Strap in. Buckle your seatbelts. Duct tape your frontal lobe to the dashboard because we’re going on a RIDE through the screaming neon hellscape of advertising, and I promise you, you’re not gonna like what you find when we get there.
So.
I’m on Twitter today. The hell bird site. The dumpster fire that Elon turned into a dumpster fire INSIDE another dumpster fire, like some kind of flaming garbage matryoshka doll. And somebody, some absolute walnut posts that ads don’t work anymore.
Ads don’t work anymore.
ADS DON’T WORK ANYMORE.
Let me just sit with that for a second. Let me marinate in the sheer audacity of that statement like a steak soaking in its own wrong juices.
Now, on that particular platform, you’ve got two options when you encounter a take this catastrophically stupid.
Option A: it’s rage bait, carefully engineered to make your blood pressure spike so the algorithm gets its little dopamine cookie.
Option B: this person has the critical thinking skills of a concussed goldfish.
I almost always go with Option B.
Because here’s the thing. HERE’S THE GODDAMN THING. [Deep breath]
Ads work. Ads have always worked. Ads will work long after the sun swallows this rock and cockroaches are buying branded survival gear from each other. Ads work like gravity works. Quietly and constantly. WHETHER YOU BELIEVE IN THEM OR NOT.
And this is why…
You see a Nike ad. You, the big smart genius with your big smart genius brain, you look at that swoosh and those impossibly attractive humans running through rain slicked streets at golden hour and you think… “Pfft. I’m not some rube. I know that a pair of overpriced shoes isn’t going to make me faster. I am IMMUNE to this sorcery.”
You scroll past a BMW ad all sleek lines and mountain roads and that fetishistic close up of the gear shift like it’s automotive pornography and you smugly tell yourself… “I don’t need a German land yacht to feel successful, THANK you very much.”
You see a skincare ad and you snort. You literally snort. Because you KNOW that no cream on this or any other planet is going to Ctrl+Z the relentless meat decay of aging.
And you feel so smart. So bulletproof. So gloriously above it all.
But…
YOU ARE LOOKING AT IT ALL WRONG.
Here’s where I need you to lean in. Get close to the screen. Closer. No, CLOSER. I want to see your pores.
They’re not selling you shoes. They’re not selling you cars. They’re not selling you age defying face goop/jizz. They are selling you a STORY. They are selling you a reflection in a mirror that doesn’t exist yet. They are selling you the beautiful, shimmering, intoxicating idea of who you could become if you just JUST opened your wallet and let the moths fly out toward the light.
Now you might be sitting there thinking, “Okay, Captain Obvious called and he wants his epaulettes back.”
And yeah. Fine. Maybe you know this. You’re HERE, after all, reading this unhinged wall of text instead of doing something productive with your life. You’re not like THOSE smart people. The ones who read one marketing thread and think they’ve achieved enlightenment. No. You’re a BETTER breed of smart person. You’ve chosen to wade into THIS particular swamp. Congratulations. Your taste in content is as impeccable as it is questionable.
ANYWHO.
Let’s crack this egg open and see what kind of monster crawls out…
BMW.
What does BMW sell? WHAT DOES BMW SELL?
They sell the idea that you are a person of REFINED TASTE. A person who appreciates PRECISION ENGINEERING. A person who has clawed their way up the success ladder far enough to afford a car that costs more than some people’s houses. The car that sleek, overengineered, turn-signal-allergic Teutonic bullet, is just the physical manifestation of an identity you want to crawl inside and zip up like a skin suit.
You’re buying a CHARACTER in a story you’re writing about yourself. Chapter One: I Have Arrived. Chapter Two: I Have Arrived In Something German.
(And for the LOVE OF ALL THINGS HOLY, for the love of every god, goddess, deity, spirit animal, and cosmic force that has ever existed or been invented, if you buy a BMW, LEARN TO USE THE TURN SIGNAL. It’s RIGHT THERE. It’s a LEVER. You push it UP or DOWN. Toddlers could do it. TODDLERS. The engineers at BMW put it there FOR A REASON and that reason is so the rest of us don’t have to develop psychic powers to figure out what the hell you’re doing on the highway)
I’ll finish the other section of this email tomorrow cause I’m about to pass out from sleep deprivation.
Stephen Walker.