass.

But we’re not above anything.

We are the people.

We’re just… slightly better at pretending we aren’t.

We live in big cities, in the bright end of the algorithm.

We earn more than most of the planet, but less than the ones we secretly want to be.

We think we’re free — but we’re tethered to rent, Slack, and self-image.

We confuse privilege for perspective.

And still, in the eyes of the happy few, we’re the working class with cooler laptops.

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We live in a world where the rent’s paid by selling “relatability” to the masses we avoid.

We build campaigns that tell others to “be themselves,” while secretly praying our next review says visionary.

We claim no pressure, no comparison — but refresh LinkedIn like stock traders, counting likes as validation.

We’ve turned self-awareness into a branding exercise.

We meditate with one eye on the camera.

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The truth?

Humans — including us — are boring as fuck.

We’re herd animals with expensive sneakers.

We follow trends, we mirror tone, we echo each other’s bravery.

We even schedule originality: “Let’s do something unexpected this quarter.”

There’s no escaping it.

Even rebellion has templates now.

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But here’s the heartbreak hiding under all the irony:

for all our cleverness, we still just want to be loved.

We mock “the people,” but we ache for their approval.

We build stories that make strangers cry, then go home and wonder why no one texts back.

We spend our lives crafting belonging for others, while quietly starving for it ourselves.

Maybe that’s the truest human truth we’ll ever touch —

that even the ones selling meaning are desperate to feel it.

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Maybe it’s time to stop calling them “the people.”

Maybe we are the focus group.

Maybe we’re not here to transcend average — just to make peace with it.

Because beneath the pitch decks and post-rationalisations, there’s a shared craving we can’t delete:

to belong.

to be seen.

to matter.

The herd isn’t out there.

It’s us.

Wow. Seems this one was less satire, more a cry for help.

Don’t worry — I’ve got the helpline number right here.

Or, if retail therapy works faster: averageadman.com/store — the You, the People T-shirt.

 

You, the people.

Every pitch begins: “We can’t be average.”

Every deck promises “bravery,” “disruption,” “freshness.”

And yet, what lands in market looks like a remix of the same “bold” idea with different lipstick.

Because most agencies don’t fight average — they sell it, package it, repeat it.

We’ve built a pandemic of sameness so profitable no one even wants to name it.

(So easy to criticise. So fun to write yet another article claiming everything is the same. So Average Adman. I hate how much we love this shit.)

This isn’t exhaustive research. But hopefully it’s enough to keep you reading.

Honestly, we’ve seen enough of this:

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1. Cropped hero assets — the “you know us by half a logo” flex

Brands flaunt how boiled-down they can get.

The “new bold” of 2025 isn’t bold at all — it’s recycled confidence.

Everyone wants to be British Airways: so famous you can crop your logo and still get applause.

McDonald’s, Tesco, Coca-Cola — showing less, meaning more.

Minimalism as self-worship.

When your asset is so “iconic” you only need to show half a fry, you’re not innovating.

You’re showing off your fame rent.

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2. Ethnographics as vanity metrics

Brands send teams with cameras into living rooms, skate parks, laundromats — “discover culture.”

They film “real life” moments: kids texting, someone dunking fries, an outfit change.

Then they pitch it back as “radical insight.”

Heinz. McDonald’s again. JD Sports.

They sit in mirror rooms, thinking culture = me filming you consuming me.

It’s quiet, self-referential.

It feels authentic until you see a few big brands doing the same.

Brands gazing at their own belly buttons, mistaking lint for insight.

Pop culture doesn’t orbit around your logo. It doesn’t even notice it.

As an aside: you’ll see this stuffed into “behind the scenes” reels, as proof of originality.

But it’s not. It’s rerun.

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3. The zoo outbreak

Animal mascot ads never died. They just went underground.

Every few months, Cadbury’s Gorilla escapes LinkedIn and triggers a new wave of animal ads.

Now they’re back — more polished, more “character storytelling,” more safe.

Virgin Broadband, British Gas, PG Tips Monkey returns, pharma, insurance…

They wield nostalgia + emotional shortcut to bypass critique.

You see a fox, a bear, a dog — and your brain thinks “empathy.”

But all the brands are lining up at the same zoo.

The trick: pick an animal nobody’s used (or twist one into dissonance).

But agencies copy. They all want the “cute beast that sells.”

When I see a campaign with an animal, my first question: Which brand?

Often I don’t know.

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4. Puppet mania

The BBH-Levi’s yellow puppet has grandchildren now — Lidl, the Meerkat, telcos, utilities.

Argos. The Specialist Works.

All swearing they’ve found their “distinctive asset.”

Yes, research says characters are top distinctive brand assets.

No, that doesn’t mean you should build the same bloody one.

Hey, sound is top in the ranking. And we still haven’t heard much about it beyond articles.

At least the Marvel and Star Wars phase is dying. Small miracles.

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Unspoken Contract

You see it: agencies preaching radical thinking, then clicking “Duplicate Slide” on the same deck template as their neighbour.

You see it: creatives running trend reports, pattern-matching to the last campaign, then “re-interpreting” it.

You see it: clients asking “Is this safe?” and the agency pivoting to version B, version C — until it’s bland enough to survive.

The unspoken contract is this: boldness is the veneer, safety is the deal.

You’ll sell us “innovation.” We’ll limit you with metrics, brand guides, KPIs, risk aversion.

You’ll give us animals or puppets. We’ll make them bland.

We all whitewash, polish, comply — and call it radical.

So the herd behaviour you mock in culture?

We’re inside it too.

We’re the herd.

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Punchline

The good thing is that all this is anthropofagia for average admen — but the real consumer doesn’t give a shit about any of it.

So you don’t need to defeat average or deny it.

Because average isn’t the disease.

It’s the vaccine.

And the agencies selling the cure?

They’re the biggest carriers of the virus.

So here’s your prescription:

Go average.

That’s where the real work begins.

Look, I don’t usually say it in marketing spheres—but I’m becoming more and more spiritual. And that makes writing this piece harder than usual. Because we, in the industry, love to mock meaning. We audit souls through data. We optimize feelings for CTR. And yet here I am, standing at the void, whispering something no adman dares to say: life is terribly marketed.

People love to criticize God. I get it. Cancer. Pedophilia. Famine. Endless cruelty. As a human with wifi, I’ve had that angry atheist phase too. But lately, I’d made peace with the idea I’ve been pitching to clients for so long: seeing problems as opportunities. Suffering as a feature, not a bug. Shadow work, you know. The spiritual rebrand.

Until I hit a new wall:

Life is a bad product, badly positioned.

Let’s do a quick audit using the 4 Ps.

1. Placement / Distribution
Life’s everywhere. Ubiquity levels that would make Coca-Cola cry. Physical salience: nature, seasons, pets, babies… Grown-ups don’t count—they’re brand-damage – they are living dead. But that’s the problem: it’s so omnipresent, it’s a commodity. You don’t need to qualify for it. Just bang and boom—congrats, you exist. Unless you’re 40+, chemically preserved, and trying IVF like it’s a Kickstarter campaign. But still: oversaturation kills value. Classic double jeopardy law but the other way around—too big, too common, too easy = no one gives a shit.

2. Price
Life is free. That’s the problem. Not entry ticket. The product itself costs zero euros. If life had a price tag, we’d value it more. Price perception 101. Scarcity breeds desire. Instead, we treat it like a cheap giveaway. Disposable. Replaceable. God, if you’re reading this, you fumbled pricing strategy hard.

3. Product
Okay, feature-wise, life is top-tier. Breathable atmosphere. Multi-species cohabitation. Real-time emotions. Open-world design. But that’s not the point. Perceived value is everything. And perception is low.

Some people are so deeply embedded in systemic misery, no amount of dopamine-decked consumerism can touch them. Others are numb, pretending everything’s fine while bingeing distractions and personal brands. The few who do seem to be thriving? We made them up in our ads, films or tik tok. And now even they’re AI-generated.

We’ve over-segmented. Lost the masses. It’s time for mass marketing again. Top-of-funnel brand building. Not micro-moment targeting. Life’s awareness and reputation is losing to Netflix, influencer fame, and “get rich fast” dopamine slots. That’s not good.

4. Promotion
Life has zero brand consistency. What’s the tagline? “Just be”? “Good vibes only”? It’s all over the place.

Sonic branding? Babies crying. No thanks. Birds and rivers are nice but way underpowered in this loud-ass feed. Shouting has been captured by Red Bull and adventure brands. Emotion? Hijacked by NGOs and fintech.

We need a 2000-year strategy. A proper one. A full rebrand.

Recommendation: Own laughter. It’s primal. Inclusive. Contagious. Borderless. A brand asset no one’s truly claimed. If life can’t own happiness, at least dominate humor. Make laughing cool again. And stay consistent. Stop switching agencies every season. Let’s forget Love. Happiness. Connection. Everyone fight for those territories.

And let’s talk leadership. Sorry God, but invisibility hasn’t tested well. For centuries. Crusades. Desperation. Conspiracies. At some point you need a mascot. A jingle. A TikTok face. Let’s give you a makeover. Not because you need it. But because we do.

Culturally,

we are so trapped in our stupid ego fights that life needs to embrace identity politics, too. Create a platform. A proper movement. Call it: #AllLifeMatters. Not the corrupted, co-opted kind. The real kind. The messy, inclusive, chaotic punk kind.

Look, I just did this in 30 minutes. And I know it’s just a bunch of Average Adman level shit – but it’s already better than most of the last 200,000 years of life brand storytelling we got till now. Not trying to be arrogant—but sometimes it helps to get an outsider’s POV.

I know internal politics are probably hell up there. I’ve worked with legacy clients. I get it. But still—Life needs a new CMO, now.

God, I’m open to discussions. But I must say budget review comes first.

In the meantime, if any other brand wants to play: let’s talk.

—The Average Adman

We need to talk about the word “performance.”

Somewhere along the line, we let it get hijacked. Stripped of its flair, drained of its drama, and shackled to a dashboard. Now when someone says “performance marketing,” they mean sales activation. BOF tactics. Real-time data. CTRs and ROIs and pixel-powered conversion funnels.

Which is fine. Necessary, even.

But here’s the real issue: “performance” wasn’t that.

The Stage We Forgot We Were On

Marketing has always been a performance. Not just in the metrics, but in the meaning. Not just in the numbers, but in the show.

The way a brand walks, talks, looks, lives. The way it tells stories, plays characters, and leaves a lasting impression. The way it makes people feel something they didn’t know they needed. That’s performance.

That’s performance in a showmanship sense. But somehow, we let it get reduced to click-through rates.

BOF Hijacked the Word

What frustrates me isn’t sales activation. It’s that we started calling it performance.

Performance should be how the brand performs in culture, not just how an ad performs in a funnel.

The tactical took over the theatrical. Now, unless a campaign delivers immediate returns, it’s seen as fluff. Soft. Indulgent.

Yes, all this, despite the efforts of the big Less Binets, Mark Ritsons or Byron Sharps of the world.

But marketing wasn’t built to be rational. It was built to perform.

Brand Has Always Been Performance

When Les Binet and Peter Field dropped their 60/40 wisdom, it wasn’t just a call to balance short and long. It was a plea to remember the craft. The emotional. The long-term brand magic that performs invisibly, until suddenly it performs undeniably.

System1 gave it a name: showmanship. Because the best marketing doesn’t sell—it seduces. It entertains. It stays in your head like a song you didn’t ask for but now can’t forget.

And Mark Ritson? He nailed it. It’s not the long. It’s the lasting. The brand effects that don’t just move units—they move minds.

What We Lost in the Funnel

When digital exploded, we gained tools but lost our sense of theatre.

We started optimising headlines instead of writing them. Testing emotions instead of evoking them. Measuring attention instead of earning it.

Performance marketing became performance metrics, not marketing that actually performs.

But the audience never changed. They still want to be moved, entertained, understood. They still want a show. Not a spreadsheet.

The Real Performance Marketer

The best marketers have always been performers. Not fakers—performers.

They know how to hold attention. How to make a product feel bigger than it is. How to create a moment, a myth, a meaning. That’s not fluff. That’s the main event.

And yes, BOF has its place. Sales activation should convert. But it should follow the performance, not replace it.

A Good Product Is Common. A Great Performance Isn’t.

Most products are functionally identical. But a brand with presence, with charisma, with narrative? That’s what wins.

That’s what lasts. That’s what performs.

We Don’t Need “Performance Marketing.”

We need marketing that performs.

We need to stop using the word “performance” as a synonym for conversion. It’s a disservice to the craft. It erases the emotion, the risk, the theatre.

Let BOF do its job. But let marketing reclaim its stage.

Because in an ideal world, we wouldn’t have to call it “performance marketing.”

All marketing would be performance.

Not about sales.

About the show.

And the best marketers? They’re not just analysts. They’re performers. They know that brand is the act. And sales are the applause.

So yes—let the dashboards dash. Let the BOF boys optimize.

But me? I’ll be in the wings, adjusting the spotlight. Rehearsing the lines. Making sure the brand knows how to own the stage.

Because I am The Average Adman.
I’ve built funnels that went nowhere.
Sold strategy with no soul.
And clapped for metrics I didn’t understand.

But I’ve also remembered something most of us forgot:

Marketing is not about being efficient.
It’s about being unforgettable.

Not about closing the sale.
But opening the show.

Bold. Brave. Undifferent.
averageadman.com

Now cue the music.
And let the brand perform.